Jeremiah 20:1-2 – The Slavish Spirit
Now Pashhur the son of Immer, the priest who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things. 2 Then Pashhur struck Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the Lord.
"Perhaps some of the Puritanic fathers may have gone too far," Spurgeon allows in his sermon "Turn or Burn," and have given too great a prominence to the terrors of the Lord in their ministry: but the age in which we live has sought to forget those terrors altogether, and if we dare to tell men that God will punish them for their sins, it is charged upon us that want to bully them into religion, and if we faithfully and honestly tell our hearers that sin must bring after it certain destruction, it is said that we are attempting to frighten them into goodness."
Jeremiah 20:1-2, though, shows Spurgeon's age was not the first to depend overmuch on the temperament of established ministry and to err to enforce its status quo as tantamount with Scripture. God has called Jeremiah into the Temple court, and he bravely goes to speak to the most self-secure of his culture.
Having failed to squelch his spirit and preempt such a step of holy effrontery, Pashhur moves against Jeremiah's body. That face which the Lord initially set against intimidation is struck for its singular eye toward the Lord's honor. The limbs which the Lord quickened toward the backdrop of the potter's house, or Tophet, or the Temple, they are bound since Jeremiah's spirit cannot be.
By God's grace, and more the laxness than the piety of our age, we are unlikely to be struck or bound for following our Spirit-moved conscience. My question is, by these spasms of obedience directly to God rather than to the customs of culture, what will we discover about our previous habits?
In the absence of specific, Divine direction, or perhaps as an indictment that we have not sought it, what man, or which of man's conventions have we called governor of His house, even in our own hearts? How much of our conformity to spiritual authority which we call tranquility, reverence, and faith, is rather over-indulgence, giving another the title of vicar when God, at great cost, has taken up residence in the Christian and every aspect of his or her life?
How much of that delegation of spiritual authority was, we thought, only nominal, a polite nod to the culture around us, to be limited if the person to whom we delegated our spiritual well-being ever exceeded the Scriptural bounds of that amorphous office?
Sure, we might tell ourselves and tell others, we CALL Pashhur governor of the Lord's house, or we CALL some man father so we can remain in a state which is spiritually childlike and have someone else discern for us, or we CALL some man pastor so long as he feeds us and guides us in green pastures, but we can revoke this anytime we want. As with any other addict, we may find addiction to delegation harder to shake than we supposed.
It may take a slap of the kind that Pashhur delivers to remind us that man settles into whatever authority we give him and often unconsciously begins to use it for his own benefit. Men become accustomed to the relationship between controlling and controllable.
As they overreact to the call to submit, so overcharged authorities are likely to overreact to any disruption in this relationship. We enshrine the stratification of responsibility before the Lord and implicitly resist a fresh move of His Spirit which would challenge the norms of any given day.
Jeremiah throughout his narrative has remained poised and pliable, susceptible to the Lord's direct movement in his daily life. The slap he receives indicts the manipulative spiritual authorities who cannot or will not adjust to what the Lord is doing NOW through a man who lacks their formal pedigree.
Our correction, though, may awaken us to the excessive degree we have delegated our responsibility before the Lord. The chains on our conscience may be those we have allowed to be forged by habit, by yielding respect to men and their customs which belongs solely to the Lord.
He is at the double portion of Benjamin at whose gate Jeremiah was confined. Would we refrain from fullness in Him because of Megan's moves or pronouncements? Or would we hear directly from the Lord and move accordingly while we have leave and daily to do so? Our bodies, brothers and sisters in Christ, are still the Lord's before they belong to the man.
"Perhaps some of the Puritanic fathers may have gone too far," Spurgeon allows in his sermon "Turn or Burn," and have given too great a prominence to the terrors of the Lord in their ministry: but the age in which we live has sought to forget those terrors altogether, and if we dare to tell men that God will punish them for their sins, it is charged upon us that want to bully them into religion, and if we faithfully and honestly tell our hearers that sin must bring after it certain destruction, it is said that we are attempting to frighten them into goodness."
Jeremiah 20:1-2, though, shows Spurgeon's age was not the first to depend overmuch on the temperament of established ministry and to err to enforce its status quo as tantamount with Scripture. God has called Jeremiah into the Temple court, and he bravely goes to speak to the most self-secure of his culture.
Having failed to squelch his spirit and preempt such a step of holy effrontery, Pashhur moves against Jeremiah's body. That face which the Lord initially set against intimidation is struck for its singular eye toward the Lord's honor. The limbs which the Lord quickened toward the backdrop of the potter's house, or Tophet, or the Temple, they are bound since Jeremiah's spirit cannot be.
By God's grace, and more the laxness than the piety of our age, we are unlikely to be struck or bound for following our Spirit-moved conscience. My question is, by these spasms of obedience directly to God rather than to the customs of culture, what will we discover about our previous habits?
In the absence of specific, Divine direction, or perhaps as an indictment that we have not sought it, what man, or which of man's conventions have we called governor of His house, even in our own hearts? How much of our conformity to spiritual authority which we call tranquility, reverence, and faith, is rather over-indulgence, giving another the title of vicar when God, at great cost, has taken up residence in the Christian and every aspect of his or her life?
How much of that delegation of spiritual authority was, we thought, only nominal, a polite nod to the culture around us, to be limited if the person to whom we delegated our spiritual well-being ever exceeded the Scriptural bounds of that amorphous office?
Sure, we might tell ourselves and tell others, we CALL Pashhur governor of the Lord's house, or we CALL some man father so we can remain in a state which is spiritually childlike and have someone else discern for us, or we CALL some man pastor so long as he feeds us and guides us in green pastures, but we can revoke this anytime we want. As with any other addict, we may find addiction to delegation harder to shake than we supposed.
It may take a slap of the kind that Pashhur delivers to remind us that man settles into whatever authority we give him and often unconsciously begins to use it for his own benefit. Men become accustomed to the relationship between controlling and controllable.
As they overreact to the call to submit, so overcharged authorities are likely to overreact to any disruption in this relationship. We enshrine the stratification of responsibility before the Lord and implicitly resist a fresh move of His Spirit which would challenge the norms of any given day.
Jeremiah throughout his narrative has remained poised and pliable, susceptible to the Lord's direct movement in his daily life. The slap he receives indicts the manipulative spiritual authorities who cannot or will not adjust to what the Lord is doing NOW through a man who lacks their formal pedigree.
Our correction, though, may awaken us to the excessive degree we have delegated our responsibility before the Lord. The chains on our conscience may be those we have allowed to be forged by habit, by yielding respect to men and their customs which belongs solely to the Lord.
He is at the double portion of Benjamin at whose gate Jeremiah was confined. Would we refrain from fullness in Him because of Megan's moves or pronouncements? Or would we hear directly from the Lord and move accordingly while we have leave and daily to do so? Our bodies, brothers and sisters in Christ, are still the Lord's before they belong to the man.
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