Jeremiah 29:1-14 • The Two Aspects of Trusting God

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Has God placed something in your heart for you to do for Him? Whatever action you need to take involves trusting God. What does it mean to trust someone or something, including God? This is post #2 in the Ezra to Malachi blog series. This blog series covers the last seven written books in the Old Testament—Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. In the first blog, we looked at why remembering who God is and your identity in Him will help us stick to our faith in a pull-apart world. In this blog, you will learn from Jeremiah 29:1-14 the two aspects of trusting God and how that helps you to flourish in every way.

Listen to this post as a similar podcast from our Identity: Sticking to Your Faith in a Pull-Apart World Bible Study covering the last 7 written books of the Old Testament.

What Does It Mean to Trust God?

Has God placed something in your heart for you to do for Him? It could be enduring a difficult situation caused by your own sin or someone else’s sin. It could be serving someone else. It could be speaking up in a situation where a voice with biblical principles needs to be heard.

Whatever action you need to take involves trusting God. What is trust? What does it mean to trust someone or something, including God? The dictionary definition of trust is this:

Trust = assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something (Merriam-Webster dictionary)

Assured reliance. To trust someone means that you know, you have assurance, that what that person says and does is true, and you are confident you can depend upon that person. When you trust God, you believe that what God says and does is true, and you are confident that you can depend upon Him.

Trusting God is an outworking of faith. Since it starts with faith, it is important for you and me to know what faith is.

For Christians, faith is a full commitment to Christ. God acted. We respond to His action by saying yes to faith in Jesus Christ and jumping into the new life God has for us. Instead of believing in your own ability to earn God’s favor, you now trust in what Christ has done for you. That is biblical faith.

Trust is an outworking of faith. As you live your life in Christ, you choose to trust Him daily for whatever it is you are called to do.

Two Aspects of Trusting God

Let us go back to the question I asked at the beginning of this blog. Has God placed something in your heart for you to do for Him? Or has He placed you in a situation where you need to act on His behalf?

Whatever it is involves two aspects of trusting God. It is like having two interlocking pieces that fit together to make a whole. What are those two pieces to trusting God?

First piece: You must trust Him as you do your part His way.
Second piece: You must trust Him to do His part in the areas over which you have no control. This involves trusting His goodness in whatever He chooses to do alongside what you are doing.

Those two aspects of trusting God are necessary for you to act on whatever God has placed in your heart to do. The book of Jeremiah provides a beautiful illustration of this for us.

Doing Your Part God’s Way

Flourish

God sent a letter through the prophet Jeremiah to all the people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. God told them how to flourish during their exile. This is what He said to them,

Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper. (Jeremiah 29:5-7)

Be productive and content. Live normal lives and be fruitful. Flourish. Be useful to the city and area in which you live. Ask God to prosper it. That is doing your part God’s way.

For us, we can be upset and fearful over evil occurring around us. We can even be mean in our thoughts and speech toward others. That is not trusting God and doing our part His way.

Be discerning

Doing your part God’s way also applies to discernment about any teaching you hear. So God gave them some additional instruction:

Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 29:8-9)

There are always deceivers among us who like to gain control over an audience through anything sensational. That is true for dreams, visions, and prophecies. I will talk more about dreams in the next blog.

You read in the lesson that the Jewish “dreamers” were false prophets who were declaring that the Jews did not have to serve the king of Babylon and that the temple treasures would be soon returned to Jerusalem. This was prophesying a quick return of the people to their homeland. But the Bible teaches that any prophecy that did not stress obedience to God was not from God. God said He placed them in Babylon and would come for them when it was time for them to go home.

We as believers in God need to be discerning about what we read and hear. That means we need to know the truth of God’s word. Then, we can test what someone is teaching against the truth that we know. You can read to my “Healthy Living” blogs covering the book of Colossians to help you discern false teaching.

Here is a key truth:

Anything that does not exalt Christ as Lord of your life over anything else is not from God.

There is a great example of this in the book of Jeremiah. He gave God’s message to a group of women who were resistant to trusting God and preferred to live life their own way. After God allowed Jerusalem to be destroyed, some women and their husbands were left behind. They knew God had brought on this punishment because of their idol worship. Against God’s instructions to them to stay in Judah, they escaped to Egypt. Yet, even there, the women were adamant about making cakes to honor what they called the “Queen of Heaven.” And their husbands let them continue doing it even after they were driven from their homes. This is what they told Jeremiah,

Then all the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods, along with all the women who were present-a large assembly-and all the people living in Lower and Upper Egypt, said to Jeremiah, “We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord! We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our fathers, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm. But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine.” The women added, “When we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did not our husbands know that we were making cakes like her image and pouring out drink offerings to her?” (Jeremiah 44:15-19)

God was furious with them. They had their woman idol and would not give her up. Did you hear what they claimed? They even credited the female idol for their own prosperity and success. They were in rebellion against God and did not care. They would do whatever they wanted to do no matter the consequences.

There is a movement among Christian women today to glorify womanhood. Part of it is meant to overcome bad teaching about how a woman can and cannot use her spiritual gifts in the church. But much of it twists God’s word to make it say whatever they want it to say to satisfy their cause. Idolatry is still sin. Beware of the causes you support and watch out for any attempt to glorify womanhood over the Lord Jesus.

Doing your part God’s way requires discernment so that you know what God’s way actually is. For help, read “Truth Is the Prescription for Healthy Living” and “Taming the “Look-Imagine-See” Dragon.”

Trusting God to Do His Part

While you are living life God’s way, flourishing as He wants you to flourish in whatever situation you find yourself, you must trust God to do His part in whatever He chooses to do. That might require a long wait in your current challenging situation. This is what God promised to the exiles:

“When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.” (Jeremiah 29:10-14)

God was working in the background to carry out His plans for them. They had to wait seventy years to go home, though. And during that seventy years, their hearts would become softer toward God. They would want Him so much that they would seek Him with all their heart.

God knew the time they spent in exile would prepare them for a future back in their homeland. It would take seventy years of cleansing their hearts and minds from all the pollution of idolatry that had infiltrated their lives. God promised to bring those in Babylon back to their land and also those who had been carried away into other countries. He was watching over them all and knew where every Israelite was. He also knew whose hearts would be turned toward Him. Those would be the ones He would bring home.

God says through Ezekiel in chapter 11,

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again. They will return to it and remove all its vile images and detestable idols. I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.” (Ezekiel 11: 17-20)

God would work on their hearts so they would be ready to go home and serve Him wholeheartedly.

The Jews in Babylon did flourish. They were given fertile land on which to farm. They lived in their own houses and built businesses. Artefacts record how they were renting, buying, and selling. They enjoyed freedom of movement and maintained their Jewish society, with their elders governing them. Yet, they knew it was still a punishment for their idolatrous behavior. They had to trust God to do His part while they were doing their part His way. That is what we need to do as well.

The result of the two aspects of trusting God is that you will want to follow His way of living life instead of the world’s way or your own way. Trust leads to obedience and peace. Trust leads to flourishing. You will see that in the next post about Daniel who trusted God with opposition and dreams.

Let Jesus satisfy your heart with complete trust in Him so that you will follow His way of living life instead of the world’s way or your own way.

All of the above information is covered in the Identity: Sticking to Your Faith in a Pull-Apart World Bible Study covering the last 7 written books of the Old Testament.

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