Jeremiah 25:35-37 – The Hireling's Habits
35
And the shepherds will have no way to flee,
Nor the leaders of the flock to escape.
36
A voice of the cry of the shepherds,
And a wailing of the leaders to the flock will be heard.
For the Lord has plundered their pasture,
37
And the peaceful dwellings are cut down
Because of the fierce anger of the Lord. Jeremiah 25:35-37, New King James Version
"The slothful think of themselves first, even in the work they choose to do," discerns Tim Keller in God's Wisdom For Navigating Life. "They select work for their own comfort or benefit rather than for how it helps others, the community, and society."
Jeremiah 25:35-37 reveals just how thoroughgoing such a selfish tendency is. Those who are positioned by God's sovereign grace as shepherds, familiar with His Word enough to feed others, are not stirred to action when the flocks scatter in search of spiritual food. God then moves to touching what they are more likely to notice, the threefold preoccupations of their selfishness.
The shepherds haven't had time or energy to feed the flock in a committed fashion because, Jeremiah 25:35 reveals, they prioritize their own comfort and safety. They are perpetually willing to move on to get it. The calling of shepherd, discipler, is noble as a general idea, but many balk at the particulars of working with actual people. "There are plenty of men," exposes Thomas Merton in No Man Is an Island, " who will give up their interests for the sake of 'society,' but cannot stand any of the people they live with."
Jeremiah 25:35 confines such a person to deal with a wandering heart rather than distract from it by changing setting. How does he know, after all, that there is no way to flee unless he has tried, or, at least, some of his thoughts were on the other side of a convenient exit? If these shepherds to whom Jeremiah was to originally speak these words have this notion of disposable relationships, we are even more guilty of the habit.
We are building a rationale for fleeing even as we probe for potential benefits of staying. Like Will Smith's date doctor in the movie Hitch, we become experts in establishing relationships up to a certain point, but we hold back when vulnerability and cost become apparent. Our flesh screeches at the notion of admitting that we are sheep and shepherds both, dependent likewise on being provided for and led.
God also gets the attention of His nominal shepherds by plundering "their" pasture. The picture here would be funny if it were not so tragic. Can shepherds eat the grass the sheep so desperately need?
Of course not, but they can think of the pasture as theirs, think of this sheep as entirely dependent on them when such a notion puffs up their ego rather than chafing against it. We want in our relationships a one-way exit clause.
Our notion of shepherding, of discipling, is that the spiritually immature will be entirely dependent on us, on "our" pasture for so long as this enhances our definition of ourselves. God, then, plunders the pasture to show that it is HE Who feeds His sheep. He always has other pastures and can shepherd His sheep directly, guiding them to beneficial relationships and settings in different seasons of life. One plants. Another waters. GOD gives the increase.
The reach of God's correction of the selfish shepherd's heart is not shortened. Touch his sense of safety, security, and significance, and he may change settings to seek these without confessing his own abject reliance on God. Expose the folly of his notion of HIS field as the sheep entrusted to him are fed elsewhere in the expanse of God's great blessing, and he may retreat still further inward to avoid God's just claim on him and his service.
God's to disturb, He asserts in Jeremiah 25:37, is also the peaceful dwelling of the shepherd. Even when he is off the clock and free, he thinks, to reconstruct the narrative of the day's "service" in the way that best sustains his sense of self-sufficiency, God reaches even there.
He can, at His discretion, touch the dreams of the pharaohs in order to prick the heart of the nation. True rest is His to grant. The psalmist can find it on the battlefield.. The selfish shepherd cannot quite close out the claims of conscience.
God can and will steal rest when rest is not in Him. He can disturb the relationships which, humanly speaking, underpin domestic tranquility if we use these to distract from our dependence on Him and our duty as shepherds to influence for Him.
Arrange our domestic comforts as we will, the very walls and roof are His to shake or give to another if we think the threshold of the house is not His to cross. Think we that we have earned these by the quality of our slipshod shepherding? Dissonance awaits and awakes.
But, oh, what sincerity and security beckon on the other side of repentance! When we cry out to Him as the Good Shepherd, when our souls relate to Him as Abba Father rather than as nominal supervisor of our superficial shepherding, our human relationships are transformed in the overflow.
Spurgeon knows this from experience, declaring with Paul in "A Lecture for Little-Faith" "There is an interest felt by a spiritual father that is not to be equal by the tender affection of a mother towards her babe. 'Ay,' said the apostle, 'I have been tender over you as a nursing father,' and in another place he says he had 'travailed in birth,' for their souls."
This is not a contest of the closeness of motherhood versus fatherhood. This is an invitation for us to surpass the intimacy of even the closest biological relationships we know. Vital, intercessory discipleship is this compelling.
It is all engaging, such that we would not look for a shortcut for our convenience. It is to experience the richness of God side-by-side with another, such that our mouths would be too full of His goodness to lay claim to "our pasture." It is a habit and a heartiness we take home with us, and gladly so.
We are filled to pour into family all we have to offer and have learned in comparatively peripheral relationships. Shepherd becomes who we are, not just an obligation we fulfill, and in this we are transformed into the likeness of the Good Shepherd.
And the shepherds will have no way to flee,
Nor the leaders of the flock to escape.
36
A voice of the cry of the shepherds,
And a wailing of the leaders to the flock will be heard.
For the Lord has plundered their pasture,
37
And the peaceful dwellings are cut down
Because of the fierce anger of the Lord. Jeremiah 25:35-37, New King James Version
"The slothful think of themselves first, even in the work they choose to do," discerns Tim Keller in God's Wisdom For Navigating Life. "They select work for their own comfort or benefit rather than for how it helps others, the community, and society."
Jeremiah 25:35-37 reveals just how thoroughgoing such a selfish tendency is. Those who are positioned by God's sovereign grace as shepherds, familiar with His Word enough to feed others, are not stirred to action when the flocks scatter in search of spiritual food. God then moves to touching what they are more likely to notice, the threefold preoccupations of their selfishness.
The shepherds haven't had time or energy to feed the flock in a committed fashion because, Jeremiah 25:35 reveals, they prioritize their own comfort and safety. They are perpetually willing to move on to get it. The calling of shepherd, discipler, is noble as a general idea, but many balk at the particulars of working with actual people. "There are plenty of men," exposes Thomas Merton in No Man Is an Island, " who will give up their interests for the sake of 'society,' but cannot stand any of the people they live with."
Jeremiah 25:35 confines such a person to deal with a wandering heart rather than distract from it by changing setting. How does he know, after all, that there is no way to flee unless he has tried, or, at least, some of his thoughts were on the other side of a convenient exit? If these shepherds to whom Jeremiah was to originally speak these words have this notion of disposable relationships, we are even more guilty of the habit.
We are building a rationale for fleeing even as we probe for potential benefits of staying. Like Will Smith's date doctor in the movie Hitch, we become experts in establishing relationships up to a certain point, but we hold back when vulnerability and cost become apparent. Our flesh screeches at the notion of admitting that we are sheep and shepherds both, dependent likewise on being provided for and led.
God also gets the attention of His nominal shepherds by plundering "their" pasture. The picture here would be funny if it were not so tragic. Can shepherds eat the grass the sheep so desperately need?
Of course not, but they can think of the pasture as theirs, think of this sheep as entirely dependent on them when such a notion puffs up their ego rather than chafing against it. We want in our relationships a one-way exit clause.
Our notion of shepherding, of discipling, is that the spiritually immature will be entirely dependent on us, on "our" pasture for so long as this enhances our definition of ourselves. God, then, plunders the pasture to show that it is HE Who feeds His sheep. He always has other pastures and can shepherd His sheep directly, guiding them to beneficial relationships and settings in different seasons of life. One plants. Another waters. GOD gives the increase.
The reach of God's correction of the selfish shepherd's heart is not shortened. Touch his sense of safety, security, and significance, and he may change settings to seek these without confessing his own abject reliance on God. Expose the folly of his notion of HIS field as the sheep entrusted to him are fed elsewhere in the expanse of God's great blessing, and he may retreat still further inward to avoid God's just claim on him and his service.
God's to disturb, He asserts in Jeremiah 25:37, is also the peaceful dwelling of the shepherd. Even when he is off the clock and free, he thinks, to reconstruct the narrative of the day's "service" in the way that best sustains his sense of self-sufficiency, God reaches even there.
He can, at His discretion, touch the dreams of the pharaohs in order to prick the heart of the nation. True rest is His to grant. The psalmist can find it on the battlefield.. The selfish shepherd cannot quite close out the claims of conscience.
God can and will steal rest when rest is not in Him. He can disturb the relationships which, humanly speaking, underpin domestic tranquility if we use these to distract from our dependence on Him and our duty as shepherds to influence for Him.
Arrange our domestic comforts as we will, the very walls and roof are His to shake or give to another if we think the threshold of the house is not His to cross. Think we that we have earned these by the quality of our slipshod shepherding? Dissonance awaits and awakes.
But, oh, what sincerity and security beckon on the other side of repentance! When we cry out to Him as the Good Shepherd, when our souls relate to Him as Abba Father rather than as nominal supervisor of our superficial shepherding, our human relationships are transformed in the overflow.
Spurgeon knows this from experience, declaring with Paul in "A Lecture for Little-Faith" "There is an interest felt by a spiritual father that is not to be equal by the tender affection of a mother towards her babe. 'Ay,' said the apostle, 'I have been tender over you as a nursing father,' and in another place he says he had 'travailed in birth,' for their souls."
This is not a contest of the closeness of motherhood versus fatherhood. This is an invitation for us to surpass the intimacy of even the closest biological relationships we know. Vital, intercessory discipleship is this compelling.
It is all engaging, such that we would not look for a shortcut for our convenience. It is to experience the richness of God side-by-side with another, such that our mouths would be too full of His goodness to lay claim to "our pasture." It is a habit and a heartiness we take home with us, and gladly so.
We are filled to pour into family all we have to offer and have learned in comparatively peripheral relationships. Shepherd becomes who we are, not just an obligation we fulfill, and in this we are transformed into the likeness of the Good Shepherd.
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