Jeremiah 33 - Jeremiah is still in prison at the Court of the Guard when a second message from God reminds Jeremiah that despite the destruction they will suffer, God also promises restoration: “I am going to fulfill the promise I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah.”  A virtuous branch will grow for David (33:15). Yahweh would sooner break his covenant with day and night, with nature and its laws as break his covenant with David and the Levitical priests (33:20-21). 

I think we Christians -- whatever our "denomination" -- have trouble seeing our own "covenant" with God as having the same roller-coaster history as that of the Jews. We need to see our "work" in establishing Christ's presence on this earth as a covenant responsibility that we too have often NOT been faithful to. And yes, we too have, suffered setbacks (i.e. "punishment") for not having been faithful: seemingly constant divisions and inter-denominational bitterness, corruption, diminished spiritual power. 

Romans 1 – A great deal is contained in the opening of this letter.  Paul says he is "a slave” of Jesus Christ, set apart to serve the gospel.  The gospel of Christ that Paul preaches was “promised long ago by God through his prophets, as written in the Holy Scriptures” (1:2). It is about God’s Son—descended from David according to the flesh, but “shown with great power to be the Son of God by being raised from death” (1:4). Through Jesus, God gave Paul “the privilege of being an apostle “in order to lead people of all nations to believe and obey” (1:7).

Paul says that the faith of the Roman community is heralded throughout the world (1:8).  He has been and continues to be eager to visit them.  “I have an obligation to all people, to the civilized and to the savage, to the educated and to the ignorant” (1:14).

The gospel, he says, is God’s saving power (1:16), his power to make people righteous through faith and to “deal with” wickedness and impiety.  People should be able to access evidence of God’s “invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity” (1:20) through the creation.  Paul seems to be addressing the question of the role of reason or human wisdom in achieving human lives that give glory (or properly reflect the dignity God meant man to have) to God.  The Hellenization of the ancient world brought much philosophy and devotion to human wisdom, but Paul says it did little to bring the “righteousness” or “holiness” Jews believed was the mark of dignity God wanted in his creation.  Man’s reason should be able to bring it, but instead it gave way before man’s passions and brought degradation and every sort of vice—wickedness, evil, greed, malice, murder, rivalry, treachery, spite, gossiping, hostility to God, sexual deviance, etc. (1:24-32). The sexual deviance part of this reading is a stumbling block for some, I know; but the profundity of the writing is very inspiring. Later he will make the claim that outward conformity to Jewish law does little to improve things.