Jeremiah 30:23-24 – Putting Theology's Pieces Together After the Fact

23
Behold, the whirlwind of the Lord
Goes forth with fury,
A continuing whirlwind;
It will fall violently on the head of the wicked.
24
The fierce anger of the Lord will not return until He has done it,
And until He has performed the intents of His heart.

In the latter days you will consider it.

Once when our transportation's reliability didn't make the 25 minute commute to our usual church wise, we attended locally. As a follow-up, a couple of congregants from that church came knocking at our door.

One of them, named Jim, in ensuing days inserted himself in our lives in the most gracious ways. As I have a disability which precludes many of the things on the usual husband's honey do list, he picked them up. He also invited me to study the Bible with a group he influenced. There, his impact was first more grating than gracious as he kept insisting on the sovereignty of God to determine ends, kept pointing to Him as the star of the Bible rather than the cast of human characters I was accustomed to emphasizing.

Gradually, by the grace of God, I began to see with both eyes and with the depth God made possible. I began to see God and His work as both small-scale and large-scale, endearing AND awe-inspiring. This is the treatment of the Divine Optometrist in Jeremiah 30:23-24 also. In the run up to these verses, the Wonderful, Counselor has treated national PTSD.

He has spoken soothingly to the estranged exiles, and to us as their heirs no less shaken, jaded, and defensive. He has painted a compelling picture of His love through leaders like themselves, no longer a part and arbitrary.

Jeremiah 30:23-24 completes the picture. Behold, He backs them up to taking more of the wholeness of Who He is. He is indeed personified in the shepherd-leader who emphasizes commonality. Yet, He is also in the whirlwind which goes forth in fury to judge the wicked. The fierce anger of the Lord, He says, is as real and holy as is His compassion.

I love the last line of Jeremiah 30. In the latter days you will consider it. God not only knows Who He is. He knows His own find His vastness, His glory, disorienting. We tend to cling to an either/

or caricature. Either God is all Handyman addressing our daily issues with gentleness and banter, OR He is shock and awe coming in judgment to knock over our assumptions – or preferably other people's.

He's right, of course. It takes experiencing both of these for us to form even a healthy notion of Who He is. It takes time to consider and integrate these experiences while deliberately withdrawing ourselves from the stream of the immediate.

Insist, brothers and sisters, on this time. In a sense, these ARE the latter days. They may be the latter days on the Bible's dispensational calendar, for His Spirit-indwelt people are gathered in His Church to testify of His character to the world.

But for each of us, they certainly are the latter days. They are latter enough that we can walk circumspectly, can consider the aspects of God's character He has revealed to us, in gentle encounters in which He hasn't broken the smoking flax or consumed the candlewick, or in direct confrontations of belief and practice that doesn't honor and Him of the sort that leave us convicted in holy fear.

Stop and consider, beloved, for He is in both. Uproot that critic's spirit Christ showed in the children He described. Like them, God in His efforts to engage has played wedding songs, and we wouldn't dance. He has played funerals, and we wouldn't mourn. Soon, He will come directly in all that He is.