Jeremiah 22:4-5 – A Gregarious Grief
4 For if you indeed do this thing, then shall enter the gates of this house, riding on horses and in chariots, accompanied by servants and people, kings who sit on the throne of David. 5 But if you will not hear these words, I swear by Myself,” says the Lord, “that this house shall become a desolation.” ’ ”Jeremiah 22:4-5, New King James Version
Quoted in Gene Edward Veith's God at Work, Martin Luther internalizes the tenderizing impact of faith this way, "Faith creates rest, satisfaction, and peace, and dispels weariness." Luther then contrasts what those downstream from us experience from our faithlessness.
"But where faith is lacking in man judges according to his own feelings, ideas, and perception, behold, weariness arises. Because he feels only his own misery and not that of his neighbor, he does not see his own privileges, nor how unfortunate his neighbor is. The result of this unsatisfied feeling is aversion, trouble and toil throughout life."
We watch this dynamic at work in Jeremiah 22:4-5. The prophet has already done his duty by the king of Judah according to any human propriety. As the Lord directed, he stood at the king's gate to the Temple courtyard and delivered God's message. Jeremiah suffered for that faithfulness and still answer the king's messenger, addressing the king's duress with social reforms the Lord deems necessary before He will intervene on behalf of His besieged people.
Jeremiah could have hardened with each exposure, stewing in bitterness toward his earthly monarch and the political structure which is so far from the heart of Heaven's King. Short on faith, as Luther diagnoses, when God asks Jeremiah to address the monarch again, this time directly, the overflow of Jeremiah's heart could have reflected the hurt of his own feelings, splattering the royal doorpost with self-centered frustration.
Instead, God is steeping His prophet in faith, preparing Jeremiah to paint a compelling picture rather than project his impatience. God knows the fitness of the faith He has placed and grows in Jeremiah, and he knows it impact on his man's upcoming words. Although Jeremiah will deliver God's verdict that the king has been complicit in murder, God's messenger is to move on to an "if" of grace in Jeremiah 22:4.
Oh, the Heavenly pictures we would have him paint in such a place! We would have him give grand theological visions of earthly kings journeying from distant lands with gifts, their holdings render completely overshadowed by God's glory. We would have Jeremiah, if he is not to continue an unstinting indictment of an unjust king, put the man in his place compared to the king of kings, bid him bow his heart to this eternal perspective.
The word to and through Jeremiah will be wiser, kinder, though. He speaks to the place the man with the crown is now. Having sketched out social upheaval, he shows the king the result of a repentant heart, God's grace expressed, says verse four, with the king and his retinue entering the gates riding on horses and chariots, accompanied by servants and people, his place in the legacy of David established. He speaks the language of the man's job.
Has God resigned greater visions of His own glory to bribe with this king's best life now? No, but showing a before and after to which this king can relate at his current level of maturity is a relatable grace. He uses metrics the man has learned by long habit to measure well-being. This is the glory of God to be revealed if you, O king, take the next step of faith. Compared to it, brave Jeremiah is to reveal the alternative, the legacy of the king apparently values left desolate by his mishandling.
If we work through our own internal discomfort with enough discipline to step into an individual confrontation, as did Jeremiah, how much energy do we have left for envisioning that event with love and creativity? As The New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl says of the equivalent on the printed page, "It's harder to pitch into writing with less to prove or revenge." Back to Luther, if we haven't been motivated by faith, we run out of steam, more preoccupied with our own misery than how to captivate the heart of man and moment.
Through reliance on Christ in our first, and second, and 32nd attempts at confrontation and correction results in a quality GK Chesterton sees in another storyteller, this one Charles Dickens. "Dickens grief," Chesterton describes in Charles Dickens: A Critical Study was gregarious." That is, he sought to draw out, to give imagination in relationship soil in which to flourish as compared to the barrenness they had known heretofore. Jeremiah and Dickens are both faithful to show the cost of inaction, but they do so with forethought and empathy. They are less interested in their own splenic relief than in faithfulness with the attention turned their way.
Quoted in Gene Edward Veith's God at Work, Martin Luther internalizes the tenderizing impact of faith this way, "Faith creates rest, satisfaction, and peace, and dispels weariness." Luther then contrasts what those downstream from us experience from our faithlessness.
"But where faith is lacking in man judges according to his own feelings, ideas, and perception, behold, weariness arises. Because he feels only his own misery and not that of his neighbor, he does not see his own privileges, nor how unfortunate his neighbor is. The result of this unsatisfied feeling is aversion, trouble and toil throughout life."
We watch this dynamic at work in Jeremiah 22:4-5. The prophet has already done his duty by the king of Judah according to any human propriety. As the Lord directed, he stood at the king's gate to the Temple courtyard and delivered God's message. Jeremiah suffered for that faithfulness and still answer the king's messenger, addressing the king's duress with social reforms the Lord deems necessary before He will intervene on behalf of His besieged people.
Jeremiah could have hardened with each exposure, stewing in bitterness toward his earthly monarch and the political structure which is so far from the heart of Heaven's King. Short on faith, as Luther diagnoses, when God asks Jeremiah to address the monarch again, this time directly, the overflow of Jeremiah's heart could have reflected the hurt of his own feelings, splattering the royal doorpost with self-centered frustration.
Instead, God is steeping His prophet in faith, preparing Jeremiah to paint a compelling picture rather than project his impatience. God knows the fitness of the faith He has placed and grows in Jeremiah, and he knows it impact on his man's upcoming words. Although Jeremiah will deliver God's verdict that the king has been complicit in murder, God's messenger is to move on to an "if" of grace in Jeremiah 22:4.
Oh, the Heavenly pictures we would have him paint in such a place! We would have him give grand theological visions of earthly kings journeying from distant lands with gifts, their holdings render completely overshadowed by God's glory. We would have Jeremiah, if he is not to continue an unstinting indictment of an unjust king, put the man in his place compared to the king of kings, bid him bow his heart to this eternal perspective.
The word to and through Jeremiah will be wiser, kinder, though. He speaks to the place the man with the crown is now. Having sketched out social upheaval, he shows the king the result of a repentant heart, God's grace expressed, says verse four, with the king and his retinue entering the gates riding on horses and chariots, accompanied by servants and people, his place in the legacy of David established. He speaks the language of the man's job.
Has God resigned greater visions of His own glory to bribe with this king's best life now? No, but showing a before and after to which this king can relate at his current level of maturity is a relatable grace. He uses metrics the man has learned by long habit to measure well-being. This is the glory of God to be revealed if you, O king, take the next step of faith. Compared to it, brave Jeremiah is to reveal the alternative, the legacy of the king apparently values left desolate by his mishandling.
If we work through our own internal discomfort with enough discipline to step into an individual confrontation, as did Jeremiah, how much energy do we have left for envisioning that event with love and creativity? As The New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl says of the equivalent on the printed page, "It's harder to pitch into writing with less to prove or revenge." Back to Luther, if we haven't been motivated by faith, we run out of steam, more preoccupied with our own misery than how to captivate the heart of man and moment.
Through reliance on Christ in our first, and second, and 32nd attempts at confrontation and correction results in a quality GK Chesterton sees in another storyteller, this one Charles Dickens. "Dickens grief," Chesterton describes in Charles Dickens: A Critical Study was gregarious." That is, he sought to draw out, to give imagination in relationship soil in which to flourish as compared to the barrenness they had known heretofore. Jeremiah and Dickens are both faithful to show the cost of inaction, but they do so with forethought and empathy. They are less interested in their own splenic relief than in faithfulness with the attention turned their way.
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