Jeremiah 17:14-15 – Who Shepherds the Shepherd?
14
Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed;
Save me, and I shall be saved,
For You are my praise.
15
Indeed they say to me,
“Where is the word of the Lord?
Let it come now!”
"It is always himself," warns Cormac McCarthy as conveyed by Jim Abbott in the appropriately named pitching memoir Imperfect, "the coward abandons first."
Perhaps it is this self-confrontation from which Jeremiah cries out preemptively in Jeremiah 17:14-15, "Heal me!" At first, we start. It is the culture around him that is rotting from within rather than Jeremiah. Jeremiah's connection to the Lord is vital and constantly reorienting him. The culture he confronts, on the other hand, seeks sustenance from secondary sources. Heal him? He might well have been expected to present himself as the spiritual specimen instead.
Yet, Jeremiah is the veteran of spiritual warfare with a healthy suspicion of himself in the battles he is about to fight. He knows the culture he will confront. Its opposition has been personal and persistent, as close as his hometown and his house of origin and as pervasive as the smog of a choking culture of lies, adultery, and treachery. Perhaps the most mature thing about Jeremiah's walk with the Lord is that he doesn't reset in deluded amnesia with respect to how easy he expects it to be to do Lord's work.
In place of naïveté masquerading as prophetic bravado, Jeremiah comes to the Lord as one who has fought this confrontational fight before, and one who has been wounded. Expecting no reinforcement from his human audience, indeed already hearing in his ears their demanding of his prophetic credentials, he declares the breadth and depth of God's healing of the coward spirit. Forget the receptive nods and repentant confessions I would like from my people. Lord, YOU are my praise.
Jeremiah is in a beautifully balanced position we are invited to join in Christ. He knows he has heard from the Lord and that he has been commissioned to declare His Word. Yet he doesn't tip over into believing he is the source of the authority he carries. He can relish God's last Word to him and allow it to renew him as he declares it to the culture around him, but he can neither control nor predict when You will speak next. Like the old pastor in the movie Rudy, he is sure of two basic things: There is a God, and he is not God.
As we play the next hours, and days, and decades forward, there will undoubtedly be wild conjectures, perceived rejections in which we, as Lord Byron warns against, cry out before we are hurt. Nevertheless, there is health in this when we turn the whole scope of our thought life over to the Lord, as Jeremiah does. Save me, Lord, from the very faults You would have me point out in others. Save me, Lord, from idolizing their approval to the extent that I would lack the boldness You call for before men. Save me, Lord, from that of me which would demand to know Your NEXT Word before I faithfully live out this one.
Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed;
Save me, and I shall be saved,
For You are my praise.
15
Indeed they say to me,
“Where is the word of the Lord?
Let it come now!”
"It is always himself," warns Cormac McCarthy as conveyed by Jim Abbott in the appropriately named pitching memoir Imperfect, "the coward abandons first."
Perhaps it is this self-confrontation from which Jeremiah cries out preemptively in Jeremiah 17:14-15, "Heal me!" At first, we start. It is the culture around him that is rotting from within rather than Jeremiah. Jeremiah's connection to the Lord is vital and constantly reorienting him. The culture he confronts, on the other hand, seeks sustenance from secondary sources. Heal him? He might well have been expected to present himself as the spiritual specimen instead.
Yet, Jeremiah is the veteran of spiritual warfare with a healthy suspicion of himself in the battles he is about to fight. He knows the culture he will confront. Its opposition has been personal and persistent, as close as his hometown and his house of origin and as pervasive as the smog of a choking culture of lies, adultery, and treachery. Perhaps the most mature thing about Jeremiah's walk with the Lord is that he doesn't reset in deluded amnesia with respect to how easy he expects it to be to do Lord's work.
In place of naïveté masquerading as prophetic bravado, Jeremiah comes to the Lord as one who has fought this confrontational fight before, and one who has been wounded. Expecting no reinforcement from his human audience, indeed already hearing in his ears their demanding of his prophetic credentials, he declares the breadth and depth of God's healing of the coward spirit. Forget the receptive nods and repentant confessions I would like from my people. Lord, YOU are my praise.
Jeremiah is in a beautifully balanced position we are invited to join in Christ. He knows he has heard from the Lord and that he has been commissioned to declare His Word. Yet he doesn't tip over into believing he is the source of the authority he carries. He can relish God's last Word to him and allow it to renew him as he declares it to the culture around him, but he can neither control nor predict when You will speak next. Like the old pastor in the movie Rudy, he is sure of two basic things: There is a God, and he is not God.
As we play the next hours, and days, and decades forward, there will undoubtedly be wild conjectures, perceived rejections in which we, as Lord Byron warns against, cry out before we are hurt. Nevertheless, there is health in this when we turn the whole scope of our thought life over to the Lord, as Jeremiah does. Save me, Lord, from the very faults You would have me point out in others. Save me, Lord, from idolizing their approval to the extent that I would lack the boldness You call for before men. Save me, Lord, from that of me which would demand to know Your NEXT Word before I faithfully live out this one.
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