Luke 13:34 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”

Jesus’ desire to gather such faithless people is not a passing whim he felt one particularly good day when he was in a generous mood. “How often” he says. “How many times I wanted this!” It is truly his standing policy toward the lost. It is the eternal stance he takes from Creation to Judgment Day.

There is no flip-flopping on this matter like the politician who changes positions with every shift in the breeze. Jesus never stops wanting the murderous, lost, and unwilling people who have rejected him. “God our Savior wants all men to be saved,” Paul writes Timothy. “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance,” is the way Peter said it in his second letter. They say that for a relationship to work between a man and a woman, love has to be a little blind. But for Jesus still to want us, and a lost and hostile world beyond us? No one else will ever love you that way.

Nor is this some cold principle or policy he is following because, you know, the world needs it. I was speaking to a special ed teacher who has many students who act out in the classroom. Some even become violent. She has taught herself not to take their behavior personally. She has to put some professional distance between herself and the students so that she can continue to serve them.

Jesus takes no professional distance. “I have longed to gather your children together.” This is his deep and heartfelt desire. He has thrown caution to the wind, and allowed himself to love each of us without boundaries, without limitations, without regard for the consequences to himself. He pours himself into winning us. He invests his whole heart in having us, no matter who we are or what we have done.

But it is not a selfish love. It is “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.” The hen does not gather her chicks because they are so cute and soft and fuzzy. We might like holding the little chicks because we get a kick out of this. They make us feel good. Not so much the mother bird.

The hen gathers her chicks to protect them. Perhaps the owl, or the hawk, or the fox is looking for dinner. The hen puts herself between her young and the danger. She is no match for any of these predators. But she will give her life, take their place in the fox’s jaws or the hawks claws, to save her young.

Which is the same reason that Jesus was heading for Jerusalem. He was putting himself between us and the danger to our souls. He was giving his life, taking our place, on the cross to save us from sin and rescue us from the jaws and claws of the devil who wants to devour us himself. When we come to Jesus in repentance and faith, this is what the people he gathers find.

Luke 13:34 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”

Humans are social creatures. The occasional loner prefers to be alone. But generally, we like to be together. We gather for parties. We gather for family reunions. We gather for class reunions. We gather to cheer on our favorite team, or celebrate our nation’s birthday, or support our favorite candidate. We want to spend time and interact with those who have things in common.

God made us this way, because he is this way himself. He could have gone through eternity alone. It’s not as though he needs anything. He’s God. But he wanted beings something like himself to love, to enjoy their company. So he made our kind, not just Golden Retrievers to fetch a ball or lick a face, but rational creatures capable of speech and independent thought, a race of beings who could create things, look beyond their own care to the care of others, and have an intelligent conversation about it all with him at the end of the day.

Ever since our first parents decided to abandon God and his plan, to run their lives and their world their own way, he has been eager to win us back. He doesn’t force us as such, but he knows we will never come on our own, either. So he began sending messengers with messages. Eventually he came to live with us himself, to expose our foolishness, make restitution for our offensive behavior and the damage we had done by our rebellion, and lead us home. He planted seeds of love that have the power to change our hearts and win them. To this day his hand is always reaching out, his arms are always open, seeking to gather us back, hoping to gather us back, before it is too late for us to return.

The Jewish people, the city of Jerusalem, had a history. When prophets like Isaiah and Habakkuk confronted King Manasseh’s promotion of gods whose religions involved dirty sex and worship, like Baal and Asherah, or child sacrifice and worship, like Molech, he had the prophets put to death. After Jeremiah’s warnings about Jerusalem falling to the Babylonians came true, and the leading people of the city were taken into exile, the few who remained assassinated him.

Who sent these prophets? Jesus answers the question here. The hearts of these people should have rightfully belonged to him. Everything they had came from him. He gave them their land. He made them a nation. They owed him their lives. As far back as their slavery in Egypt he had spared them from genocide. Was it so much to ask them to acknowledge his gifts and kindnesses? Was it unreasonable to expect them to worship and follow him, the only God who ever gave them anything, who did everything for them?

“You were not willing.” There is this thing about following and believing and worshiping the true God. He is actually God. We live under him, not the other way around. His way prevails. His rules apply. Breaking them may be forgivable, but having them is not negotiable. Over time Jerusalem and its citizens decided, “We like our way better. We like the freedom to live any way we want. We think we will do fine on our own. If you don’t stop sending us those prophets to make us feel guilty, we will get rid of them.” Their own hearts and wills stood in the way.

Maybe we aren’t murdering the clergy like Jerusalem once killed her prophets, but maybe that is just a matter of time. We live in a place and time when the gospel call is not rare, but for many of our fellow citizens, at least, “you were not willing.” Instead of running to Jesus, they are running from him.

And the old false gods also live among us in new, secular form. Baal and Asherah have been repackaged as the sexual revolution, where everything is permissible as long as both parties consent. More and more people their souls to worship at the altar of this god of sexual freedom, and it is a jealous god that can stand no criticism. Woe to the infidel who suggests there might be something wrong with it.

Moloch is the new culture of death. In it even infanticide is being defended, and the solution to terminal disease or old age is so-called “merciful” execution for the invalids.

We must be careful here, lest we forget that all these idolatries live within our own hearts. We feel the pull, the appeal, if we are honest. You and I have visited the temple of “I can do what I want,” or “I can get by on my own.” Still, Jesus wants to gather his people. They may not be willing, but he still is.

Hebrews 4:15-16 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Many people go to support groups for help. Perhaps not every support group has the answers a person needs, but people go because they expect to find people who understand the problem, the question. The group isn’t populated by professionals with canned answers, or academics who have been studying the issue for years. It consists of people who share the same problem. They understand it from the inside, because they have lived it. It is easy to make them understand.

Because of this, you don’t expect judgment at the support group. No one at AA expresses shock when a new person attends and confesses that they have a drinking problem. It’s what everyone expects. And because they have been there themselves, they sympathize with their weakness.

As our high priest, Jesus isn’t exactly the same as a fellow struggler at a support group, but some of the same principles apply to his sympathy with our temptations. He lived our lives. He wasn’t born into wealth or privilege. He wasn’t given a human body with an iron skin, or a numbed heart. When people made fun of him, and people did make fun of him, it hurt. When he got cold, or hungry, his body wanted relief. He was a male human being, and he could find a pretty woman attractive. A glass of wine warmed him on the inside. You know when you bump the top of your head on something sharp, like the corner of a cabinet door you forgot was open above you, and you get that burst of maddening pain? That’s what it felt like for him, too.

All these things presented temptations to him, just as they do for us. He has been there. He gets it. And though he never let it take him all the way to sin, he doesn’t judge us for our weaknesses. “I resisted the sin. Why don’t you?”

No, our high priest sympathizes with our weaknesses, and his heart is open to give us help. His sympathy leads us to come to him with confidence, and to know he is always ready to help.

Years ago I started seeing a doctor because I had asthma. From the beginning, he seemed to think it was all in my head. He gave me the impression that he was annoyed that I had come to see him. When the tests he ordered revealed that I did have asthma, he was genuinely surprised.

After taking the medication for a while, I was having some issues with hoarseness in my voice. So I made an appointment. Again, he seemed slightly annoyed that I came. When I got to the examining room, he shined a flashlight in my mouth, and then he said, “I’m not an ear, nose, throat doctor. I probably can’t help you. What do you want me to do?” It didn’t sound as if he cared, and he suggested he wasn’t able to help. I never went back. I had no confidence in him.

As your high priest, Jesus cares. He sympathizes with your weakness. He gets the job done. He is the Son of God who has gone through the heavens. Why wouldn’t we keep going back to him, confident of his mercy when we need help, and confident of his grace when we have sinned? We don’t need to look any further. Hold firmly to this faith, because your high priest makes it possible to pray with confidence.

Hebrews 4:14-15 “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.”

Perhaps the idea of having a great high priest doesn’t fill you with an immediate sense of good fortune, like “You just won the sweepstakes,” or “You just received a promotion.” What does this mean? I have someone in a black shirt and white collar I can confess my sins to? A couple thousand years stand between us and the picture the writer of this letter is using.

For almost a millennium and a half, from Moses to Jesus, the high priest was the Bible believer’s access to God. He sacrificed the sheep and the goats that made sure God was still on our good side, that the lines were still open to receive his blessing, that our latest sins and messes (because we are always committing sins and creating messes) weren’t gumming up the works. He brought the prayers before God’s throne so that you could be sure your messages were getting through. They weren’t being returned or rejected when they arrived. If you wanted the Lord to hear you or help you, this was sort of important. The only alternative was to try to get through life now, and judgment day to come, entirely on your own. You might have some success with the first task. You were doomed to fail with the second.

But there were some issues with the high priests themselves. They were unsteady humans full of sin and self-interest just like you and me. Before they could even do their work God required them to offer sacrifices for their own sins, or he wasn’t interested in anything else they brought as offerings or had to say. At times the high priesthood became so corrupt that the Lord couldn’t even deal with them anymore. He arranged for the execution of more than one of the priests for abusing the office across the centuries. By Jesus’ time the whole thing had become a political game. That’s not the kind of institution you want to depend on when your eternal fate is hanging in the balance.                  

If these Jewish Christians who received the letter to the Hebrews went back to their old faith in Judaism, and the religious life of the synagogue, that’s all there was for them: a corrupt and spiritually empty institution rejected by God. They might feel less alone in the world. They would be part of a bigger family of faith. But it would all be based on something that didn’t work anymore. Spiritually, they would be doomed.

If they stayed in Christianity, “we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God…” Jesus had none of the shortcomings of the merely human high priests who had come before him. Concerned about how his work might be received by God in heaven? Concerned whether corruption or incompetence might get in the way? Jesus is the Son of God “who has gone through the heavens.” He doesn’t share our human failings, or those of the other high priests. He isn’t a mere man calling on God from an earthly temple far, far away. He is a resident of heaven. He is the Son of the God whose grace and help we seek. He is acceptable, he has access, like no priest before him. Above all, he offered God the one sacrifice truly capable of erasing our sins: the sacrifice of himself. That meant every advantage for holding firmly to this faith.

Perhaps this all sounds abstract to people like us who never brought an animal to a priest to have it sacrificed, or thought about needing some kind of holy man to get our prayers heard in heaven. But understand that we need this kind of help no less today. It’s not as though God has changed. He finds sin no less offensive than he used to. It has to be dealt with in some way.

You can sample the other religions of the world, and this is what you will find: a great moral teacher, like Mohammed or the Buddha. They will tell you how to live. Maybe they will even help you to be better than you are right now. But lists of dos and don’ts won’t remove your taste for sin altogether, and they provide no solution for the evil we have done. We are still stuck with that. Even some Christian groups offer loads of advice on how to live. For a while it may feel as though we are making progress. But the long-term effect is to pile the guilt of our shortcomings higher and higher. Many, many souls end up crushed under the weight.

Another alternative is to find some religion that still has human priests to make a sacrifice on your behalf. Then we still have all the issues of their human failings. They serve in corrupted institutions of faith and worship. They bring sacrifices God did not request. They offer no help for maintaining our relationship with him. God once said to the Jews, “The multitude of your sacrifices–what are they to me?…I have enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats…Stop bringing meaningless offerings!” (Isa. 1:11, 13). What good will the sacrifices be anywhere else?

In contrast to all this, we have every reason to hold firmly to this faith we have right now, faith in Jesus as God’s Son, the High Priest who has gone through the heavens. That’s the kind of priest whose service and sacrifice we can trust.

2 Corinthians 3:9, 11 “If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!… And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!”

When the children of Israel first heard God’s voice booming down the Ten Commandments behind the smoke and darkness, the fire and lightning, on Mount Sinai, they had a sense, a premonition, of what this ministry meant. “When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

Here Paul calls Moses’ ministry “the ministry that condemns.” And some people might be surprised to hear it, but that is what God’s law does. It’s not because there is anything wrong with the law. It’s because there is a sinner in us, and he has to die. It works a little like antibiotics for the soul. You know what antibiotics do, right? They kill living things, the bacteria that make you sick. Pneumonia will kill you. But antibiotics will kill the pneumonia. That’s good for getting rid of the disease, but you can’t make a regular diet out of penicillin or tetracycline or cipro. That could kill you.

So the ministry of the law is good for what it does, dealing death to our sinful nature. But it doesn’t have the glory of giving us life or nourishing our faith. That belongs to another ministry, the ministry of the gospel we have been given.

Paul says it this way, “…how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!” The good news about Jesus makes us righteous. It takes his payment for the sins of the world and makes it ours. It takes his perfect life of love for friends and enemies, for public sinners and self-righteous hypocrites and makes it ours. It plants a living faith in us and presents us to God as new and holy people, stripped of guilt and clothed and covered in the kindness and mercy by which Jesus lived and walked for some thirty years. Spiritually speaking, it doesn’t just make us well. It raises the dead. To bring us the righteousness that comes from God it works the miracle of spiritual life in our souls.

So we have the glory of living in this ministry, of having this mission, of carrying around with us this message that makes sinners holy, that makes the guilty righteous, that makes the dead alive. Your church may not be the biggest or most influential in your community. But your ministry is still more glorious than you think. You raise the spiritually dead to life!

Add to that the glory of how long that ministry lasts. “And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts.”

After talking to God on Mount Sinai, Moses didn’t spend the rest of his life with his head shining like a light bulb screwed into the top of his neck. After each session with God, the glory faded, and he looked just like everybody else again.

Paul uses this as an allusion to the glory of the law, its relative importance for our lives. Yes, it exposes our sin. It leads us to repent. It prepares us for grace. But even in this life, it is not what faith lives on. And in the perfection of the life to come, the glory of the law will fade to black, no longer necessary for people who have been transformed into creatures of perfect love.

But the ministry that is all about God’s people living in his love as holy, righteous, radiant children free from sin and death–there is no end to that. That is like one of these fluorescent bulbs that starts out a little dim when it is cold. But as it warms the intensity of its light grows brighter and brighter until it reaches its full brilliance. Already now, with each new insight of faith, the glory of the gospel grows inside of us, spreading its light farther and farther into the dark recesses of our souls. And when we finally reach the other side, and we have put all sin behind us, and life is all we know, the love of God will reach its full brilliance in us. “How much greater is the glory of that which lasts!”

2 Corinthians 3:7-8 “Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?”

Moses brought his people a message engraved on stone. That is how his “ministry” was given. You might say it was “monumental” from the beginning, these two tombstones he carried down the mountain with the commandments carved on them. The process of receiving the law required Moses to meet with God very nearly face to face, and standing in God’s presence like that made Moses’ face shine with such an unearthly glow that the rest of his people were afraid to go near him when he first came down the mountain.

But for all their glory, these commandments, and the ministry they represented, were easily broken, both literally and figuratively. You remember that when Moses came down the mountain with the two stone tablets the first time, the people were involved in worshiping the golden calf idol. In his anger Moses threw the tablets down and broke them. After he had dealt with the idolatry issue, he had to go up the mountain again to receive two more from God.

Since then, we still chisel them onto stone monuments and fight about where you can put them, but the commands themselves are as fragile as if they had been chiseled on egg shells. Everyday good people break them. Bad people break them. Powerful people break them. Ordinary people break them. Consider how common cussing has become in our time. I can’t figure out why the television censors bleep the words they do anymore, because the ones they allow are plenty obscene. People seem to forget that God had something to say about the words you pair with his good name.

Look at social media and the things people post about celebrities, politicians, and other public figures, like God never had anything to say about your neighbor and false testimony about him. What ever happened to honoring your parents, and others in authority? When did God ever say it was okay to replace being happy your neighbor did well, and made a lot of money, with envy, resentment, and coveting his good fortune?

By contrast, the ministry of the gospel–the ministry Paul was given, the ministry we have been given–may not look so glorious in how it is given. Yet Paul suggests, “…will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?” When we deliver our message, there are no lightning and peals of thunder. The ground doesn’t shake. Our faces don’t shine like we got too close to a nuclear reactor.

You don’t know my friend Regan. One day when she was in grade school she began talking to her friend about Jesus, and then explained baptism to her, and then baptized her friend right there in the backyard swimming pool. It didn’t make the news.

You’ve never heard of Jill McKinley. She grew up in a Jewish family, and when she got to college she didn’t like many of her Christian classmates, who made her feel like a target. But her roommate treated her like a friend. After several months of giving her respect and love, the opportunity finally came to talk about faith. Today Jill is a Christian, an evangelist, and a leader in her congregation, but there was nothing flashy about her roommate’s Christian conversations.

Neither you nor I know what will happen if we show up at a new neighbor’s door and invite them to church, or talk a little about what we believe. But we know Jesus and the way to heaven. Maybe we could say something about him. We may not look or sound like much. My voice doesn’t rumble when I speak. My face may shine a little from sweat on a hot day, but I wouldn’t call it glorious. Yet with simple words the Spirit has all he needs to capture another heart for God.

Our ministry, our words, are more glorious than you think, not because of our stuttering, stammering attempts to talk. The very Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity, is at work invading hearts, wooing and winning souls, in a miraculous way that goes beyond all investigation. They are glorious, because of the saving message they contain.

Luke 6:37-38 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

“Judge” is one of those words that can mean a number of different things. Hundreds of people bring their animals, their crafts, their garden produce to the county fair each year to be judged. No one takes any offense that judges grade their work and pick a winner. Parents try to teach their children to use good judgment when evaluating situations and making decisions. They encourage their children to judge wisely.

Jesus told his disciple that on the last day they would sit on twelve thrones with him judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Paul wrote the Christians in Corinth that they ought to judge disputes between believers in their congregation without taking the issue to the secular courts. All of these involve making an evaluation of some sort, but each one takes a slightly different slant on “judging.”

Jesus makes clear his concern here when he further says, “Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.” He isn’t urging us to stop recognizing sin in others, to stop discerning between right and wrong. He is saying, “Don’t judge others as though they were vastly inferior to you, as though they were no longer worth your concern and your love. Don’t write them off as though they are beyond redemption. You are a sinner, and you weren’t.”

He is taking us back to how our heavenly Father regards us, isn’t he? If anyone has the ability to judge between right and wrong, good and evil, it is him. If anyone has the right to condemn us, to write us off, to conclude that we are no longer worth his time or effort or love, it is him. We have given him ample reason to do so, if we are honest. We know right from wrong. We know what God expects. We know how much he has given up to have us, how much he paid to make us his own, how patient he has been with our stubbornness. We still sin.

“But my sins are little sins,” someone might object. Maybe they are. But if they are so little, then why don’t we give them up? And honestly, don’t they expose the same spiritually sick heart that afflicts everyone else? Isn’t that why the Apostle James says, “Whoever keeps the whole law, yet breaks it at just one point, is guilty of breaking all of it”? Isn’t that why Paul warns, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law”? Our Father sees our sin. That he certainly can judge. But he hasn’t given up on us and condemned us.

He has forgiven us. “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” It’s not as though we are waiting for him to forgive us for the first time. We have been forgiven many times. We live in his forgiveness like it’s the atmosphere we breath as Christians. Even if we aren’t breathing it in at the moment, it’s there. It’s how we know he will keep forgiving us tomorrow. We live in this stuff.

Can we receive such grace, such a charitable, patient regard from our Father, and not be changed? Can we have so much forgiveness from him and not extend the same to others. It’s not as though we have anything to lose by doing so. “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

When you live in the United States, you use the English system of measure: cups and pints and quarts, and inches, feet and miles. When you live or travel in most other countries, they use the metric system: grams and liters and meters and such. Where you live or spend your time determines the measure you use.

When you live in God’s kingdom, when you are at home in his family, there is a system of measure based on his love and grace. That’s how our Father and his family operate. When you live and work by the world’s standards, it is a severe measuring system of personal performance, strict judgment, and stiff punishment that rules. Why not live life in God’s family, “for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Luke 6:35-36 “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

Love may be the most celebrated thing in the world. I have never met a person who was against it. Music, books, movies, art–all of them sing the praises of love. Celebrities, politicians, and holy men call for more of it. The Woodstock generation made it the theme of a movement, together with peace. Advertisers and Marketers sloganize it. “Love. It’s What Makes a Subaru, a Subaru.” Here’s a quote on love from a famous person: “Act with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people and, if necessary, even to die for it.” Sounds good, right? That’s Adolph Hitler in a speech in 1922. So you don’t necessarily have to be a nice guy to think that love is grand.

The question is, “What do you mean by love, and whom do you include in it?” That’s where it gets interesting. Jesus does not limit it to those who are easy to love, the kind of people who please you and manage to win your affection. That was where people commonly drew the line in his day. In another place he observes, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” And a lot of people would say, “That sounds about right to me.” Anton LaVey, whom you may recognize for his associations with Satanism, has condemned “Love your enemies” as “the miserable philosophy of the spaniel (the pet dog), who roles over when his master kicks him. When someone strikes you on the cheek, punch him in the mouth.”

This may be natural, but that’s not like our Father. It’s like his enemies, the ones who oppose him, the ones who are allies with hell. Jesus describes love like the Father’s this way, “But love your enemies…” Note that “love your enemies” is more than warm feelings for them. “Do good to them,” Jesus says. Love them in the way you treat them. Maybe you will soften their hearts and change the relationship.

But we don’t love our enemies for the sake of getting something in return. “Lend to them without expecting to get anything back.” Love like our Father’s isn’t looking to get something. It is looking to give something. This isn’t a shrewd trick for getting a better return on your investment. It is looking to be someone different, someone better and more, and that itself is a reward. “Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” Our reward does not come from the enemy we love. It comes from the Father who loves us. He can claim us as his own Sons, members of his own family. Suddenly, there is a family resemblance.

But weren’t we the same people who would be happy to see our enemies suffer, and maybe stick it to them ourselves, given the opportunity? What happened? What changed? We discovered our Father’s mercy, or better, he showed it to us. “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” He hasn’t treated us as our sins deserved. He didn’t destroy us for rebelling against him. Even before we returned to him in faith, he fed us everyday, and let us experience the beauty of his creation, and gave us another day, and then another day, to seek him. He let the guilt of our rebellion fall on his Son, and then let it kill him as the payment for crimes against him. He sought us, and found us, and made us his own. He showed us mercy.

There are currently at least 5 billion people on the planet living in a state of rebellion, without faith in God. But our Father does more than tolerate their existence. He actively supports it. Maybe today is they day they will repent and believe. Maybe tomorrow is the day they will repent and believe. So even now he feeds them, and clothes them, and extends their lives and delays their judgment, even though they may oppose him in everything that is good and decent. He is kind to his enemies because he loves them. He loves us all.

We were once those enemies, too. Love like your Father does, in the way you treat others.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 “But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. 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.”

There is more than one word for “blessed” in the Greek and the Hebrew. In many of the psalms, or Jesus’ beatitudes, the word “Blessed…” means something more like “happy.” We feel uplifted and elevated when we are enjoying God’s word and the good things that come from it.

Here we have a word  for “Blessed” that describes us as people who have received a great gift. That’s what happens when we trust in the Lord. We possess good things. Those things may not make us happy in the material sense, but they are still good to have. They’re still a gift.

Some people turn this around. They make it seem as though when we trust in God, we are the givers, and he is the receiver. And we may speak of giving God our trust, or giving him our hearts. But that is no great prize, is it? I once heard a talk show host and a political guest joking about the heart of a particularly hard-edged politician. If you received his heart as a transplant, would it be a good thing, because it had never been used, or would it be a bad choice, because it didn’t work?

Spiritually, our hearts don’t work right. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure,” is the very next thing Jeremiah observes in verse 9. Some great gift for God that is when we offer our love and trust.

So we are the blessed ones, the receivers of God’s gifts. And the prophet describes that blessing with a picture: “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.”

Note that the tree in the picture doesn’t have life easy all the time. The heat comes and makes it suffer. The drought comes and dries up much of the moisture on which it depends. Life is like that for those who trust in the Lord. About now we are at the peak of the annual flu season. Millions have gotten sick. We can expect that the percentage of Christians with the flu matches the general population. When prices rise, we have to pay what everyone else does. When tornadoes come, they plow through Christian homes the same as unbelievers’. We live in the same world as everyone else.

But God has planted us by a stream of water. Under the surface, our roots tap into the streams of his promises. We know the love of a Savior who went all the way to cross and death to make us his own. Disease may make us miserable. It may even take our life. It has no effect on the streams of love and forgiveness flowing to our hearts from Jesus’ cross.

Our earthly fortunes will almost certainly swing wildly between plenty and scarcity, if they don’t just hover between “can’t quite make ends meet” and “can’t get the bill collectors off my back.” But God’s grace is always free, and no one can come and repossess the kingdom that he has already given us.

As people who trust in the Lord, we are always cleansed, always safe, always rich, always free, always treasured, always prospering, always at peace with God, always filled with his presence, always destined for glory, and no one can ever take these gifts away.