Jeremiah 27:16-18 – The Nearer Frontier

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 directing, even insisting on God's dilatory progress "out there" while overlooking sin's nearer encroachments?

Our grandiose, self-inflating optimism may dissipate as we consider Jeremiah 27:16-18. Willfully unaware that the battle line for God's glory is very near, divides even, as Solzhenitsyn says, their very hearts, God's officer corps is directing optimistic intercession to demand He see to the return of the Temple vessels Nebuchadnezzar has already taken. Faith has tipped over into presumption. Pride is camouflaged as boldness.

Look in your midst, God redirects. Those vessels you still have to minister in My Name, those you assume are the residual emblems of My Presence and pleasure with My people, soften your hard hearts to the prospect of losing even those. Your optimism is unfounded. Repentance, acknowledgment of dependence and undeserved favor, must begin in the places you think intact and safe.

Nor is this bluntness abandoned in the New Testament. Christ's parables present people positioned to serve but distracted by self-indulgence and contempt for their master. They are, as it were, remaining vessels for service in the Temple but are unwilling or unavailable for such. To these, Christ dictates that what they have will be taken away. They will know the gnashing of teeth and the outer darkness. To the candles representing His Church in Revelation, He warns that if they continue in a spirit of self-centered complacency, they will be taken from the candle stand.

Our prayers need a bit of the epidemiologist's objectivity Siddhartha Mukherjee describes in The New Yorker, for sin's impact is even more pervasive than the physical epidemic they are currently battling. As in that struggle Mukherjee pledges, ""We will supplement the bird's-eye view with the worm's-eye view, " so it must be with Christ's covenant people.

Yes, by all means, plead for the visible advance of His Kingdom, the measurable progress of His people against the strongholds of the enemy. We want, indeed, vessels recaptured for His service, and our prayers will have the bird's expansive view to see this. But we don't forget that we are of ourselves the worm the worm's view.

Our sins and our weakness are as Scriptural as are the boldest of our hopes to enlarge the borders of our influence to the glory of God. Daily bread, the sustenance of spirit, mind, and body in what we quickly cool to think of as the status quo God owes us as a starting point, these are also preserved by the active grace of God.

These elemental graces's are, in the mysteries of His will, manifested in part by our conscious prayers. As Lewis chips in again, this time when logical Diggory in The Magician's Nephew supposes that Aslan as Christ already knows the basic neediness of their moment, the horse Strawberry nevertheless won't neglect. "He likes to be asked."

As we ask for what the worm needs as well as what the bird can see, we realize our commonality with the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve. My friend Chuck connects the prayers that would push faith's frontier with those that elicit gratitude for the preservation what already is.

"Every evening as I pray about Covid-19, I realize that I am included in the consequences of God judging sin in this country and on this planet.  I am wearing a mask just like everyone else; my ministry opportunities, for instance, have been abridged just like unsaved peoples' recreation opportunities have been abridged."

Christians, we, no more than the spiritual leadership indicted by Jeremiah 27, don't have immunity from a tendency to focus on the next thing we want. We can take their correction as ours, experience Christ as our Bread in the moment, His Spirit the remaining Temple vessel He leaves with us, and protect in our prayers meaningful thankfulness for what is, even as we crave with John in Revelation that He would come quickly in all His fullness.

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