Is It Bad To Live In Cities? - What Does the Bible Say?

The kingdom of God begins in a garden, while cities are depicted as centers and symbols of rebellion and pride. The first city is built by Cain, succeeded by Babel, Sodom, Nineveh, even Jerusalem. Yet God calls us to seek the peace of the cities we live in…and He himself has a city, the New Jerusalem. With many Christians fleeing America’s big cities, Kevin and Josh search the Scriptures to ask: are they right?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome friends to Generations Kevin Swanson with you. Uh Joshua Sweeso. So here this is our segment of what does the Bible say about that? We want to get to all areas of life to make this interesting. But also the reason we use the term what does the Bible say about that is because we submit ourselves to the authority of God speaking through his word, which speaks to every area of life. Yes. Not just to the pie and sky by and by, but also to the day-to-day exercises of Christian living. Yes, to equip us for every good work. That's exactly right. So today, what does the Bible say about cities? What does the Bible say about cities and living in cities versus the country? I moved to the country. You moved moved to the suburb.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Yep. Yeah, I'm I'm closer to Denver than you are, but I'm not in Denver.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

You're actually within about a half a mile from the country. Probably.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

I guess, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Or maybe even two or three hundred yards. Pretty close. But uh, but yeah, I I've moved out. I moved out to the country in 1995. I was living in Aurora, moved out way out to Elbert, Colorado. Yeah. The main street in Elbert, Colorado is yet to be paved. It's still that way. Yeah, we're hoping to have a pay by 2100. Yeah, that's true. So yeah, we're going for it. That's the long-term plan for the development of Elbert, Colorado population of 38. Right or whatever it was. Okay. So, friends, today, what does the Bible say about cities? Now that the Bible begins with the kingdom of God in a garden, but eventually the kingdom of God ends in a city at the end. Revelation 21.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Yeah, the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of the city.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

So we begin in a garden, end in a city. But you got all these cities throughout scripture. The city of Babylon did not do well.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Think of Revelation 17. The city of gross sexuality, the city that uh where the blood of the saints, the persecution of saints increases. And of course, effectively it's the neuronic agenda. It's homosexual mirage plus the persecution of God's people. So you get sexual perversion plus the persecution of God's people. This is what the harlot does as she rides the beast. And uh and then Babylon just falls, collapses on us. Uh so the city of Babylon is the subject of God's judgment. The first city was built after a rebellion on the part of Cain, killed his brother, and then built the city of anonymity. As he wandered east of Eden as a vagabond in the wilderness, he builds the city of anonymity. And as well, I believe that uh polygamy is anonymity. There's less knowing of one, two, one because there's one on two or three or five or ten or fifty or seventy-five, you're you're eventually going to end up with some degree of anonymity. You lose relationship. You just do. It's a matter of numbers.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Yes. It's easy to matter quantity. Disappear into the crowd. Oh, yeah, yeah. And numbers get larger. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

So you disappear into the crowd. And so to the extent that the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, the city of God, uh survives inside of the big city, uh, then the city of anonymity, but within the city of anonymity, within the big city of Babylon or Rome or uh Denver or San Francisco, there may be a church of 140 people in which there are relationships and accountability. Everybody knows each other's names. Now, what tends to happen today, of course, is you actually get the mega city of anonymity, the mega church of anonymity, the mega church of anonymity where nobody knows each other, uh couched inside of the mega city of anonymity that Cain built originally. So that's very, very dangerous. We want to be careful about that. But we do believe that the city of God, I believe the city of God can exist within Corinth, within Rome, even. Even Rome.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Do you believe that? Yeah, of course, and you see these early New Testament epistles, they're written mostly to cities. Seems to meet regions.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Yeah, Romans was written to Rome.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Rome. To the church in Rome. Church in Rome. He says to the saints who are in Rome. Grace to you and peace.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

So there was the city of God couched in the city of anonymity.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Yeah, and notably in the New Testament epistles, there's not any direct calls to leave the city, you know, to go to a rural context. We we will find other warnings in scripture about come out from among them in terms of Babylon. We have Jesus warning about fleeing Jerusalem and the imminent judgment. So there are times where you leave, but notably it's not a fundamental call of the New Testament teaching where it says, Oh, and since you are a Christian now, make sure you pack up and make sure you get out of the city. It wasn't as simple as that.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Cities can also become centers of pride. I think of the Tower of Babel itself. Come let us build ourselves a city so that we can make a name for ourselves. And so again, this is what the city of Man wants to do is to build the city for pride's sake, uh to somehow express itself as completely independent of God. This is why cities tend to be blue, they tend to be liberal, they tend to be in rebellion against God, because they tend to be built for this reason, which is very sad. God, of course, judges the pride of these nations and brings them down over and over again. The cities of the plain didn't do well either, so that comes to my mind. I think it was Sodom and um Gomorrah. Right. Uh Nineveh became famous for violence and wickedness, yet repented under Jonah's preaching. And as I said, Babel has never done, or Babylon has never done very well throughout the years. Cities tend to be concentrated into uh the sins of violence, oppression, corruption, sexual immorality, idolatry, unjust business, etc. And these uh accusations are brought against Jerusalem, Tyre inside in Samaria, etc., throughout, well, most of the prophets, right? Yes. Um Isaiah 121, how the faithful city becomes a harlot, and this kind of thing, very common throughout scripture. So one of the big things um is that Jesus ministered to cities, and yet he was concerned for the imminent judgment that was to come upon the cities. Woe to you, Korzin, woe to you, Beth Seda. Uh he was warning the cities that rejected him, and when he sent his uh disciples out to these cities, he would say, if they reject you, they persecute you, if they reject the message, dust your feet, your sandals off, and uh proclaim, I would say, that's a proclamation of God's judgment, that they are saying, now uh we are washing our hands, we're dusting our feet off. God, go ahead and bring the fire and brimstone down on these cities because they have rejected the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. They reject Jesus, go ahead and destroy them. I mean, those are kind of hard words, but that's the kind of way in which Jesus uh brought his ministry to a nation that was fit for judgment in AD 70.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Yeah, and I think in Matthew 10 as well, a similar passage where Jesus is saying, the reason you would leave is if they're facing persecution. Of course, it's similar to the rejection passage you mentioned, but it says, when they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. These are probably small towns in many cases, but there was the same principle of you're facing persecution, you remove from that place.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Well, Jeremiah 29, verse 7 also I think is important. It's very instructive to where we're living today. And this is as the people of Israel were uh were off into exile in Babylon. And this is what Jeremiah is telling the people in Jeremiah 29, 7. Okay, you're off to Babylon. Now he says, seek the peace of the city where I've caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it. So, in other words, rather than completely withdrawing, they were to work for the city as good while remaining faithful to God. I think this is possible within cities. Now, here's the distinction that I want to draw. I think what's happening is Babylon is not imminently under God's judgment. Now, obviously, it took 70 years, and I guess maybe uh 30, 40 years before uh Persia steps in. Right. So Persia did step in during the reign of Belshazzar. Uh but but in the meantime, the people were to seek the peace of the city, and Daniel shifts his allegiance immediately from Babylon to Persia. It's interesting. And just continues to be a blessing and to be uh I think an offering of wisdom to the leadership of these gigantic pagan empires.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

That's right. Yeah, and so Jeremiah 29, when it speaks to this matter of exile, it's interesting that the New Testament does speak about that in terms of Christian identity. You know, it uses the language of pilgrims and exiles. First Peter 1, verse 2, it says to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. So they're in all these different regions. Uh, and that language of pilgrim and sojourner is a common one in the New Testament that needs to factor into how we think about you know location and cities.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

And I was thinking of Hebrews 13, uh, I'm just gonna capitalize on that as well, where Jesus uh was suffering outside of the gate of the city. And then in verse 13 of Hebrews 13, uh we read, Therefore, let us go forth to him outside of the camp, bearing his reproach, for here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. So, in other words, the city life that we may experience, he says here is actually going to be temporary.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Yeah, it's always temporary for different reasons, no matter how great or how long-lasting it is otherwise.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Right. Except for the city of God, which is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why if you're uh a part of a city, if you're in a city, you've got to be part of a healthy church. Yeah. Uh not getting lost again in the big mega thing where there's no accountability, you don't know anybody else's names, uh, but rather uh a relational church in which the love of the saints is very much active. And yes, there are conflicts, but we're working through the conflicts. We're forgiving each other 490 times each, and and we are constructing this place of peace, this Jerusalem, this Zion, this city of peace, this city of God in the midst of the craziness that goes on around us.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

That's right. Yeah, I think of Titus 1, verse 5, where Paul's speaking to uh Timothy or to Titus, he says, For this reason I left you in Crete that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city, as I commanded you. So the assumption was that there were gonna be these local churches in every city in Crete, and they were gonna have elders, there was gonna be shepherding, there was gonna be Christian community in that time and context.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

And yet we find the diospora uh coming during times of judgment. And that's that's what we find with uh say, say, a situation like uh the fall of Jerusalem, Jonadab the Rechabite is out there in in tabernacles or tents, and he does not allow his family to drink the wine. That's one of the rules he set up for the for his family, whereas Jeremiah is pretty much hanging in there. He's in the middle of Jerusalem to the bloody end, literally. And he had a calling there. Yeah, it wasn't so much in tabernacles, more so in in like empty wells and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Yeah, which was not his original intended sleeping location, but he got put there for being faithful.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Right. So, friends, what we find is as, and I think this is why people are moving out of the cities today. And I want to talk about what does the Bible say about moving out of cities? And the first thing I would say is absolutely, there are times at which the people of God have a strong sense that judgment is coming down upon America or coming down upon Jerusalem. Now, there's reasons for for the early church to realize this because of Matthew 23. Yeah, of course Jesus warned them. When these signs occur, it's time to get out of dodge.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Right. Jesus actually said, don't stay. Yeah, move as fast as you can get out of dodge. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Or Jerusalem.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

So so there are times at which this should happen. Jesus also impresses on us the importance of understanding the signs of the times. He he's telling us that not only should we know the weather, but when we begin to hear the thunder and when we see the clouds, the dark clouds rolling in, uh, we should know that judgment is imminent upon the cities here in America. And and and he says, if you don't understand that, you're a bunch of hypocrites. What's wrong with you people? So I I think Christians today should have a strong prophetic sense that judgment is imminent on this nation. You you get through uh a Roe v. Wade, you move through uh Lawrence v. Texas, you're off into Obergafell, talking about Supreme Court decisions. This this is judgment time. I mean, these are you know, harbingers of judgment, the storm clouds are moving in. And if if there are people you know discerning the times, praise God they should. Praise God they should. Otherwise, Jesus is you're all a bunch of hypocrites. You can't discern the times. What's wrong with you people?

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Yeah, and of course there could be bad reasons for departing the city if you're if you're currently placed there. There could be fear, you know, there could be a sense of fearfulness of we're afraid of this the surrounding environment, we've got to get to a safe place. And it could also be potentially an abdication of Christian responsibility in the worst case. We don't want that. And the goal would be that in Matthew, as Matthew 6 says, we seek the kingdom of God and its righteousness wherever we go. And we do the Great Commission, Matthew 28.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

But when Jesus says dust off your feet and move on, what he's saying is don't move for fear, but proclaim God's judgment upon the place. Uh so this this is not fear, this is faith. Right. And the other thing is is yes, you're to take due diligence to bring the message and don't just, you know, run in there and you know say it once and then nobody was listening. Oh well, I'm leaving. Right. No, I think there is some due diligence labor involved. Absolutely. Yeah. And then let's talk about Christian liberty. I I do believe that different people are going to make different decisions. If you're single and you're Jeremiah, you might stay in the city for a little bit longer. If you're Jonathan the Rechabite and you're pulling out of Dodge earlier, so be it. It's all right. And uh and I think we have to be careful not to judge others who are staying in the city, at least for the time being, because they find uh opportunities to disciple the nation, still within the context of those local small those large cities. They're not moving off into the county to disciple a small rural county, they're staying within the city within a with the attempt to uh to disciple that particular city to which they have been called. Uh that's all right. But I do think the reason why increasing numbers of families in America are are saying, you know what, maybe it is time to get out of these cities is because of this imminent sense of judgment. That's that God's judgment is just about ready to rain down upon these cities. And if somebody discerns that, if somebody else doesn't discern it and somebody does discern it, what do you say to that? I think there is a major liberty still here.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yeah, I mean the scriptures do not bind us towards like uh determining a particular level of uh concern. We don't say once a city has this and this sin and this sin, you must leave. The scriptures don't give us that kind of direction. And so I think calling, uh economic circumstances, conscience convictions, and your family's own situation all play in. Such as if you're a father with multiple children, you need to be thinking, um, can I disciple them? Uh can I protect them from those things which will be damaging to their souls? Uh can we fulfill our calling as a family in this context, or are we being constantly battered, persecuted, uh drawn in by the temptations of this context? And and those could be factors that would cause one to lose.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

And are these particular cities and states, I think of Connecticut, even Nebraska, uh clamping down on homeschool rights? Maybe it's time to get out of Nebraska. Maybe it's time to leave uh Connecticut or Colorado. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Who knows? There's the state level and there's the city level, which is fascinating because when you think in Nebraska, I mean, half of the state's gonna be largely you know rural and empty, but then you might have state laws that impact you and you've got a package. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

So you have to take into account all these different factors before before moving. And uh, you know, I still wonder if you know moving from a rural Elbert County, Colorado to, you know, to Omaha, Nebraska, or Tulsa, Oklahoma, where these are still blue cities. And it could be, you know, uh a little bit more trying for families that want to disciple their children instead of running into curfew laws or things like that.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

You could be in a very red state with a very blue city. Yeah, you can.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

So there's those those issues as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

And then I was I was gonna ask you a question on this, Kevin, as I we were talking. I was thinking, what if you left the very vile, terrible city, you know, big giant city where there's lots of rampant sin in all kinds of ways, and then you moved to rural Iowa or Indiana, and then you found drunkenness, sexual sin, cultural infestation of all the youth, but it's a town of 2000. Have you escaped the judge, you know, the judgments that will fall? Like how do we think about yeah, have you protected yourself? Yeah, because you're in a small place, but American culture is right there, too.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Yeah, and I think the media, you know, these great satellite dishes are now you know the the internet, uh high-speed internet has made it into nowhereville, South Dakota. Yeah, I used to be. Where you know, we were just in South Dakota and was amazed at the the degree of uh body piercing. Like it was there's more body piercing in uh in South Dakota than I've seen anywhere else. I think Wyoming was similar. Yeah. So it was interesting. I mean, I haven't seen nearly that amount amount of body piercing in rural uh Colorado, um, that what as as what I witnessed in South Dakota, which is one of the most conservative states in America, which means the cultural influences of nihilism and and all the other you know cultural uh worldview issues have made its way into all sorts of areas such that I I mean I think the rural sometimes is a little bit better in the sense that you know you're not running into it as much and uh and maybe you can protect your children from some of these things. Um the other thing that the point I'd like to make is that um the media thing is affecting the kids. Right and uh the cell phone, the the personal media device has made all the difference in the world in the last 15 years. In the early 1990s, uh if if you know your kids wanted to take a personal media device into the bathroom with them, uh that television set weighed about 400 pounds. You can't just sit that on your lap in the bathroom. You follow it, it'd crush you. So but then you fast forward 30 years, and over the last 15 years, now you know you can bring the red light districts and all of this horrible culture into every iPhone, into every kid's life. So now you can control the media in your home, but you can't control the media uh of every kid who's attending that charter school, yeah, whether it be a rural county or a city. You can't control the media of the kids in the neighborhood. You know, I mean, even the unbelieving children in the 1980s. I can remember living in neighborhoods in the 1980s, and uh whether it be in Japan where we're missionaries, but also here in the States at times, and these kids would watch television, but in the living room under their mother's you know, oversight. So they're not like flipping into X-rated videos right and left. You can't do that. They couldn't do this. I'm talking about unbelieving families in your neighborhood. They couldn't do that kind of thing because of an accountability with their own parents in the living room. Nevertheless, once you start moving into uh the 2000s, the 2010s, the whole situation has changed. It's time for parents to wake up and smell the napalm in this war of culture. Uh the devil is doing everything he can to influence our children. Thus, I think homeschooling may be the only solution. And and a fairly limited contact of children with other children in your local church, that is the city of God, not the city of Babylon that surrounds us here. So, whatever the case, uh what what's necessary, I think, at this point is that uh we provide a degree of isolation for our children in this modern age, but uh, you know, decent community, certainly within the church community, whether that be in the city or the or the countryside.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

We're separated from the world, but we're very much involved in Christian community, and we're very thoughtful about the cultural inputs that we have. And I brought up that question because it would be a fallacy to say I've moved out into the rural district, I'm in a town of 2000, I have five acres, I have a red barn, we have chickens, and we're good. We're safe. There's all the questions, there's still friends and associations in a town of 2000, there's so many other factors. There's still the devil. There's still the devil. Yeah, he's still.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Yeah, I mean, our Brendan Mennonite family is uh, you know, they moved to Mexico, and I had this conversation with uh a brother down there who is part of that over the last three generations, whatever it was. He said these communities fell into the sin of incest. Yeah. And uh and so, yeah, just running away from the city, running away from a nation that could be a good thing. Trying to isolate doesn't help you.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

It's not sufficient.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

You're still you're still absolutely in the in the center of warfare against the world, the flesh, and the devil. And the devil is as active in the wilderness as as that devil. Is active in the big cities.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Trevor Burrus Now to what degree would we be safe from the judgments? So could that be a question? Yeah, that that's more the issue. The city of one million versus the sinful city of 2,000, are we in any way shielded from some judgments?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

I think you are at least in this, I'm just saying it, in this generation, partially because uh pandemics and weapons of mass destruction are are effectively targeting the larger cities, right? I mean that's just the way it's temporal judgments. Temporal judgments tend uh to fall on the cities. And I'm just saying that this is the case in families that want to establish a bit of distance, so be it. But let's be careful. Let's be careful. This isolation can result in a lack of evangelism. And the big cities are also places in which you run into every tribe and nation and you had opportunities to reach out to Hispanic groups and others than immigrating into the countries. Right. Why don't we do doing more of this? Yeah, who's gonna reach them? So if we're pulling back because we don't want to evangelize and we don't want to disciple the nations, you're on the wrong agenda here. Right. It's the wrong agenda.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yeah, and eternal judgment exists in small towns and big towns. Oh, yeah. Absolutely, they will all likewise perish. Absolutely. So that's not as if we're safe in the 2000s.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

And as I said, the influences that affect our children from the world are as uh strong in these rural communities as they are in the cities. By the way, these rural community libraries, just as full of filth as the cities. No difference. In fact, just recently I've been to the big libraries in the Denver Metro and the big library or small libraries in the Elizabeth Albert County area where we live. And uh it's just the same garbage. Horrible garbage. Yeah, this is cowboy country, Republican, conservative. But you walk into that library, I picked out 10 books that were targeted at the young teens, read through it's all about homosexuality, sexting, pornography, uh the F-word this, F-word that, and uh, and of course the nihilistic, the nihilistic worldview that we're we have no purpose, no meaning in the universe. That's the way the sci-fi is set up. Yeah, no, terrible, terrible, terrible.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Another reason not to think just in terms of red and blue, right? Because as if that's gonna make you safe. Yeah, you're now in a red district. Nope, nope, there's other guards here no matter what.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

That's right. Any last thoughts, Josh? I mean, I I think the big thing is discern the times, absolutely. That's really important. Jesus calls us to that. Yeah. But secondly, allow there to be some sec Christian liberty here.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

That's right. And also just wanted to reemphasize the the absolute importance and necessity of the local church wherever you're at.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Because the local church is a place in which the Lord's people are protected in unique in unique ways, spiritually, physically as well, by God's providence. Uh, and that's gonna be the most important thing that you have a good local church, whether you're in a big city, whether you're in suburbia, whether you're in your rural context, you need the body of Christ. You might think of it as you know the ark of salvation. This is a place of protection for God's people.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

It's time to move to the city of God.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

City of God, wherever it is.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

We're gonna move to the city of God, wherever we go, gotta move to the city of God where there is Christian community, there's forgiveness, there's love for one another. Uh, move into that small church of 140 people and stay there for the next 50 years. No, make that the next four generations. Friends, that's it. We move from the garden into the city, the city of God, wherever we find the city of God. Could be in the suburbs, could be in the big city, could be out in the country. And uh find the city of God. Join the church and be an active part of it for 50 years. And remember, you're gonna have to forgive every member of that church 490 times because you're gonna be working through some conflicts in the process. Well, friends, that wraps up this edition of Generations. What does the Bible say about cities? If you have more to ask about these topics, please just mail at generations.org. This is Kevin Swanson and Josh Yeshuiso, inviting you back again next time as we continue to lay down a vision for the next generation. This has been a production of the Generations Media Network. For more information, go to generations.org slash media.