Theological Bites
Six years ago, I started a fellowship (iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship), and to-date, I have endeavoured to maintain teaching the word of God as it is. I have to confess, what I normally teach at the fellowship is often offensive to the doctrines and traditions of established belief systems. Since that time, I have not attracted numbers as the cults of this age have. I have always asked God why people are not attracted to preachers and teachers of the word like myself and they (people) are easily swayed by these false prophets.
I had resorted to succumbing to modern church marketing and mobilization ways to ensure I get people to the fellowship but gradually, I have begun to give up and tone down. The major reason for the shift in my approach to ministry is due to what the Lord has revealed to me. The truth of the matter is that I was called to preach and proclaim the gospel and not to mobilize masses. Therefore, I must decrease and He must increase, and all my efforts should be put to making sure that I got the message right rather focusing on whether I got the right quality and quantity of the mass.
The reason am saying this under an introduction of prophets, is because the true prophets of God were not populists but unpopular and uncompromising theologians. Prophets of Israel were men and women with a particular message from God. It matters at this point that all the prophets did not preach a different message but instead preached the same message about and of the same God in its various facets.
As they preached this message, they were not under any pressure of administration, institutional logistics, Television and media bills, or church collection auditing. The prophets were not under the influence of technology, philosophy and neither did political-correctness preceed theological-correctness. These were men under the influence of the God himself (2Peter 1:21). The problem with modern men of God are either under the influence of greed (Philippians 3:18-20) or the evil spirits (1John 4:1-6; Mathew 7:21-22)
In my frustration as a minster of the Gospel, I have inquired from God why people are not attending to this true message that I have been faithful to, and the Lord told me; ‘I commissioned you with a special message, and it has its particular audience.’ This is exactly what he did with the former preachers (the prophets) who are the pioneer evangelists upon which Christianity was built (Ephesians 2:20). God trusted these men with a special message to a particular audience, God did not tell Isaiah a different thing from what he told Jeremiah, but since man’s problem is one (sin) and his solution is mono (savior), God throughout the generations has communicated the same message in its different facets.
It is from the narratives, events and experiences that are recorded in each of the biblical book that we investigate what the Lord is communicating about himself, our problem, its ultimate solution and us. Every prophet in his time and situation, therefore, preaches the same God and applies the same word of God to different situations. The different themes (motifs) in each prophetic book or generally each bible book are particular modes of God’s revelation of himself and his exclusive message.
The Theological Motifs
In Jeremiah, I can only trace four of them and I will, in two or five sentences, say a few words about each. I am going to arrange them in a chronology that begins with the problem to the solution and not necessarily as they appear in the book.
Human Will:
In the book of Jeremiah, we see that the problem of Israel (man) is not just disobedience but rebellion as well. Man has a covenantal relationship with God but all the time it is man who violates his end while God is faithful to his side. The relationship (between man and God) is one which is not dissolved due to the failure of man, but rather God insists and ensures that Israel (man) and understands that he has failed God. In the process, God, by all means, maintains the relationship as long as Israel’s (man) failure is in what Israel (man) has done and not in the will. The book of Jeremiah takes seriously the issue of human will.
The prophet seems to grasp the idea that man is a free-will being and therefore man’s relationship with God is foundationally seated on what he wills. This is not to assert that Jeremiah minds not human action, but it is to emphasize that the theological perspective of prophet Jeremiah is that man’s relationship with God is based on the ‘will of man.’
In Jeremiah chapters 17-19 the prophet presents this motif in two imageries. The first is when he likens the corruptness of the human will with the heart (Jeremiah 17:1-10), and demonstrates that the sin has affected the human heart to drive it away from choosing God. He further argues that since the faculties of volition are in the heart, because of the sin engraved (the fall implied) on the human heart (human will), man is likely to be self-deceptive and he needs to access God to survive a self-deception (Jeremiah 17:9-10).
He further goes ahead and employs another analogy of clay in the potter’s hand. In that, analogy, the potter is Yahweh and the clay is Israel (humanity/man). As it unfolds in the passage of the clay and the potter in chapters 18-19, it is commonly assumed that things turn out differently due to the potter, but actually, Jeremiah argues that the product of the potter’s work is determined by the quality (willingness) of the clay (Israel/Humanity).
While the initiative of the Potter on the clay is important, the willingness of the clay in the hands of the potter determines what the clay will become. The clay cannot make itself the moldings and objects that the potter knows potentially lie in the clay. The clay cannot help God or even participatory determine its products and neither can the clay by itself make anything out of itself; but unless the clay wills to be made into something, the potter’s nature is one that respects the free-will of the clay.
Revealingly, the book of Jeremiah handles foundational teaching that concerns divine sovereignty in relation to human free-will. God is sovereign and above the whole universe. Ever since he created human beings in his image (free-will). However, he launched his eternal attribute of permissive sovereignty into practice. It is under the permissive sovereignty of God that man created in the image of God is free to choose for or even against God his creator. The contention of all Old Testament prophets is why Israel (humanity representatives) would abuse their free-will by choosing against their own creator. We see this in Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, etc.
God’s Will
How God’s sovereignty and man’s will relate especially in the business of salvation has always been challenging to many believers and Bible students. Jeremiah and other prophets understand the will of God to be what is presented in the Torah (Psalms 40:8; Psalms 119) and that is what they meant whenever they said; ‘It is written’. In an advanced way, these prophets also insisted that the will of God is in their preface of ‘Thus saith the Lord’. The will of God was also, what the Lord spoke to them directly in particular situations as long it did not contradict a proper interpretation of that which was written and whatever he had said before.
The New Testament writers were as well stringent about God’s will and to the believers in Rome he said; “prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:1–2). To those in Colossae he wrote; “filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will” (Colossians 1:9). In addition, to the Philippians, he taught that God works in us “to will and to do” (Philippians 2:13). The Apostle John concluded that if we do God’s will, we will abide forever (1John 2:17). It is in the scriptures that we see clear relations between the will of God and the will of man when John writes, “if any man’s will is to do his will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority”. (John 7:17; Jeremiah 4:27).
Man’s Will
For the sake of literalism, let us mention that I have not been able to find the term ‘Free-will’ in the Bible. It is, however, true that the Bible teaches anthropology (nature and nurture of man) and it is through that biblical teaching that many scholars and believers have concluded that originally man was created with a free-will. Unlike other creatures, we are both historical and volitional beings. It also matters that we mention that since the fall (Genesis 3), man’s free-will is not free of sin and therefore, for ages it suffered the captivity of sin (Galatians 4:8; 2Peter 2:19).
While in our originality we are free-will beings, in our process into the Earth (at birth), we are born with propensities bent to sin (Romans 6:17). We, therefore, have a compromised ‘free-will’ as post-fall beings. The evil one knew that human will was the only access to turning man against his God and through temptation, he exiled man from God (Genesis 3:1-6). Heaven with its finished product of salvation can only access man through his will (Ephesians 4:30). This is what Prophet Jeremiah teaches in his discourse of chapters 17-19.
God bless you I invoke TRUTH, WISDOM and FAITH (2Tim 2:7)
Priest Isaiah White (+256-793/775 822833 for further inquiries)
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