There are mornings when the life beyond your window looks nothing like the one you expected—and no quick return is on the horizon. Jeremiah 2 and 29 press into exile’s hardest questions: what carried a people’s hearts away from home, what faithfulness looks like in an unwanted place, and whether those who have wandered too far can still call on God.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Ashes where glory dwelt, Jerusalem shrouded in silence, the temple in ruins, its people far from home. Yet, in darkness, hope speaks—a future foretold, a new and forever promise, a return to glory, a nation restored and the temple rebuilt. But even this wasn’t the end. The prophets spoke of a king whose dominion would forever be. We awaited this savior, this deliverer of his people, to accomplish what we never could.
The older I get, the more I’m starting to do old man things. Any old men in the room do this? Like every morning, this is what your morning looks like. Get your hot cup of coffee, stand in front of the window, and just watch the grass grow. It’s an old man thing. Any old women do it as well? All right, there we go. There’s something about that that is just refreshing the older you get because it’s a great way to start the day. It’s a great way to start reflecting on life. You wake up and it’s a new day. You look out and see that grass perfectly mowed that you did yesterday, see the squirrels running around bearing their little acorns everywhere, see the old people walking by on the streets with their dogs and just give them the one hand wave. It’s a great way to reflect. It’s a blast to do the older you get because you can look and just be grateful for all that God has done.
I imagine that was how the Israelites felt in the promised land. Can’t you imagine them doing that after so many years of not being a people, so many years of slavery in Egypt, just kind of standing there in Israel, finally, Jerusalem, the place that God had promised to us, and able to look out the window and see just numerous people who centuries before didn’t exist, and now there’s so many of them. And to look out and there’s the temple and just the dwelling of God and the incense and aroma coming up in a pleasing moment of worship towards our Lord. I imagine it had to have been a great way to wake up in Israel.
That’s not where we are today, though. Today, the Israelites are in exile. Today, the Israelites wake up, they look out their window, they don’t see a promised land. Today, they wake up, they look out and they’re in a foreign land, hundreds of miles away from home, far from where God had brought them. They look out and they see a people not speaking their language. They see a government not following their laws. They see temples that are not worshiping their gods but other pagan gods. Then they see their brothers and sisters being persecuted for the ways that they worship their God, Yahweh. And they begin to remember all the things that they had been promised and begin to maybe recount not the blessings but some of the hardships that they’ve gone through. Jerusalem is ruined now. The temple is burned and everything is missing. And there they are, hundreds of miles away from their home. It had to have been a surreal experience to be a people in exile, to the point where I wonder if they’re asking, how did we get here? How did we end up in Babylon? This is really where God wants our people to be? Babylon—that’s the feeling that we get from the people as we step into this new season, Season Number Three, from Eden to Eternity.
What we’re starting today, and for the next four weeks, is the journey from exile to Immanuel. And our journey does start in exile. It starts in Babylon. Now, let me remind you where we came from in Season One and Two. God had made some promises to the people, and there are four pillars of that promise. He had promised them a lineage, which means they were going to be a people, and this people was going to be a nation. And there was going to be so many of them that you couldn’t even count them. And this people was going to be a blessing to all the other nations. He made that promise. It was a promise of their lineage.
And then he also gave them the promise of the law, that the law is how as a nation you would worship me and follow me. And he gave that law to Moses. He also gave them a land through Moses’ successor, Joshua. Joshua leads the people through the wilderness, crosses the Jordan River, gets them to the promised land. He overtakes the land. He sets up camp permanently in Israel. And then they set up a dwelling place, a temple where David and Solomon, they had this vision that God would live with us. We would come to this place and the temple would be the symbol of God’s presence among the people.
And it was this promise that they were enjoying, basking in. They would wake up every morning and thank God for our lineage, thank God for our law, thank God for the plan, the land, and thank God for the temple as well. But now in Babylon, the lineage is scattered. They’re everywhere. Some of them are remaining in Jerusalem in a destroyed city. Most of the rest are sent away hundreds of miles to Babylon. The law? Well, it has been broken. The people did not obey the law. They were not keeping the law. They were not using that as their guide and their playbook for worship. They decided to worship other things.
The land? Now it was lost. They had lost the land. It was nowhere in sight. And the dwelling place of God, the temple, had been destroyed and burned to the ground. And all of a sudden, it feels like, as we start Season Three, that everything is gone. Like all things that we got to that led us up to this point, they’re just gone. Humanity in the beginning of Genesis was driven from Eden, and now humanity once again is driven away. But this time not from Eden. This time they’re driven away from the promised land. And it seems like in this story, the pattern just repeats itself, doesn’t it?
It’s like the same story lived over and over. God, he gives his people a place, he dwells with them, they turn their backs on him, and then he kicks them out. God gives them a garden, he dwells with them, they turn their back on him, and he evicts them from the garden of Eden. God gives them a promised land, he dwells with them, the people turn their back on him, and he evicts them from the promised land. It just happens over and over and over and over again. And now the people, they’re far from the promised land, far from home, living in Babylon, which is modern-day Iraq. That’s how far away they are, east of Israel.
And essentially in this exile, they begin to re-evaluate their situation, re-evaluate their own hearts as well, and they’re asking some questions. And they’re questions I want to look at today. The questions like, you know, how did we get here? How did we get to this place of exile? And if we are in exile, how do we live here? How do we live in exile? And then number three, are we too far gone? Is this the end of the road? Is this the end of the story?
So what I want to do today is look at those three questions, and we’re going to do that by looking at the book of Jeremiah. So grab your Bibles, open up to Jeremiah chapter two. The first question that’s going to be addressed in this book is the question of, how did I get here? The Israelites are asking, God, how did we get to Babylon? Why aren’t we in the promised land? Like what went wrong? How did we get here? And the answer that God is going to give through his prophet Jeremiah is this answer: Well, you left for lesser lovers. That’s how you got here. Your heart left me. I didn’t just kick you out. Your heart left home before your bodies ever did leave home. And you left for lesser lovers.
Jeremiah chapter two, let’s look at verses two and three. God, he tells his prophet Jeremiah, he says, go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, thus says the Lord. And then he gives them the message to deliver to the Jewish people. He says, tell them that I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of the harvest.
In this moment, I’m imagining God with his cup of coffee, looking out the windows. Man, I remember the days. I remember the days when we were in the wilderness and I loved you and you loved me. And you guys were to me like a bride. That’s how I viewed you. You were my beloved bride. You were holy to me. And though that’s how I feel about you, essentially Jeremiah, he’s told, go tell Israel how much I love them. In the middle of their exile, in the middle of their place, they’re in this place they don’t want to be. Let them know that I have and always will love them. I view them like a bride, a holy beloved bride.
And what I love about the prophets, by the way, we’re entering this section of the Old Testament called the Prophets. What it does in the Prophets is it moves the story from history to heart. You know, before the Prophets in the Kings and Samuels and Chronicles and Joshua and Judges, it’s a lot of history, a lot of dates, a lot of names that are going on. But the moment we get to the Prophets, all of a sudden we get this glimpse at the heart of God and we get to see what he’s gone through throughout history, what his heart has gone through.
And from the beginning, what we see as God begins to recount the story is that he’s saying, here’s what I’ve gone through. I’ve pursued you with love. Like this hasn’t just been Bible stories to me. This has been intimately personal to me. You’re not just a nation and a kingdom to me. You’re my beloved, holy bride. I gave you my heart. I gave it to you time and time again.
But then the mood switches because he says, I gave you my heart, but then you trampled on it. Jeremiah chapter three, verses six to seven, God begins to introduce the dark thing that’s happening in his heart. He says this, talking to Jeremiah, he says, Jeremiah, have you seen what my bride did? That faithless one, Israel? How she went up on every high hill and under every green tree and there played the whore. And I thought, well, after she’s done all this, surely she’ll return to me. She didn’t return.
Oof, that’s uncomfortable. And it’s supposed to be. God, he says, Israel has been my bride, but she’s been a faithless bride. Yes, Israel, you’re grieving the loss of a home. I’m grieving the infidelity of my bride, my bride who has cheated on me, my bride who has wandered to the beds of other lovers. She’s traded me for gods made out of wood and gods made out of stone. She’s going up on these high hills where they worship other gods and she’s laying in bed essentially with these other guys. She’s moving in with them.
And Israel, you’ve chased lesser lovers. Your heart’s chasing after other people who have loved you, people and things who will never love you back. And now you find yourself in exile. And now you find yourself laying in the bed of someone else’s home, realizing it was just a one night stand to begin with. Israel, I’m devastated. My heart’s devastated.
It’s an uncomfortable picture of what God is going through in this story. And I’ll tell you this though, exile is uncomfortable. It’s an uncomfortable place to be. And I wonder if you’ve ever been in a season of exile for yourself. Have you ever looked around at your life situation and just thought to yourself, this isn’t what I expected life to be like. I’m in a place that I really never intended to be. I never wanted to be in this place.
When you find yourself there, I think those are moments of exile that we go through. It’s where we had this image of what home would be, these promises that we feel that God has made. And all of a sudden we wake up, we look out our window and, man, this isn’t what I expected. This isn’t how I expected life to go.
And I think an uncomfortable truth in this situation is that often we begin to make these unspoken accusations to God of, God, I did my part. Why didn’t you do yours? God, I went to church. I read my Bible. I prayed. I worked hard. Why am I in this situation? Why am I in a place that I never wanted to be? Why am I in exile?
And I think it’s true that sometimes the reason we’re in places we don’t want to be is because of someone else’s decision. I think that happens often. But I also think it’s fair that sometimes, sometimes maybe we’re in exile, not because of someone else’s choices, but sometimes because of our own choices.
And I think it’s worth pausing to ask ourselves the question, how did I get here? God, how did I get to this place? How am I in a place where I never wanted to be? God, I thought I was doing everything right and why am I still single? God, I thought I was doing everything right and why am I jobless now? God, I thought I was doing everything right and now I look at my bank account and I’m broke. I never expected to be this old with this amount of money missing from all of my accounts. God, I never expected to be this age and be in a broken relationship or a broken marriage. God, I did my part. Why didn’t you do yours?
I think it’s worth stopping to ask, am I in exile? Am I in a place I never intended to be because I was actually chasing lesser lovers and I really wasn’t chasing God? Could that potentially be part of the reasons we end in exile? Did I really follow God here or was I just chasing God as a means to get what I really wanted? Those things are the lesser lovers.
God, what I really wanted was wealth and I thought showing up to church and praying would give me wealth and now it’s gone. God, what I really wanted was success or notoriety or influence and I thought that if I just did all the right things you would give me the thing that I wanted. God, I thought that if I really wanted to be in a relationship that you would give it to me. That I want stability and I thought that if I prayed you would give it to me.
And I think what we need to ask is do we really want God or do we just want a God who will give us what we really want? And now we wake up and realize the wealth is gone. I think it was just a one night stand. The success was gone. My position at work, gone. And it turns out that was just a one night stand. Stability is gone. And now I wake up and realize that was just a one night stand.
Exile is the place where we learn who our real lovers are. Eugene Peterson, in reflecting on the book of Jeremiah, he has this great quote about the hardship of exile. He says this: Exile is the worst that reveals the best. When the superfluous is stripped away, we find the essential. And the essential is God.
Exile is the worst thing. But what exile does is it begins to reveal to us the best thing and the superfluous things. Wealth, success, stability, position, all of those things, they’re not bad things, but they do not love us and care for us and tend our hearts like the best thing. Exile reveals to us what really is essential in life. And what is essential is a God who is not into one night stands. It’s a God who makes promises and keeps his promises even when we don’t.
So the Israelites, there they sit in Babylon, asking God, how did we get here? And his answer is, well, your heart left me long before you left this land because you chased after lesser lovers.
And so then the question begins to be asked, well, how do I live here? How do I live here? If we’re going to be in Babylon, if I’m going to be exiled in Babylon, what does life look like now? I know what life looks like in Israel. I worship at the temple. I give at the temple. We’ve got the law. We’ve got our people. We’ve got our language. I know what life looks like there. What happens when you find yourself in a place where you’re not sure how to operate in life now? What do you do now?
God’s answer through Jeremiah is this. Here’s what you do: You stay faithful in the places you never wanted to be. If you’re in a place you don’t want to be, that’s understandable. Here’s what you do. Stay faithful to God in places that you never wanted to be.
He says it this way in chapter 29 of Jeremiah. Flip over there. Chapter 29. It says, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles who I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. And here’s what he tells them to do while they’re in Babylon: Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters into marriage that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there. Do not decrease but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Essentially, God, he knows what Israel’s heart’s preparing to do. They’re like, well, we’re in exile. This is not where God wants our people and so we may be here for a night or a day, maybe a week, but we’re going to keep our bags packed and we’re going to be ready to go back to Jerusalem because our God is going to deliver us. He’s not going to appreciate us being here. He’s going to deliver us real quick.
In fact, there were prophets in Babylon teaching the Israelite peoples, hey, don’t unpack your bags. We’re not going to be here long. And then all of a sudden, Jeremiah sends this letter to them and he says, actually, here’s what God is telling me to tell you: Unpack. Settle in because you’re going to be here for about 70 years. God is going to leave you in the place you didn’t want to be for an extended period of time.
So unpack. Do you get the idea of not being settled in a home that’s not yours? How many of you have ever been on vacation and you’ve been to a hotel or an Airbnb and you take your suitcase there? How do you operate with your suitcase on vacation? Are you the kind of person who unpacks everything and puts them in the provided drawers and hangs them up on hangers? Does anybody do that? Anybody one of those weirdos? All right. Thank you for admitting that. You’re like, if I’m here, I’m going to make myself at home.
Me and normal people, here’s what we do. You put your suitcase on the other bed and you just flop it open. And every day you just live out of your suitcase. Why? Because this isn’t my home. I’m not settling in. I plan to go back to my family. But what God is telling the Israelites to do here is he’s like, hey, don’t live out of your suitcase. Put everything away. Put it in the drawers. Hang it up. He tells them, build houses and live in them. Plant gardens because you should expect to be here for years and you’re going to have to provide food for your family.
In fact, you’re going to think, hey, nobody get married yet. Like we’re in this place of pause and so it’s not the time to get married, not the time to start a family. Once everything’s settled, then we’ll start a family. God says, oh no, no, no, no. Get married, have kids, have grandkids, keep multiplying. What God commanded Abraham and what he commanded Adam and Eve to multiply and fill the earth with people who love him, do that in Babylon. Fill Babylon full of people who love me.
And then pray for Babylon. Pray for them because when they do well, you will also do well. So don’t pray against Babylon. Don’t pray for their downfall, this place of exile. Don’t pray for you to leave it. Pray that in exile, God’s goodness and his blessing will come even here. So the question is, God, how do I live in exile? How do I live in this place, in this time, in this season that I don’t want to be in? Here’s how you do it: Don’t pray for it to end. Pray that it be blessed and that God show you something in the middle of exile. Pray that God’s goodness will come about.
God’s surprising command to them is settle in and show me that you can be faithful to me even in exile. Here’s what I think some of us do. We make this deal with God. God, I’m in a place that I don’t want to be. And if you will remove me from this place, then I will be able to worship you. Then I will be able to give you my all. I will be able to give you my heart. Give me the temple. Give me the land. Give me my people. Give me a place of comfort. And the moment I have that, God, I promise that I will start worshiping you faithfully.
And I think God’s test in exile is this: If you can’t be faithful to me in exile, when all you have is me, what makes you think that when you get back to a place where the lesser lovers exist, the goodness of the world, the blessing that the world provides, what makes you think you’re going to love me there? Here’s the reality: You don’t have to be where you want to be to do what God wants you to do today. You don’t have to be where you want to be to do what God is asking you to do today.
I realize that some of you are in a season you don’t want to be in, maybe a season you never even chose. My exhortation to you is be faithful even in this. When you find yourself in exile, the goal is not just to escape. The goal is to learn to be faithful to God, even right here.
I know some of you, you’re in this place where it’s like, God, I would love to serve. And so once life gets less chaotic, then I will serve. Do what God wants you to do today. Some of you are like, God, I would love to be generous. But once I get that bump, once I get that raise, once I get that career status, then I’ll be generous. Do what God wants you to do today.
Some of you are thinking, man, I am really considering giving my heart over to God. Next weekend is baptism weekend and some of you are like, you’re right on the fence, but you’re on this side of exile knowing that you’re living in a place of slavery, knowing that you have these addictions, knowing that your life’s not perfect, and you’re like, God, once I get my life together, then I’ll step through those waters into your presence and into your family.
What if maybe instead of waiting for God to deliver us from those things, we just allow God to enter those things and we’re faithful to him today? How do I live here? Well, stay faithful, even in the places you don’t want to be.
In Jeremiah 29, it goes on in verse 10 and gets to the heart of the matter. What the Israelites are wondering is, you know, are we too far gone this time? This has been a cycle, God, and we know that we keep messing up and keep sinning and keep living far from you. Am I too far gone? Is my heart too far gone? Can you forgive me even still?
And God’s surprising answer is this: I’m still right here. I know you’re in Babylon, but I’m still right here. I know the temple’s destroyed and burned to the ground. I’m still right here. I know it’s a foreign people, a foreign circumstance, but I’m with you in Babylon, too. And so you can be faithful to me in Babylon.
He says it this way in verses 10 to 14. He says, For thus says the Lord, when 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. Now here’s a familiar verse: For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, plans 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 of 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’ve driven you, declares the Lord. And I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
God says, here’s the reality. Exile is a place that you deserve, Israel. You’ve chosen this. You’ve left me and exile is your judgment. But just because God has judged them doesn’t mean that he’s abandoned them. And just because we’re in situations that maybe we made poor decisions and we find ourselves in places and in this hole and this mess that we’ve created, it doesn’t mean that God has abandoned us.
Our heart wants to say, God, I realize that I’ve done this. I realize that I’ve left you and I’ve sinned and my heart is so deceitful and I promise to never do that thing again—and I did it. And I told my wife I would never do that thing again and I did it. And I told my boss I would never do that thing again. Am I too far gone? Am I too far gone?
What God tells Israel is, here’s the reality. You’re going to be here for 70 years. So make exile your home. But in the middle of exile, call out to me. In the middle of exile, if you call out to me, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to hear you. In the middle of exile, when you seek me, you’ll find me. Because I’m still here with you in it. I haven’t left you. I’m not forsaking you. I’m not abandoning you in it.
And church, here’s what I want you to know. When you’re far from home and you know how you got there and you begin to ask God, is there any mercy left for me? Is there any grace left for me? Am I too far gone? You need to hear God’s surprising answer to Jeremiah. And it’s this: There is more mercy in my heart for my bride than there is sin in you.
Church, there is more mercy in God than there is sin in you. His mercy is bountiful. He makes promises and he keeps them. You’re never too far gone. God, he’s right there with you in the middle of it. I know you’re not where you want to be, but there’s someone there with you in the places where you don’t want to be. So call out his name and he’s going to hear you. Seek him and he will find you.
A prophet comes along hundreds of years later and says this, Ask, seek, knock, and the door will be opened to you. It was true in Babylon. It’s true in Jerusalem, and it’s true in St. Louis as well.
Next week is Baptism Sunday and here’s my invitation. I know some of you, you’re living in exile, but you’ve never really lived in freedom and so you don’t really know what you’re missing yet. Some of you, you’ve lived in freedom with God and your heart’s walked away, your heart’s wandered. I’ll tell you this: you don’t need to be rebaptized, but maybe you do need to repent and just come to God and ask him, am I too far gone? And hear his answer, that his mercy and grace is still bountiful.
But for those of you who’ve never experienced his mercy and grace, I hate that you don’t know what you’re missing. Because I’ll tell you this, even in exile, our God is good. Are you too far gone? By no means. We’ve got a God who keeps his promise. When we have committed infidelity against him, he never does so against us. We have a God who will never abandon, never forsake, and never leave us. You may have wandered far from God, but you are not beyond God’s reach. Amen? Amen.
Would you stand with me and let’s pray.
Lord, reading through the prophets, and especially in these moments of exile, it’s difficult for my heart to read, to read the grief of not just the people crying out, the people who have lost their home, but to read the grief in your own heart, of what happens to your heart whenever we chase lesser lovers. And so God, I stand before you in repentance of a heart that desires so many things that this world has to offer. God, I keep coming up empty in those moments. I’ve never come up empty with you. I’ve never come up empty with you.
So God, I pray that by the power of your Holy Spirit, you turn our hearts back to you. May you be what we desire. May your love be the thing that fulfills the whole that exists within our hearts. May we see the goodness that you provide. May we look out our windows every single day in gratitude for the God who makes promises and keeps them.
God, I believe this is possible through the power of the Holy Spirit that comes through the resurrection of Jesus Christ himself. Transform our hearts and give us new hearts, hearts to see you, to call out to you, to seek you so that we might find you.
It’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Everybody say it with me. Amen.
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