Jeremiah 15:1 – Three Proactive Perspectives on a Generation of Spiritual Channel Surfers
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 existed for Jeremiah to wonder, what am I doing?
Those contingent thoughts are not etched in Scripture, but God's foreclosing reply is. He brings Jeremiah to consider Moses and Samuel as He does rather than as the icons we can make of our accomplished spiritual forebears. Even they, God says, would not have moved the hearts that are set against Jeremiah's message.
The lack of repentance in Jeremiah's generation was established in the opening of his book, so why give Jeremiah these two figures for comparison? I suspect there are at least three aspects of their ministries which Jeremiah, and we with him, can draw encouragement.
(1) God said ministry's rejection wasn't about them, and they meditated on that. Both Moses and Samuel had "it's not you, it's Me," moments with God, and they took them seriously. God told Moses Pharaoh wouldn't listen to Moses' message, and he wrote it down. God told Moses the people's recalcitrance wasn't directed toward Moses but toward God, and Moses took God so seriously that he actually had the resilience to plead for the people rather than agree that God should just make another following.
Samuel, likewise, knew the pain of rejection but gave at least equal billing before history to God's balm for that wound. The people, God said and Samuel dutifully recorded, have not rejected you. They have rejected Me. Samuel could have wallowed in his woundedness, but instead he put it in perspective as part of his testimony in the Word to the ages.
Jeremiah was reminded at the same time we are that ministry is not about us. God's honor is at stake, and by comparison our prestige can be let go. What's more, God chooses to extend His glory in ways we would often assume undermine it. He chooses to lose to allow Himself to be seen as weak in the moment in order to be vindicated for eternity.
Holding this firmly in our hearts, whether at ministry's beginning, midstream as we deal with rejection or indifference, or as we count our legacy, can result in spiritual steadfastness that counting eyeballs at any given moment never will. The culture is God's to conquer en masse, tiny remnant by tiny remnant, or one at a time. Or, as in Jeremiah 15:1, it is His to let it run its course, show its depravity and increasingly obvious, desperate need for Him.
(2) Humbly, they fomented Godward revolution in the next generation. As certain as Moses was of the waywardness of people's hearts, he was faith-filled enough to give ministry away. Joshua took offense on Moses' behalf, but he was glad to see seventy other leaders, some of whom would certainly outlive him and this particularly rebellious generation, Spirit-empowered.
At God's specific direction, Moses put his hands on Joshua and exalted him before the people, willing to risk focusing their desire for an alternative on another figure because Moses knew God was playing a longer game than Moses' earthly life.
Samuel's spirit, thwarted in one sense in a desire to see his people change all at once, was willing to invest in Saul as the God-chosen neophyte to replace him. He didn't just point to Saul. He served him. He taught him. He was willing to risk his own status as elder statesman and his very life before Saul's fiery temper and insecure ego by reproving the king.
Letting go of our preconceived sense of what victory will look like at the Spirit sweeps Washington or Wall Street and vindicate us before the age's present powers, we can invest in those on the margins, perhaps those who don't even yet know their right hand from their left. As we know the One Who holds the future, we can spend what energy and opportunities He gives us to pour ourselves into that certainty. We don't need to compete to dominate the moment. Instead, we plant and wait, in faith.
(3) They lived out the range of human experience before their people. The same Moses who at God's direction instituted and attended a cycle of feasts also took up his people's griefs without condescension. The same Samuel who wept all night before God also was so associated with celebration that even the commonest representative of the culture knew he could be found at the feast.
In this, they presaged the tandem to which Jesus points when He says that John the Baptist testified to righteousness with rigorous discipline while Jesus testified to righteousness by partying with sinners. Where the culture was, they were.
Likewise, as the modern-day representatives God has chosen to reflect His glory, we can forsake any notion of being one-note wonders idolizing either discipline for discipline's sake or material indulgence as the only measure of God's favor. When our culture weeps, we can weep. When they laugh, we can laugh.
The Father, the Son, and the Spirit know all these. Even Jeremiah, who comes down through history as the weeping prophet, was not so accustomed to grieving at what his culture did wrong that he rejected the opportunity to plead WITH the remnant at the end of Jeremiah 14.
"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 existed for Jeremiah to wonder, what am I doing?
Those contingent thoughts are not etched in Scripture, but God's foreclosing reply is. He brings Jeremiah to consider Moses and Samuel as He does rather than as the icons we can make of our accomplished spiritual forebears. Even they, God says, would not have moved the hearts that are set against Jeremiah's message.
The lack of repentance in Jeremiah's generation was established in the opening of his book, so why give Jeremiah these two figures for comparison? I suspect there are at least three aspects of their ministries which Jeremiah, and we with him, can draw encouragement.
(1) God said ministry's rejection wasn't about them, and they meditated on that. Both Moses and Samuel had "it's not you, it's Me," moments with God, and they took them seriously. God told Moses Pharaoh wouldn't listen to Moses' message, and he wrote it down. God told Moses the people's recalcitrance wasn't directed toward Moses but toward God, and Moses took God so seriously that he actually had the resilience to plead for the people rather than agree that God should just make another following.
Samuel, likewise, knew the pain of rejection but gave at least equal billing before history to God's balm for that wound. The people, God said and Samuel dutifully recorded, have not rejected you. They have rejected Me. Samuel could have wallowed in his woundedness, but instead he put it in perspective as part of his testimony in the Word to the ages.
Jeremiah was reminded at the same time we are that ministry is not about us. God's honor is at stake, and by comparison our prestige can be let go. What's more, God chooses to extend His glory in ways we would often assume undermine it. He chooses to lose to allow Himself to be seen as weak in the moment in order to be vindicated for eternity.
Holding this firmly in our hearts, whether at ministry's beginning, midstream as we deal with rejection or indifference, or as we count our legacy, can result in spiritual steadfastness that counting eyeballs at any given moment never will. The culture is God's to conquer en masse, tiny remnant by tiny remnant, or one at a time. Or, as in Jeremiah 15:1, it is His to let it run its course, show its depravity and increasingly obvious, desperate need for Him.
(2) Humbly, they fomented Godward revolution in the next generation. As certain as Moses was of the waywardness of people's hearts, he was faith-filled enough to give ministry away. Joshua took offense on Moses' behalf, but he was glad to see seventy other leaders, some of whom would certainly outlive him and this particularly rebellious generation, Spirit-empowered.
At God's specific direction, Moses put his hands on Joshua and exalted him before the people, willing to risk focusing their desire for an alternative on another figure because Moses knew God was playing a longer game than Moses' earthly life.
Samuel's spirit, thwarted in one sense in a desire to see his people change all at once, was willing to invest in Saul as the God-chosen neophyte to replace him. He didn't just point to Saul. He served him. He taught him. He was willing to risk his own status as elder statesman and his very life before Saul's fiery temper and insecure ego by reproving the king.
Letting go of our preconceived sense of what victory will look like at the Spirit sweeps Washington or Wall Street and vindicate us before the age's present powers, we can invest in those on the margins, perhaps those who don't even yet know their right hand from their left. As we know the One Who holds the future, we can spend what energy and opportunities He gives us to pour ourselves into that certainty. We don't need to compete to dominate the moment. Instead, we plant and wait, in faith.
(3) They lived out the range of human experience before their people. The same Moses who at God's direction instituted and attended a cycle of feasts also took up his people's griefs without condescension. The same Samuel who wept all night before God also was so associated with celebration that even the commonest representative of the culture knew he could be found at the feast.
In this, they presaged the tandem to which Jesus points when He says that John the Baptist testified to righteousness with rigorous discipline while Jesus testified to righteousness by partying with sinners. Where the culture was, they were.
Likewise, as the modern-day representatives God has chosen to reflect His glory, we can forsake any notion of being one-note wonders idolizing either discipline for discipline's sake or material indulgence as the only measure of God's favor. When our culture weeps, we can weep. When they laugh, we can laugh.
The Father, the Son, and the Spirit know all these. Even Jeremiah, who comes down through history as the weeping prophet, was not so accustomed to grieving at what his culture did wrong that he rejected the opportunity to plead WITH the remnant at the end of Jeremiah 14.
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