Tag Archives: Jeremiah 8

“Good Luck Charm” Religion

March 29, 2023 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

“How can you say, ‘We are wise,
for we have the law of the Lord,’
when actually the lying pen of the scribes
has handled it falsely?”
Jeremiah 8:8 (NIV)

A few years ago, I was working with a group of leaders who were tasked with teaching the book of 1 Corinthians to a larger gathering of Jesus’ followers. Before we began, I made a copy of the text without any of the chapter or verse numbers listed. I changed the type face to a font that resembled actual handwriting and printed it and handed it out. I encouraged the team to put themselves in the sandals of a leader of the Jesus followers in ancient Corinth and to read the words as they were originally intended: as a personal letter from their friend Paul. It was a transformative exercise for us.

One of the things that I have to always remember on this chapter-a-day journey is that the chapter and verse designations were not part of the original writings for centuries. Manuscripts as early as the 4th century AD contain some evidence of text being divided into chapters, but it wasn’t until the 12th century that Steven Langton added the chapter divisions and it wasn’t until 1551 that a man named Robert Estienne added the verse definitions. In 1560, the first translation of the entire Great Story referred to as the Geneva Bible, employed chapters and verses throughout. They’ve been used ever since.

Chapters and verses are an essential method for study, referencing, and cross-referencing. That’s why they remain. However, in my forty-plus years of studying, I’ve found that they can also hinder my reading, understanding, and interpretation. Chapters and verses gain individual attention apart from the context of the whole in which they were intended when written. Individual verses get pulled out of context. In other cases, like today’s chapter, the entire chapter is merely a piece of a larger message. I can easily read and contemplate just today’s chapter alone without connecting it to the chapters before and after into which they fit.

In today’s chapter, I noticed that the Hebrew people of Jeremiah’s day were saying, “We are wise, for we have the law of the Lord.” Something clicked and I remembered something I read in yesterday’s chapter: “Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” Both chapters are really part of one message or series of messages to be read together as a unit.

Taken together, I realize that there’s a theme in Jerry’s message that I would never see if I confine myself to each individual chapter and don’t consider them together as a whole. The Hebrew people of Jeremiah’s day had misplaced their trust. They trusted in Solomon’s Temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. They trusted in the “Law of the Lord” which had recently been rediscovered and made known to them. They had not, however, placed their trust in the God who gave them the Law, nor the God who inspired the building of the temple. They were treating the temple and the Law the same way they treated the other gods who they had worshipped, sometimes within the temple they were worshipping. The temple and the Law were basically good luck charms like all the other stars, idols, and pagan images they worshipped along with them.

In the quiet this morning, I thought about people whom I’ve met and known along my life journey whom I’ve observed treating their religion and their local church building, much like the people Jerry is addressing in his message, as good luck charms. When trouble comes in life (and trouble always comes in life – God even says so) I have observed their shock and anger. I have heard them express rage at God for not warding off their troubles and making their lives free of difficulty, pain, or sorrow. But God never promised that.

In fact, when Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit of their own free will, God said specifically that the consequences would include pain and conflict, sweat and toil, along with death and grief on our earthly journeys. Going to church and dressing my life up in religious traditions does not save me from any of those earthly realities. However, a trusting relationship with God gives me what I need to endure troubles in such a way that qualities like faith and perseverance, peace and maturity, along with joy and hope hone me to become more like Jesus, who endured more undeserved trouble than I could ever imagine and did so on my behalf.

Once again, a Bob Dylan lyric came to mind as I pondered these things this morning:

Trouble in the city, trouble in the farm
You got your rabbit’s foot, you got your good-luck charm
But they can’t help you none when there’s trouble…

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Rhetorical Question

March 20, 2018 Tom Vander Well 2 Comments

Since my people are crushed, I am crushed;
    I mourn, and horror grips me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
    Is there no physician there?
Why then is there no healing
    for the wound of my people?
Jeremiah 8:21-22 (NIV)

Being an amateur student of family history, I have gained a certain appreciation for how Story plays out across generations. My great-grandfather took a large risk coming to America alone as a young man. There is little or no primary source material available to us, but I would have to believe that he was forced by circumstance simply to focus on making a life for himself. Carpentry was what he knew. His father having died when he was young, he went to work as a wooden dowel maker as a boy to help provide for his family. In the States he eventually opened his own hardware store.

I can only speculate what my great-grandfather hoped for his descendants. He was intent that my grandfather get a college education. My grandfather was the first in our family to do so. And so my father after him, becoming a CPA. And so my siblings and I after my father, having greater opportunities afforded us than my great-grandfather could have dreamed.

So it is with the Story. My grandparents’ generation suffered through two world wars and the Great Depression. I grew up hearing the stories of hard times, making ends meet, and sacrificing much to stave off the threat of tyranny of Germany and Japan. I have been afforded much because they suffered much.

Jeremiah is traditionally known as “the weeping prophet.” He mourned as he prophesied the destruction of his city and the suffering of his people, then he suffered through the unspeakable circumstances as his own prophetic predictions came to pass.

In today’s chapter, the weeping prophet mourns and grieves for his people as he predicts the dark times to come. He then asks a rhetorical question:

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then is there no healing
for the wound of my people?

Eventually, Jeremiah’s own prophetic vision will see future generations and a “new” and “everlasting covenant” God will make through Jesus. Many generations after Christ, the hymn writers answered Jeremiah’s question with their own verse, which I remember singing as a child:

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul.
Some times I feel discouraged,
And think my work’s in vain,
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again.

The rhetorical question of a prophet suffering through his chapter of the Great Story is answered by the echo of verse two thousand years later by poets afforded the opportunity to experience the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s visions.

This morning I am thinking about my own generation. I’m thinking about the things we experience, the things we suffer, and the rhetorical questions we ask ourselves. I’m hearing a lot of big rhetorical questions being asked of late. As with previous generations who paved the road for my journey, I am living out my chapter of the Great Story and paving the way for Milo’s journey and the generations who will come after. I am mindful this morning of the responsibility, and even heart-ache, that comes accompanies each generation’s chapter of the Story.

In the quiet my heart is whispering a few rhetorical questions of my own, and wondering what the echo of future generations will be.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Jeremiah 8

January 10, 2011 Tom Vander Well 2 Comments

: Image via Wikipedia

So why does this people go backward,
and just keep on going—backward!
They stubbornly hold on to their illusions,
refuse to change direction. Jeremiah 8:5 (MSG)

It takes little or no courage to continue living in the same unhealthy patterns. We perpetuate cycles and systems that drain life from our souls because it’s what we know and there is fear doing anything different. The unknown terrifies us more than the muck in which we find ourselves wading each day.

Yet if it is Life we wish to experience in abundant and increasing measure, than a change of direction is required. Illusions to which we have firmly grasped must be released, old patterns of thought and behavior must be left behind, and new relational systems must be established.

When we walk with Jesus, old things must surely pass away. New things must surely come.