Identity - Lesson 5

Dr. James Houston

Identity

th731-05

Prophetic Identity of Jeremiah

Lesson Transcript

With Abraham and Ruth we now have a third identity: the prophetic identity of Jeremiah. Jeremiah was regarded so great that some thought Jesus was Jeremiah risen again, as we read in Matthew 16:14. The superscript infers three influences on his self-understanding: his family, his own historical context and the Word of God that came to him.

From his family, he was the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests of Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin, so he was a priest of Israel. Indeed, as a true Israelite by birth he compares remarkably with Ruth. He boasts that he knows the Lord, Jeremiah 9:23, and that his hope was in the Lord, 17:13, and it was not in man. He identifies with Israel as a weeping prophet because of his judgement on nominal Israel. ‘Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain… For I have heard the sound of the trumpet; I have heard the battle cry.’ Identifying with Israel—‘since my people are crushed, I am crushed’—he prays God will avenge the nations that do not acknowledge you for they have devoured Jacob and destroyed his homeland. And paradoxically, he combines complaint of unjust treatment by foe and friend alike, yet interceding for them.

Finally, he identifies himself with God’s people. Our backsliding is great, he says, we’ve sinned against you. And Jeremiah understood that he belonged to a generation of Israelites under divine wrath. The Lord commanded him not to marry and not to have children, for mothers and fathers of his time will bear deadly diseases. They will perish by the sword and famine and their dead bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals.

I myself have always identified with the prophet Jeremiah since I was about 16. Precociously, between the ages of 16 and 18, I collected half a dozen commentaries and read Jeremiah constantly. I was a suffering child. I was born in affliction and Jeremiah to me was my greatest joy in the whole of scripture. Some of you may find the same experience in the midst of your sufferings.

[00:03:19]

So let’s return now to Jeremiah. Anathoth, his home town, was one of the cities given to the Levites, so as a priest Jeremiah was privileged to know Israel’s ancient history. Also, he had been sanctified from his mother’s womb, so accordingly these inheritances fitted him for his calling as the early figures were not. Memories of the past do form and shape us, so our future too is shaped by our past narrative. All these factors forge our desires and will. Jeremiah did believe in God as creator of Heaven and Earth. He echoes this in describing the land as formless and empty and the heavens and the light were gone, in 4:23–26. He echoes the Abrahamic covenant when he prophesied that all the nations will be blessed in Israel as Abraham’s offspring. If, he says, you, Israel, will return, ‘return to Me and if in a truthful, righteous way, you swear, “As surely as the Lord lives,” then the nations will invoke blessings by him and in him they will boast.’ You can see here the echo in his utterance of 4:1–2 with Genesis 12:3 and Genesis 28:14.

Again he echoes Israel’s complaint repeated again: where is the Lord who brought us up out of Egypt and led us through the barren wilderness in 2:6–7.And breaking the Noachic covenant, so that night and day no longer come at their appointed time. Then the covenant with David my servant can also be broken. I will make the descendants of David my servant as countless as the stars in the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore, in Jeremiah 33:20–22. And you can compare this with Genesis 8:22, or indeed with 2 Samuel 7:28ff.

Anathoth was only three miles north east of Jerusalem. It was a commuting distance to the temple at Jerusalem where Jeremiah could conduct his daily temple services, including all his Davidic Psaltery. As an inspired poet, Jeremiah too composed his songs and poems, singing from the heart. His confessions are moulded or modelled on the lament Psalms. Cursed by the populace, Jeremiah was befriended by the scribes, the educated elite, themselves well-educated in reading and writing. So Jeremiah wrote letters to the Babylon exiles and composed a book of consolation, as we’re reminded in 30:1. He composed dirges for Josiah’s death. He also had wealth and land around Anathoth and was able to redeem his uncle’s property, like Ruth the Moabitess had the property redeemed by Boaz. His friends as disciples were the scribes Baruch and Seraiah, largely responsible themselves for the composition of the Book of Jeremiah that was written in his memory, as we read in Jeremiah 36:32, 51:59–64.

[00:07:27]

Spanning 40 turbulent years, which were 627 to 587 BC, when Babylon’s vassal states were reasserting their independence, Jeremiah had his prophetic call. Josiah asserted his independence by re-establishing King David’s religion based on the Mosaic Covenant, as we read in 2 Chronicles 34:3–7. The Word of the Lord first came to Jeremiah precisely in 627 BC while he was still a youth, as we read in 1:6, to declare Josiah’s covenant was too superficial. Declaring Judah did not turn to me with all her heart, but only in pretence—3:10. And so return, return, return is the defining message of the prophet for the next 25 years of his vocation between 627 to 605, crying out this is what the Lord says. Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths. Ask where the good way is. Walk in it and you will find rest for your souls.

Then in 622, Hilkiah, the high priest, in the rubble of the temple now being repaired discovered Moses’ Book of the Law, which had been lost through Manasseh’s 55 years of apostate religion. Jeremiah eats it like his daily food. For the rest of Jeremiah’s book, its cadence, its subjects and vocabulary are wholly imbibed by Jeremiah in his mind and writing. As he says, when your words were found, I ate them. They were my joy and my heart’s delight—Jeremiah 15:16.

Then in 605, Babylon decisively defeated Egypt to become the world’s first superpower in Jeremiah’s world. In that year, the Word of the Lord came again to Jeremiah: take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel since the days I first began speaking to you in the reign of Josiah until now. Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I plan to inflict on them, they will each turn from their wicked ways and from their sin. But Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar’s puppet king, as he heard the Word of God being read to him, cut up the scrolls, strip by strip, defiantly, and threw the strips into the fire of the brazier burning before him—Jeremiah 36. Judah’s fate is now sealed. Jeremiah can no longer be a prophet of reform. He can only be a prophet of doom. Now he prophesised Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, would march on Jerusalem and the Israelites’ only hope was to surrender. Viewed as a traitor, Jeremiah was cast into a dungeon for five days then cast into a muddy cistern, to be rescued by the Ethiopian eunuch Ebed-melech in chapter 38. but his prophesy was fulfilled in the eleventh year of Zedekiah —598–587—when the people went into exile.

[00:11:55]

This broad summary of this first lecture indicates then the unique ways that our God as our Redeemer, Creator has bonded the identity and narrative of all the human race.

If you are considering having group discussions on this first lecture, let me suggest three questions that you can discuss. The first one is how you see the importance of the three doctrines of creatio ex nihilo: God creating all things out of nothing; the Imago Dei as God creating man in his image and likeness; and creatio per verbum, that God has created all things by the Word of His power as being relevant and basic issues in your own witness before non-Christians. Of course, you can’t use the language that we’ve used this morning. You have to refer to it in much more secular language, but at least try to think about it.

The second question that you can raise among yourselves is if narrative is so important for our Christian identity, how does our professional identity mean anything to us in comparison? We’re so besieged with a functional identity. We’re so caught up with the captivity that what we do determines who we are. It’s nonsense. Our identity is in Christ and nowhere else. How radically does that change the whole structure of our religious life or our secular life today?

The third question is does figural exegesis need to become more basic in our Bible study, reading and meditation? Do we find that figural exegesis really enobles us to having our identity in Christ?

[00:14:44]

And the last question is how does the exemplar of Ruth revise our need to view the Biblical role of womanhood? Subtly, we still believe as men that man is superior to woman. And ethnically, of course, some cultures like the Japanese intensify this. But as evangelicals, we ourselves have never given the esteem to Mary that we should give her; that we’ve so reacted against Mariolatry, which, of course, is the worship that is pagan, with the esteem that Mary needs to have recovered in our evangelical churches.