Jeremiah 30:10-11a – Christ's Presence Belies Geography and Emotional Impulse.

10
‘Therefore do not fear, O My servant Jacob,’ says the Lord,
‘Nor be dismayed, O Israel;
For behold, I will save you from afar,
And your seed from the land of their captivity.
Jacob shall return, have rest and be quiet,
And no one shall make him afraid.
11
For I am with you,’ says the Lord, ‘to save you; Jeremiah 3:10-11a, New King James Version

"If you would know experimentally the preciousness of the promises," Spurgeon challenges and invites in Morning and Evening in reference to God's Word, "and enjoy them in your own heart, meditate much upon them. There are promises which are like grapes in the wine-press; if you will tread them the juice will flow. Thinking over the hallowed words will often be the prelude to their fulfillment."

Jeremiah 30:10-11a is preparation in just such discipline, with the preemptive spade work of extracting fear. A future of serving Christ as the Better David is before them, he has said in verse nine. Rather than fulfilling the caprices of a foreign king, they will serve a Friend Whose heart they know. The advance of His kingdom will be the advance of the Kingdom to which they are coheirs, however much of this might be clear to the Old Testament mind.

Because of this impending reality, therefore, fear can be put on notice. Dismay can be driven out. The claims they make, all-consuming as they seem in the moment, bow before King Jesus. Allowing a home for dismay in our hearts, choosing to meditate on the what if's or the what-might-have-been's is to look to the pretensions of false monarchs instead of the authority of Christ and His Word. Even before these temporary rulers are toppled, God says He is about salvation from afar. He can address our fears before the circumstances we are accustomed to prompting them have changed.

Hope seems as vulnerable as a seed, which here also refers to the offspring of those exiles who once did not think they had a future. We can, by God's grace, nurture that hope, and embody that hope for the future in our words and actions as parents, teachers, and disciplers. This kind of steadfast faithfulness BEFORE the political order changed got the faith of Moses' parents recognized in Hebrews 11. They hid the child and relied on the faithfulness of God, the outworking of which they could not yet see.

God is equally able to care for the seed of our hope, small and vulnerable in our eyes compared to that which by habit intimidates us. His seed in His hand by His vision can yield thirty, sixty, and one hundred-fold. He is not constrained by the pessimism of our previous disappointments. He is not directed by the overreaction of our nervous system based on traumatized experience. He can grant peace when we think it is out of reach. And when He grants it, no one can take it away. He grants the peace that passes all understanding.

Clinging to that harvest of peace ahead, with Psalm 103, we forget not His benefits, though other thoughts by for the front of our hearts. Whatever destruction has occurred heretofore, we know He is an active Redeemer, that lovingkindness and tender mercies are as habitual with Him as envisioning and enunciating calamities is with us. Needing all the remediation we can get in the realities of faith because we spend so much time mulling its opposite, we inculcate Psalm 16:7-8, determined to be receptive to the counsel our heart gives us in the night, reminding us that whatever the seeming distance He is at our right hand and shall not be moved.

Our sense of His Presence is not determined by the feelings we have tolerated or the thoughts behind them. It is not determined by how far our life path has traversed from the ideal we envisioned. Jeremiah 30:10-11 assures His Presence is intimate and powerful right where we are, able to renew our minds and direct our future.

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