I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you to the place from which I caused you to be carried away captive. Jeremiah 29: 14, NKJV
Heavenly Father, we have tasted and seen that you are a God that can be trusted to keep Your Word, this gives us hope, and for this we give You thanks. Amen
After God declares His thoughts toward His people, and encourages them to pray to Him with the promise that He will listen; after He exhorts them to search for Him with all their heart, with the assurance that they will find Him; then He tells them what will be the result of their obedience to His commands: He will bring them out of their captivity.
It is interesting that I have studied this passage of Scripture from time to time, and have claimed its promises for myself and my family; but it was not until today, that my eyes were opened to a wonderful reality. Everything that God was encouraging His people to do during their captivity, was with the purpose of preparing them for the day when they would be brought “back to the place from which [He caused them] to be carried away captive.”
It was actually a foolproof plan to ensure that they would not have to be taken captive again. If, in the land of their enemies they could get to know Him intimately. If they could discover His intentions for their lives, and know that wherever they were, for whatever cause, they would never be beyond His love and power to save; then they would obey Him out of love, and thereby save themselves so much suffering!
He had given them seventy years in captivity to learn these lessons. A lifetime as it were, “The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong…” (Psalm 90: 10). The conditions were favorable, if they obeyed, and did not resist their captivity. Such an atmosphere would facilitate the learning of these lessons. He would then carry them back to the land from which they had been taken, Jerusalem, their pride and joy.
As I thought about the experience of the Israelites I could not help but compare it with the experience of spiritual Israel, made up of, “all nations of the earth” (Genesis 12: 3; Romans 9: 8), who have entered into a covenant with God, “by faith.” Many of us are taken into spiritual captivity, with the hope that we will learn the lessons necessary to keep us from repeating the same mistakes that caused us to be carried away captive in the first place. Notice the use of plurality in the promise, “I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD” (emphasis supplied).
Just as Israel of the flesh was scattered, spiritual Israel is also scattered. We are coming from many different walks of life, and from diverse situations. The lessons we have to learn are basically the same, but because we are at different places in our journey, these lessons may have to be learned under different circumstances. God is anxious that we learn these lessons that He may return us to the place from which we were taken. The place that He had planned for us. It is a place where we can become all that we were created to be. It is a place where we can have “a hope and a future.”
May God help us to be swift learners; and may the lessons learned in the land of our captivity, enable us not to return.