Thriving in Exile

Jeremiah 29

Main Idea: God tells us now what he will do later so we will not be overcome with the present.

1. Thrive in Exile (29:4-9).
2. Thrive in Exile Because of Future Deliverance (29:10-14).
3. Those Who Refuse God’s Discipline Are Warned (29:15-31).

As the words populate themselves on the screen in front of me, what is interesting is that this is not so interesting. The fact that characters that were not there a millisecond ago are now present does not strike me at all. That is just the way things are. Communication has changed through the years.

Communication theorists suggest that there have been major shifts in communication. These could be sliced in many different ways, but think about it this way. Communication has shifted

• from oral to written,
• from written to print,
• from print to broadcast,
• from broadcast to digital.

These are all seismic shifts. However, the most significant shift in communication was doubtless the first shift, from an oral culture to a written one. The reason this was so significant was because of presence. When something was written down and then reread at another time, it separated the presence of the messenger from the message itself. You could argue that all forms of communication are attempts to get back at that original form; they are attempts to make the nonpresent person present. The messenger “re-presents” the original speaker. The limited functionality of visual phone calls reminds me at once how amazing technology is and how the trillions of dollars spent have yielded something profoundly mediocre at re-presenting presence. Spending time with my wife cannot be replicated by seeing her face pixilated on a tiny screen.

Yet the letter described in Jeremiah 29 is different. This letter re-presents the heart of God. God’s word is always accompanied by God’s presence. He is invisible, yet he makes his presence known in the word he communicates to his people through his prophets. In this written letter we have a metaphor for the nature of the written Word of God. God is invisible, yet he writes to us through his Word. He speaks to us. When he does, he is near. His presence is in his Word. This word communicated through Jeremiah will contain a message of encouragement to the exiles and a message of warning to those who are still in rebellion. So here we have a profound word, a word that carries perhaps the most notable passage in the book of Jeremiah.

Context

The leaders of the country are now refugees. They are living exiled from their home. Jeremiah is writing to them, but the text also indicates that his emissaries might have received an audience with the king of Babylon himself (v. 3).

So here is God’s word of encouragement to them.

Thrive in Exile

Jeremiah 29:4-9

God gives them clear directives: build houses, provide for yourselves, and have families. In other words, they are to have the posture of presence. God is saying they are to spend their time not moping about what was lost from the old country but actually thriving in the new land. There is no question that they are exiles, and there is no question that they are to act well in this situation.

Being a foreigner has deep roots in our faith. Abraham was praised because by faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents as did Isaac and Jacob, coheirs of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Heb 11:9-10)

This is a great metaphor for what it means to be a Christian. A believer is, by definition, exiled from his ultimate home in heaven. First and foremost we are citizens of the kingdom we cannot see. This is why the language of those who are displaced in this life is so appropriate for us. We are strangers, foreigners, and aliens. We are in this life but not of this life.

So the counsel is appropriate for us: like Abraham we are to thrive in this land even though it is not our home. But the directive is even more specific. They were not just to thrive personally but also to “pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive” (v. 7). Perhaps this is an extension of the promise to Abraham that they were to bless all nations. They were to pray for the prosperity of the country that exiled them for the practical reason that when the country prospered they would as well.

The section ends with a warning against the false prophets. This assumes the false prophets were encouraging them to do something other than be supportive of their host country. Perhaps they were advancing a nationalism that, while well intended, did not seek the best for the land they were occupying.

This posture might strike us as odd. Are they to act like nothing is wrong? Of course not! They are in fact exiles. The markets they patronize are different from what they are used to. The ground yields different crops; the customs are different. Everything seems to be different. God never asks us to pretend.

But there is a specific reason they should seek to thrive in exile: the promise of future deliverance.

Thrive in Exile Because of Future Deliverance

Jeremiah 29:10-14

The motivation for their behavior is that their home was temporary. Like Abraham their biological and spiritual father, they were to look for something more.

God had already prophesied that the time of the exile would be fairly short (25:11-12). Babylon would fall, and the people would be restored. As mentioned earlier, this is remarkable. The people have disobeyed God, and his discipline is punitive, but it is also restorative. He is taking them out to bring them back in.

Then God gives them the glorious promise that his ultimate plans were not for destruction, but to give them “a future and a hope” (v. 11).

The Lord assured the people that what had happened was not a series of unplanned, accidental events. He said, “I know the plans” (lit. “I, I know”; emphatic in Hb). His plan was not intended to hurt them but to give them “hope and a future” (perhaps a hendiadys, “a hopeful future”). He encouraged them to pray, for he would listen to them. (Huey, Jeremiah, Lamentations, 254)

This would have been at once encouraging and tough. How do you accept that God is giving you a hopeful future when you have no home, when all of your memories are tied to a land that you are not sure you will see again, when you have just walked hundreds of miles to be displaced among a strange people, when you are a blessed people living in a pagan land, and when you are literally under the judgment of God? That is a hard ask for humans. But God is not asking them to trust the plans.

The assurance is not in the plans; it is in God’s knowledge of the plans (v. 11). God knows. So that they may focus on the present, he tells them now what he plans to do later.

Now we see the importance of the letter. God assures us in our present by telling us now what he plans to do later. This is always his pattern.

• He told Abraham that later he would have offspring, a land, and a blessing (Gen 12:1-3).
• He told David that later he would have an everlasting kingdom (2 Sam 7:8-17).
• Jesus told his disciples that later they would have a home in heaven (John 14:1-6).
• We are told that later we will reign with him (2 Tim 2:12).

God’s promises are glorious, but they are future. God tells us now what he will do later so we will not be overcome by the present.

God does not promise to alleviate all suffering in this life. He rather gives us his promise in his Word that ultimately the fake kingdom in which we are citizens will be displaced by the real kingdom of heaven. All injustices will be righted, all will worship Christ, and Jesus will bring an end to all war and bring judgment on all those who have come against him and his bride. This will happen. This may not change my present, but it changes my hope. What is at stake for the country of Judah is not whether God will act but whether they can trust him until he does. Future blessing does not negate present pain. But more importantly, present pain does not negate future blessing. The fact that I cannot see the finish line does not mean it does not exist; it just means I am not in a position to fully see what is actually there. God is here, even when he is invisible.

So I do not slacken my stride, I don’t sit down or lie down, I don’t embrace the life of laziness toward the present or remorse for the past, and I don’t swelter in the heat of my present situation until I wilt in hopelessness. I don’t turn an aid station along the racecourse into a finish line.

No, we run by faith. We run toward a finish line we cannot see to a God we cannot see because his invisibility is not a worry to us. We are running by faith. His concern is not his plan; his concern is our faith in it. God tells us now what he will do later so we won’t focus on the present.

By the way, since he knows the plans, this means the most valuable asset is not the plans; the most valuable asset is the Person who knows them. We don’t know the plans, but we know the Person. He knows the plans, so run by faith into his presence.

And now we are back to how sweet this letter actually is.

Please don’t miss this. The letter is not scribbled off in a hurry with thoughtless words. No, these are the words of God to them. Remember, with his word comes his presence. Now we know why this is so important. If we have his presence, we have his plans because he is the one who knows the plans.

Those Who Refuse God’s Discipline Are Warned

Jeremiah 29:15-31

The following section is as scary as the previous section was glorious. God warns those who, as we saw in chapter 24, are left behind (29:15-19). Then he warns the false prophets who try to subvert the work of God (vv. 20-23). The closing of the chapter is a series of three letters concerning Shemaiah, a false prophet who rejected the word God was giving to Jeremiah.

It’s dificult, of course, to blame those who would not believe. After all, who wants to believe that God’s very plans involve hardship, pain, and suffering? Would it not be more logical to assume God wants me to have a happy life? After all, if God wants me to have a happy life, any enemy of my happiness is the enemy of God. Yet the book of Jeremiah exists to show that this is patently false. God has plans that involve suffering. God has plans that involve pain. God has mysterious plans in which he uses the evil of the enemy for our good. And these are his plans.

Conclusion

The lesson is twofold. First, sometimes God plans to use evil to accomplish good. God is not at all pleased with the activity of the Babylonians. In fact, he will punish them. Sometimes God plans to use bad things, even bad people with bad intentions, to accomplish his purposes. Second, when he does, we must yield to those plans. This is what it means to stay under the discipline of the Lord.

We began by suggesting that God’s Word to us is God’s presence with us. We saw in God’s encouragement to Israel that he has plans and that he tells us now what he will do later so we won’t focus on the present.

The secret then is not to know the plans but to know the Person. This affirms what Jeremiah said in 9:23-24:

This is what the Lord says:

The wise person should not boast in his wisdom;

the strong should not boast in his strength;

the wealthy should not boast in his wealth.

But the one who boasts should boast in this:

that he understands and knows me—

that I am the Lord, showing faithful love,

justice, and righteousness on the earth,

for I delight in these things.

This is the Lord’s declaration.

Our confidence is in God. Our confidence is in God because he knows how things will transpire, and he is working his plans toward a good end. If God tells now what he will do in the future, the most important thing is the mind of God that comes from the presence of God.

Reflect and Discuss

1. How are these chapters an encouragement to those in exile?
2. Why would God tell them to thrive in a nation whose people did not know or love God (v. 7)?
3. Is there anything relatable in verse 7? What are practical ways we can seek the welfare of our cities?
4. How does Hebrews 11:9-10 relate to our attitude as believers in this present state of affairs?
5. Compare the New Testament idea of being an “alien” to the Old Testament idea of Israel as strangers and aliens.
6. Jeremiah 29:11 is perhaps the best-known passage in the book. How is it commonly understood? Do you understand it differently after reading this chapter as a whole?
7. Discuss the pattern of future promises in the Scripture.
8. Describe the warnings of verses 15-31. Why were these warnings rejected?
9. If the nation were to embrace the future promise, what dreams in the present would have to die?
10. Is this death to self relatable to the New Testament idea of the crucified life? Can you name any New Testament verses that affirm this idea?