Jeremiah 14:11-12 – The Complete Offering Without Compare
11 Then the Lord said to me, “Do not pray for this people, for their good. 12 When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence.”
One of the rare times in the television series The West Wing, Josh Lyman is still and relatively reflective. He whom a colleague suspects walks so fast out of a sense of survivor's guilt in order to prove he has a right to the moment he inhabits isn't racing life now, but even so, word salad tumbles out of his mouth in an effort at self-justification.
Amy Gardner, the person in whose eyes he would show himself worthy, attempts to find his pause button. You, not so much with the talking, she says with a tenderness that is rare enough for her.
No doubt neither they nor Aaron Sorkin their creator intended to communicate Gospel Truth in that moment. Yet, there is a similitude with Jeremiah 14:11-12. It's a "You, not so much with the talking," moment for Jeremiah, who is a kindred soul with Josh in intensity, in the conviction that the efficacy of his words will shift the culture. Jeremiah is challenged to stillness by the very heart he would move in order to break down any correlation in his mind between his efforts and formulaic results.
Frenetic Jeremiah might or might not have heard anything in the stillness, have perceived anything in the hypothetical void if his people stopped the offerings on which they could come to believe their justification depe
nded. But with eyes and ears better trained on the other side of the cross, Christian believer, we can. Many times in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, the Word stirs us to action, both in prayerful intercession and in prioritizing the disquisition of our goods. We would be no longer human if we did not begin to build a correlation in our minds. If we say this, or if we give this, God will do that.
Only in the occasional full stop do we begin to understand the singular efficacy of Christ and His righteousness appropriated to us. As much as we might aspire to live up to Paul's call to pray without ceasing, we can't. With Spurgeon, we admit, the more spiritual activity, the more tiring. Yet, at that very time when we stop speaking, we perceive Christ Whom Scripture says EVER makes intercession for our needs.
The very instant we realize we can't carry another offering, or that we have not in our inventory the balm of Gilead that our neighbor's wound needs, only then do we sense the ceaseless this of Christ's striving on His people's behalf.
No, we don't see that in the frame of Jeremiah 14:11-12. Indeed, we may not feel its fullness in the closing of some Earthly opportunities we would see extended in order to score ourselves effective. But in the Trinity's plan, there's always another verse.
The rests make the next note more resonant. The baited breath of the silence in Heaven for half an hour in Revelation makes the crescendo of Christ's celebrated sufficiency all the more magnificent. As dependent as the Exodus, brothers and sisters, we move at His behest, and we pause at His command. Christ is celebrated worthy in both.
One of the rare times in the television series The West Wing, Josh Lyman is still and relatively reflective. He whom a colleague suspects walks so fast out of a sense of survivor's guilt in order to prove he has a right to the moment he inhabits isn't racing life now, but even so, word salad tumbles out of his mouth in an effort at self-justification.
Amy Gardner, the person in whose eyes he would show himself worthy, attempts to find his pause button. You, not so much with the talking, she says with a tenderness that is rare enough for her.
No doubt neither they nor Aaron Sorkin their creator intended to communicate Gospel Truth in that moment. Yet, there is a similitude with Jeremiah 14:11-12. It's a "You, not so much with the talking," moment for Jeremiah, who is a kindred soul with Josh in intensity, in the conviction that the efficacy of his words will shift the culture. Jeremiah is challenged to stillness by the very heart he would move in order to break down any correlation in his mind between his efforts and formulaic results.
Frenetic Jeremiah might or might not have heard anything in the stillness, have perceived anything in the hypothetical void if his people stopped the offerings on which they could come to believe their justification depe
nded. But with eyes and ears better trained on the other side of the cross, Christian believer, we can. Many times in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, the Word stirs us to action, both in prayerful intercession and in prioritizing the disquisition of our goods. We would be no longer human if we did not begin to build a correlation in our minds. If we say this, or if we give this, God will do that.
Only in the occasional full stop do we begin to understand the singular efficacy of Christ and His righteousness appropriated to us. As much as we might aspire to live up to Paul's call to pray without ceasing, we can't. With Spurgeon, we admit, the more spiritual activity, the more tiring. Yet, at that very time when we stop speaking, we perceive Christ Whom Scripture says EVER makes intercession for our needs.
The very instant we realize we can't carry another offering, or that we have not in our inventory the balm of Gilead that our neighbor's wound needs, only then do we sense the ceaseless this of Christ's striving on His people's behalf.
No, we don't see that in the frame of Jeremiah 14:11-12. Indeed, we may not feel its fullness in the closing of some Earthly opportunities we would see extended in order to score ourselves effective. But in the Trinity's plan, there's always another verse.
The rests make the next note more resonant. The baited breath of the silence in Heaven for half an hour in Revelation makes the crescendo of Christ's celebrated sufficiency all the more magnificent. As dependent as the Exodus, brothers and sisters, we move at His behest, and we pause at His command. Christ is celebrated worthy in both.
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