“‘…nor will any be missing,’ declares the LORD.” Jeremiah 23.4 NIV
The Lord spoke through His prophet with a warning to those leaders who had scattered His people, whom He calls the sheep of His pasture. He declares that He will gather the remnant of His flock, but there is a curious detail: In v3 God declares that He is the One who has driven the flock, scattering them into the nations.
So we see that He is sovereign.
And we see in Jeremiah 23 that His promises are for good; that they will be fruitful and increase, that they shall fear no more, and that none shall be lost.
Juxtapose this with Matthew 13.24-30, where Jesus tells a parable so that we can understand what the kingdom of heaven is like.
A man sowed good seed in his field, but in the night an enemy came and sowed tares—a crop that is virtually indistinguishable from wheat until the grain appears when harvest is near. Though the workers offer to remove the unwanted crop, the man refuses, lest the wheat suffer damage. “Let them grow together,” he commands. The reaping will be a singular event and sorting will occur all at once. Meanwhile his field will nourish both crops.
Zechariah 10.9 says, “I will sow them among the people: and they shall remember me in far countries.” Bonhoeffer, in his book Life Together, begins by saying, “According to God’s will Christendom is a scattered people, scattered like seed ‘into all the kingdoms of the earth’ (Deut 28.25).” And we see that God promises in Zechariah 10, as He does in Jeremiah 23, that although He scatters, He will also gather His people.
A farmer scatters dead seed to gather a living harvest. We understand this readily.
What we often miss is that the difference between wheat and tares is irrelevant in light of the surpassing reality that God is able to transform anything—He can even convert tares into wheat, and I would dare even to say that He can do it with a word.
But what if God allows tares in the first place so that tares can be miraculously transformed into wheat? What if the purpose of scattering is to gather? And what if the purpose of tares among wheat is not so that wheat can glorify itself and lord it over its neighbor but so that, to the glory of God, transformation can occur? Jonah missed a lot of things, but this is one of the biggest lessons we can learn from his story.
God can use anything.
This is marvelous in our eyes.
How can it be that God, able to transform anything at a word, puts that word in the mouths of men and works through His people? “Nor will any be missing.” Is this not miraculous?
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