Jeremiah 29:11 in Exile

Pastor James Cole

If you have ever been to a high school or college graduation, or maybe browsed the card aisle at a bookstore around May, you, you have almost certainly seen it. Jeremiah chapter twenty nine, verse eleven. 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. It, it gets printed on coffee mugs, framed on office walls, stamped on leather journals. And it sounds like a warm, effortless promise that everything is about to go smoothly, right? That whatever door you are standing in front of is about to swing wide open.

Pastor James Cole

But if you pull back the lens, if you, er, if you look at who actually received that letter and when, the picture changes entirely. It was written around five ninety seven BCE. The kingdom of Judah had been shattered. Jerusalem had been overrun by Nebuchadnezzar, and thousands of Judeans were marched off as forced captives into Babylon. They were living in exile, displaced, grieving, sitting in a pagan city hundreds of miles from home. Their lives were completely upended. And into that heartbreak, rival figures began to speak. There was a popular prophet named Hananiah, and he was telling everyone exactly what they desperate, desperately wanted to hear. He said, do not worry, God is going to break the yoke of Babylon. In just two years, two short years, you will all be back home. Everything will go back to normal.

Pastor James Cole

You can imagine how appealing that was, right? It is so easy to live with your bags packed, mentally sitting on the suitcases, waiting for the exit ramp. You tell yourself, I am not going to invest here. I am not going to put down roots in this place because this whole situation is temporary. I am just holding my breath until life actually starts again.

Pastor James Cole

And then, a messenger arrives from Jerusalem. A man named Elasah son of Shaphan. He carries a letter from the prophet Jeremiah. And Jeremiah completely shatters Hananiah's easy comforting story. He says seventy years. You are going to be here for seventy years. Most of you listening to this will not see the end of it. Your children might, your grandchildren will, but you are staying right here. And then he gives them two specific Hebrew commands. *Banah battim* and *nitu gannot*. Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.

Pastor James Cole

Think about how offensive that must have felt in the moment. Jeremiah is telling them to buy property, to mix mortar, to dig into foreign soil, to plant apple trees that take five, six, seven years just to bear real fruit. He is saying, stop holding your breath. Unpack your bags. Do not put your life or your faith on pause until circumstances improve. You have to live right here, right now, in the very soil where you are standing.

Pastor James Cole

So let me ask you to pause with me for a second and name your own unchosen Babylon. Maybe for you, it is a job that feels like a daily grind, where you feel undervalued or stuck. Maybe it is a long season of waiting for a health diagnosis, or a difficult season in a marriage, or living in a city you never planned to call home. Where in your life have you been waiting for an exit ramp before you choose to engage fully? Where are you sitting on your unpacked bags, waiting for life to start?

Pastor James Cole

Jeremiah does not stop at telling them to build houses and plant gardens. He pushes them even further, into a territory that must have sounded almost radical, if not completely unthinkable. In verse seven, he writes, seek the *shalom*, the peace, the flourishing, the wholeness of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its peace you will find your peace.

Pastor James Cole

Pray for Babylon? Pray for the prosperity of the very empire that dragged you away from home? The natural human instinct when we end up in an unwelcome circumstance is either bitter withdrawal or constant conflict. We build walls, or we sit in resentment. But Jeremiah offers a third way. Active presence. He is saying that divine purpose is not hidden away in some future ideal scenario when all your problems disappear. Divine purpose is uncovered through long term daily faithfulness, right in the middle of the mess.

Pastor James Cole

So how do we actually do that on a ordinary Wednesday morning? I like to call it the Garden Bed Pause. It is a simple habit of stopping right where you are today and identifying one concrete, unexpected act of care or diligence that you can plant in your current environment. Not tomorrow, not when the season changes, but today. In that workplace you dislike, in that home situation that feels heavy, in that community that feels hard to love. Planting a garden bed means choosing to invest love and effort where you cannot immediately control the harvest.

Pastor James Cole

That brings us right back to Jeremiah twenty nine eleven. When God says he has *machashevot shalom*, thoughts of peace and plans for a future, he says it to people who are facing seventy years in exile. God's promise was not that he would instantly rescue them from Babylon, but that he would be with them in Babylon. His grace was active in the very place they never wanted to be.

Pastor James Cole

Let us pray together. Lord, give us the quiet resolve today to unpack our bags. Help us stop waiting for an exit ramp, and give us courage to plant gardens, build houses, and seek the peace of the very places we find ourselves in. Remind us that your thoughts toward us are peace, and that you are present with us right here, right now. Amen. Take good care today, my friends.