We are on the second part of our three part series walking through our vision statement and today we are looking at what it means to ‘Bless our City.’ If blessing the city were a road we were traveling, then there is a ditch on either side of that road. One ditch is thinking that the only way we bless our city is through sharing the gospel. Omitting our call to be engaged with social issues in our lives. But, the other ditch is triumphalism. The idea that we are going to make this world feel like home through winning power in it.
Neither ditch is going to bless us or our city and I think Jeremiah 29 gives us as clear of a picture of the road as I can think of. We can forget that the context isn’t as cheerful as you might think if you just see some of these verses on a Lifeway poster or a social media post. The context of the passage is God’s command for his people as they live in exile outside of the promised land and inside the pagan kingdom of Babylon.
Exile has historically been seen as one of the strongest forms of punishment. To be exiled meant being cut off from the most important things in your life. For the Israelites, it meant not only being taken from the promised land, but away from the Temple in Jerusalem which they saw as being taken from the very presence of God, even though God had already removed his presence from there. But, it is in this context that God calls his people to bless the city in which they now live.
In this passage we see 1) We can bless our city without cultural power, 2) We bless our city when we listen to the right voices, and 3) We bless our city when we are blessed by God.
- We can bless our city without cultural power
God tells the Israelites that they are to seek the welfare of the city where he has sent them into exile. These Israelites were brought forcibly outside their land and living in the epitome of paganism in Babylon. They had to be feeling fear, sadness, grief…everything that would paralyze the average person and God is telling them they are to embrace this as their new normal.
They had to have some desire to disrupt the culture that had taken them. They had to have some desire to stir up rebellion. Rebellion is in our human DNA. There is something deep within us that is drawn to a rebellious spirit. This is why we have the Hunger Games, the Matrix, and all of the Star Wars movies. Our whole country was formed out of rebellion.. Now, it’s beyond the scope of what I can do this morning to differentiate between good rebellion and bad rebellion. For now, I just want to make the case that rebellion is deep inside us.
Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you. The word used here for welfare is shalom. It’s most often defined as peace. This word is used all over this passage. This is a comprehensive way of saying seek the type of well-being that touches every aspect of your lives. It means to make all things more like the way they should be. God is telling them not only can you have peace in exile, you can spread it. You have an infectious peace. So, they are to build houses, plant gardens, eat the Babylonian food, and have families.
Why would God tell them to do this? Well, the two things that stick out to me are, first, because what is good for Babylon is good for the Israelites. This is what God means when he says, ‘for in its welfare, you will find your welfare.’ Again, the word is ‘shalom.’ God is protecting his people by using them to bless Babylon. Second, God does also seem to care about the pagan Babylonian people. God’s desire for all types of people to be saved is all over the Bible. It’s all over the prophets. When you read the book of Daniel, it does seem that Nebuchudnezzar came to a real and saving faith because of God’s work there. The whole book of Jonah shows us this.
So, how does this apply to us? Well, if you are here today and you are a Christian, you are living in a state of exile and you are called to bless the city you live in. Paul says that our citizenship is in heaven. Peter, writing to Christians spread all over the Roman Empire says, 11 Beloved, I urge you has sojourners and exiles ito abstain from the passions of the flesh, jwhich wage war against your soul. 12 kKeep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, lthey may see your good deeds and glorify God on mthe day of visitation. - 1 Peter 2:11
I think our awareness of the reality of our living in exile has only increased over the past 30 years. We weren’t relocated, but the culture we find ourselves in is less friendly to our faith. I said this last August, but I have a buddy who is an Acts 29 pastor in New Mexico and his heritage is Mexican and his family has lived in New Mexico since the time when there was only old Mexico. He says that his people didn’t cross the border, the border crossed them. They didn’t move, but the culture they lived in changed significantly around them. I think that’s a good illustration for how many American Christians feel today.
But, we would do well to see that exile is the norm for God’s people and his instructions to the Israelites informs how we understand our state of exile. Christians for thousands of years have struggled with how we are to live in this world by either separating or assimilating. Neither is good. We shouldn’t wall ourselves off and we shouldn’t wholesale adopt the culture we find ourselves in. We are not of the world, but we are sent into the world. We should be engaged with the cultural, economic, and social life of the city, but we should not lose our identity as we do that. We should work as Christians for the peace and prosperity of our city.
And this is going to be hard because it is uncomfortable to live in exile. We are not home and as Christians, we will feel this every day. Even in a ‘free society’ we will not feel at home and if we are not cognisant of this, we will either demand too much of the culture we live in expecting it to satisfy us and be disappointed or mad when it doesn’t. Or we will demand too little of ourselves and our role as Christians inside the culture we live in, never seeking the shalom of the city we live in.
As we were helping our kids get ready to go back to school, I had these interesting feelings inside of me that come from my own middle and highschool years. I remember getting ready to go back to school and feeling anxiety over fitting in and being accepted. Of feeling comfortable in a strange environment. And if I’m honest, and if we are all honest, at some level, that desire never fully goes away. The way it plays out does, but the desire itself stays with us. All Christians are going to have to embrace the reality that we will never fully fit, never be fully at home in this world.
God, through Jeremiah, though, says to the Israelites to settle in. This is not going to be a quick ordeal and the same is true for us. So we live as exiles doing the best we can to seek the welfare of the city we live in. We work in offices led by unbelievers, we buy groceries and supplies from businesses that actively work against our worldview. We have children and raise them alongside families with very different world views. That’s the design and that’s how it will be until Jesus comes back or we go to him.
Our desire is that all of us would find our purpose in our work and know what it looks like to bless a non-Christian work environment. In the book, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, Tim Keller, says, “Work of all kinds, whether with the hands or of the mind, evidences our dignity as human beings – because it reflects the image of God the Creator.” So, on Sunday September 22nd at 5pm, we are going to have a seminar on faith and work. The seminar will be given by Damein Schitter, my good friend, and pastor of New City Presbyterian Church. This is what he did his PhD work on and he is the chair of the faith and works initiative at RTS. We have to have guides on our way. Guides like Damien, guides like books, guides in this church, and that leads me to the second point.
- We bless our city when we listen to the right voices
Verses 8 and 9 tell the Israelites to ignore the false prophets among them who speak of an early return and restoration. This group would have likely been the very anti-babylon crowd. They likely made claims that God himself has raised them up to stand up against these pagan rulers. But, these were false prophets.
False prophets have been around for thousands of years and it’s no less true today. We have many different kinds of false prophets today. We have people preaching that we should feel at home in this world. That God’s plan for us in this life is to make us happy, healthy, and wealthy and if you don’t feel that way, something is deficient with your faith. We have people saying that if we can win our government back, then we will feel comfortable again. I’m not against political activism, but anyone who says we can use political influence to make this country a place where we won’t feel like exiles is a false prophet. The theological term for this kind of false teaching is over-realized eschatology. That’s when we take what is only fully true of the kingdom yet to come and try and apply it here and now.
But, false teachers can go the other way too. They can preach under-realized eschatology which is not embracing the real blessings and stewardship that God has for his people in the here and now. This is when we throw up our hands and stop seeking the welfare of the city we live in. It’s when we lose heart in our culture and act as though God has no plan for the unbelievers (or believers) living in it.
In a way, the false preachers in Jeremiah’s day were doing both. They were over promising a short stay in Babylon and because of that, their advice was to stay outside the city and not engage. The real question we should ask ourselves is why do we want to listen to these false teachers. I think the answer is pretty simple. It’s the same reason the Trojans believed the Greeks about the horse. It’s the same reason Israel listened to false prophets that gave them false peace. False prophets tell us what we want to hear. False prophets feed our idols. Idols like comfort through cultural and political power.
We want to hear that this life should be more comfortable. We want to hear that we aren’t required to do hard work. We don’t want to acknowledge how much is truly outside of our control. So we are inclined to listen to teachers who tell us what we want to hear.
The teachers we should listen to are the ones who hold the proper balance of the already/not yet. That is, we live in the tension of what Christ has already done through his life, death, and resurrection and the not yet of what he will do when he returns. We need to listen to teachers who tell us that just like the Israelites we will one day go home. There will be no sin, no pain, no discomfort, no sin, and no rebellion. We need to listen to those who remind us of that.
A few weeks ago, I read part of the Epistle to Diognetus. It’s a letter written around the turn of the first century from a Christian to a non-Christian trying to explain Christianity. And in it he says, “Let me tell you why Christianity is spreading so fast. Christians busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They live in their own native lands, but they live as aliens. For every foreign country is to them as their native land, and every native land is as their foreign country. They marry and have children, but they do not kill unwanted babies. They share their table with everyone, but they don’t share their bed with everyone. They love everyone but are persecuted by all. They are poor and make many rich. They are short of everything and yet have plenty of everything. They are treated outrageously but behave respectfully. They are mocked and bless in return. When they do good they are attacked. When they are attacked they rejoice as if being given new life.”
If that isn’t a picture of blessing a city with a hostile posture toward us, I don’t know what is. There are some churches in Casselberry that have worked with the local government to identify homes in disrepair that are under heavy penalties and fines because they can’t afford the repairs. The churches asked if they brought these homes up to code, could the fines be dropped and the city joyfully agreed. What a great way of blessing the city! Lord willing, we as a church may be getting involved with this program soon as well.
You will probably never hear me endorse a political candidate. Times would have to be either unimaginably good or unimaginably bad for me to do that. But, there are times when blessing our city does mean engaging in political issues. And I think voting against Amendment four in Florida is a way of blessing the unborn. Amendment four could allow abortions up to 9 months in pregnancy and we have an abortion clinic walking distance from our church. But, if we are going to bless our city in this way, we also need to pay attention to the circumstances that make couples feel forced into this option in the first place and address those issues as well.
Blessing the city is complex and we need voices guiding us along the way. But, we still need something even more powerful than that.
- We will bless the city when we are blessed by God
Ok, this is where we get to the famous, misunderstood, and misused part. These kinds of promises in the Old Testament have a near-term application and a far-term application. Let me explain. God has two promises. First, he says he will visit his people in verse 10, he says they can call on him and pray to him and he will hear. That when they seek him with all their heart, they will find him. Remember the worst part of exile for a true believing Jew was the distance from the Temple which was essentially distance from the very presence of God. But God is promising his presence during exile. And God is reiterating what he said back in Deuteronomy 4: 29 sBut from there (exile) you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. - Deut. 4:29
The Israelites had to wrestle in their hearts as to whether it is better to have all the comforts in this life and not God or is it better to have no comforts and have God? Do you remember in Exodus 33 Moses said he would rather not have the Promised Land if it came without the presence of God. God is graciously promising Israel that the thing they need more than anything else while in exile they will have.
The second promise to the Israelites is that he has a plan for them and that plan is good. Jeremiah 29:11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. - Jer. 29:11 It just flows so well. It feels like it belongs on Tim Tebow’s cheeks. His plan is for their shalom. All is not lost. There is a good future for them as God’s people. They will be back in their land one day. Their fortunes will be restored. God has not forgotten or forsaken them even though they have been unfaithful to him. His plan for them isn’t what they would have chosen for sure. Everyone who was old enough to hear and understand this message would have heard that they will never see the promised land again. But, their children and grandchildren would. God has a plan to sustain them in their exile and bring them home to their land one day.
These are both promises that he physically fulfilled for the Israelites. That’s what we call the near-term application, and that near-term application is not for us. The far-term application is what these promises are pointing toward for all of us - Jew and Gentile alike. We have to remember that Paul says that all the promises of God find their yes in Jesus. When we step back, we can see that we were spiritually exiled, but Jesus became an exile to make these promises true for us. Being in the very form of God, he emptied himself by taking on flesh and coming to this earth. He left the throne room to enter into exile on this earth. And that exile took full form on the cross when he was exiled from God’s love and bore the full wrath that we deserve so we might be at home with God who now dwells in us. We are now the temple. We are no longer in spiritual exile, but we are in physical exile in this world because God has made his home in us. We may share in the sufferings of Christ in this way, but the promises are now fully true for us.
Remember the two promises. His presence. Jesus said at his ascension, Lo I am with you always. Jesus isn’t a religious box to check, he is our Savior with whom we have a real relationship with real access. I woke up yesterday morning and one of my kids had gotten up early and was in my bed between Angela and me. Do you know what would happen if I woke up and found one of you in that bed? I’d call the police. But with a kid, that’s different. My kids are welcome there because they have that kind of access to me. This is the kind of access we have to Jesus. They can come to me in the middle of the night if they are scared. Who can go to the King of the Universe in the middle of the night if we are scared? We can. That’s the access we have to his presence.
The second promise was that he has a good plan for us. All the sufferings we experience in this world now work toward our sanctification and we will all one day be fully at home with Jesus when either we die or he comes back. Jesus willingly took on an exile on the cross that no Christian will ever know so we could have a path back home.
And understanding how these promises are fulfilled in Jesus is our power to bless our city. Our task isn’t just to stick it out, it’s to change the world. Jesus embraced exile so he could bless us and the more we understand this and experience him, the more we will have the power to do the same. The freedom to be wronged and not retaliate. The freedom to be opposed and still choose to bless. We can be treated outrageously, but behave respectfully. We can be mocked and bless in return. We can be attacked and rejoice as if being given new life. No other worldview has this kind of society transforming power because no other worldview has Jesus. It’s him - not political power, not cultural power, not economic power. It’s just his presence.
That is God’s promise for our shalom and our future hope and that’s our fuel to bless our city the way we have been blessed. The world says that we demand those around us change so we can be blessed. The world sees everyone who won’t change as the problem. But the gospel says we bless this world and seek its welfare because we were the enemy and God blessed us anyway. Jesus didn’t look down on the world, he had compassion for it and so should we.