Life-verse Number Three

Jeremiah 45:5 “‘But you, are you seeking great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for behold, I am going to bring disaster on all flesh,’ declares the Lord, ‘but I will give your life to you as booty in all the places where you may go.’”

This verse requires a bit of context. The prophet Jeremiah had a secretary named Baruch. The technical, scholarly term is “amanuensis” - you can use it to impress your friends and neighbors, but it means, essentially, “secretary.” An amanuensis was one who would record what another said or dictated (think, court recorder).

Baruch is the one who actually wrote the scroll of Jeremiah, as Jeremiah dictated it to him. Jeremiah the prophet was persona non grata in the royal court of Judah, because his prophecies were condemning the Judean kingdom for their sins as the clock ran down on the southern kingdom. Since Baruch was associated with the hated prophet, he shared in the abuse and contempt. It could not have been pleasant to be hated by your own people while the barbarians were at the gates (actually, it was the Babylonians).

At some low point for the scribe, God gave to Jeremiah a word of encouragement for Baruch, with a promise. “Drop your personal ambitions and dreams of greatness, Baruch. It’s not an appropriate time for that. Instead, I will give you your life as a prize.”

This is for me both a rebuke and a comfort. When I was a young believer, I had dreams and ambitions of “what I would do for God.” Like most ambitions, mine were sullied with prideful desires for personal greatness. Needless to say, my great ambitions did not pan out. And it’s a good thing, too. I already struggle too much with personal pride. Visual success would simply be more than I could handle. God is so gracious.

This promise to Baruch is mine. Christ has given me my life, in that He has saved me and provided me with eternal life. By His good grace, my path has followed His course for me, not my own. Those dreams didn’t pan out, but they were more for me than for Christ. It’s been a far better path than I would have chosen. This is my life verse for the latter portion of my life as a believer, and it is a good one—a blessing.

Are you seeking great things for yourself? Don’t, Christian. God has given you your life as a prize, instead. What He has for you is far better than what you would have chosen for yourself.

Life-verse Number Two

Jeremiah 9:23-24 says:

Thus says the Lord, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord.

I love this passage. Somewhere along the line in my earliest days as a believer in Christ, I was reading Jeremiah and these two verses jumped out and grabbed me and carried me around the room a couple times. This is my life-verse.

I am one prone to boast. When I tend to be inflated with pride—puffed up, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:1—this passage calls me back, plants my feet on the ground. There is but One of whom to boast—and it’s not me. I will boast of Christ, that by His divine sovereign election I know Him. I will boast of Christ, that by His grace and mercy I know and love His Word. Apart from Christ I would be deaf to His Word and blind to His glory. Apart from Christ I would remain spiritually dead and headed for an inexorable judgment. Apart from Christ the gospel would be foolishness to me, and the ways of the world, wisdom.

When I sign my name, I often add the reference “Je 9:23-24.” When I was at Westminster, some of my instructors took exception to my using that text. They knew my background (fundamentalist), and thought I was staking out some sort of anti-intellectual position. I can understand why they might have thought that: the fundamentalist movement has often fallen prey to that self-defeating and biblically foolish position.

But my use of Jeremiah has never been a statement of that sort. It’s not a rebuke for someone else: it is a reminder for me: I have nothing of which to boast—except Christ, whom to know aright is life eternal. In Him, of Him, I will boast.

Life-verse Number One

I have three life verses from Jeremiah—three and counting, I expect.

As a prophet, Jeremiah is very apropos to our generation. His is a sixth-century BC book. Babylon is besieging Jerusalem. The once proud nation is now in its death throes. Sounds a lot like another country I know. And its people are enmeshed in sin and rebellion; they want relief, but are not particularly interested in repentance.

I’ll take my life verses in chronological order, as God used them in my life. First up is Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

In 1974 I was a freshman, a Geology major, at Colorado State University. I was mostly agnostic and completely lost. God was for me an abstraction at best and a distraction at worst: I wasn’t interested.

I was button-holed on the campus by a fellow named Chuck. He had a Bible in his hand; I tried to avoid him, but failed. Trapped, I grudgingly consented to hear what he had to say while making it obvious by my body language that I was not the slightest bit interested.

He began sharing the Gospel with me. As a teen I had enjoyed trying to talk other bible-banging teens out of their faith, but this guy parried every thrust with the Word of God. He patiently and gently answered my every question and my every objection right out of the text, and God began to work in my heart. I was not seeking God, but He was seeking me.

At some point Chuck quoted Jeremiah 17:9, and with that my resistance collapsed. I had been outed, I had been pegged, I had been exposed. All my self-righteousness went up in smoke at that moment and I knew that God saw right through my act. God knew my heart, and His knowledge was dead-on accurate.

All my objections became superfluous, because I knew that only a living God could pierce me with truth as I had been pierced. I trusted Christ that very day, and have been trusting Him ever since.

Jeremiah 17:9 is a pretty humiliating life verse—but I love it. It’s still true of me, but less true than it was thirty-seven years ago, and a year from now it will be even less true of me than it is today. The closer to Christ I grow, the more clearly I see my own corruption. And the more grateful I am that God the Son absorbed the righteous wrath of His Father; wrath that should have been poured on me. I will never be called to account for my sins before the judgment bar of God, because they’ve already been paid through the death of Christ, and God doesn’t do double jepoardy. Hallelujah!

I’m thankful for the Son of God who purchased my salvation, for a man named Chuck who gave me the facts of the Gospel straight, and for Jeremiah 17:9 which exposed my sins!