Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Sermons and messages from Pastor Jason White and others at Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Tyler, TX
We are continuing our summer message series, as you see here, titled that's not what that verse means. And we've been through a number of verses throughout this summer that a lot of people take, quite honestly, out of context. And when they're taken out of context, they're said to mean one thing, when actually they were written to mean something different. And if we don't understand what they were really there to say and what they ultimately meant, then we misapply them to our lives and how we live those verses out as well. And today, we're going to look at another verse that gets taken out of context quite often, and this is one of the most popular verses in all of Scripture. As a matter of fact, the YouVersion Bible app that many of us have on their phones, they track how many verses people are searching for, what are the most popular ones people are searching for, and this was the second most searched for verse out of every verse in the entire Bible in the year 2023, and my guess is that it's been that way for a long time. This is just one of those verses that we love to go to because we think we know what it says to us. It's Jeremiah, 2911, and it says this, 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 a hope and a future. This is one of those verses that I'm sure you know. Most of us have heard this verse. A lot of us have this very verse hanging in our homes somewhere. We display verses like this. This is a really popular verse around times of graduation for our students. It's written on graduation cards, and we say it to our students and those who are going to be launched out of here to figure out who they were created to be and what they're going to do on their own. And we we quote this verse and say, We know that the Lord has great plans for you and your life. He's going to prosper you and not harm you in any way. And so many of you, again, have this hanging up somewhere, an office, a home. Maybe you quote it often, maybe you have it written on something whenever you're trying to achieve your own goals, right? Whatever school it is that you're trying to get into, right, whatever sport it is that you're playing, I know that the Lord's got good plans for me, and so I'm going to use that to continue to work hard to make sure that I bring these things into fruition. A lot of us, when we think about this. Think about financial prosperity. This is God's way and designed to give me a great career and to bless me financially. Or this business that I'm trying to get launched off the ground, or this career that we're trying to start. Some of us go to this verse when we get married, or maybe before we get married. I know you got good plans for me. I know there's a husband out there somewhere, right, or when we do get married to bless us with children and lots of children and grandchildren. And maybe it even extends to things like retirement one day and all around I mean, we just apply it to any and every situation. A lot of times it has to do with our health, even, right? These plans to prosper us, even in our health, we just think that things are going to get better in the future, not just better, but one day, things are going to be great, right? I am going to prosper because Jeremiah, 2911,
the Bible the Lord says so. And here's the deal, though, this is not just with individuals who use this verse in this way, entire churches are built around this ideology, around this very verse. As a matter of fact, here's a direct quote from one church's website, which is around their church's statement of beliefs, and I quote it says this, it is God's will for every believer to become whole, healthy and successful in every area of life. If you say yes to Jesus, you'll put your faith and trust in Him for your salvation, then his will for you is to make you whole, to make you physically healthy and to make you successful in the area of finances and your career or your sport or your education or your title or every area of life. And a lot of times this verse is cited as a reference to say, see, this is biblical. It's not just something that we're saying. This is what the Lord says. And often when it's quoted in such a way that what it gets turned around to is, now your role in this. The Lord has those good plans, but it's your role to have faith, to be.
Leave enough that the Lord will make those plans come true, and they'll say, if you find yourself in situations and circumstances where maybe you're not prospering, you're not prospering financially, you're not prospering physically, you're not prospering in your career or your relationships, then that's because you don't have real genuine faith. But if you begin to have real genuine faith, you begin to believe enough. You name it and claim it. You follow the rules. You give you serve enough. You work hard enough to achieve those goals. Then God will get you over the top, and finally, you will enter into that promised land of prosperous living, where everything you were wanting and chasing after will become yours. The only problem with all of this
is that that's not what that verse means.
It's not what that verse means. The other problem is because of that, when we use it out of context to say these things, then it can cause people to end up in some pretty dark places in their lives when things don't go their way in life. If you're told that the Lord has plans to prosper you and you don't end up prospering, then why is that?
Take Marge, for example. Bob George wrote about this in one of his books. He used to run a large radio ministry, and Marge a real person, real story, called him one night, and the very first thing out of her mouth was, Bob, if someone commits suicide, if a Christian commits suicide, will you still go to heaven? Now, Bob had been involved on radio and ministry long enough to know that when somebody asks a question like that, most of the time, you're not just calling up and just curious about that like this is probably something that you're seriously considering and wrestling with in your own life. And sure enough, it was Marge went on to explain that she had been a Christian for a number of years. She had been a part of a church who taught her that God had plans for her to prosper in all areas of her life. But the only problem was she was not prospering. She went to the leaders in the church, and they told her that it was because she wasn't doing the right thing. She wasn't reading her Bible enough. She wasn't praying enough. She wasn't fasting enough. She wasn't giving enough. She didn't have enough faith.
Her response was but I was giving and I was studying and I was praying. I was fasting, seeking and trusting the Lord, but I still had financial problems. I was still a single mother trying to raise a teenage son. I was still lonely, I was still struggling with being overweight. I was still angry. What was wrong?
I was told that if I was do all of the right things, then God would deliver me. I would prosper, according to his great plans for me. But he didn't deliver me. I wasn't prospering. The only thing I could assume is that God was rejecting me. If
you feel like God's rejecting you,
why not take your own life? It doesn't matter if you're here or not.
This is where she was. It's a dark place to be in if you're told that the Lord has plans to prosper you, for you to be successful in every single area of life, and you're not achieving that success in those areas of life. But again, that's not what this verse means. We think that this verse was written because it's in the Bible. It must have been written directly to us. He's talking to me personally. I have great plans for you to prosper and to not harm you, and for a future and all of those things. But the proper context. First of all, we need to notice where this is in our Bibles, right? Jeremiah is in the Old Testament of our Bibles. It is at a time written, at a time when the nation of Israel was under an old covenant, a Mosaic Covenant, they had been unfaithful to that covenant God had given them the law. They said they would do everything in it that they commanded him, but they had not. They had been unfaithful. They had begun to worship idols. They were committing sins and involved in so many things that God didn't have for them. And so God's judgment at this time was coming down on them. The Kingdom had been split into two, into a northern kingdom and a Southern Kingdom. The northern kingdom of Israel had been taken into exile by the Assyrians, and at this time, the southern kingdom of Judah was being conquered now by the Babylonians. This is the thing that was going on and taking place at the time these things were written in Jeremiah 29
Yeah. And as a matter of fact, even one chapter earlier in chapter 28 of Jeremiah, if you went back and read that, you would see that there was another prophet who was prophesying about this thing and the situation that they were in, and he was trying to tell them, Listen, it's no big deal. This will just be a couple of years. It'll go by in no time, and you'll be out from underneath this thing. But here's what it says in the verse right before the one I read to you in 2911
Jeremiah says, no, no. This is actually what the Lord says. That other guy said two years. But no, no, this is what the Lord says
when 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place, not two years, but 70 years, 70 more years to live in exile, to live in a land that is not your own, to live amongst a people in a culture that is different than yours, those who speak a different language, those who who knows what are going to force you to do in those 70 years or not allow you to be able to do during those 70 years.
That's 840 more months of living under those conditions. 3640
weeks of living under those conditions. 25,576
more days that you have to go through this
which means that most of them, if not, all of them would not be here any longer when that time is up. And so here's the deal. For those who would be reading this letter from Jeremiah, there is no future prosperity for them because they'll never even make it out of exile before those 70 years are up, for example. And so look, when we look at Jeremiah, 2911,
and we try to use it to apply to each one of our lives individually, with how God is going to prosper us in the future, all of these great plans that He has for us in the future. But now, when we look at it in context, we see that most of the individuals that would have been receiving this letter that it was written to were going to have to suffer for 70 more years, and that they may not even be alive by the time that this is out. And so I hope you can start to see that it's a pretty far stretch for each one of us to try to say that this verse applies to each one of us as individuals and the prosperity that God planned for us, if the ones it was even written to he was saying, You're not going to be prospering for the next 70 years, you're going to suffer, and it's my plan for you to actually do so.
But again, that's not what this verse means. This verse, when we're looking at it here, what God says, when he says it in Jeremiah 29 is he's talking about the nation of Israel as a whole. God was saying that even though suffering is part of my plan for the next 70 years for you, I do have plans to preserve you as a nation. Have plans to preserve you as a nation. And this, of course, listen is, is all part of a larger plan. This is my plan for these 70 years, but the larger plan is the fulfillment of this promise that I made to Abraham, entering into the Abrahamic Covenant all the way back in Genesis 12, when God declared that, through the nation of Israel, he would be a blessing to all people, right? And that fulfillment, we're told, ultimately came through Christ. Right? The apostle Paul talks about this in Galatians, he referring to who Jesus. Jesus redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham,
Genesis 12 might come to the Gentiles through Christ, Jesus, so that, why? So that by faith, we might receive the promise of the Spirit, we might enter into union with God and all be a part of His family.
So watch this, the future prosperity that's mentioned in Jeremiah, 2911
once again, was first and foremost to the nation of Israel, referring to them coming back from exile. The nation would not be killed off. They would preserve a remnant. All right, they would come.
From exile, preserve you as a nation, in order to do what fulfill his long term plan and promise to Abraham from Genesis 12, so that all people, including the Gentiles, would have forgiveness of sins and receive the promise of the Holy Spirit one day. This was God's great plan, not that he would bring the blessing of financial and physical and political prosperity to every single individual, but the great plan was to offer the forgiveness of sins to all people, the chance to be reconciled to God by and through Jesus Christ, for all people and guys, that certainly does mean that if you come to receive Christ as your Lord and Savior, that one day, when Jesus comes back, we will have ultimate prosperity, complete prosperity through healing and wholeness in every single way when we spend eternity with Him in Heaven. But this prosperity also includes blessings for now, spiritual blessings that we receive for this life. The Apostle Paul even refers to that in one of his letters to the New Testament churches in Ephesus, when he says, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus, Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with what, every, every, not, some, every spiritual blessing in Christ, all right, the moment you said yes to Jesus, you entered into a spiritual union with Him, and in that moment, you have every spiritual blessing that there is to have for all time, no matter what your situations or circumstances are, whether you're prospering
or whether you're suffering, you still have all spiritual blessings in your relationship with Christ. And this is such a big deal, guys, because the promise of Scripture, again, is not that you will have financial prosperity, that you will have physical prosperity, that you will become a professional athlete one day, that you'll get into the best you know school, one day that you are going to accomplish all of the dreams that you have right now. Jesus never promises this. He never promises that we will be exempt from suffering. He never promises that if we do the right things and we work hard enough and we serve Him enough and have the right amount of faith that we will prosper. But
what he does promise is that we will have life in Christ. What he does promise is that we will have peace in Christ. What he does promise is that we will have joy in Christ. In other words, Jesus is our prosperity. Jesus is our prosperity. So when we come back to the verse that we're looking at today For I know the plans I have for you, declares the word plans to prosper you and not to harm you, and plans to give you a hope and a future. Guys, we cannot take this Old Testament, verse written to the nation of Israel and apply it to our dreams, in our hopes for our career, our hopes for our sports achievements, our hopes for our graduation plans, our financial plans, our physical prosperity, or any other kind.
Now, when we start to say that you go, okay, but I mean, doesn't God still have good plans for us, even if that wasn't written to us. Isn't that an overarching kind of principle that God has? Well, yeah, but it depends on how you define his plans,
right?
I mean, certainly God did put you on this planet to play a role in this world we live in through the work that He created you to do. There's a role that he has for you in the body of Christ, to play a role in his kingdom, work that he's up to in you and through you. And those things are good, and you should be looking to Him as the one to guide you into those plans that He has for you and how he's going to work in and through you. But the difference is this, we're looking for his plans in our lives, not our plans, not to bless what it is that we want to happen, and sometimes that may include financial blessings from him. It may achieve, it may be achievements in a career or physical blessings, but these are not for our ultimate happiness or our ultimate fulfillment. But for God to use as part of His kingdom work to bless others, he blesses you to be a blessing to others and to bring Him glory. Of course, the even bigger thing is this we have to realize, as we think about the plans that God has for us in.
The future that that might include suffering.
Chances are, it does include suffering in some way. But even in that suffering, God is at work for our good and his glory. And the thing is, is we don't have to get out from underneath that suffering in order to experience prosperity. That's what we think most of the time. I've just got to hang in there. I've done something because I haven't been in church, I haven't been praying, I haven't been reading, haven't the person I've been involved in is sin. Once I get those things in order, then I'll start to prosper in these other areas. He's going to see that and recognize but I can get out from underneath this, and then I'll begin to experience real life again, and that is not the gospel message again, because Jesus is our prosperity. Then we can experience real life, real peace and real joy in him as we walk through times of suffering, even if they continue for a long, long time.
I may have shared this story with you before. I can't remember, but in one of William Lane Craig's books, he talks about a time when he was visiting a nursing home and ran into this elderly woman whose name was Mabel. This is the way he described her in his book.
He says her face
was honestly an absolute horror.
The empty stare and white pupils of her eyes told me that she was blind. The large hearing aid over one ear told me that she was almost deaf. One side of her face was being eaten by cancer, there was a discolored and running sore covering part of one cheek, and it had pushed her nose to one side, dropped one eye and distorted her jaw so that what should have been the corner of her mouth was at the bottom, or was the bottom of her mouth. As a consequence, she drooled constantly. She was 89 years old, and Mabel had been bedridden, blind, nearly deaf, alone and battling cancer for 25
years.
Talk about suffering, right?
I mean, we things go bad for a week with some of us, and we're like, I gotta get out from under this. I mean, 25 years is a long time to be bedridden and blind and nearly deaf and alone and dealing with cancer. I mean, what about Jeremiah 29 What about the plans to prosper and to give you a hope and a future? Where is God in all of this that's happening to Mabel?
Well, it one day after visiting her off and on for several weeks. William Lane, Craig asked her, he said, Mabel, what is it that you think about like, I mean, seriously, what do you think about when you lie here, hour after hour, day after day, week after week for 25 years? What do you think about?
Said, Oh, William, that's easy. I simply think about my Jesus. I think about how good he's been to me. He's been awfully good to me. You know, now lots of folks might think that I'm quite old fashioned, but I don't really care, because I'd rather have Jesus, because he's all the world to me.
And then she began to sing,
Jesus is all the world to me, my life, my joy, my all. He's my strength. From day to day, without him, I would fall when I'm sad to him, I go, No one can cheer me. So when I'm sad, he makes me glad. He's my friend.
Guys, Mabel was prospering.
She was prospering in Christ and the life that she experienced in him, regardless of her physical suffering. And this is the message and the truth that we need to know, that when we see this verse and we look at it and the plans that the Lord has for us, we must recognize that this has been fulfilled in Christ. It's been fulfilled in Christ. He is my prosperity. And I don't know what my future holds in this lifetime, it may include suffering. It probably will, but I know I have all that I need in him, because he's my life. He's my joy, and he is my all.
He is my prosperity, amen. Amen.