Not often does a true prophet of God end up red-faced in embarrassment. But indeed, the author of our Scripture lesson, the Old Testament’s Jeremiah, is walking around with egg on his face.
In the lead-up to this passage, a prophetic wannabe named Hananiah delivers what he declares to be a true revelation from God. Hananiah serves up wonderfully rosy promises about God’s people being released from captivity very, very soon – that God soon and very soon will break the stranglehold of the Babylonian leaders who’ve taken the Israelites hostage. Jeremiah hears Hananiah’s prediction and essentially says, “Amen! May it be so!”
But here’s the catch: Hananiah is just making it all up in the misguided desire of a cockeyed optimist. So God saunters over to Jeremiah to says, “Hold the phone, back the truck up. Hananiah speaks not my truth. Here’s the real deal that I want you to share with my people.” I imagine Jeremiah swallowing hard. The knot forming in his gut makes him queasy. But he does as he’s told.
Now comes the letter Jeremiah writes to his fellow countrymen to clean up the short-circuited verbal mess that Hananiah created. And the reality of the real Word of the Lord is hard to hear: Exile is going to last a while. That’s the bad news. Yet good news lies in the Lord’s abiding concern for his people. Yes, God has allowed this calamity to come upon Israel due to their nearly wholesale failure to keep their end of the covenant. But that’s not where the story ends.
Through the pen of the prophet Jeremiah, listen thoughtfully, prayerfully, and courageously for the actual Word of the Lord – sent to “the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people.” And that group very much includes you and me.
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and 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. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the soothsayers who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the LORD.
For thus says the LORD: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me. If you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. (Jeremiah 29:4-14)
How strange!
The same God who allows this decades-long exile to take place – the same Lord who condemns his own people through the ranting tirades of his prophets – also shows tender, loving concern for his people. But if you understand that God’s love is the driving force through it all, then God’s outburst of gentleness and parental concern isn’t so surprising after all. God’s compassionate anxiety endures amid the dumpster fire of devasting exile.
That’s why God cannot and will not allow such misery to continue among the Israelites as their life has been for so very long. The Lord wants his people to thrive and – for the moment – to keep a stiff upper lip, even living as foreign exiles in a foreign land.
Yes, the laments would come. “Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept as we thought of Jerusalem,” bemoans Psalm 137. “We put away our harps, hanging them on the branches of poplar trees. For our captors demanded a song from us. Our tormentors insisted on a joyful hymn: ‘Sing us one of those songs of Jerusalem!’ But how can we sing the Lord’s songs in a strange land?” (Psalm 137:1-4)
Even so, the Lord wants his people to stay strong, to continue their communal and spiritual growth, so that when the time is right God can return these long-suffering people to their own land, thus ushering in what everyone can only hope and pray will be a better, more God-like era for their nation.
“Don’t cut off the branch you’re sitting on,” God in essence warns. Yes, yours is an uncomfortable Babylonian branch connected to a thorny Babylonian tree. But since that’s going to be your lot in life for a good-long while, work for the health of that tree, for the prosperity of the space in which for the moment you find yourselves.
Affirm life! Get married! Have kids! Remain healthy! So that when the day comes you’ll be well prepared to return to something more fruitful back home. I have a plan – a good and helpful plan. So hold out hope! Carry on as best you can! No, such hope won’t erase the sorrow and heartache of captivity – rough days still lie ahead. Nevertheless, your God has a plan.
Perhaps you’ve been in a tough place when earthly living has somehow disappointed:
Your marriage is falling apart; you’ve lost your job; money is tight; tragedy has struck, and it feels like the end of the world. All hell is breaking loose, and someone offers “God has a plan” as well-intended balm for your sagging spirit. “Buck up, pal!” And in your heart of hearts, all you want to do is slap that person. Because, in your distress, it feels like the other is downplaying your bad situation, papering it over with smiley face stickers and feel-good ephemera.
Sometimes, of course, that is the case, and you are right in those situations to ask that this miserable comforter give you your due in acknowledging what is your genuine pain, heartache, and disappointment.
Yet, “God has a plan” so also is the dearest truth. Those four words speak volumes about who God is. It assures that God really does have a plan – not just for you but ultimately so also for the whole of that which Father, Son, and Spirit created. Centuries later, the Gospel of John will put meat on the bones of heaven’s pledge –
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17)
Friends and neighbors, please hear and believe me: God is on the side of life. And that’s Good News for you, me, and all of us who feel the pain of life’s diminishment.
And that’s why baptism is such a big deal.
It is no empty symbol of one’s profession of faith, of one’s accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. God actually imparts grace through this sacrament when the baptized receives it with the eager wonder of childlike faith. Baptism – and our other sacrament, the Lord’s Supper – really do have make a difference. They pack a spiritual wallop! They accomplish something!
But their sacramental power lies not in anything within water, bread, or wine – or within any force of heaven supposedly given to the pastor who administers them. The power of baptism – the nourishment of the Lord’s Table – both lie with the Holy Spirit, who works through simple gifts to bless those who receive them by grace and grace alone.
Baptism is a visible sign and seal of God’s covenant promises. Its efficacy is not tied strictly to the precise moment of the water application. Baptism’s life-changing reality works by the Holy Spirit – according to God’s timing. The Holy Spirit is not constrained to work through baptism only in the moment when it is administered. The Holy Spirit can and does impart grace through baptism throughout your life.
Baptism is not something we do. Baptism is something we receive. Just like our salvation.
In a moment of your temptation to doubt, to turn away, to reject outright, the Holy Spirit will call your baptism to mind – to remind you that you have been marked off as belonging to Jesus. And that it is incumbent upon you to obey Christ. Even years after your baptism!
Once sharing her story was a young-adult woman who had been baptized as an infant at her grandmother’s urging. Her faith journey thus unfolded: She was taken to church occasionally after her baptism but was not, in any way, raised in the church. But when she got to college, she felt herself being drawn back to the Church. What role had her childhood experiences played in being called out of her self-imposed exile? She swore that her knowledge of the fact that she had been baptized was significant, meaningful, motivating. Apparently the Holy Spirit used her baptism many years before to draw her back to Jesus.
Others share similar testimonies. That’s because baptism marks a person as belonging to Jesus, and the Spirit makes use of baptism years after its waters have dried from the skin. Your baptism is calling you to be the person whom God has set you apart to be: Namely, one who is united by faith to Jesus Christ and by grace is living a life of service to him. By the power of God’s Holy Spirit in him.
Indeed God has a plan. And that plan unfolds on heaven’s terms not ours. And it just might be the case that you’re a late-bloomer – a precious soul enduring a dry, brutal period of wandering and wondering. But oh how good it is! That a bloom is precious and wonderful no matter when it explodes.
To God be the glory. Amen.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, July 12, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. The service included celebration of baptism. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by David Brooks, Scott Hoezee, and Richard Holdeman inform the message.