Message from Africa "You Are Where You Are Because of God" Jeremiah 29:4 > “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.” The worst wounds are self-inflicted. Rarely will anyone hurt us as bad as we hurt ourselves. There is no pain like the pain of: Making a stupid e Gulf Stream of guilt that overwhelms us with sorrow and makes us feel like we’ve blown everything. I know of no pain greater than the pain of looking at the ruins of what might have been and knowing that you are responsible for the wreckage. And that’s precisely how the Jews felt in Babylon: Rejected; Humiliated; Trapped; Judged; Condemned; Forgotten. They had become a laughingstock among the nations, just as the prophets had predicted. With that in mind, I want to make one point: In our scripture it says “to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile…” God takes responsibility for sending them to Babylon. That’s huge. You can’t overstate its importance. Everything God is going to say depends on grasping that one central truth. Why were they judged? Because of their sin. Who captured them and took them away? The Babylonians. Who sent them to Babylon? God did. God does not forget his children even when they sin. That’s the good news. The Jews had been taught from birth that God dwells in the temple in Jerusalem. If you want to find God, they said, go to the temple and worship him there. Now they were hundreds of miles from home, in a pagan land, separated from their own past, knowing most of them would never return to Jerusalem, and even if they did, the temple was no more. And into that despair God speaks a word of hope “I was with you in Jerusalem, I sent you into exile, I am with you now. God says to his hurting children, “I have not left you, not for a moment. I said I would punish you, and I did. But I have not forsaken my own people, and I never will.” Strange as it may seem, the Jews ultimately were in Babylon because that’s where they needed to be. Their rebellion was so deep that they had to be removed from Judah in order for that sin to be broken. Only radical surgery could remove the cancer of idolatry. We might say that their exile to Babylon, terrible as it seemed, was really a severe mercy from the Lord. There was no other way to get their attention. In Jeremiah 24:6-7 God offers a wonderful promise to his dejected children…“My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.” It’s as if God is saying, “You think I hate you, but I don’t. I have a wonderful plan for you, and that wonderful plan begins in Babylon.” Point to Ponder: What do you do when you don’t like the circumstances of your life and it seems as if those circumstances aren’t going to change anytime soon? The answer is that God doesn’t look at your circumstances the same way you do. You don’t like where you are, and you wish you were somewhere else doing something else. And you may be in a bad place in part because of your own foolish choices. And God says, “You are where you are because I put you there.” That’s huge! Be Encouraged and Have a Blessed Weekend: Rodgers Audi Kenya Blessings
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 19:39:43 +0000
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