Jeremiah 1:19 is the second time that God explains to Jeremiah why he need not worry about life’s problems. Dearman says, “As the book will eloquently display, Jeremiah is not immune from human suffering or doubt; his security does not 
reside in his cleverness or physical stamina, but in the fact that God is with him.”[1] This verse says, “They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, declares the LORD, to deliver you.” Christmas time was the time for celebrating Jesus’ birth. He shall be called Immanuel, which means “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). That’s who Jesus is. God is not only with Jeremiah, God is with us. He is with me! He is with you!
To be “with” someone in this sense means to be “on their side.” You can fight “with” your brother. That means against. You can fight “with” courage. That means manner. You can fight with a machine gun. That means the means or instrumentation. Or you can fight “with” the 51st Airborne. That means in accompaniment with. That’s the one that’s meant here. God is on our side. He is “for us” as Paul writes in Romans 8:31, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” The assumed answer to that question is that no one can stand against us if God is on our side. A famous Greek Scholar, just recently deceased, F. F. Bruce, is attributed with writing, “The truth of Christ’s supremacy over all the powers in the universe is one which modern man sorely needs to learn … To be united to Christ by faith is to throw off the thralldom of hostile powers, to enjoy perfect freedom, to gain the mastery over the dominion of evil—because Christ’s victory is ours.”[2]
There is a time for every purpose under heaven. There will be times to cry and times to laugh. There will be times to mourn and times to dance. Life is a mixture of good times and bad times. The best news in the bad times is that “it shall come to pass.” The bad news in the good times is “it shall come to pass.” Yet God promises that there is a time coming when the bad times will indeed be past and the good times will remain forever. There are no tears in heaven. There are no sorrows in heaven. There are only joys everlasting for you who trust God and His Son Jesus. Yet the Bible speaks of the victory as already having been won. Spurgeon writes, “Faith believes that she has her request, and she has it. She is the substance of things hoped for—a substance so real and tangible, that it sets the glad soul a-singing. Already sin, Satan, and the world are vanquished, and the victory is ours. ‘Sin, Satan, Death appear
To harass and appall: Yet since the gracious Lord is near, Backward they go, and fall. We meet them face to face, through Jesus’ conquest blest; March in the triumph of his grace, Right onward to our rest.’”[3]
[1] J. Andrew Dearman, Jeremiah and Lamentations, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2002), 50.
[2] Mark Water, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Alresford, Hampshire: John Hunt Publishers Ltd, 2000), 318.
[3] C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David: Psalms 56-87, vol. 3 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 213.