Jeremiah 29:4-7 - Homiletics

How to make the best of adversity.

Jeremiah advises the captives in Babylon to take a course that is eminently brave and wise. The first inclination would be to stir up a useless revolt, the second to sit down in sullen despondency. When trouble overcomes us we are tempted to follow one or other of these courses—to rebel or to despair. Jeremiah teaches us, as he taught the Jews of his day, that neither is right. He indicates a better way,

I. SUBMIT PATIENTLY TO INEVITABLE ADVERSITY . We are not required to court trouble, nor to yield weakly when we might successfully throw it off. But when it is plainly inevitable resistance is wrong as well as foolish.

1. It is foolish . Why dash our heads against the prison walls? The brain will suffer before the granite. The Jews could not successfully revolt against Babylon; to live on the eve of rebellion, as restless conspirators, would be dangerous and futile. The mistake of such misplaced patriotism was seen later in the wretched failure of the fanatic attempts of the Jews to throw off the yoke of Rome. The folly of the Jews would be the greater that the lengthy duration of the Captivity had been predicted and revealed as a Divine judgment. When we know the providential assignment of adversity, to resist this is to resist the power of Heaven.

2. This resistance is wrong . The Captivity was ordained by God (verse 4). It was sent as a wholesome chastisement. To those who understood the teaching of the prophets on this point, rebellion was at once disobedience to God's will and the refusal of a useful corrective. We should remember this when we grow impatient under trouble, and learn to bow silently before the will of our King and our Father, to receive without complaining the discipline which is intended to cleanse and strengthen our spiritual life.

II. SEEK THE BRIGHTEST COURSE UNDER THE DARKEST CIRCUMSTANCES . The captives could not return home. They were not, therefore, to treat the land of their exile as a hopeless desert, but to build and plant and eat the fruit of it.

1. How often trouble is worse in prospect than in experience! The Captivity loomed in the distance as a very purgatory; when it came it was found to contain many of the fruits and flowers of quiet happiness.

2. Our lot in life will be very much what we make it for ourselves. If we treat it as a "waste, howling wilderness," it will be that to us. But the hardest lot will prove to have many alleviations for him who searches for its mercies rather than for its grievances. Surely it is best to do this. Mourners are inclined to nurse their sorrows with a melancholy satisfaction in aggravating the pain of them, or as though any abatement of grief were a sacrilege. But we should learn a more robust treatment of adversity. There is no virtue in distressing one's self beyond necessity.

III. CHERISH HOPES FOR THE FUTURE UNDER THE MOST TRYING PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES . The Jews were to remember the promise of the restoration. They were not to allow their race to die out (verse 6). A great future was still before them. History has confirmed the prediction of the prophets. The scattered and ruined people were recalled to their homes. From the stock of the despondent exiles there sprang not only all that was great and good in later Jewish history, but also Jesus Christ and Christianity. In our darkest moments we should not forget that, though not a ray of light has yet appeared on the horizon, the sun will surely rise and the day return. Christianity is peculiarly a religion of the future; it encourages us to press forward to the golden age which is yet to come.

IV. FIND OUR HAPPINESS BY SEEKING THE WELFARE OF OTHERS . "Seek the peace of the city … for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace." The alien was to act with the loyalty of a citizen. Though a nation may be under the unrighteous rule of a conqueror, it should still remember that it has duties to the government under which it lives, and claims of charity in regard to the people of the superior power. If it is our duty to seek the peace of a strange city, how much more are we bound to interest ourselves in public duties for the good of our own country? Private citizens will find their personal condition improved through the successful discharge of public duties. The citizens reap the fruits of the peace of the city. In ministering to others generally we shall discover the secret of our own blessedness.