Jeremiah 9:1-3 – The Poise of the Lord's Perspective
1
Oh, that my head were waters,
And my eyes a fountain of tears,
That I might weep day and night
For the slain of the daughter of my people!
2
Oh, that I had in the wilderness
A lodging place for travelers;
That I might leave my people,
And go from them!
For they are all adulterers,
An assembly of treacherous men.
3
“And like their bow they have bent their tongues for lies.
They are not valiant for the truth on the earth.
For they proceed from evil to evil,
And they do not know Me,” says the Lord.
U2 exposes the limits of our compassion in "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," "We eat and drink while tomorrow they die."
The opening of Jeremiah's ninth chapter abuts this very limit in dramatic relief. Having understood enough of God's offended Majesty to be His messenger for eight chapters now, Jeremiah stares into the abyss in the opening of the ninth chapter. He confesses that if he starts to grieve, he might never stop. Tears like a fountain wouldn't be enough. Weeping day and night wouldn't be enough to compensate for the reality that the children, the relatively innocent among His people, have suffered for the flagrant sins of the parents.
Then in Jeremiah 9:2, dramatically, tersely, he considers the temporary remedy to which U2 points. Because his tears wouldn't provide absolution, because his words and his bodily demonstrations haven't been heeded, he considers the appeal of completely the opposite course of action. He thinks about withdrawal from serving as the point of his people's intercession. Hermetically sealing his heart, he thinks, has a certain appeal.
They are adulterers, he flatly declares. If even their spouses can't trust them as they normalize each other's sins, what chance does Jeremiah have in protecting the least of these? If his campaign against one form of depravity is successful, Jeremiah laments his people will simply move on to the next one. They proceed, he connects, from evil to evil.
Then the Lord interjects, one might suspect softly as compared to Jeremiah's just and demonstrative grief. Theology. Intimacy. Me. He whispers. Where Jeremiah has listed outward symptoms he would see cured for a better and more just society in which the relatively innocent don't suffer as much, the Lord succinctly goes to the root. By the way, Jeremiah understandable advocate of the Social Gospel, they don't know Me.
The brakes the Lord puts on Jeremiah's multifaceted lament completely reframe the problem. As Jeremiah, and we as Jeremiah's heirs, begin to understand the quiet transition in Jeremiah 9:3, less of our energy will be spent on surprise and indignation. Lost people act like lost people. Of course they go from evil to evil. Their idols have a designed obsolescence which the Lord in His mercy allows. When they don't work, when they don't satisfy, some of those bewildered people will actually turn to Him.
There is mercy in this Jeremiah 9:3 turn, and there is also quiet, final accountability. For, the Lord is not only listing the root solution, knowing Him, He is pronouncing that the greatest crime is not doing so. God certainly agrees with Jeremiah that adultery is wrong. He established marriage as a pattern pointing to Christ and the church, flatly prohibited adultery and used it in countless prophecies as a picture of sins against Him.
Yet, he reminds Jeremiah that even if his people focus on their families, even if they assemble for wholesome civic purposes, even if they are valiant for truth in the earth and proceed from good to good, if they don't know and love Him, Paul will say they are a noisy gong.
Jeremiah 9:3's end is our remedy wherever we are in grappling with depravity. If our heart has grown insensitive toward detracting from God because of the human company we keep, catching even a glimpse of Him as He is will enliven our hearts again. If by His grace we are like Jeremiah, faithful and all the more frustrated because others are not, ready to withdraw from life's battle royal for His glory, Jeremiah 9:3 is our renewal as well.
Think of it: where we have gotten to carry His message and it has fallen on deaf ears in the culture in which we live, we are still privileged to have gotten to hear Him. Many don't have ears to hear.
Where our limbs have been quickened in His service of active testimony and the people around us remain inert we at least have known Him. We at least catch glimpses of HIS face in the face we animate with the passion of His denunciation. We at least get to move the hands and feet He crafted to help as many as we can of society's most vulnerable victims. We get to know Him, and sometimes the joy of His suffering.
Oh, that my head were waters,
And my eyes a fountain of tears,
That I might weep day and night
For the slain of the daughter of my people!
2
Oh, that I had in the wilderness
A lodging place for travelers;
That I might leave my people,
And go from them!
For they are all adulterers,
An assembly of treacherous men.
3
“And like their bow they have bent their tongues for lies.
They are not valiant for the truth on the earth.
For they proceed from evil to evil,
And they do not know Me,” says the Lord.
U2 exposes the limits of our compassion in "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," "We eat and drink while tomorrow they die."
The opening of Jeremiah's ninth chapter abuts this very limit in dramatic relief. Having understood enough of God's offended Majesty to be His messenger for eight chapters now, Jeremiah stares into the abyss in the opening of the ninth chapter. He confesses that if he starts to grieve, he might never stop. Tears like a fountain wouldn't be enough. Weeping day and night wouldn't be enough to compensate for the reality that the children, the relatively innocent among His people, have suffered for the flagrant sins of the parents.
Then in Jeremiah 9:2, dramatically, tersely, he considers the temporary remedy to which U2 points. Because his tears wouldn't provide absolution, because his words and his bodily demonstrations haven't been heeded, he considers the appeal of completely the opposite course of action. He thinks about withdrawal from serving as the point of his people's intercession. Hermetically sealing his heart, he thinks, has a certain appeal.
They are adulterers, he flatly declares. If even their spouses can't trust them as they normalize each other's sins, what chance does Jeremiah have in protecting the least of these? If his campaign against one form of depravity is successful, Jeremiah laments his people will simply move on to the next one. They proceed, he connects, from evil to evil.
Then the Lord interjects, one might suspect softly as compared to Jeremiah's just and demonstrative grief. Theology. Intimacy. Me. He whispers. Where Jeremiah has listed outward symptoms he would see cured for a better and more just society in which the relatively innocent don't suffer as much, the Lord succinctly goes to the root. By the way, Jeremiah understandable advocate of the Social Gospel, they don't know Me.
The brakes the Lord puts on Jeremiah's multifaceted lament completely reframe the problem. As Jeremiah, and we as Jeremiah's heirs, begin to understand the quiet transition in Jeremiah 9:3, less of our energy will be spent on surprise and indignation. Lost people act like lost people. Of course they go from evil to evil. Their idols have a designed obsolescence which the Lord in His mercy allows. When they don't work, when they don't satisfy, some of those bewildered people will actually turn to Him.
There is mercy in this Jeremiah 9:3 turn, and there is also quiet, final accountability. For, the Lord is not only listing the root solution, knowing Him, He is pronouncing that the greatest crime is not doing so. God certainly agrees with Jeremiah that adultery is wrong. He established marriage as a pattern pointing to Christ and the church, flatly prohibited adultery and used it in countless prophecies as a picture of sins against Him.
Yet, he reminds Jeremiah that even if his people focus on their families, even if they assemble for wholesome civic purposes, even if they are valiant for truth in the earth and proceed from good to good, if they don't know and love Him, Paul will say they are a noisy gong.
Jeremiah 9:3's end is our remedy wherever we are in grappling with depravity. If our heart has grown insensitive toward detracting from God because of the human company we keep, catching even a glimpse of Him as He is will enliven our hearts again. If by His grace we are like Jeremiah, faithful and all the more frustrated because others are not, ready to withdraw from life's battle royal for His glory, Jeremiah 9:3 is our renewal as well.
Think of it: where we have gotten to carry His message and it has fallen on deaf ears in the culture in which we live, we are still privileged to have gotten to hear Him. Many don't have ears to hear.
Where our limbs have been quickened in His service of active testimony and the people around us remain inert we at least have known Him. We at least catch glimpses of HIS face in the face we animate with the passion of His denunciation. We at least get to move the hands and feet He crafted to help as many as we can of society's most vulnerable victims. We get to know Him, and sometimes the joy of His suffering.
Sometimes I find it easier to accept the fact that “lost people act like lost people” when they are mistreating others than when their sin is directed towards me. Of course, God understands the sinful root that lies beneath our own indignation at mistreatment as well as the sin of others as it propagates against believers. The great aspiration of biblical writers and heros was consistently to know God and to have others know him too. From Moses to Paul, these men desired to know more about God because they knew that relational knowledge of the creator was what was missing from life.
ReplyDeleteI am at a station in life right now where it is really easy to be abused as well as to sin against others. Although, I suppose that is every day in reality. However, with the freshness of major life-altering decisions looming overhead, I pray that God would continue to remind me to rest in the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, and to pray and weep for those who prove they do not know him by their mistreatment of me - to disregard the offense of their mistreatment and abuse and pray for them to know Christ and, therein, to know life.
The great aspiration of biblical writers and heros was consistently to know God and to have others know him too. From Moses to Paul, these men desired to know more about God because they knew that relational knowledge of the creator was what was missing from life.
DeleteAMEN! Easier to dilute our efforts with vague aspirations to fix the culture, isn't it? Watch how Lewis turns that in today's entry.