Poor Jeremiah. He was
simply giving the word the Lord had given to him concerning the welfare of the
people. The trouble was that the word
was that the city was going to fall and remaining there was not only futile but
suicide. If you stay here, he said, you
will surely die. If you leave and
surrender to the Babylonians you will live.
The leaders felt that this was demoralizing the soldiers as well as the
people. One can only imagine that they
were already completely demoralized, only a miracle could save them from
destruction and Jeremiah had already prophesied for the Lord in saying there
would be no miracle. The leaders decided
Jeremiah needed to be dealt with in order that the people not hear this
discouraging talk. Fortunately for the
prophet, an Ethiopian eunuch in the king's service heard about Jeremiah's
plight and rescued him from the cistern with the king's blessing. Sometimes it is extremely hard to be a
prophet.
What is a prophet's reward?
Is it to be thrown into jail or a cistern? The reward Jeremiah and the other prophets
received was a commendation for their obedience and their suffering in this
life. Jesus does not promise personal
popularity if we follow Him, He promised rejection and suffering. We are to tell the world that it is dying,
there is no hope for this world, and if you don't go over to Him you will
surely die. He offers us the tree of
life, the cross, as the answer to our dilemma.
If you want to be on the winning side in this war you need to switch
sides now. It is a counter-cultural
message. We think in terms of progress
as a society but God sees exactly the opposite at work, cultural degradation. When Jesus came, He came not to make this
world better but to give us hope that the world we hope for and believe should
exist actually will and it will last through all eternity. We are to work for it now but we do so
knowing that the fulfillment of that vision awaits.
Paul proposes an interesting liturgy. Everyone brings "a hymn, a lesson, a
revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation." If there are prophets there then only two or
three of them should speak and then let the body talk out the prophetic
words. It always amuses me when people want
to use verse 40, "all things should be done decently and in order" to
justify the liturgy. It reveals to me
that they have no idea the context of that scripture and don't care, those
words simply fit their personality. The church
needs a time to come together that looks like this time Paul describes here, we
need to encourage people that God is speaking to them and through them. How did we get to the place in the church
where our gatherings are dominated by the band who chooses the songs we sing
and the preacher as the only one who speaks?
I think we need to break out of that mold as the only time we gather to
consider God's word. We need another
time when we hear from one another. If we
provided that time, perhaps the prophetic folks wouldn't feel so frustrated and
we would all be able to understand the prophetic a bit better.
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