As a young pup Christian in college in the Jesus Revolution days, I was born-again into a Scripture memory focused campus Christian organization. I memorized a very lot of verses, chapters of epistles and even entire letters, like Philippians, and chunks of other letters. I still have a box of those cards on which those verses are printed or written. Given life is life, I fell out of the habit of memorization and only slowly started memorizing Scripture again decades later when we moved from Chicago to Tampa. Not sure why, other than I realized anew what a “living and active” (Heb. 4:12) thing God’s word is. The first passage I was compelled to memorize was in the church bulletin in one of the services we attended when we got down here, King David’s doxology on the greatness of our God, I Chronicles 29:10-13. This passage has been a constant companion through the vicissitudes of life ever since. God’s word is indeed living and active.
My older self doesn’t seem as adept at memorization as my younger self, and I’m only memorizing verses or passages that mean something to me in the moment. The latest has to do with a theme I’ve come to realize is what the Christian life is all about, trusting in God, or not. I’ll get to the passage in a moment, but first I want to briefly explore why trust is the very essence of the Christian life. We have to go all the way back to the temptation Satan threw at Eve in the Garden (Genesis 3). The first thing Satan does, in the form of a very crafty serpent, is question what God had commanded Adam and Eve:
“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Well, in fact he did, Satan, so buzz off! Unfortunately, Eve didn’t do that and thought she could reason with the father of lies. When I read this passage I wonder why she was so easily seduced by the serpent. The blame must go to Adam. In Genesis 2, the Lord creates man, and Moses tells us about him:
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
The Hebrew word for “keep” tells us why Eve’s encounter with the serpent was Adam’s fault. According to Strong’s:
The Hebrew verb “shamar” primarily means to keep, guard, or observe. It conveys the idea of careful attention and protection. . . . It implies a sense of diligence and responsibility in maintaining what is valuable or sacred.
Adam obviously did a terrible job of guarding and protecting the garden and the woman God gave him, the fall happened, and all its terrible consequences followed because the man didn’t do his job. All men are called to “shamar” their garden, whatever that is.
So, Eve’s on her own to deal with a crafty liar whose job is to get her to not only not trust in the character of God, but to rebel against his express command of not eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And not only does Satan impugn the character of God, but he also calls God himself a liar! 4 “’You will not certainly die,’ the serpent said to the woman.’” Oh yes you will. So the woman uses her own judgment about the tree, thinks it looks kind of appealing, and takes some and eats it. Adam having failed at Job 1, goes along for the ride, and sin, misery, death, and suffering are introduced into God’s perfectly good and ordered world.
In a nutshell, this is our same battle today, trust in the character of God or not, call him a liar or not, and experience the consequences one way or the other. It’s that stark, as are the consequences. Which brings me to Jeremiah 17:5-8. I will quote it in full, and then comment on the incredible contrast and what it means for our lives.
5 This is what the Lord says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes;
he will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.7 “But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
8 He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”
Cursed verses blessed; the choice is ours. Let’s see what that looks like in practice according to the word of God.
The Cursed and Blessed Contrast
First, let’s look at the contrasting words cursed and blessed. In Hebrew they connote divine favor or not. What they do not necessarily refer to, and this is absolutely critical, is circumstances. God’s favor, or disfavor, can’t be divined merely from circumstances, and we mistake God’s intentions if that’s what we use to judge them. Are they irrelevant? Of course not, given the obvious fact some circumstances are pleasant and others are not. Nobody wants to suffer, but suffering and terrible circumstances are not necessarily an indication of God’s disfavor, any more than pleasant circumstances, wealth and honor, are necessarily indication of God’s favor. The qualifier means they may or may not be, and wisdom understands the difference.
In fact as we see from the blessed man, unwelcome circumstances are perfectly consistent with God’s blessing, as are pleasant circumstances to the cursed man. This is counterintuitive to us because we’re human and we prefer pleasure over pain. Christianity frees us from the tyranny of circumstances because God enables us in some manner to overcome or transcend them so they do not determine us. In other words, circumstances are a superficial and often deceptive way to try to divine God’s intentions toward us. Can God use them to send messages to us one way or the other? Obviously He can because as Scripture plainly teaches, He is in control of all things, and He does that all the time. It’s called life.
The point is a simple one, if difficult to attain in practice: we are to place our ultimate trust in God alone, not anything or anyone outside of Him.
One of the great curses of the modern age, in the words of our Declaration of Independence, is “the pursuit of happiness.” The founding generation, steeped in a thoroughly Christian culture, read those words differently than we tend to today in our prosperous thoroughly secular culture. For them it was about purpose and goodness and independence, character, but for us it perfect circumstances. If we have pleasant circumstances we’ll be happy, if not, we’ll be miserable. If you want to be miserable, make happiness the purpose of your life. On the other hand, even if our circumstances are perfect, we’re not to put our trust in those circumstances for our fulfillment. It’s subtle, but daily prayer and thanksgiving for all the blessings God bestows upon us keeps us grounded. It gives us the proper perspective, that He not things or other people, is our ultimate reward, the ultimate joy that allows us to take joy, and enjoyment, in everything else. If we allow anything outside of Him to be our source of joy and fulfillment, we’ll be squeezing the joy and fulfillment out of them like water out of a wet rag.
Having said that, and at the risk of contradicting myself, God wants to bless us with good and pleasant things, as all parents want to bless their children with good and pleasant things. That wasn’t always easy for me to believe, or any of us really, but Jesus himself makes this perfectly clear (Matt 7):
11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
This can also be clearly seen from the beginning when God commanded the man and the woman to be fruitful and multiply; barren or dead trees don’t bear fruit. Women who couldn’t bear children were considered cursed because children were seen as the ultimate blessing in life, as indeed they are. (As an aside, we should want more little blessings in our lives.) The Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses, overflow with words of blessing and prosperity for obedience to God, and curses for disobedience. God’s law is not merely a means to drive us to Christ, but a means to blessing and true personal and societal flourishing. To live in alignment with God’s good, created order is the means to blessing.
Part of the reason for God’s curses and His judgment is to drive us back to Him to find true blessing and fulfillment, no matter what the circumstances are. When the boundary lines do fall for us in pleasant places our contentment is still in Him, not the circumstances. David teaches us this in Psalm 16:
5 Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
you make my lot secure.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
That’s why Jesus tells is to seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness, and not to worry about all the other stuff. Do that, and everything follows regardless of the circumstances.
Cursed is The One Who Trusts in Man
Cursed is a strong, but accurate, word, reflecting the judgment of God against sin, and not trusting God is sin. God is not obligated to reward bad behavior, any more than we are obligated to reward our Children’s bad behavior. Parents who do not discipline their children do them no favors. When God’s first children, Adam and Eve, rebelled God pronounced curses, first on the serpent and the woman, then on the man. Everything in life became harder than God initially created it to be, thorns and thistles. Like me, you may have asked the question: but why can’t God just overlook the rebellion, why does His judgment have to be so harsh?
Let me answer this with some other questions. In a court of law if a judge let someone off who committed murder would you like that? Be comfortable with that? Think that was the right thing for the judge to do? Of course not because we all intuitively understand justice must be done, that wrongs must be righted, which means we live in a moral universe where right and wrong, justice and injustice are a fact of the reality we inhabit. We can no more escape the moral laws of the universe than we can escape its physical laws. Break the moral law, and we suffer the consequences. Let’s look the one who trust in man.
6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes;
he will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.
The image is one devoid of life, devoid of thriving and blooming and fruit. Ironically, this cursed person could have all the most wonderful circumstances he could ever want, prosperity, but even then without God he can’t even see it. It’s like dreaming and working and longing for something for years, and then when you get it, it’s just a thing. It no more fulfills you than one meal fills you. The things of life, be they people or money or comfort or achievements or entertainment or possession or hobbies, or anything else, were never meant to be our fulfillment and joy, or ultimate purpose. All of these things are good, just not ultimate goods. Two of the great saints of Christian history put this truth in wonderfully poetic form. Blaise Pascal, 17th century Christian genius, says it this way:
There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.
And Augustine, the 5th century Christian genius and Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, put it this way:
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
People can stuff all kinds of things in their hearts, stuff them to overflowing, and still they will never be filled, never satiated, never satisfied because they are under God’s curse.
Blessed Is the Man Who Trusts in the Lord
The metaphors Isaiah uses are perfectly descriptive of the contrast, of the blessing, the thriving, the flourishing of this one who chooses, who is determined to trust in the Lord. We all know what trust means, but let’s look at a definition to dial in on its implications for us as we navigate the difficulties and challenges of everyday life in a fallen world among fallen people in a fallen body:
Reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence. confident expectation of something; hope.
How in the world can we have such confidence in God apart from the circumstances even as we pray and long for the circumstances we think we want? Because God isn’t looking to make His people happy, to give them circumstances that are pleasant and unproblematic, but to make them like Christ. In life I call this the pain of sanctification, and very often it isn’t pleasant, thus the reference to pain. Trusting God in such environments is difficult, to say the least, which is why we have to doggedly determine to believe in the goodness of God’s character and intentions toward us. How do we do that? Especially when things are darkest, and the struggles seem unendurable? We have to know this fact of existence of our life in Christ: Everything God does in our lives is for our good and his glory. Paul tells us in Romans 8:28 it isn’t 98% of things that “work together for our good,” but all things, one hundred percent of things. Is this easy? Of course not. Why should it be? Life isn’t easy for heathens either, so why should it be for God’s people? Assuming it should be has led a lot of Christians to become the cursed one who turns in trust to man because God isn’t measuring up to their expectations, which means the circumstances in their life are no to their liking. It’s a terribly shallow and short sighted way to look at existence, but an understandable one.
By contrast, if we look at the vivid picture presented to us in the tree planted by the water, it gets its sustenance, its life giving force from a source, from living water, that is ongoing and cannot be altered by whatever is outside of the stream. Strong living trees withstand storms or heat or drought because they are always being fed the water of life. No wonder my Christian life changed back in 2012 when I determined that every single morning I would get on my knees and pray and read the Bible. I have done that and it made all the difference. The realness of God has become more real than I can describe. My perspective on everything, literally, is always God. I can’t see anything in life apart from the connection to Him. When I hear great music, a melody that grabs me, I think God! When I look at creation, the most humble little flower, I think God! When I make a living daily working through the thorns and thistles, I think God! When I see other people and make them smile, I think God! When I walk alongside those who suffer I think God! When I see a professional golfer or baseball or football player do something we mere mortals can’t fathom, I think God! I could go on like this for hours, but I trust you get the point.
What Happens When We Get to Our Red Sea Moment
Most of the trust challenges we have in our lives are not dramatic, thankfully, but the choice in every moment dramatic or not, is do we trust the Lord, or not. Those times that do get intense present us with a seemingly intractable dilemma. We are all familiar with the story of the Exodus. Moses leads the people of Israel out of Egypt to worship God, and initially the Pharaoh allows them to go with his blessing. In fact, on the way out God inclined the Egyptian people toward the Israelites, “so they plundered the Egyptians.” Everything was looking fine, smooth sailing all the way to the promised land, then it wasn’t. Pharaoh changed his mind, sends his army out after the people to bring them back, and probably slaughter quite a few in the process.
You can read the narrative in Exodus 13 and 14. The Lord leads the people to the shores of the Red Sea, and in the opposite direction comes the army of the Egyptians. Uh oh! What now? If a situation ever looked impossible this was it. The question for the people of Israel was this: would they trust in the Lord or not. Moses implores them to the former:
13 Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
Be still? What are you nuts? We learn previously that the Israelites were armed for war, and it would have been easy for the warriors to take matters into their own hands, but be still? Yep, that’s the plan. And you know the rest of the story. They decided to trust Moses and thus the Lord.
Chances are, our Red Sea moments are never so dramatic, but they sometimes feel that way. I’ve written here before about building the trust muscle, as I call it. We all know what it takes to make muscles stronger, breaking them down, injuring them if you will, so they come back stronger. It’s not a pleasant process most of the time, but the results are worth it. I’ll end this with something I pray and strive for on a daily basis, and which I’ve yet to attain, from Isaiah 26:3 :
You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
Perfect peace . . . .
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