Jeremiah 17:21-23 – Worship as the Gateway Drug to Obedience
21 Thus says the Lord: “Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem; 22 nor carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath day, nor do any work, but hallow the Sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers. 23 But they did not obey nor incline their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear nor receive instruction.
Science fiction author N. K. Jemisin tells The New Yorker's Raffi Khatchadourian her, "writing process often begins with dreams; imagery vivid enough to hang on into wakefulness. She does not so much mine them for insight as treat them as portals into hidden worlds. Her tendency is to interrogate what she sees with if/then questions, until her field of vision widens enough for her to glimpse a landscape that can hold a narrative."
Something like this may be what the Lord has in mind in Jeremiah 17:21-23. Why else tell His prophet, while Jeremiah is to have the fleeting attention of the culture in the Temple gate about the primacy of the Sabbath? Jesus would in some sense deemphasize the keeping of the Sabbath for its own sake, teaching us in the New Testament that it exists to accommodate for human weariness rather than to fill some needed in God by its keeping. Why, then, does God deem it such a vital beginning for the spiritual reformation of Jeremiah's audience?
Perhaps the insistence on rest is an invitation to dream. This need not be the fevered dreams of literal, leaden sleep which comes from total exhaustion. God's insistence on stopping to rest pauses His people's preoccupations. It gives them a chance to stop and think on the value of the activities they are temporarily forsaking. Do these renew me, they might begin to wonder? Was getting and spending really what I was created for?
It is in this disciplined vacuum that the Lord begins to speak. He begins to inspire imagery vivid enough to hang on to it wakefulness. He begins to give us a WHY captivating enough to inspire our repetitive what's and how's. The Sabbath, and that little sabbaths we build into other days as God calls us to momentarily come apart with Him, provide portals into hidden worlds as real as any writer's.
The spiritual disciplines, not salvific in themselves, in worship and in prayer provide us with the opportunity to interrogate respectfully, with fascination, with if/then questions until her field of vision widens enough that we can glimpse the landscape that can hold the narrative of the whole of us, a world so much wider than our prescribed individually burdensome roles.
Coming apart to rest and reflect makes the difference to which Will Durant pointed in Rousseau and Revolution. He wrote, "Even the conscience has to be warmed with feeling if it is to engender virtue and make it not a clever calculator but a good man."
By alternately luring and insisting that we spend time adorning Christ, THE Good Man, our selves are changed by grace from the inside out. Our affections changed our vision, and our vision innervates us to change long unexamined and unproductive habits. We presage, little change by little change, the world to be brought down by God's sovereign grace alone because, moment by moment, we have been with Him and have been given a heart after His.
Science fiction author N. K. Jemisin tells The New Yorker's Raffi Khatchadourian her, "writing process often begins with dreams; imagery vivid enough to hang on into wakefulness. She does not so much mine them for insight as treat them as portals into hidden worlds. Her tendency is to interrogate what she sees with if/then questions, until her field of vision widens enough for her to glimpse a landscape that can hold a narrative."
Something like this may be what the Lord has in mind in Jeremiah 17:21-23. Why else tell His prophet, while Jeremiah is to have the fleeting attention of the culture in the Temple gate about the primacy of the Sabbath? Jesus would in some sense deemphasize the keeping of the Sabbath for its own sake, teaching us in the New Testament that it exists to accommodate for human weariness rather than to fill some needed in God by its keeping. Why, then, does God deem it such a vital beginning for the spiritual reformation of Jeremiah's audience?
Perhaps the insistence on rest is an invitation to dream. This need not be the fevered dreams of literal, leaden sleep which comes from total exhaustion. God's insistence on stopping to rest pauses His people's preoccupations. It gives them a chance to stop and think on the value of the activities they are temporarily forsaking. Do these renew me, they might begin to wonder? Was getting and spending really what I was created for?
It is in this disciplined vacuum that the Lord begins to speak. He begins to inspire imagery vivid enough to hang on to it wakefulness. He begins to give us a WHY captivating enough to inspire our repetitive what's and how's. The Sabbath, and that little sabbaths we build into other days as God calls us to momentarily come apart with Him, provide portals into hidden worlds as real as any writer's.
The spiritual disciplines, not salvific in themselves, in worship and in prayer provide us with the opportunity to interrogate respectfully, with fascination, with if/then questions until her field of vision widens enough that we can glimpse the landscape that can hold the narrative of the whole of us, a world so much wider than our prescribed individually burdensome roles.
Coming apart to rest and reflect makes the difference to which Will Durant pointed in Rousseau and Revolution. He wrote, "Even the conscience has to be warmed with feeling if it is to engender virtue and make it not a clever calculator but a good man."
By alternately luring and insisting that we spend time adorning Christ, THE Good Man, our selves are changed by grace from the inside out. Our affections changed our vision, and our vision innervates us to change long unexamined and unproductive habits. We presage, little change by little change, the world to be brought down by God's sovereign grace alone because, moment by moment, we have been with Him and have been given a heart after His.
"Jesus would in some sense deemphasize the keeping of the Sabbath for its own sake, teaching us in the New Testament that it exists to accommodate for human weariness rather than to fill some needed in God by its keeping."
ReplyDeleteThis is a striking phrase! It is easy to condemn the Jews for worshiping the Sabbath through the lens of history but, in reality, we do the same thing with many Christian actions. This blurry-focused worship is even more deceptive when we approach the gifts of the Christian life because, in the end, whether it is moral-do-goodism or an exaltation of the gifts of the Christian life, we all fall into the Romans 1 trap of worshiping and serving the creation instead of the Creator. What a travesty!
I fall into this myself. Perhaps, sometimes, it just takes a friendly reminder (or blog) that "our affections change our vision...[as] we have been with Him and have been given a heart after His."
Thanks so much for stopping by. The next verses, I hope, would deal cause and effect thinking a serious blow even if I hadn't been used to remind you. Rest in Him, even midweek. May the same props that were once you are smuggled or struggled-under burden instead be your glad offering.
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