Does God’s Promise Apply to Everyone? 

How can we know when a promise is meant for specific people at a specific time? Or is it a eternal truth, such as Jeremiah? Chapter 29, verse 11 is one example where a lot of people quote that. But is that something that we can claim for ourselves? Well, maybe just quoting that passage reference at least. Maybe you say, I don’t know what that passage is, but as soon as I quoted, I’ll bet you’ve heard it.

Here’s something and let’s see. Who was it that I saw? Matt. Matt, you asked this question, and I know that many of our listeners have heard this verse, right. Listen, here’s what it says. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Okay, let’s just look at that verse, which I’m sure you’ve heard before, and probably if you’ve been to a Christian book store, you probably seen it on a plaque or something that you put on your wall, or a bookmark that you put in your Bible and you say, oh, that’s a great verse. It’s a very positive verse, and it looks like a great promise of God.

Well, you’re going to read that verse and you’re going to read it because it’s such a positive verse. You can say, well, I know the plans I have for you, and you’re going to say, well, I hope that you is me, right? It’s a second person pronoun. I hope that pronoun is me. Well, here’s this context. I think Jeremiah Wright Jeremiah.

And we’re going to think, okay, Jeremiah, when was that written? Jeremiah. That’s the prophet in the Old Testament. Sometimes if you were to know this or look it up, you’d say, well, that’s he’s called the weeping prophet. Why is the Weeping prophet? Because he’s the guy who wrote Lamentations. Why is he lamenting? Well, it’s because the the Babylonians had come through Israel or Judah, the southern part of Israel, and destroyed these folks in 586 BC, and the temple got destroyed.

And he loved Israeli, loved obviously God in the temple. And he was weeping over it all. And, I mean, it was a terrible time for Israel. But in Jeremiah chapter 29, there was a promise that 

And though Babylon was going to destroy the southern nation of Israel 70 years later, after that generation was going to die off, there was going to be a whole group of people that were going to come back and reestablish Israel, and Judah would be reestablished, and there would be another temple built, and everything would come back around. And in the tail end of that, the promise of that restoration here, that verse comes, verse 11, for I know the plans I have for you.

What are we talking about? Talking about Judah there, declares the Lord, plans for welfare, plans for good, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. So? Yes. Right. Matt, you’re asking a great question. And I’m going to say when you read that verse and oftentimes I’ve seen it in Christian bookstores, not the bookstore we have at our church, but I’ve seen it with American Flag in the background.

And we say, well, I’d like to be in the U. Maybe the U is us, the United, the good old USA. And God’s making a promise to us. Well, really, he’s making a promise to Judah, the southern two tribes of Israel, in the sixth century BC, that even though Zedekiah was going to have his eyes gouged out, that they were going to come back 70 years later, undesirable to build a temple.

And Ezra, Nehemiah were going to make sure this all happens under God’s providence of God was going to make sure it happens, but they were going to be the leaders during that time, and there would be a new temple that would be built. And that God was through that remnant. Bringing them back into the land was going to bring ultimately the the promises of all the prophets, culminating in the Son of God being born in Bethlehem and living and fulfilling all righteousness and dying on the cross, and ultimately not even then, but ultimately in his second coming.

That hadn’t even happened yet, fulfilling the ultimate promises of a kingdom that was going to be established that we’re all still waiting for. So that was going to be at least in the near field in the early part of Jeremiah 29. That was going to be, as he has in view there, the return to the to the land that they were getting kicked out of.

So, yeah, it’s not about America. It’s not about us. It’s not about even someone who’s reading that thinking, well, I lost the job. So I’m going to quote this verse about God giving me a job back. But in saying all that, just because I learn a little bit about Old Testament history and Israel, or in this case Judah and the Babylonian captivity, doesn’t mean I’m going to be a guy who goes around raining on everybody’s parade, because I’m going to say, Nana, nana, Nana, this isn’t about you.

And so take all those plaques and throw them in the trash. I wouldn’t buy the plaque. I will give you that. And I’m not going to put it up and say, God bless America and read the plaque, but I am going to I’m going to say there’s a principle here that I can, if I’m going to read this passage in my daily Bible study, say, is there any is there any eternal principle I can draw from this, this text?

And of course there is. I’m not going to be some some naysayer who goes around, you know, as it says in the New Testament in to the Corinthians, as Paul says, knowledge puffs up, but love edify as we ought to seek to love. And I want to edify Christians with the principle that’s found in Jeremiah 29 verse 11.

And what’s the principle that God’s covenant people, God makes a promise with God’s covenant people, of which I am a part of here as the New Covenant people. I’m a Gentile, grafted in to the promise of God in saving me through the Jewish Messiah, even though I know I’m part of the church. And that’s a unique program. I’m someone that God has a plan for.

It’s not a plan to bring me in a particular piece of real estate, but it is a plan that God is going to ultimately bring me into his eternal kingdom, that I’m going to be saved ultimately from this terrible body that has all these passions weighing, waging war against my soul. And I’m going to be brought into a place where there’s going to be a as it says in Second Peter chapter three, where there’s going to be a world in which righteousness dwells or is it’s put in, in, in Psalm 16, verse 11, in the presence of God, there’s going to be fullness of joy.

That’s the ultimate plan where I’m going to be brought not just back into the promised land of Judah like they were in the sixth or fifth century BC. But I’m going to be brought into the place where I’m going to have the fullness of God’s presence brought down to earth, as it says in revelation 21. So that’s the plan that that relates to me ultimately.

And so the you I can stretch that in some elastic way to say, yeah, I’m a part of that plan. So the plan that God has for me is a plan for good, and it’s not for evil. And he is giving me a future and a hope. It’s just not the future and hope. That was in the near field of the promise there in Jeremiah 29.

So Matt, I hope you can see my answer to this question is yes and no. That promise isn’t specifically given to me as a Jew in the in the sixth century BC about leaving Judah and having to march away into the Mesopotamian area under the Babylonian army, and I got a promise that my kids are going to march back one day under, in that case, Nehemiah or or Ezra, and we’re going to help build the temple back under the rubble bowl.

No, that’s that’s not it’s not the specific promise for me. But now I live. You know what? 6600 years later in America, I do know that there is a promise that God makes for me. And that is, as a Gentile, I’m going to be saved by the Jewish Messiah. And the promise for me is I don’t have to live in this sin laden world and going to have to live forever in this sin laden body.

God has a plan for me. I’m going to live in a place where Christ is going to rule and reign on this earth. I’m going to rule and reign with him. And so I do have a plan for for welfare, not for for good, not for evil. And I do have a future and a hope. I just need to know what that future and hope is.

And it’s a little different. It’s different than it was in Jeremiah 2911. So I’m going to read that verse. I may even write it down. I may memorize it. I maybe get excited about it, but I have to define it as it does apply to me. So there is a principle there that’s good. So Matt, here’s the problem.

I find people here’s how I like to say it, right. Because I was at one time a first year Bible student. There’s a lot of first year Bible students that get pretty uppity about interpreting scripture, and as soon as they find out there is an original context for the application of that of that passage, they immediately go around fire hosing everybody’s, you know, quotations of Scripture saying that doesn’t apply to you, that doesn’t apply to you, that doesn’t apply to you.

And then all of a sudden they think they’re all that because they know the original context of a passage, and they miss all the joy of applying a text in a way that does apply to us, because they’ve extracted a principle and now they can apply it properly. So, Matt, the answer is yes and no in the sense that does Jeremiah 2911 apply to us?

Well, the principle does apply to us, but the exact initial original application, right, was different. And it was it was tied to the context. So the authorial intent. Right. And we all about that. We have historical, grammatical, you know, verbal interpretation of attacks. I got to know what it is so that I can rightly extract the principle and then figure out what the application is so I don’t miss apply the text.

I can apply it accurately in a way that can still allow me to buy the plaque, maybe in the bookstore. What I don’t want to do is to try and say, this applies to the United States of America in the 21st century. No, it applies to Christians who are still a part of the covenant people of God, in the sense that we are the new covenant people of God in the church age.

And it doesn’t apply to our government here today, but it does apply to me as a part of the church, because God has laid his promises upon us. All right. That was a wordy way to respond, but I hope that helps. My name is Mike Faberge. You’re listening to Ask Pastor Mike live the 

Maybe you want to talk to me about that is 1-877-913-5357. Pick up your phone and give me a call if you want to. 1-877-913-5357 I’m here for you for another 30 minutes or so. 35 minutes. Give me a call 1-877-913-5357. Whatever is on your mind lot going on in this world. Maybe you saw the big funeral there in Arizona.

I was flying back from Idaho, and because I was flying on American Airlines, I had to stop there in Phoenix. And man, a lot of people boarding my plane from that funeral, the Kirk funeral there in Phoenix actually a delayed my flight. So I was flying in when a lot of people were coming back from that funeral to to get back to Orange County, where I was flying home, of course.

And yeah, what a strange cultural moment to have so many within our government, not just speaking generally about, as Doctor Mueller said, civic religion, but really specific Christian definitions, as even my friend Frank Turek said, speaking of substitutionary atonement of how we are saved or Christ dying in our place. It was an amazing moment in this weekend, and while we had a variety of speakers there speaking at that funeral, I wasn’t a part of it.

I was busy speaking six times up in Idaho at a different event. But the idea of us thinking about our country having their attention turned to these kinds of events here recently certainly makes us think as ambassadors of Christ, as it says we are, we better be ready to have people that are starting to think about eternal things, right?

Heaven, hell, the afterlife are mortality, the fragility of life. We ought to be ready to step up and have the answers Christ says we’re supposed to have as though God. We’re making his appeal through us, be reconciled to God. And that is what matters, right? That’s the whole point. The church doesn’t change its mission, and we never have.

Right? We’re casting the net all the time. We’re fishers of men to say to people, men and women and and children, you need to put your trust in Jesus Christ and know we have an answer for you. We need to turn people to Christ, not about politics. It’s not about just cultural issues. It’s not, you know, it’s not about money.

It’s not about anything other than making sure you are right with your creator. Because before you know it, your time is going to be up, and you may not know if that’s going to be in a car accident today or, you know, a stroke or a heart attack or whatever it might be. Our lives are a vapor. You’re here today and gone tomorrow.

Make sure you’re right with the living God. All right.