
Over my years of pastoral ministry, when people experience sickness, lose a job or mourn the passing of a loved one, they have often asked the question, “Why did God allow that to happen?” In those painful situations, it’s quite natural to wonder what role God might have behind the scenes. Some go so far as to suggest that God “made” their misfortune happen. Is it God’s fault? Maybe you wonder that too.
Because we don’t know, we’re often left feeling unsettled. Does God see our pain, hear our cries, and care about the struggle we’re enduring? To answer, “No,” we believe, would be akin to losing our faith, and so we often conclude, with a bit a despair, “Well, no matter what, God is in control.” I suspect most people, when they say, “God is in control,” really mean, “No matter what I am going through, I still have faith in God.” That might be emotionally helpful, but I think there is a better response, a better way to understand the difficulties of life. In this devotional, we’ll hear the better way that God himself suggests to people in difficulty.
In our continuing study of the life and ministry of the prophet Jeremiah, we’re now at chapters 46 & 47. What we notice immediately is that format has changed, at least in the NIV 1984 bible that I’m reading. Most bibles follow suit, and for good reason. What is happening in Jeremiah chapters 46 through 51 is different from the genre of the recent chapters. In Jeremiah chapters 46-51, the genre is predominantly prophetic declarations about the nations surrounding Judah. This is quite different, as nearly the entire book of Jeremiah to this point has focused on Judah. Over the next month or so, right through to the end of the book of Jeremiah, we’ll study these international prophecies.
Chapter 46 begins this new string of international prophecies with a prophetic poem directed towards Egypt. Skim through chapter 46 and you’ll learn that the prophecy relates to the defeat of Egypt by Babylon which occurred many years before the events of chapters 39-44. We also notice that the prophecy describes the battle in colorful language.
Frankly, though, there’s not a whole lot to say about the battle. The beautifully written poem in verses 3-26 can be summarized as follows: Babylon will destroy Egypt. There is a hint, a subtle indication in the poem, that Yahweh God of Israel wants to make it clear that he is the true King, not Pharaoh of Egypt (see verses 17-18) and that he is the true God, not the gods of Egypt (see verses 25-26). The only miniscule hope for Egypt is the final line of verse 26 where God says that one day in the future, Egypt will inhabit its land again. That’s it. Everything else in this poem is bad news for Egypt.
But then in verses 27 and 28, God has a poem for Israel too. It’s a short poem, but it is loaded with powerful teaching. Before we look at the poem for Israel, let’s peek ahead to chapter 47. It’s another prophetic poem, this time for the Philistines, Israel’s ancient enemy. The message is again simple and devastating. Philistia will be destroyed. That’s it.
Clearly, foreign relations are tumultuous in this era and area of the world. Get ready, because it will be a lot more of the same in the next few weeks as we hear more prophetic poems about the nations. But thankfully, we can skip back to chapter 46, verses 27 and 28, to God’s very different message for Israel.
There is a structure to the poem for Israel, as each of chapter 46 verses 27 and 28 begins with a matching line, “Do not fear, O Jacob, my servant.” God is not talking about Jacob, the ancestor of the Jewish people, the man whose sons (and a couple grandsons) would become the twelve tribes of Israel. Remember him? Jacob wrestled the angel, and God renamed him Israel, which means something like “contends with God.” He was the father of the nation. So here in verses 27-28 God is talking to all Israel.
He starts with the important words, “Do not fear.” Why would Israel fear when the preceding prophetic poem described how Babylon would decimate Egypt? Think about it this way: If powerful Egypt couldn’t even stand up to Babylon, there was no way that tiny little Israel could do any better. In fact, the menacing Babylonian military would have caused fear in the hearts and minds of all the nations in the region. They were blitzkrieging their way through everyone and everything.
But God says, “Do not fear…do not fear.” Why not? What can he possibly say to help the people of tiny, impotent Israel to not freak out as Babylon marches toward them, having just disposed of mighty Egypt? God will get to his reasons why Israel should not fear in a moment.
Interestingly, he first calls Israel his servant. It seems the people forgot this relational dynamic. What led to their destruction is that they didn’t think they needed God. But from the beginning, God covenanted with his people, declaring that they would be his people, and he would be their God. If they served him, he would protect and bless them. Sadly, they chose time and time again to rebel. Now God is throwing them a reminder, that Israel must see themselves as his servants.
Seeing themselves as God’s servants will require a change on Israel’s part, and it remains to be seen if they will change. There is still hope that this prophecy will get through their hard hearts and impel them to repent and return to serving God. You and I know the end of the story. In chapters 39-44, we’ve just studied the end of the story over the past few weeks. Judah does not repent, and they, too, are decimated by the Babylonians.
But at this juncture, about 15 years prior, that sad end has not yet happened. That is an important message for us. No matter what station we are in life, we can turn to God. No matter what we believe about impending disaster we believe we see on the horizon, we need not fear as servants of God. Why? God gives them some reasons.
He says in verse 27 that he will surely save them out of a distant place, and he will save their descendants from lands of exile. If I’m a Jew, that’s not what I want to hear. Distant places and exile mean that I and my people will have to endure bad things for many years. I want my descendants to be saved, but I want to be saved too! Israel could hear this prophecy and think, “What are you saying, God? That you’re allowing us to face destruction? That you did this?” Their thoughts would likely be the same as our thoughts when we face hardship.
The rest of verse 27 is more of the same. God says Israel will experience peace and security, and no one will cause them to fear. But is that a promise and hope only for the future? Again, think about how the people of Israel might here these words about peace and security, “What? I want peace and security now. I don’t want to go through hardship.”
We know, though, that the reality of life is not one of uninterrupted comfort, ease and fun. That’s Humanity 101: we will all somehow, some way, struggle. In the end, we will all die. I hate to be so blunt and harsh, but if we are to fully embrace what God is saying, we will only be able to do so in a mindset of reality.
Yes, God’s promise is of peace and security and freedom from fear one day in the future, but that is because there is struggle and insecurity and fear now. At least that was the case for the people in Judah. Babylon was coming, and there was no stopping it. You might think, “But why couldn’t God just stop Babylon?” It is the question we so often ask about the difficulties in life. Why doesn’t God intervene and make life easier for us for often? I sure seems that God answers a whole lot of prayers for help with, “No.” Why? Is he cold, angry, jaded? No. Instead God gives us a glimpse into his thinking when he answers that question next.
In verse 28, after the repeated opening line “Do not fear, O Jacob my servant,” God now says, “…for I am with you.” There we have some assurance. God is with us in the mess. He doesn’t say that he will always clean up the mess. He says he is with us in the middle of our mess. While it might seem that God is nowhere to be found, asleep, or not answering his phone, he confirms that he is actually right there beside us all along.
It can be difficult to see God right there at our side, or living within us, when we are going through painful times. We tend to fixate on the negative. Cognitive Behavioral Therapists rightly remind us that we can believe the worst, even when the evidence is to the contrary. Perhaps when things are so difficult, we can’t see God because instead of looking for him right there with us, all we want is the escape hatch, the problem to be solved, and the pain to cease. We don’t want God in the middle of our pain, we want ease, comfort and fun. Often we will search passionately for a way out of the pain, when God is saying, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”
As God continues in verse 28, he says that he will completely destroy the nations, but he will not completely destroy Israel. Does that sound good? Yes and no. It sounds like Israel will be at least partially destroyed. Partial destruction is still destruction. Maybe they can take a bit of hope in the idea that their land and people will not be completely destroyed, but they will still go through serious pain. Why?
God says, at the conclusion of verse 28, they will face the pain because he will correct them with justice. The word “correct” is sometimes translated “punish” or “guide.” It carries the idea that God is not random, but instead he has a purpose. The people have rebelled against him, and he is just in correcting them. He has their best interest in mind. Their rebellious actions involved idol worship, pagan religious practices, and many actions of injustice. The people cheated, stole, murdered, beat the downtrodden, and mistreated the poor, to name just a few ways they perpetrated injustice.
Now God say that he will allow the people to be corrected, through the pain of loss and exile, so that they might return to him, return to the flourishing justice that he desires for them because it is in their best interest. This is why they need not fear, because he is with them, actively seeking their correction through justice.
We can learn much from this prophetic poem. God desires human flourishing through justice, and he himself is intentional, interactive and relational, intimately involved in our lives to bring about his justice. God is here. He wants us not to fear the pain and difficulty in the world by joining with him in the pursuit of his justice in the places and people that are currently experiencing injustice. This is why we give ourselves sacrificially to eradicate injustice wherever we see it. Be it poverty, discrimination, corruption, crime, marginalization, division, and more, we bring the Kingdom of God when we seek to bring justice.
So when we’re experiencing pain and difficulty of any kind, instead of escaping our reality by saying, “God is in control,” is seems that God says to us, “You need not fear because I am with you, and I want to work together with you to bring justice.” That means you might need to confess and repent to bring justice. That means you might need to look around you for the injustice.
I have some acquaintances who lost their son to childhood cancer. Their response to their deep pain? They started a foundation to provide pajamas and financial support to other families in the region who were struggling with childhood cancer. That’s one way we turn difficulty into justice for human flourishing. How about you? How can you have God’s viewpoint of your pain?
Photo by Christopher Sardegna on Unsplash