Ep. 183. Jeremiah 28-29 | I Know the Plans I Have

EPISODE 183

I KNOW THE PLANS I HAVE: JEREMIAH 28-29

Context matters. It has to. When we presume to use a passage without regard to its context we engage in dangerous business and run the high risk of twisting the Scripture to suit our own desires and biases.

Jeremiah 29:11 is NOT God speaking to you and me about his plans for our prosperous future, any more than Jeremiah 21:10 is about how God intends to harm us and destroy us in the fire. We can't take one verse out of context and apply it to ourselves without doing that for every other verse. I have never heard anyone use Jeremiah 21:10 as their life verse, but people stumble over one another to raise Jeremiah up as a bastion of hope for all Christians.

Jeremiah 29 is a copy of a letter Jeremiah wrote to the exiles in Babylon. It is consistent with everything he has proclaimed in his ministry for the previous 34 years and will agree with everything he has yet to proclaim to these people in the remaining 6-7 years of ministry. He is writing to Jews who submitted themselves to God's discipline at the hands of Babylon. He reminds the exiles of God's covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is showing that God is faithful to his word. But he also tells them in Jeremiah 29:10 that these things will come to pass when the seventy years for Judah are finished. (at this point they are 12-13 years into that 70 years leaving them another 57-58 years before God is going to bring about this blessing) But no one talks about the seventy years because it doesn't fit their twisted scripture narrative. As of the writing of this blog, I'm 49 years old. There's no way I'm making it another 57 or 58 years. Neither will most of the people who wrongly claim Jeremiah 29:11 for themselves.

When we take Scripture out of context and hang our hopes on it or ask others to, we set ourselves and others up for failure. The Scripture has a meaning, but it has a meaning defined and bound by its context. When we make every Scripture a secret message from God, we end up serving a God of our own making. Eventually, we will see that the false God we have created crumbles, and everything we believed (wrongly) will be reduced to rubble. The only way to be protected from false doctrine creeping into our hearts and minds is to diligently study the text to understand its intent.

Context matters. It has to.

ADDITIONAL READING: Jeremiah 21:10; Jeremiah 24