"...For the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God..." Ex 34:14
I just finished reading a few chapters in Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination and was struck and burdened with a thought that might be worthy of sharing.
In his book Brueggemann speaks of the role of the prophet and how it is a needed role for the church today. He sets the message of the prophet firmly in the tension between what we perceive as liberalism and conservativism. In his chapter entitled "Prophetic Criticizing and the Embrace of Pathos" Brueggemann (from here on out Walter, because it's easier to type) discusses Jeremiah and his intense laments and weeping over Israel. Walter writes:
"His [Jeremiah's] passion is, as Abraham Heschel has seen, the passion of this God who knows what time it is (Jer 8:7). God knows, and his prophet knows with him, that it is end time." p 48
"Jeremiah has pressed where his contemporaries would not readily go, to the pain of God, to a place where only Hosea had ventured before. Yahweh is no longer an enemy who must punish or destroy but the helpless parent who must stand alongside death, like Mary at Calvary, like David over Absalom, "My child, my child," but he is helpless and can only grieve." pp 54-55
"The prophet is not addressing behavioral problems. He is not even pressing for repentance. He has only the hope that the ache of God could penetrate the numbness of history." p 55 (author's italics)
Walter's book and specifically these quotes (although they're probably better understood in context) caused me to think of something: Yahweh is still a jealous God. He is jealous for his people. The church, the people of God, have turned their backs on him.
When this thought first struck me it filled me with hope. I have often wept over the church. I've laid awake at night pleading with God to purify his people, to do anything, revival, persecution, anything, just purify the church. I was filled with hope, because we do worship a jealous God, he is zealous for his people. I believe he will purify his church, he will bring us back to him.
As I thought, I began to dread the jealousy of the Lord. I desire for the church to be brought back, but how will God enact it? Will we have our own "exile" it is a fearful concept, because great and terrible is the day of the Lord.
Is it comforting that God is still jealous? Emphatically YES!! Is it frightening that he is still jealous for his people? YES, terrifyingly so!
But my heart aches for the purification of the church. I say: Come Lord Jesus, move as you must, purify the Church through whatever means necessary, even if it means that many have to die in persecution. I will die, I long to die a martyr's death, if it means the church will realize her sin and return to the Lord. What a great joy for my blood to prove the saying true: "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."
Come Lord Jesus, do what you must! Will you declare this with me? I pray that you will.
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