Jeremiah 18:13-14 – Reminders of Renewal
13 Therefore thus says the Lord:
“Ask now among the Gentiles,
Who has heard such things?
The virgin of Israel has done a very horrible thing.
14
Will a man leave the snow water of Lebanon,
Which comes from the rock of the field?
Will the cold flowing waters be forsaken for strange waters?
As the story for Return of the Jedi was being fashioned, one of George Lucas's inner circle objected to the sentimental turn it was taking. Darth Vader, the ultimate villain, redeemed and reconciled?! Really?!
Lucas, who tended more toward Buddhist concepts of spirituality, looked at his questioner, seeking a sort of reconciliation of his own. I thought, he queried pointedly, you were a Christian.
This is the kind of confrontational grace we face in Jeremiah 18:13-14. For, if we can deem the Darth Vaders in our own over-dramatized narrative beyond the reach of plausible grace, we can also get lost in our own maelstrom of self-condemnation. We can readily, as was the Israelite consensus in Jeremiah 18:12, decide we are too far gone to draw near again to the convicting Truth we now understand, and to God as the Source of that Truth.
The finality of "It's too late," can echo around our consciousness to the point that we seek continued sin as a meager relief. As our mouths speak according to Scripture from the fullness of our hearts, our own words can ratify our doom.
Deepening our predicament, as in Jeremiah 18:12, misery loves company. We can seek, usually unconsciously, a circle of those who will reinforce our sense of estrangement. Happy, hopeful people are is unwelcome in such a state as the man in Proverbs who chirps "Good morning!"
Enter the subtle, circumlocuting, almost conniving genius of the Lord. Cue an outsider, a George Lucas who does not hope in Him. He Who rouses pharaohs from sleep is not short of spokesmen, nor bereft of words to speak through them because they lack a Scriptural background. When they speak, when they remind us what we have said we believe in gentler times about the goodness of God, we listen.
When almost deaf to the Word because we have been stung by conviction there, when unmoved by the testimonies of our fellow Christians because their dawning radiance makes us squint in our backslidden condition, the reminder from the pagan, or the pagan culture, can be the holy subterfuge we aren't prepared to defend against.
Look at the degree of the grace of God in Jeremiah 18:13-14! When He moves the consensus of the nations to speak as a counterweight to the murmuring, spiraling hopelessness of His own people, one might expect their words to be spiritually rudimentary. Not so.
Whom the Lord anoints, He can advance in skill according to His pleasure rather than man's logic. He moves these spokesmen of the nations from benighted to beholding, equipping them in analogy to get the attention of His people.
Can't you of the long-dormant, now overheated, conscience, feel the snow waters of Lebanon? The nations have but a vague idea, backslider, and God's love is such that He is using them in compelling imagery to call us back. Our lives were as barren and as drought-hardened as the lands of many of these nations from which God springs up new spokesmen.
Hope is nurtured in the impending, compelling refreshment from the word picture they paint. We can forsake the local mud puddles that but remind us how dirty we are, and come home to the renewal of God and His Word. You need no longer be blind to it from over-familiarity.
“Ask now among the Gentiles,
Who has heard such things?
The virgin of Israel has done a very horrible thing.
14
Will a man leave the snow water of Lebanon,
Which comes from the rock of the field?
Will the cold flowing waters be forsaken for strange waters?
As the story for Return of the Jedi was being fashioned, one of George Lucas's inner circle objected to the sentimental turn it was taking. Darth Vader, the ultimate villain, redeemed and reconciled?! Really?!
Lucas, who tended more toward Buddhist concepts of spirituality, looked at his questioner, seeking a sort of reconciliation of his own. I thought, he queried pointedly, you were a Christian.
This is the kind of confrontational grace we face in Jeremiah 18:13-14. For, if we can deem the Darth Vaders in our own over-dramatized narrative beyond the reach of plausible grace, we can also get lost in our own maelstrom of self-condemnation. We can readily, as was the Israelite consensus in Jeremiah 18:12, decide we are too far gone to draw near again to the convicting Truth we now understand, and to God as the Source of that Truth.
The finality of "It's too late," can echo around our consciousness to the point that we seek continued sin as a meager relief. As our mouths speak according to Scripture from the fullness of our hearts, our own words can ratify our doom.
Deepening our predicament, as in Jeremiah 18:12, misery loves company. We can seek, usually unconsciously, a circle of those who will reinforce our sense of estrangement. Happy, hopeful people are is unwelcome in such a state as the man in Proverbs who chirps "Good morning!"
Enter the subtle, circumlocuting, almost conniving genius of the Lord. Cue an outsider, a George Lucas who does not hope in Him. He Who rouses pharaohs from sleep is not short of spokesmen, nor bereft of words to speak through them because they lack a Scriptural background. When they speak, when they remind us what we have said we believe in gentler times about the goodness of God, we listen.
When almost deaf to the Word because we have been stung by conviction there, when unmoved by the testimonies of our fellow Christians because their dawning radiance makes us squint in our backslidden condition, the reminder from the pagan, or the pagan culture, can be the holy subterfuge we aren't prepared to defend against.
Look at the degree of the grace of God in Jeremiah 18:13-14! When He moves the consensus of the nations to speak as a counterweight to the murmuring, spiraling hopelessness of His own people, one might expect their words to be spiritually rudimentary. Not so.
Whom the Lord anoints, He can advance in skill according to His pleasure rather than man's logic. He moves these spokesmen of the nations from benighted to beholding, equipping them in analogy to get the attention of His people.
Can't you of the long-dormant, now overheated, conscience, feel the snow waters of Lebanon? The nations have but a vague idea, backslider, and God's love is such that He is using them in compelling imagery to call us back. Our lives were as barren and as drought-hardened as the lands of many of these nations from which God springs up new spokesmen.
Hope is nurtured in the impending, compelling refreshment from the word picture they paint. We can forsake the local mud puddles that but remind us how dirty we are, and come home to the renewal of God and His Word. You need no longer be blind to it from over-familiarity.
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