Jeremiah 29:11
You all know that I love history, and I love bringing up historical events in my messages. But instead of going back to World War II or the Civil War or something else that happened a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, let’s go back to September 11, 2001. How many of you actually remember that event? You remember what you were doing when the news came that the Twin Towers in New York were attacked by terrorists; you actually saw the news reports live on the TV. How many of you were even alive when that happened?
You guys have learned about 9/11 in school or from your family. But because you weren’t actually there -- or if you were, you were too young to really remember it -- you have no context to the situation. You are forced to rely on first hand accounts, photographs and history books to try and find some context for what it was like.
But even now though, less than 20 years later, people are trying to change what history says really happened. There are hundreds of conspiracy theories on “what really happened” during the 9/11 attacks. Some say that it was all a way to manipulate the stock market, while others go so far as to say that the real attackers were not Al-Qaeda, but CIA agents and other members of the US Government.
The way people who believe these conspiracies justify their belief is by picking and choosing what facts they concentrate on, and ignoring the rest. For example, a popular controversy is that the simultaneous attack on the Pentagon wasn’t actually done by an airplane, but by a missile fired by a secret government agency. The damage to the Pentagon could have been done by a missile, certainly; but this controversy conveniently ignores the many images and videos showing airplane debris in and around the building.
You can see where the danger in this lies -- if I didn’t tell you about the airplane debris in and around the Pentagon, and I just explained how the damage to the building could easily have been caused by a missile, you may have believed me! A statement can be true, but if you don’t have all of the information, it can make you infer something that is not true.
This applies most often in the Christian world to scripture. We live in a time where more people than ever before can access the Bible. Thanks to websites like BibleGateway.com and Bible.com (and many more), people can read the Word of God for free, in a language they can understand, at any time of day or night. This is great! However, the ability to share a single verse with all of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can make it easy to misunderstand the original point behind that verse.
This is a hugely dangerous thing! We are all examples of Christ and His love here on Earth. People who are hungry for the Lord will listen to what we all say and do in order to get closer to Christ or, if they don’t know Him yet, figure out who this Jesus person is. If we misunderstand a verse, we run the risk of leading someone to a version of Christ that does not actually exist! Jesus speaks to the danger of this in Mark 9:42, “But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your neck.”
Well, that’s just for sin, right? If they misunderstand something about Jesus, that’s not a sin, it’s just a misunderstanding. As Dwight Schrute from The Office would say -- FALSE! If we tell someone that it’s perfectly legal for them to run into a gas station and take all the candy bars they want without paying for it, and they do it, will the police still come after them? Of course they would! The same logic is true with scripture. If we convince someone that something is true -- even though it’s not -- by misusing Scripture, they will still face the consequences.
One of the most often-quoted scriptures is Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV), “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.” What a powerful verse! This verse gives hope to many in hard situations -- and rightly so. Many people consider this verse to be their favorite verse in the Bible -- but what does it really mean? For that, we need to look at the context…
Jeremiah was a prophet during one of the most turbulent times in Israel’s history. He was a prophet over 5 kings of Israel, until after the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and destroyed Solomon’s Temple. During this time the Israelites had repeatedly fallen under the influence of false gods, even to the point of sacrificing their own children to Baal. They had fallen so far away from God that Jeremiah wrote the books of Jeremiah, Lamentations, and First and Second Kings, and because of the depressing subjects described in these books he’s often referred to as “The Weeping Prophet.”
The first half of Jeremiah 29 is a letter from Jeremiah to the Israelites currently exiled in Babylon. Starting with verse 4: “This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5‘Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.’”
In other words, “Be prepared, because you’re gonna be there for a while.” In fact, verse 10 specifies that they will be there for 70 years! Let’s pick it back up there: “This is what the LORD says: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11For 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. 12Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14I 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.”
Aha! There’s verse 11 right there in the middle. God is specifically telling the Israelites that he will restore them. This is a common thread throughout all of Scripture -- whenever God gives a judgement, a failure, or a brokenness; God always follows up with an offer of restoration! Jeremiah 29:11 says that, despite everything around them despite their fear and discouragement at becoming exiles in a foreign land, God still sees them and will still keep His promise. There is still hope!
But, like everything else in the Bible, this verse was written for the benefit of people living thousands of years ago. However, it’s not so closely tied to the original audience that it is no longer relevant today. This verse is still a very powerful piece of scripture -- it just doesn’t mean what a lot of people want it to mean.
God says in Jeremiah 29:11 that He has plans to prosper us. Whenever you see the word “prosper” in scripture, it’s easy to think that it’s referring to wealth. If you’re rich, you’re prosperous! Well, this is true, but “rich” and “prosperity” can mean vastly different things to different people. For example -- I don’t have a lot of money, but I have a loving family, a great job, and a loving and supporting church. I consider myself rich -- but I’m broke! Prosperity is the same way -- I never go hungry, and I always have a warm, safe, and dry place to sleep at night. I’m prosperous!
There is even an entire church movement devoted to this idea -- you may have heard of the “Prosperity Gospel”. People like Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, T.D. Jakes, and others are huge names in this area. The Prosperity Gospel says that it’s God’s will for us to be wealthy -- and they use Jeremiah 29:11 as one of the verses to help them “prove” this idea. Like the conspiracy theorists in 9/11, though, they conveniently ignore verses like James 2:5: “Listen to me, dear brothers and sisters. Hasn’t God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith? Aren’t they the ones who will inherit the Kingdom he promised to those who love him?” That’s interesting -- If God has chosen the poor to be rich in faith, then why would it be His will for us all to be financially wealthy? When Jeremiah 29:11 says that God’s plan is to “Prosper you”, it doesn’t mean we’re all going to be financially wealthy. It doesn’t say that we’re all going to be able to spend money all willy-nilly without needing some sort of steady income. What it does say is that, like the Israelites, we don’t need to worry about our situation because God’s in control. He will prosper us, yes -- but in His way and in His time. Remember, it took 70 years for this promise to come about -- that means that many Israelites died of old age before it happened. They didn’t prosper in the same way that their children and grandchildren did -- but if they were obedient, they still prospered in the end.
Next, God says in Jeremiah 29:11 that He has plans “not to harm us”. This can be tricky to understand because, like “prosper”, the concept of harm can mean different things to different people. If I have to discipline one of my children because they did something they weren’t supposed to do, they probably think that I’m harming them. But, in reality, punishing them when they break a rule is doing the exact opposite!
In the book of Luke, Jesus is making a point about suffering in response to sin. Luke 13:4-5: “And what about the eighteen people who died with the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? 5No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish too.” Bad things happen, and sometimes bad things happen to good people. But the harm that those eighteen people suffered was temporary. That was only harm to their physical bodies -- which weren’t really theirs anyway. Since we all belong to God, our bodies do too; and so long as we are saved, we can’t really ever die. What better definition of “not to harm you” is there than knowing that we can’t die? When Jeremiah 29:11 says that God’s plan is “not to harm you”, it doesn’t mean that we’ll never have anything bad happen. It doesn’t mean that we’ll never have a bad day. It just means that no matter what the world throws our way, we’re safe in knowing that He is with us.
Finally, God says in Jeremiah 29:11 that He has plans to “give us hope and a future”. Originally, this was a prophecy that was fulfilled in the books of Nehemiah and Ezra -- where Jerusalem was repopulated, the walls rebuilt, and the temple restored. However, now it means so much more than that! This is a prophecy concerning Jesus’ birth, and the coming of the Messiah! Jeremiah goes into more detail later, in 31:31-34, ““The day is coming,” says the lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. 32This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the lord.
33“But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the lord.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already,” says the lord. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.””
This verse was even quoted in Hebrews 8:7-13 when discussing the new covenant -- Christ’s appearance on Earth and what it meant for everyone in the world. What better hope and future could we possibly have than that?
Jeremiah 29:11 is intended to give hope, but not in the way many people think. It doesn’t say anything about avoiding bad days or increasing your personal wealth. It’s not about our own personal fulfillment, it’s about our spiritual fulfillment. If we take scripture out of context, we run the risk of making scripture fit our life, instead of making our life fit scripture. When that happens, we make no more sense than the conspiracy theorists who take one fact and run away with it, but are much more dangerous. Instead of convincing others to believe something foolish, we can convince others to believe something that can damage or even destroy their walk with the Lord.
