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Hope Breaks Through - Jeremiah 29:1-14
By Steve Jeantet | September 29, 2008
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Introduce Jeremiah
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- Son born this week
- Wanted to show you a couple of pictures
- Spent time this week thinking about his Biblical namesake
- Invite you to spend our time together investigating one of the most famous passages in the book of Jeremiah
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Pray
Transition
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- Freshman year in college at campus ministry
- Hand out slips of paper with verses on them
- Slip I received had Jeremiah 29:11
- Now, at the end of my first semester of college, it was an encouragement
- However, as I look back, I see danger in something like this because it takes the verse totally out of context
- Like picking verses out of thin air
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Jeremiah 29:11
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- Plans / prosper / not harm / hope / future
- That is an encouraging verse
- Yet, let’s go back and look at it in context and we’ll see that the power goes much deeper than we even thought
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Forth-tellers, Not Fortune Tellers
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- Normally look at OT prophecy as if the prophets were fortune tellers
- But that was not really their role
- Instead, their role was forth-telling
- That is, apply the Scriptures to the current setting of the lives of the people
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Deuteronomy 28
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- Because of that, if we want to understand the context, we need to go back – way back
- Covenants in the Scriptures are the means by which God administers his relationship with his people
- Each covenant had a responsibility that was accompanied with blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience
- Deut 28 outlines much of this for us
- Blessings
- Set above all nations
- Crops and livestock will be blessed
- Womb will be blessed – their numbers will increase
- Enemies will be defeated
- Vs 11 – “The Lord will grant you abundant prosperity – in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground – in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you
- Land – God will give them the land he promised
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- Deuteronomy is Moses’ last sermons to the Israelites before they enter the promised land
- Curses
- While obedience is rewarded with blessing, disobedience will be punished
- Read with me verses 15-19; 36
- All those things that will be blessed will be cursed because of disobedience
- And they will be driven from the land
- They know what is required of them – they have the 10 commandments, beginning with “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other.â€
- If they disobey – if they turn and worship other gods – they will be driven from the land
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Jeremiah 16
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- It is within that context that we can fast forward to Jeremiah
- Again, he wasn’t fore-telling or fortune-telling, he was forth-telling
- He was bringing the ancient words to bear on the lives of his listeners and readers
- Read verses 1-13
- Notice the parallel between the end of this passage and Deut. 28
- Driven from the land into a land neither you nor your fathers have known
- Moses warned you that if you forsook the Lord and worshiped other gods, you would lose the land
- And that is exactly what is about to happen
- In fact, we see here that God commands Jeremiah not to get married or to have any kids or to go to funerals or even to parties as a sign of the impending judgment
- Yet, they continue in their wickedness – even worse than those who came before them – and so God makes good on his word and the Babylonians attack and conquer Jerusalem and taken the people of God out of the promised land and into captivity in Babylon
Jeremiah 29:1-14
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- Because of their sin – because they worshiped other gods – they have been become exiles in a foreign land
- This passage, as we see in verses 1-3, is a letter from Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon
- Read verses 1-14
- Make a few observations
- They are to build houses and settle down
- They are to plant gardens
- They are to get married
- They are to have their kids get married
- All the things that Jeremiah was commanded not to do to warn the people of Judah of the coming judgment, they are now commanded to do
- Why? And, even more important, why would they want to do this?Â
- They have been ripped out of their home and taken captive
- All joy and hope seem lost, yet they are commanded to go on living?
- See, like I said earlier, we treat Jer. 29:11 as if it came out of thin air as a little pick-me-up when we’re having a bad day
- But that verse was written to people who have lost everything – this wasn’t a bad day, it was a seemingly hopeless day when everything they thought they knew was gone
Hope Breaks Through
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- It is right there, at that point of darkness, that hope breaks through
- Listen again to verses 10-14
- When all seems lost, God promises a return to the land and to their homes
- When all seems lost, hope breaks through
- God had not forgotten them or stopped loving them
- In fact, God remembered them and promised hope
- See, he still longed to be with his people
- The story of Scripture is the story of God making a people for himself
- He punished their sin, but he did not stop making them a people for himself
- He promises that “I will be found by youâ€
- 3 times in the next couple of chapters we see repeated the great hope of the Old Testament
- Jer. 30:22 – “So you will be my people and I will be your Godâ€
- Jer. 31:1 – “At that time,†declares the Lord, “I will be the God of all the clans of Israel, and they will be my people.â€
- Jer. 31:33-34 – Great promise of the New covenant – read
- Even in their darkest hour, God was still the king and brought hope to his people
One More Move
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- Knight playing Satan in game of chess
- Movie follows their back and forth game until, with 1 final move, Satan calls, “Checkmateâ€
- There, in the theater, was Bobby Fischer, staring at the screen – he stares for a while until he turns to his friend and asks, “Why is the knight giving up? The king still has one more move!â€
- Did you hear that? The king has one more move!
- That’s is the great hope of Jeremiah and the great hope of the Scriptures
- Just when it looked like all hope was lost, the king has one more move – our king has one more move
- Listen to these verses from Jer. 29
- Verse 4 – “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylonâ€
- Verse 14 – “I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished youâ€
- Verse 20 – “Therefore hear the word of the Lord, all you exiles whom I have sent away from Jerusalem to Babylonâ€
- See, God was always in control – he always had one more move
- At no point did this surprise him or slip from his control
- Our King has one more move
Hope Breaks Through in Christ
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- That one last move came in the darkest of hours
- A time when it seemed like all hope was lost
- Jesus, the very Son of God, was hanging on a cross
- It looked like the enemy might win after all
- But, our King has one more move!
- Dead and buried, Jesus rose from the dead, victorious over sin and death
- The Israelites were punished with exile because of their sin
- But we do not have to bear the punishment of our sin because Jesus had one last, surprising move
Hope Breaks Through in Your Life
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- Some of you here this morning are at the darkest hour of your life
- It seems like all hope is lost for your marriage
- It seems like all hope is lost in your bank account as the prices go up and the job security goes down
- It seems like all hope is lost when a dear family member or friend passes away
- Yet it is there, at the darkest hour for the Israelites – in the midst of exile – that Jeremiah delivers a message of hope from God
- It is at the darkest of hours – when the Son of God was hanging on the cross – that hope broke through in Christ
- And now, at your dark hour, Jesus is inviting you to the hope accomplished on the cross
- He is inviting you to bring your heavy hearts and lay them down at the foot of his victory
- Some of you have never found hope anywhere you have turned – this morning, turn to Christ in whom all the promises of God are “Yes and amenâ€
- If you have, it doesn’t mean your dark hours are gone – it was God’s own people who were exiled – but it is in the midst of your dark hour, just as theirs, that God longs to bring hope
- Because, the great hope of the Scriptures is this – the King has one more move
Pray
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Topics: Jeremiah |