Jeremiah 26:7-8 – Just Switch It Over?
7 So the priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the Lord. 8 Now it happened, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, that the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him, saying, “You will surely die! Jeremiah 26:7-8, New King James Version
My wife and I just finished watching ER on Hulu. We got a good deal on the subscription service, in exchange for which we granted forbearance for commercials. In one of them, we are asked to believe that the implacable Geico lizard has gone from the company's advertising frontman to the lowest position in the corporate hierarchy.
With pluck, and it seems no small amount of ingenuity given his small size, he has managed to follow orders and ready the new advertising campaign for launch. All the literature is ready to go. Then his boss appears in the doorway, and, while munching on something, absently mentions a change in the campaign's theme. The lizard looks around at all of his work, and the flaky boss restates, pump the brakes on that, and switch it over to this.
Knowing how much work is actually involved, the lizard repeats with polite exasperation, "Just switch it over?"
We also see in Jeremiah 26:7-8 that switching over is no small matter achievable by human caprice. Knowing the end of the story, we come loaded with reasons it should be easy. Of course God calls Saul. By now changing his direction for the Gospel, God can now use all the eloquence instilled by Gamaliel, but for a better cause. Of course God calls Apollos. He can now use all the learning imparted in the Alexandria from which Apollos emerged, but now in the service of the Gospel.
Of course God sends Jeremiah to the prophets and the priests in the Temple in Jeremiah 26. They already come prepared with an understanding of the Word and its authority. Just switch it over.
In such bottom-line flippancy, we overlook the desperation in which men, maybe especially religious men, will hold onto the framework that gave them self-definition and at least some plausible claim on superiority over their fellows. Jeremiah's God-chosen audience which we might readily deem experts by education and experience, ready to understand the nuances of the message God has given him, will not readily switch it over to admit that they haven't really received the Gospel message in the Scripture they have inculcated. Instead, Jeremiah has been saying, they have used God's Word and its authority to impart a gilded veneer to a corrupted, comfortable culture.
One does not simply switch over from such self-assurance. It takes a God-changed heart for that to happen, and men will, where they can, fight violently against such negation of their previous efforts, against themselves. If the Philistines did it in fatalistic, resolved service to a fallen Dagon, how much more those who consider themselves rightful heirs of Abraham, and Moses, and at that the subtle, cosmopolitan sort who can, they think, incorporate at least nominal obedience to these inherited teachings with the "real world" in which they hold considerable influence?
Challengers to that position must be stopped by any means necessary. Therefore, they show a lethal contempt for Jeremiah's Gospel which reduces their righteousness to rags. They would extinguish him before crying out in public helplessness for God to bring true fire to the altars of their lives. He has cut them to the quick. He has challenged their most essential self-definition. There will be repercussions, and in editing their reality out of the story, which God refuses to do in His Word, we do a disservice both to His glory and to the reality of human depravity.
By so quickly skipping to the happily ever after, we may also impair our own bravery in the sanctification process. The first time our flesh kicks in protest to the changes God is demanding and making possible in us, the process seems all the harder because we have been led to expect that we can just switch it over, just change allegiances instantly in any area of our lives between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. If it's not easy, if our flesh does not readily submit in Golden Retriever fashion, we think change is not possible.
God can, of course, switch desires on and off instantly. Moreover, as probably happened with Saul-turned-Paul, He can so amaze us, so stupefy us with gratitude for what He has done and is doing in our latter days as we become more like Him that the trust and the counter thrusts of His initial conquest don't seem that important. We don't get, after all, any dialogue that might have occurred on the Damascus Road before Paul asks what the Lord wanted him to do. We get an overview that He spent years in the Arabian desert shaping Paul, not a blow-by-blow of exactly how He took down the strongholds of Saul's vain imaginations.
There's a sense in which we, like Paul, forget that which lies behind and press on toward the high calling in Christ Jesus. That is all to the good, but this amnesia of grace does not leave the devil without a play. With a less vital concept of the flesh lusting against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, we become complacent in the next conquest, easily discouraged at the first setback in ourselves or from the audience before whom we are called to live out the Gospel. These are people, what passes for out logic invariably convinces us, who should know better.
We forget that God was the star of our story. We forget that Christ was the Strongman Who bound the enemy. We forget that it was He who absorbed the enemy's lethal intentions, more in mentee than Jeremiah ever imagined, that we might live fully, less distracted by intentions to steal, kill, and destroy. Bless His Word, then, which occasionally lifts the gossamer veil and allows us to see the battle that proves our entire dependence on Christ.
My wife and I just finished watching ER on Hulu. We got a good deal on the subscription service, in exchange for which we granted forbearance for commercials. In one of them, we are asked to believe that the implacable Geico lizard has gone from the company's advertising frontman to the lowest position in the corporate hierarchy.
With pluck, and it seems no small amount of ingenuity given his small size, he has managed to follow orders and ready the new advertising campaign for launch. All the literature is ready to go. Then his boss appears in the doorway, and, while munching on something, absently mentions a change in the campaign's theme. The lizard looks around at all of his work, and the flaky boss restates, pump the brakes on that, and switch it over to this.
Knowing how much work is actually involved, the lizard repeats with polite exasperation, "Just switch it over?"
We also see in Jeremiah 26:7-8 that switching over is no small matter achievable by human caprice. Knowing the end of the story, we come loaded with reasons it should be easy. Of course God calls Saul. By now changing his direction for the Gospel, God can now use all the eloquence instilled by Gamaliel, but for a better cause. Of course God calls Apollos. He can now use all the learning imparted in the Alexandria from which Apollos emerged, but now in the service of the Gospel.
Of course God sends Jeremiah to the prophets and the priests in the Temple in Jeremiah 26. They already come prepared with an understanding of the Word and its authority. Just switch it over.
In such bottom-line flippancy, we overlook the desperation in which men, maybe especially religious men, will hold onto the framework that gave them self-definition and at least some plausible claim on superiority over their fellows. Jeremiah's God-chosen audience which we might readily deem experts by education and experience, ready to understand the nuances of the message God has given him, will not readily switch it over to admit that they haven't really received the Gospel message in the Scripture they have inculcated. Instead, Jeremiah has been saying, they have used God's Word and its authority to impart a gilded veneer to a corrupted, comfortable culture.
One does not simply switch over from such self-assurance. It takes a God-changed heart for that to happen, and men will, where they can, fight violently against such negation of their previous efforts, against themselves. If the Philistines did it in fatalistic, resolved service to a fallen Dagon, how much more those who consider themselves rightful heirs of Abraham, and Moses, and at that the subtle, cosmopolitan sort who can, they think, incorporate at least nominal obedience to these inherited teachings with the "real world" in which they hold considerable influence?
Challengers to that position must be stopped by any means necessary. Therefore, they show a lethal contempt for Jeremiah's Gospel which reduces their righteousness to rags. They would extinguish him before crying out in public helplessness for God to bring true fire to the altars of their lives. He has cut them to the quick. He has challenged their most essential self-definition. There will be repercussions, and in editing their reality out of the story, which God refuses to do in His Word, we do a disservice both to His glory and to the reality of human depravity.
By so quickly skipping to the happily ever after, we may also impair our own bravery in the sanctification process. The first time our flesh kicks in protest to the changes God is demanding and making possible in us, the process seems all the harder because we have been led to expect that we can just switch it over, just change allegiances instantly in any area of our lives between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. If it's not easy, if our flesh does not readily submit in Golden Retriever fashion, we think change is not possible.
God can, of course, switch desires on and off instantly. Moreover, as probably happened with Saul-turned-Paul, He can so amaze us, so stupefy us with gratitude for what He has done and is doing in our latter days as we become more like Him that the trust and the counter thrusts of His initial conquest don't seem that important. We don't get, after all, any dialogue that might have occurred on the Damascus Road before Paul asks what the Lord wanted him to do. We get an overview that He spent years in the Arabian desert shaping Paul, not a blow-by-blow of exactly how He took down the strongholds of Saul's vain imaginations.
There's a sense in which we, like Paul, forget that which lies behind and press on toward the high calling in Christ Jesus. That is all to the good, but this amnesia of grace does not leave the devil without a play. With a less vital concept of the flesh lusting against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, we become complacent in the next conquest, easily discouraged at the first setback in ourselves or from the audience before whom we are called to live out the Gospel. These are people, what passes for out logic invariably convinces us, who should know better.
We forget that God was the star of our story. We forget that Christ was the Strongman Who bound the enemy. We forget that it was He who absorbed the enemy's lethal intentions, more in mentee than Jeremiah ever imagined, that we might live fully, less distracted by intentions to steal, kill, and destroy. Bless His Word, then, which occasionally lifts the gossamer veil and allows us to see the battle that proves our entire dependence on Christ.
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