Jeremiah 9:23-24 – Knowing Christ, Beyond Compare
23 Thus says the Lord:
“Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
Let not the mighty man glory in his might,
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
24
But let him who glories glory in this,
That he understands and knows Me,
That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
For in these I delight,” says the Lord. Jeremiah 9:23-24
"You painted me a picture, and You showed me how to see," recalls Jars of Clay in "Unforgetful You". "But I just won't behold it," they confess, "unless it pertains to me."
Jeremiah 9:23-24 is a picture of such pride, and of the Lord undermining it along with His people's more hot, scandalous sins. For the third time in this chapter, He invokes the supremacy of knowing Him. Jeremiah 9:3 insists that knowing Him scatters the fog of a culture of inveterate lying. He is Truth. The wise among us aren't surprised. We nod sagely.
He strikes the sweet chord again just three verses later. Not knowing Him results in believing lies, and it also results in acting on those lies to the poisoning of our covenant relationships. A culture in which not knowing Him has become the norm is beset with adultery. Hearts not right with God are unfit for covenant promises toward one another. The bedrock of society buckles with the pressures of promiscuity and illegitimacy.
As the chapter goes on, Jeremiah keeps up the shrill alarms. The whole country is in desperate shape. We aren't surprised when individual depravity frays national defense. Who is going to put his own life on the line for the sake of his people, or who is going to trust his fellow soldier enough to put forward a valiant defense against invaders if he is believing lies himself and has taken up the habit of not believing his fellow man?
Jeremiah 9:22 shows the wages of such sin putrefy into literal, unburied death. The stench persists through the centuries. We are rightly repulsed. We keep our distance.
Jolted into progressing through a Jeremiah 9 checklist of behaviors, perhaps we have managed to quarantine ourselves from life's more flagrant lies which go to seed quickly. Perhaps we have managed to keep covenant relationships in places which are healthier than those of our neighbors. Perhaps, as we look around, this jeremiad doesn't apply to us.
Jeremiah 9:23-24 forces us to think again. Right up against the stench of a rotting corpse, juxtaposed to complete societal collapse, we get the strange yet compelling reminder that we are not to glory in wisdom or riches. From another, uninspired writer, we would suspect a malfunction of cut-and-paste, a mind wandering from the topic of other people's obvious sins. Without that recourse, humbled before Scripture, we ride the jarring shift – and see ourselves.
When I see other people in the culture paying the price for their sins almost immediately, I can easily be confirmed in my sense of self-righteousness because I haven't been held accountable…yet. I can glory in my wisdom. When I see other people's security and stability taken away, my first impulse is to check my own bank account, to, as Jeremiah puts it, glory in my riches. If I haven't lost what I've watched my neighbors lose, I must be in the right. In fact, I am worse off than before their correction came.
My eye, as Spurgeon puts it distinctly in Morning and Evening, is not single. I have ever a side glance toward my own honor. I am not, in the last, qualified to behold the glory of the Lord. If I behold it aright, if I see Him show the grace to correct my neighbor while there is still time to repent, I might begin to humbly examine myself. I might be done with self-justification, and I might cease to stifle Matthew Sink's insistent, "Let God GRAPPLE with your heart."
Knowing Him is the ultimate prize. Should He walk with me in the greatest comfort and display of His generosity this side of the Garden of Eden, I am blessed. Should He pinpoint my lies, have me uncomfortably distrusting my assumptions, and allow me to know Him at just the time I'm unsure if I know anything else, I'm also blessed. When He allows conflict in my relationships, in no small part because of my selfishness, to give me fresh proof that I am not prizing Him above all else, even so I am blessed.
That I, by grace and mercy, will at the last know Him as I am known in spite of my sin, is blessing indeed.
“Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
Let not the mighty man glory in his might,
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
24
But let him who glories glory in this,
That he understands and knows Me,
That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
For in these I delight,” says the Lord. Jeremiah 9:23-24
"You painted me a picture, and You showed me how to see," recalls Jars of Clay in "Unforgetful You". "But I just won't behold it," they confess, "unless it pertains to me."
Jeremiah 9:23-24 is a picture of such pride, and of the Lord undermining it along with His people's more hot, scandalous sins. For the third time in this chapter, He invokes the supremacy of knowing Him. Jeremiah 9:3 insists that knowing Him scatters the fog of a culture of inveterate lying. He is Truth. The wise among us aren't surprised. We nod sagely.
He strikes the sweet chord again just three verses later. Not knowing Him results in believing lies, and it also results in acting on those lies to the poisoning of our covenant relationships. A culture in which not knowing Him has become the norm is beset with adultery. Hearts not right with God are unfit for covenant promises toward one another. The bedrock of society buckles with the pressures of promiscuity and illegitimacy.
As the chapter goes on, Jeremiah keeps up the shrill alarms. The whole country is in desperate shape. We aren't surprised when individual depravity frays national defense. Who is going to put his own life on the line for the sake of his people, or who is going to trust his fellow soldier enough to put forward a valiant defense against invaders if he is believing lies himself and has taken up the habit of not believing his fellow man?
Jeremiah 9:22 shows the wages of such sin putrefy into literal, unburied death. The stench persists through the centuries. We are rightly repulsed. We keep our distance.
Jolted into progressing through a Jeremiah 9 checklist of behaviors, perhaps we have managed to quarantine ourselves from life's more flagrant lies which go to seed quickly. Perhaps we have managed to keep covenant relationships in places which are healthier than those of our neighbors. Perhaps, as we look around, this jeremiad doesn't apply to us.
Jeremiah 9:23-24 forces us to think again. Right up against the stench of a rotting corpse, juxtaposed to complete societal collapse, we get the strange yet compelling reminder that we are not to glory in wisdom or riches. From another, uninspired writer, we would suspect a malfunction of cut-and-paste, a mind wandering from the topic of other people's obvious sins. Without that recourse, humbled before Scripture, we ride the jarring shift – and see ourselves.
When I see other people in the culture paying the price for their sins almost immediately, I can easily be confirmed in my sense of self-righteousness because I haven't been held accountable…yet. I can glory in my wisdom. When I see other people's security and stability taken away, my first impulse is to check my own bank account, to, as Jeremiah puts it, glory in my riches. If I haven't lost what I've watched my neighbors lose, I must be in the right. In fact, I am worse off than before their correction came.
My eye, as Spurgeon puts it distinctly in Morning and Evening, is not single. I have ever a side glance toward my own honor. I am not, in the last, qualified to behold the glory of the Lord. If I behold it aright, if I see Him show the grace to correct my neighbor while there is still time to repent, I might begin to humbly examine myself. I might be done with self-justification, and I might cease to stifle Matthew Sink's insistent, "Let God GRAPPLE with your heart."
Knowing Him is the ultimate prize. Should He walk with me in the greatest comfort and display of His generosity this side of the Garden of Eden, I am blessed. Should He pinpoint my lies, have me uncomfortably distrusting my assumptions, and allow me to know Him at just the time I'm unsure if I know anything else, I'm also blessed. When He allows conflict in my relationships, in no small part because of my selfishness, to give me fresh proof that I am not prizing Him above all else, even so I am blessed.
That I, by grace and mercy, will at the last know Him as I am known in spite of my sin, is blessing indeed.
Comments
Post a Comment