Is anything too hard for God?

I love Jeremiah's prophecies. Jeremiah was a man born to turbulent times. He was a man called to testing and trial. He was a minister of grace to a graceless people. He was a servant of God when others preferred to serve themselves.

Jeremiah was familiar with rejection, injustice, long nights, and short joys. He knew what it means to sing good news in sour notes. He knew how to run with the horses, even when his heart was hamstrung.

Jeremiah prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of God's people. God filled the lips of the prophet with words of gloom and doom. God filled his eyes with darkness and judgment. The nations that troubled Judah would cause the ground to shake in their advance, then quake in their own boots at the equalizing hand of God.

God filled Jeremiah's words with power, purpose, purity, and Presence. The people rejected God's words, refused God's resolution. They repented not. Yet Jeremiah's heart remained bound to his people to the end. Even in their final disobedience, he went with them to Egypt, knowing they would be slaughtered there, to proclaim the only Truth that could have saved them. Having his ministry by the mercy of God, he did not lose hope.

There is incredible revelation in the book of Jeremiah, as there is in all God's word. Consider this word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: "Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?"

See that word "behold." That's the Holy Spirit's way of saying "PAY ATTENTION!" It means that what follows is important and worth concentrating upon. "Behold," God says. Take a look. Get a grasp on what I'm telling you. Make the effort. Set aside the distractions, anything that would keep you from understanding and receiving what God says. We need this word today. We are surrounded by stimuli that lack the value of "behold! thus saith the Lord." We are bombarded by demands that lead us to exhausted bodies, fragmentary thinking, disrupted lives, and broken heart. More and more these "vain imaginations" (as one biblical author calls them) get the attention the Lord deserves from us, and we are the weaker and worse off for it. Surely this is a day in which God's people need to "behold."

What are we invited to see? Who stands ready to fill our vision and captivate our imagination? The LORD. The "I AM." The self-existent, glorious Almighty God of heaven and earth. He is, by his own word, the God of all flesh. Interesting that God should reveal himself so at this juncture in Jeremiah's life. The people of Jerusalem are under siege and soon to be handed over to the Babylonians. In their worldview, this is not merely the military exploits of one people against another, this is a battle in the heavenlies between the God of Israel and the god of Babylon. Winning this battle is more than a measure of human military prowess. It speaks to the very nature and person of the divine, whether a god is able to save his people or not.

And God says through Jeremiah, "I am the God of all flesh." God brings disaster on his own people. God claims that their current distress is not because of some foreign god, because there is no other god. He alone is God of all people everywhere. He alone is responsible for the judgment of his people at the hands of the Chaldeans. And if he can bring the means of his justice from a far land, can he not also restore his people after his judgment upon them is complete?

Is anything too hard for God? When he has tried us, can he not also restore us? When he has wieghed us down according to the measure of our sin, can he not also lift us up according to the measure of his grace? When God stops us short in our rebellion, can he not also make us long in obedience and faithfulness? These are rhetorical questions that God answers with a resounding "yes!"

Here are the words of Jeremiah the prophet, the words of the Lord that came to him from God: "Behold, I am giving this city into the hand of the Chaldeans . . . for the children of Isreal and the children of Judah have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth . . . they have turned to me their back and not their face . . . they have not listened to receive instruction . . . Now therefore, thus says the Lord . . . behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them . . . I will bring them back to this place . . . I will make them dwell in safety . . . I will be their God . . . I will give them one heart and one way . . . I will make with them an everlasting covenant . . . I will put the fear of me in their hearts . . . I will rejoice in doing them good" (Jeremiah 32:26-41).

The sovereign God of all flesh can put us down or raise us up. He can humble us in judgment or restore us in joy. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened that it cannot save." There is nothing too hard for God.