… who has spoken through the prophets…’ Yes, we are back to my readings of Jeremiah again! There are many ways of describing what a prophet does, but for now I’d like to think of him [or her] as someone who sees the way in which God is working, and gets things moving along in that direction. This reflects the role of God’s Holy Spirit, who does not just enlighten and inspire us, but will ‘guide us into all truth’ as time unfolds [John 16: 12-13].
One of the most distinctive features of Christianity [drawing on Jewish thinking, and later reflected in Islam] is the sense that God is not just standing still in some timeless eternity but moving- and taking us with Him. The same is true of each person, each family and each community. The thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson described life as “like a field of maize in July- it is becoming somewhat else… An individual man is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen”. That’s you! And we, in our turn, are a link to the wonderful future that God is planning.
When Nebuchadnezzar and his Chaldeans besieged and entered Jerusalem, Jeremiah told the king and nobles of Judah to accept the fact of being led captive to Babylon, and be confident that from there God would “cause you to return to your own land”. But the people disobeyed and decided to find a new home in Tahpanhes in Egypt, where they would not hear the war trumpet and not be hungry. They even took Jeremiah with them.
The point is that, from the point of view of the princes of Judah, Egypt probably looked the more sensible option. Yes, it had false gods, but did the Babylonians look any better as they killed King Zedekiah’s sons in front of him before putting his eyes out and burning down the royal palace? Maybe not, but what Jeremiah sensed, and God knew, was that a relocation to Babylon would move His plan forward. In Babylon, the Jews would learn new things about God: His universality and His plan for the end of time. They would learn that God could be worshipped without the temple and animal sacrifice. They would learn and develop truths about angels and the powers of darkness on which, in time, the Lord Jesus would build in His far greater teaching. Egypt, for all its imagined bread and lack of war trumpets, represented a step backwards, returning from whence they had come, counter to His plan. By listening to God, Jeremiah saw through the immediate circumstances to see which way God’s spirit was blowing.
I went cycling in Norfolk last week, where the wind blows strongly. You really do want to be cycling in the direction the wind is blowing. In the same way, our Lord calls us to be a prophetic people, showing how the wind of God’s spirit is moving His world forward according to His plan, to be a kinder, happier and better place, in which Jesus, with all the truths He taught us about God and each other, turns back all our captivity “as the streams in the desert” [Psalm 126: 4].
Lord God of power and might,
You have a wonderful plan for your world, for your church here in our town, And for me;
By your Holy Spirit moving among us, help us to hear your voice speaking your wisdom,
As you lead us and all your creation from tears and captivity to rejoicing.
Amen
Dave Pitcher
