Thoughts on Jeremiah 12

Today’s reading: Jeremiah 12; Matthew 17

God is not afraid of difficult questions. Jeremiah himself struggles before the Lord, like all of us should, with understanding, "Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?"

Jeremiah poses these questions to the Lord at the beginning of Jeremiah 12, going on to say, "You plant them and they take root; they grow and produce fruit..." And who among us doesn't struggle when we see this? Even if I feel like I have a satisfactory theological answer to it, it still causes my heart pain to see the wicked thriving while the righteous suffer. On the one hand, watching billionaires grow richer and richer day by day as they exploit cheap and child labor overseas is sickening, but I sometimes struggle even more when it's a smaller scale disparity but within the "church." When I see health-and-wealth preachers bilking God's people out of millions of dollars, thriving, while legitimate ministries aimed at preaching the Word, caring for the poor, alleviating suffering, etc. are barely scraping by and/or are having to shut down for lack of resources, it's infuriating and baffling. How can God be okay with this? How can God allow it?

The answer God gives Jeremiah is that He is not okay with it, and He will not allow it forever.

In Jeremiah's day, God's answer was that judgement for this wickedness was coming imminently. He was not okay with the wickedness among His people, which is why He had sent the prophets in the first place, to call the people back to God and to warn them of the coming destruction if they refused. God would not abide by evil, but He is also merciful and was giving His people a chance to repent and turn from their wickedness back to Him. All the while, as His people refused to listen to the prophets He sent them, He was ramping up the pressure on them to try to get them to recognize their need to repent and turn to Him, but they didn't. The result, God tells Jeremiah, will be the plucking up of His people as He hands them over to their enemies. But, in the same sentence, God also tells Jeremiah that He will not make a full end of them, but will have compassion on them and will eventually bring them back.

God was not okay with evil flourishing in Jeremiah's day, but He did allow it, for a time, as He called people to repentance and righteousness. But this allowance did not last forever, and there did come a day of judgement, where Israel had no more opportunity to repent and not be cast out of the land, because it was too late.

This is the same answer the Scriptures give us for suffering and wickedness today.

God is not okay with evil flourishing today, but He is allowing it, for a time, as He calls people to repent and turn, by faith, to Jesus. But this allowance will not last forever, and there will come a day of judgement, where there will be no more opportunity to repent and spend eternity with the Lord, because it will be too late.

This is exactly what Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3 when he says, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed."

The Lord is not okay with evil, but He loves us enough, and desires a relationship with each of us enough, that He is forestalling His judgement of evil to give us a chance to turn to Him. Let's not treat that chance flippantly, but take it, thank God for it, and shout it from the rooftops so that as many as are willing to turn to Him will hear and have the chance the repent before the last day comes like a thief in the night.