Life was looking hopeless to Jeremiah in this week’s Old Testament reading, Jeremiah 32:1-3a,6-15. He was under arrest for speaking God’s word to his people. King Hezekiah didn’t like what Jeremiah was saying and so put him in prison. At the same time, the mighty and all-conquering Babylonian army was camped outside the walls of Jerusalem where Jeremiah was imprisoned, and they were laying siege to the city. Everyone living in Jerusalem was living in fear because they knew the destructive force of the Babylonians. The invaders didn’t just conquer a city or a country. They annihilated it and everything around it so that the people of that area would never think about rising up against them.
In the middle of this hopelessness, Jeremiah received a message from God, telling him that his cousin was going to offer to sell him some of the family land. It didn’t make any sense at all for Jeremiah to buy this land from his cousin. To begin with, being in prison meant that Jeremiah couldn’t work the land to receive any income from it. What made this transaction even worse was that the Babylonians were either going to kill the residents of Jerusalem, including Jeremiah, or take them into exile as slaves. It seemed that buying this land made no sense because it looked like Jeremiah would never receive anything in return for his investment.
However, God also gave a promise to Jeremiah along with the command to buy the land. In verse 15, Jeremiah said these words from God to the people who witnessed the transaction:
“For this is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘Someday people will again own property here in this land and will buy and sell houses and vineyards and fields.’” (NLT)
Even though life looked hopeless for him, Jeremiah purchased the land because he believed this promise from God. God was telling them that the day would come when he would bring his people back to their land, restore their homes, vineyards and fields, and life would return to normal. Jeremiah’s purchase was an act of faith because he trusted that God would do what he promised. So Jeremiah invested in a future that he couldn’t see and wouldn’t benefit from. Faced with what seemed like a hopeless situation, God’s promise gave Jeremiah hope for the future, and he bought the land as an investment in the future God promised to give his people.
There are times in our lives when things can look pretty hopeless for us, too. We might not be in prison for bringing God’s word to the people around us, or have a foreign army camped around us threatening to destroy our homes, kill our neighbours, and take us into exile as slaves. However, we can face other things in life that can threaten us, harm us in our bodies, minds or spirits, or hold us captive either emotionally or spiritually. We can also lose hope for our church as our congregations get older and fewer in numbers. We might not be facing the same dangers that Jeremiah faced, but we can still lose hope for lots of different reasons, both as individuals and as a church.
When everything seemed hopeless to Jeremiah, God’s promise gave him hope for the future. God’s promises to us in Jesus can also give us hope for the future, even if things seem hopeless. God promises to always be with us (Matthew 28:20), to never forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6), to protect us (2 Thessalonians 3:3), and to work all things for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28). In Jesus we have God’s promise of everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3) and the gift of a life which is stronger than death (John 6:47). We can find God’s promises to help and not hurt us all the way through the Bible. These promises find their fulfilment and completion in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He is God’s ultimate promise to be with us in all circumstances, to give himself in our place and take the full force of those things that threaten or worry us, and to give us the victory over sin, death and every kind of evil in his resurrection. Jeremiah was facing the defeat and destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. We already have the victory over everything that threatens us because Jesus has gone into battle for us, overcome our foes through his death and resurrection for us, and gives us his victory through faith in him (1 Corinthians 15:57).
Faith in God’s promises to us in Jesus gives us hope for the future, just as it did for Jeremiah. When we trust in him and his promises to us, God then asks us to invest what we he has given to us, just like he instructed Jeremiah to invest in the future of his nation by buying his cousin’s land. Instead of investing in property or bricks and mortar, Jesus asks us to invest in people. The New Testament tells us that God’s people are his spiritual house, the living stones of the church (1 Peter 2:5). Like Jeremiah’s purchase of his family’s land when the Babylonian army was destroying everything, investing in others might not make a lot of logical sense to us. However, when Jesus teaches us to love one another (John 13:34), he is asking us to use the time, energy and physical resources he has given us to invest in the future of his church by building up the people around us in faith, hope and love. God asked Jeremiah to look past his circumstances, which seemed hopeless, towards what God was going to do in the future when he would bring his people home from exile and restore them to their land. In the same way, God asks us to look beyond what might seem to us like a hopeless situation and invest in the future of his church, the people he loves, by giving ourselves, our time and our resources to others so they encounter God’s goodness and grace in us.
The future of the church might not look very positive to us. Some might say it even looks hopeless. However, just as God asked Jeremiah to trust him and invest in a piece of land even when life looked hopeless to him, he asks us to invest the love he has given us into the people around us, so they can find the future he has for them in this world and the next.
How do you think we might be able to do that?
More to think about or discuss:
- Do you think Jeremiah buying the field was a wise investment? Why or why not?
- What does Jeremiah buying the land tell you about faith & what it means to trust God’s promises?
- What is one thing you can do this week to invest in someone in your church community?
Pastor Eugene Online 
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