One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first ripe… – Jeremiah 24:2, Amplified Bible (AMP)

What if the city you lived in was ransacked by invaders? What if your home was burned to the ground and your family and friends were hauled off to an unfamilar land? What if the people that had destroyed your home were now your masters, and the only thing you could logically predict for the rest of your life was slavery?

The Israelites faced these horrors and more when the Babylonians conquered their land. Just before the horrors came, however, God (through Jeremiah) delivered to His people one of the strangest messages in all of the Bible: I will bless you once I’ve ripped you away from your home.

The book of Jeremiah is clear that God brought the Babylonian conquest upon His people to punish them for their sins. But wrapped within the pain was God’s merciful purpose, and in Jeremiah 24:5-7 (AMP) He spelled out that purpose:

5 Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so will I regard the captives of Judah whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good.

6 For I will set My eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them again to this land; and I will build them up and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up.

7 And I will give them a heart to know (recognize, understand, and be acquainted with) Me, that I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.

When God brings chastisement upon us, we are prone to lack grace in receiving what He dishes out.  Like the Israelites who fought the very army they knew God had sent to punish them, we fight God’s chosen method of punishment – and the pain it brings. But, once God purges us of all vestiges of pride, arrogance, and self-will, He can begin the process of molding us in the obedient image of His Son. Like the captive Israelites who, after their beating, returned unto God with all of their hearts, we, too, will be restored unto our God once He is finished ripping away our selfishness.

Spankings are never fun. But when we love our sin more than we love our God, they are absolutely necessary.  The beautiful thing about a good spanking is that, after the crying is all over, the parent-child relationship is restored, and we can once again live in the joy of our Lord.