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Good Wednesday to you my ‘Walking with Jesus” friends.
“Going Home” is a wonderful statement to make, especially if you’ve been away from home for a long time, isn’t it? That experience is especially wonderful when you’ve been forcibly taken and kept away from your home for a very long time, especially if you’ve been in EXILE.
Over the past few weeks, “going home” has been experienced by a few hostages taken forcibly by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023. Pictures of the excited family reunions have been heartwarming, awakening hope for the families of other barbarically held Israeli hostages. I wonder if you have a ‘going home’ story, my friends?
Join me again, 2600 years ago, in a very turbulent middle east time, amazingly similar to our day. The Jewish prophet Jeremiah has been writing a remarkable letter from God to those Jews, far from home, living in exile. Many were born in exile and while they’d heard about ‘the homeland’ including Jerusalem, they’d never seen it. Others, like the 10,000 living in Babylon with Ezekiel, had only been there a few years. (Ezekiel 1:1,2)
Over the past few days, we’ve been digging deeply into this very exciting and familiar message: “When 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill My good promise to bring you back to this place. 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. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart… I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you… and I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile…“ (Jer. 29:10-14)
Today, building on what we’ve seen the past several days, let’s look at that last phrase from God to the exiles. First, starting from the end, do you see the God of Israel made it very clear HE was personally responsible for their captivity, their living in exile! God Himself had raised up the foreign kings who had conquered portions of Israel and carried off thousands of His people as captives. God had sent many prophets to warn the Jewish Kings and people, but in their refusal to listen the people persisted in their idolatry and rejection of God and therefore God removed His hand of protection from His cities in Israel when those foreign armies marched in!
The last of these was King Nebuchadnezzar who in 586bc totally destroyed Jerusalem including the great Temple of God! But even though hard for us to accept or understand, it was essential for those captives, as it is for us today, to firmly believe that NOTHING can separate us from God’s love for us. (Rom. 8:32-39) And when God disciplines us, He is with us in the discipline experience. That is why God said through Jeremiah “I carried you into exile”. (Jer. 29:14) Please note God did NOT say “I SENT you into exile”, rather God said, “I CARRIED YOU INTO EXILE”!! And God brought Ezekiel there to live in exile with them as His spokesman, constantly speaking God’s words to them in exile. (Ez. 2:3-5) Oh my what love of God for His people even in judgment.
Next, let’s take note of this phrase God spoke through Jeremiah: “I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you”. “Banished” is a harsh word, isn’t it? But that’s what God needed to do. Yesterday we dug into this powerful phrase from 2 Chronicles 36:21 which explains WHY God needed to ‘banish’ His people away from the Covenant Land of Israel, giving the land its “Sabbath rests”: “The land enjoyed its sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word spoken by Jeremiah.”
Normally when we use the word “banish” we think of someone sent far away to a secluded island and forgotten, perhaps like what happened to the apostle John on the Isle of Patmos in his old age. But God wanted His people to know HE was with them in their ‘banishment’, just as He would 2700 years later be with old apostle John and give John the great vision of the Revelation, the final book in our Bible. God’s Presence WITH His People, no matter where they are or what their circumstances, is fundamental to the relationship of love God has for us, His people, at all times. Do we understand that, my friends?
Finally, let’s notice please God’s promise that HE would bring back His people from all the many places where they had been carried into exile and banishment. Bring them back to where? To Jerusalem and the land of Israel!
Now watch this carefully my friends for I have an observation I challenge you to consider. This great promise of God in Jeremiah 29:11-14 has miraculously happened at least twice in history, since the day Jeremiah wrote it!! In 538bc the Persian Emperor Cyrus issued a radical decree that ANY Israeli, ANYWHERE in the entire Medo/Persian kingdom was free to return and rebuild Jerusalem, the Jewish Temple and their nation! (2 Chronicles 36:22,23) That’s the story of the Bible books of Ezra & Nehemiah.
And it happened again in our lifetime too. Following the holocaust, after the end of WWII, in May 1948 the United Nations was moved by God to issue an edict that any Jewish person, anywhere in the world, was free to return to the ancient land of Israel, newly declared to be the modern Jewish State of Israel. Millions did and we’ve lived to see the miracle of God’s words of Jeremiah 29:14 as it is still happening today: “I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you… and I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.“
And while Israel is still surrounded by hateful people who want it destroyed and will do anything imaginable to destroy Israel, God’s promise stands. Israel has been regathered and stands as a great testimony to God’s unchanging plans and purposes for our world: that His chosen people Israel will remain as evidence of God’s sovereignty in our world, until the day Jesus Christ returns and sets up His millennial kingdom in Jerusalem! (Zechariah 12)
Now that, my friends, is worth celebrating and here’s a Jewish song to help us…
Today’s Scripture: Jeremiah 29:14.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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