Jeremiah 13:12-14 – The Inebriating "I Know"
12 “Therefore you shall speak to them this word: ‘Thus says the Lord God of Israel: “Every bottle shall be filled with wine.” ’
“And they will say to you, ‘Do we not certainly know that every bottle will be filled with wine?’
13 “Then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land—even the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem—with drunkenness! 14 And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together,” says the Lord. “I will not pity nor spare nor have mercy, but will destroy them.” ’ ”
CS Lewis's fictional demon Screwtape insists on developing the habit of flippancy in humans. He calls it armor against sensitivity to God's movement.
That Lewis is onto something is confirmed by biblical evidence of this condition long before Screwtape, as in Jeremiah 13:12-14. Even those who attend to the inspired Word from Jeremiah are trained in flippancy. Perhaps worse than their craving for wine, and their craving for confirmation that all is well in it is their addiction to an "I know," response.
God has granted this hardhearted people a softhearted intercessor and spokesman like Jeremiah. He gives the prophet a metaphor to which the people can readily relate. Yet, the nation's spiritual leaders settle for the literal. They crow that of course they know every bottle will be filled with wine. They are well-armored with flippancy, unaccustomed to taking the teaching of Scripture unto themselves and pleading with the psalmist that the Lord examine them for secret faults.
We don't marvel, then, that this state of the heart toward God and His Word is toxic to human relationships. Those who don't bend heart and knee before God as the perfect king are not going to be able to acknowledge His image-bearer wielding authority far from perfectly. The arrogant "I know" is its own form of drunkenness, and this hangover lasts for generations, as fathers and sons, Jeremiah says, will tear at each other from their own insulated outlook.
Jeremiah 13:12-14 tells us much of the scope of the problem, and this makes the Good News elsewhere in Scripture very good. For if we listen beyond the twisting of God's Word that would give us quick and meaningless affirmation in the moment, we will see Christ's righteousness – and our desperate need for it. As we pause long enough to consider depravity's cost from generation to generation, flippancy's repeated refrain starts to wear thin, and we wait for real answers. We realize our own self-imposed constraint and plead with newworldson's "Sweet Holy Spirit," "If pride is my prison, then grace be my key."
This reconsideration, in turn, can be regenerative to relationships. One of the hallmarks, after all, of John the Baptist's ministry which Gabriel announced was that he would unite fathers and sons in passionate worship, the exact inverse of the predicament Jeremiah describes.
Is it a coincidence, then, that the Baptist would need and no no wine, no shortcut to artificial joy, in order to live as a man aligned with his passion and purpose? In answering life's questions, after all, he forsook the quick and the glib for that which pointed to Christ's supremacy at the cost of his own.
“And they will say to you, ‘Do we not certainly know that every bottle will be filled with wine?’
13 “Then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land—even the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem—with drunkenness! 14 And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together,” says the Lord. “I will not pity nor spare nor have mercy, but will destroy them.” ’ ”
CS Lewis's fictional demon Screwtape insists on developing the habit of flippancy in humans. He calls it armor against sensitivity to God's movement.
That Lewis is onto something is confirmed by biblical evidence of this condition long before Screwtape, as in Jeremiah 13:12-14. Even those who attend to the inspired Word from Jeremiah are trained in flippancy. Perhaps worse than their craving for wine, and their craving for confirmation that all is well in it is their addiction to an "I know," response.
God has granted this hardhearted people a softhearted intercessor and spokesman like Jeremiah. He gives the prophet a metaphor to which the people can readily relate. Yet, the nation's spiritual leaders settle for the literal. They crow that of course they know every bottle will be filled with wine. They are well-armored with flippancy, unaccustomed to taking the teaching of Scripture unto themselves and pleading with the psalmist that the Lord examine them for secret faults.
We don't marvel, then, that this state of the heart toward God and His Word is toxic to human relationships. Those who don't bend heart and knee before God as the perfect king are not going to be able to acknowledge His image-bearer wielding authority far from perfectly. The arrogant "I know" is its own form of drunkenness, and this hangover lasts for generations, as fathers and sons, Jeremiah says, will tear at each other from their own insulated outlook.
Jeremiah 13:12-14 tells us much of the scope of the problem, and this makes the Good News elsewhere in Scripture very good. For if we listen beyond the twisting of God's Word that would give us quick and meaningless affirmation in the moment, we will see Christ's righteousness – and our desperate need for it. As we pause long enough to consider depravity's cost from generation to generation, flippancy's repeated refrain starts to wear thin, and we wait for real answers. We realize our own self-imposed constraint and plead with newworldson's "Sweet Holy Spirit," "If pride is my prison, then grace be my key."
This reconsideration, in turn, can be regenerative to relationships. One of the hallmarks, after all, of John the Baptist's ministry which Gabriel announced was that he would unite fathers and sons in passionate worship, the exact inverse of the predicament Jeremiah describes.
Is it a coincidence, then, that the Baptist would need and no no wine, no shortcut to artificial joy, in order to live as a man aligned with his passion and purpose? In answering life's questions, after all, he forsook the quick and the glib for that which pointed to Christ's supremacy at the cost of his own.
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