Jeremiah 16:18-19 – Inviting into the "Me Too" Club
19
O Lord, my strength and my fortress,
My refuge in the day of affliction,
The Gentiles shall come to You
From the ends of the earth and say,
“Surely our fathers have inherited lies,
Worthlessness and unprofitable things.”
20
Will a man make gods for himself,
Which are not gods?
Pat Conroy narrates in Beach Music, "I like writing about strange cities and cuisines because it keeps me at arms length from the subjects that are too close to me."
He's on to something, something CS Lewis's fictional demon Screwtape also points to, hoping that we will continue to push the virtuous life outward into the abstract and meaningless and thereby miss the opportunities to walk by faith in the relationships directly around us. That's what makes the dynamic of Jeremiah 16:18-19 so interesting.
Leading up to this conclusion to the book's sixteenth chapter, we have seen the prophet relieved of hope of immediate repentance. We have seen him rescued from any tendency toward outright despair with the clear revelation that God will bring His people back to the land, and we have seen this good news delivered with this sobering revelation that they will come home to even greater accountability.
Jeremiah, though a seasoned saint at converted his people's sins, from lies, to adultery, to idolatry, might be excused for a desire to convert and clean up his own culture before exporting its gospel. We would also understand if he forsook the hard work of repentance and rebuilding by taking on an outward focus as a distraction. There are already hints in his book at his tendency to contend with God because the sins of the Gentiles God uses to judge Israel are worse than those of His people.
Nevertheless, the prophet of Jeremiah 16:18-19 is besotted with a big God. Reminded of his people's vulnerability and accountability, of the judgment of exiles they deserve now and the greater judgment they will deserve if they dessert God after experiencing His intimate goodness in the present generation by being brought back to the land, his first response is to worship.
Remind me that I am one of a weak people, his spongy spirit seems to insist, and I will declare God's strength. Remind me that deserved invaders are coming, and I will declare God as my fortress allowing him to touch His people except by His permission and for His purposes.
Nor is this stubborn confession for Jeremiah's self-therapy alone. With all his renewed awareness of his people's depravity, of their absolute need for God's righteousness on their behalf, he declares that they will be used as is, as a work in progress and proof of God's grace and mercy, to draw even the Gentiles to Him. Their experience with God, even all their sluggish responses, will be used to prove the faithfulness of God.
If He continues to contend with THIS people who have known and ignored His Word, who have received this land by grace and then have received it back again, who is out of His reach? Whose idols can He not show inferior?
Jeremiah's sense of national testimony is not a distraction, but an overflow of his sense of God's willingness to finish what He starts, oblivious to degree of difficulty. Having seen the narrative through which God will bring His people, the prophet picks up on the by now freight notes of Jeremiah 12:16 that God will use this to woo even His Gentile instruments He uses to correct His people.
This mix of conviction and testimony, though it seems counterintuitive, is not unknown elsewhere in the Bible. It is the response that tells us we must fix ourselves and our immediate environment before declaring God's wider work that is of the flesh. King David, convicted of sinning with Bathsheba pleads in Psalm 51 not only that God create in Him a clean heart and a steadfast spirit, but he perceives thereby that he will sing aloud of God's righteousness and teaches sinners His ways.
Beholding the glory of God, even with repentance in our lives and in our culture to work through, we sense more than self is at stake. We dig in with the declaration that because God can fix us when we are accountable for its so many of His blessings toward us and His revelation to us, then He can likewise draw the nations. Even those through whom He shows us the work of sanctification which must still be done can be moved to Him in the same multifaceted process. As big as our sin seems, our God is bigger still.
O Lord, my strength and my fortress,
My refuge in the day of affliction,
The Gentiles shall come to You
From the ends of the earth and say,
“Surely our fathers have inherited lies,
Worthlessness and unprofitable things.”
20
Will a man make gods for himself,
Which are not gods?
Pat Conroy narrates in Beach Music, "I like writing about strange cities and cuisines because it keeps me at arms length from the subjects that are too close to me."
He's on to something, something CS Lewis's fictional demon Screwtape also points to, hoping that we will continue to push the virtuous life outward into the abstract and meaningless and thereby miss the opportunities to walk by faith in the relationships directly around us. That's what makes the dynamic of Jeremiah 16:18-19 so interesting.
Leading up to this conclusion to the book's sixteenth chapter, we have seen the prophet relieved of hope of immediate repentance. We have seen him rescued from any tendency toward outright despair with the clear revelation that God will bring His people back to the land, and we have seen this good news delivered with this sobering revelation that they will come home to even greater accountability.
Jeremiah, though a seasoned saint at converted his people's sins, from lies, to adultery, to idolatry, might be excused for a desire to convert and clean up his own culture before exporting its gospel. We would also understand if he forsook the hard work of repentance and rebuilding by taking on an outward focus as a distraction. There are already hints in his book at his tendency to contend with God because the sins of the Gentiles God uses to judge Israel are worse than those of His people.
Nevertheless, the prophet of Jeremiah 16:18-19 is besotted with a big God. Reminded of his people's vulnerability and accountability, of the judgment of exiles they deserve now and the greater judgment they will deserve if they dessert God after experiencing His intimate goodness in the present generation by being brought back to the land, his first response is to worship.
Remind me that I am one of a weak people, his spongy spirit seems to insist, and I will declare God's strength. Remind me that deserved invaders are coming, and I will declare God as my fortress allowing him to touch His people except by His permission and for His purposes.
Nor is this stubborn confession for Jeremiah's self-therapy alone. With all his renewed awareness of his people's depravity, of their absolute need for God's righteousness on their behalf, he declares that they will be used as is, as a work in progress and proof of God's grace and mercy, to draw even the Gentiles to Him. Their experience with God, even all their sluggish responses, will be used to prove the faithfulness of God.
If He continues to contend with THIS people who have known and ignored His Word, who have received this land by grace and then have received it back again, who is out of His reach? Whose idols can He not show inferior?
Jeremiah's sense of national testimony is not a distraction, but an overflow of his sense of God's willingness to finish what He starts, oblivious to degree of difficulty. Having seen the narrative through which God will bring His people, the prophet picks up on the by now freight notes of Jeremiah 12:16 that God will use this to woo even His Gentile instruments He uses to correct His people.
This mix of conviction and testimony, though it seems counterintuitive, is not unknown elsewhere in the Bible. It is the response that tells us we must fix ourselves and our immediate environment before declaring God's wider work that is of the flesh. King David, convicted of sinning with Bathsheba pleads in Psalm 51 not only that God create in Him a clean heart and a steadfast spirit, but he perceives thereby that he will sing aloud of God's righteousness and teaches sinners His ways.
Beholding the glory of God, even with repentance in our lives and in our culture to work through, we sense more than self is at stake. We dig in with the declaration that because God can fix us when we are accountable for its so many of His blessings toward us and His revelation to us, then He can likewise draw the nations. Even those through whom He shows us the work of sanctification which must still be done can be moved to Him in the same multifaceted process. As big as our sin seems, our God is bigger still.
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