Jeremiah 25:4 – Continuity in Confrontation
The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah (which was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon), 2 which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying: 3 “From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, even to this day, this is the twenty-third year in which the word of the Lord has come to me; and I have spoken to you, rising early and speaking, but you have not listened. 4 And the Lord has sent to you all His servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, but you have not listened nor inclined your ear to hear.’ Jeremiah 25:1-4, New King James Version
The New Yorker's Joan Acocella writes of what made a particular ballet compelling, “it was old enough to seem new.”
The same is the nature of the Gospel presented in Jeremiah 25:4. God has the prophet present before his jaded adversaries that the message did not begin or end with Jeremiah. The same Truth, he says, has been carried forward by his prophetic predecessors. They have risen early like Jeremiah, and they have been dismissed. They haven't been listened to, nor has the culture they addressed put much effort and attention into inclining its collective ear.
I find it oddly encouraging that God can so choreograph His ballet as to present the possibility of renewal through the same old message. There is a certain confidence in Himself here in the description of which I nearly wear out the word audacious. He owns the message, and he ought to own this word.
Any human we deem brave, confident, original, is simply borrowing those qualities. What salesman would plan his pitch this way, bringing up how many have said no to it before, and implicitly how easy it would be to say no again?
Yet, in His deliberately uncool perseverance, in His resilient refusal to repackage, there is encouragement. God is there, and He is not silent, declares Francis Schaeffer's book title. He isn't even hoarse, or testy, or terse. That happens to people's messages, and especially those of parents on repetition, but He delights in Who He is and in engaging spokespeople in each generation to sing the same refrain. Such perpetual engagement with men, Theodore Beza says of the Church, is the anvil that has broken many hammers.
And what of the renewal for the man who spoke these words? Newness for him is in their enunciation. Jeremiah has been honest before the Lord that he wearies of contending with men, that his every conversation in this culture seems to result in strife and estrangement. Jeremiah 25:4, then, is the tried and true Elijah Elixir designed to prove to the prophets as they go by, perspectives bound in time, that they are not alone. Others have fought this fight, have strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage, and have gone on to their reward.
The contemporary experience of man's hardness of heart does not, Jeremiah 25:4 declares, keep God from extolling the individual work of His prophets. He knows when they get up. He bottles their tears. He treasures their prayers as incidents. If this were not enough, they go on to a great fellowship of faith attested to by Hebrews 11, a community no earthly adherence could match. By this God-granted realization, each prophet is made new, is so distinctly alive in his or her sense of deep time, that some contemporaries all but must ask after the hope that is within them.
For, the Lord proves the oldness, the sameness, the staleness of all alternatives. As his prophets persevere in proclamation that newness is to be found in Him, He sheds grace on men, granting time and tools to try to find perpetual engagement elsewhere. He is sure, then, that His message still plays, that His prophets strive not futilely because He knows what is playing on the cultures' other stages. He knows this message hasn't changed, though the accents, and the costumes, and the plot devices may have.
God sends His agents with confidence. He puts words in our mouths that renew us, as they renew the faithful who have gone before. He unearths and upends the seemingly impregnable status quo of each age with men and women both feeble and faithful to speak in their turn. He Who is ever new in Himself grants by sovereign grace newly transfixed eyes, newly engaged ears, and newly enraptured, unanticipated though He has been about this proprietary demonstration of His glory for as long as there have been men upon the Earth. Speak and live the Word, brothers and sisters. Thereby renew, and be renewed.
The New Yorker's Joan Acocella writes of what made a particular ballet compelling, “it was old enough to seem new.”
The same is the nature of the Gospel presented in Jeremiah 25:4. God has the prophet present before his jaded adversaries that the message did not begin or end with Jeremiah. The same Truth, he says, has been carried forward by his prophetic predecessors. They have risen early like Jeremiah, and they have been dismissed. They haven't been listened to, nor has the culture they addressed put much effort and attention into inclining its collective ear.
I find it oddly encouraging that God can so choreograph His ballet as to present the possibility of renewal through the same old message. There is a certain confidence in Himself here in the description of which I nearly wear out the word audacious. He owns the message, and he ought to own this word.
Any human we deem brave, confident, original, is simply borrowing those qualities. What salesman would plan his pitch this way, bringing up how many have said no to it before, and implicitly how easy it would be to say no again?
Yet, in His deliberately uncool perseverance, in His resilient refusal to repackage, there is encouragement. God is there, and He is not silent, declares Francis Schaeffer's book title. He isn't even hoarse, or testy, or terse. That happens to people's messages, and especially those of parents on repetition, but He delights in Who He is and in engaging spokespeople in each generation to sing the same refrain. Such perpetual engagement with men, Theodore Beza says of the Church, is the anvil that has broken many hammers.
And what of the renewal for the man who spoke these words? Newness for him is in their enunciation. Jeremiah has been honest before the Lord that he wearies of contending with men, that his every conversation in this culture seems to result in strife and estrangement. Jeremiah 25:4, then, is the tried and true Elijah Elixir designed to prove to the prophets as they go by, perspectives bound in time, that they are not alone. Others have fought this fight, have strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage, and have gone on to their reward.
The contemporary experience of man's hardness of heart does not, Jeremiah 25:4 declares, keep God from extolling the individual work of His prophets. He knows when they get up. He bottles their tears. He treasures their prayers as incidents. If this were not enough, they go on to a great fellowship of faith attested to by Hebrews 11, a community no earthly adherence could match. By this God-granted realization, each prophet is made new, is so distinctly alive in his or her sense of deep time, that some contemporaries all but must ask after the hope that is within them.
For, the Lord proves the oldness, the sameness, the staleness of all alternatives. As his prophets persevere in proclamation that newness is to be found in Him, He sheds grace on men, granting time and tools to try to find perpetual engagement elsewhere. He is sure, then, that His message still plays, that His prophets strive not futilely because He knows what is playing on the cultures' other stages. He knows this message hasn't changed, though the accents, and the costumes, and the plot devices may have.
God sends His agents with confidence. He puts words in our mouths that renew us, as they renew the faithful who have gone before. He unearths and upends the seemingly impregnable status quo of each age with men and women both feeble and faithful to speak in their turn. He Who is ever new in Himself grants by sovereign grace newly transfixed eyes, newly engaged ears, and newly enraptured, unanticipated though He has been about this proprietary demonstration of His glory for as long as there have been men upon the Earth. Speak and live the Word, brothers and sisters. Thereby renew, and be renewed.
Comments
Post a Comment