Jeremiah 10:1-5 and Matthew 6:3-4 – Seen in Secret
Jeremiah 10:1-5
Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel.
2 Thus says the Lord:
“Do not learn the way of the Gentiles;
Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven,
For the Gentiles are dismayed at them.
3
For the customs of the peoples are [a]futile;
For one cuts a tree from the forest,
The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.
4
They decorate it with silver and gold;
They fasten it with nails and hammers
So that it will not topple.
5
They are upright, like a palm tree,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot go by themselves.
Do not be afraid of them,
For they cannot do evil,
Nor can they do any good.”
Matthew 6:3-4
3 But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.
Most of Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate is by turns creepy and forgettable, but he lands accidentally on some phrasing for good theology. One character urges another, "I wish you would try a little bit more to feel the sacredness of your own mission."
This is the savor of Matthew 6:3-4. The Son Who knows from the experience of eternity past the actual radiance of His Father's face which promises to shine on US reminds us of this reality. As we forsake trolling for reinforcement from other people when we do what's good, as we forsake, even, congratulating ourselves, we leave room for true validation. Your Father, the Creator of every needy nuance of your character, sees in secret what it is that each of you do by faith.
What a narrow path this is to walk in thought and practice, though! Jeremiah knows it. He begins his tenth chapter exposing two alternatives which are both lonely and common. The first is to linger on our insignificance and that of our actions, to be dismayed by the signs of Heaven.
The same Heavens which Scripture says elsewhere declare the glory of God can, if our focus is only on their scale, render in us a sterile kind of awe. God if He exists, can seem distant, cold, remote. We might acknowledge Him capable of flinging the stars into motion, but in such a state we can question with David what man is that God is mindful of him, and stop there.
This leaves us with a sort of begrudging existentialism toward our works on the job or in supposed ministry. On such a scale, meaning is left for us to pretend to impose for ourselves. The God of all ages has bigger concerns than our to do list for today.
Craving intimacy and validation while we might not admit it, then, we seek to make transcendence manageable. Stanching the heart's bleeding need for intimacy and glory which Tim Keller says can only be found in God, we try fashioning our own narrative, in effect our own god.
Enter the national lurch to another idolatrous solution in Jeremiah 10:3-5. Lacking a connection to the cosmos, we want meaning we can put on the calendar, even if it comes in rituals we know in our hearts to be futile. We will prop up its emblems.
We will make our own burden incrementally heavier by carrying the very symbols we meant to lift our spirits. The very habits, the very practices, the very props we meant to give us meaning, some of them religious, have taken time and energy without imparting real meaning.
Thus God came near. Indulging for ages this over-correction between man-is-nothing vague nods toward the stars and man-makes-his-meaning brittle impudence, then came Jesus. Waiting for our weighted weariness, He shows us why our works matter.
They will never reach all the way to God even if we band together and build another Babel. God reached down to us. He reminds us through His Son that He sees in secret and will reward openly with the validation our hearts crave that which He Himself makes possible.
Thus, today matters. The planting of the apple tree matters whether we see it grow to fruition or not. The words we put on a page are not sound and fury signifying nothing. For the Christian, they are a loving echo of Divine authority and approval.
Even the humblest task is practice in the gift of dominion we will exercise for the ages. Working, ministering, parenting by faith and knowing that day of ultimate approval is coming, we spend even our internal deliberations on our efforts longing lovingly for that rather than constantly comparing ourselves to our neighbors.
Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel.
2 Thus says the Lord:
“Do not learn the way of the Gentiles;
Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven,
For the Gentiles are dismayed at them.
3
For the customs of the peoples are [a]futile;
For one cuts a tree from the forest,
The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.
4
They decorate it with silver and gold;
They fasten it with nails and hammers
So that it will not topple.
5
They are upright, like a palm tree,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot go by themselves.
Do not be afraid of them,
For they cannot do evil,
Nor can they do any good.”
Matthew 6:3-4
3 But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.
Most of Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate is by turns creepy and forgettable, but he lands accidentally on some phrasing for good theology. One character urges another, "I wish you would try a little bit more to feel the sacredness of your own mission."
This is the savor of Matthew 6:3-4. The Son Who knows from the experience of eternity past the actual radiance of His Father's face which promises to shine on US reminds us of this reality. As we forsake trolling for reinforcement from other people when we do what's good, as we forsake, even, congratulating ourselves, we leave room for true validation. Your Father, the Creator of every needy nuance of your character, sees in secret what it is that each of you do by faith.
What a narrow path this is to walk in thought and practice, though! Jeremiah knows it. He begins his tenth chapter exposing two alternatives which are both lonely and common. The first is to linger on our insignificance and that of our actions, to be dismayed by the signs of Heaven.
The same Heavens which Scripture says elsewhere declare the glory of God can, if our focus is only on their scale, render in us a sterile kind of awe. God if He exists, can seem distant, cold, remote. We might acknowledge Him capable of flinging the stars into motion, but in such a state we can question with David what man is that God is mindful of him, and stop there.
This leaves us with a sort of begrudging existentialism toward our works on the job or in supposed ministry. On such a scale, meaning is left for us to pretend to impose for ourselves. The God of all ages has bigger concerns than our to do list for today.
Craving intimacy and validation while we might not admit it, then, we seek to make transcendence manageable. Stanching the heart's bleeding need for intimacy and glory which Tim Keller says can only be found in God, we try fashioning our own narrative, in effect our own god.
Enter the national lurch to another idolatrous solution in Jeremiah 10:3-5. Lacking a connection to the cosmos, we want meaning we can put on the calendar, even if it comes in rituals we know in our hearts to be futile. We will prop up its emblems.
We will make our own burden incrementally heavier by carrying the very symbols we meant to lift our spirits. The very habits, the very practices, the very props we meant to give us meaning, some of them religious, have taken time and energy without imparting real meaning.
Thus God came near. Indulging for ages this over-correction between man-is-nothing vague nods toward the stars and man-makes-his-meaning brittle impudence, then came Jesus. Waiting for our weighted weariness, He shows us why our works matter.
They will never reach all the way to God even if we band together and build another Babel. God reached down to us. He reminds us through His Son that He sees in secret and will reward openly with the validation our hearts crave that which He Himself makes possible.
Thus, today matters. The planting of the apple tree matters whether we see it grow to fruition or not. The words we put on a page are not sound and fury signifying nothing. For the Christian, they are a loving echo of Divine authority and approval.
Even the humblest task is practice in the gift of dominion we will exercise for the ages. Working, ministering, parenting by faith and knowing that day of ultimate approval is coming, we spend even our internal deliberations on our efforts longing lovingly for that rather than constantly comparing ourselves to our neighbors.
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