Today’s reading: Jeremiah 33; Romans 9
God is always trustworthy, even when we can’t see any possible way His promises will be kept.
This seems like one of those themes that just defines so much of the book of Jeremiah, and it really makes sense why it would need to be. Imagine being in Jerusalem back then, when the rest of the country has been defeated and decimated, and the capital is under siege. How is God faithful? How is He keeping His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give this land to their descendants for a perpetual heritage? How is He keeping His promise to David that he would never lack a son to sit on the throne of Israel? How can He be letting any of this happen?
The simple conclusion, in the midst of the exile of the rest of the nation and the soon to be destruction and exile of Jerusalem as well, is to despair of God’s promises. Either He isn’t powerful enough to overcome the gods of Assyria and Babylon in order to protect His people and keep His promises, or else He isn’t actually intending to keep His promises at all. Can there be any other answer?
So often it can feel this way when we are expecting one thing from God and are seeing something different, or when to follow God in obedience would seem to be jeopardizing other important or desired things in our lives.
But what God keeps reminding His people through Jeremiah, what He has been showing them from the very beginning of their history, when He gave a 100 year old couple a son to bear their name, and what He is continuing to tell us today, is that what is impossible with man is never too difficult for Him.
Yes, it’s true that Israel was destroyed, and that Jerusalem was about to be, and God doesn’t deny that, but speaking into that reality He declares:
“In this place of which you say, ‘It is a waste without man or beast,’ in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man or inhabitant or beast, there shall be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing, as they bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord: ‘Give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!’ For I will restore the fortunes of the land as at the first.”
And then He continues on for the rest of the chapter, over and over again, reaffirming that He has not forgotten His promises to His people, and that, as bad as things may look at that moment, He will still bring His word to pass.
And while Jeremiah’s hearers didn’t have the opportunity to see how God would bring His promises to pass, we do. We are in the highly privileged position of being able to look back, read the Lord’s words through Jeremiah, and then see how He fulfilled them by bringing His people back into the land and continuing to work in and through them to ultimately bring about the Messiah and the reconciliation of the nations, just as He had promised to Abraham, from the very beginning, that through him, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.
God is good for His promises. He has never spoken a word that He will fail to bring to fruition. There will for sure be times when we can’t see any possible way for God to keep His promises, redeem a situation, heal our sinful hearts, or a thousand other things, but we don’t need to be able to see any possible way for our God to still be faithful.
He has shown us time and time again that He is faithful, and His faithfulness will never change.
We couldn’t ask to follow a better God.
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