“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”--Luke 24:27
You are not Noah. You are not Joseph. You are not Peter. You are not Paul. You are not David and your enemy is not Goliath. Shocked? You really shouldn’t be. And if you are taught week in and week out that you are a Biblical character, you need to find another church where the Bible is accurately explained.
The Theme of all Scripture is Jesus Christ. He is the Hero of the Bible—and He alone is the Hero. I do not mean to say that every word carries some hidden meaning about Jesus or even that every verse somehow directly refers to Jesus. But, salvation through Him is the metanarrative of Scripture. In other words, He is the Theme of the Book. He is what the Word of God is about. And we need to stop interjecting ourselves into the text as if we are the supporting cast. He doesn’t need our help.
Perhaps an example would be beneficial. Recent data indicates that Jeremiah 29:11 has eclipsed John 3:16 as the most popular, most shared verse in the Bible. And though I am certain some have misused John 3:16 over the centuries, there is no question that John 3:16 addresses “whoever believes in him”--him being Jesus. John 3:16 opens the door to faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ for salvation from our sins. The promotion of John 3:16 for many years was rooted in a desire to further the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now certainly John 3:16 isn’t the only verse that teaches that. But for whatever reason, it caught on.
Jeremiah 29:11, however, is used in a completely different way. For the most part, prosperity preachers of our day have used (or better, misused) this verse to teach that “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” And, by the way, that wonderful plan includes, health, wealth and prosperity—the list is always the same. I wonder what the faithful believers in the Middle East or China would think about that? I wonder what the apostle Paul would have thought of that as he sat in a jail cell chained to a Roman soldier awaiting his execution? And yet somehow, American Christians (mostly) have jumped into the middle of a passage and used this verse to make it about ourselves.
The verse is certainly a good one—“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Isn’t that encouraging? You can certainly see how easy it is to preach. I mean, why would a preacher get up and preach on sin and Hell and a bloody Savior hanging on a Roman cross when he can tell his congregation they have their best life now right at their fingertips? But I digress…
A little background is necessary to understand this verse (and any other verse). Context matters. Context is not a trap—it’s a means to understand the meaning of a text. The Bible means what it originally meant. It means what it meant to the original audience. Whatever it meant in Jeremiah 29:11, it still means today. Now certainly, we can make applications—but only within the proper explanation of what the text meant to Jeremiah’s recipients.
Jeremiah was still in Jerusalem—and he was writing this letter to a group of Jewish captives in Babylon. These people had been judged by God for their continual rebellion against Him. After many centuries of longsuffering, God had finally brought judgment on Judah by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. He dragged off thousands of Jews into exile to Babylon as prisoners of war. And though Nebuchadnezzar believed he was doing his own evil bidding, God in His providence was actually using this wicked king to judge His own people.
Notice the previous verse: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.” (Jeremiah 29:10). I’m going to go out on a limb and assume nobody reading this blog has ever been a Jewish captive in Babylon. Oh, I’m being silly—but this is obviously addressed to a nation that lived in exile in Babylon for seventy years. And understand this—God fulfilled His promised to these people and brought them back from captivity in Babylon after seventy years. You can read about this in Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai and Zechariah. He had plans for their welfare. They had a future beyond the Babylonian captivity. And because of this, they could live as slaves who had hope.
The verses which follow Jeremiah 29:11 read, “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” (Jeremiah 29:12-14). I won’t get into the eschatological arguments here—that’s a subject for another time. However, it should be pointed out with crystal clarity that Jeremiah is writing to a people still yet under the Mosaic Law. And yet, he is explaining salvation by grace through faith. He speaks of a time when they would seek God with all their heart. As the nation of promise, this was to result in their restoration from exile.
Just from that little context, we should easily see that Jeremiah 29:11 is not about American Christians getting a new sports car or healing from a disease or finding a spouse or getting a job promotion or scoring a touchdown! This verse is right smack-dab in the middle of a context. It is written to the nation of Israel (the southern kingdom of Judah specifically). We can certainly glean truths about God’s character from this passage. And without question, there are applications for us—but never outside the immediate context. We cannot read ourselves into the passage because we are not there. There is enough in the black letters—we needn’t exegete the white spaces.
I’ll offer two quick encouraging applications. First, God is faithful to His Word. When our God makes a promise, it is trustworthy. We are not promised health and wealth and prosperity. That message would have gotten a preacher laughed out of town for most of the church age—and in most of the world today, for that matter. Christians have been persecuted since the days of Jesus, just as Jesus said they would be (John 15:20). But God has promised His people that this world is not the end—that one day He will make all things right. We can latch on to that promise even if we do not live to see it. Millions of saints have “died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.” (Hebrews 11:13). So, whether we live to see it or not, God will fulfill His Word just like He did for these Jewish captives in Babylon.
Secondly, salvation is offered to mankind by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Understand, this passage was written to a nation that understood the monotony of Mosaic ceremony. They had seen sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice—day after day after day—year after year after year. They should have understood firsthand that the Mosaic system wasn’t getting them anywhere. But there was One coming who would. God had earlier promised through Jeremiah to “raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’” (Jeremiah 23:5-6). Righteousness is to be found in this promised Davidic King—in the Jewish Messiah Himself. A century or more prior to Jeremiah, Isaiah wrote, “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:5-6). This Servant of Yahweh that Isaiah wrote about is the same King Jeremiah wrote about. Jesus is the Theme of both books. Therefore, Jeremiah 29:11 should point us to Jesus, not ourselves.
What has caused such sloppy Bible teaching? I suppose many explanations could be offered. But I’ll cut to the chase. Human depravity has caused such a careless approach to Scripture. Mankind wants a religion that will do something for him now. That’s what most religions have been about for thousands of years. And contemporary charlatans have taken our natural desire for our own welfare and misused Scripture to make it about us. And when they preach it that way, we become the hero rather than Jesus. Listen, if your Christianity centers on you and whatever worldly toys you can get from God while here on Earth, you are an idolater. Your religion has made you your own god.
Let me finish where I began. The Bible is not about you and me. It is about Jesus and salvation through Him. He alone is the Hero of Scripture—and of Heaven and of the Universe. He will always be the only Hero. His call is to deny yourself and daily follow Him (Luke 9:23). Don’t use Him like a genie in a bottle. Trust Him alone as the Savior for your sins. We bring nothing to the table but our own sins which He died for. We are the rescued—He is our great Rescuer. And we’ve been sent out into the world as beggars to tell other beggars where they can find bread. |
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