God Delights to Do Good

Today's Scripture: Jeremiah 32:41
"I will rejoice in doing them good."
Read it online at the Bible Gateway: (NIV) (NASB) (KJV) (The Message)

When I married my first wife—who is now with the Lord—we asked that the following Scripture be read at our wedding. Note the many expressions of God's goodness: "They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul" (Jeremiah 32:38-41, NIV). This sounds appropriate, doesn't it, for two young people committed to serving God full time?

But this assurance was originally given to a group of people described by God as those who "have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth" (verse 30, NIV). They were in captivity in Babylon because of their sins over many generations.

Just a few chapters earlier, God had said to them: "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'" (Jeremiah 29:10-11, NIV). If anyone qualified for demerits, surely the Israelites in captivity did. Yet God promised to prosper them, to rejoice in doing them good.