Human and Divine Plans

Isaiah 40: 27 - 31

Jeremiah 29: 10 – 14

September 7, 2025

Before I read our second lesson for today, let me give thank for Pastor Brad Summer of Surrey, England for his thoughts and illustrations on today’s passage.

Sermon Text:

Jeremiah 29: 10 – 14

We are often a people not content to live fully, and obediently in the present; instead we exert a fair amount of effort and emotional capital trying to predetermine the future.

The are any number of “experts” who derive their current prosperity from some sort of authoritative claims or predictions about the future. Every Saturday morning, as I drive in to the church, I listen to experts predict the outcomes of both college and pro football games. These prediction of the football future are meant to guide the betting of millions of Americans.

To give you some idea of the size of this industry; it is estimated that this year well over 100 billion dollars will be bet just on college and pro football with an additional, roughly, 17 billion dollars being bet on the Super Bowl alone. Sports betting is a 150 billion dollars a year industry and helping to fuel that industry is a whole host of experts who seek to predict future sports outcomes.

But experts predicting the future is not just relegated to sports betting. An entire cottage industry, operating under a veneer of biblical prediction and an exceedingly problematic interpretation of the Book of Revelation, has arisen. Entire church denominations, formed under a singular set of predictions regarding the end of the world now runs across our global landscape. In spite of the clear and unequivocal declaration of Scripture that NO ONE knows when the end will come, preachers from these churches point to “signs” that the end is near and so one had better get “right with God” now. Such a fear-based evangelism is shameful.

Summer points to both a British documentary, and a book entitled “The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinterpretation,” when he cites the following “expert” predictions about the future:

· “Stocks have reached what look like a permanently high plateau.”

Irving Fisher, professor of economics at Yale University, October 17, 1929. On October 28th, 1929 – just 11 days later – the Stock Market crashed beginning the Great Depression.

· “Forget it Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel.”

So said Irving Thalberg, an American film producer who was considered one of the early experts in the film industry, to Louis B. Mayer. Gone With the Wind grossed 393 million dollars after costing just under 4 million to make. After multiple subsequent re-releases, it is estimated that Gone With the Wind has grossed somewhere between 3.5 and 4.1 billion dollars. That’s a lot of nickels.

· Here is a personal favorite of mine:

“We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out.”

Said a Decca Recording Company executive as he turned down a recording contract with the Beatles in 1962.

The reality is that we have to take the predictions of experts with a grain of salt. Ecclesiastes 10: 14 tells us that no one really knows – certainly not with the sureness expressed by our modern “experts” – no one knows with absolute certainty what the future holds.

But we struggle with that, don’t we? Uncertainty, mystery, ambiguity – those are difficult places for us. We are cause and effect people who want to believe that every future event has a cause rooted in today’s world.

And to a certain extent, this is true. The continuous abuse of drugs and alcohol today will create a certain future problem. An act of infidelity in the present moment will have disastrous effect on your marriage relationship in the future. Failing to be a good steward of your capabilities and mental resources today will negatively impact your performance at work and school in the future.

In some places we can draw a direct line from A to B, resulting in a less-than-desirable future C. But not always; and as the emotions grow higher and higher, as events become more disastrous and deadly; as life is afflicted with tragedy the need to be able to look back and say with great certainty “this is what caused that, this is who is responsible,” becomes overwhelming. In trying to reduce the tragedy of chaos we may get some short-term relief. But that short-term relief can create long-term problems for us.

Friends, all too often we pull Jeremiah 29:11 out of context and make God the perpetrator of horrific tragedy. Misfortune strikes, chaos ensues, emotions are raw, perhaps even devastated and in the swirling chaos of tragedy we try to instill a sense of order in the midst of the storm by saying “God has a plan.” In our need for cause and effect; in our need to for direct line from A to B to C; in our need for clarity in the midst of uncertainty we move God from Creator, from Sustainer, from Redeemer to perpetrator – the cause for our tragedy.

We may gain some superficial short-term relief by knowing that someone is “in charge,” but to whom does the victim of tragedy turn when God has been cast as the ultimate author of their heartbreak?

No. No. NO!

Our text is in the midst of a letter, written by the prophet Jeremiah, to the Jews in exile in Babylonia. They have false prophets – so-called religious experts – telling them that their exile is almost over. The people of Israel are despondent. After the glory of David and Solomon, after the expansion of the Promised Land by conquest and the building of the first Temple Israel has fallen on difficult times. The Northern and Southern Kingdoms have split. Kings have been unfaithful. Prophets have warned both kingdoms that destruction – centered in the sinfulness and rejection of God’s leading – will result in their ruin. Idolatry, sinfulness, and self-absorption runs rampant in both lands.

First, the Northern Kingdom falls and then the Southern. Jerusalem is obliterated, families are destroyed and the remnants are carried 750 miles as the crow flies – but 900 to 1400 miles by the routes walked – to the east, to Babylon.

The Jews are despondent. What does it mean to be the “Chosen People” if those people are in bondage and exile far from home? What good is a Promised Land if it is occupied by foreign pagans and the faithful – if even only nominally so, have been carried off into slavery? Where is the One who promised to be their God? Has God moved from protector to perpetrator?

Friends, God is not the cause, is not the originator of tragedy that afflicts us. God is not the perpetrator, God is the answer. God is in the redemption business.

Yes, Israel is despondent. But their situation has its roots – not in God – but in their own disobedience. Yes, tragedy afflicts the faithful – sickness, disease, natural disasters are all too common place in our world – but these disasters have their origin – not in a willful God, but in a Creation that is itself warped and distorted, spasming by the presence and consequences of sin in Creation itself.

So where is God? where is God when tragedy afflicts and we feel abandoned? Look with me again at our first text.

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40: 27 – 31)

Where is God? Giving power to the faint and strengthening the powerless. Where is God? Renewing the strength of the exhausted and helping those who feel defeated to soar as though on the wings of eagles. Where is God? Raising up people who will be alongside us when we feel like we can’t go forward – even carrying us at times. Where is God? Back to our second text. Giving us hope and the promise that lives lived in faithfulness and obedience will realize the promise of the real, sustaining, empowering presence of God – even in the midst of the storm.

Yes, God does have plans for us! But those plans are realized within the context of a faithful and obedient relationship with God. Yes, God does have plans for us! But those plans can be delayed, even thwarted, by human disobedience. Yes, God does have plans for us! But the brokenness of Creation – a Creation that God originally fashioned as good – sometimes results in a tragedy that is not of God’s design.

Friends, never forget that in the face of sin and death God brought about life and resurrection. God is in the redemption business and those are plans that we can count on. Amen.