Hope In The Valley
Pastor Matt Bell
Sermon Summary
Pastor Matt Bell explains Jeremiah 29:1–14 in its setting of Judah’s exile, showing that Jeremiah 29:11 is not a promise of an easy, trouble-free life but a declaration of God’s faithfulness in the midst of judgment, suffering, and dark valleys. God had not abandoned His people, and He has not abandoned believers today: in Christ, He gives a living hope and an imperishable inheritance kept in heaven. These promises call God’s people to seek Him wholeheartedly, reject the devil’s condemnation, trust the sufficiency of Jesus’ blood, and remain devoted to the Lord through every trial.
Sermon Transcript
It is good to see all of you here this morning. What a blessing already to be here and to worship the Lord. I trust that even if we dismissed right now, you would leave filled, encouraged, and strengthened just by the time of worship. So everything beyond this point is just bonus, okay? Just bonus—just adding to the goodness that God is doing in our lives. Amen?
If you have your Bibles, you can open to Jeremiah chapter 29. We are looking at verses 1 through 14 this morning. This passage contains, in the middle of it, one of the most popular verses in the whole Bible: Jeremiah 29:11. This is many people’s favorite Bible verse because it is so encouraging.
Look at what it says. This is God speaking to His people:
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
People love this verse. This might be your favorite verse. I know that for a long time this was my dad’s favorite verse. He would preach on it and talk about it a lot.
People love this verse so much that they print it on anything and everything they can find. I went on Amazon this week and typed in “Jeremiah 29:11,” and six billion products came up. I saw so many nice ones that I had to bring some to show you.
There is a little Jeremiah 29:11 wooden box. There are Jeremiah 29:11 wristbands—I have on my Jeremiah 29:11 wristband this morning. There is a little glass heart with the Scripture printed on it that you could put on your desk. Of course, you have to have your Jeremiah 29:11 coffee mug.
Then there is something I had never heard of before. It is called a little pocket hug. Have you ever heard of a little pocket hug? It is this little pocket that you slip a coin into, and the coin says Jeremiah 29:11. I guess you put it in the little pocket and then put it in your pocket, and it hugs you in your pocket. I do not know, but it is called a pocket hug.
And, of course, what home would be complete without your Jeremiah 29:11 throw pillow?
People love this passage. They love to print it and put it everywhere. Maybe you have a Jeremiah 29:11 pocket hug with you this morning, or a poster in your house, or a coffee mug. If you did, I would not be surprised, because people love this verse—and rightfully so.
But most people have no idea what Jeremiah 29 is about. Most people have never read the book of Jeremiah, which we are reading through right now in our Year of the Bible reading plan. If you are reading through Jeremiah with us, you know it is not easy reading. I will confess this morning that we have fallen a little behind, trying to keep up with the beginning of the school year and with Jeremiah, which is not easy reading.
Maybe that is why verse 11 stands out so much. It makes sense, it sounds good, and it makes us feel good when we read it. But if you do not know what chapter 29 is about, you do not really know what verse 11 is about.
The amazing thing is that when you know the whole story—when you know what is going on in chapter 29—Jeremiah 29:11 is even more encouraging than the surface-level reading you might find printed on a bumper sticker, coffee mug, throw pillow, or pocket hug. It is even more encouraging.
That is what we are going to dig into today. We are going to look at Jeremiah 29:1–14. I invite you to stand with me as we read the Word of God. We will begin by reading verses 1 through 9, and then we will look at the remaining verses as we walk through the passage.
Jeremiah’s Letter to the Exiles
This is what the Word of God says:
These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the eunuchs, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.
I cannot read these Bible names! Jeremiah sent a letter to these people. What did the letter say?
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in My name. I did not send them, declares the Lord.
Father, we thank You for Your Word. I pray that You would strengthen our hearts through it this morning and encourage us. Lord, speak to each heart that is here. God, I thank You for Your people who have gathered here today in Your name. We know that Your presence is here with us.
Speak to us today, Lord, so that we would leave Your presence strengthened and encouraged, with Your work and the work of Your Son advancing in our lives, and that we would go out into the world and show the love of Jesus. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
You may be seated. I have three points for us this morning from this passage.
Their Dark Valley
The first point from these first nine verses is their dark valley. The people of Israel are in a dark place. This is not a good place when this letter finds them.
The history of God’s people is that God had been so good to them. He created this nation out of one family—Abraham’s family. Abraham and Sarah were a couple who were very old and barren. They could not have children, but God promised to give them a son, and He gave them Isaac. From Isaac came Jacob, and from Jacob came twelve sons and the twelve tribes of Israel.
God delivered that nation from Egypt. God planted them in the Promised Land. God gave them His Word and His kings to reign over them. He gave them priests and prophets to speak His Word to them. God blessed His people so much.
Yet the history of Israel is that they continuously rejected and forsook their God. They chose not to follow the Lord but to worship idols and engage in gross perversions, even child sacrifice to false, demonic gods.
God repeatedly sent prophets to warn them and call them back to Himself. He said, “If you will not repent, I am going to kick you out of the land that I gave you. I did not give you this land so that you could pollute it with injustice. I gave you this land so that you could glorify Me in it.”
The people refused to repent, so God began to bring upon them the judgment He had promised. Jerusalem was conquered by Babylon in three separate attacks—three raids by Babylon and King Nebuchadnezzar. These attacks were about ten years apart. After each attack, there was a major deportation of the local citizens into exile in Babylon.
Jeremiah 29 tells us that these are the words of the letter Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem—Jeremiah was still in Jerusalem—to the surviving elders in exile. This happens after the first wave of exiles has been taken to Babylon.
In a few weeks we will be in the book of Daniel. We know the story of Daniel, the young man who was carried away into exile in Babylon. Daniel went in the first wave. Jeremiah is still in Jerusalem, but the exiles—the young men, the prominent men, and the elites—have been taken away to Babylon.
While they are there, some so-called prophets among them are lying to the people. One thing they are saying is that this exile will be brief. “It is only going to be two years,” these false prophets say. We read that in the previous chapter, Jeremiah 28.
They are saying, “Do not worry. This is not going to last long. It is only going to be two years, and then we will be back home. In two years we will all come back, everything will be fine, and we will pick up life right where we left off. Everything is going to be okay. God is going to set us free in two years.”
Jeremiah writes this letter to people who have suffered immeasurable loss, and he writes to tell them, “Guess what? It is going to get worse. You are not going back to Jerusalem. It is not going to be two years. It is going to be seventy years. You are going to be there for seventy years. Unpack your bags and settle in. You are going to be here for a while.”
Because it would be seventy years, the majority of them would never return home. When the seventy years were complete and a small handful did return to Jerusalem, they did not return to the homes they had left. They returned to dust and ashes, because in the third attack King Nebuchadnezzar leveled Jerusalem to the ground. He wiped it off the face of the earth. There was nothing left to go back to.
These people are in a dark valley. They have suffered unimaginable loss. Everything they had is gone. Their homes are gone. Their land is gone. Their prosperity is gone. They are refugees and exiles living in a foreign land, among a foreign people, with a foreign language and culture. Their identity is being swallowed up by Babylon. God’s city and God’s temple are destroyed.
All of this has been taken away from them by God Himself. In verse 4, God says, “I have sent you into exile. I am the One who did this to you, because you would not repent and because of your sin.”
God is a God of love, grace, and mercy. We understand that. But God is holy, which means God is also a God of justice. These two things—God’s love and God’s holiness—are not in conflict. God is patient. God is gracious. God is merciful. But God is just.
Finally, after centuries of pleading with His people and being patient with them, He brings justice upon them. It is difficult to imagine going through something this catastrophic and world-shattering.
They have lying prophets speaking good things that make them feel better: “We just have to hold on. We can make it two years. It is awful and rough, but these prophets say it will only be two years. We can hold on. It is going to be okay. We will be back home soon. Do not worry.”
But then God tells Jeremiah, “Write them a letter.”
In our generation, we have the term “Debbie Downer.” You know what a Debbie Downer is? It is someone for whom the glass is always empty—not even half empty. They always look at the worst side of everything.
In previous generations, they did not call them Debbie Downers. They called them “a Jeremiah.” Did you know that? “He is a real Jeremiah. She is a real Jeremiah,” because his message was always bad news.
Have you ever gotten a text or an email from somebody that you never want to open because you know what it will say? “What is it now?” They are a real Jeremiah.
That is how the exiles felt when they received this letter: “What is he going to say now?” Jeremiah says, “It is not going to be two years. It is going to be seventy years. There will not be anything to return to; it is going to be wiped off the map. Most of you will never return. Settle in, unpack your bags, plant trees and gardens, take wives, marry off your children, and pray for the good of the city where you are, because you are going to live out the rest of your days there.”
This is a dark valley. Jeremiah’s letter is like another bomb dropping on them. This is the context of Jeremiah 29. God’s people are in the midst of a very deep and dark valley.
But into their darkness, God sends forth some good news.
God’s Good News
In the middle of their hardship, their darkness, and things going from bad to worse, God includes good news in this letter. That is our second point this morning: God’s good news.
Look at verses 10 and 11. How many of you are ready for some good news? Amen.
For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you My promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
In the context of what is happening, this statement is about God’s faithfulness to His people and to the promises He has made. Though His people are in a very dark season brought about by their own sin and rebellion, the good news is that God has not abandoned them. He has not forsaken them. He has not cast them aside.
Though He sent them into exile to discipline them so that they might learn their lesson, He has not thrown in the towel on His people. Is this not good news for us—people who often fall into sin and rebellion, people who, though we want to serve the Lord, fall into temptation?
This is good news not just for them but for us: God will not abandon His children. Second Timothy 2:13 says:
If we are faithless, He remains faithful—for He cannot deny Himself.
Most people look at Jeremiah 29:11 and take it to mean, “I am never going to experience hardship or difficulty. Everything is going to be good and easy. It will be smooth sailing. God says He has good plans for me—plans for good and not for evil, to prosper me, with a future and a hope. God is going to bless me.”
They take a surface-level reading. They do not even know Jeremiah 29. They see the verse printed on a pillowcase somewhere and conclude that they will have an easy life because God has good plans for them. “I am never going to get sick. I am never going to lose my job. I am never going to have struggles in my marriage. I am only ever going to get raises. My kids are going to be angels. Everyone is going to love me. God has good plans for me—I read it on a coffee mug this morning.”
That is not what this verse is saying.
What this verse means is that when God’s children go through hard times and dark valleys, God is still with them. It does not mean that we will have an easy life. God never promised us an easy life—quite the opposite.
Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation.” I have never seen that printed on a coffee mug. I have seen the second part printed: “But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
Unfortunately, people read only the second part and take it to mean that they will have no tribulation. No. Jesus says, “You will have tribulation, but take heart. Do not become discouraged. I have overcome the world.”
What does that mean? It means that the attacks of the enemy in your life will not be victorious. The tribulation you go through will not destroy you; it will perfect you. No weapon formed against you will prosper.
That does not mean no weapons will be formed against us. It does not mean we will not be attacked by the enemy, or that the enemy is not out to steal, kill, and destroy, going around like a roaring lion. He is. But the promise for God’s people is that all of his attacks will fail, because God is not going to abandon His children.
The apostle Paul says that all who desire to live a godly life will suffer persecution. Jesus said:
Blessed are you when people persecute you, revile you, and utter all manner of evil against you falsely for My name’s sake.
He says that when that happens, rejoice. When you are persecuted for righteousness, rejoice. Why? Because great is your reward in heaven.
We are not to live for the temporary things of this life. We are not to live merely to lay up treasure on earth. We are to live to lay up treasure in heaven.
The promise God makes to His people in Jeremiah is a promise that most of the people who heard it would not see fulfilled in their earthly lives. Yes, God fulfilled it. After seventy years, God moved the heart of King Cyrus, who issued a decree allowing the exiles to return.
Do you know what happened? Most of them did not go back, because they had built good lives in Babylon, and what remained in Jerusalem was a barren wasteland. Only a handful returned, but God was faithful to His promise.
The people to whom God made the promise would not see it with their own eyes in this life. For us today, the promises we hold on to are mostly not promises for this life or about its temporary things. The New Testament anchors our hope not in the temporary but in the eternal.
An Imperishable Inheritance
Turn quickly to 1 Peter chapter 1. I do not have this passage on the screen. Beginning in verse 3, the apostle Peter writes:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.
How many of you are glad that you are part of God’s family? Amen. That is a work He has done in our lives. He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
What an inheritance: imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Where is it? It is kept in heaven for you.
The inheritance we are looking forward to—the promises of God for His people—is not about the good life now. It is about the inheritance God has laid up for us in eternity. Just as the people to whom God made the promise in Jeremiah would not see it with their own eyes in that life, so it is for us. The majority of God’s good promises for us will be seen in eternity. That is the hope we have in Christ.
Peter goes on in verse 5 to say that by God’s power we are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time:
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.
Peter is writing very plainly. There is an inheritance in heaven for us. It is kept by God’s power. It is imperishable and undefiled. No one can take it away from us. It is being guarded better than the gold in Fort Knox. I do not even think there is gold there anymore, because all of our presidents stole it.
There is an inheritance being guarded by God for His people. It cannot be taken away, but it will be given to us at the end of all things, in the last time. Peter says we rejoice in this. This is something to be joyful about, even if now we have been grieved by various trials.
Have you ever been grieved by various trials? Not just a trial, but various and numerous trials. We have a saying: “When it rains, it pours.” Those are various trials.
But even the trials have a purpose. Verse 7 says:
So that the tested genuineness of your faith—which is more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
The testing of your faith is more precious than gold. Gold perishes, but our faith in God carries on into eternity. Gold perishes, but our souls are being purified by trials just as gold is purified.
God is not crushing us through the trials; He is perfecting us. Therefore, we can rejoice in the midst of trials. There is an inheritance for the people of God, but it is to be revealed in the last time, not in this life.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:9:
What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined—what God has prepared for those who love Him.
Our inheritance in Christ, because of what Christ did for us on the cross and through His resurrection, is beyond anything a human being could imagine. That is amazing.
In this life, we have many things for which we can be grateful to God. Amen? But the ultimate good He has promised us consists of promises that we will not fully experience in this life. They are stored up for us in the next life.
Even if we go through very hard and difficult times—even if your whole life has been hard and difficult—it does not mean that God has abandoned or forsaken you. It does not mean that God does not have good things for you, and it does not mean that God’s Word has failed.
So many people take the surface-level reading of Jeremiah 29:11 and think, “This means God is going to have good things for me all the time.” That is the depth of their faith. Then life happens. Tribulations and trials come—which the Bible talks about—but when we do not read the Bible and only read throw pillows, our faith is shallow.
When life really hits, we have nothing to anchor our souls to, and many people lose their faith because it was a shallow, temporary faith. They believed promises that were not true—promises God never made to begin with.
Going through hard times does not mean that God has abandoned or forsaken us. The fact that our inheritance is laid up for us in heaven is better news than, “God is going to bless you here on earth.” It is better news because this life is so temporary, but eternity is forever.
The good God has stored up for you will last forever. The trials we go through in this life, Paul says, are a light and momentary affliction compared with the weight of eternal glory.
Jesus endured the suffering of the cross for the depth of the joy that was set before Him. The inheritance of glory far surpasses any trial we might experience in this life.
This is where God points their attention: “You are going through a hard time. I have good promises for you. They are not going to be realized in this life, but they will be realized in the next.”
If life is hard, the good news is that this life is short. Eternity is forever, and that is where we are going if we have believed in Jesus.
Wholehearted Devotion
Our third point from this text is our response. The response of our hearts should be wholehearted devotion to the Lord. This is what God calls His people to after the promise He makes.
Look at verse 12:
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 I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord. And I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
Every promise God made to His people in this passage, He fulfilled. After seventy years, the people went back and rebuilt. God restored them to their land. He kept His promise and His Word. God keeps His promises.
The promises we have in Christ are better promises. The book of Hebrews says that the promises of the new covenant are even better than the promises of the old covenant.
Here is this glimmer of hope that God sprinkles into Jeremiah’s letter: “I have good plans for you. I am going to restore you.”
The best part is this: when you call upon Me, I will hear you.
That is amazing. If we will look to the Lord in faith, no matter what we are going through—if we reach out to Him and call upon Him—He will hear us.
So often, we live under the condemnation of the devil because we fall into sin and temptation. When that happens, we act like Adam and Eve. We try to hide from God. We try to clean ourselves up and pretend that we are okay.
God comes looking for Adam and Eve and calls out, “Adam, where are you?”
These people had been so wicked. They had profaned God’s temple and put idols in it. They were offering their own children in sacrifice. The sexual perversion was so dark and demonic.
Yet God says, “You are My people. You are My children. I have made promises to Abraham. I have made promises to David. I am not going to forsake them. If you will call upon Me, I will hear you.”
Whatever you have done, God will hear you if you call upon Him in faith.
I feel strongly to say this, and I am sorry if it comes across as insensitive or offensive. There may be somebody here this morning who has been living under the condemnation of the devil because you had an abortion, and you have thought, “Could God ever forgive me for what I have done?”
Or maybe you are a man who pressured somebody you got pregnant into having an abortion, and you live under this weight and condemnation of the devil. “Could God ever forgive me? Would God ever hear my prayer?”
Listen: He heard their prayer. They had killed their own children. God says, “If you will call upon Me, if you will seek Me in faith, you will find Me. I will heal you. I will forgive your sins.”
Whatever you have done, the blood of Jesus is sufficient for every sin. We sang it this morning:
What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
The promises we have in Christ are yes and amen. All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Jesus wants to set you free from the sins of your past. He carried them for you on the cross. Do not let the devil hang over your head what Jesus has already paid for. Do not let the devil beat you up with what Jesus paid the price for.
Whom the Son sets free is free indeed. The Bible says that in Christ we are a new creation. Our old life of sin and shame is gone, and in Christ we are being made new.
God says, “If you will seek Me with your whole heart—with all your heart—I will be found by you.”
The good promises of God are meant to produce in us a devotion to the Lord that is wholehearted and unwavering. Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength—to be wholly devoted to the Lord.
What God promises to give those who seek after Him is better than anything this world could offer. He promises to give us Himself: a relationship with your Creator, your Savior, and your God.
This is what makes heaven so great. It is not the streets of gold. It is not the pearly gates. It is not the sea of glass. What makes heaven so great is that Jesus is there.
But we can have Jesus now. We can have Jesus now if we seek Him with our whole heart.
Do not let anything or anyone stand in your way of seeking God wholeheartedly, of seeking after God with everything you have. There is no better use of your time. There is no better use of your life than to use it in pursuing the Lord and His purpose for your life.
The Good News in the Dark Valley
I invite you to stand with me this morning. I pray that you have found that knowing the context of Jeremiah 29 makes it even more encouraging. There is a depth to this passage.
If you are going through a hard season or a hard time, it does not mean God has abandoned you. God is right there with you in the midst of it. Even in the hardship, God has good things in store for you—things better than we could even imagine.
If you are in a dark valley, let us remind ourselves of the good news. Let us remind ourselves of what God has done for us. As Mary was singing this morning: once His enemy, now seated at His table.
What took us from being His enemies to being His friends? What took us from being His enemies to being His children?
It was the work of Jesus. Amen. It is the blood of Jesus.