Jeremiah 25:38 – Freeze-Frame Fury
He has left His lair like the lion;
For their land is desolate
Because of the fierceness of the Oppressor,
And because of His fierce anger.” Jeremiah 25:38, New King James Version
Thomas Mallon writes in The New Yorker, "Photographer Arthur Felig, known as Weegee never got his wish to shoot a murder as it was happening, but his real gift was for photographing targets after they ripen into corpses."
Jeremiah 25:38 is such a freeze-frame. The wages of sin, as Romans will connect more explicitly in the New Testament, will have brought forth death once the exile Jeremiah foretells takes place. Targets will ripen into corpses. People will get something like what they deserve for flouting God's glory.
God's reflection on this moment in advance is something like Warren Buffett's in the compendium of his wisdom Warren Buffett on Business. "Trying to write good contracts with bad people doesn't work." God's covenant with His people, though communicated perfectly, is broken. Jeremiah 25:38 offers a reflective pause to show us just HOW broken.
The palpable sense of His Presence is gone, like the lion who left the lair. The land with which He identified, the city on which He put His name, is to be shattered. His glory, His reputation, is worth more than all of the beautiful earthly settings He might use to illustrate it all the prompts, all the rituals He might institute to tutor recalcitrant humanity in His ways.
Before we reflexively turn from this ugly scene, we note its duality even within one verse. The land is desolate, God tells Jeremiah, by verdict of His righteous, perfect, proportionate anger AND because of the fierceness of the Oppressor.
God uses chastisement, even destruction, to accomplish His purposes and to teach His covenant people. The Oppressor, though, the devil whom the New Testament will refer to as the Accuser of the Brethren, is the one who would leave us in this phase and relish it.
Blessedly, as with Job, the accuser renders and relishes only such destruction as he is allowed under God's permission. The history of that covenant, ugly as it seems in freeze frames like Jeremiah 25:38, will show a contrast because God's desire to see His glory reflected in His people, objects of His grace, is resilient.
Such a determined aspect of His character is also on display as Tim Keller writes in Songs of Jesus of a later chapter, "Church history is convicting and encouraging, showing how far we have fallen, yet also what God can do."
Where are we in this cycle as a community and as individuals? Certainly, at present, we know more of our vulnerability than we have been accustomed to admitting. Our helplessness and hopelessness apart from God is on display. Will we admit it and call desolate desolate? Will we confess that what oppression we experience, we deserve?
Or, will the work of unrighteousness continue to ripen? Will God's glory be vindicated in the world seeing the results of our disobedience rather than our repentance? Why waste such an hour?
Why not turn, admit that what we suffer, we deserve, and that the fullness of the Father's wrath was poured out on Christ the Son, at once the willing substitute and the Lion of Jeremiah 25:38 searching out righteousness as He instructed this very prophet to do in Jeremiah 5:1?
If He will, on the last day, be satisfied like the lion's appetite, it will be because He sees His own likeness reflected, by transforming grace, in His people.
For their land is desolate
Because of the fierceness of the Oppressor,
And because of His fierce anger.” Jeremiah 25:38, New King James Version
Thomas Mallon writes in The New Yorker, "Photographer Arthur Felig, known as Weegee never got his wish to shoot a murder as it was happening, but his real gift was for photographing targets after they ripen into corpses."
Jeremiah 25:38 is such a freeze-frame. The wages of sin, as Romans will connect more explicitly in the New Testament, will have brought forth death once the exile Jeremiah foretells takes place. Targets will ripen into corpses. People will get something like what they deserve for flouting God's glory.
God's reflection on this moment in advance is something like Warren Buffett's in the compendium of his wisdom Warren Buffett on Business. "Trying to write good contracts with bad people doesn't work." God's covenant with His people, though communicated perfectly, is broken. Jeremiah 25:38 offers a reflective pause to show us just HOW broken.
The palpable sense of His Presence is gone, like the lion who left the lair. The land with which He identified, the city on which He put His name, is to be shattered. His glory, His reputation, is worth more than all of the beautiful earthly settings He might use to illustrate it all the prompts, all the rituals He might institute to tutor recalcitrant humanity in His ways.
Before we reflexively turn from this ugly scene, we note its duality even within one verse. The land is desolate, God tells Jeremiah, by verdict of His righteous, perfect, proportionate anger AND because of the fierceness of the Oppressor.
God uses chastisement, even destruction, to accomplish His purposes and to teach His covenant people. The Oppressor, though, the devil whom the New Testament will refer to as the Accuser of the Brethren, is the one who would leave us in this phase and relish it.
Blessedly, as with Job, the accuser renders and relishes only such destruction as he is allowed under God's permission. The history of that covenant, ugly as it seems in freeze frames like Jeremiah 25:38, will show a contrast because God's desire to see His glory reflected in His people, objects of His grace, is resilient.
Such a determined aspect of His character is also on display as Tim Keller writes in Songs of Jesus of a later chapter, "Church history is convicting and encouraging, showing how far we have fallen, yet also what God can do."
Where are we in this cycle as a community and as individuals? Certainly, at present, we know more of our vulnerability than we have been accustomed to admitting. Our helplessness and hopelessness apart from God is on display. Will we admit it and call desolate desolate? Will we confess that what oppression we experience, we deserve?
Or, will the work of unrighteousness continue to ripen? Will God's glory be vindicated in the world seeing the results of our disobedience rather than our repentance? Why waste such an hour?
Why not turn, admit that what we suffer, we deserve, and that the fullness of the Father's wrath was poured out on Christ the Son, at once the willing substitute and the Lion of Jeremiah 25:38 searching out righteousness as He instructed this very prophet to do in Jeremiah 5:1?
If He will, on the last day, be satisfied like the lion's appetite, it will be because He sees His own likeness reflected, by transforming grace, in His people.
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