Jeremiah 31:6 – Condescending to a Common Celebration

For there shall be a day
When the watchmen will cry on Mount Ephraim,
‘Arise, and let us go up to Zion,
To the Lord our God.’ ”Jeremiah 31:6, New King James Version

My father once asked me why I write. He challenged me as to whether the rhetorical flourishes in which I engage, the variegated vocabulary which he played no small part in instilling in me, whether I might be employing these as offputting as often as engaging. He asked me with his usual directness whether I cared about the people who might come across my writing on social media, the burdens they carried there, and the expectations they had for the words they encountered there.

I think about this mindset as I consider Jeremiah 31:6. I've never been a little watchman, soldier, or policeman. With a physical disability, I especially depend on these for the protection I cannot provide for myself or those I care about.

My flesh, then, has directed itself to compensate for such a deficiency. If I can't run a physical parameter, if I can't overlook that which concerns me and join a physical defense when it is challenged, I can be the watchman in matters of the mind, the perpetual pundit, the arsenal arising with a fusillade of, what you really need to do family, friend, culture, country, is…" Only with a far more vigorous vocabulary.

Jeremiah 31:6 is a call down from the mountain, whether of physical overwatch or of intellectual superiority convoluted detachment and defensiveness. There is an unmistakable inclusiveness. Soldier and civilian, he with the perched, patrolling perspective and his brother more concerned with everyday affairs. Trusting the Lord rather than his own erudition and discipline, the watchman can use his vaunted position, the echo of the mountains he wants counted on to spread the alarm he sounds, these now spread a summons to celebration.

Arise, and let us go to Zion. His call, his joyous call rings out with such vigor that it rouses the sleeper. The Minuteman expecting attack is alerted, but so is the indifferent. Celebrate God and His goodness, if He be lifted up, He will draw all men unto Him.

Sometimes He is lifted up when we realize, like David did, that He teaches the specialist's fingers to fight and hands to war, when He raises up those of such dedication in spiritual and physical warfare in defense of His people that they can operate equally well with the right hand and the left hand.

His character, though, is so effusive, His keeping vigilance so unmatched, that however good the human defense He actuates, however His glory is proven in His inner assessing image-bearers incrementally, HE is our defense. He tells the Israelites so, and that effective concern certainly has not diminished. Go celebrate My feasts, every man of you, he commands similarly to the summons of Jeremiah 31:6, and My security is so thoroughgoing that none of your neighbors will even WANT Your land while you are giving yourselves wholeheartedly to worship.

Now, of course, the New Testament believer KNOWS the extent of our shock-and-awe defense. If God be for us, Paul thunders, who can be against us? The litany of skulking troubles he lists in Romans 8 are so unworthy to compare to the steadfast defense, offense even, we have in Christ that each of their particulars merely serve to highlight His superiority. The cross and the Resurrection have established beyond doubt that He that is in us is greater than He Who is in the world.

If my sentences in calling to the culture have gotten marginally shorter, they have been raised to be measurably more celebratory. I am, like the watchman of Jeremiah 31:6, calling to the feast, heralding what I have in common with my brothers and sisters of the covenant. Alerts to what's wrong, or might go wrong, come in context. 10 o'clock, and all's well because JESUS is on His throne diligently overlooking us all.

Will there be various dialects in Zion as the tribes stream to Zion, and in the churches and Bible studies that until then gather in His Name? Definitely. Will my reach for words like variegated, and pundit, and fusillade stand out as not quite common? Certainly.

But it will be because these are the notes He gives me to sing in His great, glorifying orchestration. My watch is now for signs of His coming on the horizon, for the opportunity to celebrate every one of them with those aware, and those less so. My call, more and more, is to turn our eyes and hearts to celebrate God rather than to be noticed for the cadences I use.

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