Jeremiah 31:27 – A Tangible Testimony

27 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. Jeremiah 31:27, New King James Version

I suddenly had a following. My barrage of musings on Facebook was constant as I sought to grab friends, acquaintances, and strangers by the sleeve, so to speak, and show them the wonder of some selection from theology, literature, or history. Usually most scrollers-by wriggled loose or went benignly indifferent about their business.

Growth of our household, though, put a rounded, lit-up face to my thoughts. In my speculations, it seems men and women could hear our foster child's laughter, root with her undaunted joy and determination to accomplish the next stage of growth and delight.

So God ordains attention in passages like Jeremiah 31:27. Previously, He saw fit to chastise His people before the nations. Then, as Jeremiah has pointed out, their fate was a watchword of passersby. How could a people so blessed turned their backs on their God?

Look what happens, unmistakably, when they do. If Judah's correction is compelling, though, her renewal is no less a centerpiece. The very indicators of prosperity which once stole the citizen's hearts, which once dulled their awareness of spiritual trouble in spite of the faithful efforts of the prophets toward conviction, these God will give again as appealing evidence of His mercy and grace.

Henri Nouwen's Life of the Beloved emphasizes His continuing the practice. "It is usually," Nouwen reminds us, "these very simple concrete things of daily living that provide the raw materials for our conversations. The question, 'How are you doing?' usually leads to very down-to-earth stories about marriage, family, health, work, money, friends, and plans for the immediate future. It seldom, however, leads to deep thoughts about the origin and goal of our existence."

I will sow, God binds together in Jeremiah 31:27, the house of Israel and the house of Judah WITH the seed of man and the seed of beast. As He multiplies them on these metrics people can count, the nations will, by His grace, begin to inquire why. The same sun of His prosperity which once hardened the clay of His people's hearts will, to reconfigure Elton Trueblood, soften the wax of the hearts of the truly elect.

Whereas previously, as addressed already in Jeremiah 31, He grieved His people by removing their children, even then caring for the likes of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Babylon, He will now demonstrate His same faithful character by growing them in place. Even the flourishing of their flocks will bespeak His glory in an alluring language humans understand.

We serve an irreducibly good God. Where He withholds on one front, or for a time, He gives on another, or all the more sweetly because we lacked for a while. As He teaches the hearts of His own to see growth in families, flocks, or bank accounts as an expression of His even more treasured character, and to turn and use these things that men might know Him better, He gradually immunizes us from the temptation to worship these blessings for their own sake.

Detailing a fellow clergyman's reaction to the sanctuary in which Eugene Peterson first fulfilled his vocation according to his Pastor: A Memoir, Peterson recalls, "He never failed to comment on the sense of spacious simplicity in our sanctuary, using a line from Narnia to describe Christ Our King Church, 'It's inside is bigger than its outside.'" This is God's work through prosperity, and transcending it, that His work, impressive on the outside, would be more expansive on the inside, preparing us for what is ahead.

One day, beloved, we will walk on streets made of the gold that once pulled at our deepest desires. In that day, we will KNOW by sight that our security and worth are in Him and not the means by which He may express Himself from time to time.

The trouble, if there is any, as we behold the goodness of God as expressed in Earthly measures is that we start to deplete this estimation where these things are lacking. If God's reputation was sown and extended, flourished with the arrival of a new baby, what of my childlessness? If God crowns my coworker's efforts with good success and I end up losing my job, is He less good?

Worse, the enemy of my soul turns the theological implications I was ready to ascribe to prosperity, supported by verses like Jeremiah 31:27, so that I grind beneath their weight. Am I actually cheating God's reputation because my crib isn't full in my bank account isn't burgeoning?

That these observable, perishable means DO demonstrate His character by His own assertion should not be taken to mean that they are His only measures. To remind us, we are taken through Hebrews 11, for instance, encouraged with examples of men and women whose treasure, ultimate hope, and security, was not in this world. They were pilgrims, and aliens, and strangers, trusting they would find a home in a city not built with hands. They lost by the reckoning of the world, knowing they would win in God's good time.

Even some of these handled well for a while. So it may be with us. Our fists are neither to close to prosperity God might grant or to His sovereign right to take away that which He entrusted to His own for a while. We cultivate, even more than a crop or an expanding family, the heart of Job, ready to confess, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.