Living Understanding Pt 30: Plans

Jeremiah 29:11-14                 11For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  12Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  13You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  14I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity.  I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

Deuteronomy 4:25a, 27-29   25After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time—if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the LORD your God and arousing his anger, …  27The LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the LORD will drive you.  28There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.  29But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.

In our 21st Century Western culture, we are surrounded by naysayers, complainers, atheists, and secular ‘believers’ who deny God’s reality, or at least deny that God is actively involved in his people’s lives.  Scripture calls such people false prophets and has much to say about how they lead believers into rejecting God and making other poor choices.  This part of Jeremiah is written to God’s people in a similar situation while they were in the Babylonian exile.

For decades Jeremiah had been prophesying judgment against the Jews because of their idolatry and rejection of God’s precepts.  And he was right because in 597 B.C. the Babylonian empire invaded Israel, attacked Jerusalem, killing the leaders, and carrying the rest off into exile.  False prophets arose telling the exiled that their situation was not dire, that it would soon be reversed, and that they would be returned to the Land.  There is a story about a Navy pilot who was shot down in the Vietnam War and held as POW for over seven years.  He survived, while many didn’t, because he held to the reality of the situation, while the others trusted in the hope of early release at the next Christmas, or Easter, or New Year—whatever the next holiday was.  This is the situation Jeremiah was addressing.

I know the plans.

Of course, the people felt abandoned by God; they sought out anyone who would allay their fears and calm their spirits.  This is what the false prophets were doing.  But God tells them otherwise; he is telling them that He wasn’t surprised by the Babylonian invasion.  His plans for his Kingdom have been firmly in place since the beginning. 

God was saying, “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back!”  Further, he was saying that he had sent them there for a reason.  Babylon was like hell—foreign in every way to God’s people.  It was full of idolatry, godlessness, and abhorrent sexual practices.  God had sent them there partly as consequence for their own idolatry, but partly to bring Godly values to a godless land.  They were to be missionaries.

But the ultimate message is that, while in human terms the exile is lengthy, in God’s view it was a temporary assignment.  Since he made the plan, he will fulfill it.  This is an end-times passage with a real-time initial application:  God will bring his people back from Babylon, and also he will gather them from their dispersion throughout the world and bring them home to Israel at the time of his Son’s return.

You will seek me.

One of the aspects of being in exile is that external circumstances must have seemed especially brutal.  God did tell his people to set up home there as the time would be long, but it must have seemed difficult to continue.  The only thing left to do would be to draw near to God.  Another aspect of God’s long-term plan for the exiles was that they draw near to him.  God is not a remote deity; he is personal, intimate, and nearby.  And this is a continuing part of God’s plan—Jesus reiterates it in Matthew 7:7-8:

7“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

One thing to remember:  The Jews deserved to be in exile.  They had profaned God, worshipped idols, and generally ignored everything God tried to teach them through the prophets.  Yet God was gracious.  Yes, he removed the sinful generation from the land (for most of them the seventy years was a life-sentence), but he limited the term and offered a way back— “You will find me if you seek me with all your heart.”

I will gather you.

So in the seeking, God would welcome interaction with his people.  He promised to return them back to the Land and to gather his people to Himself.  But let’s be careful here:  God’s plans for his people are for their good, but the plans are not necessarily easy.  Sometimes hard times are necessary to make a point or teach a lesson.  Certainly, the Jews had been sent into exile as a consequence for their sinful idolatry.  God’s ultimate plan is to remove sin and evil from the world, defeat Satan, and bring his people into holy and righteous lives.  But lessons learned easily are often not learned well.  Sometimes difficult things happen.

But nonetheless in the seeking and in the gathering, God will be found.  But only if one seeks with all his or her heart, with every aspect of his or her nature.  God wants full intimate relationship with himself, so the half-hearted effort so prevalent these days is not adequate.

What about me?

Sometimes when things are going well, we wonder when the next shoe will drop.  We wonder if God will ‘spank’ us if we do too well.  If we are too prosperous, will he suddenly send catastrophe to teach us a lesson?  God wants you to prosper, and he wants you to grow in intimacy with Him.  He wants both things, and the things are not mutually exclusive.  It is possible to be prosperous and to be in intimate relationship with God.a

The lesson of the exile is that the Jews had not been obedient to God; they went their own way, were self-determining, and not-at-all dependent upon God.  So as a consequence, not so much as punishment, God removed them from the Land.  Take a moment to think about your life:  Are you engaged in disobedience?  Are you involved in habitual, unrepentant sin?  Maybe the hard times you are going through is God showing you the consequence of such activity.