Jeremiah 25:17-18 – Accountability Begins at Home.
17 Then I took the cup from the Lord’s hand, and made all the nations drink, to whom the Lord had sent me: 18 Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, its kings and its princes, to make them a desolation, an astonishment, a hissing, and a curse, as it is this day. Jeremiah 25:17-18, New King James Version
Susan B. Glasser points out in The New Yorker that a political consultant she is profiling had become too familiar in her efforts to arrest current trends. In gradually being ignored, Glasser says, she is a victim of, "the soft bigotry of low expectations."
Jeremiah might fear the same fate. Again and again, he has striven with his countrymen over the same issues, insistent on the glory of God. He has been derided or ignored from his family circle in his hometown to the Temple environs in Jerusalem.
He could see the global commission God gives him in Jeremiah 25 to confront other cultures as an opportunity to engage ears and hearts who have not built up a tolerance for his message yet, who haven't become acclimated to the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Jeremiah's God-inspired zeal and empathy won't seem to let him move on just yet. He is not looking for an excuse to shirk holding those closest to his heart accountable to his Lord. He takes, in spirit, the advice given a consultant to the American government in an hour of crisis from someone who had been in that role before. "When you go into the White House," The New Yorker's Michael Specter reports the counsel, "you should be prepared that that is the last time you will ever go in. Because if you go in saying, I'm going to tell somebody something they want to hear, then you've shot yourself in the foot."
As many times as he has been rejected, Jeremiah knows accountability begins with the people familiar by heritage with God's Word. He knows, as the Bible phrases it, judgment begins in the house of God. Thus, even with a broader commission, he confronts the leadership class in his own culture first.
He could have checked that off of his two-do list already. Instead, he will do what he can to make his people hear. As with Paul later, his very perseverance along with his willingness to identify with his guilty countrymen, they are bound up in his message.
What about us? We have the commission, brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as unprecedented tools, to reach people by the thousands whom we will never meet face-to-face. One social media status pointing to the glory of God could easily satisfy our sense that we have done our part, and then send us back to those among whom we actually live uncommitted to making our lifestyle part of our testimony.
Without the starch God grants Jeremiah, we could continually point to what's wrong in other groups without the courage to confront people with whom we have relationships, people from whom we might actually have to deal with blowback.
Even for those of us who don't have a hard pass to the White House, or access to a Hollywood set or to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to lay at Jesus' feet, to risk because reflecting His glory is our ultimate affirmation, there are still steps of faith to be taken in the sphere where he and He has placed us.
Where has the conviction cooled that once burdened us for the sins beneath which our family and coworkers struggle? Are we satisfied that we once mumbled a Godward suggestion, or do we continue in the prophetic tradition to which Jeremiah points, getting up early day after day and presenting an alternative with courage and creativity? Do we treat each day we have influence in a given circle as our last, because it might be?
Or, has our message grown old in our own ears? Have we so diluted conviction by noting what's wrong "out there" that we no longer think in terms of our own accountability? As we set our sights again on home, and hometown, and home country, may we ask to be examined by the Holy Spirit for the ways in which the idolatrous assumptions of those places have found their way into us. Search me, we can plead again with the Spirit, as in Scripture, and know my secret faults.
In fact, it is from such thoroughgoing confessionals that we can emerge to see, really SEE, the over-familiar again. Before we see the opportunity to serve our brother, or our spouse, or a coworker the wine of judgment, we may see opportunities to serve him or her in more subtle ways.
By this, we can testify over time that our hope does not like in their favor, individually or en masse, but in the righteousness of Christ and in His coming Kingdom none will challenge.
Susan B. Glasser points out in The New Yorker that a political consultant she is profiling had become too familiar in her efforts to arrest current trends. In gradually being ignored, Glasser says, she is a victim of, "the soft bigotry of low expectations."
Jeremiah might fear the same fate. Again and again, he has striven with his countrymen over the same issues, insistent on the glory of God. He has been derided or ignored from his family circle in his hometown to the Temple environs in Jerusalem.
He could see the global commission God gives him in Jeremiah 25 to confront other cultures as an opportunity to engage ears and hearts who have not built up a tolerance for his message yet, who haven't become acclimated to the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Jeremiah's God-inspired zeal and empathy won't seem to let him move on just yet. He is not looking for an excuse to shirk holding those closest to his heart accountable to his Lord. He takes, in spirit, the advice given a consultant to the American government in an hour of crisis from someone who had been in that role before. "When you go into the White House," The New Yorker's Michael Specter reports the counsel, "you should be prepared that that is the last time you will ever go in. Because if you go in saying, I'm going to tell somebody something they want to hear, then you've shot yourself in the foot."
As many times as he has been rejected, Jeremiah knows accountability begins with the people familiar by heritage with God's Word. He knows, as the Bible phrases it, judgment begins in the house of God. Thus, even with a broader commission, he confronts the leadership class in his own culture first.
He could have checked that off of his two-do list already. Instead, he will do what he can to make his people hear. As with Paul later, his very perseverance along with his willingness to identify with his guilty countrymen, they are bound up in his message.
What about us? We have the commission, brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as unprecedented tools, to reach people by the thousands whom we will never meet face-to-face. One social media status pointing to the glory of God could easily satisfy our sense that we have done our part, and then send us back to those among whom we actually live uncommitted to making our lifestyle part of our testimony.
Without the starch God grants Jeremiah, we could continually point to what's wrong in other groups without the courage to confront people with whom we have relationships, people from whom we might actually have to deal with blowback.
Even for those of us who don't have a hard pass to the White House, or access to a Hollywood set or to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to lay at Jesus' feet, to risk because reflecting His glory is our ultimate affirmation, there are still steps of faith to be taken in the sphere where he and He has placed us.
Where has the conviction cooled that once burdened us for the sins beneath which our family and coworkers struggle? Are we satisfied that we once mumbled a Godward suggestion, or do we continue in the prophetic tradition to which Jeremiah points, getting up early day after day and presenting an alternative with courage and creativity? Do we treat each day we have influence in a given circle as our last, because it might be?
Or, has our message grown old in our own ears? Have we so diluted conviction by noting what's wrong "out there" that we no longer think in terms of our own accountability? As we set our sights again on home, and hometown, and home country, may we ask to be examined by the Holy Spirit for the ways in which the idolatrous assumptions of those places have found their way into us. Search me, we can plead again with the Spirit, as in Scripture, and know my secret faults.
In fact, it is from such thoroughgoing confessionals that we can emerge to see, really SEE, the over-familiar again. Before we see the opportunity to serve our brother, or our spouse, or a coworker the wine of judgment, we may see opportunities to serve him or her in more subtle ways.
By this, we can testify over time that our hope does not like in their favor, individually or en masse, but in the righteousness of Christ and in His coming Kingdom none will challenge.
As this was posted on my 40th Birthday I think it very timely for me. It is an interesting perspective on not taking anything for granted. Go until all the world and preach the gospel beginning in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is where they were standing.
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