Foundations of Truth

Guest (Male): Welcome to Foundations of Truth, the Bible teaching ministry of Dr. Timothy Mann. Our mission is to help you build your life on the unshakable foundation of God's Word, rooted in Scripture and anchored in the grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Have you ever felt like life isn't going according to plan? Like the timeline you expected has been delayed, detoured, or completely rewritten? Today on Foundations of Truth, Dr. Timothy Mann reminds us of a powerful promise from Jeremiah 29. God's plan is not only intentional, it's always better than ours. Here now is Dr. Timothy Mann.

Dr. Timothy Mann: Jeremiah chapter 29. Chapter 29, we're going to be reading verses 10 through 14. The Bible says: "For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you and cause you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

And then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive." We'll stop here, and this is God's Word.

I want to ask you this question: Do you ever wonder what Almighty God is up to? I'm talking about the Creator of this world and of all the universe. What is he up to? Do you ever wonder that? What is he doing in your life? Why won't he answer that request you keep praying? Why is he letting you experience hardship? Why are there so many difficult people in your life? Why are you still struggling with that same stubborn habit? Why are you still stuck in that same boring job? What, if anything at all, is God doing in your life?

I would suggest to you the people of God asked these same kinds of questions during the days of Jeremiah. Similar questions. Maybe not the exact same questions, but similar questions. They had been deported to Babylon, which is modern-day Iraq. They were exiles, living in a ghetto a thousand miles from home. Many had watched in horror as their friends and family were murdered. And so they wanted to know where the Lord God was in all of that. Why was he allowing them to suffer?

Some prophets said this, others said that, but nobody seemed to know for sure what God was up to. Why were these things happening to God's people? Jeremiah 29 was written to answer that question. What Jeremiah 29 really is is this: this chapter contains a letter from home written by Jeremiah the prophet as the Lord gave it to him. Jeremiah, he's still living back in the capital city of Jerusalem, down in what's called Judah or Judea.

The main point of this letter in Jeremiah 29 is this: that Almighty God knows what he is doing even though it does not seem that way from our vantage point. His plans are always the best plans. That's the answer. What are his plans? And why are they the best? That's a good question. One reason from what we see from this chapter, one reason God's plans are best is because God knows all about them. They're known plans. He says in verse 11, the first part of verse 11, "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you," says the Lord. Some of the other English translations say, "I know the plans I plan for you."

God's plans are known plans. God makes and God knows God's plan. That fact is really stressed by the grammar of this verse, where "I" is actually repeated in Hebrew for emphasis. I, I know the thoughts I have for you. Now, we don't know what the plans are, but God does. These are God's plans for us, not our plans for God. Some people want to have a plan for God. These are God's plans for us, not our plans for God or even our plans for ourselves.

I don't know about you, but I've had plans that I thought were good plans. I've even had thoughts about myself and various things that didn't turn out so well. God's plans are very different. God insists on his right to know and fulfill his plans, which is why his plans are so good. They're God's plans rather than ours. The Bible says many are the plans in a man's heart, but it's the Lord's purpose that prevails. The God who knows the plans also carries them out.

In the verses that follow, Jeremiah actually proceeds to list—and I hope you picked it up as I read the Scripture—Jeremiah proceeds to list all the things that God will do. He said, "I will be found by you." He said, "I will bring you out of captivity. I will gather you. I will bring you back to the place." In other words, God will do the finding, God will do the gathering, and God will do the bringing back.

To discover—I don't have time to get into all the history of it, all the geography of it—but to discover how God did all this, I would encourage you to read the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and you'll see how God did all of this. Since God made the plans and knows the plans, it makes sense for him to fulfill the plans. We have to be a little careful about this, it can be dangerous for us to cherry-pick a verse out of the Old Testament sometimes and say, "This is about me." We have to be careful about that.

Although we should not take Jeremiah's promise here, God's promise, individualistically, we can apply it individually. Because God does know his plans for each and every Christian. He knows his plans for you, every single one of us. If you are a Christian, if you're a follower of Jesus, then you surely have found the same thing to be true in your own life. How many of you this morning can actually look back and see how God's hand has guided you every step of the way?

You know from your own experience that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28. That promise is not trite. It is truth. It is truth. God really does work all things for the good of those who love him. He knows the plans he has for you, and he always has. I want to remind you this morning that you can trust that fact. You can trust it.

The second truth here that Jeremiah 29 says about God's plans is that they are promising. They're promising. Very promising, I might add. The exiles thought they had every reason to be pessimistic about their situation, about their plight. They were being held captive and had no way of escape. But the Bible says that God had thoughts toward them. He had plans toward them. He had thoughts toward them to give them a future and to give them a hope, the second part of verse 11.

And here was the plan: Verse 14. "I will be found by you, says the Lord. I will bring you back from your captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places that I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I caused you to be carried away captive." The exiles—the good news here, the letter that Jeremiah was sending them straight from the Lord is this: you're not going to have to live in Babylon forever. That was good news.

This was a fixed-term captivity. It wasn't open-ended. It was temporary. That's what the Lord says. Verse 10, back up at verse 10, he says: "For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word"—this is a gracious promise—"I'll perform My good word toward you and cause you to return to this place." So at the end of seventy years, they're going to get to celebrate a homecoming.

Even though God's people were going through the worst of times, things were still promising because God knew the plans he had for them. I was thinking about this yesterday evening, and it came to me that this is the case: if God's plans are for the future, then the Christian really shouldn't complain about the present. Some people don't like it when they hear from the Word of God we shouldn't complain because you say, "Well, that's not fair. Things aren't always easy, and I ought to be able to complain. I ought to be able to gripe about them."

One of the dangers of grumbling about what God is doing is that whatever it is, God probably isn't finished doing it. You don't know the end of the story yet. It's still being written. Because by its very nature, a plan is something that will not be completed until sometime in the future. And once it is completed, it won't be a plan anymore. It'll be history. If God has plans for a hope and a future for you, then you're going to have to give him enough time to work it out.

Reserve your complaints. Suspend your griping just for a little while. Let him work his plan, because he's working a plan. That's why the Christian always lives by faith. A Christian is someone who trusts the promises of God for the future and acts upon them in the present. You trust the promises of God for the future and you live your life accordingly in the present. In other words, the Christian acts on God's promises before they're fulfilled.

That's what faith is, according to Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and being certain of what we do not see. And so to draw comfort from God's plans for the future, we have to take them by faith.

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You can give a gift right now at firm-foundations.org. That's firm-foundations.org. Now, let's get back to Foundations of Truth with Dr. Timothy Mann and today's message, "God's Plan is Always the Best Plan" from Jeremiah 29.

If you've decided to live for Jesus, then your future looks very promising. If you've decided to live for Jesus, your future looks very promising because Jesus has promised to forgive your sins, he's promised to make you a child of the living God, he's promised to send his Holy Spirit to comfort you, to prepare a place for you, and to come back so you can live with him forever. It all sounds most promising, I think. And you have to live by faith in those promises.

I think you can imagine the exiles hearing about God's plans and thinking that however promising they were, they were not very good. Especially that part about the seventy years. Because seventy years is a long time. That's a long time for God to work things out. Most people that I know, including myself, we actually would like God to work out our problems by the end of the week, not by the end of the century. I want this thing wrapped up by the end of the week, whatever it is.

The exiles probably knew enough arithmetic to figure out that they would be dead by the time the exile would be over. "Seventy years you say, Jeremiah? Sounds great for my grandchildren, but what about for me?" Well, see, the answer is that God's plans were not only promising, but they were also good. They're also good. There's a hint of the goodness of these thoughts that God has toward them, these plans that God has toward them, in verse 10, where God speaks of fulfilling or performing his good word.

He said in verse 10: "For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you. I will come to you and perform My good word toward you and cause you to return to this place." This good word is translated in other ways as a gracious promise. It's all about God's grace. His good word is all about God's grace. Grace is the unearned, undeserved, unmerited favor of God. To receive something by grace is to receive something that you don't deserve.

What God's people deserved—and you can read about this in the Bible—what God's people deserved in this case was actually to stay in captivity as long as God was pleased to keep them there. They deserved it. But God promised to give them something they did not deserve. By his grace, he would bring them back home. I think the Christian can't think about God's good word toward us and his gracious promises toward us without thinking about the grace that comes through the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Bible teaches that all of us are guilty sinners who deserve to be condemned for our sins. God has every right to give us the death penalty, both physically and spiritually. And yet, according to the Bible, because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved, Ephesians 2 says. Now, that's a good plan.

That's a good plan. It's God's plan for saving sinners. We don't deserve to be rescued from sin and delivered from death, but by his grace, God sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins. Salvation is God's abundant provision of grace through the one man, Jesus Christ, according to Romans 5:17. And so if you will turn from your sin, if you will turn from your way of living and turn to Jesus in surrendered faith, you will have an eternal hope and you will have a future.

But God's plans are not only good and gracious for the future, they're also gracious for the present. They're also good for the present. Jeremiah 29:11, he said: "I know the thoughts that I think toward you," says the Lord, "thoughts of peace and not of evil. Thoughts of peace and not of evil." God's grace is available right now. See, the exiles in Babylon, they didn't have to wait seventy years for God to do them any good.

His plans actually included their present prosperity. The word peace is translated prosper in other places. Jeremiah uses this very same word when he says back up in verse 7, just look up at verse 7 in this same chapter, he says to them: "Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace." In other words, if this pagan land that I've sent you to prospers, you're going to prosper. If it has peace, you'll have peace.

It's actually the Hebrew word shalom. Have you ever heard that word before? It's the Hebrew word shalom. And that word means more than just peace. It means more than just prosperity. It's a big word in Hebrew in the sense of all that it encompasses. It's talking about order and stability and health and safety and grace and tranquility and shalom is an all-encompassing peace. God promised that he would begin to give his people that kind of peace right away.

He wanted them to not only to work for shalom, verses 5 through 7, but he wants to give it to them. God's plans for his children—listen, hear me—God's plans for his children are only good. Now, even if he sends suffering our way, it will be for our good. You may not see it that way. I may not see it that way from our vantage point. But that's what God says. And we can trust him.

So Christians who live in fear or worry—I'm just going to make a confession to you this morning. I'm a worrier. I am. I'm a worrier. Now, I don't mean I go around outwardly wringing my hands all the time and all of this, but I can remain pretty calm most of the time, but inside I can get into a real turmoil. I can get stressed out inside. I mean, I worry about my family. I worry about the church that God has given me. I worry about my country. I worry.

And so for you to say to me—I mean, maybe you're just flatlined all the time, nothing bothers you and—but for you to say to me, "Well, just stop worrying." I know it's a sin, don't get me wrong. For you just to say "Stop worrying," for some people, that's like saying "Stop breathing." You just can't turn off a switch. I'm reminded of what the Lord told us in 1 Peter when he said: "Cast all your cares on Me, for I care for you."

What do I have to do with my worry? I have to throw it onto Jesus. I have to throw it onto the Lord. I have to toss it over on him. Because he says to me, "Hey, son, I've got this. I can handle it. You can't. Don't carry it. Give it to Me." And the next time a worry comes up, give it to me. Trust me with it. I can handle it. So Christians who live in fear or worry need to grab hold of the goodness of God. If you are God's child, God is not going to ultimately harm you.

It doesn't mean you won't have trouble. It doesn't mean you won't have tribulation. It doesn't mean you won't have some suffering. But he's not going to ultimately harm you. His plans are good. Last thing Jeremiah teaches us about God's plans is that they are personal. They're personal. Because God in God's purpose in all his plans is to bring his people into an intimate relationship with himself. More than anything else, God wants you to know him.

He says in verses 12 through 14, look what he says: "Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you." And here's the verse the kids learned all week, verse 13: "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." Verse 14: "I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity." See, God's plans—and this is the connection I really want you to make if possible—God's plans are not just for you.

They are actually for you in relation to him. You get that? His plans aren't just for you. They're for you in relation to him. And this relationship, according to them, was to begin right away for them. The exiles in Babylon didn't have to wait seventy years to have a relationship with God. He invited them into a personal relationship right away in Babylon and in their suffering. And the lesson is really easy to apply this morning.

We do not need to wait to call upon God. He's available to us right now. And whenever we call, he will listen. Whenever we pray, he will answer. Whoever seeks will find. Sometimes I think seeking God sometimes seems like playing spiritual hide-and-seek. Do you ever play hide-and-seek when you were a kid? I think sometimes seeking God can kind of seem like that, playing spiritual hide-and-seek. God's ways are so mysterious that we sometimes almost despair of ever really finding him.

If we do play hide-and-seek with God, it's kind of like hide-and-seek you play with a toddler. Because toddlers will get scared if they have to look for very long. For a toddler, the joy of hide-and-seek is not in the hiding or in the seeking, but in the finding. They're actually quite relieved when they find you if they're a toddler. God knows how scary it is to be alone in the world without him.

So his plans, his good plans, are personal plans. And these personal plans, they draw his children into the heart of a relationship with him. The thing that dawned on me this week about Jeremiah 29:13 is that it's a wonderful verse for anyone on a spiritual quest. God says: "You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." That's a promise that anyone who seeks God sincerely and wholeheartedly will find him.

And what the seeker is really looking for, even though he or she does not yet realize it, what the seeker is looking for is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the way to God, the Savior of the world. And he actually is the answer to all the big questions of life. Jesus really repeats this same wonderful promise that's made in Jeremiah 29. He repeats it in a different way in Matthew 7, verses 7 through 8.

He says, "Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. For anyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." That's what Jesus said. God's plans really are the best-laid plans. What could be better than the good, gracious, well-known plans that lead to a wonderful, eternal friendship with your Creator?

Guest (Male): Thank you so much for listening to Foundations of Truth today, the biblical teaching ministry of Dr. Timothy Mann. For more resources or to support this broadcast, you can go to our website, firm-foundations.org. And thank you.