Jeremiah 18:7-10 – Word and Will
7 The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, 8 if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. 9 And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, 10 if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it.
"Jesus is," declares David Mathis in Habits of Grace, "the Word of God embodied. He is the grace of God incarnate (Titus 2:11). So full and complete is his revealing of God," relishes Mathis, "that he is not a word-thing, but a Word-person."
We need this revelation of His fullness, both from Mathis and from Jeremiah 18:7-10. The ability to read is so pivotal in this culture. From kindergarten or first grade, it separates those who are seen as successful from those who are not. Anointed with the ability to interpret characters and apply them, and impressed rightly with the majesty of God's Word, we can deify dictates. We can exchange word-person for word-thing.
If we would take our satisfied stand on cold print, as would have Jonah if the technology had existed in his day, Jeremiah 18:7-10 reintroduces us to the Living God. He reveres His Word above His Name, yet He reserves, He tells Jeremiah, the prerogative and timing of its application.
If a nation responds to the doom dictated in that Word with repentance, much to Jonah's chagrin, and sometimes to ours, God says He will relent. Likewise, He says the good He speaks over a nation, if that people takes His bounty as license to do evil, He can renege.
Memorizing and proclaiming His Word, then, is not enough. We must, we get to, relate and renew relationship with its Author. He will, we begin to learn, never contradict that sacred text, but He will move within it in ways we can expect to have failed to envision.
Maturing, we will take Moses' part of intercession. He whom God used to write the Bible's first five books, just about as soon as the ink was dry, pled for the most gracious application. Before enacting its capital penalty, he sought the Lord. He sought the Lord for those who missed the Passover and wanted to partake, those daughters who wanted to inherit.
Knowing the character of the One Who wrote, he by grace deepened that relationship over the text. Maybe that's why Moses didn't see wearying work in tarrying over the application of the Word where his father-in-law Jethro did. Savoring each jot and tittle as they would impact the members of Moses' flock, the contours of the Word as it existed then could have reminded him of his time up on the mountain with God, so substantive that he needed not food.
Why do we collide on the surface, then? Why are we satisfied if knowledge of the Word to cut and wound brings respect in culture or Christian subculture? What is this compared to entering the portal it provides, entering the portal to relate to the One Who originally imparted the Word to point to its fullness in Christ?
While we need not shy away from its promises of the punishment of the wicked, which the martyrs in Revelation pled for without being corrected, we can also be satisfied where the Father was satisfied. The penalties of the Word have been paid for Christ's own by His own suffering.
We need not, then, hold up the Word as a rubric, a scoring of our comparative worth. We have been positioned by Christ's worth to intercede for our brothers and sisters, to claim the intricacies of its promises on their behalf. We can ask for mercy on behalf of the culture and individual in our sphere because God showed us a pattern of His willingness to grant it in Jeremiah 18:7-10, and because we know even more than Jeremiah did that His wrath is SATISFIED.,
"Jesus is," declares David Mathis in Habits of Grace, "the Word of God embodied. He is the grace of God incarnate (Titus 2:11). So full and complete is his revealing of God," relishes Mathis, "that he is not a word-thing, but a Word-person."
We need this revelation of His fullness, both from Mathis and from Jeremiah 18:7-10. The ability to read is so pivotal in this culture. From kindergarten or first grade, it separates those who are seen as successful from those who are not. Anointed with the ability to interpret characters and apply them, and impressed rightly with the majesty of God's Word, we can deify dictates. We can exchange word-person for word-thing.
If we would take our satisfied stand on cold print, as would have Jonah if the technology had existed in his day, Jeremiah 18:7-10 reintroduces us to the Living God. He reveres His Word above His Name, yet He reserves, He tells Jeremiah, the prerogative and timing of its application.
If a nation responds to the doom dictated in that Word with repentance, much to Jonah's chagrin, and sometimes to ours, God says He will relent. Likewise, He says the good He speaks over a nation, if that people takes His bounty as license to do evil, He can renege.
Memorizing and proclaiming His Word, then, is not enough. We must, we get to, relate and renew relationship with its Author. He will, we begin to learn, never contradict that sacred text, but He will move within it in ways we can expect to have failed to envision.
Maturing, we will take Moses' part of intercession. He whom God used to write the Bible's first five books, just about as soon as the ink was dry, pled for the most gracious application. Before enacting its capital penalty, he sought the Lord. He sought the Lord for those who missed the Passover and wanted to partake, those daughters who wanted to inherit.
Knowing the character of the One Who wrote, he by grace deepened that relationship over the text. Maybe that's why Moses didn't see wearying work in tarrying over the application of the Word where his father-in-law Jethro did. Savoring each jot and tittle as they would impact the members of Moses' flock, the contours of the Word as it existed then could have reminded him of his time up on the mountain with God, so substantive that he needed not food.
Why do we collide on the surface, then? Why are we satisfied if knowledge of the Word to cut and wound brings respect in culture or Christian subculture? What is this compared to entering the portal it provides, entering the portal to relate to the One Who originally imparted the Word to point to its fullness in Christ?
While we need not shy away from its promises of the punishment of the wicked, which the martyrs in Revelation pled for without being corrected, we can also be satisfied where the Father was satisfied. The penalties of the Word have been paid for Christ's own by His own suffering.
We need not, then, hold up the Word as a rubric, a scoring of our comparative worth. We have been positioned by Christ's worth to intercede for our brothers and sisters, to claim the intricacies of its promises on their behalf. We can ask for mercy on behalf of the culture and individual in our sphere because God showed us a pattern of His willingness to grant it in Jeremiah 18:7-10, and because we know even more than Jeremiah did that His wrath is SATISFIED.,
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