Reflections on Jeremiah 29:11

• God boldly declares His knowledge of what is hidden to us... the future.





• God is utterly and magnificently sovereign over our experience. He is outside the realm of cause and effect, our tedious one dimensional timeline. His perspective upon the universe is from outside... not just spatially but also chronologically. He knows the end already... not because He can see ahead but because He can see from above and from below, from behind and from other dimensions of which we cannot conceive. Isaiah succinctly describes God's perspective in this way: "My ways are higher than your ways."






• God is not apologetic about His works. He made all that is and He said it was good... then we came along. What He made is still good but it is tainted in every place by the effects of that three letter word that is not "P.C."






• His plans are not thwarted by our sin. God actually planned for that eventuality. Repeated examples in the Scriptures and in our own experience give credence to this idea. A few Biblical examples that come to mind are: Adam and Eve, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, David, Solomon, Jonah, Judas Iscariot, Peter, and Paul. Our own lives are innumerable testimonies to God's triumphant sovereignty. When one comes face to face with this reality it ought to cause a staggering back, a sudden gasp of realization.






• This God, who created all we see and presides over all that is, is the one who makes our future secure. Paul puts it this way: "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?"






• The hope that God speaks of, He makes sure in Christ Jesus. Any hope that we have is in Him or it is no hope at all. To say it in another way: God, who breathed Jer. 29:11 also breathed John 14:6 and Acts 4:12.