Tuesday, 02 August, 2005: Today’s Bible readings.
10 “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. 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart, 14 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 tells the people of Israel that God has a plan for His people who are actively rebelling against Him. He will send them into exile for seventy years because of their continued disobedience. They will be destroyed as a nation and will be removed from the land of Israel.
But God also makes a great promise to them, even in the midst of their disobedience. He will not totally destroy them. He promises to maintain a remnant that will return at the end of the seventy years of exile. But more than that, God promises to work in their lives so that at the end of the exile, they will then desire God. God will fulfill His promise to His people when at the end of the seventy years He “visits” them. It is at that point they will seek Him.
What will change at the end of the seventy years? Why will they then call out to God and not before?
Because, as God tell them through Jeremiah, He has a plan for their future. He will visit them and change their desires so that they will earnestly seek Him. And when they seek Him in this way, God promises they will find Him. It is God’s plan to let them to their own desires as a punishment for their disobedience, but then to work in their lives create a desire they previously did not have. They will desire God.
What do we learn from this?
Are you not seeking God as you ought? Is your desire for Him flagging? Pray, asking that God increase your faith and your desire for Him. As you seek after Him, He promises to be found, so ask Him for the desire to seek Him. Make full use of the means God has provided for increasing our faith. Read, study, and meditate upon the scriptures. Consider the Christ to whom they point. Pray, earnestly asking God to work in your life. Make sure you are sitting under the faithful preaching of the word every Sunday. Regularly participate in the Lord’s Supper. Meet regularly with other believers so you are spurred on in your faith and you are encouraging others.
It is God who is working to draw you to Him, so trust in Him and make full use of His means of grace to spur yourself on to love and good deeds.
But always remember that you are not saved by your zeal for God. You are saved by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ. He saves you, so trust in Him and not in your own desire for Him.
Where is Christ in this passage?
My only hope of being accepted when I come before God is the fact that I have a mediator to represent me and a substitute who bore the penalty for my sin and gives me the righteousness I need. Without Christ’s perfect righteousness imputed to me, I can not stand before God. I can only be accepted by God because of the Person and work of Jesus Christ.
I can only seek God because of Jesus Christ. No one can come to the Father except through Him. So any promise of seeking and finding God is a promise of the work of Christ being applied to you through faith in Him.
