SPEAKER_00: Alright, y'all please grab a seat.
SPEAKER_00: So we are going to be looking at a passage from the book of Jeremiah this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I dare say that most of us aren't really up on ancient history, so let me tell you what's going on when this happens.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking at a letter, actually, that a prophet named Jeremiah wrote.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the history, if you back up of Israel, about the time of a chap named Solomon who was the king.
SPEAKER_00: Most people have heard at least of his name.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon was king.
SPEAKER_00: Not a great king.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, so bad of a king in the end that right after he died, God's people, the country of Israel, split in half.
SPEAKER_00: Up in the north, the Yankees were called Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Down in the south, they were called Judah.
SPEAKER_00: And they got along famously.
SPEAKER_00: They fought wars with each other, trashed each other's temples, did all sorts of nice things for each other as neighbors do.
SPEAKER_00: And about 200 years later, an empire in the ancient world called the Assyrian Empire wiped the northern kingdom Israel off the map.
SPEAKER_00: Never to be heard from again as far as world affairs go.
SPEAKER_00: Now, about 200 years after that, a different empire has arisen called the Babylonian Empire.
SPEAKER_00: And the Babylonians are in the process of doing almost the same thing to the southern kingdom, the kingdom called Judah.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the way the Babylonians did it is three times they invaded.
SPEAKER_00: And each time they invaded, they sort of sliced off a set of the elite, the cultural leaders, the political leaders, the religious leaders, and marched them 900 miles back to Babylon to undergo what really can only be described as a forced re-education campaign.
SPEAKER_00: Now, sometime in the midst of these three deportations of the elite, the prophet Jeremiah, who's still in Jerusalem, writes a letter to some of these people in exile in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: And that letter is actually what we're going to look at today.
SPEAKER_00: So if you'll read it with me from the book of Jeremiah, chapter 29, I'm going to read verses 1 to 14.
SPEAKER_00: This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the other people that Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: This was after King Jehoiakim and the Queen Mother, the court officials, the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the skilled workers and the artisans, it's a pretty big list, had gone into exile from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He entrusted the letter to El Shash, son of Tephon, and to Gemariah, son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah, King of Judah, had sent to Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: It said, This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: Build houses and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce.
SPEAKER_00: Marry and have sons and daughters.
SPEAKER_00: Find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters.
SPEAKER_00: Increase in number there, do not decrease.
SPEAKER_00: Also seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.
SPEAKER_00: Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you.
SPEAKER_00: Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have.
SPEAKER_00: They are prophesying lies to you in my name.
SPEAKER_00: I have not sent them, declares the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Lord says.
SPEAKER_00: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come back to you and fulfil my good promise to bring you back to this place.
SPEAKER_00: For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.
SPEAKER_00: Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.
SPEAKER_00: You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
SPEAKER_00: I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and will bring you back from captivity.
SPEAKER_00: I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you, declares the Lord, and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.
SPEAKER_00: That's God's word to us.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we come together as those who need you to speak to us.
SPEAKER_00: We submit and believe that what goes on here is not simply natural, it's not one person talking, it's not people listening.
SPEAKER_00: We submit that because you have told us so, what goes on here is that you come as the Spirit to enlighten our minds and to open our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We pray above all, Lord, that you would deliver us from coming out this morning as just smarter sinners.
SPEAKER_00: But instead that you would bring us to coming out this morning as people who have met you in your word and been the better for it.
SPEAKER_00: We promise you that if you would do that for us, we'll claim no glory for that ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We'll claim all the glory for you.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, none needs this word more than the idiot who's about to stand up and preach from it.
SPEAKER_00: So we pray you would touch our hearts with it.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So as Russ was mentioning breaks, Jill and I just got back from a week away.
SPEAKER_00: Um it was glorious.
SPEAKER_00: No, this is how glorious it was.
SPEAKER_00: My parents kept our younger daughter, Jill's parents kept our older daughter, and we literally had a week away.
SPEAKER_00: No job, no kids, and we haven't had that since before we started having kids.
SPEAKER_00: And so we went to an island and we sat.
SPEAKER_00: And then we walked around and looked around a little bit and then we sat.
SPEAKER_00: And then we napped.
SPEAKER_00: And then we sat.
SPEAKER_00: And then I went hiking a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Jill sat and then came back and then we sat.
SPEAKER_00: And it was wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: And as you're sitting, in fact, on a beach with your feet in the Pacific, you're thinking, this is life.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Except it's not.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, it's not, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's vacation.
SPEAKER_00: And vacation's great.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you can have one, take it and enjoy it.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_00: But you can't really live for vacation.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I recognize many of you do.
SPEAKER_00: But at the base level, we sort of know there's something wrong with that, right?
SPEAKER_00: That there really ought to be some way to locate purpose in real life, in getting up and taking care of the kids, in fighting your way to your job, in getting to school.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in 1974, a guy, very eminent oral historian of the U.S.
SPEAKER_00: and a radio personality, you remember when we had those?
SPEAKER_00: Well, his name was Studs Turkle.
SPEAKER_00: And he did an inner series of interviews called Working, where he interviewed normal people about their jobs and what they thought of their jobs.
SPEAKER_00: And one lady, her name is Nora Watson, says this.
SPEAKER_00: Jobs are not big enough for people.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just the assembly line worker whose job is too small for his spirit, you know.
SPEAKER_00: A job like mine, if you really put your spirit into it, you'd sabotage immediately.
SPEAKER_00: You don't dare.
SPEAKER_00: So you absent your spirit from it.
SPEAKER_00: My mind has been so divorced from my job, except as a source of income, it's really absurd.
SPEAKER_00: You know, she said that in 1974.
SPEAKER_00: I dare say it's not any different for most people today, is it?
SPEAKER_00: How do you find meaning in the mundane?
SPEAKER_00: Especially when the mundane seems to have so little relationship to your faith?
SPEAKER_00: To put it differently, how do you find meaning in Monday morning?
SPEAKER_00: How does what we're doing today in worship make any difference tomorrow morning when you're fighting your way down Cobb Parkway, or even worse, 75 to get to work?
SPEAKER_00: How does what we're doing on Sunday today make any difference at 5.45 tomorrow morning when you're wiping a baby's bottom?
SPEAKER_00: How does what we're doing today make any difference tomorrow morning when you're dragging yourself to school, even though your body is programmed not to wake up until 10 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: at the age you are?
SPEAKER_00: How do we find meaning in the everyday?
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's the contention.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 29 says there's meaning in the mundane because it's God's idea.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 29 says there's meaning in the mundane because it's God's idea.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll try to develop that under three things.
SPEAKER_00: First, that God has put us here.
SPEAKER_00: Second, that someday God will take us home.
SPEAKER_00: And third, he has plans for us right now.
SPEAKER_00: He's put us here, someday he'll take us home.
SPEAKER_00: And third, that he has plans for us right now.
SPEAKER_00: So to begin developing that first, God has put us here.
SPEAKER_00: This was true for the Jews in exile in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: And that's actually quite a thing to say if you think about it.
SPEAKER_00: God had put them there.
SPEAKER_00: Look at our passage.
SPEAKER_00: Now, by the way, it sure seems like this was the Babylonians' idea, right?
SPEAKER_00: They're the ones who had come and taken over the country, they're the ones who had conquered the city, they're the ones who had marched everybody back 900 miles to Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, even verse 1 says this is the letter that was sent to all the people that Nebuchadnezzar, that's the king of the Babylonians, had carried into Exil and Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: So it sure seems like it's the Babylonians' idea.
SPEAKER_00: But look at verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: He says it again in verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: He says, the city to which I have carried you into exile.
SPEAKER_00: So who did this?
SPEAKER_00: Was this the Babylonians or was this God?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: God is making the point that whatever happens by whatever ruler, it doesn't matter if it's a president, a dictator, or anybody else, only happens by his permission and his authority.
SPEAKER_00: That none of this is by accident.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Nebuchadnezzar didn't believe that, right?
SPEAKER_00: He was pretty sure this was his handiwork.
SPEAKER_00: But God is saying that he is truly in control.
SPEAKER_00: And so if they are there, this is no accident.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's actually an earth-shattering thing to say if you were the Jews in exile.
SPEAKER_00: Because life in Babylon was hard.
SPEAKER_00: Well, how hard?
SPEAKER_00: Think about this with me.
SPEAKER_00: How had they gotten into exile in Babylon?
SPEAKER_00: They'd gotten there by losing on the battlefield.
SPEAKER_00: They had watched their sons and their fathers and their brothers get run through with a sword.
SPEAKER_00: Even worse, they had watched what happens when an ancient army conquers a city.
SPEAKER_00: They had seen, and sorry to be direct about it, but they had seen men impaled on wooden stakes and left to die for three days in the Middle Eastern sun.
SPEAKER_00: They had seen women of all ages mistreated.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just put it that way.
SPEAKER_00: They had seen babies jerked out of their mother's arms and slammed into the ground to eliminate the next generation.
SPEAKER_00: They had lived the horrors of ancient warfare.
SPEAKER_00: The horrors of losing in ancient warfare.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of when, you remember the movie Saving Private Ryan came out?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jill was asking her uncle, who flew in Vietnam, she said, Are you going to see the movie?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, just very quietly, looked up and said, I know what war's like.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need anybody to show me.
SPEAKER_00: Well, they know what war's like because they'd lived it and they'd lost it.
SPEAKER_00: Even then, look at verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Why is this letter written to the surviving elders among the exiles?
SPEAKER_00: Well, remember how they got there?
SPEAKER_00: They had been marched all the way around the Fertile Crescent.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that from junior high school?
SPEAKER_00: From one end to the other in the sun by soldiers who really didn't care very much whether they lived or died.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, whose job would be a whole lot easier if they would just die on the march.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's written to the surviving elders because the rest of them died in transit.
SPEAKER_00: And now they're in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: What's life like in Babylon?
SPEAKER_00: Well, they are a conquered, persecuted, hated religious minority.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, it was a hyper-sexualized society.
SPEAKER_00: It was the center of the known world.
SPEAKER_00: So if you were ambitious, you moved there so you could move up.
SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't, if you can put it anachronistically, entirely career-driven place.
SPEAKER_00: It was polytheistic to the level that any other God was welcome.
SPEAKER_00: So long as you didn't make the crazy claim they did that their God was the one true God.
SPEAKER_00: They lived a life of hardship and rejection, of mockery under the Babylonians who were doing everything they could to break their spirits.
SPEAKER_00: If you want a sense of how bad it was, go read Psalm 30 some Psalm 137 when you go home.
SPEAKER_00: Does that society start to sound a little familiar?
SPEAKER_00: A hypersexualized, career-driven society that is becomes so tolerant of almost any faith that any faith is acceptable, except one that would claim that your faith is the only way.
SPEAKER_00: Truth is, that starts to sound a whole lot like what American society has started to become, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome to embrace any faith out there except your exclusive faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You are welcome to climb the ladder.
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome to be whatever you want to be.
SPEAKER_00: And the point I'm trying to make is that our life, in fact, is very much like the life that these exiles were living in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the point God has placed us here.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Peter 1, chapter 1, verse 1, in fact, says that Christians, those God has called, are exiles and strangers living in the world.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, this letter that Jeremiah writes is not just relevant to these Jewish exiles in 590 BC.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually relevant to God's people today living in the world we live in.
SPEAKER_00: And the point is that God has placed us here.
SPEAKER_00: And that can be hard.
SPEAKER_00: Because living in this world can be really difficult.
SPEAKER_00: Tragedies happen both by accident and by purpose.
SPEAKER_00: You live in the midst of a society that on TV, in the town hall, and the courts mocks much of what you stand for if you believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It can be a very hard place to live.
SPEAKER_00: But the first point is God is the one who's put us here.
SPEAKER_00: You are not here, like Russ said, by accident.
SPEAKER_00: You're here by God's power and God's control.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in light of that, second thing, what's our hope?
SPEAKER_00: Our hope in light of the fact that God has put us here is that someday He will take us home.
SPEAKER_00: Now that was clearly the hope of these Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Literally, that they would go home.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted nothing more than to get out of Dodge and get back to Jerusalem, and God has promised them it will happen.
SPEAKER_00: In spite of the fact that they were in exile because of their sin, in spite of the fact of everything they'd done wrong, God loved nothing more and loves nothing more than to be kind and merciful and to restore his people and to bring them home.
SPEAKER_00: Reading on in verse 11, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope in a future.
SPEAKER_00: Then you'll call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.
SPEAKER_00: You'll seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
SPEAKER_00: I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back from captivity.
SPEAKER_00: And in a sense, that is our hope too.
SPEAKER_00: Our hope as Christians is that He will take us home someday.
SPEAKER_00: That when we die, we will go to be with Jesus, and we will live with Jesus forever.
SPEAKER_00: That is the great Christian hope.
SPEAKER_00: That we someday, that we have another home, that this world is not it.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible gives us a picture of that hope.
SPEAKER_00: If you're reading in your Bible, if not, just listen, flip over to the very end almost.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation chapter 21, I'm going to read you the first four verses.
SPEAKER_00: And then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: For the first heaven and first earth had passed away.
SPEAKER_00: There was no longer any sea.
SPEAKER_00: And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband.
SPEAKER_00: And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.
SPEAKER_00: They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.
SPEAKER_00: He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
SPEAKER_00: Now don't miss something about this promise, about this picture.
SPEAKER_00: Your hope and my hope is that we will live forever with Jesus where?
SPEAKER_00: On earth.
SPEAKER_00: It is a resolutely, stubbornly physical thing that we hope that these bodies we have will be resurrected someday, and that we will live forever with him, not in more of this life, but in more of life the way that God always made it to be.
SPEAKER_00: God never gave up on this world that he created.
SPEAKER_00: God never gave up on men and women, you and me, that he created to be part of this world.
SPEAKER_00: He never gave up on the idea that he would make it everything he ever intended it to be before sin.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we fouled up royally, and we still do that every day.
SPEAKER_00: Which is why he came as a man to put this thing back on the rails.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he came in Jesus Christ to restore this world to everything it was made to be, and that is our hope.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's why this matters.
SPEAKER_00: I, like Russ said, I pastored up in Virginia for 10, 15 years, McLean, Virginia, just outside D.C.
SPEAKER_00: It's the home of a certain little government agency.
SPEAKER_00: We used to call it Christians in Action.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not following, take the first letter of each word, Christians in Action.
SPEAKER_00: So I was talking to one of my church members who worked at this agency, and he pointed out something really interesting.
SPEAKER_00: He said, the place is absolutely full of Mormons.
SPEAKER_00: To the point where he was so surprised that he finally asked one of his friends who was Mormon, he said, Why is it so disproportionate that Mormons work at this place?
SPEAKER_00: You know what the guy said?
SPEAKER_00: He goes, because in Mormon theology, this is the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: America is the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: This is as good as it gets, so we want to fight for it.
SPEAKER_00: Now you know better than that.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I love my country.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the best places to live in the world, and I would fight for my country.
SPEAKER_00: But this is not what we live for.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: This is not as good as it gets.
SPEAKER_00: The promised land is when Jesus comes back and takes away all sin, takes away all death, takes away all kind.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no more cancer, there'll be no more Alzheimer's.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no more suicide.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no more war.
SPEAKER_00: We live for a different home.
SPEAKER_00: Not the home of this world.
SPEAKER_00: And that leads to the third thing.
SPEAKER_00: Wanting to go home is a really powerful urge, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And I remember when I was a little type, the first time I ever went to camp in North Carolina, like three weeks or something.
SPEAKER_00: Homesickness.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You just you want to go home, and you can't even tell what's wrong.
SPEAKER_00: It's not there's any, but everything's just sort of gray.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing's kind of quite right.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this deep, abiding, powerful urge that just wants to go home.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Jews sure felt that, right?
SPEAKER_00: In exile in Babylon, that all they wanted was to go home.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the funny thing.
SPEAKER_00: If you want something bad enough, you can usually find somebody who will tell you what you want to hear.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening in verses 8 and 9.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 8 and 9, there are plenty of people who are showing up, false prophets, God calls them, who are saying, hey, it's almost over, you're going to be home soon.
SPEAKER_00: God's wrath's almost spent.
SPEAKER_00: This exile's almost done.
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_00: Just chill out.
SPEAKER_00: We're out of here soon.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, Don't you dare believe them.
SPEAKER_00: These folks who tell you it's all almost over, that you're done.
SPEAKER_00: Don't buy it.
SPEAKER_00: Especially, I might add, if they give you a date.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, God says, verses 5 and 6.
SPEAKER_00: What does he say?
SPEAKER_00: He says, Build houses and settle down, plant gardens, eat what they produce.
SPEAKER_00: Marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage so they too may have sons and daughters.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, settle in.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to be here for a while.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to have time to build houses, plant crops, have kids, have grandkids, have them have grandkids.
SPEAKER_00: Settle in.
SPEAKER_00: Something far more powerful than that in verses five and six.
SPEAKER_00: These are actually commands, right?
SPEAKER_00: What are the two commands?
SPEAKER_00: One, build and plant.
SPEAKER_00: Two, have kids and grandkids.
SPEAKER_00: Where does that come from?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it comes from all the way back in the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Now, since we looked at the end of the Bible, look at the very beginning of your Bible, Genesis 1.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read you verses 26 to 28.
SPEAKER_00: Then God said, Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.
SPEAKER_00: Let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over the earth, over all the creatures that move along the ground.
SPEAKER_00: So God created man in his own image, and the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.
SPEAKER_00: God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number.
SPEAKER_00: Fill the earth and subdue it.
SPEAKER_00: Rule over the fish of the sea.
SPEAKER_00: And the birds of the air over every living creature that moves along the ground.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, this is before we had sinned.
SPEAKER_00: This is before there was anything wrong with the world.
SPEAKER_00: God had commanded people two things.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Fill the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Sounds a lot like have kids and have grandkids, and subdue it.
SPEAKER_00: Sounds a lot like building houses and settling down and making gardens.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, there are purposes built into you and me from before sin was ever in the world.
SPEAKER_00: To multiply and to have dominion, if you can put it that way, over the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And those commands are re-emphasized by Jeremiah, even though you leave in exile, even though you're not home.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, we live in exile because Genesis 3, the story takes this terrible dark turn where men and women decide to walk away from God.
SPEAKER_00: Even in this life, right now, where God has put us, we have the same purposes we've always had.
SPEAKER_00: Here's why that matters.
SPEAKER_00: That means when you're wiping that baby's bottom tomorrow morning, you are doing something that is not biding time until next Sunday where you get your faith day again.
SPEAKER_00: This means when you go to work on Tuesday morning or Saturday morning in this town or a lot of other things, you are not just biding time, earning income and waiting until your faith day on Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, what you do raising kids, what you do going to work, is what God has always made us to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's not accidental to your faith.
SPEAKER_00: This is your faith.
SPEAKER_00: And it's still true even in a fallen world, even though we live in exile.
SPEAKER_00: There is purpose to your and my life.
SPEAKER_00: There is purpose to the mundane, and it's God's idea.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's particularly what I want to say to try to apply that.
SPEAKER_00: There's something you believe.
SPEAKER_00: You never put it this way, you never say it this baldly, but you really believe it.
SPEAKER_00: You believe that God loves the people who gave it all up and moved to the middle of Africa and live in a mud hut more than he loves every other Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Those are first-tier Christians.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there are some other Christians, they didn't have the guts to move overseas.
SPEAKER_00: But they at least went into religious work.
SPEAKER_00: They do what Russ does, they're pastors, they do what I do, they're seminary professors.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, they aren't quite ready to really set it all on the line for God overseas.
SPEAKER_00: But they're sort of second-tier Christians, they at least do religious work.
SPEAKER_00: Now, third-tier Christians, you know, these are the people who didn't go into God's work.
SPEAKER_00: But at least they went into sort of the not-for-profit world.
SPEAKER_00: They work in the arts or they're social workers or teachers.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're not really earning any money, so they must be a little better than the rest of us.
SPEAKER_00: And then at the bottom, the last tier of Christians are all the professionals, the accountants, the lawyers, some types of doctors, everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: And the only reason you think these people get into the kingdom of God is because they give the money for the other three tiers to do God's work.
SPEAKER_00: Now you'd never say that, but you believe that because every time you talk about, did you know that he went into full-time ministry?
SPEAKER_00: You're validating that exact idea.
SPEAKER_00: Take a stick of dynamite, put it in that, and blow it up.
SPEAKER_00: All of this is part of God's purpose.
SPEAKER_00: When you go to work on Monday morning, when you raise the kids, when you go to school and get ready to do one or the other or both, you are doing part of what God made you to be.
SPEAKER_00: And there is great dignity and value in those vocations because they are part of who God made you to be before there was ever a thing called sin in the world to mess this thing up.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, one more big point to make.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews might have been able to get that.
SPEAKER_00: Even that, they would have said, wow, our purposes as God's people haven't gone away, even though we live in exile.
SPEAKER_00: But the real bombshell of this passage is none of that.
SPEAKER_00: It's verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: Also seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.
SPEAKER_00: Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.
SPEAKER_00: Seek the peace and prosperity of Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: Peace, by the way, it's the Hebrew word shalom, it's the Arabic word salaam.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just mean the absence of conflict.
SPEAKER_00: This means the full flourishing in every sense, cultural, economic, physical, educational.
SPEAKER_00: The peace of a city in the Hebrew thought is everything as it ought to be.
SPEAKER_00: Seek the peace and prosperity of Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize how hard that would have been for them?
SPEAKER_00: Remember what life in Babylon meant for them.
SPEAKER_00: Remember how hated and despised they were, and remember how much they hated and despised it.
SPEAKER_00: And yet God says, seek the good of even this city that hates you.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Jesus said, love your enemies.
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't a brand new thought.
SPEAKER_00: So how do you seek the good?
SPEAKER_00: How do you seek the peace and prosperity of Babylon?
SPEAKER_00: Called Atlanta.
SPEAKER_00: How would you do that?
SPEAKER_00: Three quick things all from this passage.
SPEAKER_00: One, get a buyer mentality, not a renter mentality.
SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 5, build houses.
SPEAKER_00: Settle down, plant gardens.
SPEAKER_00: You know, for our entire lives until we moved here, we rented.
SPEAKER_00: I lived in Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: It made no economic sense to buy a house.
SPEAKER_00: Now I hope I was a good renter.
SPEAKER_00: I hope I took good care of the places I gave, but did you really invest?
SPEAKER_00: Do you really well no, because you know you're moving soon.
SPEAKER_00: So you don't take the same kind of care of a place if you rent.
SPEAKER_00: When we moved here a year ago, we slid most of our net worth across a conference table in a real estate agent's office.
SPEAKER_00: We are all in for the neighborhood of Princeton Mill.
SPEAKER_00: Literally.
SPEAKER_00: You think I don't care more about the schools?
SPEAKER_00: You think I don't care much about the HOA?
SPEAKER_00: You think I don't care about that lot on the corner?
SPEAKER_00: You think everything about me now, because I have invested, if it prospers, I prosper.
SPEAKER_00: It's literally true.
SPEAKER_00: It's also emotionally true.
SPEAKER_00: Invest.
SPEAKER_00: Lean in.
SPEAKER_00: It is so tempting when you feel a culture leaning away from your faith, which is the culture we now live in, to lean out, to do the Christian bubble.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, do the exact opposite.
SPEAKER_00: Lean in, seek the good.
SPEAKER_00: Have a buyer mentality.
SPEAKER_00: Second thing, multiply.
SPEAKER_00: Have kids.
SPEAKER_00: Let your kids have kids.
SPEAKER_00: Give them in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Well, for them, that meant literally.
SPEAKER_00: Literally, have kids, have grandkids.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it does mean that for us too, right?
SPEAKER_00: Kids are a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't think I'd need to say that to you, but and at this church, particularly that's like knee deep in them, you wouldn't think I'd need to say it.
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, y'all are a fairly highly educated bunch.
SPEAKER_00: Statistically, therefore, you are far less likely to have a lot of kids.
SPEAKER_00: Kids are a great blessing of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, look, I know it's hard to raise up a little sinner.
SPEAKER_00: It's just as hard as it was for your parents to do it too, okay?
SPEAKER_00: But it is a great blessing to serve the Lord in raising kids.
SPEAKER_00: It is also what happens when you share the gospel with somebody.
SPEAKER_00: When somebody hears about Jesus for the first time, a fallen, marred, distorted image of God comes back to use Jesus' term to become a son of Abraham, a daughter of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: So as you live in Atlanta, have kids, both literally and figuratively.
SPEAKER_00: And then third, pray for it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, fact is not all of us are going to be CEOs.
SPEAKER_00: Not all of us are going to be high government officials.
SPEAKER_00: Not all of us are going to have great influence.
SPEAKER_00: Fact is, not all of us are necessarily able to have kids, and if you aren't, we know how much it hurts, and we're here for you.
SPEAKER_00: It's terribly difficult.
SPEAKER_00: But everybody does have a prayer, and our prayers have to be for our city, not against it.
SPEAKER_00: They have to be for our culture, not in judgment and anger towards it.
SPEAKER_00: So lean in.
SPEAKER_00: How could God ask them to do this?
SPEAKER_00: He's asking them to lean in and care for and love the city that hates them and that they hate.
SPEAKER_00: How on earth, isn't that just too much to dare to ask?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it too much for him to dare to ask you to lean into a city that turns against you?
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be easier just to pull back and do this Christian thing?
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Why would God ask this of us?
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what Jesus did for you.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 5.
SPEAKER_00: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
SPEAKER_00: Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.
SPEAKER_00: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this.
SPEAKER_00: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we've actually been talking about this passage all wrong.
SPEAKER_00: We've been acting like we're the Jews going into exile.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not like that's false.
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to it, really, we're the Babylonians.
SPEAKER_00: We're the ones who are alien to God, and Jesus is the one who came and submitted and sought our peace and prosperity and good when in fact we did nothing but hate him.
SPEAKER_00: We did nothing but ignore him.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one who went up and died on a cross for your shalom, for your peace, for your prosperity.
SPEAKER_00: Not because he needed to, but simply because he loved you.
SPEAKER_00: And that frees us to actually lean into a world that might not like us for it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Russ has done something every week I've ever been at this church, and I pray you will do this for the rest of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Which is he reminds us, look, there are things in the Christian life that we do.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Christians do live different lives because you became Christian.
SPEAKER_00: But never do we do that stuff because it's going to make God happy with us.
SPEAKER_00: God is already happy with us by grace.
SPEAKER_00: We have this game we play with our older daughter.
SPEAKER_00: It's adapted from what a friend of mine used to do.
SPEAKER_00: And she was little enough when we started it.
SPEAKER_00: She confused a lot and a whole much and a whole lot.
SPEAKER_00: And so she had this phrase a whole much.
SPEAKER_00: So we'd say, Hey, sweetie, how much does daddy love you?
SPEAKER_00: And she'd say, a whole much.
SPEAKER_00: I'd say, that's right, sweetie.
SPEAKER_00: And how long will Daddy love you?
SPEAKER_00: Forever.
SPEAKER_00: And it was in this two-year-old voice for Ava.
SPEAKER_00: That's right, sweetie.
SPEAKER_00: And why does Daddy love you?
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm your daughter.
SPEAKER_00: And we'd say, that's right, and you will always be my daughter, so you will always be loved.
SPEAKER_00: Because you are God's daughter, because you are God's son, you are loved already.
SPEAKER_00: And it's having lived and received that love that frees us to love a world in a way that is absolutely counterintuitive, that is absolutely transformative.
SPEAKER_00: So having received his love, and Russ will come up now and talk and show us, God gave us a sacrament because he knows that we're people that don't do the invisible very well.
SPEAKER_00: So he gave us just a tiny taste, a tiny touch, to remind us this love is real.
SPEAKER_00: This really happened.
SPEAKER_00: And because he knows you need the reminder, he gives it to you.
SPEAKER_00: So as we come to the table, let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you that you love us in spite of us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you are good to us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that we can rest in faith.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, at whatever stage we have that faith, we come to you with it and we pray you'd increase it and bless us to know you and know your love.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.