Jeremiah 31:34 – The Lord's Word and Persuasion
33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ … Jeremiah 31:33-34a, New King James Version
My brother, in a coma, was a heartbeat from Hell, and Saturday Night Live rather than something more profound helped me confess my awesome responsibility.
There was a skit on the show back in the 90s in which the game show contestant had the considerable advantage of being able to tell the future. Yet, every time he buzzed in, all he could see and all he could say was that a big gray rock was coming. He was pummeled on the game show as his fellow contestants were able to focus on what was immediately relevant and score points. As the sketch unfolds, a big gray rock descends from the sky and crashes into the game show set.
I had known the big gray rock was coming, and yet using the prescience the Spirit and the Scriptures granted me to score points in everyday conversation was more important. I never pressed my brother on the point of his eternal accountability, on the reality that his next breath was not guaranteed, and that when it it lapsed he would stand before Christ either accountable by his own vanishing merit or accepted because of Christ's righteousness.
I knew that. I could talk about it in other settings. It was my flag and my brand on social media. Yet insisting that my brother know the Lord or face Hell for deliberately turning his back on the Christianity with which he was raised proved far more difficult. This was my brother. He managed, I had to admit in spite of the fact that it didn't fit into my theological matrix, his own kind of gentle, genial good. He was, as Jesus allows of the evil, a good parent. I didn't really want to tear that down, although I knew it was not CHRIST'S good.
And really, I had selfish motives woven through. My brother thought in analogies. He deployed a resplendent vocabulary. We had a trove of common experience despite our differences. I didn't need to translate for him the way I did for much of the world. I wasn't, in my me-centered myopia, willing to risk this earthly communion for fellowship in Heaven. Now it might be too late. The big gray rock had landed on him.
In Jeremiah 31:34, God contrasts His effectual Word with the one we find it so difficult to speak. In foretelling a day when we won't need to emphatically introduce our neighbors or our brothers to Him, He shows the thoroughness with which He can introduce and integrate Himself into the human experience. He makes, as He has said in Jeremiah 31, new hearts. He persuades from the inside out in a way that even my bravest confrontation could not have.
By that grace, He made my brother's heart new, and He woke him up and put him on the road to physical recovery so that my brother could tell me that. By God's grace, He caused my brother to look at our past relationship with grace also. My brother, about a year into walking with the Lord, thanked me recently for not confronting him more harshly, for giving the Lord space to speak that Word which allowed my brother to arise and to see spiritually. He thanked me for my patience with him, and I, in turn, thanked my Heavenly Father for His patience both with me and my brother.
None of the words I said, none of the words I could have said, would have said, should have said, would conjure up the new life which resides in him now. "The will, then, and the understanding," Spurgeon compounds in "Human Inability" "are two great doors, both blocked up against our coming to Christ, and until these are opened by the sweet influences of the Divine Spirit, they must be forever closed to anything like coming to Christ."
Seeing close evidence, though, of the sweet influence of the Divine Spirit, of God's authoritative "Let there be light," Word, which still reverberates with power, actually makes me more likely to speak up as He leads. I can attest in my own experience to Psalm 111:4 that HE has made His wonderful works to be remembered. The Lord IS gracious and full of compassion. That compassion extends according to His prerogatives to both speaker and hearer. If I hear wrongly, if I insert too many of my own words, inflections, and opinions in my best efforts to speak for Him, He, Creator still, can repair the damage to better than before.
He can use fecklessness offered in faithfulness. The certainty of my fellowship with Him can free me from fear that the proclamation of the Gospel to my fellow humans might isolate me.
My brother, in a coma, was a heartbeat from Hell, and Saturday Night Live rather than something more profound helped me confess my awesome responsibility.
There was a skit on the show back in the 90s in which the game show contestant had the considerable advantage of being able to tell the future. Yet, every time he buzzed in, all he could see and all he could say was that a big gray rock was coming. He was pummeled on the game show as his fellow contestants were able to focus on what was immediately relevant and score points. As the sketch unfolds, a big gray rock descends from the sky and crashes into the game show set.
I had known the big gray rock was coming, and yet using the prescience the Spirit and the Scriptures granted me to score points in everyday conversation was more important. I never pressed my brother on the point of his eternal accountability, on the reality that his next breath was not guaranteed, and that when it it lapsed he would stand before Christ either accountable by his own vanishing merit or accepted because of Christ's righteousness.
I knew that. I could talk about it in other settings. It was my flag and my brand on social media. Yet insisting that my brother know the Lord or face Hell for deliberately turning his back on the Christianity with which he was raised proved far more difficult. This was my brother. He managed, I had to admit in spite of the fact that it didn't fit into my theological matrix, his own kind of gentle, genial good. He was, as Jesus allows of the evil, a good parent. I didn't really want to tear that down, although I knew it was not CHRIST'S good.
And really, I had selfish motives woven through. My brother thought in analogies. He deployed a resplendent vocabulary. We had a trove of common experience despite our differences. I didn't need to translate for him the way I did for much of the world. I wasn't, in my me-centered myopia, willing to risk this earthly communion for fellowship in Heaven. Now it might be too late. The big gray rock had landed on him.
In Jeremiah 31:34, God contrasts His effectual Word with the one we find it so difficult to speak. In foretelling a day when we won't need to emphatically introduce our neighbors or our brothers to Him, He shows the thoroughness with which He can introduce and integrate Himself into the human experience. He makes, as He has said in Jeremiah 31, new hearts. He persuades from the inside out in a way that even my bravest confrontation could not have.
By that grace, He made my brother's heart new, and He woke him up and put him on the road to physical recovery so that my brother could tell me that. By God's grace, He caused my brother to look at our past relationship with grace also. My brother, about a year into walking with the Lord, thanked me recently for not confronting him more harshly, for giving the Lord space to speak that Word which allowed my brother to arise and to see spiritually. He thanked me for my patience with him, and I, in turn, thanked my Heavenly Father for His patience both with me and my brother.
None of the words I said, none of the words I could have said, would have said, should have said, would conjure up the new life which resides in him now. "The will, then, and the understanding," Spurgeon compounds in "Human Inability" "are two great doors, both blocked up against our coming to Christ, and until these are opened by the sweet influences of the Divine Spirit, they must be forever closed to anything like coming to Christ."
Seeing close evidence, though, of the sweet influence of the Divine Spirit, of God's authoritative "Let there be light," Word, which still reverberates with power, actually makes me more likely to speak up as He leads. I can attest in my own experience to Psalm 111:4 that HE has made His wonderful works to be remembered. The Lord IS gracious and full of compassion. That compassion extends according to His prerogatives to both speaker and hearer. If I hear wrongly, if I insert too many of my own words, inflections, and opinions in my best efforts to speak for Him, He, Creator still, can repair the damage to better than before.
He can use fecklessness offered in faithfulness. The certainty of my fellowship with Him can free me from fear that the proclamation of the Gospel to my fellow humans might isolate me.
Comments
Post a Comment