Today's reading: Jeremiah 26; Romans 2
Our reading today in Jeremiah 26 highlights the importance of faithful spiritual leadership.
Very little of the Old Testament story focuses on "the people." As you read through the various books of the Old Testament, you realize that, with very few exceptions, everything is about the leaders, priests, and prophets over the people. Even when you do read stories about other people who aren't in those roles, they are generally in support of the "main storyline." For example, we read about Jacob's daughter Dinah, but only to explain why neither Simeon nor Levi, despite being the second and third oldest sons, aren't given the blessing/patriarch role after the oldest, Reuben, disqualified himself, instead letting the blessing fall to Judah. Or we read the story of Ruth and Boaz, but only then because they bear the line of David. This is because it is the leaders, not the people, who are primarily responsible for the spiritual state of Israel.
Given the abundance of information available to us today, it is easy to forget that this has not always been the case. I have a shelf full of bibles of various translations that I can freely use and reference whenever I'd like to, but for much of human history, people have largely only had what their leaders passed down to them. This is why God so seldom directs His indictments against the people generally, because how could they know better? If they are being taught something contrary to what the Lord would have, how would they know? They don't have their own copies of the Scriptures to reference or anything like that, so they are really at the mercy of whatever they are taught. The very notable exception to this is where God does direct His indictments against the people during the wilderness wandering, but that is because the people are receiving the Lord's teachings first-hand through Moses. There is no filtering of information through kings, priests, or prophets who are leading them astray, so when they rebel against God, that is 100% on them.
The reason Jeremiah 26 got me thinking about this this morning is what it says after Jeremiah delivers God's message, "then the priests and the prophets and all the people laid hold of him..." Throughout this chapter, there are repeated references to the priests and the prophets. While the very end of this chapter tells us that Jeremiah was not completely alone in what he was saying, it's crystal clear that he was in the strong minority, and maybe the only one left at that point after Jehoiakim killed Uriah. What this means is that the people are regularly hearing from the priests and the prophets, but what they are hearing is not from the Lord.
God was not telling Jeremiah to step up into a void of spiritual leadership in Israel, He was telling him to step up to oppose Israel's spiritual leadership.
Think about this from the standpoint of the average farmer or laborer in Israel at the time. There is a large group of priests, prophets, teachers, etc., all of whom are in agreement with one another, and some of whom have been in those roles/positions for decades. Up against them though comes a lone(ish) dissenting voice from a random prophet claiming to speak for God. Who would you tend to trust? The large, established, trusted, body of spiritual leadership that is all on the same page, or the lone voice claiming to know better than the rest? Unless you had some reason to assume your leaders were wrong, you would very likely conclude that Jeremiah was an off-base zealot of some kind, but probably not the only one actually speaking for God.
While the people suffered the consequences of their collective sin and rebellion, it was the officials, priests, and prophets; those who were in a position to know better and to lead the people in the truth; who were ultimately accountable for Israel's spiritual state, and this is a big part of why so much of the Biblical story focuses on them.
The fact of the matter is, the situation isn't all that different today. Yes, we have more access to the Bible (along with an endless amount of helps and materials to get deeper into it) than anybody else in history ever has, but do we use that access? How many Christians actually read the Bible regularly? How many Christians have read (or maybe more importantly, regularly read) the whole thing? How many Christians today would even notice if their pastor misquoted or misused a piece of Scripture some week? How many Christians would have any clue if their pastor taught them something that sounded good, but wasn't actually biblical?
Despite having so much Biblical material available to us, if we aren't using it, we actively put ourselves in the same position the Israelites were in in Jeremiah's day, largely at the mercy of whatever the spiritual authority over us is going to tell us.
On the one hand, this should be a wake up call to any of us who aren't actively seeking to learn and grow in the Scriptures so that we aren't leaving ourselves vulnerable, and also so that we can help protect our churches and communities from inaccurate or maybe even malicious teaching and leadership, but on the other hand, it really highlights the importance of ensuring the people in positions of authority in our churches take the Word of God seriously and are willing to live and teach accordingly.
No spiritual leader, other than Jesus Himself, will ever be perfect, but if we subject ourselves to spiritual leadership that does not take the Lord and His Word seriously, we should not expect a vibrant and healthy spiritual life to follow.
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