Sunday Morning, June 9, 2019 AM Part 4

Long-Term Obedience and the Call to Doers of the Word

Of whatever happens and we have to do that through the scriptures. We need to know how God views it. We also need to have long-term obedience. We need to orient ourselves not just to understand the times but what to do.

We must not just be hearers of the word but also doers, leveraging our understanding into action. We spent two weeks talking about our long-term obedience and we're going to finish up the A and the N in our acronym of PLAN, talking about the need for accurate doctrine and a non-negotiable hope.

And we'll be hearing those themes in verses 8 through 14 of our text. I invite you to stand with me as I read the passage so that we will hear this word from our sovereign Jesus Christ. Here are his words.

Jeremiah’s Letter to the Exiles and the Command to Build, Plant, and Seek the Welfare of Babylon

Now these are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the Prophet sent from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders of the exile, the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

This was after King Jeconiah and the Queen Mother, the court officials, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elisha the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, 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, become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters, and multiply there, and do not decrease.

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 have welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets who are in your midst and your diviners deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams which they dream, for they prophesy falsely to you in my name.

I have not sent them, declares the Lord. For thus says the Lord, when 70 years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you, and to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes, and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Well, have you ever showed up for church service and nobody else was there? It happens. You didn't get the word? Plans have changed. You don't know the plan.

You show up. Maybe it was the time change, maybe it was something else, but you show up to church and nobody else is there, and you're sitting in the parking lot, and you're choking back secret rapture anxiety, and you finally get an answer back from your text, and you realize you did not know the plan.

You did not know the plan. Apparently everybody else knew the plan, but you didn't. That always makes you a little upset. I can understand that. But that experience of not knowing the plan, of thinking it was going to happen this way, but in fact it turned out another way, those experiences, like so many unfulfilled political promises, remind us of our lack of control.

Our lack of control. That we have a contingent existence on the one who is in control. Murphy's rules of combat. One of those rules states, no plan of attack survives first contact with the enemy. And so we deviate from our plans all the time, don't we?

We're just, why do we change our new information? Oh, I didn't expect that. Now I changed my plan. Why do we change our plans? Panic, distraction, boredom, forgetfulness. Sometimes we change our plans because of peer pressure, sometimes we change our plans because of repentance.

I can understand why we change our plans. Our plans are full of errors, not good enough, so on and so forth. But why would we ever deviate from God's plans? Why would we ever deviate from God's plans?

Are his plans incomplete? Are his plans limited? Are his plans unfulfilling? Are his plans foolish? No. The reason why we deviate from God's plans, from God's plan, is that we get bored, or we get uppity, or we get distracted, or we get scared, or selfish.

We deviate. Deviation from God's plan is a really bad plan. Adam and Eve deviated from God's plan to fill the earth with his glory, and they said, well, we're gonna fill the earth with our glory. Abraham and Sarah deviated from God's plan for them to have a child, and they decided to use Hagar to artificially create the fulfillment of the promise.

That didn't go very well, still not going very well. Israel deviated from God's plan to thoroughly conquer Canaan, to wipe out every last vestige of the idolatry that had plagued the land for 400 years, despite the preaching of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, despite the preaching of Melchizedek.

For 400 years, God had patience with the Canaanites, and Israel was the judgment upon them. But they decided to mix it up with the Canaanites, and do a little bit of cross-cultural studies, and learn more about the Canaanite religions.

God's plan is always right, good, unfailing. God's plan for mankind still stands. It's still in operation, and it is being accomplished through the man of all men, Jesus Christ, the second Adam, the last Adam.

We talked about a couple of weeks ago that our renewal into the image of God, our growing up in Christ, our being sanctified, our renewal into the image of God manifests, shows up, and looks like our pursuit of the cultural mandate, which means doing the work of God upon the earth, our renewal into the image of God manifests in our pursuit of the cultural mandate to the advancement of Christ's kingdom.

Which is why here at Sunnyside, what is our purpose? And it's not unique. It is to proclaim Christ from all the scripture until his spirit renews all God's people into his image. That's the plan. That's not unique.

That's not different. That is part of the plan. So we're going to proclaim Christ from all the scripture until his spirit renews all God's people into his image. And we're trying to stick to the plan.

That's the way we say it. Churches are trying to stick to the plan. So whatever happens, this is our theme, whatever happens, stick to the plan. We've talked about proper assessment, that we know what's going on.

When we do a proper assessment of where we are, there may be some unwelcome facts. I don't like that Israel was in the situation they were in because of their own sin. There were some unhelpful factors, we may figure out we've got some problems, some things to overcome, but yet we are called to live in undaunted faith.

Proper assessment. Secondly, long-term obedience. That's grounded in reality, it's rooted in Genesis, it's all about the Great Commission. What are we doing, as Paul said, to entrust to faithful men who will entrust to other faithful men who will entrust to other faithful men that the truths of the gospel will not perish upon the face of the earth?

What are we doing to ensure that we are in agreement with Christ's plan and his plan is to win? How are we winning? We disciple, we raise godly families, we advance the agenda of the church, who's the pillar and ground of the truth, we proclaim Christ risen and reigning.

Now thirdly, accurate doctrine. We need to maintain accurate doctrine. So P is proper assessment, L is long-term obedience, and A is accurate doctrine. Unless we maintain accurate doctrine, we are going to deviate from God's plan.

We're going to deviate from God's plan. When I say accurate doctrine, I don't mean necessarily extremely precise doctrine, I just mean accurate doctrine. Unless we have accurate doctrine, we are going to be deviating from the plan.

What was it that led Adam and Eve astray from the plan? It was a lie, right? They believed a lie, and as soon as they believed the lie, they strayed from the plan. Now notice that this is part of the theme of our text, Jeremiah 29, 8 and 9.

Listen to it. So God has just given them long-term instructions, right? Build houses, live in them, plant gardens, harvest, get married, have kids, make sure that they get married, that they have kids.

Your job, O Israel, O humanity, do not decrease, right? Advance the glory of God where you live. So long-term obedience. Now how are they going to stay on track? Well, verses 8 and 9, you know, they need to be against false doctrine.

They need to have accurate doctrine. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets who are in your midst and your diviners deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams which they dream, for they prophesy falsely to you in my name.

I have not sent them, declares the Lord. Well, this is about half of Jeremiah. About half the time in Jeremiah, we're hearing about false prophets and how not to listen to them. I mean, and so we've talked about this a great deal already.

And the second half of chapter 29 is a full-scale blog war between false prophets and Jeremiah, and so we're going to talk about much of those false prophet themes there. Suffice to say, Jeremiah's struggle is the doctrinal soil in which he's laboring.

It's a very thin layer upon the hard pack of polytheism. Judah was worshipping many different gods. They worshipped Baal and Chemosh and Asherah. They also worshipped the Queen of Heaven. They were very vigorously worshipping all the gods that they could possibly worship.

So much so that when they tried to pray to God, God said, I'm not going to listen to you anymore. You go pray to the gods that you've been following all this time and see what they can do for you. And so since he's laboring in this polytheism, it's not so much that there's the true and false moral dynamic left anymore.

It's not about what's true and what's false in a culture of polytheism. It's only what is shalom or condemnation. Whatever sounded like peace and safety was approved in Jeremiah's culture, and whatever sounded like controversy was labeled as bad.

It was either get along or don't complain, right? Don't complain, just get along. Our cultural hard pack of pluralism functions the same way. It's not about what's true and false, it's about what makes everybody happy versus what makes some people upset.

That's the moral dynamic of truth that we're trying to fight against today. So it's the same kind of culture. And we see that when they went into exile, when Jeconiah, this is in 597 BC, when Jeconiah, who had been reigning for three months, saw the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, he knew he was cooked.

He was done. So he decided to surrender himself, the royal household, all the craftsmen, all the smiths, and they all left Jerusalem, surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar, the cream of the crop of Judah, surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar says, very good, now I'm gonna go raid your temple, and he took all the most holy, sacred, valuable artifacts that he could carry, and they all went off to Babylon. So that was in 597 BC.

When that group of people left, false prophets went with them. And now, not only do you have false prophets like Hananiah in Jerusalem saying, the captivity will only be two years long, everything will be fine, very soon.

Not only do you have a false prophet like that in Jerusalem, but you have false prophets over in Babylon lying to the people. And so God says, if you're going to be in long-term obedience, if you're going to be doing what I tell you to do here in exile, you need to stop listening to the false prophets and refute them.

These false prophets in exile, we'll see them in the next part of chapter 29, here are their names. Ahab, the son of Kaliah, Zedekiah, the son of Messiah, and Shemaiah, the Nehelamite. False prophets there in exile, false prophets back in Jerusalem.

Why is it that the false prophets are always so successful in getting their message across? As you look at the text, you can see that these prophets, first of all, are accessible. They're accessible. They're in the midst of the exiles.

Do not let your prophets who were in your midst. They are accessible. They're not far away like Jeremiah. Jeremiah is back in Jerusalem. They're way off in Babylon. And these false prophets with the exiles are embedded there and they're just accessible, way more than Jeremiah.

He's way back in Jerusalem. So that's why they're succeeding in their message. Also, their dreams are very relevant to the aspirations of the exiles. These dreams are those kinds of dreams that the exiles like to listen to.

These false prophets, they really get their audience. Unlike Ezekiel, who is also there in exile and he lives next door, but he's the poster child for prophetic weirdness. So you don't want to be around Ezekiel too long.

It may rub off on you. And they also know how to talk to the people. They speak in the name of the Lord. They say all the right things and they're very conversant with the people, always communicating with them.

Unlike Daniel, who's also out there in exile, but he has sealed up his prophecies for a later time under the instruction of the Lord. So you can see it'd be very easy for the exiles to embrace these deceivers and ignore the established revelation of God in the scripture and still being preached through his true prophets.

And let's be honest, right study and searching of God's Word is always more difficult than guzzling down the most accessible, relevant, and conversant stream. It's always more difficult to to get into the Word and study and labor, but it's what's necessary.

Now look at these dreamers. Our closer reading of verse 8 tells us a little bit more about these dreams being dreamed. And the King James, in the New King James, translates the verse this way at the very end.

Neither hearken to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed. And in the New King James, nor listen to your dreams that which you cause to be dreamed. The New International Version interprets the original this way.

Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. So what's going on here? The dreams that these false prophets are having, the dreams that the diviners are having, the dreams that even some of the people themselves are having, are dreams that they want to have.

And they're causing these dreams to occur. These are the things we want to hear about. And lo and behold, those are the dreams that they have. And so yet again in Jeremiah, we are reminded of the people's responsibility in promoting the false prophets that they want to hear.

This is what Paul said to Timothy, that in the last days people would heap up for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires. Long before the like button was coded into social media platforms, the algorithm was still at work culling unpopular messages and streamlining certain prophets and their dreams to viral status.

It's been happening a long time. You are responsible for the media traipsing across your screen. You are responsible for the teaching coming into your home. You're responsible for it. You're responsible for the teaching coming into your head.

Whatever it is, take it in hand. Take it in hand. And we're to bring every thought in captive to the obedience of Christ. Take it in hand. Whatever it is, take it in hand. And if it's a snake, twist its head off.

Right? That's the responsibility. Now again, one other reason why the false prophets are messages so successful is because they're talking about deliverance. I mean, think about Hananiah's message at the end of chapter 28.

He was saying the things that everybody wanted to hear, even Jeremiah. He says, man, that sounds like awesome news. That the exile is only going to be two years long. That the king, Jeconiah, is going to come back to the throne.

That all of the stolen artifacts are going to be put right back into the temple. He says, amen! Now that sounds good. It's exactly what they all wanted to hear. But then Jeremiah said, but you know what?

That doesn't sound like what's already been said in the scriptures. But the message is about deliverance. And it's the kind of deliverance that the airplane pilot says to his many passengers. It's the, buckle up, we are having turbulence, but it will only last for another five minutes and we'll all be fine.

It's that kind of deliverance. It's that kind of peace, peace, but there is no peace. Healing the brokenness of the people superficially. And God says, I did not send them. He did not send them with this message of deliverance.

He did not send them to say everything's going to be just fine. Who did he send? Who did he send? He has sent the true Deliverer, Christ. I want us to think a little bit about Hebrews 1 verses 1 through 3.

And the reason why we should is that when we're talking about the need to stand against false teaching, to take, to be responsible for whatever is coming into our homes, false teaching, bad teaching, whatever it may be.

And it comes into our, how do we know what we've got? Again, it's about proper assessment. But how do we know what's true and false? What's good doctrine? What's bad doctrine? How do we know? Well, we need to pay attention to the one whom God has sent, and that is Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 1, 1 through 3. God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, and these were all good, in these last days he has spoken to us in his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the world.

In other words, he has spoken to us in his Son, the Omega and the Alpha. Everything we need to know about the universe in terms of its history and the baseline for what truth is, he has spoken to us in his Son.

Jesus Christ is the radiance of his Father's glory, the exact representation of his nature, and upholds all things by the word of his power. So he's the Omega, he's the Alpha, he's the Now. He's upholding everything by the word of his power.

And when he had made purification of sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, where he reigns as the ruler of the kings of the earth. Revelation 1, 5. What do we see here in Hebrews 1, 1 through 3?

What we see is, at the pinnacle of revelation, we have the apex of salvation. So when we look to our Savior, when we look to the one who has died in our place, suffered for our sins, and been raised from the dead, when we look at our Savior, we see our salvation, but we also have the most clear revelation that God has ever given of himself.

So if we want to know what's true or false, we start with Christ. Look at the Word, say, what does this say of Christ? Now I can determine the yes and the no, the true and the false. And why is it important?

Because God makes the people there in exile, he makes us as well, responsible for what we listen to as well as what we promote. Now sometimes we get told things we already know. I already know that. That's Christianity 101 or 102, I already know that.

But we need to pay attention. Jude says for us to we are to build ourselves up on our most holy faith. Hebrews 2 .1 actually says, for this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away from it.

So what does God do? He tells them something very, very basic, something they have already heard before, in verse 8. What does he say to them? He's concerned about them, what they're believing. Are they believing bad doctrine or good doctrine?

So he tells them something they have heard many, many times before, verse 8. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. I mean, how many times did they hear that? How many times was that read to them in the Torah and in the writings and in the prophets who had already come?

How many times have they heard those names, those titles of God, that he is the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel? I mean, how basic is that? But how essential is that for these exiles living off in Babylon to hear that their God is the Lord of hosts?

Yahweh Sabaoth. He is God of all the armies of creation. He's God of everything. And so even if they're off in Babylon, he's still God over them, still God over everything, still sovereign and in control, and he is the God of Israel.

He has especially revealed himself in the covenant life of Israel so that the world would know his good news. Well, it's very basic, and when we think about that, here's something very basic. Well, no matter where the exiles happen to be living, God is still God, he's still Lord.

And no matter where we're living and what time we're living in, Jesus Christ, the risen Savior and reigning sovereign, is in charge and he is God and he is man no matter where we're living or what time we live in.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So we have to have that constancy in our thinking if we're going to know truth from a lie, truth from falsehood. Now additionally, let's think carefully, let's think carefully about this.

Just because someone knows how to say Jesus Christ, and we're thankful that they do, just because someone knows how to say Jesus Christ does not mean that they know how to say Shibboleth, right? Just because someone knows how to say Jesus Christ does not mean that they know how to say Shibboleth, and by that I mean if they're not bowed to his word, they're not sent in his name.

Check if they're submitted to the word, and if they're not bowed to the word, they're not sent in his name. They can say his name all they want, but they need to be bowed to his word. And if someone who was really sent in his name doesn't get something exactly right according to the word, when they find out they're wrong, they say, yeah, I need to get it right now.

That kind of approach, we're going to be bowed to the word of God. Now look at the responsibility that we have. It says, do not listen to them, right? Verse 8, do not listen to the dreams, but before that he says, do not let your prophets and diviners deceive you.

Do not let them do that. So what are we being made responsible for? Not only are we to refuse to listen, we're to refute the lie. That there is reason if we love one another, and if we're concerned about the good of our neighbor and our fellow church member and so on, not only should we refuse to listen, but also refute the lie.

If they're saying things that are wrong and deceitful, we need to say that, expose it, and shut it down. Don Currid was the guy at the conference last two days, some of us went to, and he began his introduction to his teaching on Genesis 1 through 3 this way, recognizing all the challenges that we're now facing in our culture.

He says, we have a world screaming in confusion and Christians are stuttering. We're stuttering. We don't need to stutter. We need to be clear. Paul says that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth.

We're the lighthouse in the fog, brothers and sisters, and we have to speak clearly and let us speak clearly of who Jesus Christ is and what he came to do, and the importance of that for everything in life.

The Christian Triad of Faith, Love, and Hope

Okay, so accurate doctrine. Step four, the N in the acronym of PLAN is non-negotiable hope. Now we've got to stand against false teaching and a false doctrine because that distracts, that obfuscates, it hides, it misdirects us from our real hope.

We have a real hope, but bad teaching will turn our attention off the hope that we have. Paul says, uses the the Christian triad of virtues, truth or faith, love, and hope, and the greatest of these is love, he says.

Okay, so faith, hope, love, the greatest of these is love. The Christian triad of virtues is like a river. When you think of a river, the first thing you probably think of is water. Okay, well what good is Christianity without love?

Well, what good is a river without water? What about faith? Faith is like the banks of the river, the shape of the river that gives a structure for who we are in Christ. So you think of faith, you can think of the structure of the river, the banks, the shape that it makes on the earth, and love is like the water that fills it up and really makes it a river.

Well, what is hope? Well, if the river has water and a shape, it's not going nowhere. What do we have? We have mosquitoes, right? Yeah? We've got flooding, we've got a pond, but we don't have a river.

That thing has to be on the move. Rivers move. Christians move. We have hope. We have a direction. We're not stagnant. We're not puddles. We're not ponds. The faith and love that we have has a direction.

We have a non-negotiable hope. God gives a hope He gives a hope to these Jews in exile. Listen, we have to keep this in mind about our hope, where it's all heading. The advance of truth is not a funeral march, and we tend to mimic that sometimes.

You know, the Alliance of Confessing Ewars, you know. The advance of truth is not a funeral march. It is a wedding procession. It is a victory parade. Because of who we serve, who's on the throne, who holds it all in hand.

We have to have a non-negotiable hope. So let's look at the non-negotiable hope for the Jews in exile. Jeremiah 29, 10 through 14. Let's read verse 10 first of all. For thus says the Lord, when 70 years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you to bring you back to this place.

So you know that thing about someone who's preaching and teaching the word and then he gets something wrong and then has to repent? So I'll be exhibit A today. I have really, when I hear about the 70 years of the Jews in exile, I've just been operating on a basic principle of, you know, math.

Here it is. Solomon's temple was destroyed in 586 and sometime around 516, scholars differ whether it was 515, 517, but somewhere in there, the temple was rebuilt. It was dedicated, it was rebuilt. Hey, that's 70 years.

Looks good to me. I'm gonna go with that. However, paying attention to the text and the original prophecy, we see that the says 70 years, when 70 years are completed for who? For Babylon. Not completed for Israel, not completed for the temple, but completed for Babylon.

Well, that sounds weird to me because, I mean, I know that the temple wasn't rebuilt till later on in the reign of the Medes and the Persians, so I mean, but so what's this about Babylon? Well, when you go back to Jeremiah 25, when the 70-year prophecy is first given, Jeremiah 25 verses 11 and 12, this prophecy, the 70-year clock, was started when Jeremiah preached in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the first year of Nebuchadnezzar.

In the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah comes out and preaches this in Jeremiah 25, 11 -12. The chronological note is in verse 1 of chapter 25. You look at it, it's the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, it's the fourth year of Jehoiakim.

This is 606 BC. 606 BC. And it is at this time that Jeremiah says, verse 11, this whole land will be a desolation and a horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon 70 years. Then it will be, when 70 years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, declares the Lord, for their iniquity and for the land of the Chaldeans, and I will make it an everlasting desolation.

And 2nd Chronicles 36, 20 -23, Daniel 9, 1 -3 also make clear connections between the end of the 70 years and the end of Babylon's power. When the Medes and Persians arose, this is Darius and Cyrus. It was a double empire, Darius and Cyrus, co-reigners in the same period of time.

Darius over the Medes, Cyrus over the Persians. When they rise up, and Daniel pictures them as the two-horned ram. When they rise up, this is the end of Babylon, and that's in 536 BC. In 536 BC, you have both Darius and Cyrus on the throne.

It's the end of Babylon. 70 years. When the 70 years are completed for Babylon, then God says, I'm going to visit you and fulfill all my promises to you. And what did that look like? Well, it looked like Darius and Cyrus doing really strange things like hey, you all should go rebuild Jerusalem, you should go rebuild the temple, and here's all the money that we could collect from the taxes from all these other people, and we're going to give you the money to go build the temple and beautify the temple and make it amazing.

Go worship the God of all the earth. What? Pagan kings from Persia and the Medes? What was going on? Well, Assyria and Babylon were the hammer and tongs of God's fiery judgment against his idolatrous people, but the Medes and the Persians were the tools to bring about the promised restoration.

70 years. 70 years for Babylon, and then God visits. Normally, when you see God visiting, it's a bad thing. The Hebrew word is pichad, and it just means when he shows up, usually judgment occurs. But he also comes and visits to accomplish covenant blessings and covenant promises, bringing them to pass.

But every time we see God visiting, it has something to do with covenant. God visits with Adam and Eve when they break the arrangement he had made with them. God visits with Abraham to promise all the covenant blessings.

God visits with Jacob to reaffirm those promises. God visits with Israel on Mount Sinai to make things established for the nation. And then, when they disobey and when they go through all these cycles of idolatry, it says time and again in the prophets that God visits and brings all sorts of judgment upon them, as he says, I'm keeping my end of the covenant.

I said when you did this, then I would bring this judgment. Well, here God is visiting, but it's a good visit. It is a bringing about of his covenant promises and putting Cyrus and Darius to work for his own glory.

Well, what is he accomplishing in this? He's restoring. Look at verses 12 through 14. Then you will call upon me, and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. The temple is going to be rebuilt, and idolatry is going to be eradicated from the land.

And you can read Ezra and Nehemiah and to the great lengths that they went to eradicate idolatry from the land. And so he says, you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.

And I will be found by you, declares the Lord. And we can read about the worship services they had. They stood for hours and hours, and hear the scriptures read to them, and how they broke down in weeping and repentance.

But then they celebrated the feasts with great joy. He says, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord. I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.

And the Medes and Persian Empire was full of many, many different nations. And the Jews were scattered throughout that empire. And God began to collect them and bring them back to their promised land and restore them, just as he promised.

Josephus the historian somewhere says that over the generations, over a million Jews returned to the land. What a good thing to look forward to. God says, when the 70 years for Babylon are completed, I will visit you and start all these things into motion.

I mean, what a concrete hope for them to look forward to. That God would restore them, gather them, bring them back, give them a good future. And what is he doing here? First of all, there's the restoration of the divine human relationship.

You're going to pray to me, you're going to seek me, you're going to find me. The divine human relationship restored. The human-to-human relationship restored. I'm going to gather you from all the nations back into this place.

You're going to be together again. Restoring of human relationships. And then I'm going to put you in the land, the land that I gave you to be good stewards of. I'm going to put you back there and this time take better care of it.

So there's the restoration of the human-to-the-creation order restored. This is the image of God being renewed and restored in God's good plans. This is essentially what God is doing in Christ for us, right?

This is Christ restores us to God. Christ restores us to each other. Christ, as we follow Christ, this is, then we take care of the created order the way he wants us to. So we have this restoration. Now, look how concrete this is.

In verse 11, here's the famous verse, as promised, I delayed as long as I could and here we are. And I think Doris missed it. She was waiting for it and she's not here. I will apologize to her later. Verse 11, for I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope.

Now, I've always thought that this is a little bit odd. God says, I know the plans I have for you. Well, I would hope so. You know, what does that mean? It means that in the face of all the false prophecy going on and everybody's saying, well, I think this is going to happen or I think that's going to happen, and it's all contradictory, God reminds them, I'm the one who knows the plans.

I know the plans. And it's even more than that. When you make a plan in your life, a very important thing in your life, and you make a plan, you conceive of a plan, you craft that plan, you study the plan, you invest your happiness into that plan, you know your plan.

That's what God is saying. I know the plans I've made for you. He's chosen those plans, he delights in these plans, you better know he's bringing about these plans. He doesn't have an alphabet of ulterior plans, it's just the plan.

There's no plan A, plan B, he's got the plans and he's going to bring them to pass. So it's a concrete kind of hope. Well, how are they going to know that these plans are going to come to pass? Well, didn't the judgment that God promised, didn't that come to pass?

Yes, it did. The judgment that God promised came to pass, so the deliverance God promised is going to come to pass. He's a God of his word. He always does what he says he will do. Now we recognize that that's how we're supposed to live.

We're supposed to live as the people of God with a concrete hope. That God has made his plans for his people, he has made his plans in Christ for us. How do we know that they're going to come to pass?