Jeremiah 12:7-9 – Disconnected and Disappointed?
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“I have forsaken My house, I have left My heritage;
I have given the dearly beloved of My soul into the hand of her enemies.
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My heritage is to Me like a lion in the forest;
It cries out against Me;
Therefore I have hated it.
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My heritage is to Me like a speckled vulture;
The vultures all around are against her.
Come, assemble all the beasts of the field,
Bring them to devour!
"Believer, if your inheritance be a lowly one you should be satisfied with your earthly portion," probates Spurgeon in Morning and Evening. For you may rest assured that it is the fittest for you. Unerring wisdom ordained your lot, and selected for you the safest and best condition."
In Jeremiah 12:7-9, the Lord lingers over an unexpected reason why. His prophet feels the outcast. A more emotional man than most, Jeremiah has been dealt a blow that not only his country, not only his hometown, but even his brothers in his own house are treacherous toward the faith he stands for.
They seek, the Lord has told Jeremiah, the prophet's life. As Jeremiah sorts through feelings of regret, bitterness, fear and loneliness, he may be considering why the Lord didn't give him a more visible spiritual heritage, a house following after Jeremiah's ways, following Jeremiah as he follows God.
How can it be the better portion for Jeremiah's most logical allies to have turned against him and his faith? Does not the Lord say it is like oil running down Aaron's beard when brothers dwell together in unity? What possible benefit to prophet or prophet's God could there be in cutting him off from his base of operations, his place to recharge and be reaffirmed? Look, suggests God in Jeremiah 12:7-9, at the Company in which Jeremiah gets to find sufficiency when humanly forsaken.
God foregoes the payoff of Abraham's progeny, He says in Jeremiah 12:7, and He has taken the initiative to make it so. Jeremiah is writing out the ups and downs of his relationship with his people, but God experiences something like Jeremiah's aloneness on purpose, by His own chosen responses to Israel's unfaithfulness. If Jeremiah knows pain from other people's responses and can barely keep going, how much greater is the pain, and the fortitude, of his God?
If Jeremiah's wounded thoughts take him to his reputation as his family plots against him, God has been there first. Just like the forest's inhabitants can hear a lion on the move, the nations know that Israel has been unfaithful to her God. He endures something like scorn on her behalf, and He wants Jeremiah to know this.
Theirs is, to borrow from Paul, a fellowship of suffering. God points ahead to the shame of the cross, however much of this He prepared Jeremiah to receive. If Jeremiah is sipping shame and gagging, God will drink to the last drop, that Christ's brethren might have a better inheritance.
If Jeremiah's soul is pricked by the pangs of potential, what might have been had the people in his nation, his hometown, and his house responded in flourishing faith, he serves a God who knows this sorrow full well but will not succumb to it. He tells Cain his face can be bright with joy if he does what he should. He tells His people at the end of Deuteronomy the full flourishing that comes with obedience, and yet He pronounces the opposite in Jeremiah 12:9. His heritage is food for the vultures.
Yet even in this the Gospel progresses. Not only can we know that God experiences betrayal far more intense than His most faithful servants, we can know that BY this, He brings about good sweeter and more savory than Joseph could imagine in Genesis.
The scattering and regathering of Jacob's physical descendents, marvelous as it was, as much as it was the subject of Jeremiah's preoccupation, this was but the foreshadowing of the stripping away and remaking of an identity more lasting than national kinship and boundaries.
The same rustlings that carried the shame of the Lion of Judah throughout the world's jungle now carry His triumph. Even the vultures, carrion things, are included in Paul's clarion call that all Creation groans for the restoration Christ can now by rights bring about.
Even our instances of isolation and betrayal, real and painful as they are, bespeak everlasting community with Him and His that no common human culture could address. Every bond which strains and breaks here points toward the true oneness for which we were created.
“I have forsaken My house, I have left My heritage;
I have given the dearly beloved of My soul into the hand of her enemies.
8
My heritage is to Me like a lion in the forest;
It cries out against Me;
Therefore I have hated it.
9
My heritage is to Me like a speckled vulture;
The vultures all around are against her.
Come, assemble all the beasts of the field,
Bring them to devour!
"Believer, if your inheritance be a lowly one you should be satisfied with your earthly portion," probates Spurgeon in Morning and Evening. For you may rest assured that it is the fittest for you. Unerring wisdom ordained your lot, and selected for you the safest and best condition."
In Jeremiah 12:7-9, the Lord lingers over an unexpected reason why. His prophet feels the outcast. A more emotional man than most, Jeremiah has been dealt a blow that not only his country, not only his hometown, but even his brothers in his own house are treacherous toward the faith he stands for.
They seek, the Lord has told Jeremiah, the prophet's life. As Jeremiah sorts through feelings of regret, bitterness, fear and loneliness, he may be considering why the Lord didn't give him a more visible spiritual heritage, a house following after Jeremiah's ways, following Jeremiah as he follows God.
How can it be the better portion for Jeremiah's most logical allies to have turned against him and his faith? Does not the Lord say it is like oil running down Aaron's beard when brothers dwell together in unity? What possible benefit to prophet or prophet's God could there be in cutting him off from his base of operations, his place to recharge and be reaffirmed? Look, suggests God in Jeremiah 12:7-9, at the Company in which Jeremiah gets to find sufficiency when humanly forsaken.
God foregoes the payoff of Abraham's progeny, He says in Jeremiah 12:7, and He has taken the initiative to make it so. Jeremiah is writing out the ups and downs of his relationship with his people, but God experiences something like Jeremiah's aloneness on purpose, by His own chosen responses to Israel's unfaithfulness. If Jeremiah knows pain from other people's responses and can barely keep going, how much greater is the pain, and the fortitude, of his God?
If Jeremiah's wounded thoughts take him to his reputation as his family plots against him, God has been there first. Just like the forest's inhabitants can hear a lion on the move, the nations know that Israel has been unfaithful to her God. He endures something like scorn on her behalf, and He wants Jeremiah to know this.
Theirs is, to borrow from Paul, a fellowship of suffering. God points ahead to the shame of the cross, however much of this He prepared Jeremiah to receive. If Jeremiah is sipping shame and gagging, God will drink to the last drop, that Christ's brethren might have a better inheritance.
If Jeremiah's soul is pricked by the pangs of potential, what might have been had the people in his nation, his hometown, and his house responded in flourishing faith, he serves a God who knows this sorrow full well but will not succumb to it. He tells Cain his face can be bright with joy if he does what he should. He tells His people at the end of Deuteronomy the full flourishing that comes with obedience, and yet He pronounces the opposite in Jeremiah 12:9. His heritage is food for the vultures.
Yet even in this the Gospel progresses. Not only can we know that God experiences betrayal far more intense than His most faithful servants, we can know that BY this, He brings about good sweeter and more savory than Joseph could imagine in Genesis.
The scattering and regathering of Jacob's physical descendents, marvelous as it was, as much as it was the subject of Jeremiah's preoccupation, this was but the foreshadowing of the stripping away and remaking of an identity more lasting than national kinship and boundaries.
The same rustlings that carried the shame of the Lion of Judah throughout the world's jungle now carry His triumph. Even the vultures, carrion things, are included in Paul's clarion call that all Creation groans for the restoration Christ can now by rights bring about.
Even our instances of isolation and betrayal, real and painful as they are, bespeak everlasting community with Him and His that no common human culture could address. Every bond which strains and breaks here points toward the true oneness for which we were created.
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