You Haven't Seen Anything Yet.

Watch today’s Installment on YouTube!

The ability to accurately foresee the future - what would you do to get such ability? I don’t know about you, but I believe I can safely say there aren’t many of us who wouldn’t want to know when all this stay-at-home stuff is going to end and we can ‘get back to normal.’ (Of course, anyone who thinks we will ever ‘get back to normal’ is mistaken at best for things are never going to be exactly as they were.)

Honestly, I’m not sure I really DO want to know too many specifics about the future. After all, if it is a matter of we would do some things differently if we knew we were about to die, then we should probably already be doing them, for none of us knows when we will cash in our chips. If it’s a matter of we would do some things differently if we knew Jesus was to return on a certain date, then by all means we should be doing that now, for Jesus is quite clear about none of us knowing when he will come again.

However, even though we are not (fortunately, in my view) gifted with the ability to see exactly what is coming, we are called to be people of hope, for even though we do not know what is to come, we worship a God who does know these things. We worship a God who not only knows these things, but promises us that he will be with us through these things. Additionally, while we are not given absolute specifics, we are, throughout scripture, given hints about things that are to come. Take the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, who was tasked with giving a word about what was come.

Hear these words from Jeremiah twenty-three, verses five and six:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

The days are surely coming…I think it is most fascinating that the word given by God to the prophet doesn’t say that ‘chances are good…’ or ‘If you do this, then…’ No, indeed. The prophet says with absolute certainty that the days are coming…but days for what?

The days are surely coming when God will send for God’s people a righteous one who will have absolute reign and, as king, will show the Judean kings (the ones to which Jeremiah is delivering this prophetic word) what true kingship is all about. These kings are invited by their self-interests, with justice and righteousness being the furthest things from their minds. They are abusive and punitive. In the first verses of chapter twenty-three, Jeremiah calls them out, which leads to the words we read from verses five & six.

So, these are people who were going through what could charitably be called a difficult time. Did God deliver through Jeremiah a word about how long it would last? Not at all. What God said through the prophet was this WILL come to an end. The people WILL have a king who is focused on justice and righteousness, a king who is righteous in and of himself.

I think these words are crucial for our present time since they remind us that we worship a God who has pointed his people to the future. We worship a God who provides hope. We worship a God who delivers on promises made - for we know that God’s people, through the line of David, have been given this righteous branch in Christ our Lord.

It can be very hard to be people who look ahead when we are stuck in a time like this, where everything has been turned upside-down in our lives. It can be very hard to be people who look ahead when EVERY DAY seems to be a struggle of one kind or another. It can be very hard to be people who look ahead when it seems we are in the same situation as Charlie Brown - when we are ready to kick the ball of slowly easing back into a more normal routine, the situation changes and Lucy takes away the football as we wind our leg up to kick, and we wind up flat on our back.

While Jeremiah’s words were delivered to abusive, tyrannical kings, and not us, let us draw inspiration from from them to find inspiration - the God who delivered a righteous king who reigns with justice and righteousness is the same God who will through that righteous king deliver us into life eternal and abundant. What those kings were hearing as an admonishment let us hear as words of hope!