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

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The men that God used to write the Bible loved the Bible. Now, when we speak of the

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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

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Lord God speaking to his people down through the ages through prophets and apostles.

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But the word of God doesn't come in isolation from previous revelation. There's progression and development over time.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And that's what you find, for example, in Jeremiah and chapter 17, where from verse five,

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Jeremiah speaks on behalf of the Lord in language that many of us perhaps will recognize from the book of the

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Psalms. Jeremiah would have loved the Psalms. And so he speaks from God, saying,

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Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the

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Lord. For he shall be like a shrub in the desert and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness in a salt land which is not inhabited.

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Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose hope is the Lord, for he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river and will not fear when heat comes, but its leaf will be green and will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor will cease from yielding fruit.

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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.

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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.

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And you will notice what distinguishes these two groups, one from another.

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The cursed man is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength.

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The blessed man is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose hope is the

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Lord. The cursed man looks down and in and expects to find in himself sufficient strength and wisdom.

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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.

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And the consequences of the cursed man who trusts in himself and whose heart departs from the

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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.

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The first image is one of dryness, barrenness and emptiness. The second image is one of fruitfulness and freshness and vitality.

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Here is the man on the one hand who has no regard for God, but is constantly relying on self and who ultimately comes to nothing.

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He shall not see when good comes. Even when the Lord then does show his favor more generally, it will pass by this man because he has not been seeking after it.

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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.

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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

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Lord? That is the great division across all mankind, and it is one that we cannot afford to overlook.