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For I Know the Plans I Have for You
For I Know the Plans I Have for You Jeremiah 29:11-14 Key Verse 29:11 “’ For 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.’” Jeremiah was born into very turbulent times. When he was born and when he began preaching, Josiah was reigning in Jerusalem. Josiah was doing his best to wipe out idolatry and bring the people of Judah back to God. However the people were resisting. They had become so corrupted with the idol worship of the time, they had no desire to turn their hearts back to the one true God who could save them. This broke Jeremiah’s heart. Jeremiah was born into a priestly family. He was the son of Hilkiah, who may have been the same Hilkiah who found the “Book of the Law” in the temple in 2 Kings 22:8. Even though he was a priest, there is no indication that Jeremiah ever served in this role during his lifetime. Jeremiah lived a sad solitary life with only one real, true lifelong companion, his scribe and friend , Baruch. Jeremiah only had one ambition in life and that was to turn the hearts of the Jews back to the one true God. He knew that God was about to punish the nation for their unfaithfulness and so he preach only one main message, “Repent!” He knew that it was too late to change what God had in store for Judah and this can be seen in his preaching. He constantly warned of a terrible enemy coming from the north that would destroy Jerusalem and take the people away into captivity. Unlike any other prophets, Jeremiah recommended complete and unconditional surrender to this invading nation. Unfortunately Jehoiakim and Zedekiah refused to listen to him and instead formed alliances with Egypt. Those alliances did Judah no good just as Jeremiah prophesied. In the end Jeremiah was forced to flee to Egypt with a remnant of Jews. This is most likely where Jeremiah died. The book of Jeremiah is truly a tragic and very sad book to read. However, almost right in the middle of it we find this very short passage that offers the greatest sense of hope I think can be found in the whole Bible. It was this passage that got me through three of the most painful and trying years of my life. I hope and pray that these words might live in your heart always no matter what trials you may be facing. Part I, I know the plans I have for you (11). Let’s read verse 11 together. “’For 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.’” How many of you know what your plans are 1 year from now? How many of you know what those plans are five or ten years from now? How about twenty years from now? If we honestly think about it, none of us has any idea what we will be facing a year from now, not to mention next week. As the saying goes, “Anything can happen.” We really have no idea what lies ahead in our life, but God, our heavenly Father, does know. He is the sovereign ruler of all the universe and there is nothing that he does not know. I believe that in this one verse, God is declaring that he knows his plan for each of us. Of course in context, God is speaking to the nation of Judah through the prophet Jeremiah. So let’s think a moment about the situation Jeremiah and Judah were facing when Jeremiah declared God’s words to them. Zedekiah was king in Jerusalem. He had been placed on the throne by the Egyptians after they had killed the previous king Jehoiachin for rebellion. Zedaikiah wanted to remain faithful to the Egyptians because they had made him king, so he had rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar. This prompted Nebuchadnezzar to invade Judah and take away several thousand Israelites into captivity in Babylon. Among this first group of captives was Daniel and his three friends, but Jeremiah and a substantial remnant were left in Judah to take care of the land. Judah was devastated and defeated. They were completely at the mercy of foreign powers that were much stronger than them. They didn’t know which way to turn. Should they turn to Egypt for help or submit to the mighty power of Babylon. Jeremiah was urging them to completely surrender to Babylon, but this advice was ultimately rejected by the Jewish leaders. The point is that Israel was completely defeated. There hope was gone from a worldly point of view. Luckily, Jeremiah didn’t see things from a worldly point of view. He saw things from God’s point of view. So in the midst of all this sorrow and defeat Jeremiah was telling the people who had been dragged away into captivity to build house, take wives, have children and settle down there. Jeremiah even told them to take care of the city where they had been taken into exile and pray for that city. Apparently, there were so called prophets there preaching exactly the opposite of this to the people, but Jeremiah told them not to listen to them because the LORD had not sent them. How could Jeremiah preach such a message to a defeated people in captivity? It was because Jeremiah was not looking at the situation from a human point of view. Jeremiah always saw things from God’s point of view and in God there is always hope. God is never defeated and his plans will always work out. Jeremiah knew this and so he could encourage the people to overlook their current situation and live as if they were living before God and not before men. Remember, Jesus told his disciples to pray for their enemies and do good to those who hurt you. Jeremiah was saying the same thing 400 years earlier. Why? Because God’s plans and his will will always be accomplished no matter what our situation may look like. We must believe this. Jeremiah certainly believed this so he told the exiles just to be patient for seventy years and then God, himself, would come and fulfill his promise to bring them back to their own country. Jeremiah proclaimed God’s word to them, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” Let’s think about these words carefully. We cannot forget the situation the Jews were in when we think about these words. They were completely defeated. As far as they were concerned they had no hope or future. They were slaves in a foreign land. But in God there is always hope. I believe that God has plans for each of us just like this. I also believe that those plans are far greater than anything we may have in mind. God’s plan is to prosper us – that is to make us successful. He doesn’t want to harm us, he wants to give us hope and a bright future. Sometimes this is very hard to believe. Like the Israelites of Jeremiah’s time, we might look around and say to ourselves, “I’m just a slave in this unfair world. I’ll never get out of this situation.” However, that is so untrue. It is so fatalistic. Worst of all, it is in complete denial of what God has told us in the Bible. You might be asking yourself, “How can I know that God has these great plans for me, after all look at my situation?” The answer is really simple. God loved you enough to die for you. If God didn’t have plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future, why would he die for you? I asked myself that question thousands of times and finally came up with the answer. If God didn’t have plans for me he wouldn’t have died for me, but he did die for me, therefore he must have great plans to prosper me and give me hope and a future. When I finally realized this, I stopped looking at my situation and began to thank God from the bottom of my heart. I whole heartedly believe that these words were not only intended for the Jews of Jeremiah’s time or for myself, they are meant for you as well. Accept them as your own and always live with God’s hope in your heart. Part II, Call upon God, seek him and you will find him (12-14). Look at verses 12-14. “Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to 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 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.” Before we accept verse 11 in our hearts we often forget about God and seek our own happiness and meaning of life. Of course, when we do this we fail and only find defeat after defeat and failure after failure. However, verse twelve tells us that when we accept that God has plans for us – great plans for us – then we can call on him and pray to him. More than that, God will listen to us, which means that God will answer our prayers. When this happens, our defeats and failures will turn to great victory in God. This doesn’t necessarily mean that our life will be “a bed of roses” all the time, it means that we can be sure that God is listening to us when we call to him. It means that we never have to worry when we find ourselves in a bad situation because God’s plan for us has not changed; all we need to do is call out to him and he will hear us and rescue us. This is not always easy to believe because sometimes we find ourselves in very bad situations, but one thing we must always remember is that we are not faithful, but God is always faithful. God’s plans never change and his word stands forever. Our situation may go from good to bad from a human point of view, but God’s plan never changes. This means that we should never give up or despair but live with the eternal hope of God in any situation. Verse 13 and 14a are one and a half of my favorite verses of the Bible (along with 11, 12 and the rest of 14). Let’s read verse 13 and 14a together, “’You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord.” In life all of us seek many things, but there is only one thing that we really need to seek and that is God alone. Many people seek him, but many people seek him in the wrong places. Take the Jewish people of Jeremiah’s time. They were seeking a god, but they were not seeking God. They were following the detestable practices of the pagans around them instead of following Josiah’s example and humbling themselves before the one true God. In their quest for a god they were doing such detestable things as offering their own children as sacrifices to a demon they thought to be god named Molech. Of course they could find the one true God this way. All they found was defeat and failure. Instead of finding God they went further and further from God. This is the problem of all human beings. People don’t find God because they don’t look for him in the right way. People are willing to go to great lengths to look for God, but they aren’t willing to surrender to God. So, then, what is the right way to look for God? The right way is to “seek him with all your heart.” Don’t leave anything out. Don’t hold back for a little more sleep or a little more good time playing ping-pong. Give your whole heart to seeking God. It means, surrender everything, even your life, to find him and He promises that you will find Him. Practically speaking what does this mean? It means that we must obey the word of God. The word of God can be found in the Bible. When we read the Bible we shouldn’t just read it, we have to put it into practice. Jesus said that if we just read the Bible without putting those words into practice our life will have no firm foundation, but if we put those words into practice in our life then we will have a firm foundation that will not be shaken when the storms of life come. Jeremiah puts it another way, he tells us that we will find God when we seek him with all our hearts. This is really two ways of saying the same thing. If we find God, by seeking him with all our hearts and doing what he says, we will surely have the strongest foundation for our life. Nothing that we face in this life will be able to shake us or tear us down. I like to think of it this way, “If I find God there is nothing more that I need to look for. I have found everything. Verses 13 and 14a are God’s declaration that we can find God. We can have everything despite the bad life situation we may find ourselves in. When I accepted these verses I found a peace that passed all human understanding. It didn’t change my life situation overnight, but it changed my view of life completely and instantly. I don’t need to seek anything else in life; I have found everything I need. The question is have you? In these verses, God declares that you can find everything if you seek him with all your heart. The rest of verse 14 is the capstone to these 4 verses. Let’s look at God’s promise here. “’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.’” The English Standard Version says it a little differently. It says “’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.’” God is such a gracious God. Not only will he permit us to find him, which in itself is all we need, but he also promises to restore us. Restore us to our proper place in creation. As the ESV says, he will restore our fortunes. Fortunes may not be great riches, but it is our proper place in God’s creation. He will restore us to be his stewards in this generation; to be his shepherds. Another way of saying this, is that God will restore us so that we can be his coworkers he on earth. God wants to restore us completely and we must believe this with all our heart. This passage is found in the middle of one of the longest books of the Bible which is mostly filled with prophecies of doom and gloom. The book of Jeremiah is a very sad book, but in it there are these 4 verses which I think are some of the most hopeful and promising verses in the whole Bible. They were given to the Israelites at a time when there seemed to be no hope for them, but from God’s point of view there is never a time of no hope. God knows the plans that he has for each of us. They are plans to give you hope and a future. Plans to prosper you and restore you to your proper place in his creation. Plans to have you meet him face to face, to find him and have everything you will ever need. I pray that you can deeply accept these words and never forget them. Remember this, it doesn’t matter what your life situation may be, God’s plans for you and his words will never change. That should be enough to get you through anything. |
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