Jeremiah 15:14 – The Prophetic Proximity
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 culture in which He has intermingled us as witnesses, we are going to feel some of the impact.
As He dictates, we are going to suffer with those who suffer, weep with those who weep. If we didn't, if He exempted us as He did His people in the land of Goshen from some of the plagues, our witness would be less compelling.
Time is too short, brothers and sisters, before His great gathering of the wheat and the tears which grow up alongside each other for Him to provide an easy out, a bitter excuse, to our neighbors that we only praise and serve Him because we don't have to suffer as they do. Instead, as the birth pangs of His new order multiply, as the Earth itself convulses in longing to be made new, His prophets, His spokespeople, are embedded by His sovereign grace and choice to explain His purposes to others who are suffering, too, as Milton put it, justify the ways of God to men.
This is tender work, too precious to nurse our fears and resentments for very long. Might time in His Word allow us to adjust quickly and comfort one another with its Truth. Let us learn from Eugene Peterson in his Pastor memoir says concurrently teaching Revelation in seminary gave him an interesting lens through which to view his first pastorate. As he began to understand the real problems his congregants dealt with, he sees, "I was pastor to people who were in the lion's den, to and women who were facing wild beasts in the Coliseum. I began to imagine myself into that intersecting work in world of Patmos and White Plains and New York."
If we are singed by proximity to some of judgment's carefully controlled fire, let us rejoice that we serve Christ Who was IN the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If we think we taste but a drop of the world's bitter cup because Christ has honored us to learn His likeness by suffering exactly laid out for our growth and our good, remember that we serve One Who drink the cup of wrath for the sin of His elect all the way to the dregs.
He said in expiring triumph that His work was FINISHED, that His own, from Jeremiah through to the present day, would know that the remaining pains, heartaches, and changes we experience are not penalties but opportunities to walk by faith after Him. When life burns, we sound off, then, with joy that His own shall shine like lights in the firmament.
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 culture in which He has intermingled us as witnesses, we are going to feel some of the impact.
As He dictates, we are going to suffer with those who suffer, weep with those who weep. If we didn't, if He exempted us as He did His people in the land of Goshen from some of the plagues, our witness would be less compelling.
Time is too short, brothers and sisters, before His great gathering of the wheat and the tears which grow up alongside each other for Him to provide an easy out, a bitter excuse, to our neighbors that we only praise and serve Him because we don't have to suffer as they do. Instead, as the birth pangs of His new order multiply, as the Earth itself convulses in longing to be made new, His prophets, His spokespeople, are embedded by His sovereign grace and choice to explain His purposes to others who are suffering, too, as Milton put it, justify the ways of God to men.
This is tender work, too precious to nurse our fears and resentments for very long. Might time in His Word allow us to adjust quickly and comfort one another with its Truth. Let us learn from Eugene Peterson in his Pastor memoir says concurrently teaching Revelation in seminary gave him an interesting lens through which to view his first pastorate. As he began to understand the real problems his congregants dealt with, he sees, "I was pastor to people who were in the lion's den, to and women who were facing wild beasts in the Coliseum. I began to imagine myself into that intersecting work in world of Patmos and White Plains and New York."
If we are singed by proximity to some of judgment's carefully controlled fire, let us rejoice that we serve Christ Who was IN the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If we think we taste but a drop of the world's bitter cup because Christ has honored us to learn His likeness by suffering exactly laid out for our growth and our good, remember that we serve One Who drink the cup of wrath for the sin of His elect all the way to the dregs.
He said in expiring triumph that His work was FINISHED, that His own, from Jeremiah through to the present day, would know that the remaining pains, heartaches, and changes we experience are not penalties but opportunities to walk by faith after Him. When life burns, we sound off, then, with joy that His own shall shine like lights in the firmament.
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