10/13/24 Jer. 29:4-14 “It’s a Love That Never Ends!”

09 Oct 10/13/24 Jer. 29:4-14 “It’s a Love That Never Ends!”

10/13/24    Jer. 29:4-14      “It’s a Love That Never Ends!”

We had an interesting conversation with a young adult a while back that was very revealing in a good way.  This person told me that from the ages 20-24 or so are not the ages where people want to settle down.  These are the ages when people want to try on different roles and try different things.  In other words, it is not the time to settle down into one job or one anything.  Remember, this is just one person’s opinion.  When I was young, and that was a long time ago, this age was from 18-21 or so because there was a war and no one wanted to hire young people, especially young men.  This is because there was a good chance of young men being drafted into the military.  They didn’t want to train people into a job only to give them up to the army.  I think that there is a valid argument for this.  I also think that this puts young people in sort of a hold pattern on their lives for a few years.  I really don’t know if this is real or imagined but something like this seemed to be happening.  I also think that even older adults, those over 25, can put their lives on hold for many other reasons.  We can find ourselves in exile from our own lives.  Today, we are going to look at what God wanted the people in exile to do and it may surprise you a little.  Let’s see if we can hear words of God for us in this ancient literature.

Have you ever been in the position where you just cannot wait?  You can’t wait until you are 18 or I can’t wait until I’m 21.  In my case, I can’t wait until I’m 80.  Or I can’t wait for a better job. I can’t wait until I feel better.  I can’t wait until I pay off my debt.  Or I can’t wait until family life gets better in our house.  These are just a few things we can’t wait for and I’m sure you can fill in many more blanks.  The problem with these ‘can’t waits’ is that we have to wait.  It is usually not up to us to speed things along.  We have the same type of rationale when it comes to serving God.  I will serve God when I feel better.  I will serve God when I have more time.  I will serve God when I have a little more money.  I will serve God by sharing my faith when I am more encouraged to do so and please don’t encourage me.  The problem with excuses is that they are like armpits.  Everyone has a couple and they usually stink.  We tend to make up excuses for not serving and when those demands are met, we make up another excuse.  The people of Judah are doing the same things as they are now exiled into captivity in Babylon.  But God will have nothing to do with their ‘can’t waits’ or their excuses.  It is the same way with us.

As we begin today, we find that the kingdom of Judah, the southern kingdom, has been finally conquered by Babylon.  They had been uprooted from their homes and planted in a strange country.  They did not know what they were supposed to do in this strange land.  They were not sure how to do it.  There were not even sure if they would be allowed to live.  These were some very hard times for the Jewish people.  They were homeless.  They were exiled.

I think that one of the things that are happening in this country is that we have many people who have been exiled.  We have people who are homeless in their own homes.  You may wonder, ‘how can that be?’  We have been exiled from our churches by various organizations who are trying to take over the role of the church.  Other groups are trying to feed the poor and give many kinds of welfare.  As far as I’m concerned, they are doing a terrible job!  People are homeless in their homes because Jesus is nowhere to be found in them.  When you exclude Jesus, He respects your wishes until you ask Him back again.  So, in a sense, you are exiled in your own homes because I do not think a home is home without Jesus.  God promised He would rescue these people in 70 years and He did.  Jesus has promised that He will come back and He will!  We, the people of faith, know this to be a fact!

So, what are we supposed to do until Jesus comes back?  Well, first of all, we are to build our houses and settle down.  We are to plant our gardens and crops.  We are to marry and have families.  Then we are to find husbands and wives for our children.  This might be little bit of a foreign idea for us but this is what I think it means.  We don’t arrange marriages in our modern world but many times parents do have a say.  Paul tells us in black and white in 2 Cor. 6:14 that we are not to be yoked with unbelievers.  I’m not going to go into a treatise on marriage here but I will say this.  Several years ago, there was a convention where couples who had personal relationships with Jesus gathered.  Out of 500 couples gathered, there had been only one divorce.  All I’m going to say about marriage is that Jesus works.

Anyway, God is telling us to lead normal lives.  In addition to this, they were to pray for their captives.  In our case, we would be praying for the non-believers and they are everywhere.  Don’t be afraid to pray for your enemies and try to be very specific.  One of the reasons many prayers do not seem to be answered is that they are not specific enough.  If something or someone is bugging you, name it or them in your prayers.  This is part of living a normal life.

Then God tells them to beware of the false prophets.  In those days, there were many prophets and most of them were false.  Often times, the king had prophets that told him what he wanted to hear.  This had been a common practice for centuries and continues today.  Today, because of our increased population, we have many more false prophets.  They are the ones that tell us the end of the world will be the day after Thanksgiving, for example, a real black Friday, so to speak.  They tell us that the Bible does not really mean what it says.  Whatever they tell you, don’t listen.  They are wrong.  One of the easiest ways to tell if a prophet is false is if what he says goes against the Bible.  Simple logic tells us that if someone says the Bible is wrong or does not mean what is says, they do not pass this simple test.  Do not believe them.  Basically, we are to live our lives as Jesus would want us to live them as He tells us in the Bible.

The reason for this is that He has a plan for you.  Every person listening today has a plan for their lives made by God.  You can be a sinner, which we all are, a non-believer, a hardened criminal or a person who does not believe in anything.  God still has a plan for you.  I spent 40 years without Jesus and He still had this grand plan for me.  He has one for each of you.  All you have to do is ask Him to be your personal Savior and best friend.  Of course, then you have to listen to what He says.  You have to listen and obey.

We want to do this because God wants us to prosper.  When Jeremiah was telling the people this so many years ago, it was because God still wanted the best for them even though they had been disobedient to the point where the only way they would learn was to be overrun and exiled by their enemy.  He did not wish ill upon them.  He wanted them to learn and prosper.  And that is just what they did.  They did all these things we just talked about and they prospered.  There is a similar story when Joseph rescued his people for famine and they all took up residence in Egypt.  They had hardship in a famine and they banded together to live in another land, the foreign land of Egypt.  Once again, God wanted them to prosper in this foreign land and they did.

It is the same thing for us.  God wants you to prosper.  However, if you have had your back turned to Him, you may have to go through a little hardship to get to the prosperous times.  We are all guilty of this to a certain extent.  Have you ever noticed that when you do something really good for God, you always feel soooo good?  It happens all the time so why aren’t you doing the right things all the time if it makes you feel so good?  If word of this got out, the liquor and drug businesses would go bust because we have finally found something that really makes us feel good all the time instead of a temporary solution, a solution that makes us feel so bad when we are done.

I’ve told you this story before so I’ll just hit the high points.  After I came to know Jesus, things were looking really good but I felt that I was still missing something.  God led me to the passages on tithing and I actually had to look it up to see what it meant.  It means giving 10% of your income to Jesus.  I did not know.  At the time, we were very poor.  So, I sat and prayed about it and the next Sunday I wrote a check for my tithe and I have been doing it ever since only I sometimes write it monthly now.  I’ve been doing this for over 30 years.  Then the blessings stared coming and they are still coming just because I’m obedient or as obedient as I can be.  From the great Italian prophet, Malachi or Malachi, we hear this: “’Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.  Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.’”  That is God’s promise then and that is His promise now.  If you start to obey God in all you do, you will find blessings that you never thought possible.  That is because God loves you so much.

But of course, we all know that God is not done yet.  He goes on to tell us that He will not harm us.  You might be thinking that He allowed this whole nation to be conquered and basically turned into slaves and that is right.  Remember what I just said about how if you are disobeying God, you could or will be subject to discipline.  This is discipline, God style.  You can argue with Him or not but that is the way it is and always has been.  I’m a firm believer that God’s discipline consists of God leaving us alone to our own devices.  These devises never work.  We see over and over in the Old Testament how God withdraws His presence from the people and it isn’t too many years before they come crawling back asking for forgiveness.  So, if you don’t feel God in your life, you may have your back to Him.  In our present world many people are like this and they don’t even know it.  But we know it.  Turn back to Jesus because He doesn’t want any harm to come to you.  He wants you for eternity.  I struggle with how He could ever want a broken person like me but He does.  And He wants you also because of this love He has for us that we just do not understand.

One of the biggest things that He wants to give us is hope.  The people Jeremiah is talking to are or could be fresh out of hope.  Everything they have ever known is gone.  Their homes, their land, their neighbors are all but a memory.  I think that it is a miracle that the Babylonians even allowed these people to live.  After all, one of the customs of the day was to kill everyone.  They have been allowed to live and their captors want them to have no hope.

But God gives them hope.  He tells them that if they follow, once again being obedient, then they will go back to their land in 70 years.  Now if someone told me that, I know that I would not still be alive in 70 years but the next generation would be.  Jesus tells us that He is returning.  We will not know the time like we see here, but we can be assured that He will return.  As I get older, I realize that I might not still be here when it happens so I want the next generation to be ready, I have the hope of the future because Jesus has told me through prayer and His Word.  He is coming back, this I know.  He tells us this in prayer and in the Bible.  I have lots of hope for the future, the future that lasts forever and ever and ever.  Praise the Lord!

I don’t know how much brighter your future can be?  We have a God who wants us to prosper and do well.  He will do all He can to help you in this if you remain obedient.  Our God will not harm you.  This is totally different from some of the other so-called gods, who are only interested in harming their enemies.  You have a great future that is full of hope.  All of this, God tells us in verse 13.  “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”  Following God is not that hard but it does take a little determination on your part.  There is no such thing as a part time Christian.  It is either all or nothing.  I have tried the nothing part for 40 years and I recommend, I urge, I beg that you do not go on that route.  Follow Jesus and become free for the first time in your life.

So, I fail to understand why we give reasons for not serving God or why we cannot wait for things to happen.  If you sit and wait for things or make excuses for not doing things, nothing will happen.  And please don’t listen to the false prophets whose words are like cotton candy.  They look good but there is nothing there.  To illustrate here are some false prophecies of the last few decades.  “Television may be feasible, but I consider it an impossibility, a development which we should waste little time dreaming about,” said Lee de Forest in 1926 and he was the inventor of the cathode ray tube.  Thomas Watson, Chairman of the Board of IBM, said this in 1943, “I think there is a world market for about 5 computers.”  A recording company expert said this in 1962, “We don’t think the Beatles will do anything in their market.  Guitar groups are on their way out.”

There are many more sayings like this from so-called experts.  I’m sure glad that everyone did not listen to these people.  I know that it is hard but don’t listen to all the Bible experts today who tell you things that are against the Bible.  Instead, listen to Jesus.  Read His Word.  Listen to His soft, gentle voice.  He calls you by name because He loves you so much.  He wants to be your friend, your helper, your guide for the rest of your life, for the rest of eternity.  He loves you just as much now as He did when Jeremiah was writing.  It is a love that will never end.  And I will say that over and over again.  It is a love that never ends my friends.  It goes on and on.  Praise the Lord!  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.