Sermon Transcript
Jeremiah 29, verses 1 through 14. 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 Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Jehoiachin and the Queen Mother, the court officials and the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the skilled workers and the artisans had gone into exile from Jerusalem. He entrusted the letter to Elassa son of Shaphan and to Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. It said, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
Build houses and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there, do not decrease. Also seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper. Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you.
Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them, declares the Lord. This is what the Lord says: When 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good 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.
Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and will bring you back from captivity captivity. 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.
Thank you, Casey. How do you live in and survive and even thrive in a place that you desperately want to leave and you don’t like the people there?
That’s the question facing Israel when in the year 587 BC the city of Jerusalem is attacked by the mighty Babylonian Empire under the leadership of King Nebuchadnezzar. A year later, the city and the temple were completely plundered and burned, thousands of Israelites forcibly taken from their homes, relocated 900 miles or so to ancient Babylon. You know how every year there are these various online outlets that publish and rank what they consider to be the most desirable places to live, as well as the least desirable places to live, either in the neighborhood or in the city, the state, you know, the world, that kind of thing? I always enjoy those kinds of lists every single year. Where do most people want to live, and where do the fewest number of people kind of want to live?
What’s the least desirable place. Among the world’s most undesirable places, Babylon would have been at the top of the list for any ancient Israelite. Babylon was a step backward. Babylon was not in the plan. Babylon was not a place to settle down and to raise a family.
But Babylon is now where Israel finds themselves. They became exiles, and as exiles, they’re now a minority. They weren’t used to this. This. Now they’re a minority.
A new culture, new gods, new leaders that they didn’t like, in an enormous, hostile, brutal city filled with other exiles and people groups, all with radically different visions for how the world works and for morality and for religion.
Now in this scripture passage, there are 2 groups of people people who had their own ideas and their own agendas for how that this should play out. The first agenda was the agenda of the Babylonians themselves. Babylon brought Israel to the kingdom, and what they attempted to do was to assimilate Israel, to assimilate them into the culture socially, intellectually, spiritually. And the goal of that assimilation that the Babylonians had in mind was to gradually get Israel to lose its distinctiveness and their understanding and interpretation of the world. Sure, it would take a generation or 2, but it would eventually happen.
And that’s what the Babylonian leaders figured. And so that was Babylon’s chosen agenda for excluding and oppressing Israel— assimilation. And God rejected that agenda. But there’s another group that God equally rejected their agenda, and that was of the Jewish other than our guy Jeremiah. This passage tells us that there were false prophets who were telling the people that you need to just bide your time for a little bit, go along to get along, deal with Babylon only to the degree that it’s absolutely necessary and only as long as it personally benefits you, but internally it’s okay to disdain the Babylonians.
And then God will bring you back to Israel after just a year or too. That’s what the false prophets were saying. That was their agenda. God, however, rejected both of these agendas. He had a different agenda.
What was God’s agenda? It was just read for you. This is where God says something in this passage completely counterintuitive to anything you or I would expect God to say. We would not expect him to say what he says. And the shock— shocking thing about the message of God in Jeremiah to those in exile, he doesn’t encourage the people people to look for a way out.
He doesn’t tell the people to pray for a way out. He doesn’t even tell them to try to hatch a plan for a way of escape. He doesn’t tell them to move outside of the city and to live isolated and hidden lives away from the pagan Babylonians. He doesn’t tell them to wait until the exile’s over and to just assimilate. He doesn’t tell them to resist Babylon, or by revolting against Babylon in the capital city.
He doesn’t tell them, just hang out here for just a little bit until I relieve your burdens. Have nothing to do with these pagan, godless people. But no, he doesn’t say that. What God tells them is just the opposite. Don’t just give in and compromise and lose your distinctiveness by adopting the Babylonian way of life.
Don’t do that. And don’t accept these new gods as your own. But also, I don’t want you to remove yourself and isolate yourself. So it’s this us-and-them kind of mindset. So back to the original question that I asked: how do you live in— how do you survive and how do you thrive in a place that you dislike and so desperately want to leave, and you really don’t like the people that are there?
How do you live in a world where so many of the cultural institutions, the government, the arts, academia, aren’t always neutral and in some cases are actually hostile to your faith and to your values and to the God that you believe in? How do you make it there? I mean, it’s relatively easy, at least in theory, to make it in a place that loves us and listens to us and our voices as believers, but what about when that’s not the case? Case, how are these people to live in this new culture? I think you all know that this is not just a question for Israel, that this is a question today for you and for me, because we too— because the Bible tells us, as we’ve been talking about in this 6-week series, the Bible tells us that we as believers, all believers, are spiritual exiles in this world.
We too know a bit about what it’s like to live in a fragmented society where there’s so many different opinions and no consensus about what is right and what is wrong and what society should be like. And so this passage of Scripture is giving us an answer to the question, what is God’s agenda for His people? What is God’s agenda for you and God’s agenda for me who are living in exile in this world? How does God want His people? How does God want you today?
How does God today want you to live and to relate to living in Babylon? This Scripture passage gives us 3 messages that help answer this question. And as I share these 3 things, I just want to make sure that you understand, if you were here last week, this in no way undermines or discounts what we talked about last week. What we talked about, one of our responses as believers, as exiles in this culture, is lament. That’s a reasonable feeling, this sense of discouragement when hard times come and just being real to God with our feelings.
We talked about we can be honest with God, we can bring our lament to Him, and we can still have hope for things to change. So this in no way today discounts continuing to think about what it looks like to lament. What this passage though is telling us to do is to not just stay in that place of lament continuously, or to only lament. This is what it’s telling us to do. First, God shockingly says through the prophet Jeremiah, as exiles, instead of withdrawing from Babylon, instead of revolting against Babylon, which would have been their natural instinct, I actually want you to live there.
I actually want you to settle down there. I want you to bloom where you have been planted. That’s the first message, to bloom where God has planted you. This is what verses 5 and 6 had said. God says in verses 5 and 6, I want you to build houses.
I want you to settle down in Babylon. I want you to plant gardens. I want you to eat what they produce. I want you to marry. I want you to have sons and daughters.
I want you to get them married so that they too may have sons and daughters of their own. I want you to increase in number there, God says. Don’t decrease.
Plant yourself there. Sure sounds like Jeremiah is working for the Babylonian Chamber of Commerce. I don’t know if there was such a thing, but hey, be sure to check out our 4-bedroom homes, our lush gardens, our bustling commerce. Come to Babylon, a wonderful place to raise your family. What he’s really saying is that God wants you to put your roots down here.
It may not be what you all want to do, but God actually wants you to get established here. Now let’s remember, the other prophets were not saying this. There was a false prophet named Hananiah in Jeremiah 27 and 28, right before this chapter. And then in this chapter, Jeremiah 29, there’s a guy named Shemaiah who are basically telling the people a different message. They’re saying, look, it’s gonna be a very, very short stay.
Yes, it’s gonna be a bit uncomfortable. Don’t worry, don’t make any long-term plans here. You don’t need to unpack the suitcases, don’t need to unpack the boxes, don’t put up any nail holes in the wall and hang up pictures because you’re gonna want your security deposit back. You’re not gonna be here very, very long. Bring your tents, not your bricks, not your mortar.
God is saying precisely the opposite here through Jeremiah. Nope, this is not gonna be a short trip. I don’t want you to think like you’re a tourist here. I want you to settle down here. Resident.
Now let’s think about this. Who plants gardens and crops in a place you’re only gonna be for a little bit of time? Who bothers giving away sons and daughters in marriage and looking forward to increasing and having children and grandchildren unless you’re planning to be in a place for a bit of time? God is saying though, I want you to put your roots down here. I want you to do all the normal things that contribute to making this place better— a stable, healthy faithful, flourishing life.
Don’t retreat. Don’t separate. Certainly don’t panic. Don’t isolate. Instead, be engaged and contribute to the community.
This must have sounded so crazy to Israel. God is saying, in Israel, I know you lived in a place where everybody believed like you and thought like you and valued the same things as you. But yes, now I’ve taken you to another city, one that is pluralistic and pagan, and you’re gonna have to face people you don’t naturally like, you don’t naturally agree with, and images and values that are so different from your own. And yet I want you to make this place your home. I want you to live here and to settle down here.
So what’s going on here? This is not how Christians are supposed to relate to Babylon, right? How are we to make sense of this, and what would this even look like in practice? Practice for us today? Well, Elliott Clark, who writes for The Gospel Coalition and served in Central Asia for 6 years while serving as a cross-cultural church planter, has written quite about this topic and this concept of exile.
Elliott Clark has suggested the best human metaphor that we have for what Jeremiah 29 is talking about here, the best human metaphor we have about how we are to relate to the larger culture and to the community today is the metaphor of an ambassador. An ambassador does what? An ambassador is somebody who lives in one country while representing another country. Now on the one hand, a good ambassador is absolutely bilingual and fluent in the culture and in the language of wherever they are living and serving. And secondly, a good ambassador is also somebody who completely respects and appreciates enormously the place that they are living.
Serving. After all, you’re an ambassador. Your job is to build bridges, to bring people together, to show commonalities. And yet, if you’re a good ambassador, you never forget that you’re there to represent the values and the interests of a different country.
And that’s ultimately what it means to be a Christian.
You are to invest in the culture, you’re to make it your home, while still remembering that the values of the kingdom of God are different. So while an ambassador fully lives in one country, is fully conversant and is engaged and is fully appreciative of the culture, an ambassador remembers that their ultimate citizenship is someplace else. It’s what God is saying here in Jeremiah 29 to these exiles, but also to you and to me if you’re a believer. God is saying, I want you to live and to settle in the land land, neither withdrawing nor separating from the culture. However, I want you to respectfully resist the values of the wider culture.
Why? Because you are my ambassadors in the place where I have sovereignly planted you. That’s the first message of how God wants exiles to relate to an unfamiliar culture that may be hostile to your faith. But the second message here in Jeremiah 29 is equally shocking. God says, when it comes to relating to the I want you to seek the welfare of the city.
That’s what verse 7 said. I want you to seek the peace and the prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. And God says, pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, then you too will prosper. Not what the people were expecting to hear. Seek the welfare of Babylon?
We’re talking about the same Babylon that Israel sang imprecatory songs against and invoked God’s curses against, like in Psalm 137 where the Israelites used to sing, Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. This was one of Israel’s worship songs. It’s in the book of Psalms, for goodness’ sake. And now God is saying, I want you to seek the peace and prosperity of Babylon.
Your captors, even in exile. It’s precisely what God’s message was to them. It’s precisely what God’s message is to us today. The word in verse 7 for peace and prosperity is actually one word in the Hebrew that most of you know. It’s a word called shalom.
Shalom is a word that means full thriving, full flourishing. So as believers in this world, we are to seek, we are to root for We are to pray for the shalom of the place where God has planted you. In other words, we’re not just supposed to grit our teeth and survive here. We’re not just supposed to withdraw from this culture and grumble and complain about it and make sure that we personally prosper. Instead, we are to want the whole community to flourish in the way that’s being described here, and we are to work towards that end, meaning it’s our job as God’s ambassadors here, if you’re a believer in Jesus, here to be willing to serve everyone in the community, including the very people with whom you may disagree, including the people you— with whom you may find little in common.
And if you don’t feel that way about this community where God has planted you, thinking it’s not my responsibility, I think this passage is suggesting you’re likely not thinking about the implications and ramifications of what it means to be a believer of what it means when Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world. Where does salt function best? In places where it’s not salty. Where does light function best? In places where there’s not light.
You are the salt of the earth, followers of Jesus. You are the light of the world. You are to love me with all your heart, God says, with— and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength. And you’re to love your neighbor yourself. So as Christians, it’s every one of our collective responsibilities and calling to work for the social peace of this community and to help others to live and work together in harmony, and even to use our own financial resources to bless others like the marginalized, the poor, the widow, the homeless, the refugee, those with special needs, all those who tend to get kind of caught over overlooked, fall through the cracks in any society.
And not only that, we’re to pray for this shalom, this flourishing, to take place. Okay, how was Israel supposed to actually pray for the shalom of Babylon? They knew that they’re supposed to pray for the shalom of Jerusalem. That’s in the Psalms. But Babylon was Israel’s enemy, and yet God said, pray to the Lord for Babylon.
And if we too are inclined to think that God wouldn’t us to do the same. We’re forgetting that Jesus said we’re to not only love those who love us but to also love our enemies and to pray for those who would even persecute us. We’re to pray to the Lord on behalf of our leaders, the ones we voted for and the ones we didn’t, and the government, and for the welfare of the place in which we live. When it prospers and does well, we too, as believers in Jesus, will do well. Is this radical?
Radical? You bet. Perhaps you’ve not come across too many churches that think like this. Perhaps you’ve not come across too many believers in Jesus who think like this. And I would agree with you.
You would absolutely be right. Not many Christians think like this. Not many churches live like this. But the early Christians lived like this, didn’t they? They thought like this, didn’t they?
Makes me think of some of our friends down in Baja that took a team down to Mexico recently to work with Baja Christian Ministries. My friends Eric and Rebecca Prager, for instance, who lead Baja Christian Ministries. I think we have a photo of Eric and Rebecca. These are just precious people that I’ve gotten to know over the last several years. They could live anywhere, yet God has called them to Mexico and to live in a place that is quite challenging to live.
And they’re invested there in good times and in bad. This last week you may have seen some of the videos and photos of all the weather there, just difficult weather in Rosarito and Tecate. And so Eric was sending me pictures this last week, and just, I don’t even know how the infrastructure is going to be able to make it there. So I was like, you know, how can we help? But I just, I love Eric and Rebecca because they have decided that that’s where God has called them to be and to plant their family there and to plant their roots there.
And all of the people that work with Baja Christian Ministries, instead of cursing Mexico and wondering what, what good could come out of this place, they’re seeking to lean in and to say, God has called us to love this place and to seek to pray for the leaders here and to make this a better place. This makes me think of someone like Roger Wong. Roger, if you didn’t know, is the founder of City Impact, a wonderful ministry in the Tenderloin in San Francisco that Shannon and I love dearly. It was about 36 years ago that Roger Wong first witnessed a young boy being bullied in the Tenderloin and was inspired to intervene. And after hearing God ask Roger, what would you do if that was your son?
Roger said, God, I would help them. And God replied to Roger, to me they’re all the saying. So Roger went home, broke down crying before his lovely wife and family, and in response, Roger and his wife passed out 50 sandwiches the very next day in the Tenderloin. And then they went back the day after that, and then the day after that, and the day after that. They kept showing up to help, and that eventually turned into what is now this beautiful ministry called City Impact.
They now provide food security to thousands thousands of Tenderloin residents, have launched a quality leadership school that is fantastic, developed a City Kids program by providing inner-city children with access to after-school enrichment events. This passage makes me think of Roger Wong. It also makes me think of someone like Jimmy Dorell. You don’t know that name, most likely. He is one of the founders of a place called Mission Waco in Waco, Texas, where some of you know that Shannon and I were prior to coming out here to California, much of what the wider public knows about Waco— if I ask what are the 2 things or 3 things you know about Waco, you know about Dr Pepper, right?
You know about Baylor University. I happen to have an undergrad degree from there, as Shannon does. We love Baylor. But you also probably know about the show Fixer Upper, Chip and Joanna Gaines. Those are the 3 things you know.
What you probably don’t know about Waco is that Waco has historically had significant significant poverty and significant homelessness and significant crime in particular neighborhoods, and that there’s very much this divide between the haves and the have-nots in Waco. It’s so tangible. But many years ago, Jimmy Dorell and his wife Janet chose to live and to work among the poor in some of the most historically blighted areas of Waco in town in order to help bring good news through relationships and empowerment opportunities Mission Waco is just a behemoth in Waco. It’s gigantic, this wonderful ministry that is just— God is so blessed. They started this movement called Church Under the Bridge where people who are homeless or anyone in the community can come to church and they meet in a safe place under one of the overpasses of I-35 there in Waco.
They meet outdoors, they serve food, they have worship very much in the natural settings. Some of, some of us would probably be a bit uncomfortable there, but it’s just unbelievable. I think about these kinds of stories, and what I personally love about each of these folks is that they’re doing the complete opposite of what many Christians today are doing. You know how in Scripture when people heard that Jesus was from Nazareth and doing all these things, they’re like, can anything good come out of Nazareth? I think you and I have probably heard enough times somebody saying, can anything good come out of Mexico?
Can anything good come out of the Tenderloin? People are running away from San Francisco. And Roger Wong’s like, no, like, we’re, we’re gonna love this place. We’re gonna do what we can here. People, people only want to live in Waco if they can get a house from Chip and Joanna Gaines and fix her up and go to Baylor and drink Dr Pepper and all of these things.
Can anything good come out of Waco?
That’s the opposite of what many Christians are doing, is what these folks are doing. Now, I realize that hearing about these kinds of stories may make you feel like I’m suggesting or implying that the only way to do what Jeremiah 29 is telling us to do is to quit your job today and to move out of the suburbs or something like that. I assure you that’s not what I’m saying. Please hear me, I am not I’m not intending to imply that because I’m using these particular examples. What I am suggesting, though, is that there are some very normal folks like these folks who are just a small handful of examples— you could probably come up with examples of your own— of believers who have taken seriously what this passage is calling us to do.
And it personally inspires me to hear these kinds of stories. I love it. It just makes me want to say, God, you know what? Would you want me and Shannon to do, and how can we best serve you where you have planted us? I hope it inspires you.
The point is that at its core, this passage is calling us to live every day with a missional mindset, like an ambassador. You’re intentional, thinking, God, where have you placed me, and how can I best represent you here? So how do we walk this out? What is going to motivate us and give us the energy to keep doing these kinds of things? Because living in Babylon is hard if you’re a believer.
That’s the third message that God gives to the exiles in this passage. He says, look, I first want you to live and to settle in the land. Don’t want you to withdraw. Don’t want you to separate. And then he says, I also want you to love your enemies by seeking the shalom of the place where I have planted you and by praying for its flourishing.
And third, the message that God gives here is, I want you to remember and know that I am very much in control of this whole thing. Notice in verse 1 it says that the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar was the one who, quote, carried the people into exile. But then in verse 4 of this chapter, God says, I carried you into exile. And then in verse 7, God says, I was the one who carried you into exile. So which is it?
Is it Nebuchadnezzar or God? Here’s what God is saying: social forces brought you here into this new culture where you are now in exile. You didn’t want to be here. Social forces brought you here. However, God says, I was using those social forces for my purposes.
God says as much later in verses 11 and 12. I brought you here because I know the plans I have for you, says God. I have a purpose for you. Yes, it’s hard. It looks difficult.
It’s— it can be very frustrating and isolating, and yet know that that I have a good purpose for you, God says. I’m gonna provide for you. I’m gonna refine you. I’m gonna make you something better than you would have been if you had never been planted here. And I also have a purpose, God says, to bless this place as well.
Yes, social forces may have brought you here, but they are my social forces, God says. I have a plan for them. Do you believe that? This 3rd message in this passage, I believe, is what actually probably enabled Israel Israel to survive and to make it through the exile. And it’s what I think will enable you and me to be able to come to a place where we learn to not just tolerate our exile, but to actually embrace our status as exiles as a gift from God.
Can you imagine? God is saying to us, it is part of my plan, believers. It is part of my plan that you are where you are right now and are living as exiles in a pluralistic culture. It is part of my plan to grow you and to change you. It’s part of my plan to grow and to change them.
And so you can trust me that I planned and designed this whole thing. You can trust me when I say to love your community and to live not only for those who believe like you do and value what you do, but even for those who do not and who might oppose you hurt you. I want you to raise your families there. I want you to be deeply engaged in the prosperity of the community. Make it a great place.
Serve on the school board. Go to school there. Serve your company. But at the same time, God says, don’t lose your distinctiveness as my people. So us being in exile doesn’t mean that God has abandoned us.
It doesn’t mean that he is not in control. And how often we need this reminder, right? For whatever circumstances brought you here to this place. Maybe you were born here. Maybe it was to go to school here.
Maybe it was a job. Maybe it was an urgent family need, or maybe it was your own misguided judgment. You need to know and remember that a hand beyond your own was at work.
We live where we live, friends, ultimately because God is sovereign and He has placed us here, at least for today. You are not where you are by accident. And here’s what else you need to know: the places where God has sovereignly put you— think about it— your job, your home, your neighborhood, your school, wherever God has sovereignly placed you, those places are fields that are absolutely ripe for harvest and for ministry. And if you were a believer, I encourage you to open your eyes because I believe you are precisely the person through whom God wants to do this harvesting and through whom God wants to do this ministering and investing in the lives of people around you. These messages from God may seem like surprising, but actually, should we really be surprised as Christians by these commands?
I mean, we can understand why the Israelites in Jeremiah’s day would have been caught off guard. But we today shouldn’t be surprised by them, right? I mean, and yet there are plenty of Christians, maybe some of whom are in this room today, who are surprised to learn that this is what God wants us to do, who are gonna fight against it and say, yes, but— I know plenty of Christians, and I assume you do too, who can’t stand this place, who can’t stand this culture, who can’t stand this particular community or the state and the grit they’re teeth, and they complain about living here and resent the leaders of these places. And lots of Christians do exactly that. Plenty of people today who walk around perhaps remembering when things were better, basically feeling like victims, or just being angry or unhappy most of the time.
But here’s why we shouldn’t be surprised about this even in the slightest from God. It’s because God— I think we know this— calls us to move out of our comfortable bubbles and to incarnate ourselves as believers among people who likely don’t share our values and who may even despise us or persecute us, even as we pour ourselves out for them in love and seek the full flourishing of all people in this community. Now, do you know anybody who fits that description? Do you know anybody who’s actually lived like that? I’m talking, of course, about Jesus.
Jesus Christ, who lived in heaven, and yet he left there, and Bible says moved into our neighborhood. John 1:14, the Word became flesh and lived among us. The Message version says Jesus moved into our neighborhood, and he lived here on the earth as an absolute exile. And then of course he was persecuted and he died for his enemies, who by the way include you and me. Say, I’m an enemy of God?
That’s what Scripture tells us until you were brought to faith and adopted into His family. And on the cross, Jesus was forsaken by the Father. Why? So that you and I could have our sins forgiven and be brought back into relationship with God. Jesus was always in exile, and He took our exile for us on the cross.
And because of our rejection of God, we would have remained exiled away from God forever. But when Jesus hung on the cross, He bore on Himself everything that exiles Himself separates us from God. And so as Jesus followers today, we remain in exile, yes, but we also wait with hope and confidence for the day when Jesus will either return or call us home to rescue us from exile and to transform this world into our new forever home. We wait with hope for that. In the meantime, God’s message to those of us living in exile in the world today, longing for a better home, is to follow Jesus’ example to not just assimilate into the culture, but it’s also not to just separate from the culture either.
He’s saying in Jeremiah 29, become citizens of Babylon but remain citizens of God at the same time. Don’t just love God and hate the city, and don’t just love the city and hate God. Love them both. And because you love God and because you love the city, pray for the city. Embrace your exile, God is saying.
I’m convinced that doing so, God— friends, is just going to take a major shift in the way that we think. Honestly, I just, as I’ve been processing this message and this text, I just think this is going to be really challenging for many of us, myself included. If we’re to be honest, I think that many of us would admittedly prefer to not live in Babylon and certainly not to live around Babylonians. Goodness’ sake, because in our eyes this is a God-forsaken place, or these are God-forsaken people. The truth though, friends, don’t miss this, is that there’s no such thing as a God-forsaken place.
There’s no God-forsaken people, only church-forsaken places or Christian-forsaken places. God is in these various places at work, and He wants His people to be in these various places as well. Yes, but how do we seek the well-being of Babylon when our allegiance is to someone greater? We as Jesus followers are called to live in that very tension. That’s the way of the exile.
Let’s pray.
Father, You’ve hit us hard with a text that it would just be easy to gloss over and and not have anything to do with, but I ask that, Lord, You would forgive me when I put up those kinds of barriers. And right now in this room, if there is any refusal, Lord, among any believer here to actually engage with this text and wrestle with it, God, I pray You’d please forgive us. I ask that You would give us, Lord, a heart for people around us and open our eyes to see how You have planted us here and how we can best represent You here as your ambassadors. What an honor. Lord, we do lament that this world, Lord, is not the way that it should be and that this world is painful.
Lord, we do lament that. We also, though, Lord, have hope because you are faithful and are in control and will continue to be in control.
Make us more like you. Make us more like Jesus, Father, who lived in this world yet not what is— yet was not of this world. Change us, we pray, in your Son’s name. Amen.
