Jeremiah 29:11 is Not About You with Pastor Ryan Braley

Hey man, you can be seated.

Well, good morning, everyone.

And she I went to talk to her this morning and she's just very smiley.

So come say hello to this little one.

She's a cute.

I've known Kaylin for a long time in the Hanson County for a long time.

It's so great when I get to baptize.

Well, I didn't do it this morning, but when I get to bap we get to baptize young babies of young men and women who I knew when they were in middle school.

I love that.

It's my favorite thing.

It's so great.

I've been here for a long time, apparently, as well.

So which I love.

Well, hello, my name is Ryan.

I might have to reintroduce myself to you.

I haven't been here in a little while.

I got a text from Kelsey inviting me to church, my own church, that I'm the pastor of.

Might as well show up sometime.

Just so you know, I was gone for three weeks and it was great.

I was on vacation with my family for, I don't know, a little over a week.

Went to a cabin, a friend's friends of ours lost used their cabin up in Alexandria on Lake Ida.

We did some fishing up there and some catching.

There's a difference.

And uh we had to have some fish for dinner or breakfast or whatever, and then uh just played some games and had a lot of fun just relaxing and doing nothing.

Sometimes just doing nothing, letting the day unfold is a great uh blessing in life.

So try it sometimes.

Uh and then I went and I spent five days in Big Rapids, Michigan.

I was in the woods of Big Rapids.

There's an artist there named Rob Vanderzene who owns like 20 acres of land, and behind him is a whole bunch of federal land.

And so seven of us went out there and did a five-day wilderness experience of like silence and solitude and some togetherness.

We did some dream, like some dream work and uh kind of what is God saying to us in this time while you're you know being alone.

So we did like one night, uh one evening, one whole night, the next day, then the next morning of silence, solitude, and fasting.

And it was incredible.

And sometimes when you go out in the wilderness, uh wilderness, sometimes and you don't you don't eat and you're just out there alone, things will come to the surface.

And so I said, people were like, weren't you afraid of sleeping alone in the woods?

No, that doesn't bother me.

Uh the woods should be afraid of me, am I right?

Uh but being alone is something else.

I mean, things come to the surface that are quite wild and no pun intended.

So, anyway, it was incredible.

And we did some dream work.

And one night I had a dream, and I talked about it the next morning with our sort of little group, and the dream went like this.

I was in this car, and Katie, my wife, was in the shotgun, and we were driving.

Behind me was this young man who goes to Central, who's going to be a freshman in college next year.

Not my son, but uh a different young man, and then his mom.

And I just felt compelled in this dream to turn around and give this young man a blessing, like to say a benediction over him.

Benediction is this Latin word that means to speak good over people.

And so I felt just compelled in my heart to turn around and like give him a blessing.

And so I did, I turned around and gave him what amounted to be almost like some advice for college, but in my heart, and it was like it was a blessing.

And he was very open and receptive to it, and his mom was just watching like with this sort of gratitude in her eyes.

And I woke up.

And it was wild, and I and I, so we we came back together the next day, and I shared it with the group.

And what brought me to tears was, and it really did brought me to tears.

I mean, I cry a lot, so not really surprised, but was as I was doing this, I was recounting the dream, several questions were asked, and then the guide said, Why are why are blessings so important to you?

And I was like, I don't know, I just I love doing them.

I love speaking life over people.

And I'm not saying I always do it or I always do it right, but I love speaking life and encouraging people.

It's part of what I think I'm good at, and just comes out of me naturally.

And I love doing it for you guys through the benediction, like just to speak a word of goodness over you.

And uh and we chatted some more, and I just I just remember weeping because I just felt that was and then we did some other stuff, and and he was like, you know, uh, I wonder if uh, and I love doing it with young people too.

So like when there's young kids around, I love looking them in the eyes and giving them a high five and speaking life over them.

And part of what came out was like, I think as a young boy, that's something I could have used to have an adult just speak life over me and be good to me.

And so I was like crying and all this stuff.

This Bible verse, Jeremiah 29.11, I'm sure many of you have heard of this Bible verse.

Have you heard of this before?

No, really?

Okay, boy, it's very popular.

Uh it's for I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.

Plans to prosper you, to give you hope and a future.

Many people know this verse, it's all over the place.

And I would say this: this is probably one of the most popular verses in all of Scripture that's misused, misquoted, misrepresented in all of Scripture.

It's a great one, but I think it's oftentimes misunderstood.

I think this verse is actually God giving Israel a benediction, turning around and speaking well over them.

But you don't fully get it or grasp it until you understand the context behind it.

This verse, if you look now, you'll start to see it.

It's all over in pop culture.

It's on coffee mugs, uh, it's on tattoos on people's bodies.

In fact, this uh uh this uh we're in our story, context, and symbol series here at Central, at the very end of it, in which we're analyzing Bible verses from the story, the context, and the symbol.

Like, hey, what's the story?

What's going on?

Who are the players?

What's happening?

And the context, where does this come from?

Where does it come out of?

What does the verse before it and after it say?

And where are we in the Israel story or in the Jesus story?

So understand that.

And today's mostly gonna live in that context region.

And then beneath the literal sort of meaning of the of the story, what are the symbols that are being pointed to that sort of have this depth of meaning?

And so this was actually a question from a good friend of mine who email says, Hey, what's the story, context, and symbol of Jeremiah 2911?

So this is kind of an amalgam of story, context, and symbol, and later on in the summer we're gonna do a U-Pick series where you get to pick what we get to talk about.

It's kind of both of those.

Um, but this person has a tattooed on her body.

Great, that's awesome.

You'll find it also in like graduation speeches, the nationwide.

Go to any graduation party.

You might say it might be the theme of the day for their graduation party.

And also, I found on coloring books at the airport.

Check this out.

I was in Ohio, or no, I was in Michigan, in the Grand Rapids uh airport, and I found this uh coloring book, for I know the plans I have for you.

And then look at the bottom.

Soothing reflections on God's perfect plan and purpose for your life.

In a coloring book.

How about that?

I love it.

But and it's understandable why many people love this verse, quote this verse, even though I think they don't really fully understand the verse.

My argument is that people just don't go far enough when they use this verse like this on coffee mugs or other places.

It's because we want to understand and believe that God has not forgotten about us, that God has a plan, a perfect plan for me, that God will take care of me.

You might be at a crossroads in your life, like a college kid or a high school kid, like, what's next?

I have no idea.

And you might quote that verse to yourself to give yourself some encouragement.

Like, I'm gonna have the perfect wife in Ferrari because God has a plan for my life.

It's encouraging.

You can see why we do it.

I empathize with it.

It's as though we like use it, we kind of dole it out as medicine.

Like, take two of these and then call me in a month and tell me how your walk with God is going.

Unfortunately, this is how we often treat Bible verses.

We kind of pluck them out one at a time from here and over there, and we use them as fortune cookies or quotes of the day to just give ourselves like an encouragement for the day.

Which isn't terrible, but it's not how the Bible's really supposed to be read or handled.

But here's some examples.

Here's one.

For I know, or for God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.

This is from 2 Timothy.

It's a great verse, right?

I love it.

It's awesome.

In fact, you should write that one down and put it on your mirror or on your phone at home.

How about this one?

Jesus said, In this world you'll have trouble, but take heart of overcome the world.

That's good.

I like that.

Yeah, quote that to yourself, and that's good.

Wonderful.

How about this one?

This is my favorite one.

Philippians 4.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Love it, it's good.

And it's true you can.

I did see this though on a boxer, very famous boxer about a decade ago.

I had it uh sewn onto his shorts.

Like he was the champ of the world too at the time.

Which is great, fine.

I mean, it's better than having something else tattooed on it.

I don't know, it's a good thing to have a Bible verse in here, closed.

But the message got a little bit convoluted for me, a little bit cloudy.

When I see him standing there, and maybe he didn't mean it, but the message appeared to be I can do all things through Christ, including defeating my opponent over here in the boxing ring, through Christ who gives me strength.

What?

Or rather, like, I can at least box in this box match because Christ has given me strength.

Which is fine, okay, that's fine.

But the context when Paul wrote this was not a boxing match.

Paul, when he wrote this, said I can do all things through Christ.

Paul had been shipwrecked.

He'd been stoned, he'd been beaten, flogged, imprisoned, robbed, starved, living in poverty, facing certain death on many occasions.

And then he says, But I can do all things through Christ, including endure these sufferings for Christ as an apostle, because it's Christ who gives me strength.

Now you're cooking with some gas.

That's a little bit different than a guy boxing in front of thousands of people for millions of dollars on live TV.

Are you with me?

Okay, I'm not picking on the boxer.

I don't mean to pick on him.

I'm just saying.

These Bible verses are not fortune cookies.

I love that they encourage us and they should, but they're not to be pucked out or used as fortune cookies.

So I would say this: Jeremiah 2011 was not written to you.

Don't stone me just yet, okay?

Wait until there.

Let me hear, hear me out.

It wasn't written to you.

It's actually not even about you or me.

Jeremiah 2011 was written to a specific people at a specific time for a very specific purpose.

Now, just in case you got really nervous there, you still can be encouraged by this verse.

But I think you gotta go all the way and understand the whole context to then use it properly.

Fair enough?

Okay, so here's the context.

Just before this, did you know, in Jeremiah 29, 4, it says this.

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

He's opening up this whole verse, this section, with this intro statement, which raises all kinds of questions, context questions.

To understand that, you have to understand this.

So here's my questions then.

Okay, well, who is this God?

If you pick this Bible up, like what is it, who's this God of Israel?

Who is this God?

And in the ancient world, there were many gods.

Okay, which God is this?

Well, the God of Israel.

Okay, fair enough.

Then who is Israel?

What is this Israel?

What are they all what are they doing?

What are they all about?

What's that relationship with God like?

How about this one?

Why are they in exile?

What does exile even mean?

What's that relationship and where have they gone from and where are they going to?

And then also, who's Babylon?

It says that I took them from Jerusalem to Babylon.

So you've got to answer all these questions to understand what's going on.

Well, I'm glad you asked these questions.

So here's the answers.

Are you ready?

Israel was a people group that had a very special covenant with the divine.

God, in the early parts of the Bible, came to Israel, specifically Abram and Sarai, or Abraham and Sarah, and said, Hey, I want to make a partnership with you, a covenant with you.

I want to be your God.

You'll be my people.

I'm going to teach you how to live.

And then I'm going to let you live in this divine relationship, which is incredible.

And then as you do that, you'll receive blessings because you're in this relationship.

Then teach these things to your pagan neighbors who don't know me yet.

Show them, model for them what it's like, and then invite them into it as well.

Fair enough?

Yeah.

So here's the here's the calling of Abram and Sarai.

I will establish my covenant.

This is what God says to Abram and Sarah, this beautiful couple.

An everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for generations to come.

This is a long-lasting covenant.

In fact, it's everlasting.

To be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

Now, part of that covenant was God had to teach them how to live.

How would they know how to live?

With God.

Like this is God.

How does one know how to relate to a God or a divine being?

Unless that divine being teaches you.

And also, they were, remember, they were slaves in Egypt for 400 years before they got this guideline, the law.

So God teaches them how to live.

Here's how you live with me, with each other, and with the creation.

And he gives them instructions, like basic things, how to live.

Here's a couple of them, just so you kind of are aware.

These are the laws.

Here's one.

When you reap the harvest of your land, farmers, pay attention.

Do not reap the very edges of your field or gather gleanings from your harvest.

Leave some for the poor and the foreigner who reside among you.

I'm the Lord your God.

Great.

God's like, hey, look, there will be people among you who are poor, or that are not from Israel.

They're kind of outsiders.

Hey, welcome them in and share some of your food with them.

Be hospitable.

So don't plow all the way to the edges.

Leave some for the poor and for the foreigners.

Fair enough?

How about this one?

God says, hey, in the seventh year, the land is to have a rest, a Sabbath rest.

Did you know that?

The land is to lie fallow.

For a year, it says.

Don't sow the fields or print the vineyards, don't reap what grows.

The land is to have a year of rest.

In fact, the animals were also supposed to have a year of rest.

This is a Sabbath.

Now, here's the crazy thing.

In our current culture, these things are becoming extremely politicized.

But this was not like a political thing.

This was like the way of life for the people of Israel.

And for Abram and Sarah and all those, well, for uh for the uh for the nation that came after.

And these laws taught them how to love God, how to obey God, how to live in this blessing of divine union, and then to invite others in.

And in Jesus, this calling for Israel, this people group, when Jesus comes, he embodies Israel and invites all of us who follow him to live in these same ways.

So Jesus comes as the embodiment of Israel.

Like, hey, come and follow me, and I will also teach you how to live with God and with others and the creation.

Our mission here, in case you missed it, is to follow Jesus.

We're gonna follow him and do what he says and center our lives around him.

Then we want to create a space where folks can come and belong.

Experience true community, real friendships, real life.

Not on a computer, not for the phone, maybe some of that too, but like in real life.

Have friendships and mentoring and partnerships, that kind of thing.

Then we're gonna go and love our neighbors and invite them in as well.

Not much has changed.

Can you see that?

We're still doing the same kinds of things.

That's our mission now in Jesus going forward.

Now I would call this, this way of life, this living in tune with God and Jesus and the ways that He's given us, as shalom.

Everyone say shalom.

Shalom.

Wonderful.

I'm teaching you some Hebrew this morning.

This is my favorite word in the Bible, if you hadn't noticed already.

I love saying this word.

Now, shalom is often translated as just peace, which in our minds, oh, an absence of violence or an absence of war.

But shalom in the ancient Hebrew means something much deeper.

It's really a social reality where all have enough.

There's order, forgiveness abounds, and all live in harmony.

Everything is in this harmonious relationship.

There's community, wholeness, safeness, soundness.

There's order and well-being.

This was the purpose of God.

He wanted to let the people live in Shalom.

Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel, means the people of Shalom, Jerusalem.

So there'll be people of Shalom.

This is the call of God.

When you live in my ways, God says again and again in Jesus' well, when you live in these ways and in this order, you will experience shalom, wholeness, completeness, harmony, forgiveness.

The way things are supposed to be.

When you live outside of that, what we would call sin, it's a breaking of shalom.

So domestic violence is a breaking of shalom.

It's a breaking of how relationships are supposed to work.

It's a fissure, something's broken in there.

It's not shalom, it's the opposite.

So Israel makes a covenant with God to be these people, to live in these ways and to bless others and invite them in.

But here's the problem: Israel, on many, many occasions, probably like myself, or maybe like some of you, if you're a heathen like me, they break the covenant.

They disregard and they violate the terms of the agreement.

Israel worships other gods.

They have lots of other gods and idols.

The priests, the kings, the prophets become corrupted, these people of God.

There's social injustice that runs rampant.

The orphans, the widows, the foreigners are not taken care of.

They're neglected and taken advantage of.

In fact, Israel commits one of the most atrocious crimes we can think of today.

They sacrifice children to the God Baal.

What?

These are the people of God.

They're disregarding the laws of God.

They violate the covenant again and again and again.

And Jeremiah is an Israelite priest.

He comes onto the scene and cries and says, Stop doing this.

Repent and return to God.

Live in the ways of God, not in this broken, disruptive breaking of shalom or your sacrificing baby.

That's enough.

You'll destroy yourselves.

Don't do that.

Come home and return to the Lord.

Jeremiah 4:1, return to the Lord.

Jeremiah 4:1

He calls him, implores him, begs him to come home.

And he also gives him warnings.

Like, look, if you live in those ways, you will reap what you sow.

There will be destruction.

It's just a natural consequence to life.

When you sacrifice babies, horrible things will happen.

When you worship other idols, bad things will happen.

This is how it works.

So he gives him warnings and says, Don't do it.

Return to the Lord.

But they don't listen to it.

Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet.

They don't listen to him.

And he weeps for Israel.

And he's there, live and in person, to watch the siege.

When Babylon, this foreign army, an empire, a strong empire, marches into Jerusalem, the city of peace, the place where the temple was, the heart of the land of the Jewish people, the Israelites.

And they destroy it.

They lay siege to the whole city.

They raise the temple, the house of God to the ground.

And everyone watches.

Jeremiah himself included.

Here's what they write.

What Jeremiah writes.

This is just before our verse.

Notice.

Therefore, God says, Because you have not listened to my words, I will summon all the peoples of the north, and my servant Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.

And I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all the surrounding nations.

And I will completely destroy them and make them an object of horror and scorn and everlasting ruin.

And he goes on to say, I will banish from them the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of the bride and bridegroom, the sound of millstones and the light of the lamp.

This whole country will become a desolate wasteland.

And these nations will serve the king of Babylon for 70 years.

Other than that, Mrs.

Lincoln, how was the play?

This is no joke.

And I can't emphasize enough, this would be devastating for Israel.

They're barred from their homeland, their nation's country.

This is what exile means.

Exile means like barred or kicked out of your homeland.

Leaving home, being disconnected from home.

And Israel is now in exile in Babylon.

Can you think of anywhere else in the Bible where there are people who were living in a land given to them by God, living in union with God in this beautiful, harmonious place, and because of their disruptive behavior, they're kicked out of it.

Garden of Eden, somebody said.

You notice that?

This is the symbol, if there ever was one.

The Bible is about exile, among other things, but it's being kicked out of home or far from home, living in a foreign place, and longing in the deepest parts of your soul to be home again.

Adam and Eve in exile.

The people of Israel in exile.

And many of us in this room, friends, are far from home.

And we long for home.

We long for an end of exile.

This would have been devastating to the people of Israel.

Not just sad or oh, what a bummer.

This would have been horrible.

Their entire identity would be in question.

Their existence would be in question.

These were not just Sunday morning churchgoers.

Everything they knew and loved and lived revolved around being Jewish people.

Everything.

It centered around their family, their culture, their belief system, their economic system, their philosophical system.

All of it revolved around being the people of Israel.

It meant everything to them.

Being a Jew, in fact, meant worshiping in the temple, which is in Jerusalem.

Go ahead for me, Sarah.

The temple was the house of God.

God promised, I'll live with you, and I'm gonna do it in this building.

So come and gather in this building and worship me, and we'll be together, and I'll remind you of who I am and how to live with me.

It was this beautiful promise of God.

The temple.

Gone.

Babylon destroyed it.

The land, a gift given by God to the people.

Of Israel, a land of milk and honey, a place of sustenance and growth where shalom can flourish.

Gone.

They're taken from the land.

And the Torah, the laws of God, this charter covenant, it's gone.

They can't read the Torah in the temple anymore.

Here's the question that they would all would have been asking undoubtedly.

Who are we anymore?

Has God finally had enough?

Has He's like, hey, I'm done with you guys.

I've I warned you over and over and over and over and over and over again.

You knuckleheads, listen, I'm done.

I'm out.

I'm leaving.

Imagine the shame and guilt that Israel would have carried everywhere that went.

Living in Babylon away from the temple.

The temple's gone now.

Nothing you ever knew.

You'd be lost.

And you would think God finally has had enough and given up on you.

Maybe you know what that's like.

He says, uh, by the rose of Babylon, we sat down in the form, and there we said and we went.

And we remember the sign.

I remember the home.

And I longed for it.

On the willows there, we hung our hearts, and their captors, our captors, they asked for songs from us.

Our tormentors who know nothing about what it's like to be used.

To be Israel, these captors and tormentors they asked for mirth, and they said, Hey, sing us a song.

How can we sing songs of salvation in strange land?

It's all lost, it's all gone.

And it's there, in that moment, that God says this.

Declares the Lord.

Plans to prosper you, not harm you.

I promise.

I plans to give you hope and a future.

Look, there are consequences, no doubt, you're living in them.

I've not abandoned you.

I've not given up on you.

We're gonna be okay.

Because I'm faithful.

I know that you're not.

I've seen it again and again and again and again.

And I weep, I weep for you.

But I'll renew the covenant, I'll transform your hearts, I'll heal your rebellion, I'll deal with sin once and for all.

In fact, you don't know it yet, but I'll send my son Jesus, he'll come and once and for all deal with sin.

And the tyranny of sin and self-love run amok.

I'll be faithful.

You could say it this way: God's own faithfulness, his faithfulness will bring about his promises.

That's good news for any of us in this room who are not faithful all the time.

We're saved by faith in Jesus, I get it.

But it also could be rendered we're saved by the faithfulness of Jesus, who endured everything even to the point of the cross.

He never wavered.

He was faithful when you couldn't be faithful.

Can you see how different it is now that you're slapping on a coffee mug?

This verse isn't about you, and yet it's also about you.

It wasn't written to you, but also this is the same God that you serve, that I serve, that we meet with, that is closer to us than the air on our skin.

This God, who doesn't give up on these adulterous people who broke the covenant shamefully, again and again and again.

You thought you had a tough life.

May these words echo in your mind as a reminder that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for you.

And God loves you because God is good.

His mercies are new every morning.

It's a deep love.

Deep.

I know you think that the thing you did or the way you are, it can't be fixed.

He said, I'm done with you.

I get it.

But I don't know.

This is the God thing, everlasting love for you.

You knuckle that?

So it's about you.

You can cling to this verse.

And now that you know the context, you can share it.

Here's what I want to say.

We're gonna sing a song and give and pray.

Uh this is what Israel heard.

This was God's benediction or blessing over them, words of life over them.

And as you heard me say, I think these are important for God to speak life over you through other people, or even through just let God sort of speak to you through your imagination or whatever.

I want you to ask God this morning, this is what God told Israel?

What might God say to us today, or to you today?

You got a piece of paper when you came in, I think, right?

Grab that paper out, there's pencils all around in the pews, or borrow one from a neighbor.

What might God say to you today?

And if it's not congruent with Jeremiah 29, 11, or Paul who wrote while you were yet a sinner, or the life of Jesus, or the cross, if it's not congruent, that love, then it's not from God.

If God in your mind doesn't look like Jesus, you gotta tweak your view of God.

I mean, God better at least be as nice as Jesus.

Right?

So, what might God say to you in the parameters of this is what Jesus might say, this is what in that spirit of Jeremiah 21?

What might God say to you?

And use your imagination and write something down.

I have no idea how God uses things.

But here's a chance for you to receive some encouragement this morning.

Wherever you are, God has not abandoned you, or forgotten you, or given up on you.

So let's sing.