Devotions: Ps 31, 35; Jer 24:1-10; Rom 9:19-33; Jn 9:1-17
Lord, You are my Rock and my Refuge. I trust in You, while others put their faith in idols and the world's devices. I hide in Your shadow, protected from my enemies. Let us be strong and take courage, who wait for the Lord, for He will not disappoint or desert us. I ask YHWH to contend with my enemies. Blow them away, and let me rejoice. One of my enemies has died today, Lord; I pray for the well-being of his soul, and I exult that I no longer share the world with this adversary. Vindicate me according to Your righteousness, and let all who trust You exult and praise You all the day long!
The Babylonian king took the king of Judah and all the leaders of the Jerusalem community into exile. And YHWH showed Jeremiah an image that commented on the situation: two baskets of figs, one good, one spoiled. YHWH told the prophet that He would regard the exiles in Chaldea like the good basket of figs: 'I will bring them back to this land, build them up and not tear them down, and plant them. I will give them a heart to know that I Am God, and they will be My people and I their God, for they will return to Me with their whole hearts. But I will treat Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his princes and the remnant remaining here, as if they were rotten figs. I will make them a horror to the kingdoms, a byword and reproach. I will send sword, famine and pestilence upon them, until they shall be utterly destroyed from the land which I gave to them and their ancestors.'
Paul continues his discourse: Some may ask why God finds fault, since none can resist His will. But He is God; we are clay in His hands, and have no standing to question God's decisions. Possibly God desired to make His wrath and power known, and has endured with much patience the vessels created for destruction, so as to make known the riches of His glory for the vessels of mercy, which God has prepared in advance for glory—that is all of us whom He has called, not from among the Jews alone, but also from among the Gentiles. As God has said in Hosea, 'I will call them "My people" who were not My people, and "My beloved" those who were not beloved. So in the very place all were considered not to be YHWH's people, they will be called "sons of the living God." And as it is written in Isaiah: 'Only a remnant among the multitude of Israel will be saved; for YHWH will execute His sentence upon the earth with rigor and dispatch.' And 'if the Lord of hosts had not spared us children, we would have fared like Sodom and Gomorrah.' So what can we say? The Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it—righteousness through faith; but Israel who pursued righteousness based on the law did not succeed in fulfilling the law. Why? Because they did not pursue it through faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone described by Isaiah: 'Behold, I lay in Zion a stone that will make men stumble and a rock that will make them fall; and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame.' [Faith in Jesus, fulfilling God's covenant, is the way to achieve righteousness—the status of acceptance into God's household—rather than living by Torah, which inevitably falls short and convicts one of sin and unrighteousness.]
As Jesus was moving along, He saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked Jesus, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, 'Neither the man nor his parents sinned; he was born this way so that the works of God might be manifest in him. We must work the works of Him Who sent Me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I Am in the world, I Am the Light of the world.' As He said this, Jesus spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva; He anointed the man's eyes with this clay mud, and told him to go the the Pool of Siloam (which means 'Sent') and wash off the clay. The man did what Jesus told him, and came back seeing! All who had seen the man before said, 'Is not this the man who used to sit and beg?' Some thought so, others said not. The man himself spoke up: "I am the man!' And they asked how his eyes had been healed. He described Jesus and His actions, and the result that he received his sight when he washed the mud away at the Siloam pool. 'So where is this man?' they asked, but the man did not know. People brought the healed man before the Pharisees. Jesus had healed him on a Sabbath day. When the Pharisees questioned him, the man repeated his story: 'He plut clay on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.' Some Pharisees asserted, 'This man could not be from God, since He doesn't keep the Sabbath.' But others replied, 'How could a sinner do something this wonderful?' So they were divided. So they asked the formerly blind man: 'What do you say about him?' He said, 'He is a prophet.'
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