We are continuing with the “flashback” device this morning. Remember we reached something of a climax/confrontation between Zedekiah and Jeremiah in Chapter 21 and then the scene suddenly shifts to a series of confrontations with previous kings. It is a way of showing that this is a pattern of Jeremiah’s relationships with all the kings since Josiah and a history of God’s attempts to shake the people into obedience. Nothing is working and, as we know, nothing is going to work. They are too far gone.

Jeremiah has moved from being a thorn in the side of the king to being a traitor. He has called on the people to surrender to the Babylonian army. He has even sent notes to Israel’s allies and told them to surrender as well. If they don’t they will be destroyed. But if they surrender and serve him they will live. “Bow your neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon; serve him and his people and you will live.” In other words, Jeremiah is encouraging not only treason but cowardice. They are not to fight in order to save their own lives. He has become an internal enemy and the king has every right to have him killed for undermining the security of the nation during war. This has moved beyond irritation to subversion. Of course, no one could have been a more unlikely traitor. Jeremiah comes from a family of priests. The priests were those who had the most to lose by offending the king. Their livelihood depended on his favor and the favor of the people. They were the supporters of the institution of religion and the least likely to create opposition to the status quo. Even Jeremiah was tortured by what God asked him to do. He was not doing this out of anger but out of obedience. We all know people who stir up dissension out of their own anger – but not Jeremiah. He would have much preferred to stop speaking but he couldn’t.

After telling the people in Jerusalem to surrender and then sending messages to their allies to do the same, Jeremiah sends messages to the exiles in Babylon. While we might expect a message that would encourage them to keep up their spirits and to resist the enemy, his message is just the opposite. He is encouraging them to make themselves at home in the city of the enemy. “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you will prosper.” Strange words from home for prisoners of war!
Don’t resist. Don’t start an insurrection. Don’t try to escape or make things difficult for the enemy. Settle in and make a home there as you are going to be there for 70 years.

We know there were three invasions of Israel over a period of two hundred years. The first was by the Assyrians who carried off the ten Northern tribes. We know very little of what happened to them. They just disappear from history. The second invasion is Babylonia’s first invasion and defeat of Judah. Nebuchadnezzar carries off 10,000 of the upper class leadership of Jerusalem as well as the military commanders, the craftsmen, artists and educated – the best of the Jewish society. He left the poorest. It is those who were left behind to whom Jeremiah is speaking in Jerusalem. It is the Jewish leadership in exile in Babylonia to whom he is writing and telling them to settle down and serve the king. They were not taken there as slaves. They were taken there to serve. Nebuchadnezzar was a great builder and appreciated talent. He had plenty of slaves but he needed what Israel had – talent. This was not Egypt and it was not the Assyrian exile. They were not taken to Babylonia as slaves. They were not being destroyed. It was more like being imported. This was not a holocaust. It was Babylonia’s way of increasing the talent pool of the Empire.

In a real sense God was protecting them from themselves. They were so corrupt and self-destructive they would not survive as they were. Only in a different place could they hope to make it. They had proved they were no good at revolution or insurrection. The purpose of the exile was not to drag them off to torture them out of anger or to break them. It was to remake them. Like the potter and the clay in Chapter 18. “So I went down to the potter’s house. And I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.” God is not breaking Israel. He is reshaping them.

He “carries” them into exile. That’s important. He did not drive them like cattle or slaves. He carries them because he knows this is the only solution for their corruption. This is discipline from a loving Father. “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son…No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” That is the purpose of the exile.

These verses in Jeremiah 29 have been the pattern of every Jewish settling since the exile. They come into a community and over time become indispensable citizens. They make invaluable contributions – even in the midst of their enemies. I read a good article this week titled “The Measure of Their Achievement”.

There are, perhaps, thirteen to fifteen million Jews in a world of six billion people. Jews are so few in number that in a room of 1,000 people representing the world’s population, only two would be Jewish. A comparable sample from the United States would count only twenty-two Jews among 1,000 representative Americans. In the sciences, Jews have won 22 percent of all the Nobel Prizes ever awarded – 29 percent of the prizes since 1950, after the Holocaust destroyed a third of their numbers. Given their small population, Jews should have earned only one of the 502 Nobels awarded for physics, chemistry, medicine and physiology. They have won 123. The Fields Medal, awarded to the world’s brightest mathematicians under age 40, is the honor John Nash, of the book and movie A Beautiful Mind had hoped to win. Instead, he took a Nobel Prize in economics as a consolation prize. One-fourth of the Fields Medals winners are Jews. Encyclopedia Britannica provides its list of “Great Inventions.” Of the 267 individual inventors, more than 13 were Jews, including Zoll (the defibrillator and the pacemaker), Land (instant photography), Gabor (holography), and Ginsburg (videotape). Jews are represented on the list 22 times more than one would expect based on their population. They are disproportionately counted in most of the arts. Since their respective dates of inception, America’s leading symphony orchestras have been led by Jewish conductors one-third of the time. They have created nearly two-thirds of Broadway’s longest running musicals. Probably one-fourth of the greatest photographers of all time have been Jews, as have 10 percent of the world’s great master architects. Of movie directors who earned Oscars, 38 percent were Jews. In broad artistic recognition, nearly 30 percent of the Kennedy Center honors and 13 percent of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards have gone to them.

We have experienced this same good fortune in our own community. As a result of the pogroms in Russia and Poland, thousands of Jews immigrated to the United States. One of the main ports of entry was Galveston. From there, Jewish immigrants spread throughout the Southwest – especially East Texas. Over 900 immigrants passed through Galveston before the end of 1907 and a good number of these came to Tyler because train fare at the half-priced charity rate was only four dollars. While today in Texas the Jewish population is only .6% of the whole, this small minority has had a disproportionate effect. It would only benefit us if we as a community were more intentional about how we could attract more Jewish families to Tyler. Our history has only been enriched by their presence – even though we have not always been welcoming to them. Because of them we have prospered.

I have been meeting over the course of the last two years with growing Hispanic leadership and recently used these words from Jeremiah as a model for their role in Tyler and East Texas. Instead of using anger or entitlement or resentment they need to see themselves as citizens of Tyler. This is what eventually produces influence and opportunities for leadership. It is this that produced Nehemiah in Babylonia and it is this that will produce leadership over the next generations for Hispanics in our community.

Of course, even as Christians we are somewhat in exile. We pray “Thy Kingdom come” but it is not here yet. We face a similar challenge. We can count the days until the Kingdom comes – much like my friends in the service counted the days before they returned home on their calendars when we served overseas – or we can redeem the time. We can be angry or reminisce about the old days or we can serve. It’s better to serve.

Finally, one of the most popular verses on Bible websites is Jeremiah 29:11-14 because it encourages us to have hope. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” That’s important but I think we may too often take it out of context. We use it as a way of being positive about waiting for God to act. It’s not that at all. Let’s look at it. Clearly verse 10 refers to the period after the exile: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place (Jerusalem). However, I believe verse 11 refers not to 70 years from now but to the exile itself. “For I know the plans I have for you (now)…plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Those plans are for now – not just later. Our hope is now. Our prospering is now. Our release from the fear of being harmed is now. In other words, the exile is not an empty space to be endured. It is not a penalty box or a time out. It is not a pause in our lives. God’s plans are not just for a distant time when this is over and things will be better. No, His plans for good are for now. Now is when He is reshaping us and, for some of us, saving us from ourselves. That is the purpose of discipline. We are not waiting for things to get better. Where we are now – even if it seems like exile or wilderness – is part of God’s plan and we are to redeem it, to settle down and build here. God is not on hold in our lives. This time is preparing us for what’s next – but also for what role we are to play now. God’s purpose was to reshape Israel while they served – and it took two generations. In the end, they came out of exile as better people – not broken people. The exile saved them from themselves and made them into something they would have never been.