Wednesday, October 13, 2004
The Martyr Benjamin the Deacon
Kellia: Jeremiah 44:1-14 Epistle: Philippians 2:24-30 Gospel: St. Luke 6:46-7:1
Jeremiah 44:1-14, especially vs. 7:
"And now thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel: Why do you commit this great evil
against yourselves, to cut off from you man and woman, infant and child, from the midst of
Judah, leaving you no remnant?" The German philosopher, Georg Friedrich Hegel in his
Philosophy of History observes, both with some truth and some cynicism, that "peoples and
governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it."
The truth in Hegel's remark certainly is borne out in the prophetic work of Jeremiah. The great
Prophet spent his entire working life striving to save the People of God from needless disaster by
calling them to follow God's revealed principles of history, though largely to no avail.
After King Josiah, who gave serious attention to applying the Law of God in the policies of the
realm, subsequent kings of Judah and generations of God's People seemed to do nothing but fly
in the face of God's will despite steady appeals from His Prophets. Nowhere during Jeremiah's
ministry was resistance to learning God's truth by illustration from the past more evident than
among the refugees of Judah who fled to Egypt, a fact today's reading records.
The refugees from Judah who settled in Egypt gravitated toward existing centers of Egyptian
culture and society (vs. 1), thereby daily immersing themselves in an idolatry with an ahistorical
view of life. The underlying assumption of the Egyptian world-view was the belief that life is
determined by the cyclic forces of nature. Invented deities such as the sun god, the gods of the
sky, earth, air, water, fertility, joy and the realm of the dead were honored and worshiped by the
populace. The Egyptians devoutly burned incense to such spiritual powers in order to influence
and placate the powers of nature in their favor. Any ideas of truth, morality, and beauty derived
solely from regularities which could be observed in the repetitive course of natural processes.
The unique bias of God's People toward history as the field within which God the Lord discloses
His purposes and will for mankind was simply unknown to the Egyptians.
When the idea of fleeing to Egypt arose, Jeremiah was concerned that the remnant of God's
People in Judah were proposing to immerse themselves in a culture with a seductive faith based
on assumptions that would destroy their historical consciousness. The refugees surely would lose
their heritage based on obedience to the will of the Lord of history, and, as a result, they would
reap terrible results (Jer. 42:18).
In their immediate past, the whole nation had fallen into just such pagan worship - especially
after taking Egypt as their ally (Jer. 7:16-20). Having an historical view based on God's
revelation of Himself, the Prophet knew that thrusting aside obedience to God in favor of such
cults would inevitably result in God's wrath being "poured out...upon man and beast, upon the
trees of the field and the fruit of the ground" (Jer. 7:20).
A very significant parallel to this sort of immersion in an alien world-view confronts Orthodox
Christianity today. Recently, speaking to his Priests, the Roman Catholic Cardinal of Great
Britain, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, declared that "Christ [is] being replaced by music, New Age
beliefs, the environmental movement, the occult and the free-market economy." Think of it: all
these popular cultural movements are anchored in a naturalistic, ahistorical view of life.
Beloved, let us be cautious: the adoption of such human inventions and movements invariably
steals the fear of the Lord of history as revealed in Christ Jesus and erodes the commitment to
walk in His truth which He and His Apostles offer as the only way to life (Jer. 44:10).
O Lord Who rulest all men, and by grace hast made us reason-endowed sheep in the holy flock of
Thy Christ, help us to live unto Thee in accordance with Thy saving commandments.
