What does it mean to know God? (You won’t believe God’s answer!)

Every day we're reading or listening to part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today it’s Bern Leckie:

What did I like about today’s passage?

While this book can be dark and confusing at times, I appreciate the special clarity in this passage about why God was angry with his people and what he was going to do about it. Breaking a covenant with God and failing to obey his laws might sound trivial or irrelevant to some people, perhaps to friends of different or no faith, and worshiping other gods might sound fine to people who worship other gods. Yet God said that people from many nations would remark upon Jerusalem's fall and recognise his involvement.

The thing is, God was not complaining about Judah’s religion as much as its justice. This comes up so many times in Jeremiah’s prophecies, but just in case we’ve missed it, the commands God insisted his people obey were to “do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.”

I love how God spelled out what makes a good king – not having more stuff, but being “right and just” and defending “the cause of the poor and needy… Is that not what it means to know me?”

Other nations expected to have different gods but could recognise when people were being treated well or not. God wanted to equip and train his people to be the best at this.

What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

Worship of God goes completely together with good use of God's resources, including our time, money and ability to choose how to use them. While only one nation might have been brought up to know the intricacies of God's law, many nations would recognise the injustice, selfishness and folly which was getting Judah into trouble.

Thankfully God had a solution in mind which would be just as widely recognised - a "righteous Branch" for David, God's promised salvation through his family line, "a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land." We recognise this as Jesus.

What am I going to do differently as a result?

I want to remember that it is God's goodness, recognisable through Jesus, which is most attractive to friends who don't yet believe in God, and that God can grab their attention without me necessarily having to think of ways to make church sound appealing to them. I want to rely on God more and let him use me on his mission so that more can know him.

Who am I going to share this with?

There are conversations I need to keep coming back to around our school community where faith and practical service overlap. We don’t just want to work in our own strength here!