A restless generation will hear from God when they stop to listen

Discerning the signs.

“Announce this to the house of Jacob and proclaim it in Judah: ‘Hear this, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear: Should you not fear me?’ declares the Lord. ‘Should you not tremble in my presence?’” (Jeremiah 5:20-22)

Jeremiah was outraged by the unbelief that he saw among the people, both in the city of Jerusalem and across the land of Judah. It was almost unbelievable that they should be so foolish with their great heritage embedded in the history of the nation. “Hear this!” he proclaimed; but he knew that it was useless - because although they had eyes to see and ears to hear, they did not use them.

The words are reminiscent of those used by Isaiah at the time of his call to ministry when God told him that he would be ministering among a people who were “ever hearing, but never understanding; ever seeing, but never perceiving” (Isa 6:9). It was just the same in Jeremiah’s time some 200 years after Isaiah. And in another 500 years Jesus would be saying exactly the same thing of the generation in his lifetime. He spoke to them with simple stories because of their lack of understanding. He said “This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand” (Matt 13:13).

The spiritual blockage among the people of Israel was seemingly endemic. Jeremiah struggled to understand it. He saw that the people had lost respect for God; they had no sense of awe: “‘Should you not fear me?’ declares the Lord. ‘Should you not tremble in my presence?’” This message was not only to the people, but to their leaders and teachers.

“Hear this!” Jeremiah proclaimed; but he knew that it was useless - because although the people had eyes to see and ears to hear, they did not use them.

Spiritual Vacuum

Jeremiah accounted for this disrespect of God as stemming from the loss of recognition that the God of Israel was actually the God of Creation, who had created the universe, measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and weighed the mountains on his scales (Isa 40:12). The people had turned aside from the truth of the word of God, which resulted in a total lack of spiritual discernment.

They couldn’t even recognise what God was saying to them through the failure of the spring and autumn rains, which were causing havoc with the harvest and meant that there would be food shortages in the near future. God had withheld the rain because of the sins of the people; but they were so foolish they could not discern the signs of his activity.

When people fail to acknowledge the God of Creation, they create a spiritual vacuum that makes them insensitive to the activity of God. It leads to every kind of wickedness that affects the whole of society, which was the teaching of Paul in Romans 1. Jeremiah pointed to the social sins that had produced great inequalities in the nation. The rich had become powerful and had “grown fat and sleek” (Jer 5:27). These greedy men did not care for the poor or give justice to the powerless (Jer 5:28), which was abhorrent to God. “‘Should I not punish them for this?’ declares the Lord” (Jer 5:29).

The Reason for Indifference to God

It was at this point that Jeremiah exploded with indignation. He knew that all these social aberrations were due to a lack of spiritual truth in the nation. The people had turned away from truth; they had abandoned any thought of God in their daily lives – God was an irrelevance. This led them to worship the local Baals in the countryside, and to careless indifference to God in the city where they were intent upon making their fortunes, or struggling with poverty.

But Jeremiah went to the heart of the matter – to the reason why there was such indifference to God. It was surely due to the priests and prophets, the religious leaders of the nation, who had the word of God but did not rightly use it to teach the people: “The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way” (Jer 5:31).

Why was there such indifference to God? Surely it was because the priests and prophets had the word of God but did not rightly use it to teach the people.

The prophets made up their own visions and prophecies. Their major objective was to be popular with the people – to tell them things they wanted to hear. They weren’t bothered with the truth. Jeremiah said, “The prophets follow an evil course and use their power unjustly” (Jer 23:10). “They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord” (Jer 23:16). “Both prophet and priest are godless; even in my temple I find their wickedness, declares the Lord” (Jer 23:11).

It was the priests who were most responsible for the state of the nation, according to Jeremiah; they ruled by their own authority. Instead of faithfully teaching the word of God as given to Moses and delivered to the people at Mount Sinai (Deut 4:10), the priests made up their own teaching, misusing the divine authority they had been given. Their teaching was popular, no doubt reinforcing their own authority and ensuring gifts from the people which kept them well fed.

No Excuse

There was no excuse for the priests because the scroll of the Torah had been discovered during the repairs to the Temple ordered by King Josiah just a few years earlier. The priests were the ones who had access to the scrolls that were being copied by the scribes, so they knew the truth, but they did not handle it righteously. They did not declare the word of the Lord that would establish truth in the nation.

The consequence was that the people could not even discern the reason why the autumn and spring rains had not fallen. The whole nation was lacking in spiritual understanding. They had eyes to see and ears to hear, but they had no discernment.

Could this be said of our own generation in the 21^st Century? If God still holds the religious leaders responsible for the state of the nation, we have to ask: do we have church leaders who have eyes but do not see, and ears but do not hear? If so, we must conclude that God is saying the same thing to our leaders today: Should you not fear me? declares the Lord. Should you not tremble in my presence?

This article is part of a series on the life and ministry of the Prophet Jeremiah. Click here for previous instalments.

Clifford Denton continues his series on 'Christianity, Israel and the Jews', taking a closer look at the beloved Jewish affirmation, the Shema: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One..."

"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to lie upon your hearts. Impress them on your children: talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."

Among the literary sources of Judaism the Shema deserves its own study, because of its central place. In Our Father Abraham (Eerdmans 1991), Dr Marvin Wilson lists this as the 'Core Affirmation of Israel's Faith'. This week we explore the background and importance of the Shema.

Listen and Hear

Dr Wilson lists six issues for Christians to address in reconnecting with their Hebraic heritage. Out of the sixth (understanding the sources of Judaism) he gives special attention to the Shema, or Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord is one." According to Wilson, the Shema (p122):

...is one of the most crucial Old Testament texts for the foundational teachings of both Jesus and Judaism. A careful investigation of early sources suggests that Deuteronomy 6:4 must have been the first portion from the Hebrew Bible that Jesus committed to memory. According to the Babylonian Talmud (Sukkah 42a), Jewish boys were taught this biblical passage as soon as they could speak. Since the Talmud specifies that "the father must teach him" (i.e. the son), we may confidently assume that Joseph, Jesus' earthly father, was responsible for fulfilling this task.

When Moses was instructed to assemble Israel in the wilderness they were instructed to listen to God, or to hear him. The root meaning of Shema is 'hear'. The six words of instruction from Deuteronomy 6:4 are "Shema yisra'el adonai eloheynu adonai ehad", translated as "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one."

This has remained the central core of Israel's faith. God requires that his people listen to him and expect to hear him. He brings them together for the family Sabbaths and for the feasts. He speaks to them through the prophets and as they study together, through signs and as his people approach him in prayer. To Israel was given the privilege of hearing God directly and the foundational truth that they heard was that God is one (Ehad).

The central core of Israel's faith is God's requirement that his people listen to him and expect to hear him.

All confusion about the many gods of the nations is taken away in the foundational thing that Israel must know. The God who revealed himself through creation, through the call of Abraham, through the covenants, through the prophets and through all the recorded teaching of the Bible is not many but one. The many aspects of his character, word and works are summed up in the multifaceted nature of one-ness expressed in the Hebrew word Ehad.

This central core to Israel's life and faith is contained in the profundity of the brief statement of the Shema, and so it is the core of Judaism throughout all generations.

Part of the Prayer Book

Among the Jewish sources that a Christian should understand is the Prayer Book. In Back to the Sources (p403), we read:

Judaism is a civilization of remarkable persistences; perhaps the most remarkable is the case of prayer. Bestir yourself on a Friday evening or a Saturday morning anywhere in the world where there are Jews and you will likely find a congregation reciting Hebrew prayers several thousand years old. Nor is this a quaint vestige. Gathering for prayer is the preeminently central activity of most branches of Jewish life today, and it is within the roomy framework of the synagogue service that much else takes place: Torah study, rites of passage, political commentary, and even fund raising.

This combination of antiquity and centrality enjoyed by Jewish prayer is the result of its distinctively composite nature: Jewish prayer is both a text and experience. As a text, Jewish prayer is a prayerbook, a classical written liturgy, a structure of words and ideas, which, like any text, is open to literary and theological analysis within the terms of the historical periods that produced it. As experience, Jewish prayer also incorporates the several means by which the text is brought to life: what takes place in the inner, subjective world of the worshipper during prayer; the communal arrangements and non-verbal techniques of the practice of prayer; and the contemporary interpretations of the meaning of the text of the liturgy.

The Prayer Book is a book of blessings (berakhot), or praising. For example, the morning service contains the praise or blessing to God: "Praised are You, Lord our God, King of the universe who creates lights."

All confusion about the many gods of the nations is taken away in the Shema's profound statement that God is one.

Jewish prayer is concerned with knowing God, the one to whom all praise is given. Closer examination of the Prayer Book shows the cycles of prayer. For example, in the daily morning service (shaharit lehol) there are two cycles, of which the first cycle is the Shema, and the second cycle the The Amidah ('Standing Prayer'), containing the Shemoneh Esreh (the 'Eighteen Berakhot'), also known simply as Hatefilah ('the Prayer').

The Shema itself is put among three Berakhot:

Berakhah One: Creation
Berakhah Two: Revelation
Shema
Berakhah Three: Redemption

"The sequence creation-revelation-redemption forms the essential theological drama of Judaism" (Back to the Sources, p410). This illustrates how the Shema is foundational to the life of prayer and praise of the Jewish world.

The principle of constant repetition and remembering is also key to Jewish life. Human beings need to focus constantly on the character and revelation of the One True God. Human beings are so prone to forget and to drift into error. The Shema is the central part of that remembrance.

The principle of constant repetition and remembering is key to Jewish life – human beings are so prone to forget and drift into error.

The Shema and Jewish Prayer

Kopciowski's Praying With the Jewish Tradition (Eeerdmans 1988) contains further insights on the Shema itself. In the introduction, Rabbi Lionel Blue writes:

...the Old Testament (or Tenach, to use the Jewish term) is not the best book for understanding the religion of modern Jews because it has a limitation which it shares with all Scriptures. Its text is closed...The text of the Talmud, too, is closed. It came to an abrupt halt in Babylon in the sixth century of the common era...

But the Jewish prayer book is different. Unlike other holy books, it is still open-ended and unfinished. It can absorb the faith, the longings, the triumphs and the failures of this generation and the generations that will succeed it, as it found room for all those that went before it.

It includes blocks of biblical faith that cluster round the affirmation of God's unity in Exodus. These are followed by rabbinic petitions, philosophical statements, medieval hymns, psalms, and modern prayers trying to assimilate and interpret the holocaust and the rise of Israel. The collection is too alive to be consistent. Each layer of faith lives alongside the others – they do not cancel each other out. Consistency is found in cemeteries; the untidiness of growth is the quality of life.

Jews have a long history – four thousand years of it – double the Christian length. During that time they have worshipped at mounds of stones, desert altars and moveable arks, in two solid temples, in synagogues, and in shtiebels. Patriarchs, priests, scribes, rabbis, rebbes, seers, mystics, and ordinary folk have been leading their little worship communities in prayer. Each phase has left its mark and its message in the liturgy. If a Christian therefore wishes to understand his fellow Jews, he should attend their prayers, and give attention to the holy book which is best known among them – their prayer book.

Why should he or she do so? There are many reasons. First, there has been a subtle but definite change in Christian-Jewish relations since the end of the last war, for reasons which we do not completely comprehend – the horror of the holocaust perhaps, or the Holy Spirit. But the medieval cold war seems to have died down, and a real desire to understand each other has replaced it.

For a Christian there is also another reason. Both Jesus and his early disciples lived in the world of rabbinic Judaism, when the modern prayer book took its present form. They prayed its prayers, in the synagogues of their time. They could not know the liturgy of the Church which would proceed from them but were familiar with the forms of worship still used by Jews today. Christianity therefore, for its own self-understanding, needs to know those forms. Otherwise Jesus is torn away from his historical and human background, and is limited to an icon...

The Shema is strictly only the verse from Deuteronomy 6:4. However, this has been expanded by the addition of two further verses which complement it, for the purposes of the liturgies of the Prayer Book. This combination is now generally known as the Shema. Kopciowski writes:

The Shema is the main part of the daily liturgy, recited morning and evening. The Shema is above all the solemn proclamation of the unity and uniqueness of God, entailing the duty to love him and obey his commandments and to instruct children in the holy doctrine, so that it may be handed down for ever. The Shema consists of three prayers from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 11:13-21 and Numbers 15:37-41). (p26)

A prayer that follows the Shema at evening prayers, compiled from biblical verses is:

In the palm of your hand
You hold our souls
Which we entrust to you:
The souls of the living
And the souls of the dead.
In the palm of your hand
You lovingly hold
The divine spirit
Of all things living.
To you, O Lord,
O God of truth,
I commit now the spirit that is within me.
Heavenly Father,
Your name alone is holy,
You are unchanging
And your kingdom is eternal;
You will reign over us for ever.

Hear, O Israel,
the Lord our God,
the Lord is One.
Love the Lord your God
With all your heart and with all your soul
And with all your strength.
These commandments that I give you today
Are to lie upon your hearts.
Impress them on your children:
Talk about them when you sit at home
And when you walk along the road,
When you lie down and when you get up.

Summary: Israel's Statement of Faith

The world of the first Christians was embedded in Judaism. Paul and the apostles would all have attended the prayers at the Temple and in the synagogues. Christians today would benefit from a fresh look at these ancient traditions and how they centred on knowledge of the One True God, who called Israel to hear him in the wilderness and know that he is Ehad.

Since the world of the first Christians was embedded in Judaism, Christians today would benefit from a fresh look at its ancient traditions and their focus on knowledge of the One True God.

The Shema is placed among the benedictions but is not a prayer itself. It is more to be seen as the core of Israel's statement of faith. Dr Wilson writes:

Of the 5,845 verses in the Pentateuch, "Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" sounds the historic keynote of all Judaism. This fundamental truth and leitmotif of God's uniqueness prompts one to respond by fulfilling the fundamental obligation to love God (Deut. 6:5). Accordingly, when Jesus was asked about the "most important commandment," his reply did not contradict this central theme of Judaism (Mark 12:28-34; cf. Matt. 22:34-40). With 613 individual statutes of the Torah from which to choose, Jesus cited the Shema, including the command to love God; but he also extended the definition of the "first" and "great" commandment to include love for ones neighbour (Lev. 19:18). (p124)

For Reflection and Comment

Should the Shema be as important to Christians as to Jews?

Next time: Covenant

Series note: 'CIJ' (Christianity, Israel and the Jews) is a study series about the relationship between the Church and its Hebraic heritage.