Jeremiah 18:18 – Revelation, but Not by Him
18 Then they said, “Come and let us devise plans against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come and let us attack him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.”
My wife and I have been watching ER alongside the real-life medical drama which is unfolding these days. It's not uncommon on the show for children to resist the treatment that adults know they need. They will squirm away from the pain of an injection. Sometimes they will lash out at the person who is confronting their condition by painful means. This is reflexive, and we don't blame them.
We can even understand when, in a state of spiritual darkness, people lash out at God's messenger addressing the disease of their souls. This is a manifestation of the disease of sin, after all. The people rebelled against Moses. They rebelled against and attacked a variety of God's prophets. Ultimately, we would kill Christ as the perfect Word made flesh.
Jeremiah 18:18 penetrates our thinking in rebellion against revelation, and it revealed even more about the depth of the disease. Our reaction to Truth is not always either to submit or to reflexively recoil. This verse presents a reasoning heart, a sorting, sifting, entitled heart. Not only will we reject God's Word and His messenger as a child might the healthcare professional delivering the injection, we will fully verbalize why. We will "reason" with co-conspirators that if we don't like this application, the style or the timing of the person God's using, we can insist on something else.
The impatient, pride-hardened NEXT is at the heart of Jeremiah 18:18. Not only will the populace of that day and this shut out a messenger we find too abrasive, too intrusive, or too threatening to aspects of our self-definition, but we will decide to order up the next instance of God come near. Listen to them: if we distract ourselves from Jeremiah, the law won't end; other prophets will keep coming. Perhaps the next one will tickle our euros more to our liking.
We, awash in the Word, are much more like these degenerates than the children under the pain of initial confrontation. Much of our pride's impact is premeditated and circulated back to us by the human company we keep. As Peter predicted, we use God's mercy up until now as a pretext to believe that that forbearance will continue. We will continue to get chances, continue to hear Truth, and we will get a chance to apply what we like when we like.
But, brothers and sisters, Christ the ultimate Prophet has come, and He is coming back. He foretold accountability to His Word, which will remain forever even when Heaven and Earth pass away. There isn't another channel to change to. No matter how much company we can crowdsource in discomfort under conviction, it won't be relevant.
Before Him, no mouth will be open in protest. Humanity's itch for novelty, as framed in Jeremiah 18:18, will be revealed for the excuse that it is. What is hearing something new from someone new when compared to the reality that Christ is still making men new?
My wife and I have been watching ER alongside the real-life medical drama which is unfolding these days. It's not uncommon on the show for children to resist the treatment that adults know they need. They will squirm away from the pain of an injection. Sometimes they will lash out at the person who is confronting their condition by painful means. This is reflexive, and we don't blame them.
We can even understand when, in a state of spiritual darkness, people lash out at God's messenger addressing the disease of their souls. This is a manifestation of the disease of sin, after all. The people rebelled against Moses. They rebelled against and attacked a variety of God's prophets. Ultimately, we would kill Christ as the perfect Word made flesh.
Jeremiah 18:18 penetrates our thinking in rebellion against revelation, and it revealed even more about the depth of the disease. Our reaction to Truth is not always either to submit or to reflexively recoil. This verse presents a reasoning heart, a sorting, sifting, entitled heart. Not only will we reject God's Word and His messenger as a child might the healthcare professional delivering the injection, we will fully verbalize why. We will "reason" with co-conspirators that if we don't like this application, the style or the timing of the person God's using, we can insist on something else.
The impatient, pride-hardened NEXT is at the heart of Jeremiah 18:18. Not only will the populace of that day and this shut out a messenger we find too abrasive, too intrusive, or too threatening to aspects of our self-definition, but we will decide to order up the next instance of God come near. Listen to them: if we distract ourselves from Jeremiah, the law won't end; other prophets will keep coming. Perhaps the next one will tickle our euros more to our liking.
We, awash in the Word, are much more like these degenerates than the children under the pain of initial confrontation. Much of our pride's impact is premeditated and circulated back to us by the human company we keep. As Peter predicted, we use God's mercy up until now as a pretext to believe that that forbearance will continue. We will continue to get chances, continue to hear Truth, and we will get a chance to apply what we like when we like.
But, brothers and sisters, Christ the ultimate Prophet has come, and He is coming back. He foretold accountability to His Word, which will remain forever even when Heaven and Earth pass away. There isn't another channel to change to. No matter how much company we can crowdsource in discomfort under conviction, it won't be relevant.
Before Him, no mouth will be open in protest. Humanity's itch for novelty, as framed in Jeremiah 18:18, will be revealed for the excuse that it is. What is hearing something new from someone new when compared to the reality that Christ is still making men new?
It is amazing to me that their callousness to God's revelation did not distract them from organize religion. They were intent on keeping the basic structure of their religious activity, just with a "better" prophet. I wonder why they did not feel compelled to just ditch Jehovah all together and go to a more palatable and permissible god? I'm sure part of it is the way our religion becomes part and parcel of our identity but it really just underscores their faith before crisis - it was not that they just disliked Jeremiah but that they had never truly believed the words of God, even when times were good.
ReplyDeletePainfully true. Yet God pursued and pursues – even through the frail, distractible, discouragable likes of us
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