Jeremiah 20:14-18 – God's Sovereign Threshold
14
Cursed be the day in which I was born!
Let the day not be blessed in which my mother bore me!
15
Let the man be cursed
Who brought news to my father, saying,
“A male child has been born to you!”
Making him very glad.
16
And let that man be like the cities
Which the Lord overthrew, and did not relent;
Let him hear the cry in the morning
And the shouting at noon,
17
Because he did not kill me from the womb,
That my mother might have been my grave,
And her womb always enlarged with me.
18
Why did I come forth from the womb to see labor and sorrow,
That my days should be consumed with shame?
"Our base hearts," admits Thomas Watson in The Art of Contentment, "are more discontented at one loss than thankful for a hundred mercies."
Perhaps this phenomenon of fallenness explains Jeremiah's spiritual cratering beginning in Jeremiah 20:14. Even in the stocks, he hasn't been restrained from reflecting on God sovereignly calling him. Even in the stocks, his heart has been free to reflect that he serves a God who raises up the poor. This resilient heart recoils in verse 14.
Jeremiah has insisted on God's capacity to raise up and bless an entire class. Beholding the pervasiveness of God's transforming glory, these hundred mercies, perhaps the pain of Jeremiah's predicament is more personally painful.
Perhaps, like John the Baptist who instructed others to behold the righteousness of the Lamb of God but then it remained imprisoned while others were set free from their Earthly confines, Jeremiah started to wonder why this power wasn't applied on his behalf. He could have been despondent and embittered by the distance he perceived between what God COULD do and what God WOULD do.
God's sovereign mercies are needed even here, even when they don't come in the denominations, or with the freedom from the stocks we might have hoped for. Spurgeon diagnoses in Morning and Evening, "Afflictions cannot sanctify, excepting as they are used by Him to this end. Our prayers and efforts cannot make us ready for heaven, apart from the hand of Jesus, who fashioneth our hearts aright."
The same suffering which can confine us to reflect on our calling in one moment, the same suffering which can tune us into the vastness of God's work elsewhere in the next moment, that same suffering can embitter the most reflective, disciplined, faith-filled soul without Christ's ongoing consolation. The more spiritual an activity is, Spurgeon has said, the more tiring, and our spirits quickly take up the lament of Job and Jeremiah if we have been faithful for a while. Our faithfulness in our own eyes begins to convince us that we have deserved better.
Realizing we have been drinking from the broken cistern of bitterness, let us take up Switchfoot's resolve in "Dig New Streams." "Love let us dig new streams, where water and Word are clean." Even confined in some sense which chafes us, the Spirit still makes possible to be renewed in Him. He still shines light in the darkest places in our souls, allows repentance, the recall of the Word and its supremacy over our current circumstances.
Cursed be the day in which I was born!
Let the day not be blessed in which my mother bore me!
15
Let the man be cursed
Who brought news to my father, saying,
“A male child has been born to you!”
Making him very glad.
16
And let that man be like the cities
Which the Lord overthrew, and did not relent;
Let him hear the cry in the morning
And the shouting at noon,
17
Because he did not kill me from the womb,
That my mother might have been my grave,
And her womb always enlarged with me.
18
Why did I come forth from the womb to see labor and sorrow,
That my days should be consumed with shame?
"Our base hearts," admits Thomas Watson in The Art of Contentment, "are more discontented at one loss than thankful for a hundred mercies."
Perhaps this phenomenon of fallenness explains Jeremiah's spiritual cratering beginning in Jeremiah 20:14. Even in the stocks, he hasn't been restrained from reflecting on God sovereignly calling him. Even in the stocks, his heart has been free to reflect that he serves a God who raises up the poor. This resilient heart recoils in verse 14.
Jeremiah has insisted on God's capacity to raise up and bless an entire class. Beholding the pervasiveness of God's transforming glory, these hundred mercies, perhaps the pain of Jeremiah's predicament is more personally painful.
Perhaps, like John the Baptist who instructed others to behold the righteousness of the Lamb of God but then it remained imprisoned while others were set free from their Earthly confines, Jeremiah started to wonder why this power wasn't applied on his behalf. He could have been despondent and embittered by the distance he perceived between what God COULD do and what God WOULD do.
God's sovereign mercies are needed even here, even when they don't come in the denominations, or with the freedom from the stocks we might have hoped for. Spurgeon diagnoses in Morning and Evening, "Afflictions cannot sanctify, excepting as they are used by Him to this end. Our prayers and efforts cannot make us ready for heaven, apart from the hand of Jesus, who fashioneth our hearts aright."
The same suffering which can confine us to reflect on our calling in one moment, the same suffering which can tune us into the vastness of God's work elsewhere in the next moment, that same suffering can embitter the most reflective, disciplined, faith-filled soul without Christ's ongoing consolation. The more spiritual an activity is, Spurgeon has said, the more tiring, and our spirits quickly take up the lament of Job and Jeremiah if we have been faithful for a while. Our faithfulness in our own eyes begins to convince us that we have deserved better.
Realizing we have been drinking from the broken cistern of bitterness, let us take up Switchfoot's resolve in "Dig New Streams." "Love let us dig new streams, where water and Word are clean." Even confined in some sense which chafes us, the Spirit still makes possible to be renewed in Him. He still shines light in the darkest places in our souls, allows repentance, the recall of the Word and its supremacy over our current circumstances.
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