The Best-Laid Schemes of Mice and Men, Go Oft Awry.

“I, the GOD of Israel, want you to give this Message to the king of Judah, who has just sent you to me to find out what he should do. Tell him, ‘Get this: Pharaoh’s army, which is on its way to help you, isn’t going to stick it out. No sooner will they get here than they’ll leave and go home to Egypt. And then the Babylonians will come back and resume their attack, capture this city and burn it to the ground.” ­– Jeremiah 37:7-8 MSG

King Zekekiah had a plan. In spite of all the warnings and prophecies from the lips of Jeremiah about the fall of Jerusalem and the futility of trying to resist the coming invasion of Judah by the Babylonians, Zedekiah thought he could outsmart God. He owed his position as king to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the invading forces of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar had taken Jehoiachin, the king of Judah, captive back to Babylon and placed Zedekiah, Jehoicihin’s uncle on the throne in his place. He had even given Zedekiah his name, changing it from Mattaniah. In return for his new name and position, Zedekiah had made an oath in God’s name to Nebuchadnezzar to be a faithful servant to him. But in the book of Second Chronicles we read that Zedekiah was “a hard and stubborn man, refusing to turn to the Lord, the God of Israel” (2 Chronicles 36:13 NLT). He not only rebelled against God, he refused to submit to the authority of Babylon. He came up with the ingenious plan of forming an alliance with Egypt, and using them as a means of rejecting and rebelling against the rule of Babylon. Even though Jeremiah had made it painfully clear that nothing short of repentance could alter God’s plans for Judah’s destruction, Zedekiah had other ideas. He truly believed he could outsmart and out-maneuver God. He could escape the divine decree with a little planning and diplomacy. But God’s plan always trumps ours.

But he rebelled and sent emissaries to Egypt to recruit horses and a big army. Do you think that’s going to work? Are they going to get by with this? Does anyone break a covenant and get off scot-free? As sure as I am the living God, this king who broke his pledge of loyalty and his covenant will die in that country, in Babylon. Pharaoh with his big army–all those soldiers!–won’t lift a finger to fight for him when Babylon sets siege to the city and kills everyone inside. Because he broke his word and broke the covenant, even though he gave his solemn promise, because he went ahead and did all these things anyway, he won’t escape. Therefore, GOD, the Master, says, As sure as I am the living God, because the king despised my oath and broke my covenant, I’ll bring the consequences crashing down on his head. – Ezekiel 17:15-19 MSG

What Zedekiah failed to understand was that God’s plan for Judah went way beyond the siege of Jerusalem and the short-term exile of the people to Babylon. God had a long-term plan for His people that included their ultimate return and restoration to the land after a 70-year hiatus. It also included a future restoration to a right relationship with Him and the return of a descendant of David to the throne of Israel. That has yet to happen, but will when Jesus Christ returns and establishes His kingdom in the New Jerusalem. Zedekiah, like the rest of us, lived in the here and now. He was focused on his immediate context and could not see any good coming from a siege and possible exile to Babylon. He didn’t like God’s plan, so he came up with his own. He couldn’t appreciate or understand that God’s plan, while difficult to accept, was ultimately going to turn out for the better. Sometimes we find ourselves going through situations or circumstances we don’t like, and we can’t see any good coming from them, so we begin to scheme and plan a way of escape. Rather than ask God what He might be trying to teach us in the midst of our difficulty, we begin to figure out an alternative escape route. When we do, we are basically telling God that we doubt His love for us. We are rejecting His plan for us. We are denying His power and diminishing His sovereignty. In essence, we are saying that we are in control, not Him. We know what is best, not Him. Our plans can be trusted, not His. Our will is to be preferred over His. But God’s plan can’t be stopped, altered, derailed, and replaced with our own. Zedekiah would learn that his best-laid scheme was going to fail. Egypt would leave. Babylon would return. Jerusalem would fall. And he would end up in Babylon, blinded, humiliated and enslaved. Had Zedekiah listened to the word of God spoken by Jeremiah, the prophet of God, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble. That doesn’t mean his life would have been easy, but it would have meant that he was living obediently within the will of God rather than striving to replace God’s will with his own. We may not always understand what is going on when it comes to our circumstances, but we must believe that God is in control and He has a plan that is bigger and better than anything we might come up with. He is in control and He has a bigger-picture plan that we can’t see. We can trust that He ultimately knows what is best for us, because He loves us.

Father, my plans rarely work, but I continue to come up with them. At the end of the day, it is because I don’t trust Your plan. I doubt Your ability to take care of me, so I come up with ways to take care of myself. Please forgive me. Help me to see Your bigger plan as better than mine. Give me an eternal perspective, not a temporal one. Help me to view my situations through Your eyes, not mine. I want to learn to trust You more. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

Selective Hearing.

“Each time Jehudi finished reading three or four columns, the king took a knife and cut off that section of the scroll. He then threw it into the fire, section by section, until the whole scroll was burned up. Neither the king nor his attendants showed any signs of fear or repentance at what they heard. Even when Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah begged the king not to burn the scroll, he wouldn’t listen.” ­– Jeremiah 36:23-25 NLT

Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of our nation, believed that the ethical system of Jesus was the finest the world has ever seen. The only problem was that he did not believe in much of what was in the Bible. So he decided to create his own version, and called it “The Jefferson Bible.” In it, he sought to separate the ethical teachings of Jesus from the religious dogma and other supernatural elements that were added to the account by the four Gospels. He presented these teachings, along with the essential events of the life of Jesus, in one continuous narrative. In essence, Jefferson cut out what he didn’t like and left in those elements he agreed with. Which is exactly what we find King Jehoiakim doing in our passage in Jeremiah today. Jeremiah had been instructed by God to write down every single prophesy God had given him over the years on a single scroll. Then Jeremiah had his servant, Baruch, read the contents of that scroll in the hearing of all the people at the Temple. Eventually, the scroll made its way to the throne room of the king where it was read to Jehoiakim. His reaction? As each section was read, he would use a knife to cut it up and burn it on a fire, until the entire document was consumed. Jehoiakim, unlike Jefferson, found NOTHING he could agree with in the words of God. He refused them all. But he was going to find out that rejecting the words of God did not eliminate their power. God was still going to do what He said He would do. Jehoiakim’s little show of rebellion did not remove the consequences for his sin.

It’s amazing how easy it is for us to ignore or blatantly reject the words of God because we don’t like what they have to say. There are probably certain books of the Bible that you shy away from because you find them convicting or difficult to read. You may even choose to read only those passages that you find encouraging or non-convicting. That’s a big reason most people stay away from the Old Testament. It presents a God who is too harsh and demanding. There is too much talk about rules and obedience to commands. So we gravitate to the New Testament, and particularly the Gospels. Even the letters of Paul can be a bit intimidating, requiring way too much effort and energy for our tastes. So we develop selective reading, and therefore, selective obedience. Our Bible may be intact, but like Jefferson, we only read and respond to those parts we find agreeable.

God was looking for commitment. He even used the Recabites as an example. These were a group of Jews who had made a covenant with the patriarch of their family not to drink wine, buy land, plant crops, but to live in tents all the days of their lives. And for over 200 years they had faithfully kept their word. God had Jeremiah attempt to get them to break their vow by offering them wine. God knew they would refuse – and they did. He used them as an illustration of the kind of commitment He was looking for from His own people. The Recabites could have easily accepted Jeremiah’s offer of the wine, justifying their actions by saying that they had been faithful for 200 years, so what would a little sip hurt now. They could have excused their actions by saying that they would continue to keep the other aspects of their covenant, refusing to buy land and plant crops, and they would keep on living in tents. They could have compromised. But they didn’t. They knew that to break one aspect of their agreement was to violate it all. Jehoiakim could burn the scroll in an effort to do away with God’s word, but it would not change a thing. He could have buried the scroll, refused to listen when it was read, or killed the one who wrote it. But none of that would have changed the outcome. God’s Word stands. We can ignore it, refuse to read it, selectively obey it, or try to interpret according to our own standards, but none of that changes the content. God wants commitment and obedience. He wants repentance and dependence. Jefferson’s Bible was just that – his Bible. It was no longer the Word of God, because Jefferson had removed the words of God. But God’s Word remained unchanged. His commands and claims were undiminished. God’s Word is unchanging.

Father, forgive me for the times in which I attempt to ignore Your Word or twist it to say what I want it to say. Give me the strength to obey it faithfully. May I read it all and obey it all. May I see it all as divinely inspired and applicable to my life today. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

When Will They Ever Learn?

“And now, [you] – what have you done? First you turned back to the right way and did the right thing, decreeing freedom for your brothers and sisters–and you made it official in a solemn covenant in my Temple. And then you turned right around and broke your word, making a mockery of both me and the covenant, and made them all slaves again, these men and women you’d just set free. You forced them back into slavery.” ­– Jeremiah 34:15-16 MSG

King Nebuchadnezzar and the armies of Babylon have the city of Jerusalem under siege. Only three fortified cities remain unfallen in the entire nation of Judah. King Zedekiah of Judah had made matters worse because he refused to surrender as God had told him to. Instead, he had made an alliance with Egypt, hoping to resist the inevitable, but he only made Nebuchadnezzar angrier. This was the third time the Babylonians had come up against Judah as they systematically swept their way across the nation, leaving the capital city of Jerusalem until last. All the prophesies of Jeremiah were taking place. The very judgment God had forewarned them about was about to happen. And yet the people of Judah remained as stubborn and unrepentant as ever.

At one point Zedekiah, sometime during the siege, the people had made a covenant, a solemn agreement with God, that they would release all their slaves who were Hebrews. They had obviously been violating God’s law regarding the keeping of fellow Hebrews as slaves and had been refusing to keep His commands regarding the Year of Jubilee. God had given the people of Israel specific instructions about these matters. “If one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and cannot support himself, support him as you would a foreigner or a temporary resident and allow him to live with you. Do not charge interest or make a profit at his expense. Instead, show your fear of God by letting him live with you as your relative. Remember, do not charge interest on money you lend him or make a profit on food you sell him. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God” (Leviticus 25:35-38 NLT).

But the people of Judah had not been obeying God’s command. Under the pressure of siege and the threat of being taken captive as slaves themselves, they suddenly decide to set things right. They were probably trying to appease God in some way by their actions. So they make a covenant with God, ratifying it by sacrificing an animal and splitting the body into two pieces. They would then walk between the two pieces signifying that they were pledging to keep their part of the covenant or face the same kind of death the animal had just experienced. It was obedience or death. So the people set their slaves free. But something caused them to change their minds. Maybe there was a lull in the siege. Whatever it was, the people decided to go back on their word and force their former slaves back into slavery. God was not happy. He reminded them of His law. “I made a covenant with your ancestors when I delivered them out of their slavery in Egypt. At the time I made it clear: At the end of seven years, each of you must free any fellow Hebrew who has had to sell himself to you. After he has served six years, set him free. But your ancestors totally ignored me” (Jeremiah 34:13-14 MSG).

And they continued to ignore Him. They appeared to repent, but failed to remain repentant. They changed their minds. They reconsidered their decision. They thought better of it. They reneged on their promise to God. But what was it going to take to make them change? How bad were things going to have to get for them to truly repent and return to God? They were on the verge of total devastation, surrounded by the most powerful army in the world, and facing death or at least deportation and years of slavery. But they changed their minds. They un-repented. Totally unbelievable, isn’t it? Or is it? How many times do we make promises to God in the heat of the moment, only to break those same promises when the heat subsides? When under pressure, we can appear repentant, but fail to remain repentant when the pressure is off. We think we can manipulate God by appearing to give Him what He wants, until we really get what WE want. Then all bets are off. We change our mind. We go back on our word. And think nothing of it. But God is not pleased or impressed with our feigned repentance and words of sorrow. He wants changed hearts that result in changed behavior.

Father, forgive me for the many times I act repentant and sorrowful for my actions when things don’t seem to be going well in my world. I make promises to change, but then when circumstances improve, I simply change my mind. I go back on my word and continue to ignore Your Word. May my repentance always be real and lasting, not fake and fleeting. I want my repentance to be based on my relationship with You, not the predicament I find myself in. I want to learn to obey You out of love, not fear. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

A Sure-Fire Investment.

“And yet, O Sovereign Lord, you have told me to buy the field—paying good money for it before these witnesses—even though the city will soon be handed over to the Babylonians.” ­– Jeremiah 32:15 NLT

We’ve all received bad investment advice at one time or another. Lately, if you have any investments at all, you’ve seen their value drop like a rock as the economy continues to struggle. But who in their right mind would buy a piece of property in a land that was about to become the property of another nation? Who would make an investment like that knowing good and well that for the next 70 years he would be living in exile in another land? Yet that is exactly the investment advice that God gave Jeremiah – who is sitting in jail when he receives the great news from God. The ironic thing is that God had Jeremiah buy a piece of property outside the city walls of Jerusalem where the troops of Babylon had taken up occupancy more than a year earlier when they began their seige of the city. Jeremiah was buying enemy-occupied land. Yet he did as God commanded and bought the land for 17 pieces of silver. Jeremiah knew that this was another object lesson God was giving him in order to make a point. “For this is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘Someday people will again own property here in this land and will buy and sell houses and vineyards and fields'” (Jeremiah 32:15 NLT). God had assured Jeremiah that this was a good investment – but Jeremiah had his doubts – and he expressed them in a prayer.

While he believed that nothing was too hard for God to do, he began to have second thoughts about the wisdom of His investment strategy. Even if God returned them to the land, it would be seventy years later, and Jeremiah would not be around to use the land he had bought. His 17 pieces of silver would have been wasted. Even if Jeremiah’s descendants were someday able to occupy the land he had bought, he would never have the pleasure of living on it himself. Yet God assures Jeremiah, “I will certainly bring my people back again from all the countries where I will scatter them in my fury. I will bring them back to this very city and let them live in peace and safety. They will be my people, and I will be their God. And I will give them one heart and one purpose: to worship me forever, for their own good and for the good of all their descendants. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good for them. I will put a desire in their hearts to worship me, and they will never leave me.” (Jeremiah 32:37-40 NLT). God promises Jeremiah that “fields will again be bought and sold in this land.” Jeremiah would not live to see that day. And few, if any, of the people who were alive when Jeremiah was prophesying, would live to see that day either. After 70 years of captivity, only the youngest children would live long enough to make it back to the land. And not all those in captivity would be allowed to return. And when they did return, they would find the land devastated, the cities destroyed, Jerusalem in a shambles, and the Temple broken down and unusable. God also promised Jeremiah that He would “raise up a righteous descendant from King David’s line” (Jeremiah 33:15 NLT). God is saying that there will be a new king to sit on the throne of David, and yet, the people of Israel have not had a king since the day Judah fell into the hands of the Babylonians. So what is God promising? When is all this good news going to take place? When will Jeremiah experience a return on his investment? In that day! There is a day yet future when God will fulfill all these promises. It will happen when His Son, Jesus Christ, returns to the earth at the end of the Great Tribulation and put an end to all sin. He will establish His kingdom in Jerusalem and the people of God will return to the land once and for all. It will be at that time that all of these promises are ultimately fulfilled. God will do everything He has promised to do. Jeremiah’s investment will prove to have been a wise one. That land will be invaluable and its worth, incalculable. God can be trusted. His advice is worth listening to. “But this is what the Lord says: I would no more reject my people than I would change my laws that govern night and day, earth and sky. I will never abandon the descendants of Jacob or David, my servant, or change the plan that David’s descendants will rule the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Instead, I will restore them to their land and have mercy on them” (Jeremiah 33:25-26 NLT).

Father, Your Word is always true. Your counsel is always worth listening to. Even when it doesn’t seem to make sense to me. Jeremiah had his doubts about the wisdom of what You asked him to do. I sometimes struggle with the things You are telling me to do. On an earthly level, it doesn’t always make sense. But You are operating on a while other plane. You are seeing things from a much greater perspective than I can see. Help me to trust You more and obey You because nothing is too hard for you. You have a plan and I can trust it. Your strategy for future prosperity is perfect and worth investing in. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

A New Covenant.

“But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day,” 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. And 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.” ­– Jeremiah 31:33-34 NLT

Do you ever wonder just what kind of God it is that you worship? What is He really like? Is He angry, demanding, and unrealistic in His expectations of us as human beings? Are His standards too high and His punishment too severe? Or is He a God who turns a blind eye to our sins, lovingly overlooking our disobedience and compassionately tolerating our inability or unwillingness to keep His commands or follow His ways? The truth is, a lot of it seems to depend on the version of God we construct from reading the Scriptures. If you favor the New Testament of the Old, you probably have a view of God that is more loving, merciful, and forgiving. If you prefer the Old Testament, you might have a more hardline view of God – as a righteous deity who hates sin and deals with rebellion severely and unapologetically. Most of us, if we’re honest, have somewhat one-dimensional perspectives of God. Depending on how we were raised and the kind of religious upbringing we have experienced, our view on God can vary greatly.

But the book of Jeremiah paints a well-rounded, comprehensive and complete picture of God. It presents a vision of God that appears at time contradictory, but in the end is complimentary. Jeremiah’s God is holy and righteous, unwavering in His hatred for sin and unapologetic in His demand that His people live holy lives. He punishes, disciplines, and even destroys the disobedient. He brings judgment on those who refuse to play by His rules. But there is another view of God in the book of Jeremiah. He is also compassionate, loving, kind, extremely merciful and incredibly tolerant and forgiving. Even I read that history of the people of Israel and wonder how God could have put up with them for so long. I marvel at their stubbornness and stupidity. I cringe at their arrogance and pride. And I have no problem understanding why God finally seems to give up on them, choosing to send them into exile and out of His Promised Land. But amazingly, God never really gives up on them. He never stops loving them. Even His punishment of them is motivated by love. He says, “Is not Israel still my son, my darling child? I often have to punish him, but I still love Him” (Jeremiah 31:20 NLT). God’s love for the people of Israel remains undiminished, even though they remain unresponsive to it. He continues to care for them, despite their callousness towards Him. And He has promised to one day restore them to the land and back into His favor. He tells the people of Israel, “In the past I deliberately uprooted and tore down this nation. I overthrew it, destroyed it, and brought disaster upon it. But in the future I will just as deliberately plant it and build it up. I, the Lord, have spoken!” (Jeremiah 31:28 NLT). There is a day coming, God says, when He will make a new covenant with the people of Israel. This won’t be a conditional covenant like the one He made with Moses, that required the people of Israel to keep the Law and obey God’s commands in order to remain in His favor. They broke that covenant. No, this new covenant will be unconditional and solely based on God alone. This time God is going to write His law on their hearts. It will not be external, based on their self-effort to try and keep God’s commands, but it will be internal, flowing from changed hearts that have been transformed by God Himself. The day is coming when God will do for Israel what they could not do for themselves. He will provide them with the capability to live in faith and obedience. He will give them new hearts and a renewed relationship with Him – a relationship based not on works, but mercy and grace. The day is coming when God will restore His people and the city of Jerusalem. He will extend love, mercy, grace and forgiveness to the very people who had rejected not only His Law, but His own Son. In spite of all that they have done to reject and replace Him, He will show love. That is the kind of God we worship. He is holy, just, righteous, loving, kind, merciful, gracious and forgiving. He is patient and He is always right and righteous in how He deals with us. Our God is great!

Father, You are great and greatly to be praised. I am amazed at Your love and mercy. You put up with so much from us as human beings. You have every right to destroy us for our disobedience, but You continue to show us mercy and extend to us Your grace. You punish us, but still love us. And You are not done with us yet. Thank You! Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

And Now the Good News.

“This is what the Lord says: ‘When I bring Israel home again from captivity and restore their fortunes, Jerusalem will be rebuilt on its ruins, and the palace reconstructed as before. There will be joy and songs of thanksgiving, and I will multiply my people, not diminish them; I will honor them, not despise them.'” ­– Jeremiah 30:18-19 NLT

Not everything Jeremiah had to say was bad news. Occasionally, he got the opportunity to tell the people something that would give them hope. God gave him a message to share spoke of future restoration. Yes, God was going to punish them for their sin, because He had to. God must deal with sin. He cannot overlook it or ignore it. He told them, “For I am with you and will save you, I will completely destroy the nations where I have scattered you, but I will not completely destroy you. I will discipline you, but with justice; I cannot let you go unpunished” (Jeremiah 30:11 NLT). God was going to discipline the, but with justice, and He would not completely destroy them. In fact, He promised to return them to the land of Canaan again from captivity. And He did – after 70 years of exile in Babylon, the people of Judah did return to the land. But there are some aspects of God’s promise that don’t seem to have been fulfilled. For instance, He says that He will restore their fortunes and that Jerusalem will be rebuilt on its ruins, including the palace. It will be restored to its original splendor. This rebuilding would have to include the Temple, a central fixture in the holy city of Jerusalem. And the Temple would be destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC. And while the city and the Temple would be rebuilt and restored under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah after the people were able to return from captivity, the city never regained its original splendor. Jerusalem would never be the showplace that Solomon had made it. It would be a shadow of its former glory.

And God also promises to prosper and multiply them. He says He will establish them as a nation and punish anyone who hurts them. He will give them their own king, one who would be a Hebrew and not a foreigner. Yet, has any of this taken place? Were the people of Judah ever to have a king again? From the time of their return until the time of Christ, they would live under constant control of another nation. Even after their return from exile, they were little more than vassals to the Babylonians. And eventually they would live under the iron fist of Rome, having no king of their own. No descendant of David would sit on their throne. And today, Jerusalem is far from the spectacular city that Solomon had constructed. The palace does not exist and the site of the Temple is occupied by a mosque. So what is Jeremiah telling the people? When will all this be fulfilled? The answer is: In the future. There are aspects of God’s promise to the people that had a more immediate fulfillment. They did return from captivity. They did rebuild the city and the Temple under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah. They did occupy the land once again. But they would also be forced from the land again. Israel’s history has been filled with the constant threat of annihilation at the hands of those who despise them. Even today, the nation of Israel is surrounded by nations who are determined to destroy them. Their enemies are many. And they have no king. Yet God promised that they would have their own ruler again and he would be one of their own. So that promise has to be in the future, and yet unfulfilled. It is a future promise of the millennial kingdom. The day is coming when Christ will return and He will come to rule in Jerusalem and sit on the throne of David. He will restore the nation of Jerusalem to its former glory and splendor. And He will reign in righteousness and truth over the people of Israel and the world. At that time, God says, “You will be my people, and I will be your God” (Jeremiah 30:22 NLT).

There are things yet to happen that God has promised. He is not done yet. Israel is a nation that no longer worships God. They worship their military and their scientific knowledge. They worship their ingenuity and their prosperity, but not God. When their Messiah came, they rejected Him, and they continue to do so to this day. But the day is coming when God will return them to the land, but more importantly, He will return their hearts to Him. He will restore them to a right relationship with Him, and the Messiah they rejected will reign as their King forever.

Father, don’t let us lose sight of Your bigger redemptive plan. You have so much in store for this world and for Your people. You have promises that have yet to be fulfilled and You will see to it that they happen, just as You said they will. There is a day coming and when it comes, You will bring to completion Your divine plan for the redemption and restoration of this world. Thank You. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

A Word For Exiles.

“Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.” ­– Jeremiah 29:5-7 NLT

King Nebuchadnezzar had already invaded Judah once and had taken some of the people as captives back to Babylon. Jeremiah, living and prophesying in Jerusalem, wrote a letter to those Jews who were now living in exile. These people were experiencing exactly what Jeremiah had predicted would happen. They were experiencing the punishment God had warned them about. They were now living in a foreign land, no longer able to enjoy the comforts of home. Many had been separated from their friends and family members. They found themselves surrounded by a culture they knew nothing about and a people who spoke a language they did not understand. Can you imagine how they must have felt? It would have been easy to despair, give up, and lose all hope. But Jeremiah writes to encourage them to keep on keeping on. He wants them to know that their time there has an end. It will not last forever. A day is coming when God will restore them to their own land. Their days as aliens and strangers will come to an end, and they will get to return the Promised Land.

Jeremiah encourages them to settle down and make themselves at home. He doesn’t encourage them to become like the Babylonian culture. He simply advises them to build houses, plant gardens, marry, have children, and to have a positive influence on the land in which they find themselves. He wants them to multiply and prosper as the people of God – even in the midst of a hostile and foreign environment. They don’t belong there, but God wants them to prosper there. This was all part of His divine plan. He is the one who had sent them there and He wanted them to make the most of it. And while these words from Jeremiah were directed to the people of God living as exiles in Babylon, I find comfort and encouragement from them as a believer living in the “foreign” culture in which I find myself. I am reminded of the words of Peter who told the believers in his day, “Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls” (1 Peter 2:11 NLT). He saw them as temporary residents and foreigners living in this world. He calls them paroykos – one who lives on earth as a stranger. And he refers to them as parepidaymos – someone sojourning in a strange place, a foreigner. As the old hymn says, “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.” We are temporary residents living in this world. In essence, we don’t belong here. Our home is elsewhere. The writer of Hebrews, when referring to the Old Testament saints, said, “All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth” (Hebrews 11:13 NLT). Even Abraham, Noah, Joseph, and Moses knew that they were living as exiles on this earth. Their real home was elsewhere. But they lived and prospered while here. They made the most out of their time here. But they always kept their hope on the future, when they would receive their real reward and be returned to their real home.

The words of Jeremiah encourage us to build home, marry, plant gardens and multiply while we’re here, but to never forget that we don’t really belong here. This is NOT our home. This is NOT our final destination. We are temporary residents here. And the other thing he encourages us to do is to care about and to influence the culture in which we live. We are to “work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile” (Jeremiah 29:7 NLT). We may not belong here, but we can make a difference here. We are not to be so heavenly minded that we end up being no earthly good. We are called to be salt and light, agents of change and influence in a dark and dying world. Living as exiles gives us a great opportunity to be instruments of change in the Redeemer’s hands. God has us here for a reason. When He saved us He could have taken us, but instead, He left us here. He wants us to have an influence. He wants us to prosper and multiply. Like Daniel living in the land of Babylon, God wants us to live for Him and influence the pagan culture in which we live. God reminds the exiles living in Babylon, “For I know the plans I have for you. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11 NLT). God had a plan for them and He has a plan for us. Part of that plan is for us to live in this land as aliens and strangers. We are to live with an understanding that this is not our home. We are on our way to somewhere else. One day He is going to send His Son to return for us. He has a place prepared for us. He has a plan for us – to give us a future and a hope. But until that day comes and His plan is fulfilled, let’s make a difference where we are. Let’s have an influence for good even as we live as strangers in a strange land.

Father, show us how to live as aliens, but to make a difference while we’re here. This world is not our home, but never let us give up on it. We are here to live as salt and light. Give us an eternal perspective, but help us live with purpose here and now.. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org