Figs
This week is on Jeremiah 24:1-10 (the whole thing!):
The word God has for Jeremiah is the opposite of what logic would tell him. Generally when people are carted off like animals and sent to prison camps in the desert in a country they don't know, they're in worse shape than the dignitaries who flee to wealthy countries to retire. God tells Jeremiah that the opposite will be true for his people.
Israel had fallen away from God during Jeremiah's time. No matter what he did, he couldn't convince them to correct their path. So, God removed his protection and allowed the law of nature to take over. Israel's much stronger, much more advanced neighbors would ride roughshod over them and take everything.
As usual, it looked like the little guy was going to get the worst of it. The rich folks in power would hop in their private jets and retire to the south of France with their cabinet officers and failed generals, and the common people would be massacred and dragged off as slaves. I mean, who would you have more hope for in 1943 Europe? The guy with a bag of jewelry hopping on a cruise ship to America with his family before the Nazis swept in, or the factory worker who is too busy trying to feed his family to notice what is going on, and who ends up getting put on the death trains? It's been the same story throughout history: Leave on your own terms, and you do well. Get dragged off against your will, and you're doomed.
This time things would be different. The people being dragged from their homes, stripped of their possessions, and sent off to camps hundreds of miles from home would be blessed. Those using their power and connections to save themselves would be doomed. God's plan sometimes unfolds that way. Look at Joseph's fate versus that of the brothers who sold him into slavery. If all you can do isn't good enough, you're better off helpless in God's arms than on your own.
God's plan is stranger and more wonderful than ours. Sometimes he even uses utter doom as a tool to shape our destinies. He is a master at being God, and can see the end results of his work before he even begins it. We're like the bystander who has never seen sculpture before, yelling at the crazy man smashing the nice cube of rock to bits. God was using the rough mallet when he unleashed the Babylonian empire on poor little Jerusalem, and it was only Jeremiah's closeness to God that allowed him to see that everything would be OK.
So, the rough hand of God is OK, even good for us. And sometimes when it looks like we're being cursed, we're actually being roughly blessed. There are terrible things, even in our modern secular times, which we still refer to as "acts of God." Don't let them frighten you. Draw close to God, and he'll tell you his plan. And everything will be OK.
After Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah and the officials, the artisans and the other skilled workers of Judah were carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the Lord showed me two baskets of figs placed in front of the temple of the Lord. One basket had very good figs, like those that ripen early; the other basket had very bad figs, so bad they could not be eaten.
Then the Lord asked me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?”
“Figs,” I answered. “The good ones are very good, but the bad ones are so bad they cannot be eaten.”
Then the word of the Lord came to me: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Like these good figs, I regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Babylonians. My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.
“‘But like the bad figs, which are so bad they cannot be eaten,’ says the Lord, ‘so will I deal with Zedekiah king of Judah, his officials and the survivors from Jerusalem, whether they remain in this land or live in Egypt. I will make them abhorrent and an offense to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword, a curse and an object of ridicule, wherever I banish them. I will send the sword, famine and plague against them until they are destroyed from the land I gave to them and their ancestors. ’”
The word God has for Jeremiah is the opposite of what logic would tell him. Generally when people are carted off like animals and sent to prison camps in the desert in a country they don't know, they're in worse shape than the dignitaries who flee to wealthy countries to retire. God tells Jeremiah that the opposite will be true for his people.
Israel had fallen away from God during Jeremiah's time. No matter what he did, he couldn't convince them to correct their path. So, God removed his protection and allowed the law of nature to take over. Israel's much stronger, much more advanced neighbors would ride roughshod over them and take everything.
As usual, it looked like the little guy was going to get the worst of it. The rich folks in power would hop in their private jets and retire to the south of France with their cabinet officers and failed generals, and the common people would be massacred and dragged off as slaves. I mean, who would you have more hope for in 1943 Europe? The guy with a bag of jewelry hopping on a cruise ship to America with his family before the Nazis swept in, or the factory worker who is too busy trying to feed his family to notice what is going on, and who ends up getting put on the death trains? It's been the same story throughout history: Leave on your own terms, and you do well. Get dragged off against your will, and you're doomed.
This time things would be different. The people being dragged from their homes, stripped of their possessions, and sent off to camps hundreds of miles from home would be blessed. Those using their power and connections to save themselves would be doomed. God's plan sometimes unfolds that way. Look at Joseph's fate versus that of the brothers who sold him into slavery. If all you can do isn't good enough, you're better off helpless in God's arms than on your own.
God's plan is stranger and more wonderful than ours. Sometimes he even uses utter doom as a tool to shape our destinies. He is a master at being God, and can see the end results of his work before he even begins it. We're like the bystander who has never seen sculpture before, yelling at the crazy man smashing the nice cube of rock to bits. God was using the rough mallet when he unleashed the Babylonian empire on poor little Jerusalem, and it was only Jeremiah's closeness to God that allowed him to see that everything would be OK.
So, the rough hand of God is OK, even good for us. And sometimes when it looks like we're being cursed, we're actually being roughly blessed. There are terrible things, even in our modern secular times, which we still refer to as "acts of God." Don't let them frighten you. Draw close to God, and he'll tell you his plan. And everything will be OK.
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