Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Jeremiah 27-35
Key Verse
Jeremiah 31:29 — “In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
Devotional Thought
Jeremiah walks through Jerusalem wearing an ox yoke, a wooden collar strapped across his shoulders like a beast of burden. It is one of the strangest object lessons in all the prophets: God commands His messenger to send matching yokes to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon, with a message that Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has been given dominion over all these lands. To resist is to fight the very hand of God. Yet in the same temple courts, the prophet Hananiah breaks the yoke from Jeremiah’s neck and declares that within two years Babylon’s power will shatter and the temple vessels will come home. Jeremiah’s quiet reply is worth memorizing: the prophet who speaks peace must wait until his words come true. Hananiah died that same year, in the seventh month.
What follows is one of the tenderest letters in Scripture. Jeremiah writes to the exiles already deported to Babylon—priests, elders, craftsmen, the queen mother—and tells them the opposite of what they expected. Do not brace for a quick rescue. Build houses. Plant gardens. Marry your sons and daughters. Seek the peace of the city where I have sent you, and pray for it, for in its peace you will find your peace. Seventy years, says the Lord, and then I will visit you. Even in judgment there is a purpose: “thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end” (29:11). Then comes the promise of chapter 30—the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it; the yoke broken, David their king raised up, the captivity turned again.
These chapters meet us in November, when the days shorten and the year itself seems to go into exile. Many of us know what it is to live in a Babylon we did not choose—a diagnosis, a prodigal child, a job that emptied us, a grief that will not lift. Jeremiah’s counsel is not resignation but faithfulness: settle down where God has placed you, plant something, pray for the place, and trust the God who keeps His calendar. The yoke of wood became a yoke of iron, but chapter 30 promises a day when every yoke is broken. God’s thoughts toward His people are peace, even when His discipline is severe. Wait on Him; the expected end is coming.
Reflection
- Where in your life are you resisting a yoke God has allowed, rather than seeking His peace within it—and what would faithfulness look like there this week?
- Jeremiah told the exiles to pray for Babylon’s welfare. Who or what is your “Babylon,” and have you begun to pray for its peace?
Prayer
Lord God of hosts, You made the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm, and You give it to whom You will. We confess that we often fight the yokes You have allowed and listen to voices that promise quick relief and speak lies in Your name. Teach us, like Jeremiah, to speak truth even when it is unpopular, and like the exiles, to build and plant and pray in the place You have put us. We cling to Your word: thoughts of peace, not of evil, to give us an expected end. Break every false yoke, keep us faithful in the waiting, and bring us at last to the land of rest, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.