Jeremiah 29:1-14: Grow Where You're Planted
This is the text used for the sermon I gave at Imagine Church in St. Michael/Albertville, MN, on November 1, 2020. A prerecorded version of this sermon can be found here.
Thank you Josh for that introduction...As he said, my name is Erik, and like many folks in here and who’ve been up on this stage, I was with Josh before Imagine began. I was in Josh’s youth group at Grace Fellowship my Junior and Senior years of high school. I actually remember both his initial interview/test sermon in front of us, and his first day on the job, at a See You at the Pole rally. We also shared a fair number of lunches together during and after high school, mostly at the Broadway Pizza buffet pre allergy life; if you’re ever at Broadway Pizza have a cinnamon stick or five for me.
Anyway
I’m happy to be here in front of you today, though to be honest, it is a bit of a surprise. It’s not so much a surprise to be up here speaking, but more so that I’m around MN at all. Growing up in Brooklyn Park, I never thought I’d leave MN. I looked for schools close by and ended up at Bethel, again expecting to stick around long term. It wasn’t until I started to think about going to seminary that I actually seriously considered leaving, which I ended up doing. The semester after graduating from Bethel, I moved to Denver to attend Denver Seminary, and very quickly shifted from thinking I would never leave MN to thinking I’d never come back. But a year and a half after graduating from seminary, I found myself without a lot of direction, or money, or really any idea what I wanted to do. I felt my time in Denver coming to a close, and though I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of moving back, I got a job at Trout Lake Camps up in northern Minnesota. After a year and a half there, continuing to try to figure out what to do and pining to be elsewhere, I moved back to the cities and into my Dad’s basement.
One day earlier this year, after 6 or so months living with my Dad, we were having not the first conversation where I was expressing my desire to be somewhere other than MN, and my Dad said something that made me stop and reconsider a lot of what I was doing and thinking. After my complaints, he simply shrugged and said, “Grow where you’re planted.”
Grow where you’re planted. Perhaps not necessarily earth-shattering advice, but it brought me instantly to a passage that I’ve thought about, wrestled with, and studied at various points. So today I want to turn to that passage, to continue to wrestle with and hopefully learn from the passage. So I’ll invite you to turn or scroll, virtually or physically, to Jeremiah, chapter 29. Jeremiah 29 verses 1-14. Jeremiah is in the Old Testament; if you turn to the middle of your Bible, you should be in the book of Psalms, and if you turn to the right through Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Isaiah, you’ll find your way to Jeremiah. As we find our way there, I’ll pray for us here:
“Lord, we come before you today and ask that we may feel your presence, the presence of the Holy Spirit, with us as we approach this text. We pray for eyes to see, ears to hear, and an openness to receive what you would have us learn today. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we pray, Amen.”
Now, whenever we study the Bible, we need to remember that, while scripture is absolutely something that we can approach and apply to our lives in the present, all scripture was written at a specific time, in a specific way, to a specific group of people. These things make up the context for the scripture. Understanding the context of scripture is a way in which we are able to more successfully interpret and apply what we read. Thankfully, with this passage, we are immediately supplied with some context for where we are historically.
Starting in verse 1: “This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 2 (This was after King Jehoiachin[a] and the queen mother, the court officials and the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the skilled workers and the artisans had gone into exile from Jerusalem.) 3 He entrusted the letter to Elasah son of Shaphan and to Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon.”
Alright, a lot packed into 3 verses, but maybe a couple things in particular that should raise some questions for us. Perhaps the largest of these comes from seeing that Jeremiah, our author, is in Jerusalem, and is writing to a group of exiles in Babylon. Understanding who these exiles are and why they’re in Babylon will be a key for us understanding the purpose of this letter, so we’re going to need to cover a brief bit of history. And I know that not everyone is as big of a history buff as me and that the clock is ticking, but I promise this is important, and I’ll move as quickly as I can.
So, it’s important to recognize that, while Israel is incredibly important to us in our religious tradition, it was not the largest or necessarily most important kingdom in the region. After numerous internal struggles and military defeats, all that was left of the Kingdom of Israel was the tribe of Judah, occupying a small territory around Jerusalem. This territory served as a doormat between the two largest powers of the time, Egypt and Babylon. Egypt marched across Judah to battle Babylon, killing Judah’s king in the process. This began a decades-long subjugation of Judah by both of these kingdoms, who both installed and dethroned puppet kings. Ultimately, Babylon attacked Judah, removing both the king mentioned in this passage, Jehoiachin, and the large exile group, bringing them back to Babylon.
Now, exiling large captured groups was not uncommon in the ancient world, but this was typically a purely defensive strategy, done to separate people groups in order to destroy their cultures and keep them from rebelling. Babylon chose this exile group a little differently. We see a number of different groups listed in verse 2: political leaders, skilled workers, artisans...basically, Babylon is forcing a brain drain from Judah, taking the “best and brightest” for themselves, and forcing Judah into further dependence on Babylon. Everything Babylon is doing is to actively benefit Babylon while further subjugating Judah. So with all that Judah has seen Babylon do, it may have come as a surprise to read the first line of the letter Jeremiah has sent them, which we see in verse 4: “This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I have carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:”
God, perhaps to the great surprise of the exiles, identifies who is in control here.
Now, in the NIV, and in most, if not all, English translations of the Bible, the word LORD is written here with a capital L and a smaller but still capitalized O R D. Wherever this spelling and capitalization is used, this is the actual name of God, YHWH, being used. God here is using his personal, actual name, YHWH, to identify himself. This is followed by the use of the title “God of Israel,” again identifying his close personal relationship with the nation. We see that Jeremiah is not just speaking for God here, but is conveying a direct message from YHWH himself. And, bombshell of all bombshells, God not only speaks for himself, but reveals that he, through Babylon, is the one who carried this group into exile.
This may have been enough to incur a stunned silence, but He continues. Verse 5: “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.”
For a group who has just endured years of fighting and losing battles, followed by a forced removal from their homes and homeland, and who has just discovered that their God has claimed to be responsible for this, I can only imagine what hearing these verses for the first time would have felt like. Each of the actions in verses 5 and 6 have probably many things in common, but 2 of great importance. First, these actions all take a lot of time: building houses; plating gardens and being around to eat what they produce; and literally multiple generations of weddings, marrying their children and their children’s children. And second, all of these things were to be done in Babylon, the land of their exile, and would only serve to embed and integrate the exiles more firmly amongst their captors. And then, in verse 7, the exiles are instructed by YHWH to do something they would have thought impossible. Not only are they called to seek the peace and prosperity of this place; and not only is their welfare tied to this; but they are to pray to YHWH for Babylon. This would have gone against everything the Jewish people would have understood of their religion and their relationship with YHWH. The mindset of the exiles would have been something like “No, we don’t pray to YHWH for Babylon. We can’t pray to YHWH in Babylon. We pray at the temple, in Jerusalem. We pray for the welfare of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6-9).” This stems from their basic understanding of the relationship between YHWH, the Israelites, and the land. Israel wasn’t just the place where the Israelites lived, but was a literal gift from God, with every family living on the land that had been assigned to their ancestors by God. The temple itself was the physical manifestation of YHWH’s presence in and amongst the Israelites. Being taken into exile wasn’t just a horrible forced removal from their homes; it was a removal from the presence of God.
And now we see the crisis, how staggering it would be to expect to be among and pray, for an extended period of time, for those who had removed them from the presence of God.
The bad news continues. Verses 8 and 9: “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.” These verses do not say what these false prophets have been saying, but using context clues, we see that the false prophets have been directly contradicting what YHWH just said. Scripture from elsewhere in Jeremiah confirms that these false prophets have been telling the exiles that their time in exile will be short, and they will soon be returned home. Not just this, but we see an incredible statement here: “Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have.” The lies that are being told have been requested by the people in exile. This may seem strange at first blush, but having come this far, can we blame them? Can we put ourselves in their shoes and imagine what these requests would have been like? These would not just be requests actively seeking to rebel against God; these would have been requests of desperation. “Please, tell me what’s happening. Why are we here? When will we be going home? Will we be going home soon? Please tell me we’ll be going home soon.”
So imagine now, having lived through everything these exiles had been through, receiving this letter, hearing for the first time that your God has carried you into exile and seemingly out of his presence, that you will be there for an extended time, that all of your pleas to hear some glimmer of hope at returning home soon have been met with lies about the timetable, and then proceeding into verses 10 and 11:
“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. 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 a hope and a future.”
I can only imagine what might have been going through the heads of the exiles after hearing this: “*stutter*70 years? 70 years! Hey! I’m gonna be dead in 70 years! You took us to this place?! I’ve seen people die! My home destroyed! 70 years?! And you know the plans you have for us? Prosper and not harm! Hope and a future? Hope and a future!”
Can you imagine, the pain, the anger, the betrayal, that might have been felt? Is it any wonder they may not have listened? If I search myself, the person I am now, the person I’ve been, I can absolutely imagine, in a time of utter crisis, that I could have reacted the same way.
Now, I must say at this point that this exploration about what the exiles may have been thinking or feeling is speculation, and that this speculation may indeed say more about me than it does about the exiles. But what I do know is that the intent of this letter, the reason for this letter, is quite different from the feelings we just explored. Verses 12 to 14: “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.” One of the keys here in the literary context is the word “then.” “Then” is a connector, and in this case, “then” connects to the end 70 years in exile revealed in verse 10. Everything that comes after the “then” refers to verse 11. These verses, 12-14, are actually quoting from the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 4, starting in verse 25: “After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time—if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and arousing his anger, 26 I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed. 27 The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you. 28 There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. 29 But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30 When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him. 31 For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath”
For the exiles, we see in this passage everything that has happened and everything that will happen. The letter Jeremiah has sent to them is not new information; it is an echo of what they were told by Moses nearly 700 years before. God has not changed. He has not suddenly become weak and unable to defend his people. He has not suddenly become vengeful or wrathful. He has come to a point which is, for all intents, the last resort to bringing His people back to Him, to call them back to their covenant promise, to fully follow Him.
This covenant promise serves as an additional echo for the Jeremiah passage. The language we see in Jeremiah also echoes the covenant God made with Abraham, the patriarch of Israel, which we see in Genesis 12:1-3. The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
The nation of Israel stems from Abraham, and we see here the initial call into relationship with God, as well as the promise of the land they will possess. But we also see a responsibility given to the nation: “and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” The call here is not for Israel to insulate. The message is not that God is just for Israel. The message is that Israel is meant to use what they are given to reach beyond themselves and beyond their borders to do on a large scale what we saw God call them to do in verses 5-7. Dig in. Integrate. Seek the peace of the world around them. The last thing they would have wanted to do, pray for the welfare of Babylon and to grow where they were planted, is the first thing they should have sought to do. This was always the call for Israel. Yes, they had a special relationship with God. Yes, the land was given to them by God, and there was a physical manifestation of his presence in their land. But, as Bible scholar Christopher Wright says: (TURN TO THE SCREEN!!!) “...God’s answer to the international blight of sin was a new community of international blessing, a nation that would be the pattern and model of redemption, as well as the vehicle by which the blessing of redemption would eventually embrace the rest of humanity.
So, then the social angle of Old Testament ethics recognizes that the people descended from Abraham were not only to be blessed as he was, but also to be a blessing to the whole world of nations. And the key to that role and that mission would be their ethical distinctiveness. (Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, 49-50, my bold)”
And this is where we reach our crescendo. This peace which Israel is called to seek is not just an absence of conflict. The word used for peace in verse 7 is “shalom.” This is a peace which incorporates righteousness and justice to form a complete and total peace extending to every part of life. Justice here is the Hebrew word mishpat, which is a rectifying justice, giving people what they are due, whether punishment or protection or care, while righteousness is the Hebrew word tzadeqah, a primary justice, the day-to-day living in which a person conducts all relationships in family and society with fairness, generosity, and equity (Keller). These two ideas are both necessary to have a holistic presence of shalom. Failing to fully manifest either mishpat or tzadeqah means there will always be failure for shalom to fully manifest. This is integral to the community of faith. To quote the Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics: “Taken together, justice and righteousness represent the moral mandate laid on the community of God’s people to incorporate these qualities into the character of the community so fundamentally that moral action is characterized by these same qualities. Justice and righteousness describe persons and behaviors that seek wholeness and well-being for all, that seek equity in all social interrelationships, and that do not seek advantage at the expense of another’s disadvantage.” (See Gen. 18:19).
Last weekend I was at an event, and by chance a friend of mine, someone I hadn’t seen for over a year, was running sound. He walked past me, and even before I saw his face, I could tell it was him just from the way he walked, his posture, his gait. Israel’s posture, its gait, its walk, was meant to be this ethical distinctiveness. This was how they were to show the world they were the people of God, and how they were to point the people of the world to God.
This is our explanation for why God has allowed this exile to occur. Their exile had not separated them from the presence of God; their actions had. Israel as a whole had fallen into idolatry, worshipping Gods other than YHWH. This not only separated them from relationship to God, but in order to service this habit, they had preyed upon the weakest and most vulnerable members of their society, the ones they were repeatedly called to protect. They had lost their ethical distinctiveness which was meant to set them apart from the nations, and it took an exile to Babylon to relearn what it meant to truly be the people of God.
I see myself in this passage. I see myself in the exiles, my restlessness at being in a place I don’t want to be, feeling captive there, not wanting to set any roots because I don’t want to be there. I also see in this passage my shame of being reminded of a thing I should have already known, already been putting into practice. These concepts aren’t new to me; this passage isn’t even new to me; and yet, even when my Dad said, “grow where you’re planted,” I still fought against taking action until major events occurred.
Coronavirus was the first event to change my personal focus. It took no less than a global pandemic to force my focus to finding ways to help others, to begin to seek the shalom of the city I’d been brought to.
The death of George Floyd took this to another level. Even after beginning to do what I told myself was “seeking shalom,” I was still trying to think of any way I could to get out of Minnesota until two days after George Floyd’s death. I can’t even say it was the day after, when I first learned of his death. I took until the next day, after my city started to burn, to realize I couldn’t leave. Here I was, sitting on my behind, with a seminary degree in justice and mission in my back pocket, failing to study the issues in my community, failing to put any sort of action into practice, failing to recognize that my shalom is tied to the shalom of the community I live in. My insulation was stunting my growth, my relationships. I was Israel, needing to be knocked upside the head to wake up and return to God and His call.
And to be honest, I see the church as a whole in this passage. This passage was not written solely to or for individuals; it was addressed to an entire group. The mission and the hope that came from this passage hinged on a corporate action, and I believe the same is still true today. God still has not changed. But I look around today and ask, is the focus of Christianity today, truly, on seeking the shalom of the place we are? I look around Christianity today, especially the evangelical church in this country, and I see a focus more often on the self than the other. I see a group claiming to be the people of God, but whose ethical distinctiveness is hard to determine on any given day of the week. I see a group claiming to be the people of God while failing to recognize that they are a group. We fail to recognize corporate structures and corporate sins, focusing only on our personal relationship with Christ. Does every part of our lives focus on seeking shalom? How we spend our money? How we spend our time? How we focus our attention? Will how we act on Tuesday be influenced by this action?
If we are to be the people of God, we must recognize the actions of the group. We must move toward this ethical distinctiveness, which includes not only our relationship with God, but actively seeking the shalom of everyone and everything around us. This is our call, and it is through this action that we will seek and find God.
Let’s pray.
“Lord, we come before you today, and we thank you for giving us this day. We thank you for the opportunity to be in relationship with you, with each other, and with everyone we encounter. We pray to you for this city, for St. Michael, Albertville, Otsego, for Minneapolis and St. Paul, and for every other city in which we reside. We pray that our actions be focused on and influenced by the understanding that we represent you here on earth as your people, and we pray, as we seek shalom for those around us, that we may also find shalom with you. We pray these things in your name. Amen.”