Jeremiah 15:15-18 – Remember the Times…
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 has decreed that Jeremiah will leave the homeland with his people and remind them of their sin.
This isn't what Jeremiah expected, and as we have seen in the second half of Jeremiah 15:10, when uncomfortable he falls back on his spiritual resume. Remember me, Lord, he objects, and proceeds to go through the PowerPoint slides evidencing their time together. This is me, Lord. I'm different. Don't get so angry that You lump me in.
It could be that Jeremiah believes the evidence of grace in his life which he brings up make exile unjust. It could be that these long-term experiences with the Lord make exile, and any notion of disfavor in the eyes of the One Who has meant so much to him, harder to bear. Now feeling vulnerable, he reverts to the story of himself taking rejection for God, comprising God's word over the public opinion he constantly opposed, willing to stand bravely alone against the culture. There is more than a hint of, "What has this gotten me?" in his summation.
There is grace, then, in whatever dislocation the Lord uses to release such well-concealed self-justification in us. Such moments of honest petulance show the limits of our Gospel, the heretofore unspoken boundaries of our theology. Speaking God's Word, Jeremiah has rightly mocked the notion that God would withhold the correction of His people involving destruction and exile simply because they and His Temple cohabited in the same quarter. Yet, the very prophet who KNOWS God is bigger than one slice of land is revealing in his core objection that he cannot fathom God being gracious toward him WHILE removing him from the land he has known.
What does it take to bring out our spiritual resume, ready as we are under more reflective circumstances to admit how worthless it is compared to the righteousness of Christ? Paul in Romans 8 calls it a privilege to suffer with our Lord, what would we separate ourselves from that office if it looks for a second like we might inhabit the same fallen world as sinners do? Are we more concerned with the optics and assumptions of those we indicted than with God's everlasting purposes?
By His grace, may we recognize our indignance when it bubbles up. May we recognize the perversion when we begin to cite the works of His grace such as giving us an appetite for His Word and meeting us in it as evidence of what we DESERVE by His hand. Might we know something is wrong and that repentance is called for when we begin to recall our rejections at the hands of men as though the One nailed to a cross by and for men owes us an explanation because we get the occasional cold shoulder from our contemporaries.
Here's the sweet irony: once we stop using our list of otherwise sacrificial experiences to manipulate God into action, we really begin to experience His comfort and commendation. He DOES care that we draw near to Him in His Word. He has the audacity to reward us for it rather than simply demanding it as His due. He DOES care that we experience rejection in His service as Jeremiah did. Even while teaching us to rejoice in such circumstances, he is as David who allowed his rejected emissaries to recover their dignity. He, called an unreliable stream by Jeremiah and Jeremiah's indignant heirs when we sometimes suffer like the world does, will prove Himself to be the healing of the nations.
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 has decreed that Jeremiah will leave the homeland with his people and remind them of their sin.
This isn't what Jeremiah expected, and as we have seen in the second half of Jeremiah 15:10, when uncomfortable he falls back on his spiritual resume. Remember me, Lord, he objects, and proceeds to go through the PowerPoint slides evidencing their time together. This is me, Lord. I'm different. Don't get so angry that You lump me in.
It could be that Jeremiah believes the evidence of grace in his life which he brings up make exile unjust. It could be that these long-term experiences with the Lord make exile, and any notion of disfavor in the eyes of the One Who has meant so much to him, harder to bear. Now feeling vulnerable, he reverts to the story of himself taking rejection for God, comprising God's word over the public opinion he constantly opposed, willing to stand bravely alone against the culture. There is more than a hint of, "What has this gotten me?" in his summation.
There is grace, then, in whatever dislocation the Lord uses to release such well-concealed self-justification in us. Such moments of honest petulance show the limits of our Gospel, the heretofore unspoken boundaries of our theology. Speaking God's Word, Jeremiah has rightly mocked the notion that God would withhold the correction of His people involving destruction and exile simply because they and His Temple cohabited in the same quarter. Yet, the very prophet who KNOWS God is bigger than one slice of land is revealing in his core objection that he cannot fathom God being gracious toward him WHILE removing him from the land he has known.
What does it take to bring out our spiritual resume, ready as we are under more reflective circumstances to admit how worthless it is compared to the righteousness of Christ? Paul in Romans 8 calls it a privilege to suffer with our Lord, what would we separate ourselves from that office if it looks for a second like we might inhabit the same fallen world as sinners do? Are we more concerned with the optics and assumptions of those we indicted than with God's everlasting purposes?
By His grace, may we recognize our indignance when it bubbles up. May we recognize the perversion when we begin to cite the works of His grace such as giving us an appetite for His Word and meeting us in it as evidence of what we DESERVE by His hand. Might we know something is wrong and that repentance is called for when we begin to recall our rejections at the hands of men as though the One nailed to a cross by and for men owes us an explanation because we get the occasional cold shoulder from our contemporaries.
Here's the sweet irony: once we stop using our list of otherwise sacrificial experiences to manipulate God into action, we really begin to experience His comfort and commendation. He DOES care that we draw near to Him in His Word. He has the audacity to reward us for it rather than simply demanding it as His due. He DOES care that we experience rejection in His service as Jeremiah did. Even while teaching us to rejoice in such circumstances, he is as David who allowed his rejected emissaries to recover their dignity. He, called an unreliable stream by Jeremiah and Jeremiah's indignant heirs when we sometimes suffer like the world does, will prove Himself to be the healing of the nations.
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