In Jeremiah 32 we find Jerusalem under siege by Babylon and the people of God suffering due to their own sin. We find Jeremiah imprisoned in the court of the guard, apprehended for His faithfulness to speak the Word of the Lord to power.
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar. 2 At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah…Jeremiah said, the Word of the Lord came to me…buy my field…”
For the whole month of September I have been with the weeping prophet, Jeremiah, and a lamenting psalmist, in passages that are sobering, disturbing and a bit wearying. I have journeyed in the Fathers’ love in Jeremiah 2:6 where, God said through Jeremiah, “I brought you into a bountiful country, to eat its fruit and its goodness but you defiled My land…the priests did not say, Where is the Lord? and those who handle the law did not know Me…For my people have committed two evils, they have forsaken Me, as the fountain of living waters and hewn themselves cisterns that can hold no water.” In Psalm 81, “Oh that my people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in My ways.” Psalm 14, “The Lord looks down upon the children of men to see if there are any who understand who seek God. They have all turned aside…” and in Jeremiah 18, the Potters house passage, we are confronted with our tendency to think we should be the potter and not the clay. God says, “Can I not do with you as the potter does with the clay? Because my people have forgotten Me, they have burned incense to worthless idols.”
It’s tempting to read these texts and have a “them and us” posture. To think, “Good thing I haven’t forsaken God!” Or, “I understand He’s the potter and I’m the clay. I’m good with that.” But we dare not distance ourselves from the text and miss the call of God to see ourselves as we really are.
I am convinced, that I don’t know myself, and therefore, I don’t know God, as I think I do.
Thomas Merton, was a Trappist Monk who lived in our very own Gethsemani Abbey here in Kentucky. In his book: Seeds, he says:
“The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness…Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false-self. This is the person that I want to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him/her….without bothering to question the deep mystery of our own identity, (our true self) we fabricate a trifling and impertinent identity (a false-self) for ourselves with the bare scraps of experience that we find lying within immediate reach.”
The false-self cannot rightly interpret the reality of our life or what God is doing. I bet if I had been on the ground in Jerusalem back when Jeremiah was prophesying and talked to the average Israelite, they would not think they had forgotten God or turned away from Him. Most would have justified themselves with the same false-self structures that you and I devise, mostly unconsciously. Then when they are besieged they are appalled, offended and accusatory to God that such a thing might happen to them! Just like we are.
Oh that we would recognize the kindness of God to deal with what is false in us and to pursue our true self. The kindness to uncover us and expose what we can’t see hidden in the depths of our hearts. The journey into the heart of God is a treacherous one. We will not get there falsely.
This is a significant day for me and Joel. 31 years ago today, September 29, 1988, Joel and I welcomed our daughter, and first child, Mikal Amanda McKenzie into our world. I became a mother for the first time. It was the best day of my life at that point. I’ve had a few other best days, each time one of our children entered our world. But Mikal was the one who made me a mother, she was a beautiful red headed little girl with milky white skin and crystal blue eyes. She was a little songbird and gentle of spirit. I was honored to be her mother. I had always wanted to be a mother. I felt completely fulfilled and encountered a love previously unknown to me.
I would have said at that time, that I was a “good” Christian, too. My faith was important to me and I believed in God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I went to church faithfully, read my Bible, prayed.
When Mikal was 10 months old she was diagnosed with a terminal illness called Hurlers Syndrome. There was a twenty-five percent chance that any child we conceived would be afflicted. I was seven months pregnant with our son. We wouldn’t know if he was ok until after he was born. One doctor suggested we end the pregnancy. Mikal was missing a necessary enzyme for life. This disease would prevent proteins strains in her body from breaking down to the point that they could be either utilized by her body or eliminated. Therefore they would store in all her bodies connective tissue, causing organs to be enlarged until taxed beyond limits. She would progress normally for a period of time, plateau in her development and growth, and then digress losing whatever she had gained until ultimately, she would die, probably from heart failure. This disease affected her physical form and disfigured her more and more as time went by. There is no treatment, no cure. Most children with this disease live to be four or five.
In August 1999, when the diagnosis came, we were besieged.
Now, was I in open rebellion to God? No. Did I have idols? Didn’t think so. Was I in complete obedience and suffering for the gospel? Well, no, don’t think that’s why this happened. Was this just an attack of the enemy? That must be it! That’s the easiest answer and fits the false-self narrative well. “Mean devil! Why did you do this to me? It’s an attack!” But it’s not that simple, I’ve learned. That position gives him way more power than he actually has. And without saying it out right, implies we are more righteous than we actually are. He does nothing outside the will of God. He is in opposition to the will of God, yet still under and within the power of God. I don’t blame the devil much any more. I can get to hell on my own. Not to say he isn’t active. He is, but ultimately he’s a tool. He can hinder, thwart, disrupt, discourage, I get that, but I don’t look his way these days. Was it a result of living in a fallen world? That one, I could say, “Yes” to, but it’s not as simple as that either. I’m in relationship with the living God and although under the curse, I am set free from it, can overcome in His name and rise above. Rise above however, doesn’t mean I’m impervious to the effects of the curse.
Beloved, we all have false selves hidden from our awareness…until we are besieged.
We don’t see the jealousy that justifies the back biting and nit-picking we do to one another. We don’t recognize fear as lack of faith. And everything not of faith is sin. We believe more lies than we realize and don’t believe the Truth as much as we think we do. We are blind to the trust we put in our education, our money, our perfect family image, our reputation. I sure didn’t see them in my life. But they were there. Even as I was the good religious girl, always trying to do what was “right.”
Then I was besieged.
I know now, it wasn’t in the fury of God, or the absence of God that this happened. It was in the mercy of an omniscient God who can see what I cannot see in me and in my sincere yet immature heart cry to be fully His, He uses what’s at His disposal, which is everything, even the tragedy of a fallen world event, like a terminal illness, to answer the deepest cry of my heart. And in the power of His love He comes to get me, the real me.
In this crushing time, over 8 years of loving my beautiful girl, as she was taken from us bit by bit with much suffering, multiple surgeries, multiple “almost losing her” experiences, many disappointments and much oppression, I was delivered bit by bit from a religious construct and false-self and met the God-man Jesus, who I fell in love with, was filled with the Holy Spirit and in the besieging, I found life, real life.
I call Mikal, my Moses. God used her to lead me out of bondage to the wilderness so as to capture my whole heart and bring me into real relationship with the living God. I don’t think He caused her disease, but I do believe that He used it for my good and His glory. He is the Potter. I am clay in His loving hands. And the process continues. I am in battles now, I wish I wasn’t and still things in my heart not congruent with Christ are emerging and I am shocked when I see them. I still don’t know myself fully, nor Him. But He is relentless in His pursuit of me, the real me.
So what am I saying? We get messed up in our perspectives of what’s happening in our life because we assume out of our false-self and misinterpret what God is doing. We say things like, “Why would God let this happen to me?” Or, “If God is good, why would He let this bad thing happen or not let this good thing come?” As if we are mature in love, don’t have any idols or false security systems or misplaced trust. If we could see and know all that God does, we would receive these hard things differently, trusting that He is absolutely going to answer our hearts cry to love and be loved. Beloved, we have no idea what that means or how to get there on our own. The fullness of love is manifest for us in the cross. We are on the way to the cross of Christ, so as to go into the tomb and be resurrected true, real.
Most, if not all, of us are not in open rebellion to God. But in the depths of our beings, we are still in process and in the mercy of God He uses events and circumstances, big or small, to reveal truth about ourselves to ourselves so that we indeed can be perfected in love. It takes suffering to learn obedience not because we are outwardly openly disobedient, but because inwardly, hiddenly we are and we don’t know it. We must adopt the posture of the psalmist that cries out, “O God, search me and know me. See if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.”
Psalm 91 was the psalm I was in all week, specifically this portion:
“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, My God, in Him I will trust.” Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day. Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, And show him My salvation.”
I was confused by this passage for a long time, because it just didn’t seem true. I thought I was dwelling in God, abiding. But I was besieged. I was ripped apart and bleeding out and the perilous pestilence and the snare of the fowler did come near me, a thousand didn’t fall at my side, they fell on me, my whole tent was caving in…I thought.
But I was wrong. I came to see that I visited His dwelling some, but didn’t really live there. And I also realized that the real me, the true essence of who I am and who He created me to be was protected as I turned to God again and again, dwelling more and more in His presence, in the midst of the besieging, even though terrible things were happening. In the process of deconstructing all my false structures, my heart was being set free to be loved by God and to love.
Let me give you a couple of examples,
I remember sometime in the first year after Mikal was diagnosed, feeling that God was this high, far away God up on His throne and I was this little nothing down on earth that He didn’t even really see. That thought came up in my heart for day after day. (What caused it to surface, you ask? Besieging)
One night when I was particularly griped with this thought, I had a dream. In my dream, God was up on this grand throne far, far away and I was dying down below, tiny and unnoticed. But then in my dream, I saw Him get up and descend. He came to me, into my world, my city, my house, my bedroom, and then I saw myself in my bed right as I lay at that very moment and Jesus was standing right beside me with His hand on my shoulder. He was near, so, so near. God was with me. He awake while I slept. He watching, caring, protecting, close. I had gone to bed in a lie and I awoke in the Truth of God’s nearness to me. It became a shield and a buckler for me. Now if you had asked me before this happened, if I believed that God had come near in Jesus and that He was with me, I would have answered, “Yes, I believe that.” But I really didn’t. I thought I did. I didn’t know I didn’t believe it. Besieging ferreted it out. I believe it now, truly. I never entertained that lie again. It’s gone. Something false fell that night.
Oh, the mercy of God to deliver me from the snare of the fowler, to give His angels charge over me, for His Truth to become my shield and buckler.
Mikal lived to be nine and a half. She went from my arms to the arms of Jesus on June 13, 1998. After Mikal died, when I got home from her funeral, I wept every day, all day. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t leave my house and I didn’t care. I was covered up in grief. After thirty days of constant grieving, while on the floor in my living room, I heard the Lord speak clearly to my heart, “Jo, your time of mourning is over, go out and reenter your world today.” And after I heard it, the Holy Spirit helped me and I realized that Jesus died to take my grief and I was convicted that I was not to hold onto anything that Jesus died to take for me. I didn’t realize it at that moment, but I’ve come to see that even grief can become an idol. It is not an exaggeration to say, that had He not told me to end the time of mourning, I could still this day be a puddle on my living room floor. I was being slowly swallowed up by something false. On that day, I confessed my sin, got up, literally off my living room floor, dressed, and I ventured out of my house. I went to my mailbox. All I could do. It was the first time I had been out of my house in a month.
I did not get the sense that God was saying, “Get over it.” But rather, don’t let this consume you. Don’t embrace this identity. It’s a false one. And the day I obeyed His voice to go out, it broke something false being built in me, that had it not, might have become a prison. That’s a perspective I gained over time, but on that day, I simply obeyed. Psalm 91 says, “He will be with us in trouble. He will delivers and honor us.” He will! In the midst of my pain and loss, God protected my true self, revealed another construct I was allowing to be built in my life swallowing me in grief and He kept my life. Thanks be to God.
God didn’t do what I had asked Him to do. He didn’t heal Mikal like I wanted, so that she would be with me today, telling of His miraculous power in her life. But He did heal her. And He did deliver me. Hope is alive in me. I’ve shared a tiny slice of my story, but the final chapter hasn’t been read…it’s written though.
The passage in Jeremiah 32, releases hope in the midst of the besieging, in the midst of being imprisoned, the Lord says to Jeremiah, “buy the field.”
6 Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me: ‘Buy my field for the right of possession and redemption is yours; buy it for yourself.’… And I bought the field…I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; and…I put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.
I was so ready to get to a passage of hope in Jeremiah! Finally we get to a place where we hear the Lord say to Jeremiah to go buy the land. We can hope! There will come a time again to build houses, plant vineyards, own land. This besieging and captivity will not last forever.
As Jeremiah, signed the deed, had it witnessed and placed it in an earthenware vessel to protect it and keep it safe, so we as earthen vessels hold onto the promises of God in the midst of our suffering. We wait for the hope that is sure. He will bring absolute restoration, reconciliation, reunion and rejoicing. I reach up by faith to live in that reality.
When we find ourselves besieged: we must humble ourselves and run into the refuge of God. Whatever the reason for the besieging, it really matters little, the right response is always, “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress. My God, in Him, I will trust.”
Beloved, believe God’s promises though yet unfulfilled and not manifest and buy the field, make it public by professing your faith and protect it as long as it takes. Don’t doubt, hold onto His promises.
I “buy the field,” every time I say, “My daughter is alive in Christ, and I will see her again.” I “buy the field” when I say, “He did heal her!” I “buy the field” when I say, “He delivered me from the fowlers snare.” I “buy the field” when I say, “Jesus is coming soon and the dead in Christ will be raised.”
Because of Jesus, a time is coming when every wrong will be made right. God will dwell with us as it was meant to be from the Garden – without pain, sorrow, loss. Only life, gain, joy, health. Buy the field, beloved.
May we yield to the Fatherhood of God in all it’s goodness, may we fight the good fight of the faith, may we take hold of eternal life, which is truly life. He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, to Him be honor and eternal dominion now and forevermore. Amen