Scripture Daily

Context No. 573 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 23:15-24: in context

15Therefore the LORD of Armies says concerning the prophets: “Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink poisoned water; for from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has gone out into all the land.” 16The LORD of Armies says, “Don’t listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They teach you vanity. They speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD. 17They say continually to those who despise me, ‘The LORD has said, “You will have peace;”’ and to everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart they say, ‘No evil will come on you.’ 18For who has stood in the council of the LORD, that he should perceive and hear his word? Who has listened to my word, and heard it? 19Behold, the LORD’s storm, his wrath, has gone out. Yes, a whirling storm! It will burst on the head of the wicked. 20The LORD’s anger will not return until he has executed and performed the intents of his heart. In the latter days, you will understand it perfectly. 21I didn’t send these prophets, yet they ran. I didn’t speak to them, yet they prophesied. 22But if they had stood in my council, then they would have caused my people to hear my words, and would have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings. 23“Am I a God at hand,” says the LORD, “and not a God afar off? 24Can anyone hide himself in secret places so that I can’t see him?” says the LORD. “Don’t I fill heaven and earth?” says the LORD.

Jeremiah is confronting the false prophets of Jerusalem, the ones who tell everyone exactly what they want to hear, promising peace to people set on evil, saying no harm will come to anyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart. God's complaint is that these prophets speak visions of their own minds, not a word from him; I did not send them, he says, yet they ran; I did not speak, yet they prophesied. And then, at the end, God asks a set of questions that expose the assumption underneath all the false comfort. Am I a God who is near, he asks, and not a God far off? Can anyone hide himself in secret places where I cannot see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?

Those questions cut to what makes false comfort and hidden sin possible in the first place: the quiet assumption that God is far off, distant, not really watching, easy to slip past. The false prophets could invent reassuring messages, and the people could persist in their stubborn ways, only because at some level they had decided God was remote enough not to notice, a God kept at a safe distance while they did as they pleased. And God's answer dismantles that entirely. He is not far off; he is near. There is no secret place that hides a person from him. He fills heaven and earth, so there is nowhere his gaze does not reach and no corner of a life he does not see.

That confronts the way I quietly live as though God were distant. Much of what I let myself do, and much of the comforting story I tell myself, depends on a half-conscious sense that God is far away and not really attending to the details of my life, that some corners of it are hidden from him. Jeremiah's God says there are no such corners; he is near, and he fills heaven and earth. Where am I acting as though God were far off and not watching, and how would it change what I do in secret to know that he is near, and that no place hides me from him?

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