It’s Never Too Late to Start Over

One of the saddest stories in American history happened back in the 1830’s in the state of Georgia. Up in the northwest corner of that state lived a tribe of Indians known as the Cherokees. They were a peaceful people and quite advanced. They had their own villages, roads, farms, and schools. They even had even written a national constitution to govern themselves with.

One of the Cherokee Indians was a brilliant scholar named Sequoia. He had invented an alphabet for the Cherokee language, and had published books. So, in spite of the old Hollywood portrayals of “wild Indians” on the frontier, the Cherokees were a peaceful people who wanted nothing more than to have friendly relations with the U.S. Government.

Unfortunately for them, the U.S. Government decided that it did not want the Cherokees there. Settlers moving westward coveted their land, especially after gold was discovered on it. So the U.S. Government decided that the Cherokees had to go. The U.S. Army moved in and began to round them up.

Their lands were seized, their villages were burned, and they were herded like cattle 800 miles west to the territory of Oklahoma. At least 4,000 Cherokees perished on route. They died of cholera, dysentery and fever. Women died in childbirth. Many of those who died had simply lost the will to live. And this tragic story - the exile of the Cherokee nation - has come to be known as the Trail of Tears.

There is a similar story in the Old Testament—the story of a trail of tears. It happened to the nation Judah in 597 BC. Judah was a small nation living in the shadow of giants. She was caught in the middle of an international power struggle between Egypt in the west and Babylon in the east.

In the midst of this crisis, she lost one of her greatest leaders, Josiah—a man who is described in 2 Kings 23:25 this way:

Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.

But Josiah was tragically killed in a battle with the Egyptians—cut down in the prime of his life—and the Egyptians put his son Jehoahaz on the throne. Jehoahaz reigned for only 3 months when he was replaced by his brother Jehoiakim, a wicked man who reigned for 11 years. He was the king who hated the prophet Jeremiah so much that he actually tore up and burned his writings.

Jehoiakim became a vassal of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. That means that he had to send tribute and taxes to Babylon and follow Babylonian policies.

But when Nebuchadnezzar began to have some political problems of his own, Jehoiakim decided that the time was ripe to rebel against Babylon and throw in his lot with the Egyptians.

The prophet Jeremiah warned him against doing this, but he went ahead and did it anyway. And, just as Jeremiah predicted, Nebuchadnezzar got his own problems sorted out and the Babylonians invaded Judah and beseiged Jerusalem.

King Jehoiakim, who had been foolish enough to get them into this mess, at least had the good sense to die of natural causes before the Babylonians could get their hands on him. His son Jehoiachin inherited the throne and reigned for just three months before the Babylonians took the city on March 16, 597 BC.

One of the ways that the Babylonians dealt with a conquered people was to take them into captivity. They became prisoners of war—slaves, in other words. In 597 BC, the Babylonian army marched thousands of Jews off into exile—a Trail of Tears that ended in Babylon, 500 miles east of Jerusalem on the banks of the Euphrates River.

There, the Jews would be forcibly settled in hovels and shacks, on the worst farmland, near the swamps and marshes that were full of malaria and other diseases. They would suffer, and many would die, in the oppressive heat of the Mesopotamian summer, working like slaves on whatever projects the Babylonians gave them to do.

It was a hard, bitter, painful time for them, and the Bible tells us why it happened. It happened because of spiritual causes. God was punishing them because they had turned away from Him.

He had given them the land of Israel as their home, but they had turned to other gods. They had worshiped idols. And although God warned them through the prophets over and over again to repent and turn back to Him, they wouldn’t. They didn’t.

So finally, in the year 597, God removed them from the land that He had given them; removed them from that place of blessing; took them away from their homes and all that was familiar to them, and placed them in captivity in a strange, hard land.

To put it simply; God was trying to get their attention.

And that can often happen to us, today. We turn away from God. We insist on going our own way. And when we do that, we reap the consequences. We soon find that a life of sin becomes very very complicated. Painful. Sad. Stressful. Full of pressure and anxiety. When we sin, and keep on willfully sinning, we find ourselves walking a Trail of Tears to a place we don’t want to be.

And God uses that Trail of Tears to get our attention. Because God has for every sinner a very important message: It’s never too late to start over.

That’s the message that he had for his people who were in exile in Babylon. He gave it to them through the prophet Jeremiah in the form of a letter, which is found in Jeremiah 29…

Jeremiah was NOT one of the people who was taken into exile. He was left in Judah when the others departed. And from Judah, he wrote this letter to the people who were suffering in Babylon. And it is a letter of hope, of encouragement.

Read Jeremiah 29:1–14

Now in this letter, Jeremiah makes three points. There are three things that God wanted the exiles to do in order to start over spiritually…

1. They needed to Embrace Reality

The exiles were in a very tough situation and they needed to recognize that. You see in v. 1 where Jeremiah refers to the “surviving elders”? That’s possibly because a number of the elders of the Jews had either died under the harsh conditions, or perhaps even had been killed by the Babylonians.

They were far from home, living in a strange land under horrible circumstances. They were living in shame and defeat and slavery. They were needy, and hurting, and they needed to admit that because the very first step in spiritual recovery is to acknowledge that you’ve got a problem.

But there were people among the exiles who didn’t want to do that. There were false prophets who were saying to them: “Hey, it’s not so bad. Let’s put a good face on this. Just give us a little time and things will be okay. We’ll make it. We’ll tough it out. We’ll survive.” Look back at chapter 28.

In chapter 28, we have the message of a false prophet named Hananiah. And he was saying “Two years. That’s all it’s going to take. Just two years, and everything will be back to normal. The yoke of the king of Babylon will be broken off our necks in just two years. So why don’t we just grit our teeth and endure this suffering because pretty soon it’ll be over and we can be on our merry way. Life will be back to normal.”

You know what Jeremiah said to Hananiah? He said “Hananiah, you’re lying. You are a false prophet. You are deceiving the people with your words. You are trying to make light of this situation. You’re trying to tell them there’s an easy way out. And God is going to strike you down for that.” And sure enough, God did.

Likewise today, there are false prophets out there who’ll try to get us to make light of the consequences of going our own way. They’ll say “You can handle the consequences. You can deal with it. You will survive.” But that’s a lie. Going against God is fatal. Sin scars for a lifetime.

Jeremiah said “Two years until the exile is over? No way. Try 70 years. A whole lifetime.”

You can only start over spiritually when you’re finally ready to admit that you’ve got a serious problem. David did that in Psalm 32. For a long time, he wanted to paper over the problem. Try to live a normal life. Try to be a survivor. But it didn’t work.

It was only when he cried out “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” that God could begin to heal him. When we confess our sin, we are embracing reality. We are looking at the mess we have made of our lives and taking responsibility for it. That’s the first step in starting over.

2. The second step is to make up your mind to “bloom where you’re planted.”

Look at what Jeremiah told the exiles in verse 4…

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; 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.”

What is God saying here? He’s saying: “Be productive. Life is not over. Sure you’ve made a mess. Sure your sin has cost you dearly. But now that you’ve recognized that and taken responsibility for it, there’s hope. This is not the end of the line. I can still bring blessing out of this situation.”

Look at verse 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.”

One of the most wonderful truths about God that comes out over and over again in the Bible is that God has a talent for taking bad situations and making good come out of them.

Adam and Eve sinned and introduced death into the world, but out of that situation God brought the incarnation. And out of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, God brought eternal life.

Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. But out of that situation, God brought the deliverance of the whole family.

God has a talent for doing this! In fact, it is his specialty. Listen to the words of Isaiah 61, the same words that Jesus applied to himself and his ministry:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

But in order for this to do us any good, we have to believe that God is this way. That is where faith comes in. We have to believe that God can turn our situation around, that God can pull our chestnuts out of the fire. Because if we don’t believe that he is like that, we’ll never be able to have the kind of positive attitude that Jeremiah was encouraging the exiles to have.

He even told them to pray for their Babylonian captors in verse 7…

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.

God carried the Jews to Babylon because he wanted to use them to be a blessing to the Babylonians. And you know what? That is exactly what happened! Remember Daniel? God used that young man and his friends to bring mighty King Nebuchadnezzar to his knees before the God of Israel. Nebuchadnezzar became a believer, but it never would have happened unless the Jews had gone into captivity.

God can likewise take your situation and use you to bring tremendous blessing to others if you’ll just trust him. Determine to bloom where you’re planted for God and then watch God work.

That’s what Joseph did. He bloomed at home and God put him in a pit. He bloomed in the pit and God took him to Potiphar’s house. He bloomed in Potiphar’s house and God took him to prison. He bloomed in prison and God took him to a palace. He bloomed in the palace and God used him to save his whole family.

In the process of starting over spiritually, God wants us to embrace reality; bloom where we’re planted; and thirdly…

3. Seek God

Look at v. 12…

Then you will call upon 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.

What would have been the greatest blessing for the exiles? Would it have been simply to go back to Jerusalem, back to the homeland they loved? No, I think not.

The greatest blessing for them, as well as for us, is to get to know God better. Because that can happen anywhere, regardless of your circumstances. And to know God is the greatest blessing in all of life. He Himself is our greatest treasure. Not family, not homeland, not friends, or possessions, or material blessings.

The beauty of his presence; the wonder of His smile; the riches of His grace transcends all other blessings. His presence can turn a Trail of Tears into a Tale of Joy.

Two years ago, a handful of Cherokee Indian men decided to retrace the steps of the old Trail of Tears. They left their homes in Oklahoma and started walking eastward toward Georgia. But they were not walking in protest. They were not walking in anger. They were walking in love. Because those Cherokee Indian men were followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And as they walked, others met them and joined them. And together, they walked in reconciliation. They walked in God’s grace. And they walked all the way to the Promise Keepers conference in Atlanta Georgia where I heard one of them say, in tears…

“I do not hate the white man. I do not resent the white man’s coming. Because if the white man hadn’t come, I never would have heard about Jesus.”

That’s what God’s grace can do! He can take an ugly horrible situation and he can turn it around. But you have to be willing to start over. To embrace the reality of the situation. To determine to bloom where God has planted you. And seek God’s face.

Are you wililng to do that this morning? Are you in need of a fresh start?