The plans I have for you (Jeremiah 29)

You may have heard this one:

Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

We’re looking at favourite verses in Jeremiah, and this might top the list. We’re asking you to handle Scripture well, understanding how it applied to them before applying it to us. Who was you? What plans did God have for them?

The you is plural. Jeremiah was addressing the generation being sent into exile. He was telling them to settle down and live the rest of their lives as captives in a foreign country where they didn’t want to be. They would die in Babylon.

Jeremiah 29:11 was not promising them a good life. God was promising to bring their children home and reestablish his kingdom:

Jeremiah 29 (NIV)
⁴ This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. ⁷ Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” …
¹⁰ This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

God is not promising me a wonderful life. He’s promising us a restored world. Just imagine a world that is no longer dominated by human rulers who oppress people for their own benefit, a world restored to God’s reign in his Anointed.

We’re not fully there yet, but we can see what God is doing. Since Jeremiah penned those words, many from the next generation did return to Jerusalem. Eventually God did send his Anointed to bear the sufferings of his people in his own body, slaughtered by those who resist God’s authority, raised to life with heaven’s authority over the earth.

God’s good plans arrive in his Messiah

The plans God has for us are being implemented in Christ.

In the Sermon on the Mount, our king proclaimed the unfolding of God’s plans, the blessing of God’s reign that transforms the world. In his reign, the poor receive the kingdom and those who mourn are comforted, the meek inherit the earth and those who yearn for justice are satisfied. Those who live in his leadership show mercy rather than demand rights, seeing God at work and not just the evil around us. God’s children are recognized by making peace instead of demanding retribution, gladly bearing away the injustice because we value God’s reign (Matthew 5:3-10).

After Christ had come, Peter wrote to God’s chosen people who were still living as exiles scattered in a world of other powers (1 Peter 1:1). He said God has rebirthed the world into the living hope that became reality the day God overcame the dominion of death by raising up his Anointed (verse 3). So, the community that trusts God’s protective power anticipates the plans God has for us (verse 4). We live with the mega-joy of what God is doing, while still facing grief and struggles that come from a world that doesn’t yet recognize its Lord (verse 5).

We are living in the plans God has for us! This was the rescue plan God promised through the prophets (verse 10). We are participating in the Messiah’s sufferings and the glories that follow (verse 11), the astounding rescue mission of God that even angels long to see fulfilled (verse 12). Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming (verse 13).

“I know the plans I have for you,” God told the generation he sent into exile. He told them to settle down and live wisely in Babylon for the benefit of the occupied world. We’re called to live in the present as children of our Father, enacting his reign by seeking the peace and well-being of the world that is not yet fully released from evil, the living embodiment of the world under Christ’s reign.

Now, that is something to live for! God’s plans are so much greater than anything I could plan for myself.

What others are saying

Christopher J. H. Wright, The Message of Jeremiah: Grace in the End, BST (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2014), 295–297:

Jeremiah 29:11 probably ranks as one of the most quoted and most claimed promises of the Bible. It is found in countless text calendars, pretty pictures and sacred ornaments. It is rightly trusted as a very precious word of assurance from God. But do we take note of its context? This is a surprising word of hope to a people who stood under God’s judgment. It is not a glib happy feeling: ‘God’s going to be nice to us all, me especially’ (we should note that the ‘you’ is plural, not individual — this is primarily a promise to the people as a whole). It is rather the robust affirmation that even in and through the fires of judgment there can be hope in the grace and goodness of God. That is God’s ultimate plan and purpose. …

Here then was a surprising hope for the future that turned victims into visionaries. It enabled the exiles to look up and look forward and believe. They were not going to get the instant quick fix their prophets were dreaming of. But they could trust that God would be true to his promise and that there was a future for the coming generations of God’s people which (as we now know) would eventually be a future and hope for the nations.

Karen H. Jobes, 1 Peter, BECNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 58–59, 106:

Peter addresses his readers using terms from the OT tradition that describe them as God’s covenant people. In this salutation, he applies to them the covenantal language of (1) election and (2) Diaspora, as well as (3) adjectives used in the Greek OT to describe Abraham, Moses, and the Israelites in Egypt. Moreover, he alludes to the ancient covenant made on Mt. Sinai by referring to the “obedience and sprinkling of the blood” (cf. Exod. 24), yet he defines the covenant in which his readers participate as the covenant established by the blood of Jesus Christ. …

God’s people of the OT time who lived their lives on the basis of the prophets’ words, as if eschatological salvation had already been accomplished, were living their lives from the same perspective as Peter’s readers and other believers who live on this side of Easter.

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• Temple as God’s presence (Jeremiah 7)
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