Scripture: Jeremiah 29:4-14
When King Charles III met with President Trump recently on a state visit, he joked, “If not for us, you’d be speaking French today!” Charles was referring to the Seven Years’ War between Britain and France, which Britain won. The North American theater of that war is known to us as the French-Indian War, which our very own George Washington helped us to win… and that victory made North America safe from French invasion.
The only problem with the British victory over the French? War debt… and how to pay it off.
And this became an argument in Parliament in London… Since the war especially benefited the Americans, members of Parliament said, the colonies should pay their fair share… through taxes.
According to a new article I read last week in the Telegraph, a British newspaper, Americans—most of whom were, at the time, loyal British subjects—would have been perfectly fine with paying their fair share—including Ben Franklin, who was in London representing the colonists’ interests. “They will happily pay a war tax,” Franklin said, “only let them raise the money through their own legislatures. Don’t let Parliament tax them directly… They won’t like that… because they don’t have representation in Parliament.”
According to this article, Franklin’s argument enjoyed support among powerful and influential people in England… And the argument nearly won the day and averted our War for Independence![1]
And if it had, think of how different our lives would be… For instance, last night our dogs would have been far less nervous, enduring the loud rumble of fireworks… and yours truly wouldn’t have been moonlighting at “Crazy Brent’s” over the past week, selling fireworks…
Just kidding…
If not for our War for Independence, we wouldn’t have had our country’s founding documents—like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights—which, alongside the democracy these documents helped create, have been a precious gift to us and our world—including these words written 250 years ago—“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
I believe in these God-given rights… in their fullest, biblical sense… And in today’s sermon, I want to talk mostly about that third one: the pursuit of happiness… And I want to make three points: Number One: God Wants Us to Be Happy. Number Two: We Don’t Know What Will Make Us Happy. And Number Three: Jesus Himself Is Our Happiness.
One of the points of that article from the British newspaper was that, in 1766, when Ben Franklin was making his argument to Parliament, few people living in America could have imagined how drastically different their lives would be in the near future…
And in today’s scripture, the remaining people of Israel—reduced as they were to a remnant, many of whom were now living as a conquered people in exile—were having a hard time imagining how different their lives would be in the future.
Because… like the colonists in the lead-up to 1776, the recent experience of God’s people in what remained of Israel had been very painful and heartbreaking… Read Psalm 137 if you want the most poignant expression of their experience:
By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
But in today’s scripture, the prophet Jeremiah tells them that things will change for the better… In fact, Jeremiah is offering a message of hope to a people who badly needed it…
After all, Jeremiah’s prophecies—and the words of many other prophets—were now coming true. God was judging the southern kingdom of Israel for their centuries of idolatry and unfaithfulness. And God was using Babylon as an instrument of this judgment. Within a few years, the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed… and most of the rest of the citizens of Jerusalem would join their fellow Jews, who’d already been taken captive in Babylon.
The future seemed bleak…
However… God tells Israel in verse 11, through Jeremiah, “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”[2] That “future and a hope” included the fact that in 70 years, some of these Jews—but mostly their children and grandchildren—would be able to return to Jerusalem and Judea and rebuild their temple and their way of life.
But this verse, Jeremiah 29:11, is a favorite verse for many of us. Lisa and I even have a knickknack with this verse inscribed on it—I think it’s on a shelf in our guest bathroom.
But recently it’s become fashionable for Bible scholars to warn us: “Be careful. Jeremiah 29:11 wasn’t written directly to you. It was written to Jewish exiles in Babylon. The promise was that after seventy years God would bring them home.”
And that’s true… as far as it goes.
But some go further and say, “Therefore Christians shouldn’t claim this promise today.”
What do you think of that?
I think it’s baloney.
Because if this promise was true for God’s people in exile before Christ came, how much more true is it for those of us whose lives are now “hidden with Christ in God”?[3] Paul tells us, “All of God’s promises have been fulfilled with a resounding Yes in Christ.”[4]
Jeremiah 29:11 doesn’t mean less on this side of the cross. It means more.
How could it not mean more for us when we have, for example, an astonishing promise like 1 Corinthians 3:21-23? In my humble opinion, Jeremiah 29:11 is a very mild promise in comparison with what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3…
For context, Paul is writing to a church divided over leadership. Some say, “I belong to Paul.” Others, “I belong to Apollos.” Others, “I belong to Peter.” They’re arguing over which leader gives them the most status, the most security, the greatest advantage.
And Paul’s response is basically, “You don’t understand. You already have everything.”
I don’t think I adequately grasp the truth of what Paul says next. Because if I did, why would I ever worry? I’m serious… But judge for yourself: if what Paul is saying is true (and of course it is!), then why should any of us ever worry or feel anxious. Listen to these words and prepare to be blown away. This is from 1 Corinthians 3:21-23:
So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours [in other words, all these things belong to you], and you are Christ’s [i.e., you belong to Christ], and Christ is God’s [i.e., Christ belongs to God].[5]
In other words, this scripture tells us, God, in his sovereign control of the universe, is ensuring that everything that happens in our lives, in our world, in our universe—even the things that seem opposed to us—will finally be made to serve God’s good purposes for you and me.
If you are God’s child through faith in Christ, there is nothing happening in your life, in this world, or in our universe, that isn’t ultimately serving your best interests at this very moment.
Like I said… Astonishing!
How much money would we be willing to pay in order for everything that happens in the universe to be for our good. The world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk, couldn’t afford that kind of advantage in life… Yet it’s freely available to us.
Therefore, lasting happiness… or joy… part of the fruit of the Spirit whom God has given us… will be one important fruit of Jeremiah’s promise of welfare or prosperity!
And that’s Point Number One: God Wants Us to Be Happy…
Number Two: We Don’t Know What Will Make Us Happy…
Do any of you watch those various mobster movies? The Godfather, for instance… The mafia is evil… I get it. But I confess that, when watching these movies, there’s a small part of me envies being able to pay someone to make my problems disappear… to pay for protection… to make make my plans succeed… or in the words of Jeremiah 29:11, to “prosper me and not to harm me,” to “give me a future and a hope.”
That’s what I want!
But if these verses from 1 Corinthians 3 are true, the power and protection of mafiosos in mobster movies can’t begin to compare to what God does for us!
If only we could believe it! That’s our problem. We have a hard time believing 1 Corinthians 3:21-23, for instance, because our idea of what counts as “prosperity,” or “well-being” or “welfare”—or however our English Bibles translate the word—doesn’t usually correspond with God’s idea of prosperity or well-being or welfare…
And, here, our Declaration of Independence comes into play… Because there’s nothing wrong with the “pursuit of happiness.” I’m all for it! Pursue happiness, by all means! I do it all the time.
But my problem is, I don’t know what I need to be happy… even though I think I do!
Don’t you?
We think we know, for example, what constitutes “the good life,” and we make it our life’s ambition to achieve it.
This is why, here in America, prosperity gospel preaching is so seductive and dangerous. You know those TV preachers? I’m reluctant to name them, because I worry that I’ll step on people’s toes… “But I like that one!” Okay, but let me name one of them… Creflo Dollar… Has there ever been a preacher with a more appropriate last name?… The jokes write themselves! To say the least, the man has a lot of dollars in his bank account! But before we point any more fingers at those preachers on television, we need to understand something about ourselves: The reason prosperity preaching works is because there’s already a little prosperity preacher living inside each of us.
Because those preachers aren’t usually tempting us with something we don’t want. They’re promising us the very things our hearts already believe will make us happy: money, success, comfort, achievement, recognition, physical fitness, good health, security… you name it.
There was a song from the late-’90s by an indie-rock singer named Liz Phair. She wrote the following words in a very honest song—with which many of the idealistic young people in her audience disagreed. She wrote:
It’s nice to be liked
But it’s better by far to be paid
I know most of the friends that I have
Don’t really see it that way
But if you could give them each one wish
How much do you want to bet
They’d wish success for themselves and their friends
And that would include lots of money
While Liz Phair probably wouldn’t disagree with Paul McCartney that “money can’t buy us love,” I’m sure she’d say, “Who cares? You need money before you need anything else in this world.”
I remember as a 16-year-old coming home from church excited… Because at church that night a future United Methodist pastor named Brian Davis was leading a Bible study for the youth group… After which he told me, “Brent, have thought that maybe God is calling you into pastoral ministry?” I hadn’t thought that at the time. But it felt right, and when I got home from church I was excited to announce to my parents that I sensed that God was calling me into ministry.
And they were horrified…
And their first and loudest objection to this idea was, “Do you know how much a pastor gets paid?”
That hurt me!
My parents could have sung the words of that future song: “It’s nice to be liked…” Or… perhaps they would say, “It’s nice to have a little of Jesus in your life… a little bit of religion… But it’s better by far to be paid…”
Whether that payment happens to be in money, or success, or recognition, or good health, or physical fitness, or fill in the blank…
Do we believe that lie? For many more years of my life, I certainly did! I tried to chase and grab hold of that brass ring… I was terrible at it… Thank God… But for years of my young adulthood I thought that’s what I needed!
God’s Word tells me I was wrong… and it wouldn’t have made me happy anyway.
And that’s Point Number Two: We Don’t Know What Will Make Us Happy.
And this is Point Number Three: Jesus Is Our Happiness…
See, I fully agree that God wants to give you and me “the good life”—or, as Jesus calls it, “abundant life.” Jesus himself says in John 10:10, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
The disagreement between Jesus and the prosperity gospel, for example, or the Liz Phair song, is not over whether God wants us to be happy. The disagreement is over where that happiness is found.
Because Jesus says the strangest thing: the way to find your life is to lose it. The way to gain everything is to surrender everything. The way to experience the life you were created for is to take up your cross—an instrument of death, after all—and follow Jesus.
And for years I misunderstood that. I thought “taking up my cross” meant being willing to die for Jesus someday, under some extreme circumstance… like the apostles and many early Christians… maybe I would have to die, for instance, if I became a missionary in a land unlike ours, which didn’t have a First Amendment to protect the free exercise of religion!
And of course “taking up our cross” includes a willingness to die for Jesus if or when circumstances call for that…
But I know now that Jesus is talking about something every disciple must do every single day: we die to ourselves, which, among other things, means dying to the illusion that we know better than God what we need in order to be happy.
Which means we don’t say, “Lord, give me what I want and then I’ll have joy”… It means we start saying, “Lord, give me more of yourself—and teach me to want what you want.”
Because Jesus doesn’t merely give us the good life. Jesus is the good life.
The greatest Christian movie of all time, in my humble opinion, is Chariots of Fire—the Best Picture winner back in 1981. It illustrates the truth of the “good life” in Christ very well. It tells the true story of two Olympic runners who competed for Great Britain in the 1924 Olympics in Paris. One was a Scotsman named Eric Liddell—a Presbyterian missionary bound for China. But he had something he needed to do first. As he famously tells his anxious sister, “I believe God made me for a purpose—and that purpose is in China—but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.”
In the movie, Liddell arrives in Paris prepared to run the 100-meter, his specialty, only to learn that the heats for that race are scheduled for Sunday. And because of his traditional Presbyterian conviction that Sunday is for the Lord—not for amusements like running—he refuses to participate.
It doesn’t matter that most of us Methodists don’t share that conviction. Most of his nation—including his King, his Olympic team, and his coaches—also disagree. “Go ahead and run,” they said. “What’s the harm? Don’t be a fanatic!” In the movie, the Prince of Wales himself tries to change his mind.
Liddell won’t budge.
In the face of enormous pressure, he respectfully but firmly refuses to compromise.
Because here’s a man who loves Jesus so much, who is so satisfied in Christ, that he doesn’t need anything else to be happy. He is truly free. Because Liddell doesn’t worship running, he is free to truly enjoy running as a gift from God: “When I run, I feel his pleasure.”
But because running is not his god, he can also freely give it up. If obedience to Christ costs him the gold medal, the glory, the fame, and the recognition that comes with it—he’s fine with it; he’s willing to lose it all.
Why?
Because he hasn’t lost what matters most by far.
He still has Jesus!
It turns out he’s able to swap with another runner on his team and run in the 400-meter instead. And he wins gold…
But even if Liddell had never won gold… or even if he’d run and lost… he already had the treasure he needed most.
Meanwhile, the other runner whose story gets told is Harold Abrahams. He’s like us… He’s a very sympathetic character. He’s not striving after something bad. He’s striving for something very good. Excellence. Achievement. Victory. Gold.
But in the movie’s pivotal scene, before the biggest race of his life—having lost the previous races he’d run in—he tells his personal trainer, in the locker room, with great self-awareness, “I have ten seconds to justify my existence.”
Ten seconds to prove that I matter. Ten seconds to prove that I’m enough.
See the contrast: Eric Liddell says, “Because of Jesus, I have nothing to prove.” Harold Abrahams says, “I need to win this race to prove that I deserve to have this life.”
Which of the two men knows true happiness?
In today’s scripture, God’s people living in exile in Babylon had to wrestle with that same question: “What do we really need in order to be okay? What do we really need to live the good life?”
Look at verses 8 and 9::
For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord.
What were these false prophets saying? “You’re going home soon! Don’t get comfortable in Babylon. Don’t settle down. Don’t unpack your bags. God is going to destroy your enemies, and before you know it you’ll be back where you belong. You’ll have your homes back… your country back… your temple back. Then you can finally be happy.”
And let’s be clear: those were good things! God gave them the land. God gave them Jerusalem. God gave them the temple. They were right to love those gifts.
But God was teaching them the same lesson Eric Liddell understood: Even God’s greatest gifts cannot take the place of God himself.
So Jeremiah tells them something shocking:
Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce… seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.
In other words: “You’re not going home soon. But that doesn’t mean I have abandoned you. You think you need Jerusalemto have joy. You think you need your old life back to have peace. You think you need your circumstances to change before you can experience my blessing.
“You don’t. You need me. And I am right here with you—even in Babylon”…
If I have any problem with what our Declaration of Independence calls the “pursuit of happiness,” it’s this: It almost implies that happiness is over there… far away… out of reach… There are these obstacles in the way, but if you work hard enough, you’ll overcome them; you’ll chase after your dream until you catch it… And then you will finally be okay… and you will finally be happy.
Isn’t that where the American Dream comes from?
But you know how it is… Life happens… Life disrupts… And sooner or later we find ourselves in Babylon…
Will we be okay there?
Yes… Because that’s where our Lord is…
And where Christ is… that’s where our life is.
And that’s where true happiness is.
George Matheson, a 19th-century Scottish pastor and hymn writer, has a prayer in which he says, “The place I call dreadful is even now the house of the Lord.”
Because that place… or any other place… is where Jesus is.
And if Jesus is there—even there—we have a future. We have a hope. We have everything we need.
[1] David Blair, “How American Independence Might Have Been Avoided and the World Transformed,” telegraph.co.uk, 1 July 2026. Accessed 2 July 2026.
[2] Jeremiah 29:11 ESV
[3] Colossians 3:3 ESV
[4] 2 Corinthians 1:20 NLT
[5] 1 Corinthians 3:21-23 ESV