Jeremiah 23:7-8 – A Present-Tense People
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 23:7-8. He knows they hold the Exodus from Egypt close in their national consciousness, and there is nothing wrong with this identification with His rescue of their ancestors. God's inspired writers mention His glory displayed in this arena constantly.
Yet, He tells the people in Jeremiah's day that he is about to do something in their lives that will move the Exodus in times past from the front burner of their awareness. When they speak of Him, God says, they will instead speak of His intervention in bringing them home from the exile Jeremiah has warned about.
Participants in neither, why has God preserved this transition, this trading out of one heartfelt elevator speech for another for the New Testament Christian? I suspect we can obscure His present glory and action by constantly referring back to what He did in the past.
We can deflect attention from what He is doing in our individual lives by referring more comfortably to collective cultural action that is containable and already complete. We would rather carry a finished narrative.
Perhaps we would because we would rather not admit to our own villainy. Slavery in Egypt happened by the will of God because Jewish people once welcomed there were then seen with suspicion. It happened because the successors to the officials who depended upon Joseph's counsel and favored his relatives, as time passed, knew not Joseph. There is a comfortable passivity to this ride, now finished. It wasn't our fault, and God vindicated us.
The narrative of the exile is messier and more personal. As we have been tracking with Jeremiah who has been warning about the reasons it is coming, we know God's covenant people are responsible for disregarding Him in their daily dealings.
There isn't an outside force they can blame, and to a large degree there isn't for the Christian, either. To tell the tale of God's provision for us as exiles and regathering from that state with any authenticity means we have to be honest about the extent to which our estrangement was deserved, even merciful compared to what God could have done. It is often preferable to blame Pharaoh and Pharaoh's.
Another reality is that God's current gathering action is unsettling to those who would seek a tight narrative. The happily ever after hasn't happened yet. We have to admit with DA Carson in Gagging of God, "Our knowledge of God is always partial, but it is nonetheless authentic."
We have to link with Paul in Philippians 3 that we have not attained and been perfected. The gathering of deserved exiles into a new identity in God is a constant reshuffling with constant relational challenges that show His sanctification process of each of us is ongoing.
As reassuring as it can be to cling to the same testimony, the same testimony, in fact, that our forebears knew, there is an invigoration in admitting God is still working on us to this day, is still settling us in the fullness of His promises and weaning us from the habit of seeking our validation at the expense of our fellow humans. As we continually encounter Him and realize who we are in Him, we have fresh evidence to share that He is still active and powerful, transforming. That's worth getting the business cards constantly reprinted.
"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 23:7-8. He knows they hold the Exodus from Egypt close in their national consciousness, and there is nothing wrong with this identification with His rescue of their ancestors. God's inspired writers mention His glory displayed in this arena constantly.
Yet, He tells the people in Jeremiah's day that he is about to do something in their lives that will move the Exodus in times past from the front burner of their awareness. When they speak of Him, God says, they will instead speak of His intervention in bringing them home from the exile Jeremiah has warned about.
Participants in neither, why has God preserved this transition, this trading out of one heartfelt elevator speech for another for the New Testament Christian? I suspect we can obscure His present glory and action by constantly referring back to what He did in the past.
We can deflect attention from what He is doing in our individual lives by referring more comfortably to collective cultural action that is containable and already complete. We would rather carry a finished narrative.
Perhaps we would because we would rather not admit to our own villainy. Slavery in Egypt happened by the will of God because Jewish people once welcomed there were then seen with suspicion. It happened because the successors to the officials who depended upon Joseph's counsel and favored his relatives, as time passed, knew not Joseph. There is a comfortable passivity to this ride, now finished. It wasn't our fault, and God vindicated us.
The narrative of the exile is messier and more personal. As we have been tracking with Jeremiah who has been warning about the reasons it is coming, we know God's covenant people are responsible for disregarding Him in their daily dealings.
There isn't an outside force they can blame, and to a large degree there isn't for the Christian, either. To tell the tale of God's provision for us as exiles and regathering from that state with any authenticity means we have to be honest about the extent to which our estrangement was deserved, even merciful compared to what God could have done. It is often preferable to blame Pharaoh and Pharaoh's.
Another reality is that God's current gathering action is unsettling to those who would seek a tight narrative. The happily ever after hasn't happened yet. We have to admit with DA Carson in Gagging of God, "Our knowledge of God is always partial, but it is nonetheless authentic."
We have to link with Paul in Philippians 3 that we have not attained and been perfected. The gathering of deserved exiles into a new identity in God is a constant reshuffling with constant relational challenges that show His sanctification process of each of us is ongoing.
As reassuring as it can be to cling to the same testimony, the same testimony, in fact, that our forebears knew, there is an invigoration in admitting God is still working on us to this day, is still settling us in the fullness of His promises and weaning us from the habit of seeking our validation at the expense of our fellow humans. As we continually encounter Him and realize who we are in Him, we have fresh evidence to share that He is still active and powerful, transforming. That's worth getting the business cards constantly reprinted.
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