Why Did God Allow? Pt. 2

There’s something about the human heart that gravitates toward messages that “feel” good, but not necessarily messages that are true. Pastor Nick Gatzke opens to the book of Jeremiah, where God’s people face a crisis and get two very different messages about what comes next.

For people who are carried off into a foreign land and enslaved, what is the one thing they want to hear more than anything else? That they will be set free and allowed to go home. That’s what they want to hear. And hence we see in Jeremiah chapter 28, look with me, a false prophet named Hananiah arose to tell the people exactly what they wanted to hear. In chapter 28, verse two, it speaks of this Hananiah who stands up and speaks on behalf of God. He says, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:

“I have broken the yoke of the King of Babylon. Within two years I will bring back to this place all the vessels of the Lord’s house which Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, took away from this place and carried to Babylon. I will also bring back to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, the King of Judah, and all the exiles from Judah who went to Babylon, declares the Lord, for I will break the yoke of the King of Babylon.” So God says you will be in exile for 70 years through the prophet Jeremiah. Hananiah stands up and says, don’t worry guys, you’re only going to be in exile for two years.

He tells them exactly what they wanna hear. My point is this, when you encounter difficulties in your life, there will be no shortage of false prophets to tell you exactly what you want to hear. And it’s a great danger for the people of God, especially when times are tough. Some of them will come to you and they will say things like when you focus on being a blessing to others, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance. Some of them will say things like God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny he has laid out for us. Some of them will say things like it is your right to be healed from the disease that you have, you just need to pray harder. You just need to have more faith. God always wants the best for you, and that best, whatever the best is, is defined by you. The list goes on. And some of them will come from famous TV personalities who are false teachers. And some will innocently come from friends who just want to encourage you. But God never promises these things. He may well heal you. He may well give you financial prosperity. He may well give us abundant blessing. And we should ask for these things, but this isn’t the substance of his promise.

So what does he tell them to do in exile, enslaved, when the days are darkest? He tells them to cast off the false teachers, to not pay any attention to them, and actually to embrace the plight that they have, as opposed to simply trying to overcome it. Look with me at chapter 29, verses seven to nine. We see this. Again, Jeremiah writing a letter to those who are in Babylon, in exile. Verse seven says, “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 also find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let the prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name. I did not send them, declares the Lord.” So, so far we have three key components. The first we see is exercising patience in God’s plan. The second we see is embracing our plight of difficulty as opposed to simply trying to overcome it. And by embracing it we mean seeking, it leads to the third, seeking faithful obedience to God in the middle of the most difficult seasons as opposed to listening to the false teachers, the false prophets, the false voices that would say there’s an easy way out. Now how do you know if somebody’s a false prophet or a false teacher? Because you evaluate their promises against God’s promises. That’s how you know he makes himself known and clear in his word.

And so we have this difficulty in believing in God’s best when things are hard. We’ve seen the rise of those telling us what we wanna hear, but now, now we come to the reality of God’s plan. And it is for the good of his people. And this wonderful promise to us again, Jeremiah 29:11, for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord. Plans for your welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope. Is this promise for those who are in exile? Yes. Is this promise for Christians today?

Yes, how so? Well, follow the logic with me. Just a few chapters later, in Jeremiah chapter 31, God announces to his people what we call a new covenant. A covenant is very plainly the way that God relates to humankind. God announces a new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31, and this covenant will come to know is found in the person of Jesus. That through the gospel, Jesus mediates between God and humans by forgiving their sins when they exercise faith in him. And in Jeremiah 31:34, the result of this new covenant is seen to be God saying, all will know me.

“From the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.” Fast forward some hundreds of  years. Jesus is now on the scene. He’s showing the people what God is like in his actions. He’s showing the people God’s power through his miracles. He’s allowing the people to hear God’s words as he speaks. And he does something incredible. He secures for them, for us, this new covenant that was talked about and he secures it for us on the cross. He talks about it at the Last Supper in Luke 22:20 when he says, in raising up the cup, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” So God makes a new covenant. Jesus announces that he is securing the new covenant. And the new covenant has all kinds of benefits. First and foremost, the forgiveness of your sins as we saw in Jeremiah 31:34. But beyond that, we see that this means that a number of God’s promises, not all of them, but a large number of God’s promises that were made to the people of God in the Old Testament, Old Testament Israel, are now applied to people who would put their faith in the Lord Jesus. How do we know that to be true? Well, 2 Corinthians 1 tells us, verses 20-22, for all the promises of God find their yes in him.

That is why it is through him, Jesus, that we utter our amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and he has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us, and given us his spirit in our heart as a guarantee. So because of the work of Jesus, you enjoy the promises of God that were made long ago, even promises like, “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

We might say it this way, the plans of this world are God’s, but the final blessing is for his people. The plans of this world are God’s, and his people receive the final blessing. And so what does Jeremiah 29:11 mean for us? I don’t anticipate that many of you have been in Babylonian exile recently, though some of your suffering might feel like you have. What this promise did not mean for Israel and what it doesn’t mean for us is it doesn’t mean that you are going to like or enjoy every instance in your life because God promises welfare for you.

It doesn’t mean that God will intervene quickly to alleviate the difficulties in your life. Sometimes he does, and we should ask him to do that. Actually, often he does. But he doesn’t promise that he’ll always alleviate our difficulty, our suffering, or our pain. I mean, remember, three generations of Israelites were in exile in Babylon, 70 years. Do the math. A lot of them died in that land, and they were no less important or no less loved, but they were different types of beneficiaries of this promise.

So the promise of Jeremiah 29:11 doesn’t mean that you’ll always overcome suffering, but it does mean that God will accomplish his purposes in and through your life. And how does he do that? He does it through Jesus, through the securing of  this new covenant relationship that we talked about. And I think by a final note of application, it is very helpful to look at this promise as primarily corporate in its application and secondarily individual in its application. We read the promises of God in the Bible and it is our natural tendency to almost always say, What does this mean for Nick today, right now? How does this apply to me and how I feel or what my difficulty is, or what my hopes or my pains or my joys are? It’s all about me, me, me, me, me in this moment. But there are a lot of promises of God, this one included, that have primarily a corporate application. God’s purposes were being threatened. He had made a bunch of promises to this people, Israel, and they were about to be wiped out. And he promised that they had a future. God’s purposes are ever threatened in our time today. And there’s great hope and comfort here. There’s hope and comfort in the matter what happens in our country.

No matter how our government treats Christians or Christian churches, no matter what kind of tensions rise culturally speaking, no matter how the society at large views you, treats you, engages with you, that God has a future and a hope and a welfare for the good of his people, which are his church. God’s purposes in his church will never be thwarted. The plans of the world are God’s, and his people receive the final blessing. The plans of the world are God’s, and his people, you, receive the final blessing. And there’s great comfort there. He sees and he knows.

In 1876, a small Methodist church near the ocean in Swan Quarter, North Carolina, was struck by a hurricane and it was damaged. It was restored, but another hurricane came and damaged it and the town again. And the parishioners restored their place of worship once more, but enough was enough. So they searched for a safer location. They found some land and they offered the owner of the property a generous amount of money for it, but he refused to sell. Then came another hurricane. And again, there was massive flooding, so massive, in fact, that the church lifted from its moorings and it sent downstream, meandering through the river. The residents of the town tied ropes to the church building to try to keep it steady, to keep it from drifting away, but the current was too strong and their ropes would not hold.

When the water finally receded, the building came to rest. It came to rest on that exact piece of ground which the parishioners had previously tried to buy. And so they went to the owner and they once again made him a generous offer, but this time he refused the money. He said, but I’ll give it to you. The Lord definitely wants this church on this lot. There’s a word for that. It’s called providence. God’s providence in which he guides us through life by his care, even when the waters are difficult toward his intended purpose.

The plans of the world are God’s, but the people, his people, receive the final blessing. Barnhouse reminds us that small boys are always interested in finding out what makes things go. Many of you can relate to that. One day a boy took apart a clock to find out what made it tick, and when he tried to put it together again, he seemed to have enough springs and wheels to make two clocks. He discovered that all the parts must move in their proper way. Certain wheels must move forward, certain ones backward. There are wheels that move quickly and other wheels that move slowly. There’s a large mainspring and tiny hairspring, and all the parts must work together to make the clock go.

In the life of a Christian, when events move forward, we are very pleased with the progress. And we say, thank God that things are going the way that they should. We even use things or terms like, oh, God is so good, don’t we? If events move backward, we’re inclined to be impatient. We want them to move in a direction of our own will, not understanding the purpose that God has in our lives. There are matters in this life of great importance, main spring types of events, lives of our lives, births, marriages, deaths, triumphs, tragedies. There are matters as fine as a hairspring, petty annoyances, trivial happenings. And they seem little and unimportant at the time, but God uses them to regulate the course of our lives.

There are events in our lives that move smoothly and rapidly and we rejoice in their action. And there are some things that lag behind and they incite our impatience and we seek to speed them up by the tempo of our own wills. But when all of the events backward and forward, fast and slow, great and small, when all of them are seen in relationship to each other, we must conclude that to those who love God and are called according to his plan, that everything that happens fits into a pattern for good.

The plans of the world are God’s, in our joys and in our pains, in the darkest days, in the brightest hours. But as God works out those plans, the final blessing is for his people. How fitting is it that the new covenant is found in this very section of Scripture, the covenant in which God proclaims boldly and confidently that “No longer shall one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me. From the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.” This is a covenant secured by Jesus. It’s mediated by him. It means that you and I can have a relationship with God forever. And I don’t know about you, but when I… hear that God says to his people, I know the plans I have for you and they’re for your welfare and for your good and for future and for hope. Do you notice who he’s not saying that to? He’s not saying that to ones who aren’t his people. He’s not saying it to Babylon. He’s not saying it to Nebuchadnezzar. Surely he’s working out his  providential care, his plans in different types of way, but there’s no promise for those who aren’t his of this incredible welfare. And that scares me rightfully for those who don’t know him because his love and his grace and his mercy for those found in this new covenant through the person of Jesus results in eternal good.

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** This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.