“10 This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious 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. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
15 You may say, “The Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon,” 16 but this is what the Lord says about the king who sits on David’s throne and all the people who remain in this city, your countrymen who did not go with you into exile— 17 yes, this is what the Lord Almighty says: “I will send the sword, famine and plague against them and I will make them like poor figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten. 18 I will pursue them with the sword, famine and plague and will make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth and an object of cursing and horror, of scorn and reproach, among all the nations where I drive them. 19 For they have not listened to my words,” declares the Lord, “words that I sent to them again and again by my servants the prophets. And you exiles have not listened either,” declares the Lord.
20 Therefore, hear the word of the Lord, all you exiles whom I have sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon. 21 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says about Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah, who are prophesying lies to you in my name: “I will hand them over to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will put them to death before your very eyes. 22 Because of them, all the exiles from Judah who are in Babylon will use this curse: ‘The Lord treat you like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon burned in the fire. 23 For they have done outrageous things in Israel; they have committed adultery with their neighbors’ wives and in my name have spoken lies, which I did not tell them to do. I know it and am a witness to it,” declares the Lord. ”
Physical trainers count down and they count out loud. They count down to tell you how many reps you have left—“four, three, two, and one.” They count out loud as a way of giving hope. Each new number says, “the end is in sight. Keep going!”
We see the Lord do both tonight. He counts down to the end of the exile and He counts it aloud to encourage the exiles. Each year that passed would say, “the end is in sight. Keep going!” This is all about hope. Prophecies and promises are all about hope.
He does the same for us. We have a lot in common with these exiles in Babylon. The New Testament calls us “elect exiles.” After all, we, like them, are the chosen people of God and we, like them, are waiting to enter the land. They were waiting for the Promised Land. We are waiting for the new creation. Both of us are depending on a promise about the end of our exile. That’s what gives us exiles hope—the countdown. God gives us exiles promises and prophecies to give us hope. That’s the claim of this sermon: God gives us exiles promises and prophecies to give us hope.
We will study this in two points. First: hope and a future. Second: false hopes with no future. If you believe God’s promises and prophecies, you have hope and a future. If you don’t, you will turn to false hopes and wind up with no future. We see the first in verses 10-14 and the second in verses 15-23.
First: hope and a future. The exiles in Babylon feared that the Lord had cast them off forever. In our past two studies we’ve seen that this was emphatically not the case. The Lord had purposes for these exiles. Yes, the exile was an outpouring of wrath upon their sin, meaning that it was destructive, but it was also constructive. In other words, the exile was a fire that both burned and purified. I imagine that you can see the Lord doing both during low seasons of your own life. He is able to break with his left hand while He binds with His right.
The Lord was doing both in the lives of His people through the exile. He had a purpose for this season and purpose implies a point of completion. I just started physical therapy for my shoulder. I don’t expect it to last forever. I expect physical therapy will fulfill its purpose and then end. The same was true with the exile. God had a purpose for it and then it would end. He told them how long until would end in verse 10; ‘This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place.”’
Seventy years might sound like a crushing length of time, but seventy years was better than two. As we will see in our second point, two years would lead to death while seventy years would lead to life.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this seventy-year prophecy in the life of the exiles. Although Jeremiah was largely dismissed throughout much of his life, as the exile went on his writings were recognized as prophetic because what he said had come to pass. The people began to see that he was a true prophet and so the faithful began to trust his prophecies.
We see that with the exile we know best—Daniel; Daniel 9, “in the first year of Darius son of Xerxes… I Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.”
The book of Ezra opens in a similar way; “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia…” God’s people in exile like Daniel depended upon this promise given through Jeremiah. Pagan kings who had never heard this promise through Jeremiah were moved by God to keep it as part of their own policies.
This shows that the Lord is the God of history. It was He who sent the people into exile, and it would be He who bring them back on His timetable. He governed history. That’s also why He speaks of Himself saying, “I will come to you”, in verses 10. The King James puts this far more memorably saying, “I will visit you.” This was exodus language. This language of visitation comes from the exodus. God was saying that He would visit these exiles just as He visited the slaves in Egypt—same Hebrew word and the exiles would have known that. They would have understood that the Lord was promising them an exodus 2.0. That’s also how the gospels speak of what God did for us through Jesus. Luke, speaking of Jesus, calls it, “his exodus.”
Just as the exodus was simultaneously salvation for God’s people and wrath upon Egypt so the end of the exile would be salvation for God’s people and wrath upon Babylon. Notice that these seventy years in verse 10 have to do with Babylon; “When seventy years are completed for Babylon…”
This was about the end of Babylon. As we will see with our last study in Jeremiah, the Lord would take vengeance on the Babylonians for what they did to His people. It’s a fascinating look at divine sovereignty and human responsibility. The message here, though, is that Babylon would come to an end, which is to say if you want to see any Babylonians, “they live in a museum. It’s the only place you’ll see ‘em,” as Sting sang about the dinosaurs. The Babylonians are extinct. The children of Abraham are still around. That’s worth considering if you care about your own future and future generations.
The message is that you would be wise to be part of God’s people. The Lord has plans for His people; that’s verse 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.”’
These plans were specific. The plan was a return to the Promised Land. That’s their hope. That’s their future. That’s the plans of, “for I know the plans I have for you.” The Lord’s plans were more than that as you see as you continue to read Scripture, but they weren’t less. In other words, these plans weren’t whatever the exiles wished they might be. They aren’t whatever we wish they might be, and this verse is regularly misused that way. It turns faith into wish fulfillment and that puts us in the place of God. This verse is about the land. This is about specific promises. The source of hope for God’s people isn’t wishes. It is always specific promises and the character of the God.
The Lord promised that the exiles would return to the land. He promised that they could return to Him; verse 12, “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.” The land and the Lord go hand in hand. Think back to Eden, which is what the land was all about. The garden of Eden and the Lord went hand in hand. We create strange distinctions between enjoying God and enjoying life. We divorce the earthly and the heavenly. We seem to think that holiness and happiness are quite different realities. It wasn’t that way in Eden. It won’t be that way in the new creation. It wasn’t that way in this promise of a return to the land. The exiles weren’t simply to long for home. They were to long for the Lord. We aren’t simply to long for the new creation. We are to long for the Lord. We are to remember that life as it ought to be and the presence of the Lord are one in the same, which is why whatever wishes you might want, they pale in comparison with the promises.
The exiles would have to wait to return to the land. They could return to the Lord now. You see that in verse 13, ‘“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 will bring you back from captivity.”’
The Lord would fulfill the promise to return His people to the land. He would work through the Persians to fulfill His promise. This promise of returning to Him, however, would require something of the people. They would need to seek Him;
The people had a responsibility to return to God and this would require effort on their part—seeking Him with their whole heart. Assuming that you can find God without pursuing Him with everything you are—the way an infatuated boy seeks a particular girl—is pure presumption. God is only found by those who seek Him, but He can be found; “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” The exiles could find God if they sought Him with their whole heart. That doesn’t mean perfection. As Calvin put it, “perfection is not what is to be understood here, which can never be found in men, but integrity and sincerity.”
You see the same in the gospels—the one people who actually found Jesus were the ones who sought him with their whole heart. The rich young ruler didn’t. Jesus tried to shock him into seeking him with his whole heart by telling him to give all that he had to the poor. “No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it,” wrote CS Lewis, “Those who seek find. To those who knock, it is opened.” In other words, be careful what you set your heart on because what you seek, you will find, or as Solomon put it, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
Many exiles wanted to return to the land now. They weren’t interested in submitting to the Lord. They just wanted life to return to normal—forget about the fact that normal involved ignoring God in pretty much every way that actually mattered. The Lord had a word for such people and we see in our second point: false hopes with no future.
As we saw last week, there were many false prophets telling the exiles that they would return to Jerusalem soon. We see that again in verse 15, ‘You may say, “The Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon…”’
These prophets told the people that they would go home soon. Here the Lord makes clear that these prophets didn’t get their news from Him because He was planning on destroying home; verse 16, ‘this is what the Lord says about the king who sits on David’s throne and all the people who remain in this city, your countrymen who did not go with you into exile—yes, this is what the Lord Almighty says, “I will send the sword, famine and plague against them and I will make them like poor figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten. I will pursue them with the sword, famine and plague and will make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth and an object of cursing and horror, of scorn and reproach, among all the nations where I drive them.”’
Those prophets who were foretelling a short exile thought they were doing the people a favor. They thought they were giving hope. All they were doing was sweeting a path that led to sword, famine, and plague. They didn’t know that, but they didn’t need to know that to stop saying, “thus saith the Lord,” about something the Lord had never said. We don’t do anyone any favors when we try to comfort them by giving them by false hope.
Some of us might have been thinking that a seventy-year exile still sounds like a crushing length of time. Here we see that it was a lot better than a two-year exile that ended in death. “I will send the sword, famine and plague against them and I will make them like poor figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten.” God’s ways are always more hope-filled than our false hopes whether we see or not we see that in the moment.
The exiles didn’t see that. God did. He refused to grant the exiles the desire of their heart for their own good. He didn’t want them to wind up, “an object of cursing and horror, of scorn and reproach.” Who knows how many people have railed against God because He has prevented them from becoming, “an object of cursing and horror, of scorn and reproach” by refusing to give them what they wanted in a particular season of life?
The Lord was sparing these exiles, but as we saw two weeks ago, He wasn’t sparing them because they were any different from the people back at home; in verse 19 He tells them that all these curses would fall upon the people back at home, ‘“for they have not listened to my words,” declares the Lord, “words that I sent to them again and again by my servants the prophets. And you exiles have not listened either.”’
The Lord didn’t spare the exiles from sword, famine, and plague because they had been obedient. He did so because He had chosen them. The choice of God was the only hope for those exiles. God’s choice saved them from it as we saw with what would happen at home. We are far more opposed to grace than we understand. Praise God that it is about His choice rather than ours.
That’s the determined love of God. It chooses particular people and saves them despite themselves. That’s the story of Jesus and Peter. Jesus chose Peter and saved Peter despite Peter kept Peter despite Peter. That’s the story of Jesus and anyone who has ever come to him. We are saved despite ourselves and are continuing to be saved despite ourselves.
The Lord was determined to fulfill this seventy-year promise for the sake of these people who, given a choice, would have chosen what would lead to death. That should tell us that the Lord takes hope more seriously than we do.
We see the seriousness with which God takes hope in the judgment on Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah; verse 21, “I will hand them over to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will put them to death before your very eyes.” The next verse makes clear that they would be burned to death. Even children know that the Babylonians did this sort of thing. They know it from the account of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
The Lord used Nebuchadnezzar to execute these two prophets because they were offering false hope. They were telling the people that the Lord said that they were going home soon. Offering false hope and putting God’s name on the check is a serious offense. Here’s my checkbook. How seriously would I take it if you took this from me and wrote a check with my name on it? I would take it quite seriously. That’s what these men did to God when they spoke lies in his name. The Lord said that these two men did, ‘“outrageous things in Israel; they have committed adultery with their neighbors’ wives and in my name have spoken lies, which I did not tell them to do. I know it and am a witness to it,” declares the Lord.’
Now think about us and our exile. Think about the various ways the return of Christ is called into question the way Ahab and Zechariah called the 70 year promise into question. Think about the ways the final judgment is challenged not just outside of the church but within the church. Think about the ways in which the new creation is dismissed as a fairy tale. This is nothing new. Peter writes about it in his own day. We have to ask ourselves in what ways our hope in the second coming, the final judgment, and the new creation has been weakened by the Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiahs of our day because, remember, there is no such thing as “Bible times.” This text tells you how to interpret your time.
The Lord gave these exiles a promise about the future. Those who hoped in it would not assimilate to Babylon. Those who didn’t, would assimilate to Babylon. The Lord has given us promises about the future. Those who hope in it will not assimilate to the world. Those who won’t, will assimilate to the world.
But maybe you need some evidence for believing that the Lord will bring us to the new creation. You’ve got it. He brought the Jews back to the Promised Land. He ended that exile to show us that He will end this exile. Maybe you need some evidence for believing in the second coming of Christ. You’ve got it. It’s called the first coming of Christ. The promises are there. The question is whether you put hope in them. The question is whether you are living as if there is a countdown. Amen.