Jeremiah 29:1, 4–14

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to your dreams that you dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord. 

For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

“I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans for your welfare, not for your harm. To give you a future with hope.”

This beautiful, encouraging statement has been used in a variety of contexts over the years. You may have encountered it on a graduation card, or congratulations for a newborn baby, or at a baptism. We might encounter them in a condolence card when life has somehow not gone according to plan, or to encourage a young person who’s about to set off on a new adventure.

The words are meant to convey divine care and providence—the idea that the God of the universe loves and cares for us, has laid out a plan for each of our lives, and wants the absolute best for us. Michael Chan writes that this verse, “emblazoned on coffee mugs, jewelry, graduation cards, journals—has provided comfort to countless readers of the Bible. Its beauty is undeniable, and these words are certainly deserving of our thoughtful attention.”

So, when we pay careful attention, we might be surprised by what we find.

First of all, we’re still in a very tumultuous period of time in Israel’s history. You may recall from previous weeks, they’re still living in a divided kingdom—north and south—and in the southern kingdom in particular, things have gone from bad to worse. The Temple in Jerusalem—that center of religious and political life—has been destroyed by foreign invaders. They’ve sent all the rich and powerful of Jerusalem into exile in Babylon and replaced the king with a puppet who’s controlled by these foreign powers.

And onto this stage comes Jeremiah—the reluctant prophet, the weeping prophet. The people, they’re hungry for a word from God. They want to hear how these evil foreign powers are only temporary. That God will vanquish them and rescue God’s people, setting them free. That the north and the south will reunite, the Temple will be rebuilt—Jerusalem restored—even better than ever. That those in exile will return, the nations will heal, and the fortunes of each person will turn for the better.

But Jeremiah’s message is not that simple.

First of all, when it says, “I know the plans I have for you,” Jeremiah is not speaking to an individual person. He’s speaking to a collective. The Hebrew is plural. It’s not just “you,” but as we’d say in the South, “y’all.” Or better yet, “all y’all,” right? The plans I have for you—all of you.

The other thing that has a major impact on the way we understand these verses is the fact that these promises are being made less to those who are hearing them—and more to those who will come after them. It says right there in the passage: the period of exile is going to last for seventy years.

So, most of the people who are hearing these words will pass before they come to fruition.

Again, Professor Chan writes: “Jeremiah’s hope was set against a long, multi-generational horizon. It was hope that would be realized by future generations, not those who first heard the letter. The initial hearers would not ultimately be the beneficiaries.”

It might remind us of the people who had been released from slavery in Egypt. They had to wander the desert and the wilderness for forty years before they got to the promised new land. And as we read it, we realize—the group that sets out on that initial forty-year journey is not the same group that enters the Promised Land. People have passed away. Children have been born.

There’s this biblical theme: that the solace is given not for the current generation, but for future generations. Their solace is not in their own freedom, but in knowing that their people will not remain estranged. And that future generations will get to experience the return for which they themselves long.

What’s further surprising is that, in Jeremiah, the prophet tells them not only to make peace, but in the meantime, they’re to take up roots in this foreign land. They’re even to work—for the welfare of the city. Just to be clear, this is the city of their oppressors and their captors.

Professor Chan says: “instead of trying to manufacture a speedy return to Judah, Jeremiah calls upon his audience to exercise active, hopeful patience—by putting down roots, building lives, even working for the prosperity of their conquerors. Jeremiah’s words challenge the exiles not just to hold on to hope, but to act upon it through practical, everyday actions. Build. Live. Plant. Eat. Marry. Give. Bear. Multiply. Seek. Pray.

These are the verbs in the passage. These dynamic verbs call for active engagement with the world around them, even in the unfamiliar and often hostile environment of Babylon. Hope, in Jeremiah’s vision, is not passive or abstract. It’s lived out in the daily rhythms of life.”

The daily rhythms of life—that’s where hope is cultivated.

But Jeremiah knows that these small, daily acts reflect our faith in God’s promises. Remember, prophets are not those who are able to predict what happens in the future. Rather, they are those who trust so much in God’s future that they know it—not just as a possibility—but as an eventuality.

So it’s not so much that they have special knowledge about what is going to happen—so much as they know that no matter what happens, God is in control.

This idea—that some have special knowledge of the future that others do not—is a heresy called Gnosticism, which early Christians rejected. The name “Gnostic” comes from the Greek word for knowledge—gnosis. You can think Da Vinci Code here, where there are all these divine hidden secrets and clues in scripture and creation, or in history, that somehow some are able to decipher and gain an edge on the rest of us.

The early Church rejected this idea on the grounds that the Gospel does not prefer some over others. No one is given special knowledge—not even Jeremiah. Jeremiah doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen in the future. But Jeremiah trusts in God, no matter what.

And that difference is really important, because one leads to resignation and passivity—while the other inspires courage, even in the most dire of circumstances.

Hope is often understood simply as wishful thinking, writes Professor Chan. “I hope we get a lot of rain this year. I hope things work out. I hope they go our way. But for Jeremiah, hope shapes action.”

Let me approach this a different way. Pastor Adam Hamilton writes that a member of his congregation once sent him a Facebook meme that said: “Everything happens for a reason—but sometimes the reason is just that you’re stupid and you make bad decisions.”

It’s not that the sentiment’s wrong—it just doesn’t go quite deep enough.

Hamilton affirms that “God guides us—by the Spirit, through Scripture and church. We pray. And through other Christians, God strengthens us. God walks with us. And we are called and empowered to be God’s hands and voice in the world.

But God doesn’t force us. God has shown us what is good and what’s required of us. But God also gives us freedom—to walk the path or to walk away from it.

And that choice is what makes us human.”

My friend Bobby Williamson talks about putting his five-year-old son in time out. He looks over and sees him crying, and he knows the boy’s sorry—but he and his wife have agreed that they’re supposed to be consistent in their consequences.

So instead of letting him out of time out, Bobby pulls up a chair and sits down next to him for the duration of the time.

Hearing him tell about this brought me back to my own experience as a child. It might not surprise you, but I had more than a few occasions to be put in time out—or grounded. And as I sat there, I can recall wondering if I had done something to make my parents stop loving me.

I know it seems silly, right? But you remember what it was like to be that young—to be a vulnerable child.

My parents’ love was everything to me. And the idea of losing it? Devastating.

Of course, I hadn’t lost it. Not even close. I was just experiencing the consequences of my own behavior. And they, out of love, let me experience them. But they never really left me on my own.

“I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “Plans for your welfare, not for your harm. To give you a future with hope.”

I hope you have people in your life who love you no matter what. I hope you have people in your life that you love no matter what.

And I hope that our church community can be a place where we can endeavor to be those who love and are loved unconditionally.

And while I certainly don’t want any of us to have seventy years of exile before we get a taste of God’s future… most of all, what I really wish is that we have complete and utter faith in the love of God. That, in the words of Paul, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

Because sometimes in life, we do have to endure the consequences of our own actions.

But what a difference to know that we’re not alone. And that we’re loved, no matter what.

Amen.

The post God’s Plans appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Discussion Questions:

1. Exile and Context

• Jeremiah’s letter was addressed to a people living in exile. How do you think this message would have felt to the original hearers?
• Are there ways you feel “in exile” in your own life—disconnected, uncertain, or far from where you want to be?
• How does God’s command to “build, plant, seek the welfare of the city” speak to your current season of life?

2. Hope and God’s Plans

• Jeremiah 29:11 is often quoted as a message of comfort. How does understanding its original context change or deepen its meaning for you?
• What does it mean to you that God’s promises may unfold over generations, not immediately?
• In what ways do you see “hope” as an active practice rather than passive waiting?

3. Community and Collective Faith

• Pastor Mark highlighted that “you” in this passage is plural—“all y’all.” How does thinking of God’s promise in communal terms change its impact?
• How can our church embody a shared sense of future and faithfulness together?

4. Trusting God Over Time

• Jeremiah’s message invites a kind of trust in God’s future that sustains even without full knowledge of the outcome. How easy or hard is that for you?
• Can you share a time when you had to trust God without knowing what would happen?

5. Applying the Sermon

• What small, daily actions can you take to cultivate hope and faith, especially in challenging circumstances?
• How can we as a church support one another in trusting God’s long-term vision and embodying active, rooted hope in our community?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: God’s Plans appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Genesis 21:1–3, 22:1–14

The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him.

After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. And the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them walked on together.

When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide,” as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

A man goes to the dentist because he has a bad toothache The dentist conducts an exam and takes some x-rays. After looking everything over he says, “I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

The man says, “Let’s get the bad news over with first.” The dentist says, “You need a root canal and several fillings.” The man is taken aback. “What is the good news?”

The dentist replies, “Well, after this I will finally have enough for a downpayment on a boat.”

The Christian faith is about good news. That’s what Gospel means. It means good news. But what if the good news doesn’t always appear to be good from our vantage point? What if we don’t even really know what is good to begin with?

You and I tend to define good in relative terms: what benefits me; what is good news to me. But what about the good that comes from the bad? Or the good that confronts us with the uncomfortable truth about ourselves? Or the good news that is good for others, but not so good for you and me?

Barbara Brown Taylor says sometimes good news is a matter of where we hit the pause button. You win the lottery. That’s good. The IRS takes their chunk. That’s bad. You are able to afford all you need and more. That’s good. Suddenly people you haven’t talked to in years come out of the woodwork asking you to invest in their project or idea and you can’t or don’t want to say yes to them all. That’s bad.

We can see this truth in our story today. Abraham and Sarah finally have a child to call their own. That is good. But Abraham, who had grown impatient waiting and had a child with Sarah’s handmaid Hagar, now must send Hagar and their son Ishmael away. That is bad. God tells Abaraham to take his son Isaac up the mountain and offer him as a sacrifice. That is bad. But at the last-minute God provides a ram and Isaac is spared. That is good. Abraham earns God’s trust. That is good. Poor Isaac is scarred for life. That is bad.

Where do we hit the pause button? From which perspective or vantage point are we judging whether the news to be good or not?

Of the binding of Isaac, Ellen Davis writes, “This story appears front and center in Genesis, where no reader of the Bible can miss it, because the hard truth is that the world turns upside down for the faithful more often than we like to admit.”

She continues, “I remember the words of my young friend, a devout Roman Catholic, just a few hours after his first child had died in birth… “I could say, ‘Why me?’ But why not me? I knew this happens to people, and it never made me doubt God before. So why should I doubt God now? But still, I do not understand.”

Life presents us with many challenges and opportunities. We can’t always see how things will turn out. There is much we do not understand, and we do well NOT to rationalize or explain every tragedy, but simply let it be what it is. There is no guarantee in life that we will live free of pain and tragedy. Most of us will have more than our fair share of grief.

Where do we find God when things are turned upside down? What good is our faith? Where is the good news? Where do we go?

Davis writes, “The 22nd chapter of Genesis is the place you go when you do not understand at all what God allows us to suffer and, it seems, asks us to bear — and the last thing you want is a reasonable explanation, because any reasonable explanation would be a mockery of your anguish. This story of Abraham and God and Isaac is the place you go when you are out beyond anything you thought could or would happen, beyond anything you imagined God would ever ask of you, when the most sensible thing to do might be to deny that God exists at all, or to deny that God cares at all, or to deny that God has any power at all.”

There is an old theological formula that says if God is good and all powerful, then evil should not exist. Therefore, if evil exists then God either must not be good or not all powerful. But who says that our definition of good or power is correct? Do we really know what is good or only what is good for me? And who says power is about controlling every little thing? What about the power of letting go, the power of letting others find their own way and make their own mistakes?

Last week I told the story of parents taking their firstborn to college which concluded by stating, the best gift love can give is the gift of freedom. What if that is what the story of the binding of Isaac is really about?

What if it is not a divinely scripted experiment for God to demonstrate some barbaric lesson? What if instead it is a story about human freedom? A reminder that this gift is not without risk or challenges?

What if it is a story about how God loves us so much, that God allows us the freedom to choose and think for ourselves? What if it is about the risk God is willing to take on, to allow us the room to become our own unique selves, to make mistakes, to experience loss, to cause harm? Not because those things are good, but because the alternative means we are not really self-autonomous beings but mere characters in some divine play in which every line and movement is predetermined. What if out of love, God refuses to rescue us from every harm or danger, but nevertheless God promises to never leave us no matter what?

This past Thursday on Sept 11^th, my friend Alex wrote this on his social media account: The news today is of violence. An assassination in Utah. Russian military drones in Poland. Missile attacks against peace negotiators in Qatar. The relentless, indescribable hell of conditions in Gaza. Today is also our son’s birthday. He’s 15. When he was born, I remember being so grateful to have this gift of great joy to overwhelm the sadness of September 11th and what it did to [our] country. Because of him, today is for me not primarily a day to bemoan the brokenness of the world. It is a day to rejoice in the beauty of one wonderful human.

Friends, we live in a world where terrible and beautiful things happen every day. We do not always know what is good. We do not always exercise the power we possess in the most loving way toward others. We too often misspeak God’s name, confusing our own categories with divine commands or categories that were never given in the first place.

Simply put, the Good News is bigger than our categories of good and bad. God is not bound by our attempts to define God, to hem God in, to control God. Stories like the binding of Isaac push us deep into the mystery of God in ways that are uncomfortable and disturbing. And yet, in the end, it proclaims God is trustworthy, even in the most dire and unthinkable of circumstances. Things may not always turn out the way we hope or want, but all that means is that the universe is not designed for our benefit alone. Good news that is JUST for you or me, is not worthy of the name Gospel. God’s good news is bigger than that. It is for ALL of us. For God so loved the whole world. That is the Gospel. Amen.

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