Thoughts on Jeremiah 29

Today’s reading: Jeremiah 29; Romans 5

There are a handful of verses I regularly hear misused, but Jeremiah 29:11 is maybe the worst offender.

“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.”

The reason it bothers me so much to hear people throwing this verse around is that they are spreading false hope and promises in the name of God’s word.

There are other verses that regularly get misused, maybe even more often than this verse, but that don’t actually result in a wrong theology. For example, I hear people all the time start a sermon, bible teaching, or prayer meeting citing Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” They intend it to be encouraging, but is the omnipresent God really only present when more than one person is in the room? Matthew 18:20 is about formal discipline, calling someone to repent of their sin, and potentially even removing them from fellowship if they refuse, and the more than one person is a matter of authority/not letting it be about one person’s bias against another. So it’s a misuse of the verse, but it is communicating something true, that God is present in that moment, so it’s not as egregious. Or another good example would be Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me.” I hear this used all the time in sharing the gospel, that, “Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart, and you just have to open the door and let Him in.” Again, like Matthew 18, they aren’t wrong in the truth they are trying to communicate, but Revelation 3:20 has nothing to do with non-Christians turning to Christ. Revelation 3:20 is Jesus calling Christians to repent of their spiritual malaise and let Him back into their lives in a meaningful way.

When people use the wrong or inappropriate verse to communicate an actual biblical truth, it’s irresponsible, and I wish they wouldn’t, but at least what they are trying to communicate is true. But when people misuse Jeremiah 29:11, it’s communicating false hope and false promises as though they were from the Lord, and that really bothers me (and bothers the Lord Himself if we read what the Lord has to say about Hanaaniah at the end of Jeremiah 28, and about Shemaiah at the end of Jeremiah 29…).

The fact of the matter is, as good as Jeremiah 29:11 sounds in isolation, and as nice as it would be to be able to apply it whenever, and to whomever, we wanted to, it is completely invalid in so many ways. 

First and foremost, Jeremiah 29:11 isn't about you. If you are reading this post, I can say with confidence that Jeremiah 29:11 does not apply to you. If you don't believe me, then let's just read the paragraph this verse is in the middle of for a bit more context:

For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 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 I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

Looking at this, who is Jeremiah talking to? The Jews in exile in Babylon. This is a letter God tells Jeremiah to send to the exiles in Babylon, and he specifically says that when seventy years are completed for Babylon, He would fulfill His promise to His people to bring them back to Israel. So unless you are a Jew currently in exile during this 70 year window, this isn't about you. God is reassuring His people that He has not forgotten or ultimately rejected them, and that, while things look bad now, He is not done and will keep His promises to them, restoring them to the land.

It's also important to point out that this is about the Jews as a people, not the Jews as individuals. If you had any doubt about that, just keep reading to the end of Jeremiah 29 and the words God has for Shemaiah. Shemaiah is a Jew in exile in Babylon at this time, and yet the Lord has no plans to prosper him or protect him from evil, to the contrary, God promises that his line will be wiped out and he will have no descendants to see the good that the Lord will do for His people.

So this verse clearly does not apply to any of the Christians today that try to claim or invoke it, but unlike the other misused verses I mentioned at the beginning, this verse doesn't even communicate truth when used like it so often is today!

Where has God ever promised to prosper Christians or protect them from harm or evil? The closest we get is Romans 8 where Paul tells us that God works all things for good for those who are called according to His purpose, but that is a very different promise than God is making through Jeremiah. When Paul says this in Romans 8, he is speaking in the same context in which, in Romans 5, he talked about how we rejoice in our sufferings because that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame. God never promises to prosper Christians or to protect them from harm, but He does promise to use that harm, and to use our struggles and sufferings to bring about ultimate good.

It's one thing for Christians in America to quote this verse to one another when they face some kind of suffering or trouble, but would we quote it at villages of Christians in Africa who are being martyred for their faith? Would we say to a Christian in the Middle East who is being executed for refusing to renounce Christ, "Don't worry, God is going to prosper you and not let anything evil happen to you. He has a future for you, so clearly you won't die here!" No, we wouldn't! Christians suffer. Christians fall sick and die. Christians are killed for their faith. Christians can be poor and destitute.

Jeremiah 29:11 only "works" for Christians if we ignore the context of the verse, and then put blinders on to reality, somehow pretending this verse even makes sense to apply to an individual's life or situation.

At best, throwing this verse around is irresponsible and thoughtless, but at worst, it is misrepresenting God, communicating to others that He has made promises to them, or to yourself, that He has never made, and that could bring incredible harm to the name of God and to the spiritual lives of those who fail to see this "promise" fulfilled.

Please, I beg you, stop using Jeremiah 29:11 for anything other than glorifying our good and mighty God who keeps His promises across generations and nations, and did, in fact, bring His people back to the land at the end of seventy years, exactly like He promised.