A synopsis of the sermon delivered by the Rev. David L. Hicks at St. Paul’s Reformed Episcopal Church at the 10:30am service on Trinity XXIII, November 13, 2004. Please read Jeremiah 29:4-14.

To often, we Christians measure our spiritual condition by the circumstances of life at any given moment. Especially during the times of stress and difficulty, we are tempted to wonder if God is interested in us, or whether we have cause to hope in God. The people of Jeremiah’s day were facing extremely difficult times and were tempted to despair of God’s intervention. They were captives in a foreign land, and from the human perspective they had no reason to hope in the God of Israel. After all, the prophets, including Jeremiah, made it clear that God was behind the present situation. How could they have hope, when God permitted the armies of Babylon to take them from their homeland and live as an oppressed people? Why should anyone think that God would rescue his people now?

Jeremiah gives the people a word from the Lord that is a word of hope. He tells them to continue living their lives, trusting in God, and is so doing they will find God’s peace.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away captive, whom I have cause to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands so that they may bear sons and daughters – that you may be increased there, and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace. (Jer. 29:4-7).



Further, Jeremiah tells them that God will restore the nation, and they will return to their land because God has thoughts of peace toward them and not destruction.

For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope (Jer. 29:10-11).



Jeremiah did not want the people to lose hope in God simply because the visible situation seemed hopeless. God’s ultimate purposes and plans for his people were not be determined by the temporary hardship that they were enduring. So it is with us. Christians face many trials and pains in this life. We are not exempt from the suffering that many encounter in this world, for God has made no such promise. However, we are not free to assume that God’s love is not extended to us because of those hardships. Saint Paul writes in his letter to Titus that Jesus Christ demonstrates God’s love to his people and gives them hope. We are indeed a people of hope in Jesus Christ, apart from the cares of life.

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life (Titus 3:4-7).
 
Amen.