Coming Up For Air

 16 Therefore thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will cast you from the face of the earth. This year you shall die, because you have taught rebellion against the Lord.’ ” 17 So Hananiah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month. Jeremiah 28:16-17, New King James Version Bob Dylan describes much of the human condition in his song, "Restless Farewell." He realizes, "A false clock tries to tick out my time." So Jeremiah 28:16-17 reveals. Faithful Jeremiah has insisted on the Lord's message that the exile will last 70 years, longer than the lives of many of his hearers. Though he has simultaneously conveyed the Lord's mercy that God will continue to provide for His people in a strange land, indeed that their prosperity there will be a testimony, the people continue to be open to alternative messages. Hananiah provides. He points to Dylan's false clock. He comforts the people that the trouble will be over within two years, setting before them expectatio...

 15 Then the prophet Jeremiah said to Hananiah the prophet, “Hear now, Hananiah, the Lord has not sent you, but you make this people trust in a lie. 16 Therefore thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will cast you from the face of the earth. This year you shall die, because you have taught rebellion against the Lord.’ ”Jeremiah 28:15-16, New King James Version "My adulthood," connects Sarah Wall, "has been a slow unveiling. And right now, the only way I know to discern what’s true is to weigh every claim against God’s thoughts." Part of that reflective evaluation, Sarah says in keeping with Jeremiah 28:15-16, involves confronting what isn't true. In involves a realization just as perspective-setting as Jeremiah's that these false beliefs which set themselves against the knowledge of God won't last.  A drifting attitude more in line with, "Don't worry, be happy," reminds my friend Jim Graham, doesn't steel us for the God-ordained adventure of a...

13 “Go and tell Hananiah, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord: “You have broken the yokes of wood, but you have made in their place yokes of iron.” 14 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “I have put a yoke of iron on the neck of all these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and they shall serve him. I have given him the beasts of the field also.” ’ ”Jeremiah 28:13-14, New King James Version "He prepared a path for his anger," phrases the opening of Psalm 78:50 cogently in the New King James Version . Human anger explodes and splatters in reaction, falling far short of Aristotle's goal of being angry in the right way, at the right time, and at the right target. But God's anger is perfect, proportional, and just. So comes the progression of Jeremiah 28:13-14. He presents His people with Jeremiah, confrontation on their own scale, in their own dialect, from among their brethren. As they ignore this specifically dosed-out mercy, God tells ...

12 Now the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, after Hananiah the prophet had broken the yoke from the neck of the prophet Jeremiah, saying, Jeremiah 28:12, New King James Version "In fashion," adjudicates The New Yorker , putting pith to the world's pronouncements, "constancy is death." You only debut once, the publicist's conventional wisdom goes. Coaching contracts are severed because the team has tuned out, needs to be motivated by a different voice. Has every culture tuned out more definitively than Jeremiah's contemporaries did? This has moved beyond indifference to something more confrontational than heckling. A rival prophet has not only taken the "stage" with Jeremiah but has literally taken and broken the yoke the Lord told him to wear before the people as a picture of their coming captivity. Next! For, surely God is not short of voices. Surely Jeremiah's accent from little Anathouh has worn thin in the cosmopolitan precincts in wh...

10 Then Hananiah the prophet took the yoke off the prophet Jeremiah’s neck and broke it. 11 And Hananiah spoke in the presence of all the people, saying, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Even so I will break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all nations within the space of two full years.’ ” And the prophet Jeremiah went his way. Jeremiah 28:10-11, New King James Version Rebekah Taussig in the August 28, 2020 issue of TIME magazine here https://time.com/5881597/disability-kindness/ is incensed. She has been navigating paralysis since she was a toddler. She can manage the medical implications, but chafes at what people make of them. "Like the folks who try to do me a favor by keeping me separate from this disabled body of mine: All I see when I look at you is a beautiful woman. I don’t even notice your wheelchair! It’s meant as a kindness, but it feels like erasure." She integrates disability as part of who she is rather than something to be magnanimously and os...

9 As for the prophet who prophesies of peace, when the word of the prophet comes to pass, the prophet will be known as one whom the Lord has truly sent.” Jeremiah 28:9, New King James Version "You have to go backward to what we were," David Hammons mentions on African tribal art to The New Yorker 's Calvin Tomkins, "before you go forward to what we want to be." By was the much like this, the prophet both persists and adapts in Jeremiah 28:9. By now, his heart could have easily developed the hide of an aardvark. Has he not complained to the Lord how wearying it is to face contention in every relationship, to be swimming counter to the stream of the culture's constant craving for the good news of nearby relief? Yet, here, rather than flout the wish for peace, he connects with the innate desire of his people for more rest than they are currently experiencing. He connects what Hammons does, that the longing for a different and more fulfilling future often means ...

“Nevertheless hear now this word that I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people: The prophets who have been before me and before you of old prophesied against many countries and great kingdoms—of war and disaster and pestilence.”‭‭Jeremiah‬ 28:7-8, New King James Version I was wallowing. I had just been removed from a job role for which I had high hopes. Just as I would counsel students or clients not to do, I was connecting this painful instance to a larger, personal pattern. It's who I am. It's the impact of my disability. I could have. I would have. I should have. The administrator kindly and bravely delivering the news wouldn't buy in. Keeping his calm rather than piling on, he gave the wide-angle perspective of gracious analysis. He said the job I had been trying gamely to do was a difficult one. It had eaten up others without some of my particular challenges. There was an odd encouragement in this, and much the same dynamic is at work in Jeremiah 28...

5 Then the prophet Jeremiah spoke to the prophet Hananiah in the presence of the priests and in the presence of all the people who stood in the house of the Lord, 6 and the prophet Jeremiah said, “Amen! The Lord do so; the Lord perform your words which you have prophesied, to bring back the vessels of the Lord’s house and all who were carried away captive, from Babylon to this place. Jeremiah 28:5-6, New King James Version In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , Edward Gibbon writes of Islam but surely with broader applicability, "Human fancy can paint with more energy the misery then bliss of a future pain." Even prophets of the Truth can, which is what makes the pivot in Jeremiah 28:5-6 so remarkable. Jeremiah's message has been so consistent that he bequeaths the word jeremiad to describe a negative message of warning. He is, after all, the weeping prophet never far from lamenting his culture's offenses against the glory of God. By now, he surely has the heur...

And it happened in the same year, at the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year and in the fifth month, that Hananiah the son of Azur the prophet, who was from Gibeon, spoke to me in the house of the Lord in the presence of the priests and of all the people, saying, 2 “Thus speaks the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saying: ‘I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. 3 Within two full years I will bring back to this place all the vessels of the Lord’s house, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place and carried to Babylon. 4 And I will bring back to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, with all the captives of Judah who went to Babylon,’ says the Lord, ‘for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.’ ”Jeremiah 28:1-4, New King James Version "Men are prone to estimate sins, not by reference to their inherent sinfulness," follows Augustine in On Christian Doctrine, "but rather by reference to t...

19 “For thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the pillars, concerning the Sea, concerning the carts, and concerning the remainder of the vessels that remain in this city, 20 which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon did not take, when he carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, from Jerusalem to Babylon, and all the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem— 21 yes, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning the vessels that remain in the house of the Lord, and in the house of the king of Judah and of Jerusalem: 22 ‘They shall be carried to Babylon, and there they shall be until the day that I visit them,’ says the Lord. ‘Then I will bring them up and restore them to this place.’ ”Jeremiah 27:19-22, New King James Version In The Good Wife, the title character and her two teen-aged children go through a kind of exile by no fault of their own. The husband and father who held their former lifestyle in place is embroiled in a scandal which results in his imprison...

16 Also I spoke to the priests and to all this people, saying, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Do not listen to the words of your prophets who prophesy to you, saying, “Behold, the vessels of the Lord’s house will now shortly be brought back from Babylon”; for they prophesy a lie to you. 17 Do not listen to them; serve the king of Babylon, and live! Why should this city be laid waste? 18 But if they are prophets, and if the word of the Lord is with them, let them now make intercession to the Lord of hosts, that the vessels which are left in the house of the Lord, in the house of the king of Judah, and at Jerusalem, do not go to Babylon.’ Jeremiah 27:16-18, New King James Version "I have discovered," writes CS Lewis in officers' training for World War I wryly, "that optimism about the war increases in an inverse ratio to the optimist's proximity to the line." What happens, then, when we realize the line of spiritual battle is nearer than we supposed, that we have been ...

16 Also I spoke to the priests and to all this people, saying, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Do not listen to the words of your prophets who prophesy to you, saying, “Behold, the vessels of the Lord’s house will now shortly be brought back from Babylon”; for they prophesy a lie to you. 17 Do not listen to them; serve the king of Babylon, and live! Why should this city be laid waste? Jeremiah 27:16-17, New King James Version In Boys of Summer , Roger Kahn is looking back on the era in the middle of the 20th century from 30 years after the events he describes. What made the newspaper he worked for quaint and quirky in the midst of the cyclical daily deadlines, he now sees as the systemic weaknesses that led to its demise. In praising this history major can appreciate, Kahn decrees, "As in Hadrianic Roman, existing glories obscured the onrushing dark." It's ironic who can be subject to distraction, whom can fixate on certain singular measures of well-being and miss the dire indicato...

13 Why will you die, you and your people, by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, as the Lord has spoken against the nation that will not serve the king of Babylon? 14 Therefore do not listen to the words of the prophets who speak to you, saying, ‘You shall not serve the king of Babylon,’ for they prophesy a lie to you; 15 for I have not sent them,” says the Lord, “yet they prophesy a lie in My name, that I may drive you out, and that you may perish, you and the prophets who prophesy to you.” Jeremiah 27:13-15, New King James Version When a parishioner in Max Lucado's A Christmas Candle recoils at the idea of electricity, still new, should illuminate THE CHURCH, the pastor rebuts succinctly. "I believe that the church should be the FIRST place to embrace the future." Jeremiah 27:13-15 illustrates a definitive secondary cost when God's people don't embrace the future, jolting as it may be. We are just as likely as the citizens of Judah whose insistence...

12 I also spoke to Zedekiah king of Judah according to all these words, saying, “Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him and his people, and live! Jeremiah 27:12, New King James Version Based partly on its repetition on HBO when my brain was at its most supple, Superman II 's scenes are at ready recall. In one of them, three of Krypton's criminals come crashing through the skylight into the Oval Office. Impervious to his usually imposing surroundings, the leader of the three ambitious aliens demands surrender. When an underling claiming to be the President of the United States kneels, Gen. Zod isn't buying. "No one who leads so many," he dismisses, "could possibly surrender so quickly." The link to Jeremiah 27:12 isn't in a quick surrender. Jeremiah has been announcing the ascendancy of the Babylonians for most of the Bible's book that bears his name, and Jeremiah's audience, including Judah's King Zedekiah, ...

11 But the nations that bring their necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will let them remain in their own land,’ says the Lord, ‘and they shall till it and dwell in it.’ ” ’ ”Jeremiah 27:11, New King James Version "Meaning is not something you stumble across," insists John Gardner quoted in Stretch: How to Future-Proof Your Career , "like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build in your life. You build it on your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of your experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you." Many of us are waiting to stumble across meani...

9 Therefore do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your soothsayers, or your sorcerers, who speak to you, saying, “You shall not serve the king of Babylon.” 10 For they prophesy a lie to you, to remove you far from your land; and I will drive you out, and you will perish. Jeremiah 27: 9-10, New King James Version "Perhaps," supposes Melvyn Bragg in The Adventure of English as to the hearts' contents of early English settlers in North America, "it was fear of the unknown that made them reach for old familiar names." The same phenomenon, alas, may be at work in Jeremiah 27:10. Jeremiah's prediction of impending subservience to Babylon has startled his hearers. Magnified in their minds is the weariness of being driven to such a foreign and strange place. By recourse and reflex, they will tend to reach for the familiar, God knows in advance. He knows the pull the spiritual "authorities" they already have in place will have on th...

8 And it shall be, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and which will not put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation I will punish,’ says the Lord, ‘with the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand. 9 Therefore do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your soothsayers, or your sorcerers, who speak to you, saying, “You shall not serve the king of Babylon.” Jeremiah 27:8-9, New King James Version Refusing to let what he sees as his spiritual regression slide with the excuse that he hadn't gotten enough solitude, CS Lewis admits, "What we call HINDRANCES are really the raw material spiritual life." Jeremiah 27:8-9 can be seen in that light. These verses can be foreboding. They can be an here-we-go-again as they lay out the same traps into which people in possession of God's Word from Jeremiah's day to the present have fallen. Or, they can b...

8 And it shall be, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and which will not put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation I will punish,’ says the Lord, ‘with the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand. Jeremiah 27:8, New King James Version "I don't know where the restrictions end," a guard at the monument to Mao's burial tells The New Yorker' s Evan Osnos. "I just know my area." We are accustomed to that kind of divided authority. We celebrate the impact of checks and balances in shared responsibility as a sort of collective limitation on the full impact of man's depravity. Wherever someone is given responsibility, and that responsibility limits us, we are pretty sure there is a workaround. The overlearning of this principle among men impacts our impudence toward God. Thus we need Jeremiah 27:8. There is the impulse in us, as was Jeremiah's or...

6 And now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant; and the beasts of the field I have also given him to serve him. 7 So all nations shall serve him and his son and his son’s son, until the time of his land comes; and then many nations and great kings shall make him serve them. Jeremiah 27:6-7, New King James Version “What children we are," concedes Lew Wallace in the novel Ben Hur , "even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart.” Jeremiah 27:7 counters that immaturity and limited perspective. It does so in the way Theodore C. Sorensen in his recollection Counselor offers perspective to anyone thinking of vying for the Presidency of the United States. Sorensen, the son of an historian, insists, "Anyone speaking in historical terms is a stabilizing force." That's the gift of God's Word to and through Jeremiah here. It is a preemptive stabilizing force. It is the framing Word...

6 And now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant; and the beasts of the field I have also given him to serve him. Jeremiah 27:6, New King James Version CS Lewis connects in a letter, "if there is an eternal world and if our world is its manifestation, then you would expect bits of it to ‘stick through’ into ours. We are," he admits, " like children pulling the levers of a vast machine of which most is concealed. We see a few little wheels that buzz round on this side when we start it up-but what glorious or frightful processes we are initiating in there, we don’t know." Jeremiah 27:6 likewise reminds of the wholeness of God's machine and our imperfect perceptions of what "sticks through." In our minds, as with the individuals to whom Jeremiah originally spoke, there is a vast difference between the showiest of age-shaping autocrats, like Nebuchadnezzar, and his subjects. We move down another strata ...

4 And command them to say to their masters, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel—thus you shall say to your masters: 5 ‘I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are on the ground, by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and have given it to whom it seemed proper to Me. Jeremiah 27:4-5, New King James Version “For Virginians, taught rank-consciousness from birth, sensitive to the slightest slight," Stephen E. Ambrose explains in Undaunted Courage of the society that brought Meriwether Lewis to manhood, "concern about rank, status, and position was as much a part of life as breathing.” Consider, then, by comparison how tightly those assumptions were held as God's prophet confronted them with His Word in Jeremiah 27:4-5. Enlightenment ideas, the American and French Revolutions had not come about with their relative elevation of the status of the common man. Before these winds blew through, it was even easier for those on top of the current hierarch...

“And command them to say to their masters, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel—thus you shall say to your masters:” ‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭27:4‬ ‭New King James Version By the time he was a young man, Steve had seen a lot. His father would needle whatever he didn't accomplish rather than commending what he did, so he diminished the value of the approval he once sought. As an officer in the Air Force, he had seen other airmen manipulate the system for easier assignments. Now acclimated, Steve had taken up with mockers. One of them brought him a Gospel tract with a laugh. "Look at this!" Steve was never the same. He was transformed by that very Gospel his companion had dismissed. As it took hold of him, he went on to preach it as his real and lasting hope, clinging to it even through depression and physical complications. Steve knew by personal experience what Jeremiah 27:4 states outright, and what Jeremiah's spiritual heirs need to remember. The Gospel we present ha...

2 “Thus says the Lord to me: ‘Make for yourselves bonds and yokes, and put them on your neck, 3 and send them to the king of Edom, the king of Moab, the king of the Ammonites, the king of Tyre, and the king of Sidon, by the hand of the messengers who come to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah. Jeremiah 27:2-3, New King James Version Diplomacy, said the old wag, is the art of saying, "Nice doggy," until you can find a stick big enough to hit him with. Many of men's arts and professions, then, in essence consist of delaying or distracting from the inevitable, framing a worldview with man's doings at its center so we don't notice human vulnerability. So it was that diplomats came to Jerusalem in Jeremiah 27. They were powerless to stop the dictate of God, powerless to wrest the scepter of judgment God had given to Babylon, yet diplomatic niceties went on as before. They had control in phrasing and optics only. And that was fleeting. Yet, it is by these messengers th...

2 “Thus says the Lord to me: ‘Make for yourselves bonds and yokes, and put them on your neck, 3 and send them to the king of Edom, the king of Moab, the king of the Ammonites, the king of Tyre, and the king of Sidon, by the hand of the messengers who come to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah. Jeremiah 27:2-3, New King James Version My wife and I have started watching The Good Wife . In the show's second season, the title character's teenage daughter is starstruck at the opportunity to meet a singer and social media sensation. The friend who accompanies her is just as excited but uses the opportunity to present the celebrity with the Gospel. This kind of reach beyond our ordinary station has a solid Scriptural foundation. In Jeremiah 27:2-3, God specifically tells His prophet, condemned in his own country, dismissed in his own hometown, to confront the nations around him with the reality of sin's cost. It is God's prerogative to open such hearts, from pharaohs, to king...