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Foretold / Prophets of the Bible | Part 2 · Rewind

Rock Point Church

71 min

Pastor Bill Bush · Sep 29, 2019 · 5 min read · 71 min listen

The big idea

If your good doesn't lead to God, it's not good — no matter how good it feels.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 7Jeremiah was sent to tell God's people to submit to Babylon rather than fight, and almost no one listened.
Point 2 of 7We often redefine God's "good" as our own happiness, which distorts how we read promises like Jeremiah 29:11.

Point 3 of 7Don't give up when it feels hopeless — start by recognizing who God is.
Point 4 of 7Don't give up when it feels hopeless — respond to what God does instead of freezing or demanding your own plan.
Point 5 of 7Don't give up when it feels hopeless — remain fruitful and faithful right where you are.
Point 6 of 7Don't grab hold of false hope, including any version of the prosperity gospel.
Point 7 of 7Give yourself wholeheartedly to the only true hope, found in God Himself.
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

Jeremiah 29:11
Jeremiah 29:4
Jeremiah 29:4-14
Jeremiah 29:5-7
Jeremiah 29:8-9
Jeremiah 29:10

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Bill Bush · Sep 29, 2019 · 71 min watch · 2 min read

Foretold / Prophets of the Bible | Part 2

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

Jeremiah 29:11
Jeremiah 29:4
Jeremiah 29:4-14
Jeremiah 29:5-7
Jeremiah 29:8-9
Jeremiah 29:10

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

If your good doesn't lead to God, it's not good — no matter how good it feels.

God's plans, even when they wreck our comfort, are always aimed at bringing us back to Him — and that is what makes them good. Pastor Bill walks through Jeremiah's letter to the exiles in Babylon to show that true hope isn't a happy circumstance, but a Person, and that only a life wholeheartedly given to God, and nothing else, is truly good.

Key points

1
1Jeremiah was sent to tell God's people to submit to Babylon rather than fight, and almost no one listened.
Pastor Bill gives the background of Jeremiah as a prophet during the Babylonian conquest of Judah, sent to say discipline, not destruction, was coming and that submission was God's plan. Over forty years no recorded convert believed him, they tried to kill him, and the remnant who fled to Egypt instead of submitting disappeared from history.
2
2We often redefine God's "good" as our own happiness, which distorts how we read promises like Jeremiah 29:11.
Pastor Bill says most people quote Jeremiah 29:11 without knowing it was written to exiles whose homes were burned and lives wrecked, and that they'd spend seventy years in captivity. He argues the verse is true, but we secretly substitute "happy and successful" for "good," when to God good simply means whatever leads us back to Him.
3
3Don't give up when it feels hopeless — start by recognizing who God is.
Working through Jeremiah 29:4, Pastor Bill highlights the two titles used for God: "Lord of heaven's armies" (infinite power) and "God of Israel" (intimate, personal care). Holding both together means even a plan that doesn't feel good can be trusted, because the One behind it is both all-powerful and has your best interest at heart.
4
4Don't give up when it feels hopeless — respond to what God does instead of freezing or demanding your own plan.
Pastor Bill uses the picture of disciplining a child who won't clean their room to show how we accept God's love but resist His actual instructions. He says God will keep "tripping" us until we pick up what He's asking us to deal with, rather than caving to our demand for comfort.
5
5Don't give up when it feels hopeless — remain fruitful and faithful right where you are.
Reading Jeremiah 29:5-7, Pastor Bill notes God told the exiles to build homes, plant gardens, marry, multiply, and work for the peace of Babylon rather than isolate and wait it out. He connects this to the church's own call to know, grow, and go, arguing that being fruitful without being faithful to God's mission misses the point, just as Israel had done before the exile.
6
6Don't grab hold of false hope, including any version of the prosperity gospel.
Pastor Bill reads Jeremiah 29:8-10, where false prophets promised a quick two-year return instead of the seventy years God actually declared. He labels this pattern "false hope," and applies it to the modern prosperity gospel, insisting God is good not because He meets a standard of happiness, wealth, and health, but because He IS the standard of good.
7
7Give yourself wholeheartedly to the only true hope, found in God Himself.
Returning to Jeremiah 29:11-13 and then Jeremiah 31:31-34, Pastor Bill shows the promise was ultimately about a coming new covenant fulfilled in Jesus, quoted in Hebrews 8. He also reinterprets Psalm 37:4 to mean that delighting in God reshapes our desires to match His, rather than God simply granting whatever we want.

If my good doesn't lead to God, it's not good

A story from life

Preacher's daughter left a car running in the driveway while loading a two-week-old baby, unaware it was still on

Application

Embrace the plan even though it feels bad, because it leads you back to God.

Recognize who God is
When life doesn't feel good, remember God is both infinitely powerful and intimately personal before you decide He's abandoned you.
Respond to what He's doing instead of freezing
Stop waiting for your own plan to happen and ask God what He wants you to do with the situation, even if it means picking something up while you're down.
Stay fruitful and faithful where you are
Keep living life, building, serving, and engaging your community and church rather than isolating and waiting to be rescued from your circumstances.
Drop the false hopes and coping mechanisms
Stop chasing quick relief, prosperity promises, or unhealthy escapes that only feel good temporarily, and recognize they lead away from God.
Wholeheartedly pursue God as the only true hope
Get close enough to God that your desires start to match His, so that your life, not just your lips, can say you want Him and nothing else.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“It's Jeremiah twenty nine eleven. Who who knows that verse? Who can start it off for me? For I know the plans I have. Well, now it's on the screen”
Read the whole chapter →
From the transcript
“what I wanna do now is I wanna go back to verse four where this letter starts. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna read four through 14”
From the transcript
“I wanna go back to verse four where this letter starts. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna read four through 14. We're just gonna walk through this passage and it has three things”
From the transcript
“So what does that look like? How do I not give up when it seems hopeless? Well, let's start reading. Verse four. This is what the Lord of heaven's armies, the God of Israel says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem”
From the transcript
“look what he does tell him to do. Build homes and plan to stay. Plant gardens and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren”
From the transcript
“Don't grab hold of false hope. Verses eight and nine says this. This is what the Lord of heaven's armies, the God of Israel says. Don't let your prophets and fortune tellers who are with you in the land of Babylon trick you”
From the transcript
“You know what verse 10 starts off with? It says, for this is what the Lord says, you'll be in Babylon for seventy years”
From the transcript
“look verse 10 says this. This is what the Lord says. You'll be in Babylon for seventy years, but then I'll come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again”
From the transcript
“Now we get to verse 11. For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. There are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. You just need to trust me”
From the transcript
“Psalm thirty seven four, take delight in the Lord and he'll give you your heart's desires. Like, please don't tell me that doesn't mean what I thought it means”
From the transcript
“Matter of fact, in chapter 31, it says this. Thirty one thirty one says, the day is coming. This is in Jeremiah, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah”
From the transcript
“That passage is quoted verbatim by the apostle Paul in Hebrews chapter eight under the guise of saying, our high priest. Hebrews describes as Jesus as the ultimate high priest”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

Day 1

Most of us come to Jeremiah 29:11 looking for a promise that things are about to get better. Pastor Bill invites us to back up — all the way to verse 4 — and sit with the uncomfortable truth that God Himself orchestrated the exile. He did not merely allow Babylon; He sent His people there. That one word, 'sent,' changes everything about how we read the rest of the letter. It means the painful place you are in right now is not outside God's awareness or beyond His reach. He is not scrambling to fix a situation that got away from Him. He is the Lord of Heaven's Armies — a title that carries the weight of infinite, unrivaled power — and at the same time, He is the God of Israel, the God who made promises to real people by name. Those two things together are the foundation Pastor Bill keeps coming back to: God is both big enough to orchestrate history and personal enough to write a letter to exiles in the middle of it. Before you can trust the plan in verse 11, you need to trust the Planner revealed in verse 4. He is not distant or careless. He is sovereign and near, and that combination is exactly where hope begins.

For reflection

Where in your life right now does it feel like things have gone sideways — and what would it mean to consider that God is present and active there, not absent?

Pray

Pray for a fresh sense of who God is — both His power and His closeness — in whatever situation feels most out of control right now.

Day 2

God's instruction to the exiles is almost jarring in its ordinariness: build a house, plant a garden, get married, have children, pray for the city. No dramatic escape plan. No countdown to rescue. Just — live here, and live well, and be a blessing. Pastor Bill pointed out that this is actually a callback to God's original mission for His people: to be a blessing to the nations. Even in Babylon, even in exile, even in a place they never chose and did not want, the call was not to survive until something better came along. It was to be genuinely fruitful and faithful right where they were. That is a word worth sitting with. It is easy to put life on hold when circumstances feel temporary or painful — to treat the hard season as a waiting room rather than a real place where real things matter. But God told the exiles that Babylon's peace was connected to their own peace. Their engagement with the hard place was not a consolation prize; it was the mission. Your time, your gifts, your relationships, your story — they matter right now, in the season you are actually in, not in some future season when things feel more comfortable.

For reflection

Is there an area of your life — a relationship, a role, a community — where you have been holding back or just waiting it out instead of showing up fully?

Pray

Pray for the willingness to be present and fruitful right where you are, even if this is not the season you would have chosen.

Day 3

One of the most honest things Pastor Bill said in the sermon is that false hope produces deeper hopelessness than no hope at all. The false prophets in Jeremiah's day were not evil-looking people. They were saying things the exiles desperately wanted to hear — that the exile would be short, that relief was coming, that God would not really let this go on. It sounded like faith. It felt like encouragement. But it was not true, and when it did not come to pass, the people were left more crushed than before. That pattern has not gone away. Voices today — sometimes inside the church — still tie God's goodness to financial blessing, physical health, or a pain-free life. Pastor Bill was careful here: it is not that God never blesses materially or physically. It is that when we define 'good' as comfortable, we are working with a definition God never agreed to. The test of a hope worth holding is whether it roots you more deeply in God Himself or whether it just makes you feel better in the moment. Comfort that keeps you from needing God is not good news, no matter how pleasant it sounds.

For reflection

What voices or assumptions in your life tend to define 'good' as comfortable or easy — and how does that definition hold up when hard things come?

Pray

Pray for discernment to recognize the difference between hope that roots you in God and hope that only offers relief from difficulty.

Day 4

Pastor Bill made a point that is hard to unhear: you cannot take verse 11 without verse 10. The promise of a future and a hope sits right next to the honest word that the exile would last seventy years. For most of the people hearing Jeremiah's letter, that was a lifetime. They would not see the restoration themselves. And yet God still called it a plan for good. That forces a real question: what does 'good' actually mean if it can include seventy years of exile? Pastor Bill's answer is that God's definition of good is not about how quickly things resolve or how painless the path is — it is about where the path leads. A plan that returns people to wholehearted relationship with God, even if it is long and costs everything, is a good plan by God's measure. That is not a comfortable truth, but it is a sturdy one. You can trust a timeline you do not control when you trust the One who holds it. The exiles were not asked to pretend the seventy years was fine. They were asked to remain faithful through it — and that is a different and harder and more honest thing.

For reflection

Is there a situation in your life where you have been waiting for God to wrap things up quickly — and what might it look like to surrender the timeline to Him?

Pray

Pray for the grace to trust God's timing even when it is longer or harder than you hoped, and for honesty about where you are struggling with that.

Day 5

This is the hinge of the whole letter. God does not just say 'I have a plan' — He says when you seek Me wholeheartedly, you will find Me, and I will be found by you. Pastor Bill tied this to Psalm 37:4, the verse about delighting yourself in the Lord so that He gives you the desires of your heart. The key, he pointed out, is that when we seek God wholeheartedly, something happens to us: He changes what we desire. It is not that God becomes a vending machine for whatever we already want. It is that genuine pursuit of God reshapes us at the level of our wants. That is actually a more generous promise than the one most people read into Jeremiah 29:11. It is not just that God has a plan for your future — it is that He wants to be found by you personally. The restoration He promised Israel was not just geographical; it was relational. He was going to bring them back from every place He had scattered them. That is the kind of God who is worth seeking with your whole heart, not just the part of your life that is left over after everything else.

For reflection

What does 'wholehearted' pursuit of God look like practically in your daily life right now — and where does it feel most partial or half-hearted?

Pray

Pray for a genuine desire to seek God wholeheartedly — and for honesty about what tends to get your full attention instead.

Day 6

Pastor Bill stepped back at the end of the sermon to show the larger arc: everything in Jeremiah — the exile, the discipline, the letter, the promise — was pointing toward something God was building toward. In Jeremiah 31, God announces a new covenant, one where He would forgive sin completely and write His law not on stone but on human hearts. The author of Hebrews returns to this passage to say: that promise was fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate priest who makes the once-for-all sacrifice, the ultimate prophet who speaks God's word fully, and the ultimate king under whom that new covenant becomes available to everyone. Every painful plan God walked Israel through — and walks us through — has this as its destination: a people who know God personally, whose sins are forgiven, and whose hearts have been transformed from the inside. The exile was not the end of the story. The hard season you are in is not the end of your story either. God's discipline has never been His last word. Jesus is.

For reflection

How does knowing that God's discipline and plans were always aimed at the new covenant in Jesus change the way you think about a hard season you have experienced or are in now?

Pray

Pray with gratitude that God's ultimate plan was not just restoration to a place but transformation through Jesus — and ask Him to make that real in your heart today.

Day 7

Looking back across the week, the whole letter holds together as one coherent message: God is not offering you comfort — He is offering you Himself. The plan He has for you is good because He is good, and what He is always working toward is not a life free of difficulty but a heart fully His. Pastor Bill's closing image was a child at worship, arms up, not asking for anything — just wanting God. That is the destination of every plan in this letter. This week, you have traced the path: recognizing who God is, responding to what He is doing rather than fighting it, remaining fruitful where you are, refusing false hopes, accepting His timeline, and seeking Him wholeheartedly. None of that is easy. All of it is real. The invitation now is to stop idling your faith on the side of your life and to bring it into the center — into your worship, your community, your daily choices about time and relationships and how you tell your story to others. Not because you have to, but because you have seen enough of who God is to believe that He is worth it.

For reflection

As you look at the week as a whole, what one thing has shifted in how you understand God's plans — and what is one concrete step you want to take in response?

Pray

Pray for the courage to bring your faith out of the margins and into the center of your life — and ask God to show you one next step toward knowing Him and making Him known.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Jeremiah 29:11 is one of the most quoted verses in the Bible — but Pastor Bill Bush opened up the letter it comes from and found something far bigger and more demanding than a promise of personal comfort.

Discussion questions

1
Jeremiah 29:4 introduces God as both 'the Lord of Heaven's Armies' and 'the God of Israel' — an all-powerful commander and a personal covenant God — writing to people whose lives had been shattered by exile. What do you think that combination of titles was meant to say to people in that moment?
2
Pastor Bill drew a distinction between asking 'God, what are You going to do about this?' and asking 'What am I supposed to do with this?' What shifts when a community moves from the first question to the second?
3
In Jeremiah 29:5-7, God tells exiles to build homes, plant gardens, raise families, and work for the peace of the very city that conquered them. What does that kind of instruction say about how God defines faithfulness when circumstances are painful and uncertain?
4
Pastor Bill argued that false teachers in Jeremiah's day — and what he called the prosperity gospel today — share the same flaw: they define 'good' as comfort or quick relief rather than as God Himself. Based on what the message said, how does that definition of good end up making things worse?
5
Jeremiah 29:10 tells the exiles they will be in Babylon for seventy years — a full lifetime for many of them — and verse 11 follows immediately. How does holding those two verses together change the way we read God's promise of 'a future and a hope'?
6
Pastor Bill traced the thread from Jeremiah's letter all the way to Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Hebrews 8, showing that every painful plan was aimed at the day Jesus would forgive sin and write God's law on human hearts. How might that longer arc shape the way a community like ours responds — in worship, in home groups, in daily life — when God's timeline feels slow?

Pray together

Gratitude that God's plans — even the hard ones — are aimed at bringing us fully to Him, and courage to remain fruitful and faithful right where we are

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Foretold / Prophets of the Bible

Week 2 · 6 messages

Where these passages are preached

Jeremiah 29 Psalm 37 Jeremiah 31 Hebrews 8

Explore related topics

Exile and Discipline False Hope vs. True Hope God's Goodness Beyond Comfort Jeremiah 29:11 Suffering and Divine Purpose Wholehearted Devotion to God

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