Jeremiah 22:18-19 – Human Dignity as God's Gift
18 Therefore thus says the Lord concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah:
“They shall not lament for him,
Saying, ‘Alas, my brother!’ or ‘Alas, my sister!’
They shall not lament for him,
Saying, ‘Alas, master!’ or ‘Alas, his glory!’
19
He shall be buried with the burial of a donkey,
Dragged and cast out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.
Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire allows vulnerability that as much as he admires Charlemagne, much of his effort was expended on daily concerns or accumulation that would die with him. Gibbon confesses of his search for greatness in the minutia of king's activities, "I can seldom discover the general views and the immortal spirit of the legislator who survives himself for the benefit of posterity."
God is delivering this verdict to another king less loftily remembered, Jehoiakim, in Jeremiah 22:18-19. He has authority in his day, and he largely spends it on concerns that will not outlast him. He cannot dictate a legacy in history as he would impose on his contemporary courtiers.
As a matter of fact, God says, this king once regally clothed, once a particular human reflection of the authority of the King of Kings on Earth, will have his remains disposed of as though his were the carcass of a beast of burden. He who used national authority to make his palace comfortable will since the importance of his writ in God's eyes by the fact that he can't control the disposition of his own remains.
This shouldn't be read as a prohibition against honoring the bodies of God's image-bearers. This is a particular aspect of Jehoiakim's judgment meant for our instruction. We are meant to learn by the contrast between his narrow, indulgent efforts to keep up his comforts and how soon they died with him.
As God gave him the contrast in the preceding verses between Jehoiakim's feckless striving and God's own capacity to keep his father Josiah comfortable AS Josiah prioritized honoring the Lord, so we can learn of legacy from others and compare it to Jehoiakim.
Moses forsook, the Word says, the wealth and honor of Egypt. He deigned to serve refugees in the desert, and yet God revered and protected his burial place that his body not be stolen. There is much in King Saul's life which would suggest that God's honor would be better preserved if his legacy were eradicated, yet his successor King David honored the Lord by sending a party of raiders to steal Saul's body back from its desecration at the hands of Philistine enemies.
Note that these, in contrast to the preening of the sons of Josiah or the similar efforts of Absalom, had their legacy preserved by God's grace after their passing – not because they obsessed about it. Their lives offer instruction in seeing to our impact in the Lord's service while it is called today and trusting Him by faith to deal with our remains and our testimony before history.
To do otherwise is to live in the tension of a divided effort and audience, as admits FFH in "Jesus Give Me Rest." They narrate, "I've been writing the fence, on one side my ambition on the other my salvation. It's finally making sense that my need for affirmation is what's causing me stress."
Freed from the elusive distraction of never-quite-satisfied efforts to control how men honor and remember us, we can focus on our true, indelible legacy. Spurgeon points us there in "Everybody's Sermon."
Picturing all earthly work in the writer's vocation he undertook with such drive and excellence, Spurgeon likens, "Thou art one that guideth the pen, and from hour to hour wearily thou writest. Ah! man, know that thy life is a writing. When thy hand is not on the pen, thou art a writer still; thou art always writing upon the pages of eternity; thy sins thou art writing or else thy holy confidence in him that loved thee. Happy shall it be for thee, O writer, if thy name is written in the Lamb's book of life, and if that black writing of thine, in the history of thy pilgrimage below, shall have been blotted out with the red blood of Christ, and thou shalt hare written upon thee the fair name of Jehovah, to stand legible forever."
We hunger to leave an impact behind us because we do. God has placed eternity within the hearts of men. Our error is not in holding onto a sense that our days matter. It is in holding them up to a jury of men, here or hereafter, to determine their worth. This is not faith, but faith's siphoning and distraction. If our honor and reward, our true reckoning, is in the hands of the Lord, we await an affirmation more meaningful, more completing than the most poignant state funeral. We await, Christian, in fact, a crowning at Christ's hands and eternal reign with Him.
“They shall not lament for him,
Saying, ‘Alas, my brother!’ or ‘Alas, my sister!’
They shall not lament for him,
Saying, ‘Alas, master!’ or ‘Alas, his glory!’
19
He shall be buried with the burial of a donkey,
Dragged and cast out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.
Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire allows vulnerability that as much as he admires Charlemagne, much of his effort was expended on daily concerns or accumulation that would die with him. Gibbon confesses of his search for greatness in the minutia of king's activities, "I can seldom discover the general views and the immortal spirit of the legislator who survives himself for the benefit of posterity."
God is delivering this verdict to another king less loftily remembered, Jehoiakim, in Jeremiah 22:18-19. He has authority in his day, and he largely spends it on concerns that will not outlast him. He cannot dictate a legacy in history as he would impose on his contemporary courtiers.
As a matter of fact, God says, this king once regally clothed, once a particular human reflection of the authority of the King of Kings on Earth, will have his remains disposed of as though his were the carcass of a beast of burden. He who used national authority to make his palace comfortable will since the importance of his writ in God's eyes by the fact that he can't control the disposition of his own remains.
This shouldn't be read as a prohibition against honoring the bodies of God's image-bearers. This is a particular aspect of Jehoiakim's judgment meant for our instruction. We are meant to learn by the contrast between his narrow, indulgent efforts to keep up his comforts and how soon they died with him.
As God gave him the contrast in the preceding verses between Jehoiakim's feckless striving and God's own capacity to keep his father Josiah comfortable AS Josiah prioritized honoring the Lord, so we can learn of legacy from others and compare it to Jehoiakim.
Moses forsook, the Word says, the wealth and honor of Egypt. He deigned to serve refugees in the desert, and yet God revered and protected his burial place that his body not be stolen. There is much in King Saul's life which would suggest that God's honor would be better preserved if his legacy were eradicated, yet his successor King David honored the Lord by sending a party of raiders to steal Saul's body back from its desecration at the hands of Philistine enemies.
Note that these, in contrast to the preening of the sons of Josiah or the similar efforts of Absalom, had their legacy preserved by God's grace after their passing – not because they obsessed about it. Their lives offer instruction in seeing to our impact in the Lord's service while it is called today and trusting Him by faith to deal with our remains and our testimony before history.
To do otherwise is to live in the tension of a divided effort and audience, as admits FFH in "Jesus Give Me Rest." They narrate, "I've been writing the fence, on one side my ambition on the other my salvation. It's finally making sense that my need for affirmation is what's causing me stress."
Freed from the elusive distraction of never-quite-satisfied efforts to control how men honor and remember us, we can focus on our true, indelible legacy. Spurgeon points us there in "Everybody's Sermon."
Picturing all earthly work in the writer's vocation he undertook with such drive and excellence, Spurgeon likens, "Thou art one that guideth the pen, and from hour to hour wearily thou writest. Ah! man, know that thy life is a writing. When thy hand is not on the pen, thou art a writer still; thou art always writing upon the pages of eternity; thy sins thou art writing or else thy holy confidence in him that loved thee. Happy shall it be for thee, O writer, if thy name is written in the Lamb's book of life, and if that black writing of thine, in the history of thy pilgrimage below, shall have been blotted out with the red blood of Christ, and thou shalt hare written upon thee the fair name of Jehovah, to stand legible forever."
We hunger to leave an impact behind us because we do. God has placed eternity within the hearts of men. Our error is not in holding onto a sense that our days matter. It is in holding them up to a jury of men, here or hereafter, to determine their worth. This is not faith, but faith's siphoning and distraction. If our honor and reward, our true reckoning, is in the hands of the Lord, we await an affirmation more meaningful, more completing than the most poignant state funeral. We await, Christian, in fact, a crowning at Christ's hands and eternal reign with Him.
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