Jeremiah 14:5-6 – Sin's Ongoing Impact
5
Yes, the deer also gave birth in the field,
But left because there was no grass.
6
And the wild donkeys stood in the desolate heights;
They sniffed at the wind like jackals;
Their eyes failed because there was no grass.”
My friend Chris wasn't moving like himself. He lowered himself gingerly into a chair beside me with a soft grunt. When I asked, he said it had been a rough week. Then he spoke my love language with an anecdote.
He said when his daughter was two and was getting up from a chair, she affected the same grunting noise. He marveled how easy it is for us to pass on a burdened sense of our existence to those who follow behind us.
If it catches our attention when those we influence carry through with the outward acknowledgments of sin's impact on a fallen world, how much more poignant and pressing is it when we see the actual suffering sin causes those without direct responsibility, as in Jeremiah 14:5-6? This is more than a pantomime after Adam, or after us. This is actual vulnerability on display, the children suffering for the sins of the fathers, the Romans 8 groaning of nature for the renewal possible only in Christ.
Yet, too often we are myopic in our measurement of the impact of our sin. Can we get away with it today? Co-opting the language of sound theology for the purposes of the flesh, is it covered by grace?
We spend little time wondering how much compounded blessing it will cost us with which we could be blessing others, or pausing to think about what rarefied desires those we influence could be cultivating instead of being preoccupied with meeting needs psychological or physical.
This groan, when we pause to hear it, is not altogether unlike the one God heard from Abel's blood in Genesis. We probably haven't murdered as Cain did, but how often have we thought our satisfaction in the moment paramount, at whatever cost to others?
Perceiving as God perceives their and in Jeremiah 14:5-6, we can get a better idea of the severity of our crimes against Him, and secondarily against others. Generations could be impacted, as with the deer whose foal is left to die. Do we really want to account for that cost?
Will we be like Judah's idolaters, likened to the animal in heat sniffing the wind as we go beyond immediate options to actively chase worldly satisfaction? When the debt comes due for such desecration of God's image and purpose on us, similar sniffing may be for a less leisurely purpose.
As in Jeremiah 14:6 when the animals in a dry and thirsty land sniffed the wind like jackals, those who come behind us, who might have received a gracious handoff and looked to the horizon to see how God might bless them in order to bless others, instead may subsist on constricted options because we indulged this day.
Ironically, when we take a pass on positive influence in spiritual leadership, we exercise it anyway. The royalty who declined to train in the ways of the Lord, Jeremiah indicts, actively trained their oppressors. The leaders who modeled sniffing after lust's fulfillment prepared the way for sniffing after survival.
How are we using our influence? Will we show those who come behind us a holy longing for Christ that can be satisfied nowhere else, a wanderlust that will find a permanent address nowhere but with Him in the city not made with hands?
Yes, the deer also gave birth in the field,
But left because there was no grass.
6
And the wild donkeys stood in the desolate heights;
They sniffed at the wind like jackals;
Their eyes failed because there was no grass.”
My friend Chris wasn't moving like himself. He lowered himself gingerly into a chair beside me with a soft grunt. When I asked, he said it had been a rough week. Then he spoke my love language with an anecdote.
He said when his daughter was two and was getting up from a chair, she affected the same grunting noise. He marveled how easy it is for us to pass on a burdened sense of our existence to those who follow behind us.
If it catches our attention when those we influence carry through with the outward acknowledgments of sin's impact on a fallen world, how much more poignant and pressing is it when we see the actual suffering sin causes those without direct responsibility, as in Jeremiah 14:5-6? This is more than a pantomime after Adam, or after us. This is actual vulnerability on display, the children suffering for the sins of the fathers, the Romans 8 groaning of nature for the renewal possible only in Christ.
Yet, too often we are myopic in our measurement of the impact of our sin. Can we get away with it today? Co-opting the language of sound theology for the purposes of the flesh, is it covered by grace?
We spend little time wondering how much compounded blessing it will cost us with which we could be blessing others, or pausing to think about what rarefied desires those we influence could be cultivating instead of being preoccupied with meeting needs psychological or physical.
This groan, when we pause to hear it, is not altogether unlike the one God heard from Abel's blood in Genesis. We probably haven't murdered as Cain did, but how often have we thought our satisfaction in the moment paramount, at whatever cost to others?
Perceiving as God perceives their and in Jeremiah 14:5-6, we can get a better idea of the severity of our crimes against Him, and secondarily against others. Generations could be impacted, as with the deer whose foal is left to die. Do we really want to account for that cost?
Will we be like Judah's idolaters, likened to the animal in heat sniffing the wind as we go beyond immediate options to actively chase worldly satisfaction? When the debt comes due for such desecration of God's image and purpose on us, similar sniffing may be for a less leisurely purpose.
As in Jeremiah 14:6 when the animals in a dry and thirsty land sniffed the wind like jackals, those who come behind us, who might have received a gracious handoff and looked to the horizon to see how God might bless them in order to bless others, instead may subsist on constricted options because we indulged this day.
Ironically, when we take a pass on positive influence in spiritual leadership, we exercise it anyway. The royalty who declined to train in the ways of the Lord, Jeremiah indicts, actively trained their oppressors. The leaders who modeled sniffing after lust's fulfillment prepared the way for sniffing after survival.
How are we using our influence? Will we show those who come behind us a holy longing for Christ that can be satisfied nowhere else, a wanderlust that will find a permanent address nowhere but with Him in the city not made with hands?
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