What Sort of Person Are You
Jeremiah 17:5-11
This is what the Lord says: "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
Some of God's messengers tend to be most constipated. I do not mean that they are physically backed up; rather, they tend to have a lot of issues like most humans. Jeremiah is proof that God does not choose perfect people to be the ones he uses. For this reason, God alone gets the glory rather than his messengers for the excellence and the power is in him alone. Jeremiah sounds like a clinically depressed person here. He was sent to preach for many years to a people who did not wish to hear his message nor even that of the Lord's. The primary sin of the people of Israel is not mentioned here; it was evil enough that the land's children remember the sins of their fathers for good or for evil. Their sins held so many repercussions that God visited the sins of the fathers on their children as a curse in Deuteronomy 5:9. When the people of Israel went to worship God, their sins were before him on the altar as in Matthew 5:23. The sins that brought judgement without repentance are not mentioned by name. However, they are something that the nation would know for it was no secret. See, at this time, even Israel's people turned away from God for the other people and riches of this world. The people Jeremiah preached to are described as "a bush in the wastelands;" they mirror Jesus's description in Luke 11:24-25 of the man with the demon who wandered through the wastelands only to return and find the house swept and cleaned. These people found their daily needs met with a form of godliness, but they denied "the power thereof" as in 2 Timothy 3:5. These find that desolation and barrenness lasts for those who do not have Jesus's strength nor do they trust in him. These people have no substance neither here nor in eternity. We see in these few verses the totality of the curse brought because of sin.
"But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."
Those with the Lord find strength and life in him so completely that in him they find everything needed regardless of external circumstances. He is the food, the strength, the power, the endurance, the wealth, and health. These things are not sought for themselves alone but rather the Lord. So much so, in the end of this life, inheritance awaits in the land above. God himself gives us inheritance with him in Romans 8:17. We share the Father's place through our relationship with the Son. Above else, his sanctuary is the place of refuge. His presence is its' own sanctuary. Is it not funny, God says no one can cure the heart, the sin, the consequences, the curse, nor the visitation thereof but him alone.