Coming Up For Air

1 “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; With the point of a diamond it is engraved On the tablet of their heart, And on the horns of your altars, 2 While their children remember Their altars and their wooden images By the green trees on the high hills. "Children will imitate their fathers in their vices," laments Spurgeon looking at the legacy of his title subject in the sermon "Manasseh," seldom in their repentance; if parents sin, their children will follow them, without much doubt; but when they repent and turn to God, it is not easy to lead a child back in the way which it has once forsaken." So it is that opening Jeremiah 17, God presents one of the most frightful exhibits of His people's depravity, the faith of their children. The opening metaphor He gives Jeremiah's attention-getting enough, indelible sin written with a pit of iron, engraved with the point of a diamond. It's frightful tally, but for His intervention, is not going a

19 O Lord, my strength and my fortress, My refuge in the day of affliction, The Gentiles shall come to You From the ends of the earth and say, “Surely our fathers have inherited lies, Worthlessness and unprofitable things.” 20 Will a man make gods for himself, Which are not gods? Pat Conroy narrates in Beach Music , "I like writing about strange cities and cuisines because it keeps me at arms length from the subjects that are too close to me." He's on to something, something CS Lewis's fictional demon Screwtape also points to, hoping that we will continue to push the virtuous life outward into the abstract and meaningless and thereby miss the opportunities to walk by faith in the relationships directly around us. That's what makes the dynamic of Jeremiah 16:18-19 so interesting. Leading up to this conclusion to the book's sixteenth chapter, we have seen the prophet relieved of hope of immediate repentance. We have seen him rescued from any tendency toward outr

16 “Behold, I will send for many fishermen,” says the Lord, “and they shall fish them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks. 17 For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity hidden from My eyes. 18 And first I will repay double for their iniquity and their sin, because they have defiled My land; they have filled My inheritance with the carcasses of their detestable and abominable idols.” "Until we feel some measure of dread about God's future wrath," suspects John Piper in 50 Reasons Jesus Came to Die , "we will probably not grasp the sweetness with which the early church savored the saving work of Christ in the future." The same dynamic seems to be at work in the hairpin turns required to explore God's character and expand our notions of it in Jeremiah 16. Piper's words resonate especially as God lingers on H

14 “Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that it shall no more be said, ‘The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ 15 but, ‘The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had driven them.’ For I will bring them back into their land which I gave to their fathers. David Zwirner admits to The New Yorker 's Dana Goodyear that the controversy Jordan Wolfson stirs up is effective. "Annoyingness is an interesting strategy in art-making." Jeremiah 16:14-15 emblazons that principle on unforgettable display. For, if the annoying but largely harmless idiosyncrasies of an artist can draw people to his work as Goodyear suggests, the art God makes out of the dark hues of human depravity and His contrasting light is all the more captivating. The Divine Dramatist has spent considerable time tamping down expectations. He has told Jeremiah how hopeless the culture is in w

9 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will cause to cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. 10 “And it shall be, when you show this people all these words, and they say to you, ‘Why has the Lord pronounced all this great disaster against us? Or what is our iniquity? Or what is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’ 11 then you shall say to them, ‘Because your fathers have forsaken Me,’ says the Lord; ‘they have walked after other gods and have served them and worshiped them, and have forsaken Me and not kept My law. 12 And you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, each one follows the dictates of his own evil heart, so that no one listens to Me. 13 Therefore I will cast you out of this land into a land that you do not know, neither you nor your fathers; and there you shall serve other gods day and night, where I w

5 For thus says the Lord: “Do not enter the house of mourning, nor go to lament or bemoan them; for I have taken away My peace from this people,” says the Lord, “lovingkindness and mercies. 6 Both the great and the small shall die in this land. They shall not be buried; neither shall men lament for them, cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them. 7 Nor shall men break bread in mourning for them, to comfort them for the dead; nor shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or their mother. 8 Also you shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink.” On the classic sitcom Cheers , barfly Norm Peterson is usually on the periphery of the working world. He sneaks out early to find his real community and identity at Cheers . Ironically, it's when he is punished for such indiscretions that he finds what is close to a calling. He is consigned to fire employees at his accounting firm. The task so break him up that he tends to spe

1 The word of the Lord also came to me, saying, 2 “You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place.” 3 For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bore them and their fathers who begot them in this land: 4 “They shall die gruesome deaths; they shall not be lamented nor shall they be buried, but they shall be like refuse on the face of the earth. They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their corpses shall be meat for the birds of heaven and for the beasts of the earth.” "There's a lot of ruin in a nation, Adam Smith once said," as quoted by the New Yorker 's Adam Gopnik, who hopefully adds, "meaning that it is born ruined – that any social system is rotten already, yet it still keeps most people fed and placated. Those systems and practices can be dysfunctional while the whole still works, more or less. In the same way," I think of Smith'

20 And I will make you to this people a fortified bronze wall; And they will fight against you, But they shall not prevail against you; For I am with you to save you And deliver you,” says the Lord. 21 “I will deliver you from the hand of the wicked, And I will redeem you from the grip of the terrible. John Donne intones in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions , "God governs not by examples, but by rules." The maxim is so solidly Scriptural even the devil would have a hard time disputing it. God says He is no respecter of persons. God says there is no shadow of turning with Him. So, the enemy's recourse is often to recast God's Word to cast doubt upon the heart behind it and the implications that flow from it. He did it in Genesis, hissing, has God really said? Even so, the end result of such wrestling with the Word can be a more thriving intimacy with Him. Abraham, deemed God's friend, thereby saw the sweeping plan of God and contended for individual exceptions – le

19 Therefore thus says the Lord: “If you return, Then I will bring you back; You shall stand before Me; If you take out the precious from the vile, You shall be as My mouth. Let them return to you, But you must not return to them. Spurgeon confesses of the Christian life in Morning and Evening , "My inward experience has often been a wilderness; but Thou hast owned me still as Thy beloved, and poured streams of love and grace into me to gladden me, and make me fruitful." Just so, the Lord contends with the wildness, the waywardness, sometimes the whininess that even besets the faithful prophet in Jeremiah 15:19. In a similar pattern, He says His streams of grace and love will renew the profit where people have drained him. Most amazing for both Spurgeon and Jeremiah is their usefulness as instruments, as conduits, even after they have admitted their tendency to express their own will rather than God's. The same battle is undertaken in us as His own, in the same battle He

19 Therefore thus says the Lord: “If you return, Then I will bring you back; You shall stand before Me… An 18-year-old on the show New Amsterdam who thought he had beaten lymphoma finds out the disease is going to kill him within six months. He doesn't want to tell his parents. He wants to live the time he has left to make up for what cancer has already taken away. Dr. Fromm, the psychiatrist, unsuccessful in talking him out of it directly, persuades the patient to record his five favorite memories to be played for his parents when he passes. It is through this exercise that the patient realizes what his parents meant in the midst of his previous cancer ordeal. He reconciles with the reality that their relationship is bound up in the fact that they were WITH him throughout the fight. This expanded sense of "with" is God's gift to His prophet in Jeremiah 15:19. It is a breaching, reaching grace, for Jeremiah has howled in estrangement. Much like the kid on New Amsterda

15 O Lord, You know; Remember me and visit me, And take vengeance for me on my persecutors. In Your enduring patience, do not take me away. Know that for Your sake I have suffered rebuke. 16 Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O Lord God of hosts. 17 I did not sit in the assembly of the mockers, Nor did I rejoice; I sat alone because of Your hand, For You have filled me with indignation. 18 Why is my pain perpetual And my wound incurable, Which refuses to be healed? Will You surely be to me like an unreliable stream, As waters that fail? "Men are more ashamed," finds Aristotle in Rhetoric , "before those who are always present with them." From such a motive, it seems, the prophet springs up to object in Jeremiah 15:15-18 from being included in the exile. This has been God's verdict, that the scope of His nationally offended majesty is such that He

And I will make you cross over with your enemies Into a land which you do not know; For a fire is kindled in My anger, Which shall burn upon you. “When we witness suffering," artists Jordan Wolfson tells the New Yorker 's Dana Goodyear, "we experience it by proxy.“ This is the prophetic proximity we see at work in Jeremiah 15:14. God has distinguished Jeremiah as part of a remnant in whom faith is at work. He has pledged to protect and provide for the prophet, even that He will use conquerors with no background in His service to do so. Yet, He has determined that Jeremiah will be protected by this aspect of His sovereign care co-mingled with the experience of exile for the sins of his countrymen. This is life of the faithful after Genesis 3. We still live in a fallen world. We still experience dislocation, perhaps even more strongly than Jeremiah because we are aware that the whole Earth cannot satisfy our homesickness. When God's hand of judgment is on the c

12 Can anyone break iron, The northern iron and the bronze? 13 Your wealth and your treasures I will give as plunder without price, Because of all your sins, Throughout your territories. 14 And I will make you cross over with your enemies Into a land which you do not know; For a fire is kindled in My anger, Which shall burn upon you.” My brother has recently come to faith. He and I were reflecting the other day on that faith we saw in the life our grandfather lived before us, and how differently we see it now. Growing up, we reveled in the spitefully conspiratorial impression that he was to Heavenly minded to be of much Earthly good. Looking back now through believing eyes ourselves, we recognize how wrong we were. He held down a full-time job as a cash register salesman through which he provided for a wife and seven children. Beyond the energy and faith this required, though, he was always redeeming the time with that aspect of the day's work was finished. He renovated World War I

 The Lord said: “Surely it will be well with your remnant; Surely I will cause the enemy to intercede with you In the time of adversity and in the time of affliction. Spurgeon in Morning and Evening describes the stretching of our faith in waiting. "We are waiting till we shall put on our proper garments, and shall be manifested as the children of God. We are young nobles, and have not yet worn our coronets." That we haven't yet experienced the full glorification of which Spurgeon speaks, there is grace still get our present position among an expectant company. In Jeremiah 15:11, God paints this position as consolation to his pressed prophet. Jeremiah is feeling extremely lonely, and he has demonstrated the faith to take this to the Lord. Everywhere he turns, he says in Jeremiah 15:10, he experiences rupture because he speaks for the Lord rather than the human fellowship his soul craves. In such a state, he might have brought up God's Genesis precedent toward Adam tha

10 Woe is me, my mother, That you have borne me, A man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent for interest, Nor have men lent to me for interest. Every one of them curses me. Under sedation to have a wisdom tooth pulled, biographer Stephen Ambrose reveals in Nixon: The Education of a Politician , Richard Nixon mumbled part of a campaign speech. The same thing can happen, reveals the second half of Jeremiah 15:10, when the sedative is some aspect of depression because of results we hope in but haven't realized. For an instant, Jeremiah's open humility before the Lord is a model for the ages. He confesses that he needs affirmation and identity in that moment that even his mother can't bequeath to him. But, like the squirming child asked to be part of a family photo, his spirit cannot stay still for long. Even he, more mature than most men in the ways of faith, glimpsing well ahead of his peers his justification in the righteousness of Christ

10 Woe is me, my mother, That you have borne me, A man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! Gentle Henri Nouwen's Life of the Beloved insists in a tone almost strident, "You have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting embrace.'” Jeremiah 15:10 is an authentic snapshot on the way to telling this Truth to self. Beautifully, poignantly, pointedly, Jeremiah recognizes his sense of assurance of who he is

7 And I will winnow them with a winnowing fan in the gates of the land; I will bereave them of children; I will destroy My people, Since they do not return from their ways. 8 Their widows will be increased to Me more than the sand of the seas; I will bring against them, Against the mother of the young men, A plunderer at noonday; I will cause anguish and terror to fall on them suddenly. 9 “She languishes who has borne seven; She has breathed her last; Her sun has gone down While it was yet day; She has been ashamed and confounded. And the remnant of them I will deliver to the sword Before their enemies,” says the Lord. Near the conclusion of the television show The West Wing the sometimes condescending conscience of the fictional presidential administration, Communications Director Toby Ziegler, has been exposed. He made known secrets pertaining to national security because he didn't believe that his boss would do the right thing. Caught, he offers in the Oval Office to resign. Th

5 “For who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem? Or who will bemoan you? Or who will turn aside to ask how you are doing? 6 You have forsaken Me,” says the Lord, “You have gone backward. Therefore I will stretch out My hand against you and destroy you; I am weary of relenting! "If humans had a sense of proportion," judges Ben Taub in the New Yorker on the rate of urbanizing natural habitat, "they would die of shame." Although the Bible doesn't necessarily agree with Taub's priorities, it concurs with his conclusion. The wages of sin is death. He also agrees with him that we rarely exhibit what he calls a sense of proportion. We rarely and only briefly grasp the extent to which we have offended the majesty of God. Knowing the damage of sin's impact and are resulting sense of perpetual entitlement, God at times in the book of Jeremiah enacts approaches that are unusual against the overall tenor of His Word. Twice already, He has told Jeremiah to stop prayin

I will hand them over to trouble, to all kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem. Jeremiah 15:4, New King James Version "We have no right to renounce all that is wrong in another person, place, or culture," warns Pete Greig's Dirty Glory , "until we have recognized all that is right, good, and useful." Jeremiah 15:4 reminds us that both aspects are on display in the most influential figures, whom Malcolm Gladwell calls the tipping points of a given culture. It is an undeniable biblical reality that in some seasons we get the ruler who approaches what we deserve and that he or she reinforces the worst aspects of the culture. Jeremiah 15:4 shows some of the frightful cost of sin as the people then pay for the sins of the monarch, the mogul, or the celebrity they have revered instead of reserving themselves unto God. Yet, even here there is grace. Part of God's penalty on this culture which, li

2 And it shall be, if they say to you, ‘Where should we go?’ then you shall tell them, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Such as are for death, to death; And such as are for the sword, to the sword; And such as are for the famine, to the famine; And such as are for the captivity, to the captivity.” ’ 3 “And I will appoint over them four forms of destruction,” says the Lord: “the sword to slay, the dogs to drag, the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. "My Master is of a generous spirit," declares Spurgeon in Morning and Evening , "but He has a right royal heart, He spurns all dictation, and maintains His sovereignty of action." So we see in Jeremiah 15:2-3 as He prepares His prophet for the people's pleas. He has made Jeremiah a sensitive instrument in His hand, the consummate pleading intercessor. Yet from the book's first chapter, He has continued to steel His young prophet's spine, to work in him to set his face against the peop

Then the Lord said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel stood before Me, My mind would not be favorable toward this people. Cast them out of My sight, and let them go forth. Jeremiah 15:1, New King James Version "If you choose to allow guilt to ruin your prayer life, cautions Adam Stadtmiller in Praying for Your Elephant , "It will. The effects of guilt and shame on your prayer life are cataclysmic." So it is, then, that God in Jeremiah 15:1 preempts any power guilt might have over His softhearted prophet. We shan't be surprised if Jeremiah, ineffective and yet still interceding for his people, was at least open to the temptation to their great champions in history. Moses, he might have pled/whined, was the military champion I am not. He shaped the culture in ways I am not. Samuel, he could have continued his guilty, self-centered inventory, led a revival, respected among the very people who otherwise seemed so distractible in the era of the judges. The possibility e

Are there any among the idols of the nations that can cause rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are You not He, O Lord our God? Therefore we will wait for You, Since You have made all these. “In any miracle," traces Matthew Lee Anderson in Earthen Vessels , "chase the causation back far enough and eventually you'll find the marvelous goodness of God's creation.” This persevering second look is what distinguishes the repentant remnant of Jeremiah 14:22. The contrast is telling. These whose cause Jeremiah takes up in his own words are surrounded by an obtuse culture that does not look beyond the status quo. Flip back to Jeremiah 13:12, and we see the worldlings indifference to the beginning of Jeremiah's rebuke because they believe that of course, the wine will keep flowing. How quickly do we take up the chorus that the sweetest and most developed of God's blessings that we experience, those are what we continue to deserve? We don't chase back farther to

19 Have You utterly rejected Judah? Has Your soul loathed Zion? Why have You stricken us so that there is no healing for us? We looked for peace, but there was no good; And for the time of healing, and there was trouble. 20 We acknowledge, O Lord, our wickedness And the iniquity of our fathers, For we have sinned against You. 21 Do not abhor us, for Your name’s sake; Do not disgrace the throne of Your glory. Remember, do not break Your covenant with us. "If you’re wondering where Jesus’ friends are," identifies Bob Goff in Everybody, Always , "just find people whose feet are a foot off the ground because someone else is lifting them up. You just found our church." What I recently read that, I was at first thinking about THOSE people. I was thinking about those people MercyMe says can't help but dance they are so persistently aware of God's pervasive forgiveness. I was thinking of those people aglow with awareness of Charles Dickens' anointing from A Chri

17 “Therefore you shall say this word to them: ‘Let my eyes flow with tears night and day, And let them not cease; For the virgin daughter of my people Has been broken with a mighty stroke, with a very severe blow. 18 If I go out to the field, Then behold, those slain with the sword! And if I enter the city, Then behold, those sick from famine! Yes, both prophet and priest go about in a land they do not know.’ Nick Paumgarten in last week's New Yorker examines how sponsors of professional climbers dealt with the fatalities of their athletes. "Death and lifestyle are at odds in the marketplace." Yet, these are the disparities, this is the dissonance, God chooses to use in instances like Jeremiah 14:17-18. In the previous verses, the focus group from the culture surrounding Jeremiah has telegraphed to him what it expects. Their anointing of false prophets to tell them all will be well lets him know how to compete for their attention. Use that passion, Jeremiah, to insist o

14 And the Lord said to me, “The prophets prophesy lies in My name. I have not sent them, commanded them, nor spoken to them; they prophesy to you a false vision, divination, a worthless thing, and the deceit of their heart. 15 Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who prophesy in My name, whom I did not send, and who say, ‘Sword and famine shall not be in this land’—‘By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed! 16 And the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; they will have no one to bury them—them nor their wives, their sons nor their daughters—for I will pour their wickedness on them.’ "The heart of bias," plums Jane Leavy in Sandy Koufax , "is as intangible as it is corrosive." We get a glimpse of that in Jeremiah 14:14-16. Jeremiah has gotten around God's ban on his intercession for the wayward people by narrating their plight rather than submitting a specific