Jeremiah 18:19-20 – My Ministerial Splash as My Idol
19
Give heed to me, O Lord,
And listen to the voice of those who contend with me!
20
Shall evil be repaid for good?
For they have dug a pit for my life.
Remember that I stood before You
To speak good for them,
To turn away Your wrath from them.
“A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty," reduces Tim Keller in God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, "that he is and no more.”
Generally, the prophet Jeremiah seems more likely to deliver that verdict than need to receive it. God has told him from the commissioning of Jeremiah's ministry that the people won't listen to him, and this has been reinforced in Jeremiah's experience. Surely, if there were a man impervious enough in his identity before God to be able to celebrate it in either abundant or nonexistent ministry results, Jeremiah would be the guy.
Yet, even for him, such a discipline perspective corrodes. No matter how many times God pulls off the bandage of his stickily attaching his hopes to human responses, Jeremiah bonds again to such a man-centered metric. It's the inverse of the weeping prophet's genuine care for people. What Lucy holding the football is to Charlie Brown, leading a national revival seems to be to Jeremiah. This time, it's going to work.
We see the latest scarring of such sticky hopes in Jeremiah 18:19-20. Hyperactive hopes in humans lead to a plummeting loss of prophetic perspective. The whispers Jeremiah has heard, whether by auditory scuttlebutt on the street or by divine inspiration, reveal that he is going to be attacked with the tongue and that his words will be heeded. The populace purposes that by these insidious disciplines Jeremiah's legacy will be erased. Will affiliate with the next prophet or priest, they decide.
But note, the deep hues and mortal lament in Jeremiah's decided overreaction. They want to damage his legacy, to see that he is ignored. He interprets this as digging a pit for his life. The prophet's transparency shows us that even he, even Jeremiah brave before his culture and candid before his God, can begin to define his reason for living by the responses he gets or doesn't get from the people around him.
Where is the pit for your life and mine? We face, Jesus said, an enemy who comes to steal, kill and destroy, so that pit is real. Even so, I fear we help Satan dig it before us with such expansive definitions of self and purpose as Jeremiah 18:19-20 reveals.
What defines my life? That God gave it defines life. That God set a purpose for it before my days ever began defines life. That Christ will present me faultless before His Father whether the worth of my life ever meets my metrics or not, THAT defines my life in a way that no pit can derail or bury.
Want results? Good for you. There is absolutely a place for holy ambition, for wanting to present an offering in response to the opportunities Christ gave us. Bleed in soul for the people in your particular sphere who don't find their justification in Christ? Quicken your hopes every time they turn slightly in that direction, and we at least in spirit every time they move further away? Much of this, brothers and sisters, is holy and Christ-like. Our Savior didn't personify perspective by being emotionally inert. He wept for Jerusalem. He despaired before the pending, personal rejection of His Calvary ordeal.
Even so, He kept moving. He found, again and again, it's His identity in His Father rather than in the advances of His human audience. He locked on to the joyous reunion with His Father set before Him, and He continued to see the humans He would lead there as an extension of that joy between Father, Son, and Spirit – never a replacement for it.
Ye of Jeremiah's sticky hopes, confess your pit and move on. That resilient, ebullient, irrepressible hope in Christ alone you knew yesterday is still present and pervasive. Christ's payday of His own is coming, for His reward is with him, and none of our sense of inequity between effort and results will remain. Better a crown at His nail-scarred hands which no one can take away than a spike in human results which, having grown in our hopes again, will draw them downward.
Give heed to me, O Lord,
And listen to the voice of those who contend with me!
20
Shall evil be repaid for good?
For they have dug a pit for my life.
Remember that I stood before You
To speak good for them,
To turn away Your wrath from them.
“A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty," reduces Tim Keller in God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, "that he is and no more.”
Generally, the prophet Jeremiah seems more likely to deliver that verdict than need to receive it. God has told him from the commissioning of Jeremiah's ministry that the people won't listen to him, and this has been reinforced in Jeremiah's experience. Surely, if there were a man impervious enough in his identity before God to be able to celebrate it in either abundant or nonexistent ministry results, Jeremiah would be the guy.
Yet, even for him, such a discipline perspective corrodes. No matter how many times God pulls off the bandage of his stickily attaching his hopes to human responses, Jeremiah bonds again to such a man-centered metric. It's the inverse of the weeping prophet's genuine care for people. What Lucy holding the football is to Charlie Brown, leading a national revival seems to be to Jeremiah. This time, it's going to work.
We see the latest scarring of such sticky hopes in Jeremiah 18:19-20. Hyperactive hopes in humans lead to a plummeting loss of prophetic perspective. The whispers Jeremiah has heard, whether by auditory scuttlebutt on the street or by divine inspiration, reveal that he is going to be attacked with the tongue and that his words will be heeded. The populace purposes that by these insidious disciplines Jeremiah's legacy will be erased. Will affiliate with the next prophet or priest, they decide.
But note, the deep hues and mortal lament in Jeremiah's decided overreaction. They want to damage his legacy, to see that he is ignored. He interprets this as digging a pit for his life. The prophet's transparency shows us that even he, even Jeremiah brave before his culture and candid before his God, can begin to define his reason for living by the responses he gets or doesn't get from the people around him.
Where is the pit for your life and mine? We face, Jesus said, an enemy who comes to steal, kill and destroy, so that pit is real. Even so, I fear we help Satan dig it before us with such expansive definitions of self and purpose as Jeremiah 18:19-20 reveals.
What defines my life? That God gave it defines life. That God set a purpose for it before my days ever began defines life. That Christ will present me faultless before His Father whether the worth of my life ever meets my metrics or not, THAT defines my life in a way that no pit can derail or bury.
Want results? Good for you. There is absolutely a place for holy ambition, for wanting to present an offering in response to the opportunities Christ gave us. Bleed in soul for the people in your particular sphere who don't find their justification in Christ? Quicken your hopes every time they turn slightly in that direction, and we at least in spirit every time they move further away? Much of this, brothers and sisters, is holy and Christ-like. Our Savior didn't personify perspective by being emotionally inert. He wept for Jerusalem. He despaired before the pending, personal rejection of His Calvary ordeal.
Even so, He kept moving. He found, again and again, it's His identity in His Father rather than in the advances of His human audience. He locked on to the joyous reunion with His Father set before Him, and He continued to see the humans He would lead there as an extension of that joy between Father, Son, and Spirit – never a replacement for it.
Ye of Jeremiah's sticky hopes, confess your pit and move on. That resilient, ebullient, irrepressible hope in Christ alone you knew yesterday is still present and pervasive. Christ's payday of His own is coming, for His reward is with him, and none of our sense of inequity between effort and results will remain. Better a crown at His nail-scarred hands which no one can take away than a spike in human results which, having grown in our hopes again, will draw them downward.
Comments
Post a Comment