A Word in Season: Cursed or Blessed (Jeremiah 17:5-8)

The men that God used to write the Bible loved the Bible. Now, when we speak of the Bible, we typically mean both the Old and the New Testaments, the whole 66 books, the completed canon, as it is called, the collected works, if you will, of the Lord God speaking to his people down through the ages through prophets and apostles.

The Progressive Revelation of Scripture

But the Word of God doesn't come in isolation from previous revelation. There's progression and development over time. The men who speak later are not saying something new in the sense of something different, but something that is fresh, something that is extra, something that opens up, advances and carries forward the saving purposes of God.

And you would expect that because it is God who is always speaking through these different men, that there will be consistency both in the message itself and sometimes in the very language that is being employed.

And one of the ways in which God would do that is to work through men in whom he has already worked a love of the Word of God. And that's what you find, for example, in Jeremiah and chapter 17, where from verse 5, Jeremiah speaks on behalf of the Lord in language that many of us, perhaps, will recognize from the book of the Psalms.

Jeremiah would have loved the Psalms. And so he speaks from God, saying,. Now while this language and imagery is used in various places in the scripture, it's a striking reflection of what we read, particularly in the first psalm.

Cursed Trust in Man and Blessed Trust in the Lord

And Isaiah, Jeremiah rather, is using that imagery to set before us this stark contrast between cursing and blessing, between the man who lives and dies under the judgment of God and the man who lives and dies enjoying the mercy of God.

And you will notice what distinguishes these two groups, one from another. The cursed man is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength. The blessed man is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose hope is the Lord.

The cursed man looks down and in and expects to find in himself sufficient strength and wisdom. The blessed man looks up and out. He looks to God and he trusts in him to save him and to bless him and to keep him.

And the consequences of the cursed man who trusts in himself and whose heart departs from the Lord and the blessed man who trusts in the Lord and whose hope is there is seen then in the whole pattern of life.

Because on the one hand you've got a man who's like a shrub in the desert and on the other a man who's like a tree by the water. The first image is one of dryness, barrenness and emptiness. The second image is one of fruitfulness and freshness and vitality.

The Fruitless Life of Self-Reliance

Here is the man on the one hand who has no regard for God but is constantly relying on himself and who ultimately comes to nothing. He shall not see when good comes. Even when the Lord then does show his favour more generally it will pass by this man because he has not been seeking after it.

On the other hand you've got the blessed man when trouble comes, when heat comes, when the drought comes, he will still be prospering and fruitful because he has roots that are going down into the living water.

The Great Division Between Cursed and Blessed

So what of me and of you? Are we cursed because we trust in self or in other men or are we blessed because we are trusting in and hoping in the Lord? That is the great division across all mankind and it is one that we cannot afford to overlook.