October 6-10
[M] Jeremiah 27, 28, 29, 24; James 4
[T] Jer 37, 21, 34; Psalm 79; James 5
[W] Jer 30-33; 1 Peter 1
[T] Jer 38, 39, 52; 1 Peter 2
[F] 2 King 24-25; 2 Chr 36; Ps 126; 1 Pet 3
Dwell Plan Day 201-205 | CSB | Digital PDF | Printable PDF
Notes from Jon & Chris
Monday
Jeremiah 28:15 | In Jeremiah’s day, the people were desperate for good news. Hananiah gave them exactly what they wanted: a message of peace, quick deliverance, and an end to their troubles. But that message of encouragement wasn’t from God. Jeremiah, on the other hand, carried the heavy word of the Lord—a word that cut against the grain of their desires. Faithful prophets, then and now, are not called to echo cultural optimism or consumer preferences, but to deliver God’s truth, even when it stings. The history of Israel shows that false prophecy thrives when people crave comfort more than truth, but it always leads to disappointment and judgment.
This is a sobering reminder for the church today. In a culture that constantly encourages us to “shop around” for voices that affirm our desires, true shepherds of God’s people are called to give us what our souls actually need—the Word of God—even when it challenges us. That’s why Chris and I need your prayers. Pray that we would have courage like Jeremiah to resist the pressure of popularity and faithfully proclaim Scripture. Pray that we would not be swayed by fear of man but strengthened by the fear of the Lord. And pray that God would give you ears ready to receive His Word, even when it confronts the flesh, knowing that His truth always leads to life.
Jeremiah 29:7 | When Jeremiah wrote to the exiles in Babylon, he shocked them by telling them not to resist or withdraw, but to settle in, plant gardens, raise families, and even pray for the very city that had conquered them. This was a radical call to live as God’s people in a foreign land—not by assimilation, but by faithful presence.
That theme runs through the whole Bible: Israel in exile, Jesus calling His disciples “not of the world” yet “sent into the world” (John 17:14–18), and Paul describing the church as “ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor. 5:20), embassies of God’s kingdom planted in foreign soil. For the early church scattered across the Roman Empire, their gatherings were like outposts of heaven, living under Christ’s reign in the midst of a pagan world. And so it is with us in San Francisco: our churches are not fortresses to hide in, nor mirrors of the city’s idols, but embassies of Christ’s kingdom—seeking the good of our neighborhoods, praying for their peace, and showing with our lives that the true King has come.
Jeremiah 29:11 | This verse is often stitched onto pillows, printed on coffee mugs or wall art as if it were a simple promise that life will go smoothly. But the real context is far more sobering. God had just used the Babylonian army to lay waste to Jerusalem—His own city—because of His people’s rebellion, idolatry, and injustice. Families were torn apart, homes destroyed, and survivors carried off into exile. In that chaos, you can imagine the questions echoing in the hearts of the exiles: Has God abandoned us? Is He finished with His people? And it is into that devastation that Jeremiah brings this word: not of quick rescue but of God’s long-term sovereign plan. Even through judgment, destruction, and exile, God was weaving together a future and a hope for His covenant people.
The apostle Paul makes the same point centuries later in Romans 9, reminding us that God is sovereign over vessels of wrath and mercy alike, using even rebellion and disaster to magnify His glory and fulfill His promises. Paul’s point is not to make light of suffering but to lift our eyes above it. When the people of Judah saw Babylon’s armies marching through their gates, they couldn’t imagine how God could still be at work. Yet the Lord says, “I know the plans I have for you.” His people’s sin didn’t derail His purposes, and Babylon’s cruelty didn’t dethrone Him. In His sovereignty, He rules over even the darkest events of history.
The cross is the ultimate example. For the disciples, the crucifixion must have felt like the end of all their hopes: their Teacher betrayed, arrested, mocked, beaten, and executed. Surely in that moment, they were asking, “God, what are You doing?” And yet Peter would later declare in Acts 2 that Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” and that the very act of wicked men nailing Him to the cross was part of God’s design for salvation. That means we can trust Him, even when life feels like Babylon, when we can’t see the purpose and when our world seems broken beyond repair. God is always sovereign, always working for His glory and our ultimate good. What looks like tragedy may, in His hands, be the pathway to redemption.
James 4:10 | In an age when you get compliments on your narcissism, this truth seems absurd. God’s grace flows downhill; it’s like water in that way. Tracing a water leak in your house can be quite a headache. Finding a small leaky pipe or drain can be almost impossible. But if you want to find out where the water goes, that’s much easier. It always finds the lowest point. That’s what liquids do, running wherever gravity sends them. It’s a natural and inescapable process, and it’s what God’s mercy does too. It also finds the lowest point and fills that place. And as inevitable and necessary as that process is in God’s work to make us holy, we fight it and resist it and fear it. We don’t want to be humbled. To us it only looks and feels like our humiliation, so we run from it. Who wouldn’t?
But at what cost? The context here says everything. It’s our pride that keeps us fighting and hurting and destroying one another. It’s our pride that makes plans as if God doesn’t exist. It’s our pride that drives our prayers to seek our own passions. And God is opposed to all of this. Are you working in opposition to God? Are any of us? Cry out for this work: make me submit to You, my God! Draw me in and take me over, and do what I cannot even really begin to do: make me humble in You. That’s not a prayer you can spend on your passions. Praise Him; He gives such prayers!
Tuesday
Jeremiah 37:2-3 | What an odd and common mix these two verses are in what they describe. Verse 2 is very plain: no one listens to what Jeremiah says. But Jeremiah says more directly: that it isn’t personal—no one is actually listening to God. In this little verse is much of the experience of many prophets, pastors, evangelists, and parents: no one is listening to you. You’re just being ignored. But then comes the next part. In verse 3, King Zedekiah stops ignoring Jeremiah and what does he do next? He asks Jeremiah to pray for him! And so you come to the next common experience of prophets, pastors, etc., when folks are scared and needy they suddenly want your undivided attention to their problems. This little passage, and the saga of Jeremiah’s suffering as God’s prophet, are still the same sorts of stories in God’s kingdom today. Our stories. May our Father rescue us from the blindness that doesn’t seek or listen to Him!
James 5:1 | When most Americans read a verse like this, we instinctively imagine someone else—the ultra-wealthy billionaires with private jets and endless luxury. But James wasn’t writing only to the super-rich. Compared to the majority of people who have lived throughout history, and even most of the world today, we are the wealthy. We have homes with running water, food in refrigerators, clothes in closets, and technology in our pockets that kings and emperors could never have dreamed of. The temptation of our hearts is to always compare, so that God’s warnings to the rich feel like they don’t apply to us. But the truth is, these verses do apply to us.
James warns that wealth has a way of deceiving us into false security and of lulling us into forgetting God. That’s why we need to let passages like this search our hearts instead of sidestepping them. The Spirit is reminding us not to put our hope in riches that will one day rot but in Christ who never fades. These words are not meant to crush us but to wake us up, so that our wealth becomes a tool for blessing others rather than a trap for our souls. The call is to hold our money with open hands—using it for generosity, for mission, for the good of our neighbors—because everything we have has been entrusted to us by the Lord. In that way, the warning becomes an invitation: to live free from greed, anchored in Christ, and rich in the things that truly last.
Wednesday
Jeremiah 30:1–3 | God’s promise to “restore the fortunes” of His people was not just about returning from Babylon—it pointed forward to the far greater restoration in Christ. The exiles longed for home and peace, but their deepest need was for a Savior who could restore their broken relationship with God. In Jesus, the true Israelite, the promises of Jeremiah 30 reach their fulfillment: He brings us back not merely to a strip of land but into the kingdom of God itself, not just to rebuild ruined cities but to raise the dead and make all things new. When we read these words as Christians, we see that the ultimate “restoration of fortunes” is found in the cross and resurrection, where our sin was dealt with and eternal life secured.
Jeremiah 31:31–34 | Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah… For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. | Here God promises something entirely new: a covenant grounded not in our weakness but in His grace. His people, burdened by sin and exile, are given hope that one day He would do what they could not: forgive their sins completely and write His law on their hearts. This is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, whose death and resurrection secure for us an unbreakable relationship with God. The new covenant is not about what we bring to God, but about what He has done for us—mercy freely given, hearts transformed, and sins remembered no more. This is the hope of grace: that we are God’s people forever because of Christ.
Jeremiah 33:6–8; 11; 14; 22; 26 | In this passage God piles up promise after promise, repeating “I will” again and again: I will bring healing, I will restore, I will cleanse, I will multiply, I will not reject. The emphasis is unmistakable—the hope of God’s people rests not on what they do for Him, but on what He does for them. This is the heartbeat of the gospel: salvation is God’s work from beginning to end. Just as Israel’s future depended on His initiative, so our hope depends entirely on His grace in Christ. The cross and resurrection are the ultimate “I will” of God—His declaration that He Himself will heal, forgive, and redeem His people forever.
1 Peter 1:12 | It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you… things into which angels long to look. | Peter reminds us that even the angels—those who dwell in the presence of God, who see His glory unveiled—long to peer into the mystery of the gospel. That means the salvation we so often take for granted is something so glorious that heavenly beings are eager to marvel at it. But our sin has dulled our vision. We get used to grace, numb to mercy, distracted by lesser things. Instead of treasuring the gospel as the greatest reality in the universe, we skim past it as though it were ordinary so that we can go home and look at our phones. The angels see what we too easily miss: that the good news of Christ crucified and risen is the most breathtaking display of God’s wisdom, love, and power the world has ever known.
When we lose that perspective, we settle for cheap substitutes. Imagine a kid given the choice of a lollipop or a hundred dollar bill. You know the kid would choose the immediate sweet distraction over lasting treasure. Without gospel perspective, we live small lives, consumed by ourselves and blind to the riches of God’s grace. But when the Spirit lifts our eyes to see the gospel as the angels see it, we realize we have something far better than fleeting pleasures: we have Christ Himself, forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance that never fades. That is worth more than all the lollipops in the world.
Thursday
Jeremiah 38 | The back and forth between King Zedekiah and Jeremiah is sad. Time and time again (three times in our story) Jeremiah preaches God’s grace to Zedekiah. All Zedekiah has to do is trust God’s words. God has Jeremiah keep repeating to him: “don’t look at the power of Egypt or the awesome mighty empire of Babylon and be intimidated by them. God is greater and He’s already decided on His judgment. Submit and you’ll be fine. Don’t be so scared.” And Zedekiah just doesn’t listen. He’s pushed around by others, he swears secretly out of fear, he’s terrified of torture and suffering, and he’s determind to be practical. And all of that is a death sentence. He doesn’t seem to really be concerned about Jeremiah being beaten, imprisoned, and thrown into a pit. He doesn’t even do anything about those horrible sufferings until someone else brings it up. He’s weak and he’s faithless, and God still keeps sending him words and promises from Jeremiah. What a picture of tender mercy and what a horror of hardness of heart. Here is God’s judgment at its worst, with a man both unable to receive grace freely offered and unable to turn from his slavery to fear. May God protect us from such a complete condemnation.
Friday
2 Kings 25:27–30 | The book of Kings ends in a surprising way: Jehoiachin, the captive king of Judah, is lifted from prison and given a seat at the table of Babylon’s king. After pages of judgment, destruction, and exile, this small detail shines like a flicker of hope. It’s not just a random kindness—it’s a reminder that God had not abandoned His covenant. Even in exile, the line of David was preserved, because God had promised in 2 Samuel 7 that a son of David would reign forever. This strange ending whispers that the story isn’t over—that God’s mercy still has the final word. And centuries later, through this same line, Jesus the Messiah was born, proving that even when everything looks lost, God is still faithful to His promises.
Psalm 126:6 | This verse captures the paradox of the Christian life: sorrow in the sowing, joy in the reaping. It reminds us that the tears we shed in the work of faith are never wasted, because God Himself ensures the harvest. Ultimately, this points us to Christ, the true Sower, who went out weeping to the cross, bearing the seed of His own life. His death looked like loss, but it produced a harvest of salvation beyond measure. In Him, our labors and our tears are gathered up into God’s redemptive plan, so that even the hardest seasons will one day end in joy. The gospel promises that our sowing in weakness will be crowned with His resurrection power, and we too will come home rejoicing, our arms full of His gracious harvest.
1 Peter 3:19-20 | Have you ever heard of the “harrowing of hell”? As early as the second century, we see this teaching, and sometimes you’ll see it omitted from the Apostle’s Creed in modern churches, or changed to read “He descended to the dead” or something like that. The claim is made that this is what this verse actually teaches. Jesus went, after He died on the cross and before He rose on Easter Sunday, down on a little road trip to hell itself. What He was up to down there depends on the church tradition you come from. But is that what this verse actually means?
Remember the Emmaus road and what the two disciples learned from Jesus after the resurrection: the Old Testament is chock full of Jesus. How so? It doesn’t use the name Jesus. The Old Testament is full of Him in this way: the work and kingdom of Jesus are described and predicted in stories, rules, poems, and rituals. That’s what the Old Testament is, a preparation and prelude to the work and person of Jesus. Peter is saying here that Noah’s ark was a picture of the cross of Jesus. In the same way those folks were rescued from death by being safe inside the big boat God had prepared, we also are rescued from death by faith in the person and work of Jesus. Faith in Jesus puts us inside of Jesus, sheltering us from the anger and judgment of God. In this way, the flood and the ark were mini sermons about Jesus and the cross. Those mini sermons were heard by the folks in the ark, in one sense. They were living out a sermon about God’s rescue of sinners. They’re experiencing Jesus’ going to “proclaim to the spirits in prison”. They’re watching the previews, the redemption trailers of the upcoming salvation show that Jesus is starring in. Peter is eager for us to see and track how God is unfolding this message of His redemption through Jesus and then on through us.