He Drapes us with His Purpose,
He Covers us with His Love,
and,
He makes us Shine with His Glory.
I. How does God drape us with His purpose?
By using us. The importance of this passage is that it shows us God can drape even the despicable with divine purpose. At the end of
verse 15 God promises that He will bring forth His own that will do what is just and right in the land. He is promising the Messiah. But from where will the Messiah come? God says at the beginning of
verse 15, that He will make this Messiah, the one He calls "a righteous 'Branch,' sprout forth from David's line." The wording is important because it illustrates how God can use the insignificant and failed things of this world to accomplish His ends:
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That God uses the insignificant things of this world for wonderful purposes is indicated in the image Jeremiah calls to mind. When Jeremiah speaks of the righteous branch he is referring to an earlier prophecy of Isaiah where that prophet declared that:
"A shoot (or twig) would come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit" (
Isaiah 11:1).
Have you ever cut down a tree in your yard and then had twigs start shooting up from the stump? It is the image Isaiah is calling to mind but for any Hebrew it is an image of shame. Jesse was the father of David, the founding king of Israel's glory days. An eternal kingdom was promised to David; Israel expected greatness to follow. And it did, at first. Under David and his son Solomon the kingdom grew and flourished. Then the people sinned; there is an ensuing division of the kingdom; Assyria attacks the northern kingdom; and, now, Jeremiah prophesies Babylon will also demolish Judah. The grand kingdom has been whittled down and now is to be cut down. Jeremiah looks forward to what the nation will be and, for all its present pride, all he sees is a stump; the nation will be an insignificant nothing, a joke, a shame, a source of derision for the enemies of God's once-great kingdom.
Yet from this joke, this object of shame, Jeremiah sees something else arising. A twig or branch is going to shoot up which will save Israel and rule again with righeousness and justice. To whom is Jeremiah referring with this symbol of a branch? Jesus Christ, of course. The Savior of the world is going to come from this stump of a nation, because God can use the despised things of this world for His purposes. (Jeremiah himself is an example of one despised but used for a noble purpose as a prophet.) God is always doing this sort of thing. The apostle Paul says God uses the lowly things of this world and the things that are not (significant) to nullify the things that are" (
1 Cor. 1:28). To display who He really is, God uses the insignificant things of this world to do amazing things for heaven's purposes.