Refined and Tested
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Jeremiah 9:1-9
1. O that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! 2. O that I had in the desert a wayfarers' lodging place, that I might leave my people and go away from them! For they are all adulterers, a company of treacherous men. 3. They bend their tongue like a bow; falsehood and not truth has grown strong in the land; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know me, says the Lord. 4. Let every one beware of his neighbor, and put no trust in any brother; for every brother is a supplanter, and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer. 5. Every one deceives his neighbor, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent. 6. Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit, they refuse to know me, says the Lord. 7. Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: "Behold, I will refine them and test them, for what else can I do, because of my people? 8. Their tongue is a deadly arrow; it speaks deceitfully; with his mouth each speaks peaceably to his neighbor, but in his heart he plans an ambush for him. 9. Shall I not punish them for these things? says the Lord; and shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?
Jeremiah has looked around at a desolate and ruined city. He sees his countrymen and even close friends defying God. He can’t trust even his former best friend. His world has been spinning out of control, and he is inconsolable! And God doesn’t really seem to offer much hope of helping Jeremiah feel any better about the situation! He pretty much says, “You made your bed, now lie in it.”
God isn’t seeking revenge. How could mere man do anything that would threaten or challenge God in a battle of wills? But man does. We rely upon our own wisdom. We get a little too big for our britches. We start thinking that we are the gods—we’ve made amazing breakthroughs in medicine; we’ve been to the moon, for Pete’s sake! We’ve figured out how to clone mammals, and how to transplant a human heart. We’re pretty smart, aren’t we? We hold the power of life and death in our grasp, right? We don’t need God to tell us how to live, and what to do! We’ve got it all under control.”
Really? God’s saying, “that’s great, you let me know how that works for you as I withdraw and allow you to “have at it.”" He’s telling us “Go for it!” I don’t interpret these verses as God saying he’s going to do something actively to hurt us, but rather that he will back off and let us figure out that we really do need him! Kind of like when you know your child is making a poor choice, and you have no doubt of what the outcome will be, but you must stand back and let them learn their own lesson from it. That’s how I think God acts with us.
He never abandons us. He won’t leave us to our own resources forever. Just long enough for us to figure out, “Oh, yeah! I remember you taught us that.” And he’s going to let us hang out there a good long while—long enough so that we won’t ever forget the lesson. But, of course, we do forget. Fortunately for us, God allows us to keep forgetting, and remembering . . . over and over again. . . He just doesn’t want us to miss out on that last big chance for salvation! He really wants us to decide that “Today’s the day!”
I hope today you decide, “Today’s the day!” And that you rejoice in the refining and the testing in your life so that you can be ready when Christ comes again.
Mary
