Philippians 2:9-11 “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Sometimes Christians complain that department stores are disrespecting Jesus if they substitute “Happy Holidays” for “Merry Christmas.” Of course Jesus is the reason for the season. Of course the stores are all too happy to make a buck off his birthday. But I don’t know that Jesus is particularly pleased when people who don’t even believe in him reference his title in their season’s greetings. He never made it his mission to become a seasonal slogan. If Christians want to defend his honor, they might start by being careful not to use his name as an exclamation point. Then let’s find the courage to go and tell someone who doesn’t know, why Jesus means so much to us.

In Paul’s world, just talking about Jesus in public could land you in prison. That’s where he was writing this letter to the Christians in Philippi. In our world, there are still over 50 countries where talking about him in public can get you arrested. Should that surprise us in a world that crucified him when he visited the first time?

Trends and statistics for Christians can be depressing. Every recent study indicates between 70 and 80 percent of young people raised in the church will leave it by age 30. Society at large tries to ignore Jesus or remove him from public life. It is easy to fear that Christianity is dying. Maybe the faith Jesus started is a failure after all.

Paul has two answers for our fears. “God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name.” You can’t take away the honor Jesus has already been given. Not only did God raise him from the dead. In response to his sacrifice for our sins, God has given him the highest position and most respected name of all. Jesus may have been executed when he was here. The people he left behind may struggle. But those who continue to trust in him need to know that they are playing on the winning team.

And when we reach the next life, where Jesus already enjoys these honors, no one will be able to deny his greatness: “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” Note that Paul does not say that all these knees bowing to Jesus do so because they believe in him as his people. He is not predicting a mass conversion.

In the end even his enemies will have to acknowledge him. Jewish priests and Roman soldiers mocked the idea he was some sort of king while he hung on the cross. They will all bow down to him and call him Lord. Literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of people I have met have smiled and told me they aren’t interested in church or religion at the door. They will all bow down to him and call him Lord.

And we will be there, too–our faith confirmed, our doubts dismissed. But when we bow, we will bow as royal guests of the King, saved by his humble grace. For this, God the Father himself exalts him.

Exodus 3:7-8 “The Lord said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey…”

The theologian’s term for God’s all-knowing ability is “omniscience.” No truth, no fact, no event ever escapes his notice.

The point of this talent is not that he could be the all-time winningest champion on Jeopardy, or that it qualifies him to teach the entire university curriculum. Those things may be true. “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.” David writes in the 139^th Psalm. “You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.” The point is, the Lord is entirely familiar with the most intimate details of our lives. And he acquaints himself with them not because he wants to catch us, or shame us. He makes them his business because he is concerned to help us.

The Lord did not feel obligated to explain to Moses why he waited a couple of hundred years and several generations to do something about the suffering of his people. That doesn’t change the fact of his concern. Timing can be a complicated thing. Before you bake the bread, it’s wise to let the bread dough rise, even if you are hungry right now. Otherwise you might end up with an inedible brick.

Just because the Lord doesn’t explain to us why he waits to intervene in our suffering doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a perfectly good reason for waiting. In the meantime, if you want to know what he is really like, trust him when he says, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people…and I am concerned about their suffering.”

Then he reveals that he is the God who rescues us in his love. “So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey…” So begins the story of the greatest deliverance before the coming of Christ.

Israel was a slave nation: no army, no weapons, no organized leadership. Egypt was a superpower: an empire whose wealth, and technology, and military had no superiors. There was no way the little nation of sheep farmers turned brick layers was going to escape to freedom without divine intervention. It would take a miracle– at least a dozen of them before God was done.

But God did what he promised, because that is the kind of God he is. He comes down. He gets involved. He delivers his people even when it looks like all hope is lost. It makes it easier for everyone to see that the escape was not luck, a fluke, or a sudden surge of human ingenuity. It was God, the one whose loving concern leads him to deliver his people.

You could say that the whole Bible tells this story over and over again. The names and places change. The story is always the same. God’s people are trapped in misery, usually due to some foolishness of their own. The Lord intervenes to rescue them: from bad decisions, bad behavior, bad neighbors, bad family members, bad employers, bad leaders, bad empires, bad weather, bad health, even bad religion. It all culminates in the big one, the rescue of all rescues. He let his own Son be crucified to deliver us from our sins and free us from death. This rescue tells us, like no other, what God is really like.

Mark Paustian tells about the time he arrived at church early to set up for Sunday service and found a young woman waiting there. “I hope you don’t mind my being here,” she told him. “I don’t believe in God.” “Why don’t you tell me about the God you don’t believe in,” he offered. “Maybe I don’t believe in him either.”

She went on to describe a god who sits on his hands, does nothing about the pain in the world, invents arbitrary rules, and enjoys judging and killing people. “Guess what?” Pastor Paustian said. “I don’t believe in that God either.” Then he went on to describe the God of all power, who is still holy and just, but who might best be understood this way: He is the “God with skin on,” Jesus Christ. He is the God who made the very beam of wood that got too heavy for him when he had to carry it up the hill where they executed him.

He is the One who could do everything, hanging on the cross doing nothing. Just dying. For me. He is love in flesh and blood, alive again three days later, because he is concerned about his people.

Exodus 3:4-6 “When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, ‘Moses! Moses!’ And Moses said, ‘Here I am.’ ‘Do not come any closer,’ God said. ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.’ Then he said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ At this, Moses hid is face, because he was afraid to look at God.”

On the mountain Moses came face to face with the God who is holy. Ordinarily, Moses’ sandals kept his feet from being defiled by the dirty, dusty desert floor on which he ran his sheep. In God’s presence those same dirty sandals defiled the dust made holy by the presence of a God so pure, so distinct from the people he had made, that Moses was afraid to look at him.

At best, people conceive of gods who are larger-than-life versions of themselves. These homemade gods value what they value, crave what they crave, tolerate what they tolerate, and condemn what they condemn.

We sometimes laugh at the cartoonish gods of Greek and Roman mythology. They are greedy, lustful, envious, moody, petty, violent, conceited–larger-than-life versions of the people who worshiped them. I submit to you that those same gods, minus the cartoon images, have largely conquered and colonized the culture in which we live today. They have made deep inroads even into our Christian churches. That is why, in the name of god, people will defend perversions of every sort, stinginess, disregard for the poor, the slaughter of the innocent unborn, deceit, vulgarity, and worse. That is why the person who tells you to listen to the voice of god within is probably an idolater urging you to make a god who looks like yourself.

The holy God of Mount Horeb is not one of us. If you find it hard to look at him there is a reason for that. He is better than we are. No, that is an understatement. He is everything we are not. He is so utterly true and authentic that we shrink from his absolute honesty. He exposes me, the fraud I am. He sets the standard of right and wrong. He is the standard of right and wrong. He tolerates no deviation from it. He is the only being in the universe who has a right, a claim, to making everything about himself. He is God.

But in his holiness we find not absolute selfishness but absolute love. He lets nothing get in the way of giving his creatures exactly what they need, not even their own objections, not even his own pain and sacrifice. His burning desire to save his people moves him to come to their rescue. Moses was the man of the moment for his saving plan. Jesus is the greater Savior for all people, whose mission to rescue us from sin God was protecting by sending Moses to rescue Israel from Egypt.

“So this is what God is really like,” Moses must have thought as he stood barefoot in front of a fire that didn’t burn, and he hid his face. He is so holy, and yet he comes to us and stoops to save us. He is still so holy, and so zealous to come and save.

Exodus 3:1-3 “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, ‘I will go over and see this strange sight–why the bush does not burn up.’”

The burning bush was not a magic trick. It was an introduction. God needed to introduce himself to Moses some way, and this is how he chose to do it.

Maybe his method seems strange. With Abraham, the Lord adopted a human form to come and visit him. With Jacob he appeared in a dream. Sometimes, it seems, he came as little more than a voice.

For Moses, he is this fire engulfing a mountain shrub, but the branches and twigs are not glowing red, then turning black and disintegrating into ash. The leaves were not curling and then disappearing in the heat. The miracle was an important part of God’s “How do you do?”

The fire that burns down your house or destroys 10,000 acres of forest is a powerful thing. We don’t play with fire because we know it is dangerous. That is the natural power of fire, and we respect it. A fire that can leave a perfectly combustible plant untouched, that can live in its branches without consuming its life, is more powerful still. It is the supernatural power of God, who is not limited by the laws that ordinarily govern the way the universe works. For him the laws of physics are only suggestions. God’s introduction to Moses, where he first meets him, was a way of reminding his future prophet and deliverer, “I am all-powerful. I can do the impossible.”

That was going to be important for Moses going forward. The Lord was going to ask Moses to take his life into his hands and confront one of the world’s most dangerous dictators. Imagine if he asked you to march into North Korean crazy-man Kim Jong Un’s office and demand that he let his people freely travel to the south. You might want to know that the Lord had some supernatural power up his sleeve, because nothing natural was going to bring you out alive. This burning bush was a start to build Moses’ confidence.

God’s almighty power is still a good starting point for knowing what he is like. Some people believe they meet God in the power or beauty of nature–storms, hurricanes, earthquakes; stately forests, tranquil lakes, mountain vistas, or gorgeous sunsets. None of these is God himself. They are only his fingerprint, only his craftsmanship. But you would be right to conclude that a power far higher than yourself stands behind the forces that make us feel so small.

Some people find it hard to believe in an almighty God in a world that seems so out of control, so plagued by catastrophe, cruelty, and suffering. These are not due to a lack of power but consequences of his love and respect for freedom. Sinful people brought these things into the world. You and I have to survive in such a place.

One God alone has the power to deal with the problems of sin and its effects: catastrophe, cruelty, and suffering. It would be foolish to face these without the only God who overcomes it all.

James 1:18 “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.”

God chose to make us alive spiritually. He gave us the new life of faith. Here’s a thought with Mother’s Day approaching: God giving us the new life of faith was like a mother giving birth. Who does all the work, all the sweat? Certainly not the baby. It gets squeezed, and pushed, but it’s not actively involved one way or another. No one gives the baby a high five after delivery and congratulates it: “Good job, junior! Nice arrival! You showed up well.” Mom is the one who gets all the hugs, all the kisses, all the credit, because she did all the work.

God chose to birth a spiritual life in us, and it involved its own kind of spiritual labor pains. James says God gave the gift of spiritual birth “through the word of truth.” And what word was that? What did that word say? It wasn’t a reasonable list of evidences for the existence of God. It wasn’t an abstract discussion of the nature and characteristics of God.

It was the word that showed you his love. It is the word that revealed that in order to save you, God traded his home in heaven for the slums of earth. He traded his glory and power for a weak human body, and he became the man named Jesus. He traded his holiness for your sin. He traded his life for your death. He traded his respect and praise for your shame and punishment. He traded his throne for a cross, and a stone slab in a cold tomb. He sweated and suffered and died over all this labor and sacrifice to save you and me, because that’s how much he loves you and me.

This word, this news, this love was the one thing powerful enough to land on the cold, barren planet that was my heart. Where there was no atmosphere, no sunshine, no water–none of the requirements for life spiritually speaking–this was the one thing that could miraculously establish the spiritual life of faith where no life had ever existed before.

Why? Just for the pride of being able to say he could do the impossible? No, “that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” You know what firstfruits are? They are the first part of the harvest, the first thing to come off the trees or out of the field. They aren’t only first in time, but God generally considered them first in quality and first in desirability. In the Old Testament he required that the people of Israel give him the firstfruits of their harvests in recognition of the fact that he had supplied the harvest in the first place.

In the New Testament God doesn’t want fruits or grains. He wants you to be his own. You are the one thing he desires. You are the one thing he regards above everything else he has made. You are the one thing he values more than anything in the world.

You want to know that God loves you, and that he has only your good in mind, when your life is up and down, and you see suffering you can’t explain? This is where you look, where he has made himself clear. Not at all the hard to interpret experiences of life in a complex and broken world that frankly is too big and too lost for our puny brains to comprehend. This is where you look. God’s proof lies in the gift of our new life and all the loving sacrifices he gave to make it happen.

James 1:16-17 “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

God knows how to give only one kind of gift to his people. James has two words to describe it: good and perfect. “Good” does not necessarily mean “pleasant.” It means wholesome, helpful, beneficial.

I run for exercise. This is good. It is rarely pleasant, at least not exclusively so. Sure, I enjoy fresh air and sunshine and scenery, and at first even the invigoration of my body in motion. But some days it is really cold, and the wind stings my cheeks, maybe blows down my collar and chills me. Some days it is really hot, and the sunshine beats on me, and the humidity presses all around. It feels like I’m carrying a hundred extra pounds in the heat, and the sweat stings my eyes. A couple miles down the road my lungs may burn no matter what kind of day it is, and my knees may ache a little, and I just want to be done. But do you know what? The benefit for my heart, and my health, and my mind is always the same. It is good.

So God doles out experiences, situations, the content of our lives, and James tells us everything that comes from him is a gift, and a good one at that. Sometimes this is obvious. Friends, family, love, a little feast to celebrate some happy milestone, new things to make our lives a little easier–we practically feel God smiling on us.

Sometimes this seems impossible to believe. An illness you will carry to your grave, people who break your heart, persecution for what you believe– we don’t see that these serve any good purpose, so it is hard to see how James can call them “good” or classify them as gifts.

But that is what he does. And he says even more. “Every good and perfect gift is from above…” As is so often the case, there is more than one Greek word for “perfect.” The one James uses here emphasizes that God’s gifts are “complete.” He gives you the whole package, just the way it is supposed to be.

Maybe you have bought something that required assembly before, and what you got was good so far as it goes. But there were parts missing. It couldn’t work right because of the missing parts. The life content God is giving you has no parts missing. They are all there in every situation, doing what they are supposed to do. As his gifts, they are perfect, even if that is hard for us to see.

And that is mostly hard for us to see. I could give you a hundred stories at this point that attempt to find God’s good and perfect gifts in situations that seemed to have evil written all over them. Christian author and editor Marshall Shelley once wrote about the short life of his little girl who was born with much of her brain having failed to develop. She lingered through various health problems for about two years. On the last day of her life, he writes about the procession of people who visited her hospital room and confessed the impact that this wordless, sightless little girl had had upon their spiritual lives–people learning to deal with their own loss, wanting to reconcile broken relationships, and especially moved to renew their relationship with God. “I sat there amazed,” he writes. “In the presence of a dying child, a child who couldn’t speak, we had a small revival–people confessing sins and drawing nearer to God.”

Our God knows something about “good” and “perfect” not adding up to “pleasant” or “easy.” Jesus is his ultimate gift. Much of his earthly life and ministry were difficult. Everything about his trials, crucifixion, and death were painful. But from this sacrifice God brought us the greatest good, the greatest gift of all—our salvation from sin and death. He invites us to trust that every other gift is good and perfect as well, no matter how hard that might be to see.

1 Corinthians 13:9-12 “For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

This is not an evaluation that my pride likes to hear. Though in theory we may admit that we don’t know everything, in practice we tend to forget it. We easily fall into making sweeping generalizations and drawing universal conclusions based upon the relatively thin slice of knowledge even the smartest of us possesses. Isn’t that why so much of so-called “modern science” is in such a mess?

Even our Bible knowledge is only partial knowledge of God and his will. It may be accurate knowledge. It may be useful knowledge. It may be saving knowledge. But it isn’t everything there is, only what God has chosen to reveal.

And don’t we struggle to comprehend the most fundamental truths God has revealed–Father, Son and Holy Spirit as One God; God becoming a man in the person of Jesus Christ; God’s promises of daily bread and protection when so much human experience seems to contradict them? “Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!”

In its present, incomplete form this knowledge, too, is passing away. It is not like the greater knowledge of heaven to follow. Because this is hard for us to get, Paul supplies three illustrations to help us. First, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” Many of the things we knew as children were not false. They were just profoundly incomplete. That fragmentary information of our childhood isn’t always very useful for the way we view things and behave as an adult.

As a child I knew that my toys were my toys. Believe me, I knew the word “mine” well. As an adult, I still know what it means that something is mine. But I also know what it means to be a husband, a father, a friend, a neighbor, and a citizen. The concept of “mine” has gone through some profound changes, just as our present knowledge of God will become something greater and different in the life to come.

Second, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.” Ancient mirrors were usually fuzzy compared to our own. Even when their clarity rivaled those we use, the image was still indirect and incomplete. Depth perception can be difficult to determine in a mirror. What’s the little phrase printed on the side-view mirror of your car, “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear”?  Peripheral vision is limited in a mirror. The picture it reflects is only so big. That’s why, after you check your car’s side view mirror, you still have to look in the blind spot or risk an accident. So our face to face view of God will clear up the fuzzy, hard to judge, and limited view we presently possess.

Third, “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” I may think I know myself, but I don’t know me anything like my Lord does. I know almost nothing of my own life between 11 o’clock last night and 6:30 this morning. I don’t know what disease might be lurking deep within my body. I know I have hair, but I have no idea how many. I know my tastes in food or music, but I don’t know why mine are not exactly like everyone else’s. But my Lord knows all these things.

Can we even begin to fathom what it will be like to know the Lord so completely and so intimately as he now knows each of us? Doesn’t that point to a difference between what we know now, and what we will know then, that is so vast as to demand that our present knowledge will pass away, and give way to something unimaginably greater and better? And doesn’t that help us to regard our current spiritual gifts with a proper sense of humility?

Perhaps your spiritual resume isn’t filled with fantastic abilities and impressive knowledge. But in his grace, in his forgiveness, in his Son, God has loved you. He has poured that love into your hearts. And that love will go with you, both his and yours, into eternity, long ages after what we think we know has passed away.

Ezekiel 34:28-31“They will live in safety, and no one will make them afraid. I will provide for them a land renowned for its crops, and they will no longer be victims of famine in the land or bear the scorn of the nations. Then they will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, declares the Sovereign Lord. You my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, are people, and I am your God, declares the Sovereign Lord.”

Let me share with you part of a remarkable e-mail I once received: “My name is Mr. Abdul Wade, the Auditor General of Standard Chartered Bank and Security Company, Medina, Dakar, Senegal (West Africa). There is a consignment containing the sum of 12 million, five hundred thousand United States Dollars. The said box was deposited by Mr. Mark Francis Roderick, an American who died on Sept. 11, 2001 in a plane crash. Going by the usual rules governing our operation, the box shall be handed over to the relevant government authorities as an unclaimed deposit. Details shall be made available to you as soon as I hear from you. Please kindly send me (your contact information). At the conclusion of the transaction you will be given 25% of the total fund. I shall furnish you with all the necessary information you need in this transaction.”

Apparently if I had helped the man get the money into the hands of the proper authorities, I would pocket a little over 3 million dollars! All my money problems would have been solved!

But you already recognize that this is something known as a “Nigerian Bank Scam.” The only person who would make any money from this deal is Mr. Abdul Wade (if that is his real name). The offer is, as they say, “too good to be true.”

Do God’s promises ever seem that way to you–too good to be true? Through Ezekiel God promised Israel a very special relationship with him. They would be his people, his sheep. He would be their God, be with them, and care for them like a shepherd. They could be sure they would have enough to live on. They could live in safety, because he claimed them as his own.

Today you and I are his people, the people God claims as his own. Like Old Testament Israel, we can take this promise for ourselves. Do you see why that is so important for us, that he claims us so? In war, it may be good to have mercenary soldiers on your side because it adds to your troop strength. But mercenaries can present a problem. There is only so much one will do for pay. Mercenaries have been known to flee the field of battle because they are willing to fight for money, but they aren’t willing to die for it.

But when men are fighting to protect their own children, their own families, their own communities, their own people–there you have a soldier faithful to the very end. Our God is not a mercenary we have hired to protect us. We are his family. He claims us as his sheep, his children, even his bride. He joined our family as a real human being. He died to save our family and spare our lives. He lives to assure us we live in safety, and all the more so when we finally reach the family home.

If something looks too good to be true, it probably is–except for the promises of God. Because he claims us, we can be sure of his providence, protection, and care. We are his sheep, and we can live securely.

Lamentations 3:24 “I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’”

“Portion” is an important Old Testament word for understanding God’s loving relationship with his people. When forty years of wandering in the desert were over, and Joshua finally brought the people into the land we know as Israel, each family received its own piece of land. This was that family’s “portion,” a kind of gift and inheritance from God. Your house, your yard, your farm were to be constant reminders that you had a place in the Lord’s extended family.

One tribe didn’t receive the same kind of “portion” as everyone else. The families from the tribe of Levi received much less land. They got scattered towns and villages all across the country. But God had chosen them as temple workers. Every one of them had a job to do in supporting the worship and sacrifices. Because they had been given this special connection with his work and worship, the Lord told them that he himself was their “portion.” They had something more direct than a piece of property to remind them of their place in God’s family. More than anyone else they were immersed in the system of worship that kept God’s love and promises in front of their eyes. In the message communicated in the preaching and sacrifices, the Lord was giving them himself. He was their “portion.”

Of course, the other people also went to the temple. They heard the preaching and participated in the sacrifices, if not as much. The idea grew that God gave himself to the people of this nation in a special way, that he was the “portion” for all of them. For Jeremiah, remembering “the Lord is my portion” was an important reason for hope.

This is no less true for us. By describing himself as our portion, the Lord shows us that he is a self-giving God. He makes himself a “self-gift” to us. That finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus. In telling the story of Jesus’ birth, the gospel writer Matthew reminds us that Jesus is “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” God was giving himself to us when Jesus came to earth. During his ministry Jesus taught his disciples about the reason he came. “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” He came to give us himself as the ransom that sets us free. He kept that promise months later when he let himself be arrested without cause, refused to defend himself at his trial, and allowed himself to be falsely convicted and crucified. His death on the cross, and all the many spiritual blessings flowing from it–forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, power for faith and a new life, admission to heaven, life that never ends– this is our portion. In Jesus God is giving us his very self.

Now Jesus promises to be with us always. He is here, even if we can’t see him. The Lord is my portion. He gives his people the Holy Spirit and he lives in our hearts by faith. The Lord is my portion. He comes to me in his word, he spends time with me when I receive his body and blood in his Supper. The Lord is my portion.

Someday he will welcome me into heaven. He will wipe the very last tear from my eyes with his own hands. He will sit me at his table, and we will feast forever and ever. The Lord will be my portion forever and ever.

The God Jeremiah worshiped, the God we know as Jesus, give us more than property, money, health, family, friends, a life to enjoy. He says, “Here. I am yours.” He gives himself. That is the chief part, the great blessing, of the portion he has given us.