Jeremiah 32:17 Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You.
Jeremiah uttered these words when everything around him looked hopeless. Babylon’s armies surrounded Jerusalem, the city was on the brink of destruction, and yet God told Jeremiah to buy a field as a prophetic sign that restoration would come. The prophet responded in awe: the God who created the heavens and the earth by His outstretched arm (bizroa netuyah) is not bound by human circumstances. The same God who set galaxies in place and boundaries for the seas is the God who still moves to redeem His people. Truly, nothing is too hard for Him.
The testimony of Scripture confirms this over and over. When Abraham and Sarah were old and barren, God promised a son. Sarah laughed at the impossibility — yet God replied, “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14). Isaac’s birth was living proof God brings life where none is possible. What was beyond human ability was accomplished by the Arm of God.
Centuries later, that same Arm walked among us in the person of Yeshua (Jesus). The gospels show us His mastery over the impossible: blind eyes opened, lepers cleansed, the dead raised. Even the wind and the sea obeyed His command, for the One who set their boundaries at creation still held them in His hand. At His word, storms were silenced and chaos was calmed — a living demonstration that nothing is too hard for the Arm of the LORD.
The cross and the resurrection are the ultimate proof. Sin and death — the greatest impossibilities — were shattered by the Arm stretched wide for us. Where humanity could not rescue itself, the righteousness of God sustained His Arm to finish the work. And in the empty tomb, we see that no grave is too deep for His power to overcome.
Let Jeremiah’s declaration be your anthem: “Ah, Lord GOD, there is nothing too hard for You!” No siege of fear, debt, sickness, or oppression can stand against the Creator of heaven and earth. The God who gave Abraham a son in his old age, who calmed the raging seas with a word, who broke the power of the grave through His Son, is the same God who stretches out His hand over your life today. Lift your eyes from the impossibility before you and fix them on the One who speaks worlds into being. Rest in His strength, declare His power, and stand in faith — for truly, nothing is too hard for Him.
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Here we have a stark word. Here we see the Lord testing Israel: “He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you.” [Deuteronomy 8:16]. Yet Paul says that they put Him to the test. A great irony occurs when God is testing us, and we despise His discipline, thereby testing Him.
The Apostle Paul continues his warning to the Corinthians against idolatry by referring to Israel’s celebration/worship of the golden calf. Aaron’s proclamation, “These are your gods (plural) O Israel” could be one of the earliest declarations mixing the worship of the true and living God, YHVH, with idols. This is called “syncretism”. Dictionary.com defines it: ” the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion.”
The Apostle Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 10:6 against desiring evil as they did, would seem to point to the obvious sins – lying, stealing, adultery, fornication, etc. – and following their deliverance from slavery, many of the children of Israel were certainly guilty of some of these. But this passage in Numbers describes a type of sin we don’t normally consider: it was simply their desire for the foods they ate in Egypt.
When I was in school, it seemed they ran a “fire drill” at least once a year. A long, loud, kind of scary bell would sound and we knew it was either a real fire, or, more likely, just another drill. We were formed into lines, ushered down the halls, and out the doors we went. Of course, the point was practice….so we would be prepared for a real fire.
The children of Israel are facing yet another test, this one, even more severe than hunger– dehydration – which, unabated, quickly leads to a miserable death. Yet, now, every day they are also seeing the miracles of God, who is feeding them regularly with manna, and surrounding them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Once again, they fail the test, even in the midst of their daily witness of miracles. So even though the test is more severe, the evidence for trust is that much greater.
Is there something about miracles that makes them forgettable? Or is the problem with us? After journeying for a season the children of Israel were faced with hunger — another test. This time, naturally faced with starvation, they murmured against the Lord, AGAIN! You’d think they might begin to put it together that God truly wanted them to trust Him. Apparently not yet. The dire circumstances attacked their mass cerebral cortex (memory) and once again they went into attack mode, bitterly complaining in unbelief. The Ten Plagues, the pillar of fire, the Red Sea walk, the Egyptian chariot soup, none of these connected to the present hunger pangs. Nature trumped super-nature, and sadly, God Himself.
The Apostle Paul’s discourse in 1 Corinthians 10 recalls the great miracles God performed for the children of Israel during the time of the Exodus. Delivered from Egypt and Pharaoh’s slavery, they were dismayed to discover his maniacal rage pursuing them anew, driving them into a deadly corner and imminent destruction. Humanly speaking, their terror and panic was understandable. With their eyes they could only see the wrath of Egypt succeeding at last to utterly destroy them. In that state of mind, how might they have remembered the consecutive miracles God had wrought against Egypt which had brought them to this very place?