Jeremiah writes like David.
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord… Blessed
is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree
planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream,” That sounds a lot like, “Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor
sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord,… He is
like a tree planted by streams of water…”
Jeremiah knows that as he trusts in the Lord and is faithful to do what
the Lord commands him, he loses favor with men.
He also knows that the Lord is eternal and man is a vapor, and that makes
it all simple. He asks but one thing,
salvation, to be preserved from men who seek after his life for his obedience
to God. The logic is simple isn’t
it? Why do we so often get it wrong? We can love one another without trusting in
one another, that isn’t good for either of us.
No one gets what Jesus is saying or even believes it can be
true. Their argument from the Law is
plain, it says that the Christ “remains forever.” That word, remains, is one of John’s
favorites, in some form or another it appears about 120 times in the New
Testament and over half of those are in John’s writings. It is ambiguous in a way that “live” is
not. It is variously translated as stay,
remain, and abide through the Gospel. The
crowd can’t understand what Jesus is saying because they are limited in their
thinking about this word. They see only
a man living forever in this form, they don’t see that second life, eternal
life, in the way Jesus is speaking. Like
Nicodemus before them, they don’t understand earthly things, what must happen,
when Jesus uses the same words about the Son of Man being lifted up that He
used with Nicodemus so they can’t understand the heavenly and spiritual things
of which He is speaking. They are
putting their trust in an earthly Messiah.
It is difficult to keep in mind that Paul wrote this epistle
from prison when he writes, “The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about
anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let
your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” If he
can write that from prison, why can’t we find peace in our lives? We look too often for peace from our
circumstances, too often from the world, and not enough from the knowledge of
God’s sovereignty. Paul had learned the
secret of abasing and abounding and found that it was in not looking to these
things for contentment. Transcending circumstances
is a matter of not allowing circumstances to determine our contentment and
peace. They are too changeable to rely
upon.
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