Peter Misselbrook's Blog
Aug 14 2020 - 1 Peter 2:11-3:7 – Submit!

When I was a teenager, I liked to watch the wrestling on TV on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes one of the wrestlers would get the other in a backbreaking hold with the aim of gaining a submission – getting the other to admit defeat. I was reminded of this as I read the passage this morning. It too is all about submission: submission to civil authorities (1 Peter 2:13-14); submission to masters – to those who have the right to command your work (2:18); submission to husbands (3:1); and, by implication, submission to God (2:16). Submission does not come naturally; only when my arm is severely twisted or my back is about to break am I ready to cry, "I submit!" Submission is a sign of weakness. To submit is to admit defeat. Or is it?

Peter knew all about the human tendency to fight back; he had been the disciple who had struck off the ear of the high priest's servant with a sword. But in this he had acted against the will of his master. He urges servants, even when ill-treated, to submit to their masters: "To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps" (2:21). We are to walk in the footsteps of Christ, even in situations (perhaps especially in situations) where we feel that we are treated unfairly. We are to win the day by unalloyed goodness (2:15) – by the power of a godly life; even by the power of the cross.

The call to submission is therefore an invitation to submit to Jesus Christ as our Lord and our Master. Peter reminds us that, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls" (2:24-25). Jesus endured the cross that we might be healed, transformed. Risen from the dead he is "the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls." He calls us each by name to follow him; to follow him in the path of submission – dying to sin and sinful responses and living to righteousness. Nor will he ever leave us to walk this path alone; he walks with us every step of the way – "the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls." 

This life of discipleship, following Christ and walking with him, is to be lived out in every aspect of our daily lives. It is to shape our life at work and in society. Above all, it is to shape our life in the home, in the relationship of husband to wife and wife to husband. It is here especially that we are to practice the grace of submission as we live in love for and consideration of one another. Such shared lives find expression also in frequent times of prayer, for they have their focus in Christ and the coming of his kingdom.

Such submission is not weakness nor is a life shaped by such submission a servile life. It is a life marked by gratitude, freedom and contentment – the freedom of knowing that we are children of God and that we do not need to prove ourselves to others or fight to establish a position for ourselves. We have become content with Christ and glad to follow him.

Loving Saviour, you taught us submission when we came to own that you are Lord, Lord over all the universe and Lord of our lives. Help us to live this day in glad submission to your gracious rule, recognising that you are the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls. Help us to live in ready submission to one another and even to those who do not yet know you. Help us to display the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit – for your name’s sake and for your glory.

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Aug 14 2019 - Jeremiah 3:1-18 – Call to a faithless people

You may remember that Josiah had ordered the temple to be repaired and idols removed. As the work was going on, a scroll of the Book of the Covenant was discovered containing the laws which God had given his people through Moses – a scroll which may have contained the Book of Deuteronomy. Jeremiah 3:1 seems to refer to Deuteronomy 24:1-4 which prohibited a divorced couple, after marrying others, from getting back together. One writer explains this law as follows:

[It] was aimed against what would amount to virtually lending one's partner to another – for if an authoritarian husband could dismiss his wife and have her back when the next man had finished with her, it would degrade not only her but marriage itself and the society that accepted such a practice. (Derek Kidner, The Message of Jeremiah)

Such practices would trivialise marriage, turning it from being a binding commitment into a temporary association that people could drift into and out of at will.

And this, says the Lord, is how his people have been behaving. God uses the dramatic picture of marriage to represent his relationship with his people. Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes, had been married to two sisters. God represents his relationship with his people in the same way; both Judah and her sister, the northern kingdom of Israel, were his brides, united to him in the covenant bonds of his redeeming love.

But both Israel and Judah have treated their relationship with the Lord as if they could drift away from it and back to it as they pleased; they have failed to take it seriously. They have been seduced away by the idol gods of the nations around them. They have installed their lovers, their gods and goddesses, on every hilltop where they performed sexual acts hoping to charm the rain out of the sky and the corn from the earth in the time-honoured way of Canaan.

But the Lord alone is the living God. He is the one who has withheld the rain and blighted their harvests (v.3). He is the one who has allowed the unfaithful northern kingdom of Israel to be defeated by the Arameans and taken off into captivity: "I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries" (v.8). But, "In spite of all this, her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to me with all her heart, but only in pretence,’ declares the Lord" (v.10).

The Lord had hoped that Judah would learn from Israel's fate and would abandon her love affair with idols. With the discovery of the scroll in the temple there had indeed been some reform. Josiah had destroyed many of the places where Baal and Asherah were worshipped. He had called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem, along with the people of Judah, their priests and prophets, and had read in their hearing the Book of the Covenant. Then:

The king … renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord – to follow the Lord and keep his commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul… Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant. (2 Kings 23:3)

But reform was only skin deep. Far from keeping the Lord's commands with all their hearts and souls, the people of Judah had quickly drifted back into the idolatrous worship of the gods of Canaan. Through Jeremiah, the Lord declares that their sin is worse than that of Israel.

How seriously do we treat our relationship with our God? The Lord Jesus has redeemed us through his shed blood so that he might make us his own – his bride. But are we sometimes drawn away from him by the idols of this world – the things which charm, captivate, excite and entertain the world around us? God gave his best for us to make us his own. Let's not hold back anything from him but offer him the undivided devotion of heart and soul.

Father God, help us by your Spirit to keep ourselves in your love and to keep ourselves from idols.

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Peter Misselbrook