THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST: RUN WITH THE HORSES

WHY DOES THE WAY OF THE WICKED PROSPER?

Jeremiah 12

A paraphrase of Jeremiah’s prayer in 12:1-4 might go like this: "You’re good, God; after all, you are God. So don’t get me wrong. But I know about goodness too, and there are some things I think you need to explain – like the way you seem to have blessed those scoundrels and let me, your servant, suffer." Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, paraphrased Jeremiah’s prayer this way:

Wert thou mine enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost Defeat, thwart me?

Essentially, Hopkins says, "With friends like you, who needs enemies?"

The glory of the gift of prayer is that God lets us speak to him honestly!

But this gift also includes the privilege of hearing him answer what we say. Prayer is a two-way conversation. God’s not-so-gentle answer to Jeremiah’s complaint is to put it in perspective. The first perspective is, "You think this is bad? You haven’t seen anything yet!" God says, "If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?" (verse 5). The message is that Jeremiah had better brace himself for more of what he doesn’t like. He will need the next two perspectives to do that.

The second perspective is of God’s own pain in the mess, "I will give the one I love into the hands of her enemies. My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest. She roars at me; therefore, I hate her" (verses 7-8). God’s suffering is always greater and truer than ours because his love is. The purer the love, the keener the pain when the beloved goes astray. Jeremiah’s suffering can make him a participant, a partner with God (see Philippians 3:10).

The final perspective is the perspective of hope. "But after I uproot them, I will again have compassion and will bring each of them back to his own inheritance and his own country?" (Jeremiah 12:15). Things will get worse before they get better, but the bad is not worth comparing to the better (see Romans 8:18). Our prayers are surrounded by hope.

God’s words to Jeremiah call us to a "muscular" faith, a race against the horses. But they also remind us of who we run with and where we are running to.

In Christ,