Thriving in Exile

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.

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.

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.