Jeremiah 5:25 Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you
We have a family friend who has the honorary title of uncle, and I have called him that before I can even remember. Last Saturday he was visiting, and took me and several others of the family out for lunch. This is something he has done dozens, if not scores, and maybe even hundreds of times. When I was a little kid, he bought me breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He has purchased lift tickets in Colorado to ski. He has done all kinds of things. I have always thanked him, but I felt something a little different enjoying my hamburger on Saturday than I did when I was ten or even twenty. It was a gratitude that was a little different because I am a little different. My perspective is different now. I know what it would be like to buy someone else’s lunch. I can imagine what it means for Uncle John to take the time and effort and to have the affection and interest to buy lunch for all of us. So, my gratitude then and now is a little different.
The more capable we are and the more we have to enjoy, the less worry we have, and sometimes the less grateful we are. In Jeremiah 5, God is addressing a people who had turned their backs on God and refused to return. God says, “How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery.” He is talking not just about unfaithfulness to a spouse on earth, but unfaithfulness to their God. In Deuteronomy God warns the people that when they came into the land and inherited cities they didn’t build, vineyards they didn’t plant, and prosperity they didn’t deserve, they would say they had gotten all those things for themselves. Ironically, when Israel prospered, they were less inclined to recognize that God was the giver. They were less grateful. That is the way it is in life.
Talking about the coming Babylonians and judgment to come, Jeremiah 5:17 says, “And they shall eat up thine harvest, and thy bread, which thy sons and thy daughters should eat: they shall eat up thy flocks and thine herds: they shall eat up thy vines and thy fig trees: they shall impoverish thy fenced cities, wherein thou trustedst with the sword.” He was saying, “You pat yourself on the back because you have food to eat and you trust the walls you have built to defend you. In both cases, you have forgotten God.” They forgot both the power and provision of their God. They were not grateful,l therefore they were not right with God.
That is the way it is today. We ignore our God when we ignore His gifts. Sometimes we think it is the other way around, that because we ignore God, we ignore the gifts He gives. That is true, but it is also true that when we ignore the gifts that we have and assume that we have done things by our own strength, we ignore God, are unthankful, and feel entitled. Then, we miss God altogether. Gratitude and faith are not very different. They are essentially the same thing on two sides of a need. When I look ahead and see my need, acknowledge God, and trust Him, that is called faith. When I look back and see provision and recognize God and acknowledge Him, that is called gratitude. So, gratitude and faith go hand and hand.
There are two questions to ask. First, can you name three blessing that you have? Oftentimes at church your pastor may ask if anyone has something for which they are thankful. Oftentimes we think, “What do I have to be thankful for?” Then someone stands and says they are thankful to live in a free country, or to have health or food. When I was a boy, these all sounded boring because we had all of them so why thank God for them? If I had a new pair of skis that would be great. That was because I was a child. We are to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but most of us have never asked God for daily bread because we don’t need to; we got it on our own. There came a time for Israel when God stopped raining food from heaven, and Israel ate of the food of the land, but whether it was natural or supernatural, all the food was from God.
Today, I live in one of the wealthiest sections of the wealthiest country in the wealthiest time in time or space in human history. I don’t have a lot of money compared to most people in my area, yet I am probably still in the top fifth percentile of wealth in the world. All this money is a problem because we are so affluent and spoiled that we can’t even see our blessings. When Israel was coming out of Egypt, God parted the Red Sea, rained food from heaven, and provided water, yet they still complained. Oddly enough I think it was easier for them to see the provision coming from God in the wilderness than when they got to the land of Canaan and had their own land and prosperity. So, naming three blessings might be harder than it should be simply because we have so many blessings that none of them really reveal themselves to us.
Second, can you name three needs or three worries? We are living in a time of higher stakes than ever before. More calamity can be done in less time by fewer people than ever before in human history. Our technology and power have outstripped our virtue, and that is the way it has always been. I read today about a plot to take down the power grid in my area of Nashville, Tennessee. Not a big story, but it was big to me. How hard would it be to take us from ultimate prosperity to relative poverty? So, we can name three worries both profound and practical.
The point is that the answer to your first question is your confidence in the second. If you can’t name any blessings, then you have more worries. If you can look back and see what God has done and acknowledge Him in the past, then you are more likely to have hope and optimism about the future. Your answer to the first question is your confidence in the second. Let me encourage you to look for God in your world. See the gifts and acknowledge God. I’m not talking about some spiritual imagination where we make things up, but literally realizing that God has given us the very air we breathe and so many other things we take for granted. Look for God by seeing the gifts. See the gifts, see God, and see hope.
In contrast, in Jeremiah’s day he addressed God’s people and said, “But thou saidst, There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go.” It was an intention hopelessness. They did not acknowledge God in their past, so they did not have hope for their future. You do not have to live that way. If you will cultivate gratitude by acknowledging God in your past, you can cultivate faith and trust in God for your future because we ignore our God, the Giver, when we ignore His gifts.