Are These Promises for You?

(Jeremiah 29:11–14) 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. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

This is an perfect example of what I like to call “refrigerator magnet verses”, so named because of the way that they are forcibly yanked out of context and blithely placed in Hallmark cards and placarded on internet memes.

In Jeremiah 29, the prophet speaks of two different classes of people within Israel. And the above promises are tenderly given to one sort of Israelite and clearly withheld from the other.

So, before we can put any sort of claim upon the mercies promised in these verses, we first need to determine which class of people we most closely resemble.

One camp within Israel was characterized by its refusal to listen to God’s Word and to embrace the God-ordained “death” of exile in Babylon, and to faithfully await the “resurrection” of return to the holy land by God’s means, in God’s time. To the Israelites who spurned God’s Word and were confident that they could save themselves, God promised “the sword, famine and pestilence.”

The other camp within Israel listened and obeyed God’s prophets, humbly embraced the “death” of Babylonian exile and faithfully awaited the “resurrection” of return. But their waiting for resurrection was not passive. In obedience to God’s command they actively built homes, planted gardens, bore and raised children and grandchildren, labored and prayed for the welfare of city where God had placed them, believing, as the Lord had said, that their welfare was linked to the welfare of their city; their city of exile.

It was to these Israelites; the Israelites who listened carefully to God’s Word, humbly submitted to God’s plan of death and resurrection and faithfully labored for the good of the worldlings who surrounded them, that God promised “plans for welfare and not for evil…a future and a hope.”

And so, not coincidentally, every week in our assembly on Mt. Zion, we revisit, re-hear and indeed reenact the Gospel, God’s wonderful plan to save us via our union, by faith, in Christ’s death and resurrection, along with reminders to build, plant and parent while actively seeking the welfare of the unbelieving city in which God has placed us.

And this we do, reveling in the sure knowledge that God’s plans for us are supremely good, filled with hope and bursting with promise.

GH