Jeremiah 29:11, a Plan to Prosper You?

Jeremiah 29:11 reads, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, a plan to prosper and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future."

What a beautiful promise from God's Word, right? Slap it on a coffee cup and fill me up with some of that! We love that verse. In fact, according to BibleGateway.com, it is the second most searched Bible verse on the internet after John 3:16. But there's a problem with the way we tend to use it. See, Jeremiah 29:11 isn't addressing you and me.

The verse appears in a letter written by the prophet Jeremiah to Israel, who at the time was under Babylonian captivity having been exiled because of their sin. In verse 11, God was assuring them that they would not be annihilated by Babylon, but instead needed to pray that they would benefit from the welfare of their captors.

He then says that they will call out to Him and he would restore their scattered nation. But that was a promise that wouldn't be fulfilled for another 150 years. The Israelites hearing that letter weren't even of the generation that would receive the things it promised.

So what we have is a proclamation, given to a specific nation, in a particular situation, which prophesied the restoration, of a future generation. It was not written as an individual promise of health and wealth.

It's true that to those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (That's Romans 8:28, by the way, the third most sought after verse on the internet.) But we need to see the fulfillment of these promises the way the Old Testament faithful did.

As it says in Hebrews 11:16, it wasn't an earthly land they desired, but a heavenly one. And that's what we should be looking forward to when we understand the text.

Jesus Never Said Anything About Homosexuality?

Jesus never said anything condemning homosexuality, so that must mean it's okay, right? Well, based on that argument, you could also say that Jesus never condoned it either, so that must mean it's wrong. There are actually a lot of things Jesus didn't say. (He also didn't say pedophilia is wrong, but surely you don't think that's okay.)

But on the subject of marriage, He said everything he needed to say in Matthew 19:4-6. It's there that he reiterates God's design for marriage:

"Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let man not separate."

And there you go. In three sentences, Jesus has given the definition of marriage -- which He created by the way -- and anything contrary to that definition is sin, including adultery, divorce, polygamy, pedophilia, and homosexuality. A few verses later, he says that those who are not capable of keeping with this design for marriage should not get married, and he addresses sexual sins in other places like Matthew 15:19, where he says that all sexual immorality is evil.

Understand something else: Whatever is written in red letters is no more important than what appears in the Bible in black and white. After all, 2 Timothy 3:16 describes all Scripture as being from God. And in John 16:12-13, Jesus said to His disciples more teaching was coming through the Holy Spirit, who is God just as Christ is.

So passages such as Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, and 1 Timothy 1 which condemn homosexuality as sin are also the words of Christ. The Old Testament, the gospels, and the epistles are all God's Word. It's imperative to receive the Bible this way when we understand the text.