Jeremiah 26:1-2 – The Word in Audacious Competition
1 In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came from the Lord, saying, 2 “Thus says the Lord: ‘Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak to all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord’s house, all the words that I command you to speak to them. Do not diminish a word. Jeremiah 26:1-2, New King James Version
"It is usually very simple concrete things of daily living," concedes Henri Nouwen in Life of the Beloved, "that provide the raw materials for our conversations. The question, 'How are you doing?' usually leads to very down-to-earth stories about marriage, family, health, work, money, friends, and plans for the immediate future. It seldom, however, leads to deep thoughts about the origin and goal of our existence."
In such unpromising soil, also, God plants the Word He is setting up in Jeremiah 26:1-2. He is allowing in advance of his latest message to and through Jeremiah that there are other factors that could choke out His Word. Beyond the usual gravitational pull of daily habits to which Nouwen speaks, a new king's reign is beginning, and He sets Jeremiah's message to compete with His Temple surroundings.
God will seldom make Himself the only option, isolate faith as the incremental recourse of the pragmatist so that He would be selected for His benefits and not for Himself. Earthly kings will come and go, and if we be disenchanted with one, few factors are more magnetic for our affections than the ascent of another.
Before the new king, the new pastor, the new president, the new relational partner has taken firm positions, has shown himself or herself subject to the same: habits that have beset the race since Adam's ruin spoiled Eden, until then the new is freighted with wildly unrealistic expectations. Better that, holds out our flesh, then submit to God's comprehensive claims.
If it were not enough proof of reliance on Himself and the effectual power of His Word alone that He would compete with whatever hope the people hold out for Jehoiakim, God has His man compete with the reflexive reassurance of the Temple court. Will the people, when confronted with Jeremiah earlier in his ministry with the coming correction, parrot that the presence of the Temple of the Lord will preserve them?
Then God will send one man, one oft discouraged man to offer his message in the balance against the reassurance of the Temple. Wasn't that the crank put in the stocks in this very place for his contrarian message, the bulk of the people will gawk?
We would, playing media Maestro, instruct God in picking His time more carefully. Wait until, we as consultants would suggest, the attributional shine has worn off the new king. God, infinitely patient, has not one speck of cowardice. The people's hearts have grown dull in the Temple, we would counsel, reading the lack of buzz in the crowd. Let's take Your message somewhere exotic, somewhere where new visuals will draw the people's attention, not the same old background in which they think they are already safe and righteous.
He Who controls the flow of time and holds even the hearts of kings in His hands, says Proverbs, is the ultimate Teacher. As a colleague in that field once related telling a student, "My brain is programmed to hear all excuses the same, so it is with the inexorable purposes of the Lord and His Word. We give sham sanctification to our failure to engage the culture with Biblish words like waiting for the right season. Waiting becomes its own intoxicant, but God is unaffected.
As with the opening of Jeremiah 26, He is insistent. Sow and live My message, He retorts, in season and out of season. "Why weren't you born 2000 years ago, or during the Reformation, or during the Civil War," questions John Hauser,"? It's because God says, I want you IN this moment FOR this moment."
When people's hopes in one figure, in one trend, are crashing, we can point to Him as the contrast Who instills, maintains, and at the last will fulfill all true hope. When hope in the stuff of Earth is cresting, we can point to the aspects of His blessing, even His character, which draw people's hearts, and then to the true hope in Him.
Even in the Temple, or its equivalent, we can be the one constantly pointing to Him as the meaning behind even the best of religious forms. We can be the one, the Jeremiah, constantly, if sometimes subtly, provoking assumptions of national and personal self-righteousness in order to question them.
We can gather with God's people in the broadest and sometimes a nominal sense in order to, as the New Testament puts it cause people to examine themselves to see if they be in the faith – or if there faith is in their religiously respectable location.
There will never be an optimal time to engage the sphere in which He has placed us unless we know Him to be optimal. Pretending that competitors for His rightful supremacy don't exist will prove unworthy of His candor.
Speaking of suffering, but just as truly of the spiritual stupor that perpetually competes with true ardor for the Divine, Jon Hauser resolves again, ""I have no interest in standing out in the rain trying to convince everyone that it's sunny outside."
Augustine was as candid in his day as to what obscured Truth. James KA Smith in On the Road with Augustine summarizes the church father, "Only healthy eyes can see, and faith restores the health of the eyes." We rarely see the scales fall from human eyes, and almost never before we obediently engage.
Ours, then, as with Jeremiah is to steep in the assumption that God has chosen the time and place for us to strike His selected Gospel note to His glory. We play to an audience of One Whose delight outshines all the favor of men in the perfect, fleeting moment WE would select.
"It is usually very simple concrete things of daily living," concedes Henri Nouwen in Life of the Beloved, "that provide the raw materials for our conversations. The question, 'How are you doing?' usually leads to very down-to-earth stories about marriage, family, health, work, money, friends, and plans for the immediate future. It seldom, however, leads to deep thoughts about the origin and goal of our existence."
In such unpromising soil, also, God plants the Word He is setting up in Jeremiah 26:1-2. He is allowing in advance of his latest message to and through Jeremiah that there are other factors that could choke out His Word. Beyond the usual gravitational pull of daily habits to which Nouwen speaks, a new king's reign is beginning, and He sets Jeremiah's message to compete with His Temple surroundings.
God will seldom make Himself the only option, isolate faith as the incremental recourse of the pragmatist so that He would be selected for His benefits and not for Himself. Earthly kings will come and go, and if we be disenchanted with one, few factors are more magnetic for our affections than the ascent of another.
Before the new king, the new pastor, the new president, the new relational partner has taken firm positions, has shown himself or herself subject to the same: habits that have beset the race since Adam's ruin spoiled Eden, until then the new is freighted with wildly unrealistic expectations. Better that, holds out our flesh, then submit to God's comprehensive claims.
If it were not enough proof of reliance on Himself and the effectual power of His Word alone that He would compete with whatever hope the people hold out for Jehoiakim, God has His man compete with the reflexive reassurance of the Temple court. Will the people, when confronted with Jeremiah earlier in his ministry with the coming correction, parrot that the presence of the Temple of the Lord will preserve them?
Then God will send one man, one oft discouraged man to offer his message in the balance against the reassurance of the Temple. Wasn't that the crank put in the stocks in this very place for his contrarian message, the bulk of the people will gawk?
We would, playing media Maestro, instruct God in picking His time more carefully. Wait until, we as consultants would suggest, the attributional shine has worn off the new king. God, infinitely patient, has not one speck of cowardice. The people's hearts have grown dull in the Temple, we would counsel, reading the lack of buzz in the crowd. Let's take Your message somewhere exotic, somewhere where new visuals will draw the people's attention, not the same old background in which they think they are already safe and righteous.
He Who controls the flow of time and holds even the hearts of kings in His hands, says Proverbs, is the ultimate Teacher. As a colleague in that field once related telling a student, "My brain is programmed to hear all excuses the same, so it is with the inexorable purposes of the Lord and His Word. We give sham sanctification to our failure to engage the culture with Biblish words like waiting for the right season. Waiting becomes its own intoxicant, but God is unaffected.
As with the opening of Jeremiah 26, He is insistent. Sow and live My message, He retorts, in season and out of season. "Why weren't you born 2000 years ago, or during the Reformation, or during the Civil War," questions John Hauser,"? It's because God says, I want you IN this moment FOR this moment."
When people's hopes in one figure, in one trend, are crashing, we can point to Him as the contrast Who instills, maintains, and at the last will fulfill all true hope. When hope in the stuff of Earth is cresting, we can point to the aspects of His blessing, even His character, which draw people's hearts, and then to the true hope in Him.
Even in the Temple, or its equivalent, we can be the one constantly pointing to Him as the meaning behind even the best of religious forms. We can be the one, the Jeremiah, constantly, if sometimes subtly, provoking assumptions of national and personal self-righteousness in order to question them.
We can gather with God's people in the broadest and sometimes a nominal sense in order to, as the New Testament puts it cause people to examine themselves to see if they be in the faith – or if there faith is in their religiously respectable location.
There will never be an optimal time to engage the sphere in which He has placed us unless we know Him to be optimal. Pretending that competitors for His rightful supremacy don't exist will prove unworthy of His candor.
Speaking of suffering, but just as truly of the spiritual stupor that perpetually competes with true ardor for the Divine, Jon Hauser resolves again, ""I have no interest in standing out in the rain trying to convince everyone that it's sunny outside."
Augustine was as candid in his day as to what obscured Truth. James KA Smith in On the Road with Augustine summarizes the church father, "Only healthy eyes can see, and faith restores the health of the eyes." We rarely see the scales fall from human eyes, and almost never before we obediently engage.
Ours, then, as with Jeremiah is to steep in the assumption that God has chosen the time and place for us to strike His selected Gospel note to His glory. We play to an audience of One Whose delight outshines all the favor of men in the perfect, fleeting moment WE would select.
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