Jeremiah 23:10 – Dimensions of Depravity
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, human-to-human covenants will break down. Adultery will be rampant, God has told Jeremiah before, and emphasizes again in Jeremiah 23:10.
If people aren't reminded that God keeps them over a longer term than the satisfaction of their own impulses, they, like sheep, will scatter for where the grass looks greener. An itch, a lust, for quicker, less committed payoffs in our relationships begins when we forget that our ultimate satisfaction is in God by faith, that we were created to know Him and be known by Him most intimately in another world.
As the shepherds don't uphold God's covenant relationship with His people before them, they likewise take material prosperity for granted. Much as the culture rebuffed Jeremiah's warnings with the complacent assurances that all must be well because the Temple is still intact, the ground growing enough to satisfy our needs and most of our wants tends to be insulation against being justly convicted that we are in the wrong before God.
How can that be when my belly is full? How can that be when last year's seed came up so well? How can that be when I was able to bring in an offering to keep the Temple going?
Thus, God shows, again, that is much as He loves to show His rhythmic glory in the continuity between seedtime and harvest, He will break that cycle, that His people realize that they rely on Him more than grain, more than much fine grain.
We can, it seems, after having God bless certain habits to the point of predictability, distance ourselves from Him, believing instead that all we need is the habit, the outward form, the vocational diligence in order to prosper.
Thus, God tells Jeremiah, and through him tells us, that He is willing to loosen the linkages we take for granted, to step between ordinary cause and effect in our relationships and in our jobs in order to remind us the extent to which we are dependent on Him. He sets up spiritual shepherds to show us faithfulness with skin on, and when these are not diligent, He will replace them with others.
But not even the best of them can vicariously replace a people's candid confession of ongoing need for Him. Without that provenance of a keeping God, our relationships falter both with our spiritual leaders and our families. Without that provenance of a keeping God, none of our efforts will prosper, even if they are similar to yesterday's or last years.
Under the lamp post, in isolated instances of protected blessing that stand out in a fallen world, or in the wider darkness, His people must constantly give testimony to Him as our true light. Without that humble, candid repetition, the world and even the Church are too likely to credit habits, credit traditions, credit cultures rather than the undeserved goodness of God.
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, human-to-human covenants will break down. Adultery will be rampant, God has told Jeremiah before, and emphasizes again in Jeremiah 23:10.
If people aren't reminded that God keeps them over a longer term than the satisfaction of their own impulses, they, like sheep, will scatter for where the grass looks greener. An itch, a lust, for quicker, less committed payoffs in our relationships begins when we forget that our ultimate satisfaction is in God by faith, that we were created to know Him and be known by Him most intimately in another world.
As the shepherds don't uphold God's covenant relationship with His people before them, they likewise take material prosperity for granted. Much as the culture rebuffed Jeremiah's warnings with the complacent assurances that all must be well because the Temple is still intact, the ground growing enough to satisfy our needs and most of our wants tends to be insulation against being justly convicted that we are in the wrong before God.
How can that be when my belly is full? How can that be when last year's seed came up so well? How can that be when I was able to bring in an offering to keep the Temple going?
Thus, God shows, again, that is much as He loves to show His rhythmic glory in the continuity between seedtime and harvest, He will break that cycle, that His people realize that they rely on Him more than grain, more than much fine grain.
We can, it seems, after having God bless certain habits to the point of predictability, distance ourselves from Him, believing instead that all we need is the habit, the outward form, the vocational diligence in order to prosper.
Thus, God tells Jeremiah, and through him tells us, that He is willing to loosen the linkages we take for granted, to step between ordinary cause and effect in our relationships and in our jobs in order to remind us the extent to which we are dependent on Him. He sets up spiritual shepherds to show us faithfulness with skin on, and when these are not diligent, He will replace them with others.
But not even the best of them can vicariously replace a people's candid confession of ongoing need for Him. Without that provenance of a keeping God, our relationships falter both with our spiritual leaders and our families. Without that provenance of a keeping God, none of our efforts will prosper, even if they are similar to yesterday's or last years.
Under the lamp post, in isolated instances of protected blessing that stand out in a fallen world, or in the wider darkness, His people must constantly give testimony to Him as our true light. Without that humble, candid repetition, the world and even the Church are too likely to credit habits, credit traditions, credit cultures rather than the undeserved goodness of God.
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