Jeremiah 15:2-3 – God's Sovereign Disposition
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 people's manipulative reactions.
It is by this preemptive grace that he gives Jeremiah the sovereign script in advance with which he can answer the people, accusers of a sort. Even here, inoculating His man against the spirit of panic that will be all around him, he prepares him to teach theology. God prepares Jeremiah to undermine any malicious sense of meritocracy remaining in the hearts of the people.
God steadfastly declares it is His prerogative to divide up this people seemingly so united in defying Him. He decides based on His own counsel who will die and by what means, and who will experience the traumatic but protective grace of captivity. He is deliberately short on explanations. He and Jeremiah have split chapters, and presumably hours, tossing back and forth the various aspects of this people's depravity, from the pervasiveness of lying and adultery to the proclivity to outright idolatry. Yet fates in Jeremiah 15:2-3 are not divvied up by grades assigned, by whose behavior has been better or worse.
Even today, the degree of His correction or protection we experience is His to determine. We have no standing before Him from which we can declare that He has been unfair. That He grants another day's breath is mercy itself. We can use this allotment as He prepares Jeremiah to do, to proclaim His justice in Himself. Knowing the way of our flesh and our culture to take the highest point of comfort and prosperity as our due, we can be the outlier ready to admit at the slightest reminder that we live only by God's grace.
Seeing farther back to Calvary and forward to the completion of Christ's work in us than Jeremiah could with any regularity, we maintain an even more firmly rooted poise that he could. We know of suffering concomitant with residence as aliens and strangers in a fallen world,, but we know its limits.
We know, after all, that whatever touch we experience from death's cold hand, our Captain has truly beaten to death. "The sword that has been forged against us," at once acknowledging spiritual warfare and hardship and rejoicing in its limits, " is already blunted; the instruments of war which the enemy is preparing," he gives a holy gloat, "have already lost their point."
Famine likewise, however blighting, makes feasting on Him as the inexhaustible store of the Bread of life more sumptuous, the constraints of captivity remaining in this world rendering the freedom we have in Him all the more amazing.
“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 people's manipulative reactions.
It is by this preemptive grace that he gives Jeremiah the sovereign script in advance with which he can answer the people, accusers of a sort. Even here, inoculating His man against the spirit of panic that will be all around him, he prepares him to teach theology. God prepares Jeremiah to undermine any malicious sense of meritocracy remaining in the hearts of the people.
God steadfastly declares it is His prerogative to divide up this people seemingly so united in defying Him. He decides based on His own counsel who will die and by what means, and who will experience the traumatic but protective grace of captivity. He is deliberately short on explanations. He and Jeremiah have split chapters, and presumably hours, tossing back and forth the various aspects of this people's depravity, from the pervasiveness of lying and adultery to the proclivity to outright idolatry. Yet fates in Jeremiah 15:2-3 are not divvied up by grades assigned, by whose behavior has been better or worse.
Even today, the degree of His correction or protection we experience is His to determine. We have no standing before Him from which we can declare that He has been unfair. That He grants another day's breath is mercy itself. We can use this allotment as He prepares Jeremiah to do, to proclaim His justice in Himself. Knowing the way of our flesh and our culture to take the highest point of comfort and prosperity as our due, we can be the outlier ready to admit at the slightest reminder that we live only by God's grace.
Seeing farther back to Calvary and forward to the completion of Christ's work in us than Jeremiah could with any regularity, we maintain an even more firmly rooted poise that he could. We know of suffering concomitant with residence as aliens and strangers in a fallen world,, but we know its limits.
We know, after all, that whatever touch we experience from death's cold hand, our Captain has truly beaten to death. "The sword that has been forged against us," at once acknowledging spiritual warfare and hardship and rejoicing in its limits, " is already blunted; the instruments of war which the enemy is preparing," he gives a holy gloat, "have already lost their point."
Famine likewise, however blighting, makes feasting on Him as the inexhaustible store of the Bread of life more sumptuous, the constraints of captivity remaining in this world rendering the freedom we have in Him all the more amazing.
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