Jeremiah chapter 29. Jeremiah chapter 29. We'll begin in verse four is where we'll start tonight. As I was just studying today and yesterday, I was just thinking about this idea of living as exiles. We read so much in the Bible and the Old Testament about different times where God's people lived in exile, whether it was in Egypt, whether it was in Babylon, which is the case in Jeremiah's text, but God's people continually, it seemed, were found in exile. And if we look at the New Testament, I think what we find is that that's the reality of who we are as Christians. We are a people living in a real sense in exile. What do I mean by that? Well, in the New Testament, Christians are called by a few different things that have this idea of living in exile. We're called aliens. right, where those that are aliens in a foreign land even are sometimes called foreigners. We're called a peculiar people. And so that's the picture that God gives even in a New Testament context of his people just in this world. Those that are part of the kingdom of God, part of the family of God, we're a people living in exile, understanding that we are not in our homeland. That's the reality of the Christian walk. But I think that we don't always really understand what it means to live as exiles in this world. And so in this passage today, obviously there's a specific context to what's going on here. The people of Jerusalem have been exiled. They've been taken away. They've been carried away to Babylon. And here the prophet Jeremiah is going to send a letter. We'll find ourselves in the middle, or really right at the beginning of this letter that he sends to those in exile. And through that, he's going to give to them God's instructions, right? He's gonna give them God's instructions for living as a people in exile. They're God's people, they're living in a foreign land, And he tells them how he would have them to live. I think we can be challenged by this passage of scripture to look and to see if we're living in the world as those who might call ourselves Christians, are we living as God's people in exile? Because there's a choice, right? When you find yourself in exile, there's a choice to make about how you're going to live. On one extreme, you have isolation. You can choose to live in isolation. We see that sometimes if you've ever gone to a major city and there's an area of the city that's dominated by a particular group, they're not from that country, they're not from that city, but they have all live in the same place. kind of the same general vicinity right you go to certain places and there's uh there's you know back in the day it was little italy and little greece and there's a lot of major cities have a chinatown and major cities there's a lot of uh of arab dominated neighborhoods there's there's uh jewish dominated neighborhoods in major cities and so uh a lot of times they people come together and they try to maintain every little bit, they isolate themselves really as much as is possible from the outside world. That's what we think about, we might think about like the Amish, right? They do that to an extreme measure, right? Not in an ethnic sense, but they do it in a religious sense where they completely have separated themselves from the greater picture of the culture of the country in which they live. That's the potential choice of isolation on one extreme. On the other extreme, we have complete assimilation, where we completely give ourselves over to the place in which we find ourselves. We're in exile, we find ourselves here, and I'm going to be as much like everybody else as is possible. Right? I'm going to do what they do. I'm going to say what they say. I'm going to eat what they eat. I'm going to think what they think. I'm going to buy into everything about the place in which I live. An exile, those are the extremes that you can choose from. I think there's a ground in the middle. We're going to get there in just a moment. So just keep that in your mind. Isolation on one end and complete assimilation on the other. And so I think here. This text of scripture is going to tell us how God commanded his people, and it's not gonna be a complete side-by-side comparison, but I think we can make a good application to us as Christians living in a world where God calls us to be in the world, but not of the world. So I'm gonna just read verses four through nine in Jeremiah 29 tonight. There the Bible says, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away captive. whom I have caused 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. And so in the beginning of this passage in verse 4, we're really just told the audience, right? He's writing this letter, this is the prophet Jeremiah, and he's sending this out and the word of the Lord to those who have been carried away captive. They've been taken to Babylon. They've been exiled. Just as Jeremiah told them was going to happen, he was persecuted for it. All of those things that took place in the life of Jeremiah, they have been carried away. And now he's writing to them God's instructions for how they're to live as a people in exile. And I would just point out to you as well, first and foremost, that God claims, takes ownership of their exile here. He says, I have caused you, caused to be, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon. Now, obviously, the people, God's people had been in sin, they had sinned against God, they'd broken covenant with God, as they had many times in the past, they'd been warned, they'd been warned, they'd been warned, but God says, you are where you are because I put you there. All right. And I think that's one of the things just on the beginning on the front end that we have to recognize our situation in life where we find ourselves. Yes, we can end up in certain problems and situations because of our sinful choices. That's possible. We've got to recognize that where we find ourselves is fully within God's control. And so we can find ourselves wanting to lament as people who want to be godly in the midst of ungodliness. We want to lament, God, why do you have me here? I don't want to be here. This time, this place is so this, and it's so that, and it's so wicked, and it's so ugly. And we kind of wring our hands. We've got to recognize we're not where we are by accident. God knows where you are. God knows what he is doing. And I think here perhaps that God is really encouraging the people with the fact that the Babylonians weren't the ones that got him there, got the people there. They were the instrument that God used to carry out this chastisement of his people, but Babylon was not in control. The wicked worldly rulers in Nebuchadnezzar, they were not in control. God was the one who had put this together. God was the one who had sent them to their exile. And so I think as we, as Christians, if we think about it in our context, and we think about, okay, we're Christians, if we know Christ, if you know Jesus today, if you've repented of your sins, you've placed your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, his life and his death and his resurrection, you find yourself as a stranger, as an exile, as a foreigner. It's what the Bible calls us. then how do we view that? How do we think about that? How do we recognize? Do we think that God has messed up by making that our reality? Do we somehow arrive at the conclusion that, well, God didn't really want us to live in this kind of state? No, this was how God designed it, that we would be a people of his kingdom in this world doing his work, even though it means we are going to be that peculiar people. And so how does God tell these people that find themselves in that situation to live? Well, first off, he says, build houses and dwell in them. Now that may seem like a, you say, well that's a pretty normal thing to tell them to do. Build your house, live in your house. But you've got to recognize that there were competing voices over God's voice, in this case coming from the prophet Jeremiah, that we're telling the people other things, which we'll get to towards the end of the passage that we're covering tonight. But there were those that originally were saying, this isn't going to happen, we're not going to be exiled. And then when it began to happen, they were saying, oh, this isn't going to last. And God tells them this is going to last. In fact, He tells them how long it's going to last. It's going to last for them 70 years. The exile is going to continue for 70 years. And so God tells them, you build a house and you dwell in it. This isn't a camping trip. All right? You're not just here for a moment. that we're gonna be there for a while. Accept your situation as exiles. And I would say that to you, I would say that to Christians, I would say that to myself, that we have to accept and acknowledge our situation as exiles in this world and commit to living to the glory of God as a people in exile. Right? That we've got to look at our situation and understand God has got us here, God has blessed us, God has called us to himself, and we are called to live to his glory. You ever hear, I've heard preachers say this through the years, right? They talk about people and they say, man, that guy, he's so heavenly minded, he's no earthly good. And I've heard that said all my life. I don't know if I've ever actually encountered that person, but I know what they're getting at. It's those people that want to over-spiritualize everything, I'm headed for heaven, I'm bound for glory, and all those things that we should think about, we should rejoice about, but we use that almost as an escape clause to do nothing while we're here. And that is the wrong direction to go. They were gonna be here for a while. And God tells them, you put down roots and you get to work, because that's the next thing he tells them. He says, plant and eat. Plant a garden and eat the fruit of your garden. It's really kind of the same idea, but what God's telling them there is not just have a place to live, but have a means to provide for yourself, at least your basic sustenance. Provide for your needs. Now hear me when I say I believe that God gives us each day our daily bread. I believe that. I believe our provision in this life comes from God. But, I don't think that the general pattern for us to live in this world is that we get up every morning and we pray until we go to bed at night and say, God, just meet my needs and bring me some food and bring me a little money to get the things I need and bring me this. That's not how God generally works. Are there some situations in the Bible where God works that way? Sure there are. Manna from heaven, 40 years in the wilderness. There are times when those things happen. But the general pattern is, is that we pray, we ask God, God gives us the strength, the ability to go out and to undertake the work that we need to undertake to provide for ourselves in this life. Understanding that it still all comes from the hand of God because He has given us every bit of the ability to do that. We don't just hole up and again in complete isolation and pray and hope that we're going to be cared for miraculously. God gives us provision, but most often He does it through the work of our hands. We pray God give us this day our daily bread. God gives us the strength by the work of our hands to work and we're rewarded with pay or whatever that is, we're paid a wage and we're able to provide what we need to get through this life. God's not telling them to just isolate and he's gonna send ravens with food, right? Like he did it one time and he's gonna send manna from heaven. He's telling them, you need to establish a life here. Build a house, dwell in it, plant a garden, eat from it. Friends, we need to keep our eyes on eternal things more than most of us do, I believe that. I think in our day and age, most of us are more concerned with earthly things. We're more concerned with where our food's gonna come from, where our housing's gonna come from, where this is gonna come from, and those are legitimate concerns. All right? And so we don't need to overemphasize that direction either. We need to trust in God and go about the work in the best way that we can in obedience to God. But here the caution was, don't think that this is gonna fall on you, that this is all gonna come and you're not gonna have to do anything. His encouragement to them is don't hole up and just wait on my deliverance. That's not what we're called to do as Christians either. We're not called to just hole up and huddle up in our churches and just wait till Jesus comes or just wait till we die and we go to glory. That's not the call of the Christian. The call of the Christian is to build a life through the leadership of God, through the provision of God, to live a life in this world, even though we're in exile, and live a life that glorifies God. Live a life that expands the kingdom of God. That's what he goes on to say, I believe, in verse six. He says, God tells his people to 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. He tells them to multiply. Now we got to be careful here that we don't overread what's being said. All right? He's telling them to marry. He's telling them to have children. He's telling them really to grow in strength and number. And he tells them to take wives for your sons, give your daughters to husbands. If we don't look at this closely, we may get the idea that God was telling them that it was okay to intermarry with the Babylonians. All right, that's not what God's saying either. All right, here's why I say that. I think probably the thing that I've seen, particularly with younger people in the ministry that God's given me through the years, The thing that leads a lot of young people astray who are solid Bible-believing people, and this happens not just to young people, to older people, many times is when they make a decision to marry someone outside of the faith, right? And it carries them away from the truth. It carries them away from obedience. All right? Now look, this isn't a racial thing. God's not forbidding interracial marriage. There's people that want to take that and run with it, and that's sinfulness and foolishness, okay? We got too many examples of that. Moses himself married a woman, a Cushite, okay? So that's not what's going on here either. But God does command for his people not to be unequally yoked. meaning that we are not, as Christians, to marry non-Christians. That's not what we're supposed to do, because it doesn't produce a good environment to raise up the next generation in the fear and the admonition of the Lord. So he's not telling them to intermarry with the pagans. What he is telling them is, go on living life, let your children grow up, let them marry, let them have children, and continue to grow my people. Do you know how many people there are out there, even Christians right now in our culture, that are scared to death, they're scared to death to marry, to have children, to launch out into the world in any meaningful way? because they look around and everything is so by comparison to however many years ago when they were younger or what their parents experienced or what their grandparents experienced or what they think should be normal. And they look and they see the craziness in the world and they say, I can't do that. I can't be a part of that. And they hold back. I can't raise children in this atmosphere. I can't hold on to a marriage in this atmosphere. I can't do this. I can't do this. And they live in fear. That's what God was cautioning them against. That they would live in fear and that they would not do the normative things that God had commanded His people throughout the generations from the Garden of Eden to be fruitful and multiply. We as Christians are not to be so fearful as exiles in the land, even when it gets really bad that we just refuse to take on really the basic building block of society as ordained by God, which is the nuclear family. That's not what God would have us to do. And from a context of the New Testament church, when we talk about multiplication, we're not just talking about marrying and having children. That's a wonderful thing. That's a beautiful thing. I think that's ordained by God. But even more than that, in a New Testament context, we are called to multiply disciples. I think that's how we should understand that. Yes, do I think Christians should have godly marriages and raise godly children? Yes, I do. I think that's a good and glorious and godly thing. But I think the chief command to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is the multiplication of disciples. Because we can even get in that fearful mode as a church and refuse to do what needs to be done in order to see multiplication happen in the kingdom of God in our sphere. All right, because sometimes we get this idea because of how it is out there. We don't want to venture out into that mess. It's spooky out there. There's a bunch of weirdos out there. Oh, there's all this kind of stuff going on out there. And we kind of get in our holy huddles. We decide we're the frozen chosen. And it's just going to be us. And again, we're going to wait till Jesus comes back. No. God's command is to multiply. God's command through the gospel, the proclamation of the gospel, is to see more come into relationship with Christ and to raise them up in discipleship in the fear and the admonition of the Lord, to take ground for the Lord Jesus Christ and to win souls. Fear has taken the teeth out of Christianity in the modern age. A lot of times it's just a fear being thought of as being different, being weird. Yeah, we are that. I've said it five times tonight. We're a peculiar people. Sometimes it's just a fear of the circumstances of life. I don't really want to engage in that. I don't even know if I want to get my family where they're exposed to any of this. Hey, we got to have good barriers. We got to protect our families. We need to do that. but we cannot isolate ourselves because we have a mission in front of us that we call the Great Commission to proclaim the gospel to the neighborhood and to the nations. We are called to multiply, church. Raise families in the fear and the admonition of the Lord, yes, but proclaim the gospel that the family of God might grow. We can't let fear in the land of exile. keep us from growing in strength. He does, God does not call his people to diminish just because they find themselves in exile. That's what he says. He says, don't, he says that you may be increased there and not diminished. we're taking ground for the Lord Jesus Christ. I know we get a pessimistic idea of what it means to be in the kingdom of God and what's going to happen before Jesus comes and all of those kinds of things, but I'm here to tell you, if you get a macro view of everything that's taken place from the time of Christ until today, the story of Christianity through the centuries is a story of the conquest of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel has been taking ground all over the world from the time of Christ even until now. And just because in our little limited view sometimes it looks like it's diminishing, I'm here to tell you the gospel is taking ground all over the world. God has called us to be those who follow in the train of His victory and experience the conquering power of His gospel over sin. To see multiplication happen. in the church as people come to know Jesus Christ. This next piece that is commanded of the people by God is maybe for some of us, I think in our modern kind of political landscape, sometimes maybe troublesome to think about. It is for me. Maybe I'm just telling on myself. says in seek the peace, this is verse 7, seek the peace of the city where I've caused you to be carried away captive and pray to the Lord for it for in its peace you will have peace. Now what does this mean to seek the peace of the city, of the place where you've been found in exile? Does that mean full assimilation, acting as they act, living as they live? No. I don't think it means that at all. But to seek the peace of the city in which you live or the place in which you live, I think means a couple of things. Number one, as Christians, we're not rabble-rousers. We're not fighting just to fight. And I think that's the two, that's really the only two pictures that people in the culture have of us is either we're just a bunch of weak pacifists, some say that, and then others say, oh, all they want to do is fight about something. That's kind of the only two descriptors you'll get. Yeah, it's inaccurate, we know that, they're wrong about that, but that's the picture that a lot of people have of Christianity in the modern day. Now listen, we're not to cause trouble for trouble's sake. It's a lesson I've had to learn. There's been times where I've picked some fights that weren't worth picking in the culture. Now, do I think there's a time to stand for what's right and true, whatever the consequences? Absolutely, there are. All right? I think there is a time for that. If we're ever commanded to do things that God would command us not to do, or we're commanded not to do things that God would have us to do, we stand up and we do what God says anyways. And we take those consequences as they come. But as a general rule, Christians are to be responsible citizens, striving for the good of our community and our nation. Jesus talks about this himself. He tells us, pay your taxes, obey the king, obey the emperor. And you say, man, I don't like that at all. Well, you like it or not like it. And is there a time, Jesus wasn't saying that you obey the emperor again when he tells you to not worship God, or if he tells you to kill somebody, that if he tells you to do this, he tells you to do that. It's not that kind of a blanketing statement, but as a general rule, we're to be good citizens that live in accordance with the law of the land. God didn't tell them they had to embrace the pagan religion of Babylon in order to fit in, but he tells them to seek the peace of the city. Where I've caused you to be again, there it is. I caused you to be there. Wherever you find yourself right now, you find yourself in Ozark, Arkansas. Most of you live here or near abouts to here. God has commanded his people, I believe, to seek the good of the community that they find themselves in. What does that mean? Well, I think for the most part for us, that means we're sharing the truth of the gospel. We're seeing people delivered from sin. But it also means we support those things that are good and right and godly, and we stand up and we say when we believe something is not good and right and godly. Now, in our system of government, and some of you will disagree with this in general principle for this moment in time, but as a general rule in our nation, generally, we have had much more opportunity to actively promote the good and godly. Because we have a form of government that allows us as the people, at least on paper, right? That's the turning point of it all for us right now. At least on paper, that we have the power through representative government, supposedly, to promote the good and the godly things. Now we know that's not always happening. But in general, through the ages, that's been the, through the history of our nation at least, that's been the rule. And so we should do that. Whatever opportunity you have, whether it's through voting, whether it's through working toward legislation, whether it's toward supporting causes, whether it's toward whatever it may be, I think we are required to seek the peace, the good of the nation. And I think how we do that is we support those things that we know God would support and we reject those things that God would reject. These people I think when you say this now in kind of the political climate that we live in, you say, hey, you need to seek the peace of your community. You need to seek the peace of your nation. There's a lot of us, myself included, that kind of look at the political landscape and I'm like, I don't know, I kind of feel like it might be okay if it all burned down and started over a little bit. Like we need, we need, something needs to happen. We gotta do something different. And I feel that way sometimes. And maybe that's the pathway God will take. I don't know. But what I'm saying is, is we're not to be the ones that are just trying to pick a fight and rabble-rouse, because all of that does is to keep us from fulfilling the main point of why God has his people here. We fight when we must fight, when it's the right thing to do, but we are to be good, responsible, faithful citizens that love, support other citizens, come alongside, engage ourselves in the good of our community. These people were prisoners in exile, and they were being told to seek the peace of their community. If that was true about them, then surely it's true about us in our day, in our time, and where we live. We're not prisoners here. That's not who we are. We have more opportunity to stand for what's right and good and do what's right and good without fear of consequence, at least for now. And so we better get it in good practice and doing what's right and good when the consequences are few, because there may come a day where the consequences grow. We are to live godly, productive lives, not be the fomentors of rebellion, unless it comes time to fight for what's right before God. The final piece of this, this instruction to those in exile is, I think really has to do with maintaining the faith, holding true to the true faith, because what is the warning here in verses eight and nine? 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." What's he telling them? He says, don't listen to voices that are going to tell you to do differently than I have told you. We need to hear that today. We're in exile. And God has spoken. God has told us what's good. God's told us what's right. God's told us what's true. And we don't need to listen to those voices that would tell us things counter to what God has told us. We don't need to be deceived by them. The scary thing about what was going on in Jeremiah's day is that the voices in his case were coming from within, not without. They weren't coming from the pagan Babylonians, at least in this context right here. They were coming from those who wanted to maintain position or they wanted to be thought of as popular or helpful amongst the people. And so what were they doing? They were telling the people, oh, this is not gonna last long. God's gonna take us out of here. Don't worry about this. And God said, no, that's not the case. This is gonna last a while. And Christian, I'm gonna tell you, unless in his good time, in his good will, Christ returns, you will remain in exile until you leave this world. That's your situation. That's my situation. And it's not a situation to be lamented. God, sure, sometimes, I guarantee you, sometimes, even under this instruction, they longed for Jerusalem. They longed for Zion. And hear me, Christian, you should long for heaven. You should long for deliverance from this sinful world and the body of flesh in which you live. but it should not keep you from living to the glory of God in the here and now, and it should not make you susceptible to being deceived by those who just want to tell you what you want to hear. In their case, it was from within, and I'm here to tell you there are a lot of people out there flying the flag of Christianity, and instead of telling people what God has said, they are telling them what they want to hear, and it is destroying lives. It's a shame. It's it's it's it's and they will they will answer for it in a way that is beyond imagination. But God was warning them. Don't listen to those voices. And I must warn you there's a lot of people out there that have a following. They have a large ministry. They have a this or that. You better be careful and check everything against what God has specifically said in his word. because there are a lot of people that look like they're on the inside, they look like they're calling themselves by the right name, and they are just telling people what they think they want to hear. They're being patted on the back, they're being celebrated, they're being elevated in the Christian culture. And God says, don't listen. Don't be deceived. I have not sent them. So be careful. So to summarize and close, how do we live as exiles, foreigners, aliens in this land we call Earth, this life? We put down roots, we build lives, we build families to the glory of God. We multiply through the proclamation of the gospel We live in a way to seek the peace of our city, our community, our nation. We love radically those around us and we proclaim to them that truth in love and we study ourselves to show ourselves approved, so we know what God's word says, so that when those deceiving voices rise up and tell us things that sound really good, and man, I really like that, and I wanna believe that, and that we recognize it for what it is, it is a false teaching against what God has revealed to us in his word, and we reject it. Hold fast to the truth and live to the glory of God, even while in exile. We're a people in exile, but here's the beautiful thing. We're not on our own. We're in this together with one another as the people of God, but we're also, most importantly, in it together with God. God is with His people. He has not left us alone, even though we're a people in exile. He will empower us to live as he has commanded us to live. Let us live to the glory of God, proclaiming his truth, multiplying his kingdom, and seeing the peace of God reign more and more and more as we obey him and his word. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the day. I thank you for your truth. I ask God that you would use it. Lord, perhaps if there's someone here that doesn't know you at all, I pray that they would see this vision of living as a person under your care, even in exile in this world, and you would use even that to draw them to you as the author, Lord, of all of our circumstances, Lord, but as the one who has made us a way to live at peace with him in this place. Father, I ask that you would strengthen us as Christians to live for your honor and glory, to seek the peace of our nation, through the promotion of that which is right and true and good, being good and faithful, not just Christians, but also citizens, and knowing your word, Lord, so that we might reject that which is false. Lord, help us, encourage us, strengthen us, empower us, in Christ's name, amen, amen. Thank you, God bless you.