If the exiles in Babylon thought they would return soon,
that the Lord would quickly deliver them from Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah’s letter
disabused them of that notion. We use
the promises of verse 11 as our hope in trial but the original audience would
not have seen these as personally hopeful.
They were going to be here in Babylon for seventy years, nearly all this
group would never see Jerusalem again, they would be like the generation who
perished in the wilderness and never entered the Promised Land. Jeremiah says, settle in, it’s going to be a
while, live life as you would if you were here.
Apparently, the prophets and diviners among the exiles were giving a
different message and Jeremiah is quick to put down the hopes they may have
engendered. The promises of verse 11 are
contingent on their turning back to Him in truth and when they do, the Lord
will glorious restore them to the Land.
If you were in their shoes, knowing that you were going to spend the
rest of your life in “exile”, whatever that may mean in your life, would you
still hold onto the promises as dearly in hope?
You should, even if they are never realized in your life.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus sends out the disciples as an
“advance team” to the places Jesus is about to go. They are to proclaim the coming of the
kingdom in both word and powerful deeds to prepare the place for His
coming. This would have been a familiar
thing at the time, for heralds would have gone ahead of the king to the places
he was preparing to visit to get the people and the place ready to receive
their king with fanfare and gladness.
The seventy-two go about the mission and then come back overjoyed and, it
appears, quite surprised at what has happened through them. Jesus says that
they aren’t to get attached to the works, these aren’t the truly important
thing. The thing to rejoice over is the
reality that they have eternal life, “that your names are written in heaven.” These things will pass away, the things
eternal are the things of real significance.
Lydia is a person of peace, the kind of person Jesus spoke
of in our Gospel reading. Paul got a
vision and a word from a “man of Macedonia” but when they went to Philippi they
found no men, no synagogue, only a place of prayer by the river, a place of
women not men. The requirement for the establishment of a synagogue was that
there be ten faithful men in the place else it was thought to be subject to
judgment as Sodom and Gomorrah where that number of faithful men could not be
found. God has faithful people, people
of peace, prepared all over the world, but who will go to them as Paul
did? We are to live as exiles here,
prepared to go wherever He sends us to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom. As the people settled in Babylon, men like
Daniel and his friends became witnesses to the kings and his “magicians”, the
descendants of whom we know as the wise men who visited Jesus after His birth. It is important that we always be proclaiming
the Gospel lest we miss an opportunity to see it take root.
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