Where the Battle Will Be Won (Jeremiah 29:1-14)

Big Idea: When God’s promises seem unfulfilled, the real solution is wholehearted repentance and turning to God in prayer.

When things go wrong, it is only natural to ask the question, "Why?" And when you ask this question, you will no doubt receive no shortage of answers. The simple answer is sometimes, we don't know the reason why something bad takes place. Sometimes, as seen in John 9, a person can be sick solely to demonstrate God's work in their life. We can find no discernable link between cause and effect.

Sometimes, however, there is an answer to the question, "Why?" It's reasonable to question why we aren't experiencing the promises and benefits of God. If God has promised it, and we're not experiencing it, there are only three possibilities. God lied, we misunderstood the promise, or there is some condition to it that hasn't been met.

Let me state categorically that God is not a liar. God is truthful and faithful to every promise that he has ever given. God's faithfulness means that God will always do what he has said and fulfill what he has promised. Numbers 23:19 says, "God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?" In 2 Samuel 7:28, David said: "O Sovereign LORD, you are God! Your words are trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant."

Let this be unequivocally clear: God is entirely dependable. He will never falter in His faithfulness to those who place their trust in His declarations. God always delivers on His promises. When a perceived promise seems unfulfilled, the issue does not lie with Him. Instead, we must consider two other possibilities.

• The first is that we have misinterpreted the promise itself. Consider the countless parents who have relied on Proverbs 22:6: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." After diligently training their children, they are understandably dismayed when those children depart from that path. The key, I believe, lies in understanding that this verse is a proverb, not a categorical promise. Proverbs are concise expressions of probable truth or wisdom, offering poetic guidance rather than divine legal guarantees. Misunderstanding the nature of God's communication can prevent us from rightly receiving what He offers.
• The second possibility is that we have not yet fulfilled the conditions attached to the promise. God is ready to act on his word, but we still need to fulfill certain requirements. I believe God wants to fulfill his promises to His children, but they haven't met the necessary requirements yet. The obstacle, then, is not on God's end, but on ours.

Crisis

The time was around 597 BC. The Babylonians were the enemy. The Babylonians were an invading nation known for overwhelming military force, psychological terror, mass deportations, and heavy tribute. And for the Southern Kingdom, the news was not good. In the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, he laid siege to Jerusalem. And on March 16th of that year, 597 BC, Jerusalem fell. All the treasures from the temple, and all the gold articles, were plundered. And Nebuchadnezzar carried into exile 3,023 Jewish males, probably ten thousand people in total. 2 Kings 24:14 tells us that "only the poorest people of the land were left."

In Jerusalem, Jeremiah learned that false prophets were claiming Babylon would fall soon and that the exiles would quickly return. And Jeremiah said clearly:

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. (Jeremiah 29:8-9)

In fact, Jeremiah said, you're going to be there for seventy years. The question was, "Why?" Is God a liar? The answer, once again, is a categorical no. God is truthful and faithful to every promise that he has ever given.

Was there some misunderstanding about God's promise? Absolutely not.

He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among you or among your livestock. (Deuteronomy 7:13-14)

So God is not a liar, and there is no misunderstanding about what God has promised. That leaves only one option. Could it be that the problem is not God, but us? The temple was plundered. Ten thousand people were carried off into exile. Could it be because of the disobedience of God's people?

When you father children and children’s children, and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, so as to provoke him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed. And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you. And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. (Deuteronomy 4:25-28)

The problem is sin. Sin among God's own people. Jeremiah was prophesying in Judah's darkest days. He began as a prophet during Josiah's reign, Judah's last good king, but saw the kingdom descend into apostasy and idolatry under four different kings. They perverted the worship of the true God and gave themselves over to spiritual and moral decay. And what is worse, they refused to listen to God's prophet.

Jeremiah predicted that a major intervention was necessary. Jeremiah prophesied that Babylon would be the instrument of God's judgment. Jeremiah preached this message of warning and condemnation for forty years, and was rewarded only with opposition, beatings, and imprisonment. The problem was sin, but the warnings went unheeded.

Three Principles

I'd like to develop some principles that apply to us.

God withholds blessing and brings judgment because of sin.

Judah's captivity by an enemy nation was not due to military strength or politics, but mainly due to their sin.

Churches today are struggling mainly not because of demographic changes or poor strategies. I believe the primary reason why churches struggle today is because of God's judgment on sin. The church's sin is as serious as Judah's sin was in the times of Jeremiah. Most of our churches are in a state of plateau or decline. It takes the average evangelical church one year and a hundred members to introduce one new person to Christ. Many churches are wasting lives, driving pastors out of the ministry, and turning away those who are seeking God.

Since 1940, the evangelical church has not grown in proportion to population growth. Evangelical churches have grown in terms of absolute numbers, but as a percentage of the total population, they have declined. Many churches are in deep trouble today, and do not know it, or know it but are ignoring it.

We are like the church of Laodicea in the book of Revelation.

I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. (Revelation 3:15-19)

We are experiencing the Lord's discipline due to our lack of repentance and our lack of passion. Because we do not care enough about our ways to fulfill our mission. God is withholding blessings and bringing judgment on our church because of sin.

There is no other solution than a spiritual one.

If the problem is a political problem, then the answer is a political solution. If the problem is a strategic one, then the answer is strategic. But the problem is a spiritual one, and the solution is going to be a spiritual solution.

In Jeremiah 29:8-9, false prophets tried to mislead the exiles by suggesting that their situation was minor and temporary. Many false prophets today are telling the church that the problem is not serious or is merely strategic. Seminars offer panaceas of techniques and methods that are guaranteed to make a church grow.

But, as Bill Hull writes in his book Can We Save the Evangelical Church?:

Before anything else, church renewal is a matter of the heart. It is gut-wrenching prayer, Spirit-generated confession, determined repentance, and conflict resolution. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is those internal spiritual issues that must not be skipped. If they are, then moving on to secondary renewal issues, such as mission statements, restructuring, or evangelism strategy, will be pointless. We must not be too interested in superficial changes that only relieve symptoms and bring temporary relief – a plop, plop, fizz, fizz theology.

The way out of the mess is not through secondary means such as mission statements, restructuring, or strategies. I believe we first need to deal with the primary issues: gut-wrenching prayer, Spirit-generated confession, determined repentance, and conflict resolution.

Read what Jeremiah wrote in Jeremiah 29:12-13: "Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart."

Or, read what Deuteronomy 4:29-31 says:

But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice. For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.

The only way out of this predicament is to return to the Lord "with all your heart and with all your soul." God's promises are contingent on our wholehearted repentance. As God told the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3:19: "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent."

I think we as a church have some business to do with God. We need a period of corporate confession, repentance, reconciliation, and restoration. We need to recognize and confess the personal and collective sins that have brought judgment on the church, and address them biblically. And that's why we're calling a Solemn Assembly this week.

When things aren't going well, when sin abounds, or when we're just in need of a fresh move of God, it's time for desperate measures. During the Welsh Revival, churches that had not experienced a clear movement of God for two years would hold a Solemn Assembly to seek his presence. In the Bible, Jehoshaphat called a Solemn Assembly because the enemy was hotfooting it his way. Hezekiah called for it because the priesthood was corrupt and the nation divided. In Josiah's case, it was the rediscovery of God's Word that was the catalyst for revival. Joel exhorted the priests to call a Solemn Assembly and to rend their hearts, not their garments.

Let me quote from Joe Aldrich:

In the Old Testament, the Solemn Assembly was targeted on Joe-citizen, not upon Joseph-the-priest. Everyone was expected to attend. Wives and children were to be there. Honeymooners were expected to show up. It was not a time for business as usual. Sometimes the assemblies lasted for days.

The word "solemn" underscores the seriousness of the occasion and the gravity of the situation. We should get solemn:

• when we realize we’re in over our heads.
• when the “glory of God” has departed from our churches.
• where sin abounds.
• where church leaders are in disarray.
• when no one is coming to Christ.
• when worship is dead.
• when there is no vision.
• when the Word falls on deaf ears.
• when carnality prevails.
• when sin is condoned.
• when unity is AWOL.
• when the perimeters of control are out of control.
• where effective individual and corporate prayer is weak or nonexistent.
• where a spirit of criticism prevails.

We need to earnestly and wholeheartedly seek God. In humility, we need to declare our utter dependence on God. We need intense, persistent prayer leading to insight, repentance, and then blessing.

For the next week, it's not business as usual. We are holding a Solemn Assembly to seek God's blessings and for both corporate and personal cleansing.

I will be fasting this week, and some of you may want to join me for the entire week, or for just one day – this coming Saturday. We will gather for prayer during the week at the church. On Thursday, volunteers will engage in continuous prayer for Richview throughout the day and night. But we want to get down to business with God. That's principle number two: there's no solution but a spiritual solution.

God is willing to answer our cries.

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 welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 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. (Jeremiah 29:10-14)

God's work at Richview is far from over. According to God's wise plan, Jeremiah prophesied that his people were to have hope and a future. Even in a difficult place and time, they had the promise that God wasn’t through with them yet. The Bible says that when you seek the Lord your God, you will find him, if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.

It’s time to stop preaching, and it’s time to start praying.