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Reading Jeremiah 29:12-23 where the Lord continues to address the exiles and assures them that their hearts will be changed, and they will again seek God and find Him. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
The Lord says to the Jews that had been sent into exile You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all your heart. That's certainly true. But this was also prophetic when we understand the text.
This is when we understand the text a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the word Monday Tuesday and Wednesday. We feature New Testament study an Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday.
Now here's your teacher pastor gate. Thank you Becky. And our study of the book of Jeremiah. We are in chapter 29 and last week. We finished with Jeremiah 29 11. So I'm gonna pick up there and continue reading a little bit.
But to recap what we looked at remember. This is the letter that God told Jeremiah to send to the exiles who had been sent away into Babylonian Captivity. They thought because of their rebellion against God that God meant to annihilate them at the hands of the Babylonians.
But God in this letter is assuring them that he's not going to wipe them out. In fact, what he wants them to do is just live normal lives. Plant gardens eat the produce give your sons and daughters in marriage.
Let them have sons and daughters of their own. Pray for the welfare of your captors for in their welfare You will have your welfare. And then God says that I am going to bring you back to this land. I have a plan to prosper and not to harm you.
So they are gonna get to go back to Judea now a lot of the things that God promised even that generation. That's receiving this word wouldn't get to see so they they are promised restoration, but it would be.
Many generations down the line before that people is comfortable again in Judea. Now, of course ultimately what God is pointing to is that he is going to use the Jewish people to fulfill what had been prophesied.
About the coming Messiah and it's through the Jews that the Messiah would come. So that's the main reason why God intends to bring them back to this place was so the Messiah could be born and we would.
All.
Come to know Christ and therefore live the kingdom of God that is growing through the advancement of the gospel. But let's come back to this letter once again, I'm gonna read. I think I said I'd start in verse 11.
Let me start in verse 10 because that really helps us with the context and I'm gonna go through verse 23 so that would be the end of this letter. Hear the word of the Lord. 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 all 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.
Now where God goes next is talking about these false prophets. I said I was gonna read through verse 23. But I think I'll stop there and we'll consider the rest of this paragraph and then see what else God says with regards to those Vile figs that are so rotten that they can't be eaten.
What's that about? Well, we'll get to that in a moment. So once again verse 10. And this was a verse we looked at last week for thus says the Lord when 70 years are completed for Babylon. Remember there was that false prophet Hananiah who said no, it's only gonna be a couple of years just two years.
You're gonna be exiled and then God's gonna bring you back to this place. Really nothing to worry about at all and God says no, I'm gonna replace that. That wooden yoke with an iron yoke and you are going to be in captivity even longer.
Then this false prophet has said you were going to be so 70 years now is going to be the time of your exile. And here in verse 10 70 years are completed. I will visit you I'll fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.
And like I said last week. That's the verse that really puts verse 11 in context. So you can't read Jeremiah 29 11 as some personal promise that God is giving to you in which he is gonna fit. He's gonna fulfill all your hopes and dreams everything that you have ever wanted.
Well, it must be what God wants for me because he gave me these thoughts in these ideas I used. I used to have this thought in my head. So I'm just telling you the way I would interpret things like this and it wasn't just Jeremiah 29 11.
It was also John 10 10 or it was Romans 12 2. I just had this idea that if if God is Promising great things for me. It must be these thoughts that I have He's given me these hopes and dreams and he means to fulfill them.
But as you're reading this in verse 10 the people who were reading this letter We're not even going to be of the generation that would see those things fulfilled. So many of them would die. Hence why God says.
Take.
Wives. Give your sons and daughters away and let them marry and then they will have children. The reason why God is saying this is because there needs to be a population of people let it be a big number of people that ends up coming out of the exile and into the promised land and I tied this into first Timothy chapter 2.
Where Paul said it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior to lead Peaceful and quiet lives godly and dignified in every way. So Paul is saying the same sort of thing through Timothy. That God is saying through Jeremiah or through his scribe Baruch here in Jeremiah 29.
We need to pray for the welfare of our captors. We need to do well to take families and raise up children and give them in marriage and see families grow. Those are very good things to do. So just as we see it here in Jeremiah 29.
So we see it in the in the New Testament also, but if we give this a good spiritual application then really our ultimate goal is to spread the gospel whether that's in our families that we are building or it's just going out in our community and sharing the gospel with others because as More people come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ when we finally get to leave our exile.
Remember that Peter and James they refer to us as being an exile. We are strangers and aliens in the earth. And so when we get to leave our exile meaning that we go to our promised land, which is heaven.
We're taking a big group of people with us all of those who had come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ again whether they are our own children or people that we witness to so that same picture that's given here in Jeremiah 29 we should Aspire to see that kind of a thing when we get to depart this life and go into the next.
Let's bring a whole big crowd with us. After Charlie Kirk was assassinated. It was very popular to say let's make heaven crowded. I guess that was something that Charlie Kirk said when Frank Turek had spoken at Charlie Kirk's memorial.
He made that very same thing. Let's he said that let's make heaven crowded let's spread the gospel as Charlie did so that many more people can come to faith and Will enter into glory. So we kind of have that picture here with God saying Be fruitful and multiply essentially even in your exile.
And he says in verse 11 for I know the plans that 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 God says and I will hear you.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. That's probably the second most popular verse in this section. After Jeremiah 29 11, you've surely heard somebody say You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
But this is.
Specifically a prophecy now. It is true that when a person seeks God with all their heart, they will find him. You can take that principle out of that verse, but this is specifically a prophecy. That's being given to this people who are in exile.
And the reason why they have been exiled is because they haven't sought the Lord. They did not from their heart Obey God, but instead with their heart they worship false gods. That became their identity and their and their full pursuit was Worshipping these false gods and living like the pagans that were around them.
So this is prophetically saying to them you will seek me and you will find me. When you seek me with all of your heart. This is God promising that the desires of your heart will be reoriented in the right place again.
It will happen. Think of what David said in Psalm 51. He says create in me a clean heart Oh God and renew a right spirit within me and then later on he says Oh Lord Open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.
So first of all He asked for a clean heart and then he says God Open my mouth and that the words that would come from my mouth would be from you would be Praising and honoring of you. And same sort of thing here is being said to the Jews.
Before they're going to be able to return back to their own land. It is it's being said of them you will call upon me and You will come and pray to me. Perhaps at the time that this letter is being read to them.
They're in grief certainly over their sin and the consequences of that sin. So now something else is being said to them. Here's what's gonna happen now for you beyond this moment that you're in now. These things will happen first.
You will call upon me and you will come and pray to me. I will hear you. You will seek me and Find me when you seek me with all of your heart. Verse 14 I will be found by you declares the Lord and I will Restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations in 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.
But once again many of the people who were hearing this were not the ones that would see all of it come to fulfillment. So we still need to understand that this verse is a proclamation given to a specific nation in a particular situation.
Prophesying the restoration of a future generation. Now the hope for Israel. Even though God is speaking to a group that is not going to see these things come to a true fulfillment in their lifetime. Some of them would come back some of them would even see the temple built.
But many of the promises that are made here would not happen for over a hundred years. But they still rejoice in this because they know that as a people they will continue. God's blessing and favor will be upon them and if it's upon them in life It certainly will be upon them in death as well.
Even if they don't get to see it. Yet we still hold fast to the promises of God and they are our comfort. Remember what we read in Hebrews chapter 11 that these all died in faith not having received what was promised.
But having seen it from afar if They were expecting a land promise They would have had the opportunity to go back to that land from which they came but they desired a Better country that is a heavenly one.
And so God has prepared for them a city. That was what we read about the faithful in the Old Testament. There in Hebrews chapter 11 and the same thing is being said to us as well. Our desire should not be for earthly rule or an earthly kingdom.
Our desire is much higher than that. We seek after a heavenly kingdom that's Matthew 6 33 seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and The things that you need will be added to you as well.
Now in the rest of this there's a warning about false prophets and. So let me pick up reading now in verse 15 God says because you have said the Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon thus says the Lord concerning the king who sits on the throne of David and Concerning all the people who dwell in this city your kinsmen who did not go out with you into exile now remember God had said if you go out into the exile, you're gonna be safe and You will even have an opportunity to return to this place though, of course as we've read it will be 70 years from now.
If you don't go with them into the exile, then it will be worse for you. You will think I can stay in Jerusalem. I can run and hide. I can live out in a field somewhere. No, they are going to come against you and you will die.
The Chaldeans will come back for another sweep and those who tried to remain here will be killed. But they have some prophets among them and we're gonna read about this as we go further in Jeremiah. They have some prophets among them who are telling them what it is that they want to hear.
We want to know that we're gonna have prosperity if we stay here. Tell me I don't have to go into exile. I can remain in this place and so those prophets are saying that but they're going against the word of Jeremiah the Word of God that had been given to him so these prophets are not hearing from God and They're rebelling against God and leading people to death because they teach Falsely, so verse 17 thus says the Lord of hosts behold I am sending on them sword famine and pestilence and I will make them like vile figs that are so rotten That they cannot be eaten.
I will pursue them with sword famine and pestilence and will make them a horror To all the kingdoms of the earth to be a curse a terror a hissing and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them.
Because they did not pay attention to my words declares the Lord that I Persistently sent to you by my servants the prophets, but you would not listen declares the Lord. Now remember they came into idol worship and Living like the pagans because they would not listen to the law of God nor would they listen to the prophets who were sent to them and Warned them and told them to repent.
They did not listen to messages of repentance. So because God's servants the prophets were not listened to. Thus this judgment is coming upon them. Verse 20 hear the word of the Lord all you exiles whom I sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon.
Thus says the Lord of hosts the God of Israel concerning Ahab the son of Koliah and Zedekiah the son of Maseah who are prophesying a lie to you in my name behold, I will deliver them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and He shall strike them down before your eyes.
Because of them this curse shall be used by all the exiles from Judah to Babylon. The Lord make you like Zedekiah and Ahab whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire. Because they have done an outrageous thing in Israel.
They have committed adultery with their neighbors wives and they have spoken in my name lying words that I did not command them. I am the one who knows and I am witness declares the Lord. So we all know that there's bad teaching out there that can damn a person, right?
There's bad teaching that can lead to a person's death. It's actually not to their flourishing or to their benefit certainly not to their salvation and. So we must be very very careful with those teachers that we listen to.
Are we being led into all truth and therefore into eternal life or are we being led astray by lies and therefore unto death and even judgment. So the Lord is warning about these false teachers that will lead to your death if you are following along with them.
But they need to pay attention to the true word that has come Through the prophet Jeremiah and his words have been tested and shown to be truly from God. Now we have next to finish up chapter 29 we have Shemya's false prophecy.
So I'll come back to that next week. We're still not all the way through chapter 29 here. It's a it's a very famous chapter, of course because of Jeremiah 29 11. But we remember what God has called us to and that is obedience.
There are many out there who will pay lip service to being Christians to being followers of Jesus Christ but they're not obedient to the Word of God and we need to Believe in the true gospel the true gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ the true Christ the true father that the Bible testifies to and Then we need to live peaceful and quiet lives godly and dignified in every way in our present day and in our present context.
We would be obedient to the Lord abstaining from sin. Staying away from those things that entangle us that draw us away from God that satisfy the desires of our flesh but will lead to destruction if we don't turn back to the way of righteousness and we need to keep our eyes fixed on Christ and pursuing him as The goal that has been set before us because he is our greatest prize.
Our highest attainment is in the Son of God who is given for us. Who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have Everlasting life and that everlasting life my friends.
That's the promised land that we are given the heavenly kingdom of God. Heavenly Father we thank you for what we've read here, and I thank you for breaking down our Preconceived notions if we read a verse like Jeremiah 29 11 and try to make it a personal promise There's certainly something that we can see there about the character of God.
But that is not a verse that is meant for us as as if we would understand God fulfilling all of our hopes and dreams. May our greatest desire be Christ and may we seek him today with all our heart. It's in Jesus name.
We pray. Amen.
This has been when we understand the text of pastor Gabriel Hughes. For all of our podcasts episodes videos books and more visit our website at WWW .com if you'd like to submit a question to this broadcast or just send us a comment email when we understand the text at gmail .com and let your friends know about our ministry.
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