Jeremiah 22:28-30 – Facing Fruitlessness
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 said, that he didn't have much to show for the grace of God in his life and charged him to do differently, to overtly make disciples, in the extra time he was going to be given. What is the stifling nature of social niceties compared to that?
Coniah in Jeremiah 22:28-30 faces just such a reckoning. He has been blessed with Josiah as a father, who reflected well both the image and kingship of God. His dad was an active reformer who sought God's glory above his own comfort.
In his own day, Coniah has inherited the trappings and opportunities of royalty by the grace of God but doesn't have anything to show for them. Not pleasing to the Lord, as a "broken idol," he hasn't managed even to captivate the hearts of those who would oppose the Lord's purposes. He hasn't made disciples. His legacy is devoid of passionate acolytes. He is despised with indifference.
If there is any hope offered Coniah, it is folded into a scorching condemnation of the pattern of his life. Perhaps we feel that correction, that measuring futility as futility, convicts us too heavily for us to want to reread the passage and see ourselves in it.
Just as the Lord will write down Coniah as childless, so much of our self-indulgence is already written down. We can't go back. We can't turn those who faithfully copied our carnality retroactively into fervent disciples.
God doesn't warn His servants needlessly, though. He preserved this Word for a reason. Did you catch David's name in this indictment? Did you catch just a flicker of a smile behind the frown of Providence there?
Based on how often God insists on blessing David's dullard descendents on behalf of that hit-and-miss passionate king, I don't think God can mention that man after His own heart without betraying a flush of pleasure, even in the midst of a severe scolding delivered to his shadowy heir Coniah.
In keeping with that abiding affection for David, God promised the king that a descendent of David's would always sit on Israel's throne. In calling out Coniah as a squib without a flicker of David's divine ambition, there is hope. That promise still stands. The sterility of Coniah's passionlessness is not the final Word.
This is the God Who roused Abram as a childless Syrian idol-maker and transformed him by grace into the father of the faithful. Habits can be undone. Names, lofty callings, can have their irony erased and replaced with fulfillment in Him by grace.
If we missed our chance to live out what we think might have been had we taken crown and calling more seriously sooner, we can take heart from the likes of Daniel. He never wore the crown.
He existed in exile because of the sins of people like Coniah, but he left a legacy. People with crowns like Coniah's looked to this man from his youth into his old age for how to use regal authority to the glory of God.
If Daniel had a wife and children, they are never mentioned in Scripture. He may have been a eunuch from his boyhood at the hands of the Babylonians he went on to serve so faithfully. Yet, even if he couldn't father physical children, he planted the seeds of faith in that pagan court.
Rather than lamenting the too-late, the finalities of other men's unfaithfulness, he made disciples where he was. Who knows if it might be to his credit in the Divine reckoning that the wise men looked for the star and honored the Christ?
In the same alien environment, with all of its reminders of misused blessings, Mordechai challenged Esther that she had been given influence for such a time as this. Fertility is of God in more than the conventional, biological sense.
His Word is declared good. His guarantee is that it will accomplish what He sends it forth to accomplish. All the disappointed hopes foisted on Coniah, or likeness BY us, or his likeness IN us can still be fulfilled.
We can invest even relationships outside of genetic progeny, as Paul did, with faith-filled purpose. As Paul called Timothy his son in the faith and referred to caring for the churches with which he worked with the intensity of maternal and paternal affection, so can we by faith.
If it lands on us from passages like this that we have done little to pass on the grace our King bequeathed to us, today is a new day. Who knows what He will do with today's resolve to burst through listless habit, conformity, and comfort-seeking?
“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 said, that he didn't have much to show for the grace of God in his life and charged him to do differently, to overtly make disciples, in the extra time he was going to be given. What is the stifling nature of social niceties compared to that?
Coniah in Jeremiah 22:28-30 faces just such a reckoning. He has been blessed with Josiah as a father, who reflected well both the image and kingship of God. His dad was an active reformer who sought God's glory above his own comfort.
In his own day, Coniah has inherited the trappings and opportunities of royalty by the grace of God but doesn't have anything to show for them. Not pleasing to the Lord, as a "broken idol," he hasn't managed even to captivate the hearts of those who would oppose the Lord's purposes. He hasn't made disciples. His legacy is devoid of passionate acolytes. He is despised with indifference.
If there is any hope offered Coniah, it is folded into a scorching condemnation of the pattern of his life. Perhaps we feel that correction, that measuring futility as futility, convicts us too heavily for us to want to reread the passage and see ourselves in it.
Just as the Lord will write down Coniah as childless, so much of our self-indulgence is already written down. We can't go back. We can't turn those who faithfully copied our carnality retroactively into fervent disciples.
God doesn't warn His servants needlessly, though. He preserved this Word for a reason. Did you catch David's name in this indictment? Did you catch just a flicker of a smile behind the frown of Providence there?
Based on how often God insists on blessing David's dullard descendents on behalf of that hit-and-miss passionate king, I don't think God can mention that man after His own heart without betraying a flush of pleasure, even in the midst of a severe scolding delivered to his shadowy heir Coniah.
In keeping with that abiding affection for David, God promised the king that a descendent of David's would always sit on Israel's throne. In calling out Coniah as a squib without a flicker of David's divine ambition, there is hope. That promise still stands. The sterility of Coniah's passionlessness is not the final Word.
This is the God Who roused Abram as a childless Syrian idol-maker and transformed him by grace into the father of the faithful. Habits can be undone. Names, lofty callings, can have their irony erased and replaced with fulfillment in Him by grace.
If we missed our chance to live out what we think might have been had we taken crown and calling more seriously sooner, we can take heart from the likes of Daniel. He never wore the crown.
He existed in exile because of the sins of people like Coniah, but he left a legacy. People with crowns like Coniah's looked to this man from his youth into his old age for how to use regal authority to the glory of God.
If Daniel had a wife and children, they are never mentioned in Scripture. He may have been a eunuch from his boyhood at the hands of the Babylonians he went on to serve so faithfully. Yet, even if he couldn't father physical children, he planted the seeds of faith in that pagan court.
Rather than lamenting the too-late, the finalities of other men's unfaithfulness, he made disciples where he was. Who knows if it might be to his credit in the Divine reckoning that the wise men looked for the star and honored the Christ?
In the same alien environment, with all of its reminders of misused blessings, Mordechai challenged Esther that she had been given influence for such a time as this. Fertility is of God in more than the conventional, biological sense.
His Word is declared good. His guarantee is that it will accomplish what He sends it forth to accomplish. All the disappointed hopes foisted on Coniah, or likeness BY us, or his likeness IN us can still be fulfilled.
We can invest even relationships outside of genetic progeny, as Paul did, with faith-filled purpose. As Paul called Timothy his son in the faith and referred to caring for the churches with which he worked with the intensity of maternal and paternal affection, so can we by faith.
If it lands on us from passages like this that we have done little to pass on the grace our King bequeathed to us, today is a new day. Who knows what He will do with today's resolve to burst through listless habit, conformity, and comfort-seeking?
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