Jeremiah 31:18 – Hearing a Whole Confession
“I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself:
‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised,
Like an untrained bull;
Restore me, and I will return,
For You are the Lord my God. Jeremiah 31:18, New King James Version
"Even our tears of repentance," admits Jerry Bridges in Pursuit of Holiness, "need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb."
If those blood-washed tears could speak, their purified confession would sound a lot like Jeremiah 31:18. This is what God hears. God's characterization of the words that Ephraim is "bemoaning himself," is not, perhaps, a promising beginning. That description could be a prelude to endless what Pursuit of Holiness also downgrades as "morbid introspection."
Indeed, once we begin to look at our sin, to apprise the gulf between ourselves and God's glory, there is an intoxicating quality to the exercise in extremism. Bemoaning ourselves can become, perversely, an indulgence in self-righteousness. I'm more demonstratively sorry than I was yesterday. I'm more demonstratively sorry than those blithely happy fools around me. I must be something special.
But God… But God Who has surely heard men bemoaning themselves to such ends keeps listening. He hears such potentially unpromising confessions with the righteousness of His Son in mind. He hears Ephraim attribute aright by new heart, and eyes, and mouth that God has granted. Ephraim begins to get up from a rightful place of self-abnegation by recognizing the sovereignty of God in Ephraim's correction. There is human responsibility. Israel and Judah's sin deserved the exile, and worse. God used human means to bring about the exile, but Ephraim's recall is not a list of human actors, instruments.
Ephraim's blood-washed confession of repentance is that, use what God will, God has chastised him, and chastised him effectively. We celebrate with New Testament cheerfulness, and we should, that what God starts, He is faithful to complete in us, but how often do we apply that to seasons of chastisement? Begin, begin to feel the sting of conviction, and we swing from blissful, strutting, self-assured to lower than low, convinced we will stay that way, and convinced we are holier than our neighbor because of this perpetual posture. Ephraim, by God's grace, sees through this performance art to correction's true work. God finished what He started, even here.
Even when we, brothers and sisters, bring in the bull to the china shop of the fragile, right confessional attitude, God's whole purposes are not broken. Yes, Ephraim likens himself in his sin to more animal than image-bearer of God, but even here he doesn't fall into bottomless, hopeless lament. A bull can make a mess. A bull is guided by his impulses and instincts. THIS, Ephraim notes, is an untrained bull. There's… potential by the grace of God. As imposing as the bull's strength is to wreak complete havoc, God is more powerful still. God Whose chastisement accomplishes exactly what He dictates can even bring the bull's power to bear for His purposes. God can take our passions, our zeal, and use them for His glory.
Ephraim, who moments ago sensed the breadth of rightful estrangement between himself and his Maker, senses the gap closing already by the end of Jeremiah 31:18. He is catching the rhythm of cause and effect in the prayer God is shaping in him. You chastised me, and I was chastised. It worked. Restore me, he begins to reason, rescued from being crushed in his sin, and I will RETURN. Demonstrate Your Mastery over my bullheadedness, Lord, and the end result is not a stronger pen but nearness. Already in God's mind in one people's cycle of sin, repentance, correction, and restoration, is the larger work of fully restoring Creation, within which He says the lion will lie down with the lamb. Look at one drop. Look at one body of water. Look at the vast blueness of our planet. The characteristics of the God story are the same.
The flourish at the end of Jeremiah 31:18 is ours also as He takes us through the same cycle. Men, convicted or convicting each other, can get stuck in self-pity. Chastisement can become a perpetual, hectoring way of life. See the bull in ourselves or each other, and bigger restraints and better boundaries must be put in place. Even where we manage a return, proximity to one another, as was the uneasy state for a while of the relationship between David and Absalom, even there the work is teetering and incomplete. Not the work in Ephraim showcased by Ephraim's God.
The finishing flourish of HIS Jeremiah 31:18 work is complete identification with it on the part of the redeemed. We have been through this together, Ephraim attests. God's favor has become more than a theoretical idea vaguely applied in good times and easily dispelled every time he messes up. You are, he celebrates in theology thoroughly applied to himself, the Lord MY God. His next tears of repentance, for surely they will come again, will be washed in the blood of the Lamb.
‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised,
Like an untrained bull;
Restore me, and I will return,
For You are the Lord my God. Jeremiah 31:18, New King James Version
"Even our tears of repentance," admits Jerry Bridges in Pursuit of Holiness, "need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb."
If those blood-washed tears could speak, their purified confession would sound a lot like Jeremiah 31:18. This is what God hears. God's characterization of the words that Ephraim is "bemoaning himself," is not, perhaps, a promising beginning. That description could be a prelude to endless what Pursuit of Holiness also downgrades as "morbid introspection."
Indeed, once we begin to look at our sin, to apprise the gulf between ourselves and God's glory, there is an intoxicating quality to the exercise in extremism. Bemoaning ourselves can become, perversely, an indulgence in self-righteousness. I'm more demonstratively sorry than I was yesterday. I'm more demonstratively sorry than those blithely happy fools around me. I must be something special.
But God… But God Who has surely heard men bemoaning themselves to such ends keeps listening. He hears such potentially unpromising confessions with the righteousness of His Son in mind. He hears Ephraim attribute aright by new heart, and eyes, and mouth that God has granted. Ephraim begins to get up from a rightful place of self-abnegation by recognizing the sovereignty of God in Ephraim's correction. There is human responsibility. Israel and Judah's sin deserved the exile, and worse. God used human means to bring about the exile, but Ephraim's recall is not a list of human actors, instruments.
Ephraim's blood-washed confession of repentance is that, use what God will, God has chastised him, and chastised him effectively. We celebrate with New Testament cheerfulness, and we should, that what God starts, He is faithful to complete in us, but how often do we apply that to seasons of chastisement? Begin, begin to feel the sting of conviction, and we swing from blissful, strutting, self-assured to lower than low, convinced we will stay that way, and convinced we are holier than our neighbor because of this perpetual posture. Ephraim, by God's grace, sees through this performance art to correction's true work. God finished what He started, even here.
Even when we, brothers and sisters, bring in the bull to the china shop of the fragile, right confessional attitude, God's whole purposes are not broken. Yes, Ephraim likens himself in his sin to more animal than image-bearer of God, but even here he doesn't fall into bottomless, hopeless lament. A bull can make a mess. A bull is guided by his impulses and instincts. THIS, Ephraim notes, is an untrained bull. There's… potential by the grace of God. As imposing as the bull's strength is to wreak complete havoc, God is more powerful still. God Whose chastisement accomplishes exactly what He dictates can even bring the bull's power to bear for His purposes. God can take our passions, our zeal, and use them for His glory.
Ephraim, who moments ago sensed the breadth of rightful estrangement between himself and his Maker, senses the gap closing already by the end of Jeremiah 31:18. He is catching the rhythm of cause and effect in the prayer God is shaping in him. You chastised me, and I was chastised. It worked. Restore me, he begins to reason, rescued from being crushed in his sin, and I will RETURN. Demonstrate Your Mastery over my bullheadedness, Lord, and the end result is not a stronger pen but nearness. Already in God's mind in one people's cycle of sin, repentance, correction, and restoration, is the larger work of fully restoring Creation, within which He says the lion will lie down with the lamb. Look at one drop. Look at one body of water. Look at the vast blueness of our planet. The characteristics of the God story are the same.
The flourish at the end of Jeremiah 31:18 is ours also as He takes us through the same cycle. Men, convicted or convicting each other, can get stuck in self-pity. Chastisement can become a perpetual, hectoring way of life. See the bull in ourselves or each other, and bigger restraints and better boundaries must be put in place. Even where we manage a return, proximity to one another, as was the uneasy state for a while of the relationship between David and Absalom, even there the work is teetering and incomplete. Not the work in Ephraim showcased by Ephraim's God.
The finishing flourish of HIS Jeremiah 31:18 work is complete identification with it on the part of the redeemed. We have been through this together, Ephraim attests. God's favor has become more than a theoretical idea vaguely applied in good times and easily dispelled every time he messes up. You are, he celebrates in theology thoroughly applied to himself, the Lord MY God. His next tears of repentance, for surely they will come again, will be washed in the blood of the Lamb.
Comments
Post a Comment