Jeremiah 25:15-16 – To Cause to Hear
15 For thus says the Lord God of Israel to me: “Take this wine cup of fury from My hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send you, to drink it. 16 And they will drink and stagger and go mad because of the sword that I will send among them.” Jeremiah 25:15-16, New King James Version
"The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men," traces Henry David Thoreau in Walden, "and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains."
Jeremiah has not been on a cabin passage below decks. He has been before the mast. He has, by God's grace, been able to perceive the Almighty's character and the ways in which the worn and dusty patterns of men deviate from that. He has by the gentle moonlight God in His grace allows, been able to trace and declare what is right in God's heart and what is wrong in men's.
There is responsibility, God declares to His prophet in Jeremiah 25:15-16, that comes with this gradual eye-opening by grace. Freed from habitual, blind conformity within the ruts of culture, Jeremiah is positioned to declare the Gospel to the nations. He is to proclaim God's glory, the distance between it and the habits of mind and practice into which the nations have fallen, and to cause the nations to drink of the reality of the resulting judgment.
It's not enough, God says, to issue a general press release. Here's man. Here's God. Here's the distance. Now back to regularly scheduled programming. The drawing in Campus Crusade's classic Four Spiritual Laws tract which shows cliffs facing each other with a chasm between, the facing-off of the respective positions of God and man only to be bridged by the cross is fine as far as it goes, but the abstract principles must be taken up by a man, and a mind, and a heart, an entreating, discerning communicator who actually cares how the message lands on ears and hearts captive to distinctive idols.
Like unto Jeremiah, in this calling we need what Walter Lippmann in Public Opinion credits as "Socrates' energy for breaking through words to meanings." How much time do we spend, then, in the preparatory stages like Jeremiah 25:15-16? For, surely, we will encounter as many subsets of culture and resulting variance of disbelief as Jeremiah does. Our charge is no less than his. Insofar as it lies with us, we are to capitalize on the capacity God gives to read the signs of the times, to walk the Mars Hill of our day and channel the energy of our indignant spirits toward the best way to break through the unbelieving assumptions of those around us.
Our technique will never be perfect. We look on the outside. God looks on the hearts of both cultures and men. At the very least, though, may our energy, our passion for the One Who is worthy of passion be distinct from the robotic follow-through on inherited conventional wisdom around us. Might we cause the nations to hear just because we are perpetually fresh from God, perpetually amazed that we are granted such access through His grace and mercy, and perpetually impressed with His heart to expose the idolatry of the nations and the real relationship with Him on the other side of it.
As we give perhaps as long to contemplating the variegated spiritual scape of the globe as we give to asking for our own comforts, God may grant us discerning sight. He may allow us as the intrepid outsider who pledges to put discernment into practice to see what Tim Keller in God's Wisdom for Navigating Life calls the "deep 'background beliefs' about life that are so taken for granted that they are invisible" within a given culture. He makes prepare us with the kind of distinctiveness, the kind of emphasis, the kind of empathy to cause people to hear who would not hear otherwise. Yes, only He grants ears to hear, but He may use the preparation of our hearts and messages to narrow in on the right frequency.
"The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men," traces Henry David Thoreau in Walden, "and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains."
Jeremiah has not been on a cabin passage below decks. He has been before the mast. He has, by God's grace, been able to perceive the Almighty's character and the ways in which the worn and dusty patterns of men deviate from that. He has by the gentle moonlight God in His grace allows, been able to trace and declare what is right in God's heart and what is wrong in men's.
There is responsibility, God declares to His prophet in Jeremiah 25:15-16, that comes with this gradual eye-opening by grace. Freed from habitual, blind conformity within the ruts of culture, Jeremiah is positioned to declare the Gospel to the nations. He is to proclaim God's glory, the distance between it and the habits of mind and practice into which the nations have fallen, and to cause the nations to drink of the reality of the resulting judgment.
It's not enough, God says, to issue a general press release. Here's man. Here's God. Here's the distance. Now back to regularly scheduled programming. The drawing in Campus Crusade's classic Four Spiritual Laws tract which shows cliffs facing each other with a chasm between, the facing-off of the respective positions of God and man only to be bridged by the cross is fine as far as it goes, but the abstract principles must be taken up by a man, and a mind, and a heart, an entreating, discerning communicator who actually cares how the message lands on ears and hearts captive to distinctive idols.
Like unto Jeremiah, in this calling we need what Walter Lippmann in Public Opinion credits as "Socrates' energy for breaking through words to meanings." How much time do we spend, then, in the preparatory stages like Jeremiah 25:15-16? For, surely, we will encounter as many subsets of culture and resulting variance of disbelief as Jeremiah does. Our charge is no less than his. Insofar as it lies with us, we are to capitalize on the capacity God gives to read the signs of the times, to walk the Mars Hill of our day and channel the energy of our indignant spirits toward the best way to break through the unbelieving assumptions of those around us.
Our technique will never be perfect. We look on the outside. God looks on the hearts of both cultures and men. At the very least, though, may our energy, our passion for the One Who is worthy of passion be distinct from the robotic follow-through on inherited conventional wisdom around us. Might we cause the nations to hear just because we are perpetually fresh from God, perpetually amazed that we are granted such access through His grace and mercy, and perpetually impressed with His heart to expose the idolatry of the nations and the real relationship with Him on the other side of it.
As we give perhaps as long to contemplating the variegated spiritual scape of the globe as we give to asking for our own comforts, God may grant us discerning sight. He may allow us as the intrepid outsider who pledges to put discernment into practice to see what Tim Keller in God's Wisdom for Navigating Life calls the "deep 'background beliefs' about life that are so taken for granted that they are invisible" within a given culture. He makes prepare us with the kind of distinctiveness, the kind of emphasis, the kind of empathy to cause people to hear who would not hear otherwise. Yes, only He grants ears to hear, but He may use the preparation of our hearts and messages to narrow in on the right frequency.
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