Sermon text for today is Jeremiah 29 verses 1 to 9 and the sermon topic will be exilic discipleship. Jeremiah 29 1 to 9 now becoming a very familiar passage of scripture in our country in the last decade or so. Please stand for the reading of God's word. Jeremiah 29 1 to 9. Now these are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the remainder of the elders who were carried away captive, to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon. This happened after Jeconiah, the king, the queen mother, the eunuchs, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elassah, the son of Shaphan, and Gamariah, the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away captive, whom I have carried, or I have caused, rather, to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses and dwell in them. Plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters. And take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters, that you may be increased there and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city, where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it. For in its peace you will have peace. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners who are in your midst deceive you, nor listen to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely to you in my name. I have not sent them, says the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your. overarching sovereignty over all events in our lives. And we thank You that we're at the place that You want us to be. Bless us, Lord God, as we think about this text, consider it, and by Your Holy Spirit, help us to learn the implications of it for our day and age. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Please be seated. This Wednesday, we'll have an Ash Wednesday service here to begin the season of Lent at Reformation Covenant Church. And most of the churches or a number of the churches in Oregon City are going to be using this devotional guide that's on, copies of it are in the foyer. In fact, There probably be thousands and thousands of churches using the same devotional guide and we make it available to you, not because we agree with everything in it. It's kind of a typical evangelical presentation, but because the overall sense of it is quite right. and because other churches are doing it as well. And we want to have that show of unity here in Oregon City where we're seeking the peace of the city where God has placed us. This is based upon Seek God for the City. That text, of course, is a paraphrase or an implication of what we just read in Jeremiah 29. I might ask the I might say as well that there is an app for your Android and iPhones for this. If you want to get it, I've got it. And you can follow along with that. If you get the app, make sure you get the 2015 version, and then we'll all be on the same page. Now we're having Ash Wednesday because it's the beginning of Lent and there's a sense in which it seems like the church calendar is a very appropriate thing to remember in terms of describing the life of our savior, his advent, his work, his suffering, his resurrection and his ascension, which leads us to the second half of the church year, which is the work of Jesus Christ through his church. So it seems like this focuses us on the central events of the gospel as portrayed in the four gospel accounts. And so it seems to be a good thing to do. We won't have any actual ashes here. So we're sort of, you know, we're not fish or fowl. We're sort of liturgical, but not all the way. But we think it's a good thing to begin Lent with a consideration of our own sins as well as the sins of our city that we're trying to see corrected through our presence and our action. Our Ash Wednesday service, what we do is we go through the seven penitential psalms and we sing musical versions of each of the seven penitential psalms. It's about an hour. There will be a few comments on each of the psalms, but that's it. And then Good Friday, we'll have a Good Friday service as well to mark the culmination of Lent. So I bring it up, number one, because I want to encourage you to be here Wednesday. Number two, to make sure you get one of these and consider using it in your family worship time or your own personal devotional time or your devotional time with your spouse. And it's really, as I said, based upon the text that we just read. And that's really what I want to focus in on today are some implications from that text that you might or might not have thought about. And so the title of the sermon is Exilic Discipleship. This is a buzzword, a buzz phrase that I think is just starting to be used in American churches and maybe other churches. But I wanted you to know about it. And I think it's a very important message to take away from Jeremiah 29. And so we'll talk about that today. What I want to do then is we'll talk about Jeremiah 29, 1 to 9. Talk a little bit about what some of the specific terms mean in there. So we'll look at the text. And then we'll talk about what it means to be seeking the peace of the city while in exile. And what is the role of the church in discipling people, and specifically in marriage and vocation, so that they can effectively seek the peace of the city. So we'll look at Jeremiah 29 then we'll talk about what it means being in exile for our discipleship and the distinction between other forms of what we might think of ourselves as. And then finally we'll turn to that chart that's on the front of your order of worship today which comes from the epilogue to Tim Keller's book Every Good Endeavor. Not by him, it's actually written by the woman who's in charge of their faith and work ministry. And it sort of shows that as we work through seeking the peace of the city, these are some big places where a lot of Christians are, some of us are, and places we need to get to. So we'll talk about that. So Jeremiah 29. exile and the implications of that for our discipleship. And then finally, this kind of 10 from two sort of events. So that's kind of how we'll flow along. Now, the first thing that we notice here in the text is that they are in exile, right? So the translations go various different ways. But God says that he's carried them away captive to a particular city. So what he's declaring to them is, is they are now in exile and there's different words for that. Right. But the word exile seems to be a good one and is a is readily applied to the situation in Jeremiah. And you know what's going on in Jeremiah. Hopefully God has brought his judgment on the northern and southern kingdoms. The southern kingdom gets taken by Nebuchadnezzar into captivity. So this is the captivity that's being described. And in this text, Jeremiah, who remained in Israel or Judah while most of the captives were hauled away, sends them a letter to help them interpret what's happened to them. So they've had an external change in their circumstances. And Jeremiah writes to them, God writes to them through Jeremiah, so that they can understand what's going on, right? They can put categories to it. We're sort of, you know, some of us here in Oregon are a little taken aback at the events of the last couple of days. I mean, it was bad enough to hear all the ads for the Heathman Hotel and Fifty Shades of Grey Cocktails with Handcuffs, blah, blah, blah. That was bad enough to see that Oregon is the center of sort of that whole movement, which is astonishingly bad, I think. But then secondly, on Friday the 13th, before all those festivities start happening, we have national news made with the resignation of our governor effective next Wednesday. That wasn't the news. The national media stayed away from that story for the most part as it developed over the last six months. But what was the news was that we have history being made in Oregon. For the first time in our country's history, we're going to have an openly bisexual governor. Now, I don't know what that does to gay marriage. You understand, right? Bisexual governor. Who does she get married to? I don't know. So it challenges all that again. It's another click of the wheel. And so we're sort of, you know, in a way where we can see what it feels like to wake up one morning and realize this is not Kansas anymore. This is not Christian America. This is not what we kind of thought and hoped and worked that it might be. We're not in Jerusalem anymore. We're in Babylon. We're in exile. And, you know, so this text, I think, has particular significance for us. And, you know, we don't have the full import of the text the way they did. I mean, Nebuchadnezzar came and took them away, right? Trashed Jerusalem. hauled them away in chains. They were taken to what you could think of as a concentration camp, so to speak, although he wanted them to survive there and whatever. In a way, what Jeremiah is telling these people would be as if There was a message sent to Christians who were in prison during World War II in the concentration camps, and God gave them a message saying, pray for the peace of Berlin. And so what does that mean? That's difficult. The first thing it means is we understand our situation. And this is really the biggest point I want to make today is for us to understand our situation. You know, the last couple of verses that I read through verse nine, because there's lots of people saying, oh, no, this isn't what it has to be. We'll get out of this soon. We just get engaged enough and everything will turn around and we'll have Christian America again in a couple of years. Forget it. I believe our situation is very analogous to Jeremiah 29. We are in exile. And so what does it mean? Does that mean all hope is gone? Well, of course not. It means actually just the opposite. It means that we've been sent by God to all kinds of different sorts of people to proclaim the gospel. So the number one message, you know, that I want to get across today is that we're in exile. And then an implication of that is that how we disciple one another in the context of the church looks different because of that. If we're discipling one another in Christian America, OK, so go back 100 years, whatever it was, and we're the majority. Everybody thinks the way we do is an external, at least, obedience to God's word, including the fourth commandment, blah, blah, blah. Discipleship looks different than it does when we're a minority. culture in the midst of a state where we've got 50 shades of gray and a bisexual governor. There's difference there. Those are majority attacks on much of what Christians believe and that are very important to them. And how we talk about marriage, for instance, will be different because of that. It'll be more difficult, right? I mean, if you're in an exilic culture that doesn't value marriage, and in fact is doing everything that it can to wash away the significance of marriage through same-sex marriage, that means that when you struggle in your marriage, when you're surrounded by a culture with Fifty Shades of Grey going on in every direction, and available at every terminal, You know, you shouldn't wonder that you might have difficulty with fidelity and acceptance of one another in a marriage. The forces of this exiled place where we are, are blowing hard against your attempts to establish and maintain and grow Christian marriage, Christian family. Right? So, you know, why do we wake up and think it's weird that we're having trouble getting along with our spouse. Of course, we're going to have trouble. The culture plants all kinds of discontent. The culture plays on our own sins and fans those sins, right? So what I'm saying is exilic discipleship looks different because the culture doesn't support what you know is the truth of God's word. And because of that, we have to work a little harder in particular directions. I'm saying that based upon the external circumstances as I see them here in Oregon, we're in exile. And these texts are very important for us in determining our brand of discipleship. Now, the point could be made that the church is always in exile. So we've got 39 books of the Old Testament, right? And how many of those books do we see a vibrant, faithful, Yahwistic culture going on? How many? Not too many. What's the normal pattern? The normal pattern seems to be exilic. We've got 17 prophetic books. They're all about exile. They're all about why you're in exile. Maybe exile right in the middle of Jerusalem. Jerusalem has become sort of Egypt, right? You've been carried away right in the middle of the country and then you're literally carried away. We've got 17 books that instruct us as to what's happened and what we're to do living in this context. And Jeremiah is one of them. And so we turn to this text to help understand where we're at today. The Bible seems to normally see us in a setting of exile. Secondly, the biblical terminology here in the New Testament seems to reinforce this truth. First Peter 2.11, Beloved, I urge you, and this is an epistle that we read to ourselves, right? And we know there's a historical context, but this is God's Spirit speaking to us, I think. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Well you know that there you have it right. So it seems to be in perpetuity the Christian church is addressed as sojourners and exiles and not only are they addressed as exiles they're warned about particular temptations they will face in the middle of Babylon. There's a Leonard Cohen song. Let me see you move the way they do in Babylon. See, so Babylon has a particular structure to it that's going to present particular temptations to those in exile there. And Peter picks that right up, picks that right up, and defines or describes the Christian church as sojourners and exiles. Earlier, 1 Peter 1.17, and if you call on him as father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, Conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, throughout the time of your sojourning. Again, ultimately, we're headed for the heavenly country, right? So you have a sojourning in exile. And Peter has no trouble describing the Christian as being just that. Hebrews 11, 13, and actually, there's a lot of texts in Hebrews 11, the hall of faith, right? That say the same thing. But in Hebrews 11, 13, we read, these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar. and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. Do you acknowledge that? Now I know that ultimately they were looking forward to the coming of Messiah and Messiah comes to fulfill that and to make a way to our heavenly home. But I think that's what we're supposed to do is to see that not just in terms of our circumstances but generally the Christian is described in the New Testament and then it's described as people of faith in the Old Testament that our normal state is to see ourselves in the context of exile. Do you? When you wake up in the morning, do you think about that? What are the implications of being in Babylon today? How do I conduct myself as an exile in a country that opposes me? That is the normal state, I think, that the Bible says we're to exist in the context of. Abraham, right? He's called, and Hebrews 11 talks about Abraham. He comes. He's a stranger in a strange land. He's in exile, so to speak. In the context of him being the father of the faithful, so are we in him. What was Abraham doing? Verse 10 of Hebrews 11. He was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Abraham looks forward to God's city. We're seeking God for the city and the model of that is the city whose architect and builder is God. God builds cities. And what we're doing is living in the midst of a city here that we're seeking God for the peace of it, the well-being of it. And we're doing that based upon the eternal city of God when Christ returns and the new Jerusalem is made fully realized in the Eschaton. So that's what we're aiming toward. That's our pattern. That's where our citizenship is at the right hand of God in Jesus Christ in the heavens, in that city. But that city then gives us a model for how to live in exile, both avoiding certain things, but more importantly, how to seek the peace of the place where God has placed us. We're like Abraham. We're looking forward. We're exiles in that large sense. And frequently in the history of the church, we're exiles in a political sense as well. So I think the Bible tells us that we're in exile. And so the text here from Jeremiah is very significant for us. And we can learn a lot from it. And it becomes then a way of understanding who we are. What do we do? Well, there's several things that Jeremiah says we do. So looking at the text now, and if you have your Bibles open, looking at Jeremiah 29, there's much that could be said here that we won't have time to talk about. But let's talk about a few things, OK? He puts it in the historical context, of course, the letter. But then the letter itself, we want to focus on that. Thus says the Lord of Hosts, which is a funny thing to say. You may not think about it that way. But the first thing he does is he addresses himself as the lord of hosts, hosts or heavenly hosts, also used in a military sense, the lord of armies. So you serve the lord of armies. You're in exile in Portland, Oregon, and the first thing God says to you is, I'm the Lord of hosts, I'm the Lord of armies, which means that this hasn't happened unbeknownst to God or because he's not a God who's involved in armies. He's going to say here in a moment, he did it. He's the Lord of hosts. But secondly, he's the Lord of hosts, meaning that we serve the God. Yes, he brought us into exile. He's going to say that in a minute, but he's the God that can bring us out and will. He'll make us successful in the command he gives us to seek the peace of the city. And in the context of these exiles, eventually he would bring them back into their own particular land. But he's the Lord of Hosts. That's the first thing he says, the God of Israel to all who are carried away captive. So this is to you and me, not just the leadership, right? whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon. Now, if we look at the first few verses, it says several times Nebuchadnezzar carried them away to Babylon. But here, one of the first things God wants us to know in exile is that we didn't get here through lack of Christian voting. We didn't get here because there were some conspiracies or plots or because someone was trying to conquer Christian people. All that's true. Those things are actually in play. But ultimately we got here because God carried us into captivity. We are right where He wants us to be. Okay? So now that's tremendously liberating. That means you don't have to close your eyes. Christine and I, years ago, had a vacation down in California and we were hauling a trailer behind us in this van and on one freeway in California, there were six semis on either side of her, right? And she's trying to go down the road between these two huge semis, battling, flying down the freeway. And she said she had to combat the desire to just close her eyes, right? To get through this. You know what that's like. And we can be like that in our context today. Bisexual governor. History-making Oregon again. And so you just want to say, I don't want to hear this stuff. I don't want to do it. But God says, wait a minute. Understand. I put you here. I put you here for a reason. And we can take a deep breath, right? I mean, it's still exile. There's still difficult times in front of us. We still are the minority. We're still oppressed. And we will continue to be. That's OK. God has placed us here for a particular purpose and reason. And he's going to tell us what we're supposed to do. He's going to tell us what to do now. We don't got to figure it out, you know, in the big picture of things. God tells us here. I've done this. And he says, here's your job. Here's what I want you to do. Build houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit. So settle down, number one. Capitalize yourselves. Build a house because you're not getting out of this quick. Don't shelter in a tent the rest of your life here. Build a house. Settle down. Get roots in the exile place where God has set you. It's going to be a long time. Then he tells them at the end, don't believe these guys that say it's going to be short. Exile is short of our lives right now. So he says, capitalize yourself. Settle down. Then he says, plant gardens and eat their fruit. Now that's vocation. Remember that the context for the Old Testament is agrarian culture. This is vocation. This is what they're supposed to do to make money. This is what they do to feed themselves. So first he says, you're going to be in this for the long term. Then he says, engage in vocation. Plant. Eat. Live from your labor. So he says, have vocation. And secondly, he says, take wives and beget sons and daughters and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters, that you may be increased there and not diminished. So settle down. And your first task is vocation. Your second task is family. Work on your marriage. work on bringing up your children in the faith, work on them having succession by marrying godly people. So he says, and it's kind of interesting because this is the way it worked for Adam, right? And there's language here that kind of reflects creation imagery, by the way, in terms of planting and stuff. So it's like Adam, he was given a vocation by God and then he was given a wife. In Proverbs, right, you get your field established and then you have a family. And, you know, I don't want to argue about the order or make anybody feel bad, but these are the two big tasks of life, obviously, right? And so God says how you live in exile is to figure out vocation and to figure out family. Those are the two big deals, okay, at least the first two big deals. And then third, he says, and seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive and pray to the Lord for it. This is the difference maker. You know, the first if all we did is look at the first couple of verses, then it's OK to be a Christian ghetto, a monastic community. We're just keep ourselves away from, you know, the movies and the governor and everything else as far as we can. And we cloister up, and we cloister up making just enough money to feed ourselves, and we have a family, and we have kids, and they're cloistered up too. But no, God says, no, don't do that. You're to seek the peace of the city where I have taken you captive. So he's brought them into exile. We are into exile. God has brought us to this place in our country, in our state's history, in your personal history. This is where he's placed you. And I believe these commands are yours. OK. One, get ready for the long haul. Two, work on vocation. Three, work on your marriage and your family. And four, seek the peace of the city. Don't become monastic. Don't become ghetto. Don't become internally oriented all the time. You've got to seek the peace of the city. What does it mean to seek the peace of the city? Well, this is a huge topic in the last 10, 15 years, but just a couple of simple points. This word seek is an interesting one. It has several connotations. One, and it actually reinforces this in the second half of the verse, pray to the Lord for it. So when we have these devotionals that have you engage in daily prayer for 40 days of Lent, praying for the city, this is obedience to this command. So to seek God for the city, seek the peace of the city means to seek God, to pray to God for the city, which means you have a concern for it. And if you're going to pray, you're going to understand what to pray for. Right. So, number one, seek means to pray for the city, pray for the place you've been exiled to. OK. Which immediately sort of changes your perspective on these. Number two, seek has the idea of investigating. There's a cognitive aspect to it. He doesn't say at first, pray to the city for it. He says, seek the peace of the city and to seek out something. means to discern the components of a thing. It's to know a thing to seek is to attain knowledge and understanding of a thing, which means that if we're going to seek the peace of the city, I think what it means is we have to understand the city. We have to seek cognitive understanding of where the city is and what God's city looks like, where we're where we are now and where we're going to. That's implied, I think, in this word, seek. So there's prayer, and then there's study. Then there's a third use of the term seek. In one of the Psalms, David says, no one seeks for my soul. More modern translations translate it, no one cares for my soul. When the ark was being carried around and they didn't handle it right, God said they didn't seek the ark. In other words, they didn't care for it properly. They mishandled it. So a third implication of seeking the peace of the city is caring for it. In other words, actively involved in its care. David didn't say it's something nobody thought about. I mean, nobody cared for my soul, he said. You know what that's like. So there's three things we're supposed to do in seeking the peace of the city. One, we're to pray for it. Kids, listen now, OK? Six years old, you all can understand this. Here's what you're supposed to do for the cities where you live, kids. You're supposed to pray. And mom and dad are going to encourage you, particularly over the next six or seven weeks, to pray for the cities in which we live. Kids, you're supposed to pray until you're supposed to understand the city. Now, you can't do that much as a six-year-old, but the older you get, the more you and your parents can sort of understand what makes the city tick, what's going on. It means you're engaged somewhat, OK? And you don't have to be like me, a complete news junkie that gets every piece of data on the political implications of Kitzhaber's resignation and Kate Brown's ascension and all that stuff, and I already know about 10, 15 things about it. You may not have to be like that, but you should be thinking about it some. You should sort of understand where the city and the state are. How do you pray for it otherwise, right? General prayers. No. God likes specific. So you're supposed to, kids, you're supposed to kind of understand the cities in which you live. And your parents will, part of discipling you is to disciple you how to understand the city. And then third, you're supposed to care about it. Whatever city you live in, here in Oregon City, if you're here, you're supposed to care for this city, which means an emotional attachment to it. You desire its well-being. And it means involvement in actually bringing this care to pass. So if you're in exile, and we always are, and we are particularly in exile here now in Oregon, Washington, Pacific Northwest, whatever, then these are the things we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be working on our marriages. We're supposed to be working on our vocations. We're supposed to be praying, understanding, and actively involved in the life of the city. To what end? Seeking that, well, you know, you have different translations. The welfare is what the ESV says, or the prosperity, some translations say. The simplest translation is usually the best. And the translation here, and this word is repeated three times in this text, is peace. It's shalom. It's the general term for peace that always means in the Bible not a cessation of hostilities, not a lot of money, not welfare in some general sense. Peace is the presence of God and the blessings that flow from God's presence in your life. That's what peace is comprehensively throughout the Old Testament. So when we seek God for the peace of the city, it doesn't mean some sort of general common good apart from the presence of God affecting the people in the city. I mean, Jonah sought the peace of Nineveh by telling them they were going to be destroyed in three days. They repented. He didn't care for them and God chastised him for that. But the point is, you know, it doesn't mean just whatever the city wants to do, we're cool with it and we should help out and get a shovel or a rake and, you know, pitch in with everybody. Sometimes you do do that. But ultimately, the goal is peace, the presence of God with them. and the blessings that come from knowing God and structuring our lives around him. That's the goal of all of this. That's the goal of our caring for the city. That's the goal of our understanding the city. What does Paul do when he gets to Athens? He figures it out. He cares for them. He's seeking the peace of Athens, right? He's praying for him. He's walking around. He's understanding the city. And then he gets mobilized in doing something about it by going to the philosophers of the city and challenging them or proclaiming them the good news of the resurrection of Jesus. And he does it smartly. He understands the city. So this is our job. And the goal of all of that, the goal of our vocations, the goal of our families, is ultimately the shalom of whatever place God has placed us. It's not an insular, ingrown, interior thing. It is a missional, outgoing, working in the community sort of thing. Okay? So that's what's going on in this text. And God, you know, he doesn't command this. And then he actually tells us there's a personal motivation. He says, do this because in their peace and their shalom, you will have peace. Now, that verse has several things going on. One is it's an incentive to us, right? It incentivizes us. And to realize that our faith, God has placed us in this place. We're right where he wants us. And not only that, but he has tied our faith and our well-being to the well-being of the city. There's no way of escaping, OK? It means that if you don't seek their peace and that develops, you're not going to have much peace in your home either. You try that monastic thing and it's not going to work out because God doesn't want it. Stinks to him. He wants you seeking the peace of the city. Secondly, it helps identify that I'm right in using this generalized term shalom, thinking of the peace of the city. He immediately ties it to the peace that we're going to have in the peace of the city. You'll have peace. He's clearly telling us it's the same thing. He wants for the city what he wants for you. God loves the city. That's why he was upset with Jonah. Jonah did his job. Repentance happened, but Jonah didn't care for the city. That's why we do this stuff. OK, again, I don't I'm not recommending everything. I don't you know, there's some Arminian stuff in here, blah, blah, blah. It's OK, though. It's OK. But the point is, there's an immediate application of this sermon is to think in terms of our exilic nature and to take from the text before us the commands that God gives us in terms of where we're at now. That's what Jeremiah says. That's, I think, what the Spirit wants us to focus on here. And I want to talk about some aspects of this that may be obvious, maybe not. The two areas that are in conjunction with seeking the city are marriage and vocation. OK, so if we take this as a manual for what to do in exile. You know, it's seeking the peace, but it's also vocation and marriage and all those things are connected up. God doesn't give us compartments to our lives. They're all connected. We won't have peace in our families, as an example, if we don't seek for and attain the peace of the city. You know, it's interesting because in first Timothy two, what is Paul tell Timothy? It's a first Timothy is a manual for church, right? Here's what you do in church. And chapter one's kind of an introduction based on some doctrine and stuff. Chapter two gets right down to what you're supposed to do. What's the most important thing? And so first Timothy two, verse one says, the most important thing is to pray for the rulers of your city is to seek the peace of the city in corporate prayer. And then he says, because, you know, if God wants everyone saved, all kinds of people saved. So the goal of that is not just bless them, Lord God, in their paganness. The goal is bless them through your shalom and your peace. So God says he wants all kinds of people to be saved to pray for their salvation. That's a comprehensive term in the Bible. And then secondly, he says, because when things are like that, you will do well. Right. He says, you know, well, You know, at times as you pray for and seek the peace of the city and attain it, then your lives are going to be quiet and peaceful. You won't have all the disturbances of a bisexual governor or a weird health care system that makes everybody start attending to what the government's doing. So when we seek the peace, he says in First Timothy 2, it actually produces the ability to work our own lives, our own family lives quietly and to do our jobs well. What's he doing? He's just channeling Jeremiah 29. That's what Paul's doing. And Paul's doing it in the pastoral epistle that tells us why you're here today. What are we doing today? Well, we're here today, first and foremost, Paul says, to pray for, to seek the peace of the city and its rulers, and to seek a peace in which they have relationship with God that produces blessing, because in their blessing, in their peaceable blessing, you'll be blessed. Again, the evidence is overwhelming. The New Testament church saw itself as exilic disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that's what we're doing here. And the two areas, as I said, marriage and vocation. So what's the point? The point is, this is why this is sermon 18 or 19 on vocation. This is why two years ago I did a whole bunch of sermons on marriage. Because those two areas have primary significance of how we live as exiles in the context of the city. Marriage and vocation are right in there. And then third, and I've preached a series on this, social justice. The necessity, and it's a bad term, its origins are liberal, but all it means is justice in society. And we would say it's defined by God's word and the methods to attain it are defined by God's word. And if we agree on that, we're cool. In fact, we're not just cool, we're doing the gospel, right? What is the gospel? What's the gospel? We were watching a Right Now Media study by Gabe Lyons called The Next Christian. It's very provocative. I'm considering doing it as a Sunday school class. Don't know if I will or not. Well, anyways, but he gave lines is interviewing his fellow and he says, you know, what's the gospel game says to him? Well, he says, number one, it's personal salvation. Of course, it's God dealing with our sins definitively through the work of Jesus Christ and his death, resurrection, ascension. But number two, it has more import than that. He said most Christians begin in Genesis three with the fall. And then they look at Romans 3, where the fall is taken care of through the gospel of Jesus. And, you know, that's about all we need if the gospel is about personal salvation only. Life or fire insurance. But, you know, it's weird because the Bible is quite long. There's all kinds of things it says between Genesis 3 and Romans 3 that are very significant. And in fact, the Bible doesn't start with Genesis three. It starts with Genesis one and two. It starts by telling you and I who we are created in God's image. Three gets us off the track. Right. And Jesus's death in the gospel relates to our personal salvation. Absolutely true. But it doesn't stop there. The point is, the gospel is much broader than that. The gospel is the good news that Jesus is bringing the peace of the city, the peace of the planet. It's comprehensive. For years, I don't know if it still has it or not, on the envelopes of Reformation Covenant Church, the return address said, proclaiming the good news of the ascension of the Savior King to the throne. This was a phrase I first heard from R.J. Rushduny, and I just loved it. What's the gospel? It's good news. So let's use that phrase. It's the good news. What's the good news of? The ascension of the Savior King, Jesus Christ. Jesus, he'd save his people from their sins. Christ, he's the anointed priest and king. So Jesus Christ, translating those terms, Savior King. And see, it's not enough just to believe in Jesus. He's the king, too. So Savior King, he's ascended to the right hand of the Father and all his enemies will be made his footstool. All sin will be dealt with. So the gospel is this full blown assertion that Jesus has come to make the world right, to empower you and I in terms of our calling in Genesis 1 and 2, not just to reverse the fall of Genesis 3. And that is a message that is resonating throughout much of Christianity now. Praise God. So our job is to see these things as a process of living as exilic disciples, proclaiming the gospel, and working out the implications of the gospel as well. And marriage and vocation, social justice. That's how I got off on this. Jesus says in the Gospels, he's bringing justice to victory. We have a relationship to society and culture. And that's the third point of Jeremiah 29. Seek the peace of the city. That's why these sermons that I'm preaching, that's why we're doing it. Now, we've got all kinds of activities out there for marriage. We don't make good enough use of them at this church. I believe we should probably have a Sunday school class, short term, a Bible study or two during the year that we're always offering on marriage. That requires staffing. But I think that would be good because looking at discipleship, you make disciples of people in their marriages The context of our exile makes that more difficult today than it was, say, 50 years ago, as I said earlier. And so I think we need to put more energy into that now. And number two, that's why, you know, in addition to that, the church has not broadly provided the same sorts of resources that the church has for marriage. Tons of them, a lot of them bad, some of them good. Lots of resources. They don't do this for vocation. Why not? In fact, vocation is front-loaded in Jeremiah 29 and in Genesis 1 and 2. Vocation is front-loaded. And if the purpose is seeking the peace of the city, that includes our work, then vocation is absolutely vital. Vocation is about being God's fingers feeding the world, right? And vocation is about cultural advancement. We've learned a lot about vocation the last 17 sermons. Well, I've said a lot about it. How much we've learned is hard to tell. And we haven't learned much because as people, we have a lot of information, a lot of content thrown at us. But if we don't take that content, most of it, talk about it, discuss it, Think it through. Is it right? Is it wrong? What does it mean? What are its implications? This vocational concept and then make some commitments to do it. If we don't do that, then we've learned a little interesting ideas, but it hasn't changed our vocation. So we need the same thing that we have with marriage, I think, for vocation. We need to be taking our young people who want to change the world. That's the generation coming up. That's what they want to do. Praise God. And we want to help them to tie in, to examine different vocations, to think about their vocations in the kind of terms we've used for the last 17 weeks. And we want them to be jazzed about vocation. And we want to help direct them and give them some opportunities to see different kinds of vocation. What are the bases for making those decisions about vocational choice? That's the job of the church. That's exilic discipleship relative to vocation, because the culture If we just leave it up to the ethos, then they're going to choose the highest paying jobs or the most sexy jobs or the thing that floats their boat today. You know, we have a job in exilic discipleship to help train, to disciple people, all of us, in terms of vocation, just like you do for marriage and family. Not just vocation choice, vocational development. You know, it'd probably be useful if they do this at Keller's Church, where a bunch of businessmen in a particular kind of vocation get together. They'll have a speaker about accounting or law or the arts, whatever it is. They'll have some courses and stuff. They'll have occasional discussion groups. They'll try to self-consciously grab a hold of their particular vocation and see how it's part of seeking the peace of the city. So I think that's what we need. In order to accomplish that, we have to see ourselves once more as exilic disciples. We have to see ourselves in the context of exile. Now, let me talk a little bit about if we don't see ourselves that way. Let's say we see ourselves as a Jerusalem model, where we're a Christian subset and we're happy within ourselves. The exilic model points outward. The Jerusalem model points inward. The Jerusalem model anticipates not a lot of opposition and support. The exilic model actually, when we disciple one another in the exilic model, we expect the kind of persecution, being made fun of, opposition, the particular idolatries that are thrown at us in the workplace and in our marriages, et cetera. We sort of expect that stuff, and we're sort of ready for it, OK? That's what I'm talking about. And in terms of inward or outward, this is huge. The Jerusalem model, the model that we're a Christian culture, focuses everything here at RCC. You come here or if you go to somebody's house, it's still about the church. It's still about talking with one another and fellowshipping in Jesus and having a good time and long extended conversations about this or that doctrinal issue. Right. That's an interior model. A lot of it's just great. But I think that over a long period of time, That kind of inward facing model, which essentially is to some degree a rejection of the command to seek the peace of the city, I don't think God approves of that. And I think that what happens, and I've seen this over and over again, is that when we focus internally all the time, We end up having long discussions about this or that doctrinal position, this or that husband and wife relationship, this or that parenting method. And it becomes all interior. And we start to talk and talk and we start to, you know, argue with one another. And it's all about stuff here. And we forget about out there. Now, it's good to encourage each other. It's good to have conversations. It's good to challenge existing paradigms of how the scriptures, what the scriptures say about this, that or the other domestic or ecclesiastical issue. I'm not putting that down. But I am saying that if that becomes the focus of a church, if Jerusalem is at the focus of the church, then that interior thing can become somewhat damaging. Because God wants us using a significant amount of our marginal time seeking the peace of the city, praying for it, understanding it, mobilizing in terms of it. So ask yourself, first of all, think about your time. Probably 80 percent of people that are involved in vocation or occupation get a paycheck, right? Maybe as much as 80 percent of their time isn't spent with their family. or with their church. Well, here at RCC we've got a big chunk of time, but typically not. It's spent with co-workers. It's spent in vocation. How much of your efforts to understand the scriptures and your community group discussions is helping you for that 80 percent use of your time? Well, if we if we understand, you know, the idea of this exilic discipleship, then we're going to understand the significance that we've got to make sure that we're doing things to build up what we do in the context of our vocations. How much of your marginal time? OK, so you come home from work and you're done with the chores at the home or whatever it is, and now you got a couple hours in the evening, right? Five or six days a week. You got maybe a Saturday. You have some marginal time there. How much of that marginal time is involved in missional activities? I know, you say, well, don't make me feel guilty about that. OK, I get it. But are you seeking the peace of the city? And I think when God adds seeking the peace to marriage and vocation, it means there's another component there. If we're not using, to some extent, some amount of our marginal time to be understanding the cities and cultures we're in, our neighborhoods, our city, whatever it is, and trying to help move that along in a biblical frame, I'm not sure we're doing this. You can push back in Q&A time. That's what it's for. But I wonder if exilic discipleship doesn't imply to us some use of our marginal time to seek the peace of the place where God has put us. Much more could be said about exilic versus Jerusalem models, right? The Jerusalem model, you expect comfort and security. If this is a Christian country, Christian city, whatever it is, if we've got a Christian subset, we expect security and comfort. But if we understand the nature of who we are as exiles, we don't expect that. And when we don't get that, it doesn't Frightened us. It doesn't mean we've done something wrong. It doesn't mean we're not where God wants us. God put us in exile. OK. People go to work and then I hear people talk to me about work and the work people are, you know, lustful or doing this bad sexual stuff or they're they're telling lies all the time or they're bragging or they're slandering one another. Well, what do you expect? We're in Babylon. And the people in your workplace are generally not going to be Christian, or certainly not committed Christian. How do you want them to live? Is what we want people to do is just to be ethical without having the power of the Holy Spirit? Is that what we want? No, that's not what we want. We want people to know Jesus Christ. No, we don't want them to be jerks, but I'm saying expect it. Don't be surprised. Find a way of coping with it biblically. Talk to your community group. Have them pray for you, whatever it is. But if you're going to work, and all that's upsetting you every time it surfaces, you don't quite get it. We're in exile. That's who the Babylonians are. Now we're seeking their change, we're developing relationships, friendships, we're seeking their peace, but we don't expect comfort and security in the workplace. We don't expect our workplaces to be places where merit is rewarded. Sometimes it is, praise God, but that's not what we expect. We expect party politics or office politics to win more often than not. Don't we? I do. I think that's what it's going to be like, at least until more transformation of the city is taking place. In a Jerusalem model, Our identity is taken for granted, right? Everything is reinforcing of who we are if we're in a Christian culture, predominantly Christian culture. And our identity is taken for granted. In an exilic model, you have challenges to your identity all the time. And you have to ask yourself, am I living for Jesus? Is this my identity as I'm going through the kind of relationships that I have? Your identity will be challenged, even discriminated against. You get the point. You can fill in a lot more, right? But that's what it means. Exilic discipleship means coming to grips with the reality that God has placed us in exile. And actually that is the normal state of the Christian life. And in that exile we have to work hard. At the two major non-seeking the city tasks, marriage and vocation. And that's why I've done these sermons the last couple of years on marriage and vocation and social justice is because this is what God wants us doing as a church. He wants us to engage in these three. He wants us not to assume our marriages are going to be great. They would be in a Christian America, not to assume the vocations are going to be a great thing and your boss will be Christian or at least treat you Christian. No. You're going to have to work hard at knowing how to engage in vocation and how to protect, develop, and mature your marriage because we're in exile today. And the beginning place in that, I think, is recognizing where we're at, recognizing that God has in his sovereignty put us here, And he's put us here because he's interested in the transformation of all the world. We're to seek the peace of the city. That's why we're here. We're in exile because God wants us transforming wherever we're at. Abraham Piper said there's not one square inch. of the created order and things that go on in human life, over which Jesus doesn't say, mine, mine. And living in exile helps us to remember that, that our marriages are Jesus's, that our jobs are Jesus's. And it's also a reminder to us that this city and the city where you live, the neighborhood you live, that belongs to Jesus. And He's put you here to advance the crown rights of King Jesus in every area of our life and in the place where He's placed us. Let's pray. Father God, we thank You for Your Scriptures. Thank You for Your sovereignty. Thank You for Your blessings to us in Jesus. And thank You for giving us all kinds of direction about how to live in the times in which we live. We pray, Father, that You would help us in our community groups and are getting together with friends and in our families to think about these things to discuss them. And we pray that you would help us Lord God to start holding one another accountable to build our marriage and to build our vocation and to seek the peace of our city. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.