Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1965
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” Jeremiah 29:11.
I HAVE already explained to you, while expounding the 24th and 29th chapters of this Prophet, that these words were written by Jeremiah in a letter to the captives in Babylon. A considerable part of the people of Israel were carried away by Nebuchadnezzar into a far country. They were exhorted by the Prophet to build houses, form families and to abide peaceably there till the Lord should lead them back at the end of 70 years. But at that time there was a general uneasy feeling among the Jews and other subjected nations who did not rest quietly under the iron yoke of Babylon. They were plotting and planning continual rebellions and certain false prophets in Babylon worked with them, stirring up the spirit of revolt among the exiles. Jeremiah, on the other hand, assured them that they had been sent of God into the land of the Chaldeans for good, bade them seek the peace of the city wherein they now dwelt and promised them that, in due time, the Lord would again plant them in their own land.
A people in such a position as the Jews in Babylon were in danger in two ways—either to be buoyed up with false hopes and so to fall into foolish expectations, or to fall into despair and have no hope at all—and so become a sullen and degraded race who would be unfit for restoration and unable to play the part which God ordained for them in the history of mankind. The Prophet had the double duty of putting down their false hopes and sustaining their right expectations. He, therefore, plainly warned them against expecting more than God had promised and he awakened them to look for the fulfillment of what He had promised. Read the 10th verse, and note that pleasant expression, “and perform My good word unto you.”
This morning my desire shall be to comfort any of God’s people who are in a state of perplexity and thus are carried away captive. I would assure them of the Lord’s kindness to them and urge them to trust and not be afraid. God’s thoughts towards them are good, though their trials may be grievous.
The text puts me upon two tracks. First, let us consider the Lords thoughts towards His people. “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” Secondly, let us consider the Believer’s proper attitude towards his Lord. What should we think of our gracious God who thus unveils His heart to us?
I. First, then, dear Friends, CONSIDER THE LORD’S THOUGHTS TOWARDS HIS PEOPLE.
It is noteworthy, first of all, that He does think of them and towards them. Observe that this Scripture says not, “I know the thoughts that I have thought toward you.” That would be a happy remembrance, for the thoughts of God concerning His people are more ancient than the everlasting hills! There never was a time when God did not think upon His people for good. He says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn you.” But the point here brought forward is that He still thinks of them. It would be possible for you to have thought out a
plan of kindness towards a friend—and you might have so arranged it that it would henceforth be a natural fountain of good to him without your thinking any more about it. But that is not after the method of God! His eyes and His hands are continually towards His people. It is true He did so think of us that He has arranged everything about us and provided for every need and against every danger, but He has not ceased to think of us. His infinite mind, whose thoughts are as high above our thoughts as the heavens are above the earth, continues to exercise itself about us. “I am poor and needy,” says David, “yet the Lord thinks upon me.” We love to be thought of by our friends. Indeed, thought enters into the essence of love. Delight yourselves this morning, O you who believe your God, in this heavenly fact, that the Lord thinks upon you at this moment! “The Lord has been mindful of us,” and He is still mindful of us.
The Lord not only thinks of you, but towards you. His thoughts are all drifting your way. This is the way the south wind of His thoughts of peace is moving—it is towards you. The Lord never forgets His own, for He has engraved them upon the palms of His hands. Never at any moment does Jehovah turn His thoughts from His beloved, even though He has the whole universe to rule. He says of His Church, “I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.”
This Truth of God, although it is easily spoken, is not readily comprehended in the fullness of its joy. Nor is it always believed as it should be. These people in captivity were likely to fear that their God had forgotten them and, therefore, the Lord repeats His words in this place and speaks of thoughts and thinking three times. His words are so repeated as to seem almost redundant, out of a desire to make His people feel absolutely sure that not only did He act towards them, but that He still has thoughts towards them. To the banished, this would be a grand consolation. The Lord thought of them when they walked the strange streets of “the golden city” and heard a language which they understood not. He thought of them when they were buffeted as aliens by those who marched in the proudest pomp and danced in cruel derision to the sound of their viols. The Lord thought of His exiles when their sole solace was solitude by the brink of the Babylonian canals where, among the willows, they remembered Zion.