Coming Up For Air

“Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge those …" Jeremiah 24:5a, New King James Version Franciscan Richard Rohr tells The New Yorker 's Eliza Griswold that after a recent vision, "I'm trying to find my way to yes." He admits to the writer, "that he often wakes up in a state of no." The prophet Jeremiah was a man who knew more than most the valid reasons for no. He had been told from the beginning of his mission as a young man that people would not respond to his calling, and this had been borne out in his ministry. He faced rejection from his own hometown and his own family. For his bravery in speaking up in the precincts of the Temple, he was put in the stocks. He was so broken by the hardness of the hearts around him that he comes down to history as the weeping prophet. Yet, he finds his way to yes. With all he knows of depravity, he doesn't just see the rotten figs in the vision of Jeremiah 24, or thei...

Again the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Jeremiah 24:4, New King James Version "Linguists," relates Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way say parties in the conversation will tolerate silence for four seconds before interjecting anything, however unrelated." Knowing this pressure, and knowing how crucial protecting time to think is, my friend Scott will punctuate his rhythms as a social studies teacher by deliberately taking a drink from his water bottle after he asks his students a question. This prevents him, he says, from following up with the answer too quickly and trampling his students' nascent answers. I notice a related phenomenon in Jeremiah 24:4. In the prophet's inspired narrative thus far, entire conversations have taken place in one setting between him and the Almighty. Yet here, between Jeremiah's answer that he sees figs and any response from God, there is a noticeable pause. Jeremiah says the Word of...

The Lord showed me, and there were two baskets of figs set before the temple of the Lord, after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and the princes of Judah with the craftsmen and smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon. 2 One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first ripe; and the other basket had very bad figs which could not be eaten, they were so bad. 3 Then the Lord said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” And I said, “Figs, the good figs, very good; and the bad, very bad, which cannot be eaten, they are so bad.” "We do not want to be beginners at prayer," confesses Thomas Merton as quoted in Nathan Foster's The Making of an Ordinary Saint , "but let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything but beginners in prayer." The venerable, vaunted prophet goes before us in this exercise in Jeremiah 24:1-3. He is expositor extraordinaire, tested and true....

37 Thus you shall say to the prophet, ‘What has the Lord answered you?’ and, ‘What has the Lord spoken?’ 38 But since you say, ‘The oracle of the Lord!’ therefore thus says the Lord: ‘Because you say this word, “The oracle of the Lord!” and I have sent to you, saying, “Do not say, ‘The oracle of the Lord!’ ” 39 therefore behold, I, even I, will utterly forget you and forsake you, and the city that I gave you and your fathers, and will cast you out of My presence. 40 And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten.’ ”Jeremiah 23:37-40 Observing an intense reunion between 10-year-old Charles Spurgeon and his father, Matt Carter pauses in Steal Away Home to note, “Children need to be SEEN by their fathers.“ This is the longing, misdiagnosed, in Jeremiah 23:37-40. This is the source of the "look at me" mentality of Judah's spiritual leaders who continually announce and pronounce their privileged position, declaring thems...

35 Thus every one of you shall say to his neighbor, and every one to his brother, ‘What has the Lord answered?’ and, ‘What has the Lord spoken?’ 36 And the oracle of the Lord you shall mention no more. For every man’s word will be his oracle, for you have perverted the words of the living God, the Lord of hosts, our God. Jeremiah 23:35-36, New King James Version "The saddest thing about imposed ambition," realizes James K.A. Smith in On the Road with Augustine , "Is that it nonetheless forms us. Our resentment doesn't inoculate us. Just because others set the path for our hearts doesn't mean we don't run there." So it is with the habit of running to an oracle which Jeremiah 23:35-36 declares will soon be threadbare. His people have been shaped by this perpetual pilgrimage for the Word from the Lord via the man with the proper credentials. Their ambition has been to carry out the oracle's advice with the imprint of that man's authority on their ac...

“So when these people or the prophet or the priest ask you, saying, ‘What is the oracle of the Lord?’ you shall then say to them, ‘What oracle?’ I will even forsake you,” says the Lord. 34 “And as for the prophet and the priest and the people who say, ‘The oracle of the Lord!’ I will even punish that man and his house. Jeremiah 23:33-34, New King James Version "I was," recalls Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker , "a kid crazy about language and an omnivorous reader. At breakfast, I'd pore over every word on a cereal box as if it were holy writ." Some of us are inured to that kind of all-purpose wonder. We are no longer moved by the prospect of seeing the glory of God in the sunrise, or on the cereal box. The world is too much with us, as Wordsworth phrased it. Our hearts are stultified by routines with ourselves and expectations of us at the center. Yet, suggests Jeremiah 23:33-34, we keep going through the motions as though our hearts were alive to the answers ...

30 “Therefore behold, I am against the prophets,” says the Lord, “who steal My words every one from his neighbor. 31 Behold, I am against the prophets,” says the Lord, “who use their tongues and say, ‘He says.’ 32 Behold, I am against those who prophesy false dreams,” says the Lord, “and tell them, and cause My people to err by their lies and by their recklessness. Yet I did not send them or command them; therefore they shall not profit this people at all,” says the Lord. Jeremiah 23:30-32, New King James Version "The ultimate preparation for tomorrow," declares Matthew Sink, "is storing God’s Word in our hearts today." We ARE storing in our hearts, he insists, but what?  “We don’t have a memorization problem.  We have a meditation problem.” Jeremiah 23:30-31 proves his principle. By not actively teaching God's Word, God charges that false prophets are actually stealing it. Conversations between neighbors that don't put Him at the center are filling up ...

28 “The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; And he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat?” says the Lord. 29 “Is not My word like a fire?” says the Lord, “And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? Launching from Luke 24:27's assurances that Christ expounded unto His own, "in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself," Spurgeon wonders in Morning and Evening , "He who hid the treasure in the field Himself guided the searchers to it. Our Lord would naturally discourse upon the sweetest of topics, and He could find none sweeter than His own person and work." Do we find and settle for less when we come to hear the Word? The spirit which God accosts in in Jeremiah 23:28-29 is at work. The dreams, interpretations, and guesses of men are at work as they attempt exegesis to make God's Word an accomplice to give religious credibility to their vision-casting. Instead, God calls for truth in labeling...

25 “I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in My name, saying, ‘I have dreamed, I have dreamed!’ 26 How long will this be in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies? Indeed they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart, 27 who try to make My people forget My name by their dreams which everyone tells his neighbor, as their fathers forgot My name for Baal. "Some dance to remember," sing The Eagles in "Hotel California" as they realize the proper place of entertainment and celebration. Then they differentiate, "Some dance to forget." They drop in a little more theology later, saying, "We are all prisoners here of our own design." They could have, unbeknownst to them, been narrating Jeremiah 23:25-27. Both insistences on prophetic perspective call the cadences of the dance to forget, the music of which can drown out the moment's lasting purpose. Existing outside such time-bound, purposeful amnesia, God is in a positio...

From Jeremiah 23… 23 “Am I a God near at hand,” says the Lord, “And not a God afar off? 24 Can anyone hide himself in secret places, So I shall not see him?” says the Lord; “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the Lord. “There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life," cautions Thomas Merton, appropriately in Thoughts in the Solitude , "than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us.” This is also the warning of Jeremiah 23:23-24, ironically delivered to the spiritual shepherds of the people who should be most aware of God's intimate Presence in their work. It is, alas, often not so. God says he does not warn His servants, in the genuine or ironic sense, needlessly. So it is, then, that He marks for destruction a tendency in the human heart immersed in His work and His Word to grow cold to His actual involvement. An announcement of, "Hello, I'm here," is less an end...

From Jeremiah 23… 21 “I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. 22 But if they had stood in My counsel, And had caused My people to hear My words, Then they would have turned them from their evil way. Jeremiah 23:21-22, New King James Version V. S. Naipaul in The New Yorker describes the process of bonding with a stray cat left guarded by hard experience. "It was as though, feeling my hand, he felt my benignity." God is THAT sure of the power of His own Presence. Having indicted throughout Jeremiah 23 how far Judah's spiritual shepherds have strayed from their calling, He declares in Jeremiah 23:21-22 that failing to spend time in His Presence was the pivotal neglect. If they had stood in His counsel, He says, and simply caused His people to hear what the shepherds heard from God they would have been healed themselves in that process. They would have felt his benignity, and so would have their flocks. Thomas Merton in N...

18 For who has stood in the counsel of the Lord, And has perceived and heard His word? Who has marked His word and heard it? 19 Behold, a whirlwind of the Lord has gone forth in fury— A violent whirlwind! It will fall violently on the head of the wicked. 20 The anger of the Lord will not turn back Until He has executed and performed the thoughts of His heart. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly. Jeremiah 23:18-20, New King James Version Jiayang Fan illustrates in The New Yorker a Chinese culture so steeped in denial that a family will gather for a wedding in order to visit a dying relative without admitting to mortality. She broadens to admit, "No culture relishes talking about death." We chuckle with condescension, but our turning away is just as contrived as our assumptions are dying. Foundational underpinnings of the way in which we have looked at the world are being uprooted and blown away in God's sovereign storm of Jeremiah 23:19, and we don't w...

15 “Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets: ‘Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, And make them drink the water of gall; For from the prophets of Jerusalem Profaneness has gone out into all the land.’ ” 16 Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you worthless; They speak a vision of their own heart, Not from the mouth of the Lord. 17 They continually say to those who despise Me, ‘The Lord has said, “You shall have peace” ’; And to everyone who walks according to the dictates of his own heart, they say, ‘No evil shall come upon you.’ ” Dr. Rufus Fears in the lecture series Books That Have Changed History renders the inscription above the door at the oracle of Delphi: “Nothing in excess. Know yourself.” Jeremiah 23:15-17 offers the next step of admonition. For, if we put an excessive priority on knowing ourselves, seeking counsel from our reflection of our own experience, we are in the same predica...

13 “And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria: They prophesied by Baal And caused My people Israel to err. 14 Also I have seen a horrible thing in the prophets of Jerusalem: They commit adultery and walk in lies; They also strengthen the hands of evildoers, So that no one turns back from his wickedness. All of them are like Sodom to Me, And her inhabitants like Gomorrah. Jeremiah 23:13-14, New King James Version “We should not be overly shocked and disillusioned when our leaders are revealed as having clay feet," advises Tim Keller in God's Wisdom for Navigating Life , continuing, "nor should we be blasé and shrug. If we are to trust God as our only true hope for social order and peace, we must avoid either adulatory naïveté or bitter cynicism about human leaders.” This is the aspect of His glory on display in Jeremiah 23:13-14. He calls out the state of those purported to be set apart for His ministry. He doesn't revere them for the social respect they engende...

11 “For both prophet and priest are profane; Yes, in My house I have found their wickedness,” says the Lord. 12 “Therefore their way shall be to them Like slippery ways; In the darkness they shall be driven on And fall in them; For I will bring disaster on them, The year of their punishment,” says the Lord. Jeremiah 23:11-12, New King James Version Expositing from the eloquent Isaiah's repentance with reference to his tongue, Sinclair B. Ferguson links in The Power of Words and the Wonder of God , "We foolishly assume that our real struggles with sin are in those areas where we are 'weak.' We do not understand the depth of sin until we realize that it has made its home far more subtly where we are 'strong,'' and in our gifts rather than our weaknesses and inadequacies. It is in the very giftedness God has given that sin has been at its most perverse and subtle!" The inwardly directed talk of such a heart grown self-confident in the Lord's service i...

For the land is full of adulterers; For because of a curse the land mourns. The pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up. Their course of life is evil, And their might is not right. Jeremiah 23:10, New King James Version Chesterton laments in Heretics , "What we might have discussed under the lamp post, we now must discuss in the dark." God warns of the same dissension in Jeremiah 23:10. The shepherds have failed to feed the sheep, He charges. What momentum might have been gained by ancestral respect for spiritual leaders and the Word of God revered in their sight has been lost. Though God offers the comparison that He can make disciples out of the tumultuous scattering and regathering of the exile, there is trouble to come first. Missed opportunities for discipleship, gone to seed, will bring forth weeds in the culture. Because the covenant with God has not been upheld before the people by the shepherds, the spiritual leaders, who should have most revered it, lesser, h...

My heart within me is broken Because of the prophets; All my bones shake. I am like a drunken man, And like a man whom wine has overcome, Because of the Lord, And because of His holy words. Jeremiah 23:9, New King James Version "There is a spiritual selfishness which even poisons the good act of giving to another. Spiritual goods are greater than the material," appraises Thomas Merton in No Man Is an Island, of manipulative, self-serving discipleship, "and it is possible for me to love selfishly in the very act of depriving myself of material things for the benefit of another. If my gift is intended to bind him to me, to put him under an obligation, to exercise a kind of hidden moral tyranny over his soul, then in loving him I am really loving myself. And this is a greater and more insidious selfishness, since it traffics not in flesh and blood but in other persons' souls." This sort of discipleship especially grieves Jeremiah in Jeremiah 23:9. Why? He has spent...

7 “Therefore, behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that they shall no longer say, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ 8 but, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up and led the descendants of the house of Israel from the north country and from all the countries where I had driven them.’ And they shall dwell in their own land.” Jeremiah 23:7-8, New King James Version "You can't teach a person to love something," admits James MacDonald in Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling , pivoting to realize, "but you can get him to feel the heat of your love for something." As nothing provokes such passion like personal redemption from the perilously deserved, the heat of Simone Weil's is kindled with the ongoing realization, "God is rich in mercy. I know the wealth of His with the certainty of experience. I have touched it." So it is that the Lord predicts the updating of the testimony of His people in Jeremiah 2...

5 “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “That I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness; A King shall reign and prosper, And execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. 6 In His days Judah will be saved, And Israel will dwell safely; Now this is His name by which He will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. "The saints," thunders Charles Spurgeon in Morning and Evening , "are God's heritage, and he is in the midst of them and will protect them." We see this sense of intimate Presence beautifully inserted in His inspired words in Jeremiah 23:5-6. Their very kings, the individuals who should reflect Him most majestically, who should be copying down aspects of His character from Deuteronomy as part of their responsibilities, have failed, and He is telling them so in no uncertain terms. Yet, in the midst of this eyeball-to-eyeball indictment, there's a gleam in the Divine glare. There's a nod of fondness for one who, like this litany of ...

 3 “But I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all countries where I have driven them, and bring them back to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase. 4 I will set up shepherds over them who will feed them; and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, nor shall they be lacking,” says the Lord. It could have been that the eyes in the Education class were starting to glaze over after one too many techniques and that Ed Gosnell knew his audience. He inserted a personal antidote and anecdote, an experience with a veteran teacher in a rural school in which he was trying to suggest some different approaches that might get better results. The teacher's dry retort was, "You can't get chicken salad out of chicken shit no matter how much mayonnaise you use." I could have sworn, lamented Gosnell with the passion of an educator who had followed his calling out of the impoverished hills of East Tennessee, that he was looking toward the kids on the playground wh...

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!” says the Lord. 2 Therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel against the shepherds who feed My people: “You have scattered My flock, driven them away, and not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for the evil of your doings,” says the Lord. "They are worthless," judges Augustine of false teachers in a letter quoted in Augustine as Mentor by Edward Smither on the danger of interspersing philosophy and revealed Truth, "not because everything they say is false, but because they have put their trust in many false theories, and, when they are found to speak the truth, they are strangers to the grace of Christ, who is truth itself." John Bunyan in Come and Welcome Jesus Christ warns the same starvation by subterfuge can be accomplished socially. "What! teach men to put God and his Word out of their minds, by running to merry company, by running to the world, by gossiping?  This is as m...

28 “Is this man Coniah a despised, broken idol— A vessel in which is no pleasure? Why are they cast out, he and his descendants, And cast into a land which they do not know? 29 O earth, earth, earth, Hear the word of the Lord! 30 Thus says the Lord: ‘Write this man down as childless, A man who shall not prosper in his days; For none of his descendants shall prosper, Sitting on the throne of David, And ruling anymore in Judah.’ ” Chuck is not a man subject to the subtleties of custom. He struck up a conversation with me over the main business of the men's room. He has been known to stall the exodus from the sanctuary in order to check in in detail. A lifelong introvert, I figured he was always thus, a man with an extra helping of boldness by the grace of God. As I got to know him in more conventional settings, however, I learned differently. Chuck told me that he dealt with a brain tumor at 55 and that this was a means to a candid conversation with God. The Lord showed Chuck, he sai...

26 So I will cast you out, and your mother who bore you, into another country where you were not born; and there you shall die. 27 But to the land to which they desire to return, there they shall not return. Jeremiah 22:26-27, New King James Version Amy Layne Litzelman questions, “Do you find yourself in a dry place today? Don’t look back toward the land of your bondage. He is now offering you a great opportunity. He is longing to reveal his sovereignty to you by providing for you in this most hot and dry place." We scoff, brothers and sisters, at the Israelites in Scripture who would long for Egypt where they knew slavery. Perhaps a less alien example for us as God extricates us from the prison of nostalgia is His admonition to Coniah in Jeremiah 22:26-27. His chains were gilded rather than rusted, heart-sought rather than heavy, invited rather than imposed. His family habit was to use kingly prerogatives, the royal authority given by God for servant leadership, to prioritize com...

24 “As I live,” says the Lord, “though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet on My right hand, yet I would pluck you off; 25 and I will give you into the hand of those who seek your life, and into the hand of those whose face you fear—the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the hand of the Chaldeans. In one of his books providing memorable character sketches, I believe it was the one on David, Chuck Swindoll also provides candid personal disclosure. He says he had an early formative assignment as the assistant to a national ministry figure. In that capacity, he enjoyed great access and respect. A kind intervening figure, however, warned him against allowing the pride which looked around that particular job to warp the young minister's character for future usefulness. I consider that example when I hear the Lord's verdict in Jeremiah 22:24-25. He says in no uncertain terms that Jehoiakim has been His empowered representative, His signet ring. Unlike ...