Lent - His Love Enduresნიმუში

My friend once tried to be really nice and made some birthday cupcakes for me. She wasn’t an avid baker, accidentally misread the quantities and substituted sugar for salt. Needless to say, it was a horrible substitute and although thankful for the gesture, few cupcakes were consumed.

Figuratively, this is the underlying principle found in Jeremiah 10–11: There is no substitute for the steadfast, unchanging God. He can only be who He is and do what is in His nature to do.

The truth Jeremiah prophesies is always the same: The promise God made is steadfast, unchangeable, and true because the one who promised it is steadfast, unchangeable, and true. “You will be my people, and I will be your God,” is found throughout the whole of Scripture: when God makes His covenant with Abram (Genesis 17), when God tells Moses to confront Pharaoh (Exodus 6), during the giving of the law (Leviticus 26), and multiple times here, within the book of Jeremiah. Paul repeats it in 2 Corinthians 6, and it appears in Revelation 21, with a definitive promise for all time: “They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God” (v.3).

This is the covenant promise that will never change. I can imagine Jeremiah weeping with desperation as he wrote the beautiful words that testify to the Lord’s sovereignty and promise:

“He made the earth by His power, established the world by His wisdom,

and spread out the heavens by His understanding… He is the One who formed all things.

Israel is the tribe of His inheritance; the LORD of Armies is His name” (Jeremiah 10:12,16).

There is no substitute for the Lord of Armies. His reactions to the sins of His people are not separate from His steadfast, unchangeable love. He’d called them to obey Him and follow His commands, which were a kindness to them, part of the covenant promise (Jeremiah 11:4). But that’s not necessarily how the Israelites saw things. When Jeremiah writes of the stiff-necked Israelites who have repeatedly turned away from God, he writes confidently of how the Lord will act “because they had not done what [He] commanded them to do” (v.8).

The book of Jeremiah shows God’s justice and love: how His perfect character demands perfect righteousness, and how His love for His people is unfailing. Jeremiah didn’t know how that promise would culminate hundreds of years later on the cross where Jesus died, taking on every ounce of God’s just anger and every molecule of God’s perfect love. It is a gift to cling to the steadfast promises of our unchanging God, who is always, perfectly, unchangingly good.