I often hear people make comments about wishing they could get an interview with God. I’ve made them myself. It’s what Job wanted and got in the end (Job 38-42). But it didn’t work out quite the way he’d imagined. Job found that all the questions he had for God melted like snow in the blast of a furnace. God questioned him.
Well, I expect a letter from God to us would also be a bit different than we imagine. This is GOD after all. If he is the big cheese we are like crumbs of Parmesan before him. No, like the dust of the dust of a crumb of Parmesan (Isaiah 40:8). I can’t remember the last time he came to me for advice, or even my opinion. In fact, he seems to have a long list of things for me to work on. Go figure.
Anyway, the people back there in Babylon were feeling fearful, bitter and vengeful as we saw in Psalm 137, and Jeremiah gets wind of it back in Jerusalem. -- Perhaps someone sent a copy of the new psalm for his encouragement. -- So he writes them a letter which he says is from God. You may doubt that it really is. I’m sure many of them doubted it. But it sure sounds like God to me.
Jeremiah 29:4-7 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." (There’s more if you want to check it out.)
What is God saying in this letter to his people in their Babylon? What might he be saying to us in ours?
4 comments:
Isn't God's purpose for the jews who are in exile in Babylon,the realization of their waywardness from God and to seek Him? So is our Babylon a journey towards God and a longing to be with Him someday?
Hi
This is also an interesting one for me -- because with Ezra and Nehemiah - wasn't it that God then separated families because they were not pure blood? And, while (1) I like and can get my head around the citation and (2) there are some things where "My ways are not your ways..." I don't get how in one place they (we, by implication) are asked to do one thing then punished for doing it.
I think that God is telling us to live our lives wherever we find ourselves. Instead of crying about what is wrong with where we are we need to carry on from here.
Another thing that this passage touches on is the issue that we prosper (or not) along with the rest of our society. Sometimes this can be problematic. If my country makes a policy that might be against my conscience, I still share in the consequences of that decision whether positive or negative. So I need to care about my country and not just about myself.
Re: Jim Parson's comment.
Throughout the scriptures there's an ongoing tension over how God's people should relate to the surrounding peoples. Most of the Old Testament emphasizes separation, though there are points of engagement. The New Testament then emphasizes engagement, though the problem of distinctiveness remains. This ambivalence is illustrated in the fact that, though the bible takes a dim view of Christians marrying non Christians, statistics show that more people are converted to Christ by marrying a Christian than any other way. Even so, I counsel my flock to work a little harder on the other ways.
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