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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Aron Crews

From Years to Weeks to Days

I was born and I was actually born in Michigan But I grew up and I was raised in Maryland Silver Spring, Maryland both my parents Loving parents work at the General Conference.

Then I recently graduated from Southern Adventist University Whoo-whoo Men Got a job working in Michigan as a pastor.

Spent 9 months up in the UP, pastoring 3 churches.

Now I've recently moved down to the Lansing Seventh-day Adventist Church, where I am the assistant pastor, and it's been quite the journey.

It's been a blessing, and I'm so happy that I got the invitation to come here.

It's my first time at Loma Linda, and This is a strange place.

There's no color here, but it's still okay.

All right, well, let's jump right into this evening's presentation.

It is entitled Years to Weeks to Days, and you have no idea what that means.

Does this verse sound familiar to anybody here tonight?

Jeremiah 29.11 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.

Who has ever this evening found hope and comfort in this verse before?

You can do a little Google search and find out that this verse is like top 3, top 5, top 10 most frequently searched verses of all time.

We've heard this verse many times before.

Tonight, what we're going to be doing is unpacking this verse, hopefully in a way that you've never seen before, and looking at the actual historical context and see how this verse stretches all the way into the day in which we're living all the way today, in 2016.

The context for this verse is, of course, in Jeremiah 29.

If you have your Bibles this evening, you can open up to that chapter.

Jeremiah 29 The context here is the nation of Judah had been taken away captive by what nation?

And there, as they were taken away as captive into Babylon, the whole nation of Judah, of Israel, thought, oh no, God has utterly forsaken us.

We have broken covenant with Him and now we're off on our own.

Well, in the midst of this thinking, God gave the prophet Jeremiah a special message to give to the exiles in Babylon.

And He sent them comforting words that begin in Jeremiah 29.10.

It says thus, For thus says the Lord, after 70 years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you and cause you to return to this place.

So they thought that they were utterly abandoned, that they were gonna be in Babylon forever, utterly forsaken by God, but God says, "'Nope, 70 years, and then you're gonna come back.'" And this is where that next verse comes along, verse 11.

70 years, and then I'll cause you to return to this place, for I know the plans I have for you, or your translation might say, for I know the thoughts I think towards you, declares the Lord.

Thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a hope and a future.

Then you look at verse 12, it says, then you will call upon me and go and pray to me and I will listen to you.

And you will seek me and find me when you search for Me with all of your hearts.

I will bring you back from your captivity.

I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive." Here, we have a very simple layout.

Then in the next verse, verse 11, he says, for I know the plan, the plans that I have for you.

Then the following verse, in verses 12 and 13, he says, you will go and you will pray to me, seek me with all of your heart, and then I will be found by you.

And then he closes the whole thing up with verse 14, assuring us of the promise that the prophecy is sure, that the plan is sure, and that the prayer will be sure.

Here we have God in cooperation with man.

If you notice very closely, whose prophecy is it?

He says, I'm the 1 who's decreeing the 70 years.

God says, I know the plans that I have for you.

But then he says, you will go and pray to me and seek me with all of your heart and I will be found by you.

And then whose promise is that to close the whole thing up?

God is the 1 who gives the promises, who gives the plan, who gives the prophecy, and He wants us to cooperate with that.

This 70-year prophecy began in just about the year 606 BC.

This is when Nebuchadnezzar came in and he took many captive into the nation of Babylon people such as Daniel, right, Hanani, Mishael, and Azariah.

We'll have a timeline here, even though I have it on the board.

They go into exile into the nation of Babylon.

Well, there's a man by the name of Daniel.

And in Daniel 1, he's taken as a captive.

And here, this is the tone-setting verse for the entire book of Daniel.

It says, "...but Daniel purposed in his..." where?

"...heart, that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's delicacy." He purposed in his heart.

He says, I'm in this thing for the long run and I'm gonna stay true to my God.

I'm gonna stay true to his law, to his character, and I'm going to serve him and be faithful.

And as we go here, beginning in 606 BC, which is when Daniel purposed in his heart, the background, you've read the book of Daniel before, I'm sure, you've read Daniel 1, and he's all, you know, practicing healthful living, and he's all like, I'm 10 times wiser, and he's elevated to the Chaldeans, the magicians and such and so forth.

But then we take a step forward Daniel chapter 2 and inch by inch as we're going through the book of Daniel I don't want us to lose the context that in the backdrop is this 70 year prophecy there.

He goes and he's like, I'm a vegetarian, I drink water.

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From Years to Weeks to Days

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