Filling your heart with what is good
This week's verse is Jeremiah 15:16:
These verses are a kind of oasis in the middle of Jeremiah's self-congratulatory rant about his difficult life situation in Jeremiah 15. (If you have a Bible nearby, or promise not to be distracted if I give you a link, read the whole thing and see what I am talking about.) He's all "I am so righteous and worked so hard at being righteous, but my life is going badly and I'm afraid you might want it that way, God." And God reassures him that everything will work out. But these verses are neither "Look at what a beautiful, gorgeous, upstanding man I am" nor "I feel like God is trashing my life despite the fact that I should have earned bonus treatment by now". They're simply an honest admission of loving devotion.
In the midst of his complaints, and worries, and self-analysis, Jeremiah says that God's words filled his heart with joy and happiness. He describes himself as drinking them in. Other translations describe it as eating them up. He consumes them like food or drink, and makes them part of himself. How often do we find ourselves in that condition, where we drink up God's words? Maybe we drink up other words, condemnation, fashionable self-affirmations, questionable self-talk? But God's words? Probably not very often.
We could take these verses and ask "what are you drinking?" But Jesus said that it's not what goes into us that makes us unclean, but what bubbles up out of our heart and comes out of us. It's not what we don't consume that makes us clean. Our natural state is to be unclean. Rather it's what we choose to consume, and to develop a taste for, that wells up in us for good. It's not a question of whether we're eating too much junk food, but whether we're getting enough "Vitamin G." One way to avoid eating unhealthy food is to eat the healthy stuff first so you don't have room. Some of what Jeremiah describes sounds a bit like that. "Big glass of water before walking down the candy aisle..."
Jeremiah says God's words filled his heart with joy and happiness because he belongs to Him. As Christians, we belong to God. Is that a joy we drink in very often? Especially when life is hard? Have you ever been in a prayer tirade about something and just found yourself blurting out "but I am really happy to be a Christian?" Jeremiah had drank in so much of God's truth that it just came bubbling out of him in the midst of his trouble.
Jeremiah had developed a taste for God's words, even when they were dangerous. He wanted them so badly that he got himself into trouble all of the time by disregarding everything else to get them. He didn't want to just acquire them like books and baubles, but to consume them and be changed by them, the way a malnourished person might with the vitamin they lack. Jesus tells us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Why? What could he be saying?
Gloomy Jeremiah's one bit of joy is "because I belong to you, O Lord God of Heaven's Armies." How did he get to know that? How did he become so sure of it that it just sort of came up in the middle of conversation? I think it was because he drank in God's words, and they became part of him. His reality was that he, like us, belonged to God, the Lord of Heaven's Armies. He was under the leadership and protection of the most powerful being in the universe. We are cherished companions of that being.
This first week of Advent, think about this verse and what it means. Not just the idea of consuming God's truth, but of the joy and happiness Jeremiah describes, and of the powerful God who cared for Jeremiah but whose greatest blessing was given to us.
As your words came to me I drank them in,
and they filled my heart with joy and happiness
because I belong to you, O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies.
These verses are a kind of oasis in the middle of Jeremiah's self-congratulatory rant about his difficult life situation in Jeremiah 15. (If you have a Bible nearby, or promise not to be distracted if I give you a link, read the whole thing and see what I am talking about.) He's all "I am so righteous and worked so hard at being righteous, but my life is going badly and I'm afraid you might want it that way, God." And God reassures him that everything will work out. But these verses are neither "Look at what a beautiful, gorgeous, upstanding man I am" nor "I feel like God is trashing my life despite the fact that I should have earned bonus treatment by now". They're simply an honest admission of loving devotion.
In the midst of his complaints, and worries, and self-analysis, Jeremiah says that God's words filled his heart with joy and happiness. He describes himself as drinking them in. Other translations describe it as eating them up. He consumes them like food or drink, and makes them part of himself. How often do we find ourselves in that condition, where we drink up God's words? Maybe we drink up other words, condemnation, fashionable self-affirmations, questionable self-talk? But God's words? Probably not very often.
We could take these verses and ask "what are you drinking?" But Jesus said that it's not what goes into us that makes us unclean, but what bubbles up out of our heart and comes out of us. It's not what we don't consume that makes us clean. Our natural state is to be unclean. Rather it's what we choose to consume, and to develop a taste for, that wells up in us for good. It's not a question of whether we're eating too much junk food, but whether we're getting enough "Vitamin G." One way to avoid eating unhealthy food is to eat the healthy stuff first so you don't have room. Some of what Jeremiah describes sounds a bit like that. "Big glass of water before walking down the candy aisle..."
Jeremiah says God's words filled his heart with joy and happiness because he belongs to Him. As Christians, we belong to God. Is that a joy we drink in very often? Especially when life is hard? Have you ever been in a prayer tirade about something and just found yourself blurting out "but I am really happy to be a Christian?" Jeremiah had drank in so much of God's truth that it just came bubbling out of him in the midst of his trouble.
Jeremiah had developed a taste for God's words, even when they were dangerous. He wanted them so badly that he got himself into trouble all of the time by disregarding everything else to get them. He didn't want to just acquire them like books and baubles, but to consume them and be changed by them, the way a malnourished person might with the vitamin they lack. Jesus tells us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Why? What could he be saying?
Gloomy Jeremiah's one bit of joy is "because I belong to you, O Lord God of Heaven's Armies." How did he get to know that? How did he become so sure of it that it just sort of came up in the middle of conversation? I think it was because he drank in God's words, and they became part of him. His reality was that he, like us, belonged to God, the Lord of Heaven's Armies. He was under the leadership and protection of the most powerful being in the universe. We are cherished companions of that being.
This first week of Advent, think about this verse and what it means. Not just the idea of consuming God's truth, but of the joy and happiness Jeremiah describes, and of the powerful God who cared for Jeremiah but whose greatest blessing was given to us.
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