I want to begin the lesson by hearing a promise that God makes:
I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart. (Jeremiah 24:7 ESV)
God says that he is going to give his people a heart to know him because they are going to return to him with their whole heart so that they will be in relationship. They will be the people who belongs to the Lord and the Lord will be their God. Now this is quite an amazing promise considering what we have been reading about concerning the people. We have read that the people do not have a heart for the truth. They just want to follow their own stubborn hearts. So what is God going to do so that his people will have heart to know him and return to him? Open your copies of God’s word to Jeremiah 24 and we are going to see how God will bring his people to himself.
Grasping the Vision (Jeremiah 24:1-10)
Jeremiah 24 begins with the prophet Jeremiah seeing a vision. Jeremiah sees this vision after the first two invasions from Babylon against Jerusalem. When the Babylonians invaded, they captured and brought back to Babylon many of the important people in the land. During the first invasion, the Babylonians captured the nobles and upper crust of the society. Included in that exile were the people like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. During the second invasion, the Babylonians captured more of the working class of people. Included in that exile were people like the prophet Ezekiel. But there are still people who remain in Jerusalem and Judah who were not captured by the Babylonians. This is the context for the vision we read in chapter 24.
In the vision, Jeremiah sees one basket containing good figs and one basket containing bad figs that could not be eaten (Jeremiah 24:1-3). As the vision is explained we are going to learn that the two baskets of figs represents two groups. One basket of figs represents the people who were left behind and were not captured by the Babylonians. The other basket of figs represents the people who were captured and sent into Babylonian exile. Before we read the explanation, I want us to think about how we would interpret these events. Which group do you think would represent the good figs and which group do you think would represent the bad figs? Let’s read the text and see if you would have interpreted God’s actions properly.
In verses 4-7 God says that the the basket of good figs represents the people who were captured and sent away into exile. Listen to what God promises in verse 6. God says he will keep his eyes on those people for their good. He will bring them back into the land. He will build them up and not tear them down. He will plant them and not pluck them up. These are the people that God will give the heart to know him. They are the ones who will be God’s people and will return to the Lord with their whole heart.
Now look at verses 8-10. God says that the basket of bad figs represents Zedekiah, the king of Judah, his officials, the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in the land, and those who are in Egypt. What is God’s message to them? God says in verses 9-10 that God will bring disaster on them so that they are an offense to the nations of the earth. They are going to be a reproach, a byword, a taunt, and a curse. God is going to send sword, famine, and pestilence on them until they are completely destroyed from the land.
Misunderstanding God’s Intentions (Jeremiah 24:1-10)
Now here is what I want us to think about. Would anyone of us have thought to look at these events in this light? Don’t you think that the people who were left behind and not captured would be considered the lucky ones? Don’t you think that the people who were not captured and sent into exile would be the ones who would think that God loves them. They must have been living right and God watched over them. But those people who were captured and sent away, they must have done something wrong. They must have been living life badly. God did not care about them. God was not watching over them. They were the unlucky ones. I think this is how we would have interpreted these events. I think this is how we would have interpreted the vision if we were not given the explanation. We would immediately interpreted these events in our lives as bad if we were captured and good if we had been spared and stayed in the land. As you read through Ezekiel and Jeremiah you get the sense that this is the way the people had interpreted these events (cf. Ezekiel 11:14-15; Jeremiah 29:15-23).
But God says that the people have it all wrong. God says that you have the picture backward. You think that God is saying something about the people who are going through suffering and you think God is saying something about the people who are not. I want us to think about how we can easily confuse God’s intention. We think that we can know what God is doing intuitively. But God is always expressing to us that we cannot. God’s ways are not our ways and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts (cf. Isaiah 55:8-9). The “foolishness” of God is greater than the wisdom of any human way of thinking (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:25).
The book of Job also shows how we can confuse God’s intention. Job’s friends presumed that God’s intention toward Job was to lead him to repentance. They repeatedly proclaim that Job is not upright but a sinner who needs to repent. They proclaim that God never causes the innocent to perish or the upright to be cut off (cf. Job 4:7). But God arrives at the end of the book and states something very important. God condemns these friends for not speaking right about God (cf. Job 42:7). Not only were they wrong about Job, who the Scriptures called blameless and upright in chapter 1, but they were also wrong about God and what God was doing.
We see this same confusion of God’s intention in the New Testament. In John 9 we read about Jesus and his disciples approaching a man who was born blind. But the question the disciples ask is telling in John 9:2. They ask who sinned. Did this man sin or did his parents sin so that he was born blind. The disciples of Jesus thought they had an understanding of God’s intentions. They thought they knew how to look at this situation with the man born blind. But Jesus tells them that they had it all wrong. No one was to blame for this condition. God’s intention was not to punish for someone’s sinning. Rather, the man was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
I want us to consider that this is the answer God is giving to the people who are in exile. Why are these people taken into captivity? What was God’s intention toward these who were in Babylonian exile? God’s answer is amazing. God says that his intention toward those in exile is to have his eyes on them for their good. God is going to build them up and plant them. God is going to give them a heart to know him and make a relationship with them so that they will return to him with their whole heart. In short, God is working so that God’s power and glory can be put on display. God was working to bring his people back to him. God was working so that he would cause these people’s eyes to turn upward, not downward. The exiles were the good figs, not the bad figs.
Having A Heart For God
So what is God trying to teach his people through this prophecy of Jeremiah? First, just because life is rough and you are in a bad place does not mean that God’s eyes are not on you or that God does not have a future plan for you. I think this is a very important message. The people who had been captured and taken into exile could think that they were abandoned by God. But this was far from the truth. Rather, God had a future plan to do good for the people who at the present were removed from their land and suffering in exile. This is an important reminder for us today. Just because life is difficult does not mean that God’s presence has left or that God is not longer going to work in your life. Too often we equate suffering with God’s punishment. The book of Job was written to break that kind of thinking. But we are still tempted to do. When life goes badly, we cry out to God because we think he is punishing us. We are wondering what we did wrong. Now, I think we can recognize from the book of Proverbs that there are consequences for bad decisions and not choosing God’s way. But just because someone has something worse going on in their lives does not mean you are righteous and they are wicked. This is what these people in Jerusalem were thinking about those who were in exile. Those in exile were tempted to think the same about themselves and about those who remained in Jerusalem. To say this another way, our present circumstances are not an indication of God’s love for you. Further, our present circumstances are not an indication of God’s purpose for you.
Second, God was using this time of discipline in exile to change the people’s hearts to know the Lord and to return to him with their whole heart. You see God specifically say this in Jeremiah 24:7. God setting his eyes on the people for their good did not mean that the people would have the biggest home or the newest camel. God setting his eyes on the people for their good meant giving them instruction and discipline through difficulty so that they would return to the Lord with all their hearts. Our hardships are for our good. We have a hard time with this truth. We think that it cannot be true because we cannot see how it could accomplish any good. But I would imagine the man born blind thought the same thing. He could not understand how God could accomplish any good from it. But that did not mean that God could not or would not. God is working for our salvation and our transformation. This is how God works all things together for good (cf. Romans 8:28). God is working to give you a right heart for him. Listen to what the writer of Hebrews said to those who were suffering:
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:11 ESV)
Now the key to this teaching is at the end of the sentence. None of what the writer of Hebrews taught will be true in your life if you have not been trained by the discipline. God is training us in our difficulties and hardships if we will allow him to do so. We cannot bear the fruit of righteousness if we do not allow the time of our exile to train us. God has not cast us off. God is teaching and training us.
Therefore, the right evaluation of God’s intention is to consider how God is teaching us and training us. Rather than charging God with wrong, or being wrong by trying to second guess God’s intentions, let us just learn what God is teaching us through our hardships. How can the works of God be displayed in us? How can God’s goodness be shown in our lives? How will I use what God is doing to cause me to follow the Lord with my whole heart? Notice that this is what Paul did regarding his imprisonment.
I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. (Philippians 1:12-13 ESV)
God’s purpose for your life is relationship with him and he is actively working in the world, in your life, and in the lives of others to accomplish this. So we submit our lives to the Lord so that we can be his people and so he can be our God (cf. Jeremiah 23:7).