One of the more popular verses in the Bible among followers of Jesus is Jeremiah 29:11:
‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’
It’s a beautiful, hope-inspiring promise from God’s Word. Unfortunately, that promise isn’t ours the way most people think.
In this video, Voddie Baucham of Grace Family Baptist Church in Spring, TX explains why Christians today misinterpret this verse. For those that can’t watch the video, I’ll try to summarize his points below. For the rest of you, enjoy this short clip:
The heart of Baucham’s dissent (in which he’s not alone, and with which I tend to agree), is that this promise was made to the people of Israel. If you read the passage in context, you’ll see that Lord is speaking to the nation of Israel, promising them that at some point in the future (150 years, Baucham tells us) that He will gather Israel back together from the nations to which it has been exiled and bring them back to the land of promise. The “you”, then, in 29:11 is not a modern day Christian; it’s the entire Old Testament nation of Israel. Baucham also points out that this is not an individual promise, but a corporate promise. It’s not to, say, Jeremiah, but to all of the people of Israel as a whole.
Baucham also does a nice job dismantling that “yeah, but that was the Old Testament and this is the New.” He notes the “cognitive dissonance” (how great is it that that term shows up in a sermon? :) between the perceived promise in the verse (“plans for welfare and not for calamity”) and the harsh reality of life. “Why don’t you ask Ananias and Sapphira about that. Oh, I’m sorry. You can’t. God killed them. Not allowed them to die. He KILLED them. As a matter of fact, He killed them in church!” He then quickly listed how the apostles, all Godly men with strong faith all died horribly. Either God broke His promise to us in this verse, or we’ve interpreted the verse incorrectly.
For what it’s worth, I tend to think that there IS something for us in this verse. While God’s plan for us, either as individuals or as the church body as whole, may not be for welfare and not calamity, I think this verse, in concert with countless others throughout Scripture can give us comfort in knowing that God does have a plan for us. Unfortunately, that plan, in the short term at least, may very well include some pain and misfortune. Baucham says it best when he asked, “If God would crush and kill His perfect, spotless, sinless Son, who do you think you are?” Indeed.