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Northwood Archives
Sermon notes
November 11th, 2007
“Being
Taken Where You Don't Want to Go”
By Dan Armstrong
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14
Life is what happens while you were planning other
things. When that happens…when life takes you where you don’t want to
go…remember that you don’t go there alone. God goes with you…every step of the
way. This morning’s story is about those steps.
1. The first step, when life takes you where
you don’t want to go, is to get past shock
and denial to
acceptance.
This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of
Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build
houses and settle down… (29:4-5).
2. The second step with God, when life takes
you where you don’t want to go, is to decide to move past
surviving to thriving.
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. (29:7)
3. The last step with God, when life takes
you where you don’t want to go, is to ignore the
know-it-alls and put your faith
in God.
This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years
are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious 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. (29:10-11)
Sometime fairly early in His ministry, it became
clear to Jesus that He was being taken where He didn’t want to go. Though He
dreaded it, He kept His eyes on God, not the storm. God’s promise of a hope and
a future did not come this side of death, but it did come. After Jesus’
resurrection and ascension, the apostle Paul put all the pieces together when he
wrote:
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:9-11)
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