An allusion is a reference, typically brief, to a person, place, thing, event, or other literary work with which the reader is presumably familiar. As a literary device, allusion allows a writer to compress a great deal of meaning and significance into a word or phrase. However, allusions are only effective to the extent that they are recognised and understood by the reader, and that they are properly inferred and interpreted by the reader. If an allusion is obscure or misunderstood, it can lose effectiveness by confusing the reader.

Some common allusions in frequent use nowadays include phrases like ‘If I’m not home by midnight, my car might turn into a pumpkin’ (a reference to the fairy story, ‘Cinderella’, where the heroine’s carriage to the ball is the result of a magic spell on a pumpkin, but where the magic only lasts until midnight) or speaking about a weakness as ‘my Achilles’ heel’ (alluding to the one weakness of Achilles in Classical mythology.) Such phrases are completely meaningless without the background story (Why should a car turn into a pumpkin? How can you have a heel belonging to someone else?), but are extremely evocative and effective if you know the things to which the phrase alludes. Allusion acts as a binding agent, giving people the pleasure of shared knowledge and unity, using language in a coded way that goes way beyond the surface meaning of words.

‘The day of the Lord’ is a phrase which features frequently in the Bible, to the extent that its New Testament usage relies heavily on allusion. To those soaked in the Scriptures, the phrase is shorthand for all kinds of things: judgment, destruction, darkness, God’s intervention in human history in ways that are nothing short of miraculous, the final righting of wrongs for which we all long. To fully understand what this phrase means (delving deeper into its meaning than saying ‘the Lord’s day’, meaning Sunday, would imply), we need the mindset of the prophets who were the main writers using this phrase, but we also need to see how the coming of Jesus and the victory He has won redefined and reshaped this phrase. Such a study is important, because the phrase is used so frequently in the Bible that it’s clearly important!

January in England is a long, dreary month. The excitement of December, with its Christmas celebrations and holiday period, twinkling lights, merry music and festive decorations, not to mention the tempting aromas of baking and cooking, give way to the hard slog of winter. Grey skies, darkness, cold weather, mizzling rain and biting frosts remain, but there seems nothing to alleviate the monotony. Many people, paid early in December, find the financial burden of January a heavy weight. Doom and gloom seem more natural bedfellows. Spring beckons, to be sure, but it’s a long time to March!

Pessimism, doubt and despair hang over January like the gossamer threads of a spider’s web clinging to us cloyingly. The occasional bright blue sky promises much, but rarely seems to linger. We are in the middle of winter and only the occasional snowdrop with its delicate white perfection reminds us life is not done yet.

Eugene Peterson, in meditating on the word ‘Hallelujah’ (‘praise God’) writes, ‘we were not created for curse and gloom. We were not put together to live in despair and melancholy.’ (‘This Hallelujah Banquet’, P 147)

Praising God is easy in the good times, ‘when the sun’s shining down on me and the world’s all as it should be’, as Matt Redman puts it (‘Blessed Be Your Name’). But praising God is not confined to the good times. It’s a remarkable fact that the people of God are called to sing and praise God in all circumstances (1 Thess 5:16-18), and the book of Revelation, as well as the rest of history, testify that singing and praising God goes on during the dark times as well as when all is well. This is possible becuase ‘grace and love are the centres of existence.’ (ibid., P 149) Doom and gloom, melancholy and misery, do not have the final word. ‘Hallelujah’ can become our first and last word, a universal word that transcends the limitations of different languages, as we shape our language and life around the truth of God. God is the reality of life, therefore ‘Hallelujah‘ can be our daily response to life, even in January!

In our series looking at questions God asks us, we have seen that God does not ask questions out of ignorance as we do. Sometimes, He asks questions to challenge us, to make us question things which perhaps would otherwise have passed us by and to dig deeper into our own motivation and the motivation of others. Sometimes, He also asks rhetorical questions (‘a question asked to make a point, rather than get an answer’), and this is the kind of question asked in Jer 32:27, when God asks Jeremiah, ‘Is anything too hard for me?’

We might feel that rhetorical questions are pointless. It would have been just as easy to say, ‘Nothing is too hard for me’, but somehow, by asking questions, we are invited to reflect and reach a conclusion; we are even drawn into the conclusion. In Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice (which looks at the divide between the Jewish and Christian faiths), questions are used to highlight the fact that all humans are the same regardless of their religion: ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?’ As we reflect on the fact that people are all fundamentally the same despite differences in colour or religion, we are able to reach this conclusion without feeling that it has been forced upon us.

God uses rhetorical questions to engage us in debate and to ensure that there is no dissonance between head knowledge and heart knowledge. It’s easy to believe that God is all-powerful from a theoretical point of view, but God wants more than head knowledge. He wants this truth to permeate every area of our lives and for us to acknowledge in our lives as well as in our speech that He is the God of the impossible.

The Bible tells us time and time again that ‘with God all things are possible.’ (Matt 19:26) If we read the Bible believing that the impossible can’t happen, then we will have to chop out a lot of the stories it tells, because most of these are impossible for people to achieve on their own.

• A hundred year old man and his barren wife having a baby? Impossible.

• A nation enslaved by Egypt escaping because the Red Sea parts and lets them through? Impossible.

• A city’s walls collapsing just because people march around and blow trumpets? Impossible.

• A young boy defeating a 9 foot warrior with a sling and five stones? Impossible.

• People surviving being thrown into fire and coming out totally unscathed? Impossible.

• An unmarried virgin giving birth to a son? Impossible.

• A man walking on water? Impossible.

• A man healing the sick and raising the dead? Impossible.

• A man rising from the dead? Impossible.

Yet the Bible declares categorically that all these things happened because God worked the impossible for His people. God specialises in things thought impossible, the song says. He is the Lord, the God of all mankind. Nothing is too hard for him. So if we have an impossible situation to deal with today, we could well be in for a big surprise. The God of the impossible could step in and change our situation. All He is looking for is that little bit of crazy faith, that mustard seed of faith, which believes there is nothing too hard for the Lord. All He wants is for us to dare to believe that He can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. Miracles happen when people dare to believe that nothing is too hard for God. If we will stretch that faith muscle and believe nothing is too hard for the Lord, then we will see the impossible become possible in our lives, not just in other people’s!

Jeremiah 32:1-29 tells the strange story of Jeremiah, a prophet who has been telling Israel that they are about to go into exile for 70 years, buying a field, even though he is not likely to get any use out of the field himself. This seems a bizarre thing to do, given that he knows he will not live to see the return of Israel from Babylon, but is a vivid living parable that in a life of faith, we have to take the long view.

God reminds Jeremiah through the question ‘Is anything too hard for me?’ (Jer 32:27) that even though life may look unrelentingly bleak at present, He is still working and has not abandoned Israel. Jeremiah’s apparently ludicrous act of purchasing a field is a visible testimony to Israel that ‘houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.’ (Jer 32:15) God, the Sovereign Lord, has not abandoned His people forever; there will be a time when He acts decisively and the people will return. Jeremiah’s act of faith reminds us that we are called to see more than the visible: ‘We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’ (2 Cor 4:18) Now, with all its humiliation and hurt, with all its persecution and pain, is not the final story. Now they may have to endure God’s furious anger and great wrath, but in the future, they will be gathered from all the lands and brought back to Jerusalem where they will live in safety. God’s covenant with His people will survive even punishment and exile, but they – like us – need eyes of faith to see the impossible become possible and to believe through the waiting period when nothing seems to be happening.

Dave spoke this morning about grace, looking at the time in David’s life when he showed grace to Jonathan’s son, Mephibosheth (2 Sam 9:1-12). David wanted to show kindness to his friend’s son and is a picture mirroring God’s grace to all people. Rom 5:11 reminds us that sin cripples us; Mephibosheth was physically crippled through a fall and had ended up in a place called Lo Debar, a place of no pasture, a place of barrenness. David made the first move in seeking out Mephibosheth, just as God made the first move to us in sending Christ.

That initial summons to see the king may well have frightened Mephibosheth who could have expected judgment or punishment (so often, a new king got rid of any descendants of the previous ruler in order to avoid any claims to power.) But when Mephibosheth appeared before the king, he only received kindness. David knew his name: God knows ours too. We have done nothing to deserve His grace, but God seeks, saves and restores us. Mephibosheth was allowed to eat at the king’s table, an act of grace. God’s grace is sufficient for us too, drawing us into fellowship and communion with Himself. God’s kindness, grace and favour are shown to us and we are, like Mephibosheth, the happy recipients of grace!