pg. 30 — lightandlifemagazine.com
Before we
address God’s
remedy for Israel’s
condition in Babylon
and, what I perceive to be
the remedy for the church
today, hear what God said to
Jeremiah when he was summoned
to the potter’s house: “Arise and go
down to the potter’s house, and there I will
announce My words to you” (18:2).
Jeremiah adds, “Then I went down to the potter’s house,
and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the
vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of
the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased
the potter to make. Then the word of the Lord came to me
saying, ‘Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this
potter does?’ declares the Lord. ‘Behold, like the clay in the
potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel’”
(18:3–6).
God’s peace abiding among all the people was and still
is God’s remedy for slavery to sin. It is also the dominant
concept the writer has in mind. The term “welfare” in
29:7 can also be defined as peace. In the Old Testament,
God’s presence among His people was believed to create
an environment of peace, total well-being, prosperity, and
security among His people. The presence of peace, as God’s
gift, was conditional upon Israel’s obedience. In prophetic
material, true peace is part of the end-time hope of God’s
salvation.
To effectively bring God’s elaborate and systematic scheme
to fruition, the people of God must place two pursuits atop
the priority list of family prayers and practice. First, they
are to develop a corporate family structure that cultivates a
longing for God to be present in their current location. They
are not to pray that God would remove them from their
existing conditions, as miserable as they might be. Instead,
God calls for His people to obediently labor before Him in
corporate prayer, invoking His presence to come and create
an environment of peace, total well-being, prosperity, and
security among all people.
This instruction was not only God’s intermediate
instruction for His people in Jeremiah’s day. It is still His
transitional plan for His people today. We are reminded
why this is the case when Peter says, “The Lord is not slow
about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient
toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come
to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). But we get an ever better sense
of God’s desire for His people to participate in this prayerful
labor, in Jesus’ instruction to the disciples: “Jesus was
going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their
synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and
healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.
Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because
they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without
a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is
plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the
Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest’”
(Matthew 9:35–38).
God’s scheme — the plan of action for His people both
then and now — is for us to engage in the daily activity of
corporately praying for the Spirit of God to reign down His
peace, which is salvation upon the entire land. Can you
imagine what could happen if, during this time of social
distancing and mask wearing, God’s people obeyed this
command?
The largest hole in the Arctic ozone recently closed. (Visit
fmchr.ch/ozone to learn more.) Wow, if God can mend the
hole in the ozone, couldn’t He also heal the racial divide
that exists among the brothers and sisters with the family of
God? Remember their prayers for the city were not only to
be a benefit for others, but because of their obedience to pray
to the Lord, they were also to prosper in this way.
The second pursuit the people of God were to engage in
was strict adherence to His word alone. Listen to the Lord’s
instruction to His people through Jeremiah: “For thus
says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Do not let your
prophets who are in your midst and your diviners deceive
you, and do not listen to the dreams which they dream. For
they prophesy falsely to you in My name; I have not sent
them,’ declares the Lord. For thus says the Lord, ‘When
seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit
you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to
this place’” (29:8–10).
The threat of false doctrine posed a danger to the people
of God during Jeremiah’s time. For example, in Chapter 28,
Hananiah the prophet falsely told the people that God had
broken the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, and the people would
be free to return home within two years. Jeremiah on the
other hand, said to the false prophet, in short, that God had
not sent him. Because he was causing the people to believe
a lie, which led to their rebellion against Him, Hananiah
would die that year.
God is still serious about His people not listening to and
being dissuaded from His plans for them by deceptive words.
Today, false doctrines of racism and white nationalism are a
demonic threat to the family of God. Just as in Jeremiah’s
day, the mature leaders, those of color and white alike, must
take a stand against any doctrine that lifts itself up against
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