Jeremiah 30:11 – A Proportional Response

 For I am with you,’ says the Lord, ‘to save you;
Though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you,
Yet I will not make a complete end of you.
But I will correct you in justice,
And will not let you go altogether unpunished.’ Jeremiah 30:11, New King James Version

Charles Spurgeon is expansive in Morning and Evening. He catalogs, "As for animate creatures, they all own His dominion, and from the great fish which swallowed the prophet, down to 'all manner of flies,' which plagued the field of Zoan, all are His servants."

As this multifaceted sovereignty is expressed differently to and through the imposing great fish and the vulnerable flies, so we see God's nuanced approach to expressing His sovereignty over His human creations in Jeremiah 30:11. We need this particular reminder of scale, perspective and purpose. Without it, brothers and sisters, we tend toward an all-or-nothing approach in our theology.

What exertion of power, after all, does it take to direct the mighty great fish according to One's purposes? What daunting power, then, must it take to make an end of nations who, in their turn, are able to dominate those less powerful than themselves? Without Jeremiah 30:11 islands on which to rest, the Israelite exiles and we as their frequent heirs generalize to our detriment. Once we begin to grasp that the forces of this world which seem arbitrarily against us will perish, we begin to envision a God of the Sledgehammer, a God of the Firehose.

It takes a God that big, we reason, to face down what I cannot. If something which dominates me, which dominates the people I care about, is to be dictated to instead, this binding must be done by a greater Strongman. So far, so good. So far, in fact Scriptural according to the Savior's Word.

Our overgeneralization comes as we begin to see God's loftiness at the expense of His intimate concern. As Spurgeon says, He dictates to the flies as well as to the great fish. In the continuum revealed in Jeremiah 30:11, God pledges to exert Himself enough to make an end of nations, but also to tailor His approach to the comparative frailty of His redeemed. As hot as the wrath must be to melt the iron pretensions of the nations, He is WITH the comparatively frail remnant of His people, and He says so. He makes the whirlwind, Elijah experiences, but He speaks through the still, small voice and expresses His heart in provision for one prophet.

He will correct His people, He says specifically, in justice. His end is not to let His anger burned indiscriminately just because its full expression was needed to come against entrenched power in uprooting domineering nations. In dealing with His remnant, His elect, though we be prone to the same errors as empires but on a smaller scale, He has our redemption, our perfection in the likeness of His Son in mind. He knows the value of a proportionate response.

Our penalty, after all, has already been paid by Christ on the cross, as had, looking forward, that for the sins of His people referenced in Jeremiah 30:11. What we experience of correction, uprooting, exile, we don't experience because we must add to the perfect price Christ paid. We experience it with the Father's just ends in mind. We will be like Jesus. We will cleave to Jesus and not to any particular situation, certainly not to any location or to its governments as they go by.

We will, likewise, have this sense of the proportionate as we nudge toward change in contemporary culture where God may make it possible. Though we may be passionate about an issue we view as particularly egregious, God reminds that the wrath of man does not accomplish His righteousness.
 

Touch our issue, and we may wish like Samson to bring the whole structure down. But as God has been gracious and deliberate with us, Edmund Burke cautions in, Greg Weiner's Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence, "Perhaps no aspect of Prudence requires a greater dose of that virtue then assessing the need for, and knowing the difference between, revolution and reform."

Aspiring to the Jeremiah 30:11 manifestation of Prudence, we ask, in all likelihood, for individual minds we can change by the grace of God. We ask for individual needs we can meet, hearts we can mend, hopes we can restore contrary to the entropy being enacted as God judges the nations inexorably.