StringSubstitutor from Apache Commons Text library is a lightweight way of doing this, provided your values are already formatted correctly.

Map<String, String> values = new HashMap<>();
values.put("value", "1");
values.put("column","2");

StringSubstitutor sub = new StringSubstitutor(values, "%(", ")");
String result = sub.replace("There's an incorrect value '%(value)' in column # %(column)");

The result string will contain the following:

There's an incorrect value '1' in column # 2

When using Maven you can add this dependency to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-text</artifactId>
    <version>1.10.0</version>
</dependency>

Performing string substitutions using multiple passes is almost always the wrong approach, and leads to bugs. If one of the values happens to be a string that looks like a %(key), then all sorts of unpredictable things could happen, including various uncontrolled format string attacks!

Therefore, the string replacements must be done in a single pass of the format string. I recommend doing it using a regular expression.

Furthermore, your method provides no escape mechanism, in case you need to specify a literal %(blah) in the format string. In Java, it would be customary to use backslash as an escape character.

Suggested solution

This solution uses Matcher.replaceAll(Function<MatchResult,String> replacer), which was introduced in Java 9, to provide each substitution text via a callback.

import java.util.Map;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class NamedFormatter {
    private static final Pattern RE = Pattern.compile(
        "\\\\(.)" +         // Treat any character after a backslash literally 
        "|" +
        "(%\\(([^)]+)\\))"  // Look for %(keys) to replace
    );

    private NamedFormatter() {}

    /**
     * Expands format strings containing <code>%(keys)</code>.
     *
     * <p>Examples:</p>
     *
     * <ul>
     * <li><code>NamedFormatter.format("Hello, %(name)!", Map.of("name", "200_success"))</code> → <code>"Hello, 200_success!"</code></li>
     * <li><code>NamedFormatter.format("Hello, \%(name)!", Map.of("name", "200_success"))</code> → <code>"Hello, %(name)!"</code></li>
     * <li><code>NamedFormatter.format("Hello, %(name)!", Map.of("foo", "bar"))</code> → <code>"Hello, %(name)!"</code></li>
     * </ul>
     *
     * @param fmt The format string.  Any character in the format string that
     *            follows a backslash is treated literally.  Any
     *            <code>%(key)</code> is replaced by its corresponding value
     *            in the <code>values</code> map.  If the key does not exist
     *            in the <code>values</code> map, then it is left unsubstituted.
     *
     * @param values Key-value pairs to be used in the substitutions.
     *
     * @return The formatted string.
     */
    public static String format(String fmt, Map<String, Object> values) {
        return RE.matcher(fmt).replaceAll(match ->
            match.group(1) != null ?
                match.group(1) :
                values.getOrDefault(match.group(3), match.group(2)).toString()
        );
    }
}

You might also try org.apache.commons.lang3.text.StrSubstitutor if Java 7 is not an option. It does exactly what you want it to do. Whether it’s light-weight might depend on whether you use something else of commons-lang as well.

You can use MapFormat for this. Find out the details here:

http://www.java2s.com/Code/Java/I18N/AtextformatsimilartoMessageFormatbutusingstringratherthannumerickeys.htm

String text = "The user {name} has email address {email}.";
Map map = new HashMap();
map.put("name", "Robert");
map.put("email", "rhume55@gmail.com");

System.out.println("1st : " + MapFormat.format(text, map));

OUTPUT:

1st : The user Robert has email address rhume55@gmail.com.

String.format()

Since Java 5, you can use String.format to parametrize Strings. Example:

String fs;
fs = String.format("The value of the float " +
                   "variable is %f, while " +
                   "the value of the " + 
                   "integer variable is %d, " +
                   " and the string is %s",
                   floatVar, intVar, stringVar);

See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/data/strings.html

Alternatively, you could just create a wrapper for the String to do something more fancy.

MessageFormat

Per the comment by Max and answer by Affe, you can localize your parameterized String with the MessageFormat class.