A Future and a Hope

Jeremiah 29:11 (1-14)

Intro:

I once heard a story (a true story) of a girl who was wondering if she should date a guy who was working hard to pursue a relationship with her. They were both godly followers of Christ and the name of the guy was Will. When the girl was praying to the Lord for guidance in His Word on whether or not she should date this guy, she tries turning to a random passage of the Bible. She turns to Romans 12:2 and she reads “Do not be conformed to the world… that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect WILL of God”. And she thinks “Oh my, goodness, he IS The perfect WILL of God.” So she made the decision to date the guy based upon using Romans 12:2 out of context— The relationship ended in disaster. Now that’s not to say that God isn’t merciful and can’t use a misuse of scripture to provide a relationship.

We hear of the misuse of scripture like this and we probably laugh. “Oh, how silly. I would never do that.”

But just because this is an extreme case does not mean that we, even mature Christians are not subject to taking scriptures out of context.

We’re starting this new series today: taking the 9 most misused and misunderstood verses (sometimes seen on Bumper stickers) and seeing their true meaning in their context. This series is designed to aid us in avoiding these errors- because the reality is, we all do it. And for a couple of reasons

First, we take verses out of context often because we treat the Bible like a road map for every decision of our lives. And while the Bible does guide our decision making, we approach this wrongly by reading new meaning into different words or phrases and apply it to our situation. We over individualize scripture and read ourselves into passage that we were never meant To. Like when I got my first car, 1996 Honda accord, all of a sudden I started seeing Honda Accords everywhere. It’s not that there were randomly more Hondas on the road than usual, it’s just now I’m sitting in this car so I recognize them more. So too when we have a big life decision we treat the Bible like our magic 8 ball and we read our situation in to random passages. The Bible was never meant to be read this way.

The second reason we do this is because we sometimes believe that the bible is a book solely about us and our life rather than about God and His plan of redemption. We treat the Bible like our personal promise book to meet our felt needs at the present moment. We have our felt needs and instead of reading through the scriptures systematically and in context, we bring our felt needs to our favorite feel-good verses for a massage. We Don’t let the Bible set the agenda we bring our agenda to scripture, and therefore we pull verses out of their context because they make us feel good in a moment. It’s very natural for us to do especially in our overly individualistic American context.

You may think, “well what’s the big deal?” The reason we believe a series like this is so important is because when we repeatedly treat the Bible like this, it can be often misleading for our own hearts. Or worse, it can reveal something about our hearts.

It can reveal that we don’t submit to the authority of scripture. Rather than allowing the scriptures to bend us to God’s will, we bend the scriptures to submit to our will.

It can reveal a doctrinal preference that we have and we massage certain bible verses To mean something that they aren’t saying- We take them out of context and we can make them say whatever we want. You need to know, this is how heresy sweeps through the church and how people are led astray into cults. It’s been said “every heretic or false teacher has their bible verses.” Most false teaching comes, not from a complete rejection of the Bible but from a misreading of the Bible.

And the worst thing of all, bible verses that are ripped from their context and are used in contradiction to their supernaturally intended meaning are no longer God’s Word. We’re simply robbing language to propagate our word, not God’s Word. God’s Word is the meaning of that verse in light of it’s various Contexts and in light of what the author was trying to convey.

So maybe I can demonstrate that this morning.

We’re going to examine one of the most misused verses in the Bible: Jeremiah 29:11

Perhaps you’ve seen this verse on bumper stickers, or go to a Christian book store or Hobby Lobby and you’ll find this verse on plagues, throw pillows, coffee mugs, or paper weights, etc.

In certain bible search engines, this is THE Most searched verse.

And rightly so because in its context this verse is rich with meaning and incredibly beautiful. Let’s excavate the treasures from the chapter of the Bible. Here’s the structure for today’s sermon- each message in this series will follow this basic outline:

1) How the verse is normally misused, 2) The various contexts surrounding Jeremiah 29:11, 3) What faithful application looks like.

How this verse is normally misused

The various contexts

What faithful application looks like