Jeremiah 13:15-16 – Pride's Advancing Darkness
15
Hear and give ear:
Do not be proud,
For the Lord has spoken.
16
Give glory to the Lord your God
Before He causes darkness,
And before your feet stumble
On the dark mountains,
And while you are looking for light,
He turns it into the shadow of death
And makes it dense darkness.
"Were it not for the goodness of God," confesses Spurgeon in Morning and Evening, " the rider on the black horse would soon scatter famine over the land. Infinite mercy spares the food of men."
Though the black horse has particular concern with the physical food of men, does not the same malevolence exude toward the spiritual food of men, only with more intensity? We regularly and rightly take up the heart of Jesus as expressed in Scripture and thank the Father for who can hear, and see, and dwell on the grace of the Gospel, and who cannot. He, indeed, keeps the heart's equivalent of the black horse from despoiling faith derived from Scripture as the only true food of our hearts.
Yet, as with Jeremiah 13:15-16, there is a prominent place for what John Piper calls grace-driven effort in this battle for focusing and refocusing on Truth. Jeremiah beseeches his audience, then and now, to make the effort to listen to God's Word as Jeremiah delivers it.
Hearing is not enough, he knows, but he would presage the reality that faith does come by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. If closed ears, though, were the first potential bottleneck to understanding by faith, then opening the ears but choking off the heard Word with pride is next lethal to incipient faith.
What, and who, is the focus of God's Word when it makes it into our ears and our minds? Whom do we default to as the star of the story? Jeremiah 13 has already shown us man's default answer unless we plead, and refocus, and unless we are internal witness to a work of grace only God can do.
Like the original witnesses to this chapter, we make even God's Word about us. We become experts at isogesis to make the Word about us and about the continuing flow of our comforts. The prophet would and that biblical bacchanal with the confrontation of Jeremiah 13:16.
Hearing God's Word aright, receiving it in the light, is about giving glory to HIM, not about affirming or even adjusting our behavior. There is an urgency, he insists, to this discipline to refocus on God and His Word, because we can't assume that its continued delivery and right recall will last forever. Just like Jesus tells his doubtful band that there is a daylight time for ministry and an hour in which darkness will reign supreme, the pleading prophet giving his life to illuminate Truth warns the prophetic filament will one day burn out.
As Jeremiah is honest about God's calling on him, as he is honest about the opportunity his people have to repent, so he is also honest about God as the sovereign source of darkened understanding. Pointing toward Paul's similar acknowledgment in Romans comforts he says that those who don't receive revelation when granted it, whether from nature or directly from the Bible, are giving themselves over to hardened hearts which actually lose the vague understanding of the Truth groped toward before.
Either darkness or light is advancing, then, as we receive God's Word. We cannot count on grasping, treasuring yesterday's understanding. We are not spiritual cows who can swallow the Word wholly, thoughtlessly, and depend on bringing it back for nutrition from active consideration later. Receive not like Felix, curious with the human-centered intellect but in our pride confident in a more convenient time. That hour may never come. That Truth we begin to understand right now may be snatched from our souls.
Hear and give ear:
Do not be proud,
For the Lord has spoken.
16
Give glory to the Lord your God
Before He causes darkness,
And before your feet stumble
On the dark mountains,
And while you are looking for light,
He turns it into the shadow of death
And makes it dense darkness.
"Were it not for the goodness of God," confesses Spurgeon in Morning and Evening, " the rider on the black horse would soon scatter famine over the land. Infinite mercy spares the food of men."
Though the black horse has particular concern with the physical food of men, does not the same malevolence exude toward the spiritual food of men, only with more intensity? We regularly and rightly take up the heart of Jesus as expressed in Scripture and thank the Father for who can hear, and see, and dwell on the grace of the Gospel, and who cannot. He, indeed, keeps the heart's equivalent of the black horse from despoiling faith derived from Scripture as the only true food of our hearts.
Yet, as with Jeremiah 13:15-16, there is a prominent place for what John Piper calls grace-driven effort in this battle for focusing and refocusing on Truth. Jeremiah beseeches his audience, then and now, to make the effort to listen to God's Word as Jeremiah delivers it.
Hearing is not enough, he knows, but he would presage the reality that faith does come by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. If closed ears, though, were the first potential bottleneck to understanding by faith, then opening the ears but choking off the heard Word with pride is next lethal to incipient faith.
What, and who, is the focus of God's Word when it makes it into our ears and our minds? Whom do we default to as the star of the story? Jeremiah 13 has already shown us man's default answer unless we plead, and refocus, and unless we are internal witness to a work of grace only God can do.
Like the original witnesses to this chapter, we make even God's Word about us. We become experts at isogesis to make the Word about us and about the continuing flow of our comforts. The prophet would and that biblical bacchanal with the confrontation of Jeremiah 13:16.
Hearing God's Word aright, receiving it in the light, is about giving glory to HIM, not about affirming or even adjusting our behavior. There is an urgency, he insists, to this discipline to refocus on God and His Word, because we can't assume that its continued delivery and right recall will last forever. Just like Jesus tells his doubtful band that there is a daylight time for ministry and an hour in which darkness will reign supreme, the pleading prophet giving his life to illuminate Truth warns the prophetic filament will one day burn out.
As Jeremiah is honest about God's calling on him, as he is honest about the opportunity his people have to repent, so he is also honest about God as the sovereign source of darkened understanding. Pointing toward Paul's similar acknowledgment in Romans comforts he says that those who don't receive revelation when granted it, whether from nature or directly from the Bible, are giving themselves over to hardened hearts which actually lose the vague understanding of the Truth groped toward before.
Either darkness or light is advancing, then, as we receive God's Word. We cannot count on grasping, treasuring yesterday's understanding. We are not spiritual cows who can swallow the Word wholly, thoughtlessly, and depend on bringing it back for nutrition from active consideration later. Receive not like Felix, curious with the human-centered intellect but in our pride confident in a more convenient time. That hour may never come. That Truth we begin to understand right now may be snatched from our souls.
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