It's all about you

I found an old business card the other day. I can't remember the guy who gave it to me, or when I met him. On the card was printed Jeremiah 29:11, 'I have plans for your welfare... to give you a future and a hope.'
Now I'm sure it's true that, ultimately, God has wonderful plans for that man as he has for all of us who trust in Christ. But before the glory of heaven, it's pretty certain that we will suffer - that's our calling in Christ (1 Peter 2:21 etc). So we need to be careful how we appropriate Bible verses for ourselves by setting them in their proper context and remembering when they were spoken in God's plan of salvation.
But it's easy to criticise, as I was reminded when I was reading an earlier chapter in Jeremiah this mroning. In Jeremiah 5, people are criticised for injustice, swearing falsely, refusing God's rebuke, breaking their bond with the Lord, running after foreign gods, complacency, selfish hoarding and rejection of God's word.
In today's climate it would be very easy to say that this is about the greed, dishonesty and injustices of the banking & financial world. And I have no doubt that many sermons based on the OT prophets will be drawing that conclusion in pulpits around the world.
But Jeremiah 5 is not about the pagan world. It's about God's people, Israel. It's God's people who have turned away from him and become unconcerned for justice. It's they who have committed adultery with false gods. And so, v10, in a passage that's echoed in Jesus' teaching about the vine in John 15, Jeremiah is told,

'Go up through her vine rows and destroy, but make not a full end; strip away her branches for they are not the Lord's. For the house of Israel and the house of Judah have been utterly treacherous to me', declares the Lord.

And so, interpreting this through NT spectacles as we must, we find that this is not about bankers and corporate greed, but about the church and those who call themselves Christians:

'I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.'      John 15:1f

The fruitfulness that Jesus wants from us is,

 'everything that is the product of effective prayer in Jesus' name, including obedience to Jesus' commands (v10), experience of Jesus' joy (v11...), love for one another (v12), and witness to the world (vv16, 27) This fruit is nothing less than the outcome of persevering dependence on the vine, driven by faith, embracing all of the believer's life and the product of  his witness.'   (D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, p.517).

So the conclusion is that if we are not producing the fruit of genuine fellowship with  and dependence on Jesus Christ - if we are not obedient, joyful, loving, witnessing people - then we are not true branches and will be 'cut off and thrown into the fire' (v6).  In Jeremiah's language this is being overrun by a foreign nation and being ejected from the land - exclusion from the goodness and rule of God and from the Promised Land. For us, it's about exclusion from the eternal glory of the kingdom of heaven.
And so as we read Jeremiah, we must search ourselves and our church and ask if God's finger is pointing at us. Are we neglectful and fruitless?
If so, then we must hear God's call to repentance. And remember that it is simply by abiding in Jesus - by living in dependence and reliance on him and allowing ourselves to be fed by him and his word - that we will become fruitful.