March 1, Jeremiah 29
"For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." - Jeremiah 29:10-11
It's on coffee mugs, plaques and bookmarks in religious bookstores. It's even on the wall in one of my favorite local restaurants. It ranks right up with "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," and "Choose this day whom you will serve" as encouraging, quotable lines from Scripture.
Those references to these oft-quoted words in Jeremiah 29 are good. Truly, the words are a good reminder of God's benevolent intentions toward us all. But consider how impactful they must have been to the first people who received them in the letter Jeremiah sent to the captives in Babylon. They had been taken far from their homes to another land. They were the ones with leadership potential and skills the Babylonians wanted to use for their own benefit. The others were left behind under a puppet king who was not in the true line of succession from David's sons. For what it was worth, their real king was a captive with them in Babylon. They left their homes and probably some family behind, and were taken from their country. Most of them would never see home again.
It's easy to see how they could have become despondent and lose all hope in such a dark situation. Did the lying false prophets really dream the things they said? Or did they pick up on the theme of an early end of the exile from the dreams and hopes of these defeated people?
The Lord told the exiles from Judah living in Babylon, “Live your life where you are now. Trust me, believe my word. Be a good neighbor, a blessing to your neighbor. Pray for the city of your captors where you live.”
The now-famous words, "For I know the plans I have for you..." addressed two extremes God wanted his people in Babylon to avoid. He did not want them to follow hopes based on lies and lose their faith and courage. And the Lord wanted to keep them from despair, thinking that they were discarded and forgotten, and that the great Messianic promises had failed. So he promised them that his plans were intact, and the plans were to bless them, to give them hope and a future.
Jeremiah warned them not to hope for what God had not promised. The false prophets were using Satan's oldest trick — denying what God had plainly said and insisting the opposite of what God said was true. God said the captivity would last 70 years; they said, "No, within two years we'll be back home." It's understandable that the exiles would be drawn to such a prophecy. But it wasn't true. The letter reaffirmed God's announced duration of the exile. It renewed and extended God's promises to bless them with his plan.
God called them to seek him and promised they could find him, if they sought him with all their heart. They needed a concise statement of their prime directive, to seek the Lord. The people were to seek him intentionally, and they needed to know the search would require the dedication of their whole being.
You and I must never lose sight of God's intentional plan for us. We need to focus on the generous kindness he wants to show and blessing he wants to give us. We must keep trusting that his purpose in dealing with us is to do us good. We should never fall for the opposite of what God has told us when Satan or one of his representatives tells us lies. The God of the universe is worthy of our whole-hearted devotion and earnest effort to learn his will, trust his promises and draw near to him.
Don't buy the pop culture lie that you are so good at multitasking that you can worship God while doing two or three other things. And realize like the captives in Babylon, that this world is not our forever home. God has plans to be glorified by his people's surrendered lives here, and to bring us home to be with him forever. You and I can't imagine all the good God wants to give us. But we can trust him, hold onto our hope and anticipate a bright future.
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—March 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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