Jeremiah 30:12 – Redeemed FROM, and Redeemed FORWARD

11
For the Lord has redeemed Jacob,
And ransomed him from the hand of one stronger than he.
12
Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion,
Streaming to the goodness of the Lord—
For wheat and new wine and oil,
For the young of the flock and the herd;
Their souls shall be like a well-watered garden,
And they shall sorrow no more at all. Jeremiah 31:11-12, New King James Version

I haven't tuned in to Wheel of Fortune in a while, but I remember the old voiceover that drew the viewer in. "Look at this studio, filled with fabulous prizes…"

That's the tone I sense from the Lord in Jeremiah 30:12, and it staggers me. You are the Prize, Lord, I want to insist. I want to know, and I want Him to know, that I want Him more than what He can do for me. It's

Nevertheless, the description, HIS description in Jeremiah 30:12 is positively alluring. He speaks stuff. He admires His work. He is the Father on Christmas morning, relishing ahead of time the image of His children enjoying His generosity and actually modeling how to do so.

The place He invites them FROM into enjoying Him by enjoying His bounty makes this lavishness all the more enticing demonstration of His character. The Israelites had this, and they blew it. God promised them a land flowing with milk and honey, a land so fertile that it took two of them team lifting a bunch of grapes to show one another how good the Lord could be. Enmeshed in the spell of this prosperity, they gave their hearts to it instead of Him. They ignored His prophets calling their hearts back morning by morning, including Jeremiah.

Still, here we are again. There must be something deep within the heart of God that yearns to bless because He is Who he is, that ventures to risk surrounding us with potential distractions because He will yet see us enjoy them in context, enjoy Him by enjoying them.

He would see His people streaming to the goodness of the Lord, not theorizing about it in the abstract, but actually enjoying His generous creativity in the present. Wheat, new wine, and new oil take on a deeper newness when we begin to see God's heart reflected in them.

God coaches our hearts as with the original recipients of this message that this isn't just an oasis, a reprieve between variations of earthly misery. The young of the flock and the herd bespeak future blessing. He is teaching his people to look forward to how He will show Himself merciful and gracious in the future. Dread, He does, is a habit like any other, even an addiction.

If the devil can't eradicate guilt altogether, he will so overspread our souls with it that we can't tell the difference between true conviction to a point, sent to draw us closer to God, and a general, hopeless sense of estrangement. Our hearts lie to us, His Word diagnoses, but He is greater than our hearts, greater than gloom-by-habit. By His power to reconstitute hearts, His decree has meaning that there is an US apart from the sorrows and dread we so deeply accommodate that we forget the feel of freedom without them.

Begin to know that freedom, begin to, with those senses the Lord can entice, to taste and see that He is good, discipline with respect to His goods springs from a different place. We begin to consider not renunciation for renunciation's sake, not attempts to atone for ourselves, but likeness to Christ our Giver and Master. All things are lawful for me, intones Paul, but not all things are profitable for me.

We serve, we follow after, after all, Christ Who was rich and for our sakes became poor. Why the deliberate downgrade? For the joy set before Him, He exchanged Heaven's comforts for Earth's cross. Therefore His, with Paul again, can know contentment in plenty and need. In either, we celebrate Christ.

Knowing the cost of our ransom, and reflecting on it from time to time, we celebrate all the louder. All we harvest of grape or grain to us now represents not forestalling doom but a shadow and foretelling of God's ultimate goodness in Christ. The bread and wine from these, they represent the ultimate bounty. The rhythms of our work and enjoyment of its results represent the completeness of HIS work. He teaches us to want again, that He may lead us toward ultimate fulfillment in Him.


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