daily java

Daily Java: This is what the LORD says: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. 11 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. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 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." (Jeremiah 29:10-14)

The Israelites were being punished by God for years of rebellion and disobedience. He hoped that in this last big disciplining process, they could come back to him and become the people he wanted them to be.

His mandate to them? Give up to the invading forces. Do not put up a fight. Do not rebel against them. Do not fight them. Give up.

He told the Israelites that if they were to be pleasing to him, they would accept the punishment and the exile and would go into the land of Babylon, buy houses and land there, plant farms and wait. He promised them that their exile would be 70 years. Then they would come back to the land of Israel and once more be his nation.

But they didn’t want to. They had been, at one time, the largest empire in the world. Under David and Solomon, they walked large in the world. But they had to give that up. Like so many of us, it is hard to lay down your autonomy and accept someone else’s direction. They were to be Babylonians citizens, a nation in exile. And they were to do this because God told them to.

Instead of taking his direction, though, they tried to pretend everything was okay. “Prophets” even came up and gave wonderful prophecies. They said in essence that in two years, all of the temple furniture that had been stolen by the Babylonians would be brought back, the king, who was in exile, would come back, and nations would once again bow down to Israel.

Jeremiah was sent by God to tell them that it was God’s will that they give up. The other prophets came to tell them that Jeremiah was full of beans. But Jeremiah kept trying to tell them that the only way for them to win was for them to lose. He told them that the 70 years of captivity was part of God’s plan.

He said that God knew the plans he had. His plans were for their good, If they would just take them. If they didn’t, it wasn’t as though he didn’t want to help them. It was that they would not allow it.

For them to win, they had to lose. At the end of this period, he said that he would bring them back, gather them from all the places they were and make them once again a nation.

The Israelites refused God’s plan. There was a remnant that obeyed, as there always is, but for the most part the nation of Israel as a nation of God and a great empire stopped. Never again would they be anything big. Even today, they are just another nation, not a people of God, not great in the eyes of the world.

God said, if you will just listen to me, I will do great things for you.

In order for God to work in our lives, we have to give up to him. Jesus said, in Matthew 10:39, Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. To win in the eyes of God, you have to lose. To gain in the eyes of God you have to give up everything. That is the hardest thing for anybody to do in the world, to acknowledge your own powerlessness.

God’s plans are great. But in order for them to be worth anything, they have to be accepted. He does not accept our plans, we accept his. He is God, we are not.