Jeremiah 28:9 – Affirmation, and…

9 As for the prophet who prophesies of peace, when the word of the prophet comes to pass, the prophet will be known as one whom the Lord has truly sent.” Jeremiah 28:9, New King James Version

"You have to go backward to what we were," David Hammons mentions on African tribal art to The New Yorker's Calvin Tomkins, "before you go forward to what we want to be."

By was the much like this, the prophet both persists and adapts in Jeremiah 28:9. By now, his heart could have easily developed the hide of an aardvark. Has he not complained to the Lord how wearying it is to face contention in every relationship, to be swimming counter to the stream of the culture's constant craving for the good news of nearby relief? Yet, here, rather than flout the wish for peace, he connects with the innate desire of his people for more rest than they are currently experiencing.

He connects what Hammons does, that the longing for a different and more fulfilling future often means going back to address the practices that have siphoned off one's peace in the first place. The Christian would call such spade work repentance. Jeremiah connects with, agrees with his people's longing for peace rather than assuming an oppositional posture by habit. By addendum, though, his concession is much in line with Tim Keller's explanation in The Meaning of Marriage. "If you understand what holiness is, you come to see that real happiness is on the far side of holiness, not the near side."

The people want peace, and Jeremiah foreshadows Christ as peace's Prince. Fully conscious of it or not, he points to the wholeness of Christ's life message that God brings the stability, the unity, the intimacy for which we were created through challenging the status quo we thought would lead straight to these ends. Christ endured a willing "exile" from His lofty status as Heaven's First Citizen, to reconcile His own.

Thereby, we enjoy the fruits of His righteousness and "learn" obedience as He did. Knowing our righteousness rests in His, unchallengeable, we will go through whatever curriculum of which His school consists, open to questioning whatever previous assumptions He brings under His scrutiny. Use our now discerning backward glance, O Christ, our Captain, that we might grow in Your likeness.

We know, then, that what change it seems daunting, even arbitrary as human instruments enact it, is under His control. Spurgeon says so, declaring in Morning and Evening, "On earth the Lord's power as readily controls the rage of the wicked as the rage of the sea." We are jarred that we have been reclassified as refugees  estranged forcibly from the comfortingly familiar.

The full impact may be upcoming, in progress, or accomplished, but Spurgeon assures Christ's comfort can reach us on whatever shore He deposits us. "His love as easily refreshes the poor with mercy as the earth with showers." His watchcare is as comprehensive as the horizon and as comforting to the desperate and desiccated as the rain drops therefrom.

Spurgeon likewise urges we progress through dislocation and disorientation of exiles, those impending, those underway, or those which seem to have tossed us in an unfamiliar land. Our ultimate destination, he rallies, is assured. let us play the man; let us show that we are not such little children as to be cast down by what may happen in this poor fleeting state of time. Our country is Immanuel's land, our hope is above the sky, and therefore, calm as the summer's ocean; we will see the wreck of everything earthborn, and yet rejoice in the God of our salvation."

The ultimate peace we long for is there, with Him. Let us take every impulse, every spark which illuminates our drug soul's deepest longings, as a down payment, an earnest toward that day when we will know as we are known, when sanctification's work will be complete.





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