“10 For thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. 11For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”Jeremiah 29:10-11
Whereas Jeremiah 29:11 is an oft-quoted scripture heralded to inspire messages of a “future and a hope,”many hearers—and expositors alike—do not consider that such promises to the people proceeded ‘after seventy years’ of suffering. In a similar fashion, the Jeremiad—the complaints, protestations, prophesying, sermons and lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah recorded in the Book of Jeremiah and the Book of Lamentations—were not simply directed towards the Babylonians for its future invasion and subjugation of the people. (It first involved prophecy against his own people.)
For the entirety of the 52 chapters of the Book of Jeremiah was first directed to the wrongs of the people before prophesying against the Babylonian invaders that led to ‘seventy years of [Babylonian] captivity,’ which Jeremiah was prosecuted, persecuted and imprisoned for speaking. (And this came at the hands of the people and false prophets who “healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, peace, peace when there was no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14). These were also those who comforted the people saying that they should not suffer or be subjugated believing that God was with them in spite of Jeremiah’s declarations, which were proven to be true.)
All the same—then and only then—in his final prophecies against Babylon and its eventual demise at the hands of his “anointed” (Isaiah 45:1) deliverer of the people, the Medes and Persians (Darius and Cyrus the Great) who were the executors for the promise of an “expected end” fulfilled. In prophetic fashion, the people were first required to suffer before they would succeed.
Then Understood I
Ps 73:17
17 Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.
KJV
Even the most ardent believer who believes in the economy of God (His methods, ways, rules and principles) will easily become discouraged when he or she becomes preoccupied with the apparent success of the world’s economy in comparison. And this is why we must constantly attend to the hearing of God’s Word. Consider the the contemplations of Asaph, a Levite worship leader and seer, in Psalm 73.
In Psalm 73, Asaph contemplates the apparent fruitlessness of living righteously in the face of evil men who prosper without any regard for God. This he contemplated until he went into the sanctuary of God. Since Asaph was probably writing during the period of Israel’s captivity–and thus there was no physical sanctuary to attend–it is safe to assume that there was either some spiritual haven or his own personal time when Asaph congregated with others or studied for himself to uncover the proper meaning of things according to God’s Word.
All the same, it is clear that Asaph’s contemplation suggests that the beginning of understanding the affairs of this life starts in the sanctuary including the revealed word of God: “Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary…” Psalm 77:13
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