Jeremiah 29:10-14a 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. 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.

These words are part of a letter sent to the children of Israel who had been carried off to Babylon. Though they had become a great nation under God’s blessings, their repeated refusal to live as God’s people had brought them to this point. Because of their unfaithfulness, God allowed His people to be defeated by the Babylonians and removed them from the land He had promised to them. This is the situation in which Jeremiah wrote the message from God in the passage above.

God tells His people that He has not forgotten them or abandoned them. He wants them to know that this chastisement will last for seventy years, and that they will then be allowed to return to their promised land. He calls upon them to seek Him out, and He will be found. He is telling them that when they repent, He will indeed forgive them. He also promises that those who repent and seek Him will prosper.

The promise of deliverance from their bondage to the Babylonians, which God fulfilled, is a foreshadowing of the deliverance that He would provide for all men through the Messiah, Jesus Christ. This is where the message speaks to us. God has already sought us out and led us to faith that Jesus is the Savior of the world. Yet we still sin and go against what God would have us do. Therefore, we must also seek his face, going to our God in repentance and trusting that the death and resurrection of Jesus has provided for our forgiveness. Because of Jesus, God has prospered us. He has given us a hope and a future. By His grace, those who have faith in Jesus Christ are declared righteous and forgiven. Eternal life is the possession of the faithful.

Even though God has sought us out, redeemed us through the sacrifice of His Son, and called us to faith, the world in which we live is such that we will be tempted to turn away from our loving God.  There will be distractions and temptations that try to lead us away from Him. So our God encourages us to continue to seek His face.

There was a congregation in which the Pastor would dismiss the children just before the sermon to go to their Sunday School classes. They would exit past the pulpit, where the Pastor was standing. A high point for this Pastor was receiving a smile from each of the children as they walked past, and giving them a smile in return. He tried to do this with each child, but one day he apparently missed one. A curly-headed four-year-old ran out of the church and threw herself into her mother’s arms, sobbing as if her heart were broken. After the service, the Pastor sought out that mother to see what was wrong.  She said that after she had calmed down her daughter, the little one said, “I smiled at God, but He didn’t smile back at me.” That Pastor stood for God to that little girl, and she was devastated when she thought that God had overlooked her.

It would indeed be tragic if we were to seek out God only to have Him spurn us. But for those who have faith in Jesus, this will never happen. God has already sought you out and claimed you as His child. Because of Jesus, you will never be rejected or overlooked.  God accepts you and smiles at you. He looks on you with favor and gives you peace. Seek His face … always.