Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 277 | Most Misused: Jeremiah 29:11

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

Context is key when interpreting the meaning behind a verse of the Bible. Many Christians might believe that Jeremiah 29:11 must mean that God will give His people prosperous lives without suffering. However, when we explore the background of the book of Jeremiah leading up to the verse, we discover that it has a much richer message than that. Today's Link: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. I am super excited about today's episode. We are doing a most misused about Jeremiah 29.11. If you have not heard my previous most misused episode, what we do is we take a verse that is used a lot and is often misapplied or misinterpreted to mean something that the context tells us it doesn't actually mean, and in so doing, it waters it down. And so we go through the context of verses like this, and we ask ourselves, not what do we want this to mean or what does this mean to me and my specific situation, but what does this actually mean? And what we always find is that the true meaning, according to the context of not just the chapter in book, but the entirety of the biblical canon, is always so much better than the superfluous.

official applications of the verse that are so often decontextualized and watered down. So Jeremiah 29-11, 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. So that indeed is a very hopeful and a very positive verse and it should be read like that. However, like I said, there are so often superficial applications of this verse that often manifest itself like this. God is going to spare me from suffering. He's not going to let anything bad happen to me because of Jeremiah 29-11. God is going to ensure that my dreams come true.

He's going to make sure that I get into the college that I want to get into. He's going to make sure that a lot of people like me or that I will find my soulmate. He'll make sure that I don't have to go through anything super. hard. This is also used in the same way that Psalm 374 is. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. If you're interested in the correct interpretation according to the Bible of that verse, I have a most misused on Psalm 374 that you can listen to. Jeremiah 2911, Psalm 374. These are verses that I call magic eight ball verses. So a verse that someone flips open to and says, okay, this is God speaking to me about my specific situation.

This is the answer that he is giving to me about my specific desire. It fills us with a kind of affirmation of what God can do for us and what we believe he will do for us. It's also used as kind of this blessing verse or an affirmation of what we're doing. So if we have material blessings in our life, so if we've made a lot of money off of something, we take that as an affirmation. of what we're doing as God's approval of what we are doing. And we take something like Jeremiah 29-11 to mean, okay, well, if God is giving me prosperity right now, then that must mean he likes what I am doing. And we will talk about why these interpretations and applications of this verse simply are not

correct. But in order to talk about this, we do have to back up just a little bit and ask ourselves, why is it important to get these things right? And who am I? Like, why do you? do I get to say what verses actually mean? Well, I don't. I am not the arbiter of what verses actually mean. So what we do when we read the Bible is there is a systematic way to read the Bible. And it's true that there are people who have a variety of interpretations of things. But the truth is, there's only one interpretation to the Bible. There may be a variety of applications. There might be a variety of ways to study a verse. But the systematic way that we see, study the Bible is that we look at a verse and we say, okay, what is the context of this?

Not just the context of this chapter and the context of this particular book in the Bible, but the context of the biblical canon, the context of history. This is why I love the ESV study Bible, which actually provides you with all of this context and the John MacArthur study Bible. There are a lot of good study Bibles, but those are two that I trust that I think are just really, really good in their scholarship. So that is one way that we can know the historical context. in the biblical context of a particular verse.

And we also need to know the authorship. So who wrote this? Why is he writing this? To whom is he writing? And again, a study Bible is really, really helpful in giving you that information. The real meaning of verses based on the context, based on the author, based on the purpose of the verse, always has significance to us because the Bible is about. Jesus and about his glory and his glory is our good. And the Bible tells us how to live in such a way

that we can glorify God. So when I say that when we look at a verse, we don't say, what do I want this to mean? I'm not saying that the Bible isn't for us. Of course it is. By the grace of God, we have his written word that there are many people in the world today and many people throughout history that didn't have access to his written word. But we, by his sovereignty and according to his grace have the privilege of being able to read his written word. And the Bible, the biblical canon, is about Jesus. Everything points to the gospel. The gospel is the scarlet thread. It is the driving force behind the biblical text in every single verse that we read. We should be looking for the glory of God. We should be looking for the characteristics of God. We should be looking for how this

betters our understanding of who he is, who the Messiah is, and why God sent him. And what the gospel is, and then, of course, what that means for our lives. So we ask ourselves, does this ask me to repent of a particular sin? What does this say about God's character that should shift my perspective of what I think about God? So yes, it changes not just our theology, but also our practical everyday obedience. Jeremiah, who wrote this book, is known as the weeping prophet. Most scholars think that he wrote lamentations, as well. He was a prophet for over 40 years of his life. He started out really young, as I will read in just a second. He was a prophet to God's people, specifically those in the nation of Judah

who lamented over the people's sins and their need for repentance and warned them, warned the people about God's impending judgment. And Jeremiah comes on the scene after years and years of God telling his people to repent from their wickedness and the people just outright refusing. So God has called up Jeremiah. He has given him the task of not just lamenting, but also warning his people about the impending suffering that they will endure because of their rebellion and sin. Here is what is said about Jeremiah and by Jeremiah in the first chapter of, in the first chapter of the book. Now, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

Then I said, ah, Lord God, behold, I do not know how to speak. For I am only a youth. But the Lord said to me, do not say, I am only a youth. For to all to whom I send you, you shall go. And whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you. So God consecrated or set aside Jeremiah for this task of weeping over and warning a rebellious people. Jeremiah did not believe that he was qualified. And one thing that we know about God throughout scripture, we see it, for example, specifically in the story of Moses that Moses also said, look, you know, paraphrasing here, God, I've got a stuttering problem. Like, I'm not the person that you want to lead Israel out of Egypt. And God answers in much the same way that, hang on here, I'm going to be with you. I'm going

give you the words to speak, I'm going to empower you. And what we learn from this, that it is God's presence, not our talents, that empower us to do the things that he has called us to do. Now, Jeremiah, in this calling to be a prophet of the people, to be this lamenting, weeping prophet, was a lonely, sorrowful guy. He was bearing the cross of telling God's people to stop sitting, telling them of the wrath that was to come through Babylonian exile by King Nebuchadnezzar, something that God orchestrated, not just allowed, but orchestrated to judge his people. It is very similar. His attitude to Psalm 11936, my eyes should streams of tears because people do not keep your law. So Jeremiah's heart was

broken because of the sinfulness of God's people and knowing according to God what was to come for them. But Jeremiah was also tasked to bring news of God's impending mercy and restoration, as we will discuss today in verse 11. But the people didn't listen to Jeremiah. Maya. His own hometown rejected him. This is what Jesus talks about in Luke 424. Jesus says this, and he said, truly I say to you, no profit is acceptable in his own town. We also see in the book of Acts in Stevens monologue before he gets executed by the angry Jewish people that he was trying to share the gospel with. He talks about how their forefathers, how the Jewish forefathers rejected the prophets and mistreated all of the prophets that God sent. Jeremiah is certainly one of those

people that was mistreated because he was sharing the truth of God to a rebellious people who didn't want to hear it. Interestingly, he only had two people recorded at least that listened to him and actually converted Baruch and the Ethiopian eunuch. And yet, even though we only read of two converts, two people who actually listened to him and repented, Jeremiah was still seen as faithful, held faithful by God. So not because of how many people followed him or listened to him, but because of his obedience to God's voice. And even in his loneliness, God promised to be with him, even in his rejection, God promised to be with him, even in his sorrow, God promised to be with him and strengthen him, to give him words to speak, to uphold him. And as we see throughout the book of

Jeremiah, God does just that. So I often say that we are not the point in the Bible. And I said that in the beginning of this episode as well, that we are not the stars of the show. We are not Jeremiah. But from what we see about Jeremiah in God's word, we see the character of God that does apply to us today, that God is faithful to equip those whom he has called. And he does not judge faithfulness by our perceived fruit or the worldly definitions of what fruitfulness is. So number of followers, number of likes, or the number of people who agree with you or how many downloads you have on a podcast episode, but whether or not you are obeying him in word and indeed.

Hebrews 13, 20 through 21 says this about God's insistence upon equipping those whom he had called and what kind of standards he holds his followers to. Now may the God of Peace who brought again from the dead, our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever. So he equips us to obey him and that obedience brings glory to God, whether or not we see superficial standards of success in our own lives. It is obedience and adherence to His word that God is looking for and brings him glory

and he graciously equips us to do just that as we see through the prophet Jeremiah and his life. God will equip you for his glory. He will empower you to obey him. And when the road is lonely, when the journey is hard, he is with you. That is not inserting ourselves into the biblical story where we don't belong. That is looking at God's character that he exemplifies in the book of Jeremiah and throughout the Bible, realizing that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever, as Hebrews 138 tells us, and realizing that we benefit from that characteristic of God today. So already, we see how much we draw how much good news we see in studying the context of a verse. Like, how awesome is all of that that we've already learned?

We haven't even gotten into Jeremiah 29-11 yet. In looking at the whole picture, we see more of who God is and we see how that benefits us. and it draws us into true and right and humble worship before God. Rejoicing in the faithfulness of God is so much better than demanding favors from God. Now, that does not mean that we cannot pray for things that we want in accordance with His will. We do. It does mean that our relationship with Him isn't about what we can get out of Him, but is about us enjoying Him for who he is and who he is.

as we see in the book of Jeremiah is faithful and merciful and sovereign and good. And we are going to talk about this idea a little bit more as we dig into Jeremiah 29 verse 11. So let's start then at the beginning of chapter 29 to see what this verse really means. Jeremiah 291. These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah, the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadneb Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. To Israelites, so this is to Israelites that were captured by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon

exiled from Jerusalem. Babylon was used multiple times by God as an agent of judgment on Israel because of sins like idolatry. At the time Jeremiah 29 is being written, Nebuchadnezzar had already captured an exile many Jews to Babylon, but the full destruction of the temple of Israel in Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar hadn't happened yet. So Jeremiah is writing to those that have survived the exile who are currently in Babylon. He is telling them how to conduct themselves, conduct themselves while they are in exile. And he is assuring them that after they turn to God, God will restore them

and will allow them to return to Jerusalem after 70 years in exile. So this is what the Bible says in 29 verses 4 through 7. Thus says the Lord of hosts, that God, of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. So again, I just want to emphasize that God is actually the one who purposely orchestrated the exile. So many times we say, oh, God just, he doesn't cause bad things to happen. He just allows bad things to happen. Well, the Bible over and over again disproves that. He does cause suffering to happen at time. So to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem, to Babylon, build houses and live in them, plant gardens, and eat their produce. Take wives

and have sons and daughters, take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, and that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare, you will find your welfare. Verses four through seven, he tells them not to listen to false prophet or soothsayers after that and to make sure that they are only listening to that, which is true. And then we get to the verses surrounding verse 11, starting in verse 10, for thus says the Lord, when 70 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 your whole heart, or actually just with 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. So Jeremiah is talking about the restoration and forgiveness of God's

people after righteous judgment for their persistent sin. So even after God's people rebelled over and over again, they rejected God's prophets, they rejected his warnings, they continued to do what is right, what was right in their own eyes, they continued to worship idols, taking on the customs and the religious traditions of the surrounding areas and cultures and welcoming all kinds of impurity and immorality that God had commanded them to resist, not. just arbitrarily, not just because he wanted to, but because he desired and called them to be holy, to be pure, to do that, which honors him in a way that also protects them, protects them from the heartache that comes from sin, but also from the physical consequences of

things like murder and theft and sexual immorality and child sacrifice. Jeremiah 422 says this, for my people are foolish. They know me not. They are stupid children. They have no understanding. They are, quote, wise. There's actually quotations around it. They are, quote, wise in doing evil.

So they are wise in some ways, if you mean wise in foolishness. But how to do good, they know not. So they don't even know how to do good. Their hearts are so depraved. Jeremiah 5.1 says, run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem. Look and take note. Search her squares to see if you can find a man, one, who doesn't. justice and seeks truth that I may pardon her, her being Jerusalem. Jeremiah 7, 8 through 10,

behold, you trust, this is God's people, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to bail, and go after other gods that you have not known and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say we are delivered, only to go on doing all of these abominations, So we see hypocrisy, we see double-mindedness, we see idolatry and them turning around and saying they still follow the Lord. But God is saying, these people don't know me. They don't know me at all. There's not a single one of them who does justice. There's not a single one of them who even knows what good is. The only thing that they are wise about is being stupid. That is what God says. Please don't tell the

tone police because they will be coming after God in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah 7-17 through 20 says this. do you not see that they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the father's kindle fire, and the women need dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger. Is it I whom they provoke, declares the Lord? Is it not themselves? To their own shame? Therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place upon man and beast.

upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground, it will burn and not be quenched. So, God is very angry, righteously angry at his chosen people because they continue to rebel, no matter how many times he has asked them, told them, warned them to please repent and to return to him so that they can take part in all of the good promises that he has offered them. God sets the rules and gives the commands for his people out of goodness. and compassion, not greed or malice. And the people refused to see the goodness in God's law as they turned away, doing whatever they pleased. And God's judgment came out of yes, anger and wrath, but also out of a relentless, undying love for his people. Rather than rejecting them forever, cutting ties

with them and saying, I'm done with you. No more. I'm not dealing with this. He said, I am going to judge them. I am going to cleanse them. So that. so that they will repent and be restored and be reconciled to me. I am going to allow them and cause them to basically receive the natural consequences of their rebellion, not for the sake of destruction, but actually for the sake of restoration and redemption. That's how good and merciful God is. That is how committed he is to keeping his promises, that they may repent and stop

doing the things that they are doing that are not just dishonoring to him, but also harmful to themselves and to worship him as their good and true God. So in verse 11 of Jeremiah 29, when he says, I have plans to prosper you and not to harm you, he's clearly not saying, I will never allow you to be hurt or to go through anything hard. Actually, he is promising that they are going to suffer a lot for their rebellion. The prosperity and hope that he is talking about is reconciliation to him, restoration in their relationship with him. And that is what biblical prosperity actually is, not the absence of suffering, but the presence of communion with our Redeemer. So first, we need to understand that Jeremiah 2911 was not written about us, but we can,

with proper contextual knowledge, draw something, something really good from this verse about God's character that applies to us. So what we learn about God from this book is that he hates sin, that sin must be dealt with. He will go to any length, any length to rid people of it and to call his people to repentance. We also learn that he has relentlessly committed to forgiveness, redemption, and restoration, not because he has to be, but because he is good and gracious. And where do we see this reality, this characteristic of God proven most in the cross of Jesus Christ? So this is what we get to draw from this as Christians that you and I deserve the same wrath poured out on Israel and Judah and then some. We deserve not just earthly exile, but eternal exile.

We deserve separation from God forever because we too are idolaters. We too love the ways of the world. We too are rebels. So we are sinners and rebels like God's people in the Old Testament. And like God's people in the Old Testament, we are deserving of his judgment and wrath. But God, instead of pouring out that judgment on you and me, he poured it out on his son, Jesus Christ, sending him to die a death. He didn't deserve to die on a cross, paying for all of our sins of wickedness so that we could be redeemed, so that we could be restored, so that we could be reconciled. but God, the two most hopeful words in the whole Bible, but God, but God being rich in mercy because

of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, we have been saved. For those of us who were dead in our sin, which is all of us, Ephesians 2, goes on to say, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, we were sons of disobedience. This chapter says that we were children of wrath. God, by his grace, through our faith has made us alive in Christ, saved by God's goodness to be his children, his heirs, his friends forever. So the hope and the prosperity that God was promising to his people in Jeremiah 2911 was restoration and reconciliation after judgment. The hope and prosperity that God has promised to us is restoration and reconciliation after a judgment that

was poured out not on us but on his only begotten son. So when we read Jeremiah 2911, We know that God is not promising us an easy life. He's not saying that we won't suffer. Actually, 2 Timothy 312 says, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. He is saying that I have made a way for you to be with me, to be a relationship with me, your creator, your good father, not because you deserve it, but because I am gracious and good, not because I need you, but because I want you.

That's how good God is. And that is what this verse points to. That's such a better meaning of the text. That's such a better message, that's such better news, that's such a better God than the one who is promising you superficial satisfaction and temporary happiness. No, in this verse, he is offering rebellious people living water and bread of life, and that is so much better news. That is how Christians can read this verse and rejoice and be glad for a relationship with a good and holy God. Now, the judgment that is described in Jeremiah is still poured out on the

those who do not have faith in Christ. And it will be poured out eternally for those who are not in Christ, for those who have not had their slate wiped clean by the blood of Christ. It shows us a picture of how God does and will deal with sin, not just with temporary suffering, but also with eternal suffering. But what we as Christians get the privilege of drawing out of this text is that the judgment that you and I deserved as rebellious sinners was satisfied, was satisfied in Christ, in his death, in his resurrection, and the defeat of death through his resurrection. He is the propitiation for a sense. He is our reconciliation to God.

He is the bridge. He's also the one that carries us over the bridge to God so that you and I can stand before God with confidence because of our faith in Christ. Again, not because of anything that we have done, but because of our. what Christ has done for us. So what we read in this verse is gospel truth. It's the best news ever. It's so much better than the interpretation of this text, which means that God is not going to allow you to suffer. He's not going to allow you to go through hard things. He's going to give you all of the things that you want in life. Like how small of a God is that he is basically just

the genie from Aladdin? Like, is that the God that you want to rescue you? Is that the God that you want to worship? Is that the God that you want to, that you want to bear your burdens? Is that the kind of God that you see avenging evil and defeating Satan and death forever? It's not the God that I want to worship. I want to worship the God that promises, that promises out of his own grace, not our deservedness, eternal life with him, and not just forgetting that sin exists, but actually paying for that sin with the sacrifice of his own son. And that is what we can rejoice in when we read Jeremiah 29-11. Again, there is so much richness in studying the Bible in context. I will recommend some resources for you. Well, one, I did a podcast called reading the Bible. So I recommend listening to

that. Now, I will kind of change something I said. So I do typically go verse to verse. It's really hard for me to read entire chapters or a few chapters at once because I typically have so many questions that it just takes me forever. And so I typically read small chunks or verses at a time and I kind of break it down. I've got a Greek and Hebrew, a Greek and Hebrew Bible. So you can look at keywords and you can look up the original Greek or Hebrew and it tells you the context and what they actually mean, how they show up in other places in the Bible. I have all of this in an Instagram highlight. I have my ESV study Bible that gives me context in historical analysis and things like and things like that.

However, I will say one caveat that I would give to my reading the Bible, my reading the Bible episode is that it is okay and good to read whole chunks of the Bible at once, especially if you were trying to read the entire Bible. Like I'm doing same page summer right now with Christchurch and Rachel Jankevick, and we're reading big chunks of the Bible at once. That's not how I'm used to reading it, but there's a lot of benefit to that too, because if you're trying to read as much of the Bible as possible, it would take you several lifetimes to go through like one verse at a time. So go listen to my podcast reading the Bible,

but also understand that's not, you don't have to go only verse to verse in order to get something out of the biblical, out of the biblical text. So I've got my study Bible. I've got my keyword Greek and Hebrew Bible. I love systematic theology from Wayne Grudum. I think, it's a really helpful, helpful resource. Also politics, according to the Bible by Wayne Grudem, is something that just kind of helps build your worldview. But those are just some of the few resources that I like. I also love gotquestions.org, like really good resource. If you've got any questions about, you know, how the biblical canon came together. Systematic theology is also good for that, but how different. Bible verses are interpreted different forms of eschatology,

and that means the end times and things like that. And so those are all really good resources. but I hope that, I mean, we can talk about this particular verse and the book of Jeremiah for weeks and weeks and weeks to come. There are people who are a lot smarter than us who have done that that we can draw a lot of wisdom from. But I hope that this was a good dive into a verse that, unfortunately, I think, is not just misused, but is misapplied in a way that misses the heart changing and the life changing and perspective changing truth that it signifies.

So anyway, thank you guys so much for listening. I will be back here on Wednesday.