Jeremiah 27:3 – New Life to Old Forms

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 that God tells Jeremiah to send His Truth. As He would with Rome's masterful infrastructure centuries later, He uses what man puts in place with pretenses to dominate. At God's discretion, He gives new life to old forms.

For the Christian, Christ is the Better David. For, even then king pointed out the folly of running without a message and purpose, conceding an overeager emissary might do so. Yet, he commissioned HIS crew messenger with news of the victory over the preening pretender. To carry this news of the ascendancy of the true King was to move with a purpose.

So we do today. Whether diplomat or dogcatcher, the Christian is placed by God's loving sovereignty in a constellation of earthly relationships for so long as He should dictate. His own are given earthly forms and functions, measurable expectations for the approval of men. But in these, we are positioned as the diplomats at Zedekiah's court, ready to carry the Word of the Lord, to juxtapose the expiring freedom in which men operate with the chains of coming judgment now being forged.

Thomas Merton describes the difference in No Man Is an Island. He renews himself, ""Hope… brings our souls into perfect detachment. In so doing, it restores all values by setting them in the right order. Hope empties our hands in order that we may work with them. It shows us that we have something to work for, and teaches us how to work for it."

We live and move, then, in the wake of Christ the perfect Messenger. As He said the words His Father gave him to say to the people among whom His righteousness was known in its everyday aspects, so we do. Let us not be so preoccupied, then, with the expected scripts and routines that we are distracted from His orders toward eternity.

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