Jeremiah 29:5-6 – Resisting Common Grace

5 Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. 6 Take wives and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters—that you may be increased there, and not diminished. Jeremiah 29:5-6, New King James Version

Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes, “Earth's crammed with heaven...But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.”

What are these shoes made of? What keeps us resisting the common grace of which the Lord speaks in Jeremiah 29:5-6, causes us to fail to walk in His blessings of harvest and perpetuated family?

The work of His Spirit is genuine conviction. Quickened to the reality of our sin, we might forsake some earthly pleasures for a while. Jesus said His would fast. Paul, equally inspired, said couples might refrain from celebrating sex and thereby propagating the species for a set time in order to seek the Lord.

But both warn against self-dramatizing excess. Jesus scolds those who fast with a glum look to draw attention to themselves. Paul warns couples to only be apart for a time, because the enemy crouches at the door, ready to tempt. These warnings are well-placed, because our flesh reasons awry. Once it can no longer altogether resist conviction, obtuseness which Jeremiah has long been facing, the flesh is ready to dive into all-consuming abnegation. If a little sorrow and self-discipline is good, a lot must be better.

This legalism, inflicted on ourselves and at times on our community of influence, is particularly abhorrent for the Christian. Christ paid for our sins and exchanged them for His righteousness, and yet there is a tendency in us to want to add to that payment, to want to take partial credit for the price He alone could pay. If we are sorry enough for long enough, we reason, and especially if we come up with theatrical ways of showing it, we can please God in our own strength.

We please God, rather, by moving on. He prodded Joshua to move on and fight the next day's battle rather than dwelling on yesterday's overconfidence in the flesh. We need just as specific a reminder, brothers and sisters, to combat discipline for discipline's sake by enjoying His blessings and celebrating them as an expression of His unquenchable grace. These blessings run us down when we would hide, dejected, and His people are glad.

In addition to thinking we can add to the price He paid, there can be a sort of passive aggressive protest in our not fully engage in in the moment of His present blessings. His people in Jeremiah 29:5-6 originally surely would have rather experienced the kinds of Babylonian blessings of which He speaks in Judah rather than in a foreign land. Traumatized by life changes or just pridefully stubborn, we can refuse to accept blessings and the responsibility that comes with them unless they come in the way, and the time, and the place of our choosing.

There is wasted time in this, and fearful accountability. For, parent or not, these days are for fostering spiritual heirs, and we will answer for every word and passion spent otherwise. Whether we have physical gardens or not, we do have gifts and possessions to use to His glory, both for the testimony this produces and for the increase by which we can bless those in need in His Name. Would we accept his invitation to be a part of what He is doing next, or would we continue to live in yesterday's gloom?