Sermon Transcript
This is what the Lord says: When 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to you, bring you back to this place. 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. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to 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 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.
If you haven’t been with us the past month and a half we’ve been studying the book of Jeremiah, and today is our final week looking at this Old Testament prophet. Next week we begin the book of Romans, but that means if today is your first time with us, it’s kind of like you’re walking in at the end of a movie, but that’s okay because we can catch you up quick. We have reiterated each week that contained within the book of Jeremiah is It’s really the story of the whole Bible. And if you’re new to Christianity or new to studying the Bible, you may not know that the Bible really tells one story. It’s the story of humanity.
And the Bible is not primarily a collection of little nuggets of wisdom like fortune cookies for how to live a good life. That’s not it. Though you can certainly pick up much wisdom by reading the Bible. But primarily, the Bible is a story, and therefore, if you read the Bible, you will notice it has a similar plot arc to a great novel or a great movie. You know, in, in many novels and in many movies, at the beginning of the story, we are introduced to the characters, and oftentimes at the beginning, life is going pretty okay.
For the characters. Not in all stories, but in many stories they at least start with a type of stasis or equilibrium. Their circumstances are harmonious, right? But then they encounter some kind of problem and they are no longer okay. If you remember elementary literature class, they call it the tension or the conflict of the story.
And really then the point of the story, why you keep reading or watching it, is to see how that conflict is going to get resolved, which in most stories it does. Most stories the conflict is resolved, at least the stories that become bestsellers, the ones that most resonate with our hearts. There are, of course, many examples where the author or playwright, you know, kind of takes an artistic angle and the conflict is not resolved, and those might win awards, but they typically don’t do as well at the box office. We don’t connect with them as much as stories where evil is vanquished and good prevails, our favorite characters come out on top, all the loose ends are tied up. Those kind of stories connect with us more.
So usually authors have the conflict resolved, and more often than not, the conflict is resolved by a hero that emerges. The hero fights the battle, rescues the people, saves the town, makes escape possible. Unlocks the riddle, finds the treasure. It’s the hero or group of heroes that save the day. So the central plot really then resolves— revolves around the hero or heroes and their efforts.
And the climax of the story is the dramatic point where the heroes pull through for everyone else. And then after the climax, what do you have? It’s the final chapter. It’s the conclusion. Often it’s a happily ever after.
Returning to the harmony they had at the beginning, maybe having it better than they had at the beginning. But that final chapter, we as the readers or viewers were often given a glimpse of the future that the characters will now enjoy since the problem has been solved. That’s a classic prototypical story arc. It resonates with our hearts, it feels right to us, we buy that story, we read that story, we watch that story over and over and over again. And perhaps the reason we are drawn to those kind of stories is that it is the story of humanity.
It’s our story, at least according to the Bible. It’s our story. The Bible tells that story about humanity. It progresses through each one of those steps: beginning, conflict, hero, climax, resolution, new future. It’s one story, even though it was written by dozens and dozens of people over thousands of years, many of whom never met each other, who certainly lived in totally different contexts.
And even though their writings contain many different— or represent many different genres— I mean, there’s poetry, history, law, prophecy, biography— yet somehow, when we link all those manuscripts together, it’s one cohesive plot arc. Which is amazing because it’s not like someone went back and edited everything to make it all fit together, and the authors along the way didn’t coordinate their efforts. They didn’t even know each other, but it’s as if they were somehow guided by someone or something to tell this one story. It’s pretty neat. If you’re a skeptic, It’s pretty neat.
Humanity’s story according to the Bible, which we’ve talked about all of these weeks, is at the beginning when God created us, He created us and everything else good. We originally lived in harmony with each other, with God, with the world. Everything was great. Even work was great. Got up, go to work, you’d think it was great.
Our labors were rewarding and not burdensome. Our earliest ancestors never would have asked, why is everything harder than it should be? They wouldn’t have asked that because everything worked as it should. Similarly, our relationships were joyful, life-giving, never filled with tension or heartbreak or disappointment. Everything was good.
All the ways we think the world should be, it was at the beginning. But then, problem. We fell from that perfection. Because we walked away from God. We rejected him.
We humanity rejected the source, the wellspring of goodness, light, life. And of course, I mean, if we say no thanks to wholeness, peace, and joy, what should we expect to find? It was going to be a mess, or we’ll have darkness, decay, death, chaos, turmoil. Okay, this is the problem. The conflict, the tension in the story that we caused.
The Bible calls it sin. It has plagued the world ever since our earliest ancestors, and we, meaning humanity, we have not been able to fix it despite our best efforts to redeem ourselves, to get humanity back to the perfection from which we fell. We haven’t. We haven’t resolved our core problem. We said last week this shouldn’t be controversial.
It should be the most self-evident truth in all of existence. I mean, we know, we can see that the world is still filled with problems. Still. No matter how many economic systems we’ve tried, or no matter how many political parties we’ve tried, or no matter what technology is invented. Some of those are better than others for sure.
Some of them solve some problems, sure, but then they always end up creating some other kind of problem, right? The world is still a mess.
That’s not news, right? We haven’t pulled ourselves back up from the perfection from which we fell. Life is a struggle, as we know. The Bible details much of the same struggles and problems that we see in our world today. And one of the lessons that we’re supposed to learn from all those struggles and what we read in the Bible, um, at least the lesson the Bible wants us to learn is we will not be the ones to solve our problem.
Not only haven’t we redeemed ourselves, we won’t redeem ourselves. In other words, we need a hero. We need someone to fight this battle for us, solve the riddle, liberate us from the destruction that we caused. We need a hero, and the Bible puts forth such a hero. He is actually promised from the very beginning of the biblical story.
As soon as we fell, in fact, God says one day a hero will come, and then he does. That hero, that Savior, that Messiah is Jesus, who was a real-life historical person born in Bethlehem, lived a perfect sinless life, died on a Roman cross, and then rose to life again. And the Bible claims In so doing, he solves our problem by redeeming us from our sin. How? How does death and resurrection solve our problem?
When he was crucified on the cross, he took all the sin of the world onto himself. All the decay, all the darkness, all the shame, all the guilt, it all went on him. He died. He took death on as well. Maybe our biggest problem.
He absorbed death, but then he rose to life again. We say in victory over all the mess of the world, which shows he’s bigger than the mess. Where we couldn’t conquer it or rise above it, he did. This is why Christians are so crazy about Jesus’ resurrection when we celebrate Easter here in a few weeks, right? Where we have failed to overcome the sin and darkness of the world, he succeeded.
He rose. He’s the hero. The cross and resurrection are the climax of the story, because up until that point evil and death had been winning. They were undefeated. Their reign was supreme.
But then Jesus won. Where everyone else had lost, Jesus won. Jesus’ resurrection marks the turning of the tide against all the problems of the world. It’s kind of like He cut the head off the snake. And while that snake is still writhing around, you know, hence why we still have problems in the world, that snake’s days are numbered.
The hero won a decisive victory, and therefore eventually all traces of evil, sin, and death will one day be gone. That’s what we’ve gotten to so far in our story of Jeremiah. So what would we expect to come next in the story after the problem is solved? It’s the conclusion. It’s the happily ever after.
It’s the return to harmony, which is where we are today. So if this is your first Sunday, you really are walking in at the end of the movie where we see the glorious future that Christ has prepared for us, because we’ve already studied all those other chapters each week. We’ve seen one way or another how all the elements of that story arc is found in Jeremiah. Jeremiah lived in one place at one time and wrote in one context, but what he writes parallels the bigger story. And we’ve studied each chapter of that story except for the happily ever after.
So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And to do so, we’re looking at maybe one of the most famous verses out of the book of Jeremiah. It’s the verse that gets printed on coffee mugs and decorative pillows. It’s one that many people have memorized. It’s where God tells the Israelites, I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.
Even if you aren’t a Christian, you may have heard that verse before. You, you might not have known it was in the Bible, but somehow you know it. I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, to give you hope and a future. So as we reflect on this familiar passage today, we will see how this ancient verse written to people long ago in a totally different context still applies to us. Then we will compare their promised future to ours, and then finally we’ll see why, why our future is guaranteed.
How this verse applies to us, the difference between their future and ours, why our future is guaranteed. So first, how this ancient verse applies to us. Um, we have it even better than they did.
You may or may not be aware, but within certain circles of Christianity, there are some— not me— who would say that Jeremiah 29:11, you know, I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you a hope and a future— they would say that cannot and does not apply to people today. They say, don’t put it on a coffee mug, don’t put it on the throw pillow, it’s not speaking to you, it was not written to you, it was written to people in a different— in a specific different context. It was telling Israelites what would happen to them after 70 years of Babylonian captivity, you know, which is not us. That’s what they would say. And they have a point.
It’s true. It’s just not the whole truth, because the context of the verse is— it’s— this is the context of the verse. Babylon was about to conquer Israel. We’ve talked about this in previous weeks. Babylon would shortly utterly destroy everything significant to the Israelites as part of God’s judgment on Israel for their unrestrained sin.
They would lose their temple, their economic systems, their leaders. It was all going to be wiped out. And not only that, but Babylon would also carry off their best and brightest into exile, into captivity, prisoners of war basically, back to Babylon. And those exiles would remain in captivity in Babylon for 70 years. That’s all about to happen.
But before it happened, when Jerusalem was still functioning as a city, God speaks and pre-comforts the people before it gets bad. God says it won’t always be bad. He says when 70 years are completed for Babylon— this is the 70 years of captivity, so captivity will have an end date— when captivity is completed, God says, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. That’s meaning the city of Jerusalem, because that’s what they’re going to get taken out of. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, give you a hope and a future.
So it’s true, absolutely true. The context of this verse is comforting the exiles before they go into exile in Babylon, assuring them that they will come back to Jerusalem one day. They will come home to this specific city. That’s the promise. And historically, it happened.
It was 70 years later, just like clockwork. Ezra and Nehemiah come back, rebuild the city after 70 years in captivity. Babylon defeated Israel in about 586, 587 BC. First exiles returned 516 BC approximately. Case closed.
Promise fulfilled. Doesn’t initially seem to have anything to do with us. As some people would cynically say, Unless you are about to be in exile in Babylon for 70 years, don’t put Jeremiah 29:11 on your coffee mug.
And while they have a point, there’s more to it than that, because again, as we have said throughout this series, contained within the book of Jeremiah is really the story of the entire Bible. What happens in Jeremiah is a microcosm of the whole. The themes in Jeremiah point outside themselves to an ultimate final fulfillment. It’s like what happens in Jeremiah is a foretaste of the real thing to come. And this theme, the theme of exile and return, of being kicked out of the land for sin but one day returning to the land of losing paradise, but one day returning to paradise.
That theme absolutely applies to us because we, like they were, we are longing for, awaiting our return home. Humanity has been displaced from the perfection we once enjoyed at the beginning of our story. We said last week, just as the people in Jeremiah’s day lived in the aftermath of the fall of their city, So we live in the aftermath of the fall of creation. We have been exiled from our original home. We fell from perfection.
We can feel it in our bones that this world isn’t as it should be. It’s, it’s like we’re captives in a dark land. So we need to hear, just as the people in Jeremiah’s day needed to hear, one day we will return home. One day our exile will be over. We need to hear from God like they heard.
Verse 14, the day will come when God says, I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile. That is for us. That is for us because we are in exile. Even though we are not returning to Jerusalem, we are returning somewhere better. We are returning to Eden, to perfection, to the world as it should be, to remade creation.
That’s, that’s our return. So not only does this verse apply to us, it applies better to us than it did specifically for them. This is the most important piece as you read the Bible and try to understand it. Anytime that we see a theme building throughout Scripture, you know, the promise of something, the foreshadowing of something, while it will have an immediate fulfillment, you know, like the Israelites coming back from Babylon, the ultimate final fulfillment is always exponentially better, more glorious than any of the little steps along the way. The reality is better than the signs that point to the reality.
Okay, so a couple of for instances. You know, in the Old Testament they had temples or tabernacles. It was the place where God dwelled with the people. Great, but it was limited. It was one location, and only one guy, the high priest, could go in there once a year to get close to God’s presence.
But in Christ, who, you know, Jesus refers to himself as the real temple. Real temple. Tear this temple down, I’ll rebuild it in 3 days. Jesus refers to himself as the real temple. In Christ, the presence of God is with us forever and everywhere.
Those old temples pointed forward to Jesus, and Jesus is better. Similarly, in the Old Testament, they had sacrifices. They brought animals to be burned at the altar, which Hebrews 10 says were an annual reminder of sins. It reiterated for them every time they brought a sacrifice, it told them we are not restored to God yet. We are waiting to be restored to God.
We are waiting for the real sacrifice, which means those sacrifices that they brought pointed forward to the sacrifice, to Jesus, who again makes us perfect forever. Again, Hebrews 10 says Jesus’ sacrifice makes us perfect forever. We talked about that last week, how He gives us His righteousness. So Jesus, His sacrifice doesn’t remind us of our sin and guilt like the old sacrifices did. Jesus’ sacrifice reminds us of our forgiveness, that restoration to God has come, is here, will be here forever.
That’s better. It’s a better sacrifice. Another example, in the Old Testament, you know, they had prophets who spoke the Word of God, but Jesus is the Word of God made made flesh and dwells among us. John 1. That’s better.
In the Old Testament, they had kings, some of whom were okay, most of whom were just magnificent failures. But in Jesus, we have the King of Kings, the perfect King who will reign forever with justice and righteousness. That’s better. He’s better. In the Old Testament, the Israelites were delivered out of Egyptian slavery in the Exodus, but in Christ, we are delivered out of the hands of the ultimate slave master, death itself.
That’s better. We have a better Exodus than they did. We see this over and over and over again. Covenant, New Covenant, Passover Lamb, Lamb of God. The ultimate fulfillment in Christ always, always surpasses the little foretastes, the little pointers along the way.
This is why Paul can express in 1 Corinthians 1:20, all the promises of God find their yes in him, meaning Christ. All the promises of God find their real yes, their ultimate yes, in Christ. All of them, including Jeremiah 29:11. I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. The ultimate fulfillment of that promise is in in Christ.
Because in Christ we have a homecoming that far exceeds the homecoming the Israelites experienced coming back from exile in Babylon. So, rather than saying, oh, Jeremiah 29:11 doesn’t apply to us at all, we should understand their homecoming is but a small glimpse of ours, which means not only does it apply to us, Jeremiah 29:11 applies more and better to us in the future that awaits us. So let’s get specific about that more and better, what the future was for them versus what it will be for us. It’s partial versus complete. Theirs was partial, ours will be complete.
Let’s think about it. When God promised Israel a future and a hope coming back out of captivity, what would they have imagined. They would have imagined, you know, walking back through the gates of Jerusalem. They would imagine there being gates again after the gates were torn down. They would imagine, you know, seeing the hills of Judah after living, you know, in a foreign land for decades.
They would imagine rebuilding their homes, reopening their shops, hearing Hebrew spoken in the streets instead of Akkadian, you know, which is Babylonian language. They would have looked forward to worshiping in the temple. They would have longed for normalcy, stability, familiarity. They wanted their land back. They wanted their national identity back, their city back, their routines back.
They wanted life to feel like it did before everything fell apart. And when 70 years were completed, that’s exactly what happened. The people returned, walls and gates were rebuilt, temple was reconstructed, sacrifices resumed, It was a real fulfillment of God’s promise.
But it wasn’t Eden. It wasn’t perfection restored. Yes, they were back in the land, but they were still under foreign rule. Yes, the temple was rebuilt, but it wasn’t even as glorious as the first temple that Solomon had built. Yes, their sacrifices resumed, but sin was still present.
Yes, they were home, but death still reigned. Their return was good, but it was incomplete. It was just a shadow of something greater yet to come. Because even though their immediate exile had ended, their deeper exile, like ours, remained. The exile we feel from the original perfection that we once enjoyed.
You know, we are still residents of a sinful world. We are still dwelling in a dark land. We still suffer the effects of brokenness, disease, decay, ruin, death. We are still displaced from the home that we once had. But when Christ completes His work and we finally get to go to our ultimate home with Him, we won’t be in a fragile city that can be invaded again.
We will return to a remade creation. Bible describes it in Isaiah, Peter, Revelation as a new heavens and a new earth, as a city where God dwells fully with His people. That city doesn’t even need to have a sun that it orbits because the glory of God provides all the light that’s required. It’s a place where there is no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain, and it will never end. Israel came home, but that home could still be destroyed, and it was many times.
After Babylon, Persia was the world power. Then Persia lost to Greece. Greece lost to Rome. Then Rome fell. And even up to today, Jerusalem is not a place of never-ending peace.
Their homecoming has always been shaky. But ours never will be because while their walls had to be defended, the walls of the city of God need no defense. They returned to a land still marked by sin, but we will return to a world where sin has been eradicated. They still buried their loved ones, but when we are home, we will never attend a funeral ever again. Their future and hope lasted a generation, Ours will last into eternity.
They came back to rebuild. They came back with hammers and stones, but we go home to rest. We go home to a finished kingdom. Our future and hope in Christ is exponentially greater than what they experienced. I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
It’s a future far better than what we could ever ask or imagine. Now lastly, how do we know all of this is really going to happen? How do we know our future and hope— our future hope won’t be shaken like theirs could be? Why is our future guaranteed? It’s because Jesus was exiled in our place and returned.
As we said at the beginning of today, the climax of the biblical storyline is Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Everything rests on those events. If the cross and resurrection didn’t happen, it’s like the big dramatic rescue scene of the movie didn’t happen, which would mean, you know, the problem isn’t solved. The people wouldn’t be saved. In our case, we wouldn’t come back from exile if there weren’t crucifixion and resurrection.
But the cross and resurrection did happen, and what it shows us is that Jesus was exiled so that we can return. On the cross, he was exiled in our place. Jesus’ biographers get this across in the New Testament a couple of different ways. First, we are told that Jesus was crucified outside of the city. He was literally cast out of Jerusalem, carried his cross, you know, outside the gates to the hill of Golgotha.
It’s a picture of banishment from the city, banishment from His city really. I mean, Jerusalem is the city of God. It’s where the Messiah is supposed to reign on David’s throne. But in the final moments of Jesus’ mortal life, He’s banished from it, expelled from His city. It’s a picture of exile.
Another picture of His exile is on the cross. He cries out, my God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
Forsaken. He’s experiencing the curse of separation, of excommunication. It’s the same kind of banishment that humanity experienced when we originally lost paradise because of our sin. It’s the same banishment that Israel experienced going into captivity in Babylon because of their sin. But when Jesus is banished, forsaken on the cross, it was not because of His sin, it was because of ours.
He stands in our place as our substitute. He takes on the sin of the world. He absorbs what we deserve, which is exile from God and His goodness. It’s like He sucks the poison out of our wound, but then the poison goes into Him, and He dies as we deserve to die. And if that had been the end of the story, as we said at the beginning, If he had stayed dead, it would mean that exile won.
It would mean darkness was more powerful than, you know, the light of the world incarnate. It would mean, you know, the black hole is stronger than the sun. That’s what it would have meant if he stayed dead. But he didn’t stay dead, because on the 3rd day he rose. He walked out of that grave alive.
He came back. He, he came back from exile. He conquered our exile, which, which was heaven’s announcement that our exile has an expiration date. It says sin doesn’t get the last word, death doesn’t get the last word, brokenness doesn’t get the last word, darkness doesn’t get the last word, exile doesn’t get the last word. Jesus does, because he proved that he’s bigger than all of that.
He returned. He lives. And because he lives, our future is not fragile. Our future is not wishful thinking. It’s not sentimental optimism to be printed on a coffee mug.
It is a secured reality. If God was faithful to bring Israel home after 70 years, how much more certain is our homecoming that is secured by a resurrected Savior? You know, their return depended on when the calendar flipped to 70 years. Our return depends on an empty tomb. The empty tomb showed that the way home is open and guaranteed.
Jesus was the first to return from banishment, but his return proves that return is possible. And one day he will bring all of us who are in him, with him, to the new heavens and new earth. It is guaranteed. May the hope of that day fill your heart today and every day between now and then. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you that there is a happily ever after to the story of humanity, that we get to dwell with you forever in unbroken security, prosperity, that you bought and opened the perfect future for us. May we walk with that bright hope of what You have promised. We pray all those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
