DB#1-Jeremiah 29:11-13
21 Aug. 2104
BIBL350_B10

Most people have at some point construed Jeremiah 29:11-13 as a promise from God to prosper our individual lives and to offer us hope for the immediate future, myself included. It is printed on coffee mugs and t-shirts, preached to us at church, and offered as an inspirational pick-me-up when we are feeling lost and afraid. We want it to be a personal assurance that God is listening to our supplications, and will come running when we beckon to Him for deliverance from whatever evils hold us captive. While this, in its basest sense, is true—God does hear us and come to our aid when we need Him—in this specific instance, we are entirely missing the point. Without a deeper examination of the original intent of these verses, we fail to see that God is giving a corporate blessing, meant to give hope to a nation during their time of captivity. We are often so self-involved that when we come across verses such as these, we misidentify their true significance. We must focus our thoughts on the bigger picture and understand that not everything God does is specific to us as individuals, especially in the circumstances surrounding the events associated with Jeremiah 29:11-13.

“…I was violating the context and completely missing the fact that God was talking to a nation (not an individual), a nation that had to go through seventy years of heartache and exile before there was any hope of freedom from captivity. And if it could not be used as a promise for the immediate future of those who first heard it, then it should not be used for my immediate future either” (Bargerhuff 2012, 39).

As the author illustrates, God’s promises do not always generate an immediate action—often, His promises are not meant for us, but for future generations, whose benefit is derived from the suffering and persecution of the generation to whom God was originally speaking. When the author writes, “We have no right to hold God hostage to a promise that we misunderstood” (41), he is telling us that we as Christians need to always be aware of the context of the passages we are trying to interpret—many mistakes occur due to the shallowness of our understanding of what God’s words mean as a whole. In the case of Jeremiah 29:11-13, we are offered hope for the future, a spiritual promise of the eternal life we can look forward to with God or, as the author states, a promise of “restoration” (39). This means that although we are scattered now, lost and wandering in a world filled with corruption and pain (as the Judeans were also displaced and persecuted), God will soon gather us up, and place upon us prosperity and protection in overwhelming abundance. Nothing in this world is permanent, except for His love towards us, love that has continued from the first light of Creation. So, as the Judeans suffered, we too, will suffer, but we know through our faith that God will not allow this suffering to continue forever, and no amount of strife in this life can overshadow the eternal joy and peace that we can expect to see when He comes to take us home.
Manipulating God’s words to suit our desires is not how we are meant to glorify Him. The message in these verses is that God keeps His promises to those who are faithful in their hearts. Faith gives us hope for the future, and that is how God rewards us for our trust in His love.

References

Bargerhuff, E.J., 2012. The Most Misused Verses in the Bible. Bloomington, MA: Bethany House Publishers.