Jeremiah 30:3 – Sanctification, Even in Sameness

3 For behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘that I will bring back from captivity My people Israel and Judah,’ says the Lord. ‘And I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it.’ ”Jeremiah 30:3, New King James Version

“Aslan,” said Lucy of the leonine Christ figure in CS Lewis's Prince Caspian, “you’re bigger.” “That is because you are older, little one,” answered he. “Not because you are?” “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

The same sense of confidence and continuity exuding from Christ causes me to pause again on Jeremiah 30:3. He is as confident he can extract His people from Nebuchadnezzar's grip, yes, as He was He could deliver them to it. As He can move affairs of state in the hearts behind them in any direction He chooses, one wonders, if He thought like a human, if fear of relapse wouldn't enter more into His calculations.

Just as He can place His people anywhere in exile, He can move them anywhere when correction is complete. Back to the same place? Back to the same place that triggered their self-confidence, their certainty that God would never move them? Knowing how accommodating my heart is to adjust to my surroundings, I might have done otherwise were I in God's place. For, as the human heart works, no sooner would I land in the environment I left than I would begin crafting a tale of how this group's spiritual steadfastness was responsible for such a move.

If I were in God's place, I would begin looking for exit clauses in My promise that Abraham's descendents would own this particular land for a thousand generations. Let's get them a fresh start somewhere else. Let's redo the drying up of the Jordan, the conquering of the Promised Land so that THIS people will have fresh evidence that they must rely on Me.

But God does not see as man sees, nor act as man acts in fear of relapse. By His grace, He knows He is bigger in His people's eyes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, but they have grown. He can be faithful to His ancient promises, bless His people in some of the same ways, and engender trust from His remnant rather than endemic arrogance. They will possess the land, God says. This time, it won't possess them in the sense of serving as an excuse for their indifference to Him.

God has brought His people grafted in by Christ through much the same journey. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:16, "Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet we know Him thus no longer." Our experience with Christ, our expectations of Christ, grows, as our sense of contractual entitlement decreases. As He moves us from season to season and setting to setting, we, like the sheep in John 10 whom He leads out of the sheepfold find security in His voice.

Thus led, He can lead us back to the start, back to the place of our greatest failures and betrayals. New beginnings, REAL new beginnings, are in Him even there. Paul continues his thought in 2 Corinthians 5:17 on the resulting changes in us as we see Christ differently. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation."

Those we been through life's exiles with, we can encourage in HIM, even if it seems like we're back where we started. Our perspective has become new. Our faith has been reinvigorated. Our sense of dependence is deeper. All things, even the things we took for granted, even the things we used as transitory proof of our own righteousness, are of Him.

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