Jeremiah 14:7-9 – The Intercessor's Basis
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O Lord, though our iniquities testify against us,
Do it for Your name’s sake;
For our backslidings are many,
We have sinned against You.
8
O the Hope of Israel, his Savior in time of trouble,
Why should You be like a stranger in the land,
And like a traveler who turns aside to tarry for a night?
9
Why should You be like a man astonished,
Like a mighty one who cannot save?
Yet You, O Lord, are in our midst,
And we are called by Your name;
Do not leave us!
"When we pray, we are speaking to the One Whose eternal purpose and designs are unfolding as our present realities," James MacDonald drills down in Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth. "In order to find hope in them, we must seek HIM and HIS perspective. This requires a keen understanding of the redemptive nature of our existence, which points to the glorious gospel of Christ.”
In this, the prophet is nearer to the kingdom of God in Jeremiah 14:7-9. It isn't a social crusade or a symptom that brings him before God's throne, not lying, not adultery, not a lack of commitment to one another in national defense. All of these have troubled him recently, but now he is caught up in God's perspective.
He pleads the Name of God rather than any righteousness found in himself or his people. He accedes to any accusations God could bring in still, resiliently, asks that God intercede because He is Who He is.
In this, he takes up the pattern of Abraham and may have been thinking of this patriarchal friend of God as he dared to bargain on behalf of his own. In Genesis, God would have gone on, but Abraham, humanly speaking, the father of faith and the faithful, stopped him to find out and to actually through his interactions with God to shape the plan.
From the place of absolute, abject humility in Jeremiah 14:7, Jeremiah gets off his face with admirable chutzpah and calls out to the Almighty, "What, are You just passing through? Can't we talk about this?"
Jeremiah then rolls the burden of responsibility onto God's shoulders with aplomb reminiscent of Moses. Knowing neither has no basis to either himself or in his people's behavior to plead for clemency, both know the Divine character well enough to insist on the paramount, unblemished extension of God's reputation.
Should it get out, Jeremiah queries in the bold line of argument used by Moses, he has Scripturally-admired meekness still intact, should it get out, Lord, that You, YOU cannot save?
Invoking Moses again, consciously or not, Jeremiah stands on the perspective of deep time, invoking the Presence of the Lord STILL among His people. Yes, there has been drift on their part. Yes, they are experiencing consequences for seeking other things, even other gods, in preference to Him.
Yet, Jeremiah can end what comes down to us as 14:9 with the emphatic "Do not leave us!" His plea is one with Moses' who, for all the distraction among the congregation of his own day could stand firm, "If You don't go with us, I'm not going."
We plead, then, in patterns that have been pled before, in patterns that have been graciously received before. Yet, if arguing at the bar and in the fashion which Abraham, and Moses, and Jeremiah, have known does not give us courage, wait before we melt back into the wayward culture for which we would otherwise intercede. If these examples of giants of the faith don't give life to our intercession, Spurgeon invokes Christ in Morning and Evening.
"He wears," confides Spurgeon, "the glory of an intercessor who can never fail, of a Prince who can never be defeated, of a Conqueror who has vanquished every foe, of a Lord who has the heart's allegiance of every subject." We can admire, then, the seamless this of the praises Spurgeon ascribes as much as any individual accolade.
Intercession isn't Christ's other job when there isn't an Abraham, Moses, a Spurgeon, or you or me with the right words. Christ EVER makes intercession for His people, our access to the Divine perspective from which prayer flows. Prayer empowered by the proven righteousness of the cross, the Resurrection, the ascension is His means of conquering, His Princely prerogative.
O Lord, though our iniquities testify against us,
Do it for Your name’s sake;
For our backslidings are many,
We have sinned against You.
8
O the Hope of Israel, his Savior in time of trouble,
Why should You be like a stranger in the land,
And like a traveler who turns aside to tarry for a night?
9
Why should You be like a man astonished,
Like a mighty one who cannot save?
Yet You, O Lord, are in our midst,
And we are called by Your name;
Do not leave us!
"When we pray, we are speaking to the One Whose eternal purpose and designs are unfolding as our present realities," James MacDonald drills down in Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth. "In order to find hope in them, we must seek HIM and HIS perspective. This requires a keen understanding of the redemptive nature of our existence, which points to the glorious gospel of Christ.”
In this, the prophet is nearer to the kingdom of God in Jeremiah 14:7-9. It isn't a social crusade or a symptom that brings him before God's throne, not lying, not adultery, not a lack of commitment to one another in national defense. All of these have troubled him recently, but now he is caught up in God's perspective.
He pleads the Name of God rather than any righteousness found in himself or his people. He accedes to any accusations God could bring in still, resiliently, asks that God intercede because He is Who He is.
In this, he takes up the pattern of Abraham and may have been thinking of this patriarchal friend of God as he dared to bargain on behalf of his own. In Genesis, God would have gone on, but Abraham, humanly speaking, the father of faith and the faithful, stopped him to find out and to actually through his interactions with God to shape the plan.
From the place of absolute, abject humility in Jeremiah 14:7, Jeremiah gets off his face with admirable chutzpah and calls out to the Almighty, "What, are You just passing through? Can't we talk about this?"
Jeremiah then rolls the burden of responsibility onto God's shoulders with aplomb reminiscent of Moses. Knowing neither has no basis to either himself or in his people's behavior to plead for clemency, both know the Divine character well enough to insist on the paramount, unblemished extension of God's reputation.
Should it get out, Jeremiah queries in the bold line of argument used by Moses, he has Scripturally-admired meekness still intact, should it get out, Lord, that You, YOU cannot save?
Invoking Moses again, consciously or not, Jeremiah stands on the perspective of deep time, invoking the Presence of the Lord STILL among His people. Yes, there has been drift on their part. Yes, they are experiencing consequences for seeking other things, even other gods, in preference to Him.
Yet, Jeremiah can end what comes down to us as 14:9 with the emphatic "Do not leave us!" His plea is one with Moses' who, for all the distraction among the congregation of his own day could stand firm, "If You don't go with us, I'm not going."
We plead, then, in patterns that have been pled before, in patterns that have been graciously received before. Yet, if arguing at the bar and in the fashion which Abraham, and Moses, and Jeremiah, have known does not give us courage, wait before we melt back into the wayward culture for which we would otherwise intercede. If these examples of giants of the faith don't give life to our intercession, Spurgeon invokes Christ in Morning and Evening.
"He wears," confides Spurgeon, "the glory of an intercessor who can never fail, of a Prince who can never be defeated, of a Conqueror who has vanquished every foe, of a Lord who has the heart's allegiance of every subject." We can admire, then, the seamless this of the praises Spurgeon ascribes as much as any individual accolade.
Intercession isn't Christ's other job when there isn't an Abraham, Moses, a Spurgeon, or you or me with the right words. Christ EVER makes intercession for His people, our access to the Divine perspective from which prayer flows. Prayer empowered by the proven righteousness of the cross, the Resurrection, the ascension is His means of conquering, His Princely prerogative.
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