Jeremiah 6:6 – God's Rooted Purposes
Jeremiah 6: 6 For thus has the Lord of hosts said:
“Cut down trees,
And build a mound against Jerusalem.
This is the city to be punished.
She is full of oppression in her midst.
"Civilization is based on principles which imply," unearths Oswald Chambers in The Highest Good – Thy Great Redemption, "that the passing moment is permanent. The only permanent thing is God, and if I put anything else as permanent, I become atheistic. I must build only on God (John 14:6).
I can declare permanence in my more optimistic moments. I can even give it a Scriptural sheen. I can look at times full of promise such as those when God's people entered the land that was to be theirs. So confident was He of their possession, and so ready to bequeath this confidence to them that He told them not to cut down the trees. Sure, they can be useful for siege engines, but the Lord would rather in that season have seen His people confident in Him in the day of battle, leaving the trees in place to bear fruit for their future. There are times, then, when faith is so strong we feel leave to believe we could be victorious with one arm tied behind our backs.
With a nod to Chambers, those seasons and situations are not permanent. To be certain, God is, but His most blessed agents invariably become mired in distraction. So it was with those who were blessed to leave the trees alone, still conquer, and then to eat their fruit. They trusted in themselves, their own righteousness, and so have we as their spiritual heirs. Together, we have made blessedness fruit for comparison and pride. We have forgotten that blessing, from national status down to the fruit on a given tree, is God's to grant, and God's to take away. He will not share His glory with another, and certainly not with a tree.
Thus, in Jeremiah 6:6, the tree comes down by His command. This time, the conqueror is told directly by God to cut down the tree and lay siege to Jerusalem. If God, willing in Scripture to be conveyed in human terms for our understanding, can have degrees of confidence, He seems more certain He will be heard by the pagan hordes besieging Jerusalem than His own people blessed for so long by His own hand. Use the trees this time, He says, to bring down the very people I once blessed with the dew of promise.
If we have lived very long in Christ, we likewise have heard the ax to the roots of our promise. That we know we deserve such a judgment makes the crash of what could have been God honoring blessing all the more crushing. This, we might still question, is supposed to help the oppression in our midst? What good can happen now compared to the elusive, in bettering sense of what could have been? At best, we arrive at Job's surrender that the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.
But, as Joyce Kilmer declares that only God can make a tree, only God can determine its ultimate purpose. As He did in validating Aaron's ministry before his critics, He can make the dead rod bloom. The season of fruitfulness may not be over just because it's most obvious expectancy has passed. Better yet, we recall that He used another wave of conquerors to fell another tree, this one a tree on which the Romans would be used to kill His Son. This, what seemed to be the ultimate fulfillment of Jeremiah 6:6, the ultimate and final removal of national identity and authority, was instead the air removal planting of a whole new Tree of Life.
So it can be for us, and none will keep us from its fruit. Wherever we are in this progression or regression, God's purposes will not be thwarted. Our root system is in Him rather than in any situation or any manifestation of our obedience. He can use anything, even our wanderings and the weeds of our self-confidence to bring Himself glory. Final relief from the oppression in our midst is to find permanence in Him.
“Cut down trees,
And build a mound against Jerusalem.
This is the city to be punished.
She is full of oppression in her midst.
"Civilization is based on principles which imply," unearths Oswald Chambers in The Highest Good – Thy Great Redemption, "that the passing moment is permanent. The only permanent thing is God, and if I put anything else as permanent, I become atheistic. I must build only on God (John 14:6).
I can declare permanence in my more optimistic moments. I can even give it a Scriptural sheen. I can look at times full of promise such as those when God's people entered the land that was to be theirs. So confident was He of their possession, and so ready to bequeath this confidence to them that He told them not to cut down the trees. Sure, they can be useful for siege engines, but the Lord would rather in that season have seen His people confident in Him in the day of battle, leaving the trees in place to bear fruit for their future. There are times, then, when faith is so strong we feel leave to believe we could be victorious with one arm tied behind our backs.
With a nod to Chambers, those seasons and situations are not permanent. To be certain, God is, but His most blessed agents invariably become mired in distraction. So it was with those who were blessed to leave the trees alone, still conquer, and then to eat their fruit. They trusted in themselves, their own righteousness, and so have we as their spiritual heirs. Together, we have made blessedness fruit for comparison and pride. We have forgotten that blessing, from national status down to the fruit on a given tree, is God's to grant, and God's to take away. He will not share His glory with another, and certainly not with a tree.
Thus, in Jeremiah 6:6, the tree comes down by His command. This time, the conqueror is told directly by God to cut down the tree and lay siege to Jerusalem. If God, willing in Scripture to be conveyed in human terms for our understanding, can have degrees of confidence, He seems more certain He will be heard by the pagan hordes besieging Jerusalem than His own people blessed for so long by His own hand. Use the trees this time, He says, to bring down the very people I once blessed with the dew of promise.
If we have lived very long in Christ, we likewise have heard the ax to the roots of our promise. That we know we deserve such a judgment makes the crash of what could have been God honoring blessing all the more crushing. This, we might still question, is supposed to help the oppression in our midst? What good can happen now compared to the elusive, in bettering sense of what could have been? At best, we arrive at Job's surrender that the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.
But, as Joyce Kilmer declares that only God can make a tree, only God can determine its ultimate purpose. As He did in validating Aaron's ministry before his critics, He can make the dead rod bloom. The season of fruitfulness may not be over just because it's most obvious expectancy has passed. Better yet, we recall that He used another wave of conquerors to fell another tree, this one a tree on which the Romans would be used to kill His Son. This, what seemed to be the ultimate fulfillment of Jeremiah 6:6, the ultimate and final removal of national identity and authority, was instead the air removal planting of a whole new Tree of Life.
So it can be for us, and none will keep us from its fruit. Wherever we are in this progression or regression, God's purposes will not be thwarted. Our root system is in Him rather than in any situation or any manifestation of our obedience. He can use anything, even our wanderings and the weeds of our self-confidence to bring Himself glory. Final relief from the oppression in our midst is to find permanence in Him.
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