God Is Good - Pt 1

“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. 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. (Jeremiah 29:10-14, ESV). Today I am going to embark on an ambitious journey. It will begin with one of the most familiar verses from the Old Testament. I encourage you to stay to the end of our discussions. First, and foremost, let me begin by stating without reservation that God is good! Then, let me say that our understanding of that has often been misunderstood. Perhaps a part of that truth is found in the fact that when it comes to reading the Bible, we can sometimes be so familiar with the words on the page that we read them, but we don’t really understand them. We see the words and hear the words, but we don’t make any sense out of them. Familiarity can breed laziness, and so many of our misunderstandings about the scriptures happen because we are too familiar with the passage to look it with fresh eyes. If we would come to the Word of God with fresh eyes more often, we would realize that some of our most common interpretations of Scripture passed down to us don’t make much sense when viewed within the context of the passage. Our text today, especially verse 11, is quoted to countless individuals who are struggling with understanding God’s will, and yet, it is not written to individuals at all. This passage is written to a whole group of people, an entire nation. And the verse just before it is perhaps even scarier. For in Jeremiah 29:10, God lays down the specifics on this promise: that He will fulfill it “after seventy years are completed for Babylon.” In other words, yes, God says, I will redeem you, after 70 years in exile. This is certainly a far cry from our expectation of this verse in what God’s plans to prosper us really mean. He did have a future and a hope for them, but it would look far different than the Israelites ever expected. So what? Some of you may be thinking. Even when the verse is taken out of context, it still offers value, right? God does know the plans of individual people, so it’s just as well to keep prescribing Jeremiah 29 for those seeking God’s plan for their life, right? Well, yes and no. We need to let the Bible speak to us, not allow our own personal bent to speak into the Scriptures. If Jeremiah 29 is speaking to the nation of Israel, and not just one person, then we should start with the truth in the Scriptures. This truth will lead us to the path that ends in freedom. For now, rest assured God knows and cares about every detail of our lives. His dealing with Israel merely proves this unalterable truth. So, take this day and trust in His provenance. He will not fail you!