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We all have hopes and dreams for a prosperous future. But what happens when our plans for a prosperous future and God’s plans for a prosperous future don’t line up?

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If only. We all have “if only” moments in our lives. It doesn’t matter how young or old you are. Everybody has “if only” moments. Consider some of the categories of “if only” that work their way into our everyday lives.
Every single one of us has features about our looks or about our personality that we wish would be different. If only I was a better athlete. If only I wasn’t so shy all the time. If only I could get better grades. If only my joints didn’t hurt so much so often.
Sometimes our “if onlys” are circumstantial. If only my boss didn’t seem like such a jerk. If only my basketball team could win just one game. If only I could have a superpower. If only I could be batman. If only the baby would sleep so I could get one good night of rest. If only I didn’t get cancer. If only I had more friends. If only I had bought stock in Microsoft back in 1984. If only I could grow hair again.
Sometimes our “if onlys” are regrets. If only I could take back those words I said in anger. If only I had applied for that promotion at work. If only I had spent more time with my kids while they were young. If only I had taken a chance and asked her out on a date. If only I had ordered the salmon instead of the chicken. If only I could remember where I set the keys.
I don’t care how old you are; I don’t care how young you are. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor. It makes no difference what background you come from. Here’s what I want all of us to see. We all have “if only” moments. In fact, many of us have these moments every single day.
But follow along with me now, because I want us to consider what all of these “if only” moments do to us and to our lives. How does this pile of “if onlys” impact who we are and what we do and how we live? How does this weigh upon our relationships and community? How does this shape our hopes and dreams and plans for the future?
Today I think there is something we can pick up from the Old Testament prophet of Jeremiah that could help us with this question. Let me set up the background here for you first. We are going to be reading a section of scripture that include what is—for some of us—a very familiar verse. In fact, this is a verse that many people have on plaques and pictures in their homes. This is a verse that some people have tattooed on their body somewhere. This is a verse that ranks among the top-five favorite Bible verses in all of the scriptures. And the problem with a verse like this is that many of us know it and have heard it ripped all by itself completely out of its context. And so most of us actually have no idea whatsoever what this verse is actually saying.
But—lucky you—you’re in the right place because we are going to fix all of that today. So, here is background for the prophet Jeremiah. In the year 722 BC the ten tribes of northern Israel were conquered by Assyria. Only the tribe of Judah was left in the southern kingdom. 135 years later, in 587 BC, the Babylonians conquered the city of Jerusalem and the southern kingdom of Judah was taken into captivity. Some of the people were left behind in a city was burned and destroyed. Others were taken into exile to live as servants in Babylon.
This is the context into which Jeremiah writes. He is writing specifically to the people of Judah who are living as exiled servants in Babylon. Note this in particular. Jeremiah is writing to a group of people who are dripping with “if only.” These are people whose entire lives are an “if only” story. If only we had followed God’s commands. If only we had learned the lesson we saw take place in the northern kingdom 135 years earlier. If only we could just be back home again. If only we weren’t stuck over here in Babylon where we don’t want to be. Here is a group of people that seems to have no hope for the future at all. Their entire existence is now predicated on a series of “if onlys.”
In some ways, maybe not all that indifferent from us today.
And here’s what God has to say to them (and us) in Jeremiah 29
Jeremiah 29:4–19 NIV
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.” Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord. This is what the Lord says: “When seventy 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. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to 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 will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.” You may say, “The Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon,” but this is what the Lord says about the king who sits on David’s throne and all the people who remain in this city, your fellow citizens who did not go with you into exile—yes, this is what the Lord Almighty says: “I will send the sword, famine and plague against them and I will make them like figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten. I will pursue them with the sword, famine and plague and will make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth, a curse and an object of horror, of scorn and reproach, among all the nations where I drive them. For they have not listened to my words,” declares the Lord, “words that I sent to them again and again by my servants the prophets. And you exiles have not listened either,” declares the Lord.

The excuse: if only

If only. If anybody had an excuse to play the “if only” card, I think it might have been these exiled Hebrew people. And I can only imagine the reaction of those exiled people who might have heard these words from God through Jeremiah. Humph, yeah right. I have every excuse in the world to tell you why I am not prospering. I have every reason in the world to explain away why my plans for the hopes of any kind of future can’t happen. After all, God, have you forgotten where I am? A slave in Babylon? If only you hadn’t let that happen. Maybe then I could believe what you have to say about a plan for a prosperous future. But not here. Not like this.
I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. I sometimes wonder why it is that so many people claim this as their favorite verse in the Bible. Yes! Let our homes burn, destroy everything I have, let my family and loved ones be murdered, carry me off as a slave to a foreign nation. I love that verse!
No, I get it. We all love the part about God promising a prosperous future. Who wouldn’t. There is an entire branch of prosperity gospel churches that build their entire existence upon this idea—that God promises a prosperous future. We just forget about and want nothing to do with the rest of this message from God. We conveniently leave out the other details of Jeremiah’s message from God.
So what about all of these “if onlys” in your life that you want so desperately to change; all of these circumstances around you, and all of the regrets from your past? What about all these hinderances that we look at in our lives and identify as blockades? What about all the “if onlys” in the way of the prosperous future that we would like God to have planned for us?
We all live with a multitude of “if only” moments we see as hindrances keeping us away from plans for a prosperous future. We all have our Babylonian exile moments.
But what does God say about that? Build your house there. Plant your gardens there. Have your family there. Those of you living in Babylonian captivity, pray for the prosperity of that city. Because if it prospers, you also will prosper. What’s that? Are you telling me that this hope for the future begins right here in this Babylonian nightmare I’m living in? Are you saying that God extends a plan of hope that keeps me stuck right here on a basketball team that has yet to win a game? In a family that has lost a dear loved one whom we miss very much? In an illness that has taken my health and left me exhausted? In a school where I feel like everybody else judges me? Are you telling me that I should pray for prosperity here? That I need to trust your plan of hope can reach even into this place?
No thanks. Count me out. I’m gonna take a hard pass on that one. My children do that to me a lot. Who wants to take the afternoon to help me clean out the garage? Yeah, hard pass, dad. What do you say we stay in tonight and watch a classic film from the 1970s? Hmm, hard pass.

My plans, or God’s plans

I’ll tell you what, if God’s plan for hope and a future doesn’t begin by getting me out of this mess of “if onlys” right now, then I’m gonna take a hard pass on that one. You see, because I think that when most of us read God’s promise in Jeremiah 29 we really want to substitute our own plans for the future in there. I love to think about all the prosperous things that I want God to do for me once all those “if onlys” get out of the way. In fact, I love so much to think about God doing exactly what I want him to do that I actually start to think my plan is better. I read Jeremiah 29 and I automatically fill in the blanks with details from my own plan for my own prosperous future. And somewhere in the back of my mind I convince myself that God’s plan must in fact be exactly as I imagine it to be. I want to believe it so much that whenever anything happens that flies in the face of my own plans, my own hopes, my own dreams, the answer is hard pass. I want my own plans for the future so much, that often I completely skip over any thought of God’s plans.
Sure, this passage in Jeremiah 29 talks about restoring God’s people to their promised land. It talks about God gathering his people back again. But that’s not the whole thing. God’s plan is also about a God who is so big and so majestic that he can reach down into any and every circumstance in our world and pull us through it. Not out of it, not an escape, but through it. How do I know that? What do I mean by that? God told his people through Jeremiah to seek him with all their heart right then and there in the midst of their Babylonian exile. Seek the peace and prosperity of the world in which you live, even if it’s not the world you want to be in right now.
You see, God’s plan of grace is big enough to reach down a grab hold of you no matter who you are, no matter where you are, no matter what your world looks like right now. His plan does not need to wait for a magical someday when all the obstacles and barriers are removed. God’s plan for your future begins by meeting you exactly where you are today, right now.

Seek Shalom

So, what does that look like? How am I supposed to get up from here and go out into my week and identify what this prosperous plan of God looks like, especially if my world looks more like Babylonian exile than it does the promised land?
Maybe this will help. I think we misinterpret prospering and prosperity as we think about it in this passage. I say that because I think it’s the wrong word. Most other places in the Old Testament where you find the english word prosper, or success, or victory, it comes from the Hebrew word tsalah. But that’s not the word Jeremiah uses in this passage. He uses another Hebrew word that is hardly ever translated into english as prosper. It’s the Hebrew word shalom, which is almost always translated into english as peace. I understand why it is the way it is. We don’t really use the word peace as a verb in English. It’s not proper grammar to say I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to peace you and not to harm you. But that’s literally how this verse translates from Hebrew to English. God’s plans for this world are plans for shalom.
So how do you and I start living into this plan from God? Jeremiah tells the exiled Hebrew people to seek the shalom of the city into which they had been carried into exile. Seek shalom. That’s the step for each of us to take from this place. What would your life look like this week if you were able to replace every one of your “if only” moments with a shalom moment. How would our week change if we focused ourselves away from identifying all the “if onlys,” and instead focused on identifying all the places we see the shalom of God.
Seeking the shalom of God right here in this world does not come from God as a command or an obligation. It comes as an invitation. God—in his grace, through Jesus Christ—is extending an invitation to every single one of us to enter his shalom. Isn’t that exactly what he says here through Jeremiah? You WILL find me when you seek after me with all your heart. The shalom of God is not a secret mystery for a select few people. It is an invitation to all. The question today is this: will you accept that invitation, or will you take a hard pass?
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