If you’re blissfully breezing through life without having come across the myriad of people who outright claim the title “prophet” or just claim to speak a word from God, I honestly envy you. One day my eyes are going to be permanently stuck as I roll them to the top of my skull yet again when someone prophesies in the name of the Lord. It’s not that I don’t believe in the gifts of the Spirit, I just don’t believe the vast majority of what we see today is authentic. One time in a Sunday morning church service I actually heard a woman speak in tongues immediately followed by her husband providing the interpretation. How did we know the message was authentic? Because it didn’t follow the formula of the numerous false prophets, but dealt narrowly with a call to for the body of Christ to return to His Word.
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I know God is imparting a very serious message through Jeremiah, but sometimes the way He words things sometimes appear, on the surface at least, to be humorous. But aside from occasionally making me smirk, I find the fact that throughout Scripture God repeatedly uses the rhetorical question to be really fascinating. Because most of the time when He does this He is speaking about things that are not explained supernaturally or by some mystic means, but simply by every day common sense. Another way of phrasing God’s question is, “Don’t you know that man is fallen and his very nature is to sin?” Everyone knows this, right?
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This is easier to understand and apply if you treat it like a proverb. The basic meaning is, “If you’re having so much difficulty right now in times of relative peace and prosperity, what are you going to do when the REAL trouble starts?” Someone who doesn’t really practice properly for a marathon isn’t going to fare well when it’s time to actually run the 26+ mile course. Someone who doesn’t really study hard doesn’t have the best chance of passing the exam much less acing it. And someone who can’t endure the basic trials and tribulations of this life won’t have much chance of enduring the most excruciating ones to come.
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Make careful note that God does not say the wise man does not have wisdom, nor that the mighty man does not have might, nor that the rich man does not have riches. The issue here isn’t focused on wisdom, power, or wealth but on the verb which is associated with them four different times: “boast“. The issue is once again concerned with human behavior. Specifically it’s human behavior as it is related to what defines a person’s quality of life. Someone possessing these treasures who also maintains a biblical relationship with Christ would know that they exist in order to achieve something far more valuable in God’s economy: “lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth“. These are all expressions of our relationship with others.
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The best interpreter of God’s Word is God’s Word itself. And we need to pay particular attention to the terms it employs. For instance in this passage it does not mention “sin” but “wickedness“. The Hebrew word for “sin” literally means to “miss the mark”, something which anyone is capable of. But the word for “wickedness” carries with it the notion that this is someone who is fully aware of what God’s rules and requirements are but just do not care. They know God’s standards but consciously choose not just to ignore them, but actively work against them. Likewise we are here told that the problem is not simply that God’s people don’t know His Word, it specifically defines the issue, “But My people do not know the ordinance of the Lord“.
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There’s a particular pattern throughout the Bible that is worth paying attention to. Very often before God proves someone is not keeping the commandments of the First Tablet to love God, He first proves they are not keeping the commandments of the Second Tablet to love others. One of the recurring bad spiritual behaviors throughout the whole of history is rooted in the notion that worshiping God is more important than any activity engaging humans. But the God-given commandments are all equally applied in God’s view, so the mistreatment of another person, no matter how it is justified, is just as fatal as mistreating God by worshiping a false god in His place.
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I am never surprised when someone from a non-Christian religion ignores or advocates ignoring the Bible. I would actually expect that. And I am never really surprised when a false Christian sect replaces the authority of the Bible with something in its place like the way the Mormons hold up The Book of Mormon or Jehovah’s Witnesses rely on their New World Translation. That’s par for the course. But when those claiming the label “Evangelical” and operating within the traditional boundaries of mainstream Christianity engage in such practices? It never ceases to simultaneously amaze and depress me.
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