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Los Lunas Cornerstone

Church of the Nazarene

Message to the Exiles (Jeremiah 29:4-14)

    If I were to say to you, Jeremiah 29, you’d probably think of Jeremiah 29:11, “‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’” This is a great verse, and a great promise, that many of us are likely familiar with, and maybe even a promise that you’ve taken to heart a time or two in your life. And that’s great! My message this morning is actually about the connection between what was going on in Jeremiah 29 and us as New Testament believers, so I believe this is a verse and promise that we can take to heart!
    But I want to talk about more of the passage so we get more of the story, and I love the way that my Bible translation, the NASB, sub-titles this passage as a “Message to the Exiles”, and that is just what we are. But, historically, and in context, this was written to a specific group of exiles, and Jeremiah 29:1-3 tells us that this was the group of exiles: the priests, prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
    Okay, brief history lesson here, and this is grossly simplified, but it will get the point across. All the way back in 1 Samuel, the people of God, the Israelites, cried out for a king to lead them. They wanted to be just like all the other nations around them, which is just a horrible idea. God told them He would give them a king, just like they had asked, but it came with a warning, that their kings would be bad for Israel, that they would lead the people away from God, and into idolatry and wickedness, that they would oppress and enslave their own people. But they still wanted a king. They got a king, and with only a handful of exceptions, those kings were terrible. Most of them did what was right in his own eyes, and led the people further and further away from God.
    God sent prophets to warn them to turn back to Him, but by and large, they didn’t listen. They continued to reject God, just as they had been in a pattern of doing for much of their history. Not only did they reject God, and worship idols, but they also began to oppress the poor, and forgot to plead the case of the widow, and this grieved God greatly. Though His mercy is perfect, His justice is also perfect. He warned them through the prophets that if they did not return to Him and seek justice and righteousness, He would allow foreign nations to come destroy them and take the survivors captive. And that’s exactly what happened. The northern kingdom of Israel had already been destroyed by the kingdom of Assyria, and despite warnings that the same thing would happen to the southern kingdom of Judah, the people and kings did not listen. So Babylon came for God’s people.
    After a 30 month siege of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah, the Babylonians effectively destroyed the city and the temple, and killed many of the people. Those who were important people, priests, leaders, etc. were led away to Babylon to become exiles, just as they had been told would happen. It’s there that we read about people like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, living in exile in Babylon along with many others, unable to go back to Jerusalem for 70 years. This is the setting we find ourselves in when we read Jeremiah 29, and the message to the exiles living in Babylon.
    We have to understand Babylon too, which starts all the way back in Genesis 10:10 with the founding of the city of Babel, which we know from the infamous “Tower of Babel” incident we can read about in Genesis 11. It was there that people got together and thought that they could go their own way, and do their own thing, and make themselves great without God. It’s the same thing humans have been doing forever. We set ourselves up as great and try to do our own thing and go our own way.
    So by the time that the Kingdom of Babylon comes along in Jeremiah’s time, it is a city that stands for all that goes against God. Babylon is a nation and a people who reject God, and stand in opposition to Him. It is a nation where they sought only what was best for themselves, and worshipped whatever they pleased. Think about the stories of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being forced to worship foreign gods and accept what the Babylonians said was good and right. Babylon became representative of, as the Bible Project says, any human institution that demands allegiance to its idolatrous redefinitions of good and evil.
    This was the historic Babylon, so when God’s people were carried off into Babylon, they were faced not only with a new culture, a new society, a new language, but they were also confronted with new gods, and as we read about in the book of Daniel, were even forced to worship those new gods and adhere to strange, evil ways. What were God’s people to do?
    Well some revolted. They fought against the Babylonians when they were besieging Jerusalem. They fought bravely, I’m sure, but they were killed.
    Some left Jerusalem so they wouldn’t be taken captive to Babylon. They fled to Egypt and surrounding countries and disappeared into history.
    Some, when they were taken into Babylon as captives took a second path, and they COMPROMISED. They not only made themselves fit in with the new culture, and new society, and learned a new language, but they also adopted the new gods and lost their identities as people of God and became just like the Babylonians around them.
    But, God through the prophet Jeremiah presented a different path, a third path. Let’s read our passage for this morning, finally, Jeremiah 29:4-14, “This is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 ‘Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and father sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may give birth to sons and daughters; and grow in numbers there and do not decrease. 7 Seek the prosperity of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord in its behalf; for in its prosperity will be your prosperity.’ 8 For this is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel says: ‘Do not let your prophets who are in your midst or your diviners deceive you, and do not listen to their interpretations of your dreams which you dream. 9 For they prophesy falsely to you in My name; I have not sent them,’ declares the Lord. 10 “For this is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. 14 I will let Myself be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’”
    This is the third way, I’m calling it the EXILE mindset. It’s a different way of thinking that isn’t revolt and rebellion against the corrupt powers, and it’s not the compromise of adopting all the ways of corrupt and evil people. It was a different mindset that God’s people were called to to be able to live in exile away from their true home while still standing firm for God’s truth.
    What were they meant to do? Jeremiah tells them first to build homes and have families. Get jobs, be productive members of society. In verse 10 it is repeated for the exiles that they will be in Babylon for 70 years, exiled for 70 years. So they had really just a short set amount of time to be in Babylon and then they knew that they would have a chance to go back to their true home. But it was long enough that they couldn’t just wait it out, just wait and do nothing. They had to establish lives in Babylon, and they were told that was okay. It was okay to marry, it was okay to build a home and a life and grow a garden and eat its produce. Settle in, you’re going to be here a while.
    They were told to pray for the CITY. They were told to pray to God on behalf of the city, because if it prospered it would mean they prospered too. So, even though the city was corrupt and wicked to the core and it represented everything that was in opposition to God, their duty was to pray for the city and seek its prosperity, to seek its good.
    If we look at the stories of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we see that praying for the city and seeking its good didn’t mean that the exiles weren’t supposed to stand up for what was right. Their stories show them being bold enough to stand up for what was right, and to refuse to bow down to idolatry. We learn that Daniel refused to eat all the rich foods of the King’s table so that he would be healthy and able to keep a clear head in prayer. We see Daniel stand up against the corruption and wickedness of King Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson. The exiles were called to pray for the city and seek its well-being, but to still stand up against corruption and evil, and to seek what was just and right.
    In verses 8-10 of Jeremiah 29, God warns them not to listen to false prophets who were giving a different message than what He had given to Jeremiah. There were some saying they would go back to Jerusalem sooner than 70 years, and there were some saying they’d never be returned to Jerusalem. Both were wrong. God assured them it would be 70 years, and then He would come and take them back to their true home. So even though they were told to make a life for themselves in Babylon, they were meant to remember that one day they would return home, and they needed to be ready. They needed to be ready to leave the life they had put together when the time came because they were exiles, and Babylon was not their true home.
    And finally, the exiles were told to seek GOD. Seek God above all else in Babylon. God promised that if they sought Him with all their hearts, they would find Him, and He would restore them to their true home. If they sought God, He would be found. He assured them that He wanted His best for them, wanted to give them a hope and a future, but they had to seek Him.
    What does this have to do with us, New Testament Christians? Well, we too are living in Babylon. It’s a modern Babylon, but when we look at what Babylon comes to represent in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament, we see clearly that we are living in the midst of the ideas of Babylon. Remember that Babylon is any human institution that demands allegiance to its idolatrous redefinitions of good and evil. You can just pause for a moment and see these human institutions all around us, governments, entities, organizations, etc., that have redefined what is good and what is evil, and make demands of us to accept their redefinitions and not only agree to them, but to embrace them. We live in Babylon.
    But this is not our home. Our true home, as Christians, is with the Lord. We too are exiles, not living where our true home is, but having to find our way in this modern Babylon. How do we do this?
    Well, we could revolt. We could take to the streets and have violent protests and seek to do harm to those who are corrupt and evil in an attempt to overthrow them. I have to admit, sometimes that seems appealing. Or we could compromise like some of the Israelites did. We could embrace the redefinitions of good and evil and take those as our gospel. Or, we too, can adopt the exile mindset we see given in Jeremiah 29.
    We just finished 1 John, and I’m reminded again of 1 John 2:15-17, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. 17 The world is passing away and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God continues to live forever.” This world, this Babylon is not our home, and we are not to embrace its things or its lusts. The exile mindset is what we must embrace.
    The Jewish exiles were told to build homes and grow gardens and build families, and they had a set timeframe for this, 70 years. But we don’t have a timeframe. We don’t know how long we’re going to be here, and not our true home. We have the same hope the Jewish exiles had that one day a ruler will come and set it all right, but we don’t know when that day is. So settle in, you may be here for a while.
    Ephesians 5:31 tells us husbands to leave their parents houses and make new lives with their wives. Get married if you so desire, have families, build lives. 1 Timothy 5:8 tells us it is good and right to provide for ourselves and our families. Get jobs, make a living, feed yourselves. You may be here a while. But remember Jesus’s words of Matthew 10:37-39, “The one who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and the one who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 And the one who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 The one who has found his life will lose it, and the one who has lost his life on My account will find it.” We build lives and we get jobs and families, but just like the Jewish exiles, we must be prepared to leave it all behind at any moment. We hold loosely to the things we have here, even if they are good things, because the one who deserves our allegiance and worship is God alone. Ultimately, everything else will pass away, and the only things that remain are the things of God, the things that are eternal, and those are the things we should be pursuing with our time and resources.
    The Jewish exiles were told to pray for the city, to pursue its prosperity and the good of its people, but to also stand against corruption, evil, and injustice. Romans 13:1 reminds us to be subject to governing authorities, because all of them exist because God allows them to exist. Titus 3:1 says to be subject to all authorities and rules, to be obedient, and to be ready to do good deeds. 1 Peter 2:13-14 echoes those words. And in Matthew 22:17-21 we read the conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees concerning poll-tax and how they are to give Caesar what is his.
    But, as much as we are to pray for our cities and do good to its people, we can’t forget that Hebrews 12:14 tells us to make peace with all people, but also to seek holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. So there can be no room for compromise even as we’re seeking to do good to those who we meet every day.
    And how many times did Jesus publicly call out the Pharisees for their corrupt and hypocritical nature, like we can read in Luke 16:14-15.
    And James 1:27 points out that true religion means we fight for the case of orphans and widows. So we are meant to stand up for those who are on the margins of society, those taken advantage of and sometimes even looked down upon by others. In Matthew 21:12-13 we read about Jesus overturning tables near the temple who were bringing greed and corruption into God’s house. On numerous occasions He stood against wickedness, hypocrisy, greed, and corruption.
    So we pray for our cities, pray for our leaders, even submit ourselves to their rule, but we are to at the same time have a sort of quiet subversion against those who are corrupt and wicked, against the evil of Babylon.
    We hold loosely to this world, even while working in it to see God’s Kingdom here and now and to bring the good news of Christ to the lost and hurt and broken of this world, we understand this is not our true home. We don’t want to abandon those we know to the darkness, and it is our job to shine the light, but this is not our true home. Just like the exiles living in Babylon, we know someday we’re not going to be here anymore. Luke 6:22-24 tells us that we should expect that people will hate us, exclude us, insult us, and scorn us because we are followers of Christ. Jesus reminded people that the prophets, like Jeremiah, were treated the same way. But we are to take comfort knowing that our joy and reward is in heaven.
    Matthew 24:44 tells us to be ready to leave this earth, leave our exile at any time because unlike the exiles living in Babylon, we don’t know when our exile will end. Be ready.
    Matthew 25:14-30 gives us the parable of the talents, which reminds us that even though we know someday Christ is returning to take us to our true home, that we have been entrusted with His gifts and resources now and that He expects us to use them to grow His Kingdom. We are not to waste or squander the time He has given us now, but instead to work to bring others along with us to our true home. Be ready to leave at any moment, but don’t you dare keep the hope and the freedom you have in Jesus to yourself as you wait.
    And finally, just as the Jewish exiles in Babylon were urged to do, we seek God. Romans 12:1-2 tells us to give ourselves to God completely and entirely and allow Him to change and transform us so that we no longer want the things of this world, but can discern what His will is for our lives. Matthew 5:3-12 has Jesus telling us that our attitude toward God should be one of humble repentance, seeking God’s Kingdom and His righteousness above all else.
    Acts 17:27 is very similar to what God told the Jewish exiles through Jeremiah, that if they were to seek Him, we would be there! He is not far from us, His Spirit is with us here right now! Seek Him, look for Him, run after Him, I guarantee because it is His promise that you will find Him.
    Matthew 22:37 tells us to love Him with all our hearts, souls, and minds. Matthew 6:33 tells us to seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness.
    We are exiles, living in Babylon. This is not our home. We could revolt, and we could compromise, but that is not the way of exiles. Instead, we settle in because we may be here for a while, and we pray for our leaders and cities, and we seek to do good to all people. But, we also must live in a sort of quiet subversion and stand against corruption and injustice and evil, and be ready to leave at any time because this is not our home. And as we wait, we seek Him who is our King, and we lead others to seek Him too.
1. Is there some sin to avoid in your life, brought to light by the message?
2. Is there some promise you need to trust? Write it here:
3. Is there some example to follow that you are not following? How will you do that this week?
4. Is there some command to obey that you are not obeying, or is new? What is it?
5. Is there some knowledge of God and your relationship with Him that is given here? How does it challenge you to grow with Him?

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