Jeremiah 20:7-10 – Rehearsing Our Calling
7
O Lord, You induced me, and I was persuaded;
You are stronger than I, and have prevailed.
I am in derision daily;
Everyone mocks me.
8
For when I spoke, I cried out;
I shouted, “Violence and plunder!”
Because the word of the Lord was made to me
A reproach and a derision daily.
9
Then I said, “I will not make mention of Him,
Nor speak anymore in His name.”
But His word was in my heart like a burning fire
Shut up in my bones;
I was weary of holding it back,
And I could not.
10
For I heard many mocking:
“Fear on every side!”
“Report,” they say, “and we will report it!”
All my acquaintances watched for my stumbling, saying,
“Perhaps he can be induced;
Then we will prevail against him,
And we will take our revenge on him.”
The splendid fanfiction of Paradise Regained is John Milton's narrative handbook for spiritual warfare. As it unfolds, Satan is buffeting Christ with the suggestion that He is lost as He has been driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. Christ's retort which Milton hears in his imagination's ear is stout. "God Who brought me hither Will bring me hence; no other guide I seek."
Jeremiah is insisting on the same principle of the Divine character in Jeremiah 20:7-10. His "wilderness," the chastening, refining frontier of his walk of faith, is, ironically, as confining as Christ's wilderness was unrestrained.
Different as their backdrop is, both are in a place where the present provides no circumstantial comfort and no conventional map out or timeframe to return to life's more convivial comforts. What we see as small conjecture from Milton's mind is spelled out as Jeremiah's adamant insistence. Both declare that God led them where they are.
Where Jesus replies tersely to move on to the next aspect of His ordeal, Jeremiah relives his calling in Technicolor. The emotional nuances of his recounting fill the scene, as expansive as his current circumstances are confining. Jeremiah recalls the give-and-take of the conversation.
He looks back at his commission into the Lord's service absolutely convinced that he was Divinely "induced" and "persuaded," wrestled into prophetic confrontation by One stronger than he.
In fact, Jeremiah reminds the One Who called him that he has actively tried to resist giving God's Word to the people who don't want to hear it. Jeremiah's wounded resolve to "not make mention of Him," is likewise overcome by the One Who has laid hold of Jeremiah from the womb. Try as he might, Jeremiah says quietly getting along with the unbelieving culture burns. It is more wearying than speaking up and enduring the reaction.
Why this recounting that going into the ministry wasn't Jeremiah's idea, that God was his goading guide to the stocks of public rejection and derision? To Jeremiah, this may be venting, the barely conscious dynamic by which the Bible says the mouth speaks out of the fullness of the heart.
There is therapy here, though, however much or little Jeremiah or another in straitened circumstances is aware of it. When we rehearse our calling, remind ourselves and our God that our service wasn't our idea, other motives burn off like so many impurities.
Looking back, Jeremiah's soul is rooted, as was Christ's in the wilderness, in the fact that we serve at the Father's pleasure and not to get a given reaction from men. Jeremiah re-centers on Whose idea ministry was. We can and should go with him in this pruning of the soul whenever expected results don't immediately sprout from our efforts.
In the stocks, in the wilderness, ignored, it seems, by the sweeping current of the culture, if we can rehearse that we are where we are by the Father's pleasure, we flourish in the most unlikely corners of this fallen planet.
From that grounded and secure affirmation of who we are in the Father's eyes, we can venture into debriefings like Jeremiah 20:10. We can bring to Him the barbs of men which remain stuck in our souls. This is what they said, Lord, and it still hurts.
Bravado before Him about sticks and stones breaking our bones but words not hurting us is both false and unnecessary. These are the words, Jeremiah thrusts back to the Lord. Deal with them with the same irresistible sweep by which You got me into the ministry.
This may be one of the blessings of being purposefully isolated. If we are reflexively contending with men and not honest about the state of our hearts, our minds are almost always on our next reply.
How can I win? How can I persuade? How can I vindicate the Lord's honor, and my own, sometimes in differing order. But, pulled out of the battle, even in circumstances we wouldn't choose, honest reflection is as unavoidable as was active service. We can no longer drown out the soul's cry that it bleeds from the wounds that men inflict.
Even in this, for the Christian, our Savior goes before. He dealt with rejection. He exemplified the discipline of reflection. In the heat of tense exchanges, He proclaimed Who He was in His Father's eyes. This root system was the source of His flourishing in the hardscrabble of the difficult work before Him.
Christ's sense of His own interdependent identity was on display when He disentangled Himself from men. He relished His time with His Father. Jeremiah's stocks, the wilderness Jesus passed through in temptation, whatever circumstances sideline us, can help refocus our calling.
O Lord, You induced me, and I was persuaded;
You are stronger than I, and have prevailed.
I am in derision daily;
Everyone mocks me.
8
For when I spoke, I cried out;
I shouted, “Violence and plunder!”
Because the word of the Lord was made to me
A reproach and a derision daily.
9
Then I said, “I will not make mention of Him,
Nor speak anymore in His name.”
But His word was in my heart like a burning fire
Shut up in my bones;
I was weary of holding it back,
And I could not.
10
For I heard many mocking:
“Fear on every side!”
“Report,” they say, “and we will report it!”
All my acquaintances watched for my stumbling, saying,
“Perhaps he can be induced;
Then we will prevail against him,
And we will take our revenge on him.”
The splendid fanfiction of Paradise Regained is John Milton's narrative handbook for spiritual warfare. As it unfolds, Satan is buffeting Christ with the suggestion that He is lost as He has been driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. Christ's retort which Milton hears in his imagination's ear is stout. "God Who brought me hither Will bring me hence; no other guide I seek."
Jeremiah is insisting on the same principle of the Divine character in Jeremiah 20:7-10. His "wilderness," the chastening, refining frontier of his walk of faith, is, ironically, as confining as Christ's wilderness was unrestrained.
Different as their backdrop is, both are in a place where the present provides no circumstantial comfort and no conventional map out or timeframe to return to life's more convivial comforts. What we see as small conjecture from Milton's mind is spelled out as Jeremiah's adamant insistence. Both declare that God led them where they are.
Where Jesus replies tersely to move on to the next aspect of His ordeal, Jeremiah relives his calling in Technicolor. The emotional nuances of his recounting fill the scene, as expansive as his current circumstances are confining. Jeremiah recalls the give-and-take of the conversation.
He looks back at his commission into the Lord's service absolutely convinced that he was Divinely "induced" and "persuaded," wrestled into prophetic confrontation by One stronger than he.
In fact, Jeremiah reminds the One Who called him that he has actively tried to resist giving God's Word to the people who don't want to hear it. Jeremiah's wounded resolve to "not make mention of Him," is likewise overcome by the One Who has laid hold of Jeremiah from the womb. Try as he might, Jeremiah says quietly getting along with the unbelieving culture burns. It is more wearying than speaking up and enduring the reaction.
Why this recounting that going into the ministry wasn't Jeremiah's idea, that God was his goading guide to the stocks of public rejection and derision? To Jeremiah, this may be venting, the barely conscious dynamic by which the Bible says the mouth speaks out of the fullness of the heart.
There is therapy here, though, however much or little Jeremiah or another in straitened circumstances is aware of it. When we rehearse our calling, remind ourselves and our God that our service wasn't our idea, other motives burn off like so many impurities.
Looking back, Jeremiah's soul is rooted, as was Christ's in the wilderness, in the fact that we serve at the Father's pleasure and not to get a given reaction from men. Jeremiah re-centers on Whose idea ministry was. We can and should go with him in this pruning of the soul whenever expected results don't immediately sprout from our efforts.
In the stocks, in the wilderness, ignored, it seems, by the sweeping current of the culture, if we can rehearse that we are where we are by the Father's pleasure, we flourish in the most unlikely corners of this fallen planet.
From that grounded and secure affirmation of who we are in the Father's eyes, we can venture into debriefings like Jeremiah 20:10. We can bring to Him the barbs of men which remain stuck in our souls. This is what they said, Lord, and it still hurts.
Bravado before Him about sticks and stones breaking our bones but words not hurting us is both false and unnecessary. These are the words, Jeremiah thrusts back to the Lord. Deal with them with the same irresistible sweep by which You got me into the ministry.
This may be one of the blessings of being purposefully isolated. If we are reflexively contending with men and not honest about the state of our hearts, our minds are almost always on our next reply.
How can I win? How can I persuade? How can I vindicate the Lord's honor, and my own, sometimes in differing order. But, pulled out of the battle, even in circumstances we wouldn't choose, honest reflection is as unavoidable as was active service. We can no longer drown out the soul's cry that it bleeds from the wounds that men inflict.
Even in this, for the Christian, our Savior goes before. He dealt with rejection. He exemplified the discipline of reflection. In the heat of tense exchanges, He proclaimed Who He was in His Father's eyes. This root system was the source of His flourishing in the hardscrabble of the difficult work before Him.
Christ's sense of His own interdependent identity was on display when He disentangled Himself from men. He relished His time with His Father. Jeremiah's stocks, the wilderness Jesus passed through in temptation, whatever circumstances sideline us, can help refocus our calling.
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