Joel Brooks: If you would pray with me. Father, we thank you for your word. We ask that through your spirit you would breathe life into that word and penetrate our hearts. This is a word we all need to hear. It's a word our church needs to hear, And so I pray that I would not get in the way of that word.
I ask that in this moment, this time, my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Well, tonight we begin a new series, going through the book of Daniel. This is a series I'm excited about teaching through.
And in particular, I'm excited about looking at the 29th chapter of Jeremiah. This is a well that I've gone to over and over again to draw from through the years. These words from Jeremiah, they're they're foundational for any church, really for any believer who wishes to, to reach the people around them. This chapter of scripture here is why my wife and I live where we live and why we do many of the things that we do. And my prayer is that these words, as we study them together, that they would become, so influential in our lives, that they would help shape our calling and our foundation as a church.
Last week, for those of you who stayed awake for the full hour, we we tried to go through most of the Bible or the whole Bible, and we saw when we looked at Genesis 3, we saw the Garden of Eden, and we saw the tree of life in the middle of it. And this is how the Bible begins. It begins there with just man and woman in the Garden of Eden, and then you go to the end of Revelation, and once again, you have the tree of life. But this time, there's not a couple. This time there's an entire city.
You move from just a couple of people to a transformed God glorifying city. That is, that's the movement of the Bible. That's what, that's what God's heart is. We see this clearly in Jeremiah 29. We see this clearly in Daniel chapter 1.
Now, this text is especially relevant to us today in the 21st century because it shows us how we're to live our lives and how we are to share our faith in the midst of a culture that is hostile to our faith. In the midst of a culture that doesn't love God, this letter by Jeremiah that we read in chapter 29 was written to the exiles shortly after 600 BC that is written to the first wave of exiles that had left Jerusalem. Israel had been living in disobedience for a while, and so God had to punish them. The the way I like to think of the exiles, it's like a parent sending their child a time out in which you you have a disobedient child and they won't listen to you because so god says you're not to go to time out for a period. God does this with Israel.
He says, you've been disobedient. I'm gonna put you in time out for 70 years. 70 years are gonna go into exile before I let you return. And during this part of Israel's history, this is where Jeremiah writes. Most people just think there's one exile, but there was actually 2 exiles.
But before the big exile that happened, when Jerusalem was fell and the tabernacle, the temple fell, there was a smaller exile 10 years earlier, in which Nebuchadnezzar, he he brought out a much smaller class, but it was very strategic. It was very ingenious on his part because the people who he deported to his city were the young working professionals. He captured all of the lawyers, the city manager managers, the power brokers, the craftsmen, the musicians, the artists, all that influential working class and he deported them first to Babylon. Because he knew that if he could take this class of people, this young professional working class of people, if he could get them to Babylon and he could Babylon them, all of Israel would follow. And it was an ingenious plan.
Because if you want to change the way that people think, the way that people live, you change the working class. I'd like to think that the way to change people is through people like me, a pastor. Pastors are really the ones, you know, who could change the culture of a city, but usually that's not the case. It's the working professionals. Nebuchadnezzar understands this and actually during this period, God uses the same strategy.
The people that God uses during this exile period are people like Nehemiah. Nehemiah is a simple cup cup bearer to the king, and God uses him as a civil engineer. A civil engineer who's gonna bring revival to his people. He raises up people like Esther, who's nothing more than a winner of a beauty pageant, and he raises her up to save her people. People like Daniel, who just is one of the king's advisors.
He's gonna use him to be an influence, a light shining in a dark place. Now, this letter to Jeremiah is written to the people who are part of that first smaller wave of exiles. Just think how drastically these people's lives change. They they once were in a community that a faith and a community that nourished their faith, and now they're in this pagan land, a pagan culture. The school the schools are no longer teaching their morals, no longer reflecting their religious values anymore.
The laws are no longer reflecting their moral values. The songs that they hear, the arts that they see are strange images. None of them glorifying to God. So this had to be a tremendous shock to them. Now they're they've been reduced to just this irrelevant, powerless minority that's going to be misunderstood by all of those in power.
And as they are sitting there, there is nothing about this crowded pagan city that appeals to them. They hated Babylon. They wanted it to burn with all of the people in it. And so what the people did when they were exiled there is they they begin to remove themselves from the people of Babylon. They they begin to isolate themselves, if you will.
They lived in separate neighborhoods. They lived in separate communities away from those pagans. They formed what I would like to say, little holy huddles, that they could just gather together and kind of warm each other, you know, reminding each other of of of who they are and their heritage, but then never leaving that. Just staying in that holy huddle, and they looked out at that pagan hostile city and they said, let it go to hell For forsaking God, for murdering our parents, for ripping us out of our homes. Let them stew in their juices, get what they deserve, and that's, that's what the people were doing.
I mean, they they pick up, you know, the Babylonian news, if you will, and they they would read that and they'd read about all the murders, all the drugs, all of the violence, and they'd be like, that's right. That's what happens when you forsake God. That's right. That's why the school systems are so bad. That's why everything's going to pot, serves them right.
They're getting what they deserve. And then the prophet Jeremiah writes them a letter. It says, don't do it. Don't have that attitude. Don't have that heart.
The Lord sent you there. The Babylonians didn't capture you. The Lord sent you there for the shalom, for the peace of that city. And through the prophet Jeremiah, God says that when you were placed in the midst of a pagan culture, you were neither to just jump right in and completely become Babylonized. You're not to assimilate, if you will, and you're not to withdraw or to isolate.
Instead, you were to engage. You're to get involved in the lives of these faithless people and you're to try to transform the culture. Transform the community in which you now find yourself a part of. And this is what Jesus tells us to do. In Matthew chapter 5, when Jesus says that you are the salt of the earth.
We tend to think of salt as just being something you put on food, add a little flavor, but Jesus is not saying, you know, you're the spice of life or something like that. He's not saying that. In the 1st century, the main reason you had salt was a preservative. They didn't have refrigerators like we have. You you needed salt to preserve things, otherwise, it would rot.
So when Jesus says that we are the salt of the earth, he's saying, I put you here to preserve the earth, to preserve life. And the way that salt preserves something is by by by applying salt to it and mixing salt in it. Salt is to be worked into something that would rot without it. It's only useful when it's worked into something that would rot. And Jesus tells us that if you are not around rotting things, if you are not applying yourself to something that will rot, mixing your life into something that would rot without you, then you're worthless.
You're to be just thrown on the ground and trampled. Now the Israelites were in the midst of a rotting community, and now through Jeremiah, he is saying be salt. Act as a preservative. Seek the shalom of the city. Work yourselves into this pagan culture that would rot unless I sent you there to preserve it.
So you asked the question, how are they supposed to do this? Well, the first thing that Jeremiah says to do is to build houses. Says, build houses and live to them. He doesn't say, rent homes. Even though he's already prophesied, Jeremiah said, you're only gonna be there for a time.
You're only gonna be there 70 years. It seems like it'd make more sense to just rent if it's only a transitory period, but he says, do not see this stage of life as just a transition. Build a home, Make roots. Get to know your neighbors. Live there.
Settle into the city and interact with its people, commit yourselves to them. And they were to build houses, not like we do in which we build fortresses. We build our homes in a way to keep neighbors away. I mean, that's kind of what we do. And that's what, you know, they were doing before they got Jeremiah's letters.
You know, they were hurrying home, closing the doors. They let's not interact with these pagan people. Let's get all of our houses together. Let's only do business with one another. You don't have a fish on it not doing business with you.
I mean, it's just we have to stick together. Jeremiah says, no. Build homes. Don't build fortresses. You know, I think of the modern home like a fortress in which you, you know, you pull into the driveway, which is your moat.
You open up the, you know, the garage door, and that's the drawbridge. You get in it, and you lower the drawbridge or raise the drawbridge up. The analogy kind of breaks down there. The whole idea is if I could just get safely into the home, which is my castle, I I I don't have to interact with people, and I could go and sit on my throne, turn on the tube, let the world rot. Jeremiah says no.
No. That is not what salt looks like. You don't just sit around and just try to guard yourselves from all the evil influences in the world. You've yes, you gather together. You do have some holy huddles, but you gather and then you scatter and you get into the community.
You interact with people. You don't make people's like, you know, I'm gonna put in my fortress. You know, our church could be a fortress and Hey, you're gonna have to swim over our moral moat. And you know, you're gonna have to get in here and burst through our doors. Literally, if you were to be in this place, Jeremiah says, don't you dare.
Christ modeled this for us. First off, I mean, Christ, he left his heavenly home to come to us. Alright? It's like living in exile. He left the the relationships he knew and that were so nourishing to be amongst a people who would try to suck him dry.
He left the songs of heaven. I mean, the angelic choir, all the songs he got to listen to, and he traded it in for insults. The incarnation is him being salt, working himself into people like us who would rot without him. That's what the gospel is, and then even when he was in this world, he reached out to the outsiders. People said, hey, he he hangs out with with drunkards.
He's a glutton. He's a drunkard because he was always with sinners, And you just got to ask the question. Let me ask our church a difficult question. When you look at scripture and it seems like sinners were always being drawn to Jesus. Why is it that sinners are not always being drawn to our church?
Or that sinners are not always being drawn to us, The church, when we're outside these doors. Is it possible that we're putting up barriers? We're, we're building fortresses and we're telling people to stay away. We are isolating ourselves instead of engaging. It's a tough question.
The next thing Jeremiah says to do is plant gardens. Eat of their produce. Now one of the things he's hinting at here is work hard. Work hard to be a part of your community. It's coming close to gardening season.
Usually in late April or May, my wife and I, we we plant our vegetable garden in our backyard. For those of you who've been to our house, you've actually seen Jeremiah 29 painted over the fence that's around our garden to remind us of this text. Now planting a garden, something Jeremiah is hinting at here, is never something you do when you initially buy a home. There's there's other projects for you to do. Planting a garden doesn't build equity, you know, work on the kitchen, add a closet and, you know, add another half bath, do something like that.
But, but, but don't plant a garden because later when it comes time to sell your house, people aren't going to go, well, you know, I really needed a 4:2, but I could take a 2:1 with this pretty garden. You know, that just doesn't happen. A garden is not going to add to the value of your house. Now I'm not sure if any of you are gardeners. I am not very good.
I try to be. Our little house garden is probably about the size of the garden that Jeremiah is talking about here, and when we finally get tomatoes this year, they will be $50 tomatoes when it's all said and done. Alright? If when we give you a tomato and you're like, it's a tomato. No, it's a it's a gift of love.
Okay. It was a financial commitment to to grow these things, Because if you were to count up all of the hours we spend working the soil, you know, buying the mushroom compost, you know, setting up the fences, all this stuff, It's gonna come up to about a $50 tomato. It's cost a lot. Jeremiah is saying, you know, you do this. Put in a lot of work, put in a lot of time, put in some money into something you're really not going to get a dime back to because you know what?
Your investment is not your house. Your investment is your neighbor. That is who you're to be investing in. Work hard. Make your community a better place.
Don't just turn your house into a pretty castle. Jeremiah then tells them to raise a family. Says take wives, have sons and daughters. Says if you want to change the city, you're gonna have to raise a godly family. Don't ever go into life thinking, alright, as a parent, my job as a parent is to completely shelter my children from the world.
Believe me, I know the temptation. There's a definite temptation to do that. The the first time one of your children comes home and they're singing a song that you didn't teach them, it just throws you off guard. Like, where did you learn that? You mean you have other people teaching you things or they say a word that that you didn't teach them?
Maybe they heard from someplace else and you realize, oh my gosh, they're being influenced by outside sources. And so you just kind of want to lock them in the room until they're 20 so they turn out normal. There's there's that temptation to do that. You I feel that. Jeremiah says, don't you dare.
Don't you dare. You raise children up in the world for the purpose of changing the world. You know, one of the the things, like, even living in the community that we've moved into, it it forces your hand to do a number of things. It forces you to be creative, and and how can you provide nourishing things for your children? How can you provide education for your children if you live in a community where there's not good education?
Well, you better start something. You know, and so many people in this church have been a part of a school that we've started in the neighborhood. Well, there's there's no soccer leagues. There's no anything like that. Well, you gotta start them.
That's what happens when you're in places that are rot. You either let it rot or you just start working for the sake of your children and for the gospel. We will make this a livable, redeemed community. Some people when we, left my previous job and we were starting Redeemer, they they thought we were a little off, and and they were right about that, but not for the right reasons. And they said you're gonna sacrifice your children.
You know, they raise up the questions like where are you gonna go to school? Where are they gonna do all these things? And, I remember years back, I can't remember how old Caroline, my oldest was. She she was not old. She's probably about 7.
We found a list that she had made, and it had all of our neighbors names on them, and it said things like mister Dale, and said paint him a painting about Jesus because Dale loves artwork. And then give it to him so I could tell him about Jesus. And then it had, like, miss Anne, you know, I can't remember what it was. Maybe it was write her a poem or show her a cool news article or something as a way of telling her about Jesus. And she went through all of our neighbors, and she tried to find a connecting point, And she's 7.
Now they were horrible ideas. For the most part, they they were they were not the best ideas, and I appreciate it. She's right here looking at me going, it's already started. I'm 11 and now all the illustrations, pastor's daughter. But when I saw this, like, I sacrificed nothing with my kids here.
Nothing. They get their mission. They get their mission. That you raise a child in the world in order to reach the world. Finally, Jeremiah says that you are to so attach yourself to the city that your welfare is attached to its welfare.
That when it prospers, you prosperous. You know, a few years back, one of my neighbors, he was, he was an atheist. He was an alcoholic, and many times I would find myself in his living room just thinking, why am I here? You know, I'm keeping keys away with away from him. If I If I can't find his keys, I'm moving my car to block his car in so he can't leave.
I'm at times separating him and his wife as they're screaming at one another, and I got so involved in his life that when he was going to have a bad day, it meant I was gonna have a bad day. I I just it's like, well, there there goes my evening, and I would have to go over there and I'd have to help. And when he had a good day, it was great. I I would have a good day. When he prospered, I prospered.
When he didn't, I didn't. That's what happens when you work your life in to things that will rot without you, and let me just strip down all the glamour from that, because you grow up and you're thinking, you know, I want to work with the homeless, and it's a very glamorous thing. Or, you know, I wanna go to India and work with the urban poor or something like that, and, like, it's very glamorous. It's glamorous for about 4 weeks. Then reality hits, and you're like, this is just hard because rotting things smell.
You're around things that aren't beautiful. It's time consuming, and you have to work really hard to be salt, acting as a preservative in these things. But that is what God has called us to be. Now let's look at Daniel. 1 of the exiles.
Daniel is a great example of how to be in the world, but not of the world. Daniel was likely in his teens, he was just beginning his professional career when he was ripped from that and taken along with that first group of exiles to Babylon. And I'm sure that he is scared, He is angry. He is confused. He's not sure what he's supposed to do.
Then he gets a letter from Jeremiah, and Jeremiah first says, first off, all this has happened according to God's plan. Remember, the Lord has sent you there, and he sent you there for a purpose. Part of the reason he sent you there was so that you and your friends might be a great witness to the city of Babylon, And so Daniel is there for this purpose. He is to seek the welfare of Babylon. He is to bring peace or shalom to the very people who destroyed his homeland for the very people who would have killed many of his friends and likely his family.
He is to preach peace to them. He's to preach peace to those who are now trying at that moment to destroy his spiritual and moral fabric of him and his community. He's a work for their welfare, and this is how he does it. Daniel and his three friends. It's a familiar story.
They're brought before the king, and they're put in this reeducation program. They are to be reprogrammed, if you will. They're gonna be babylonized. Because remember the king knows, if I could just babylonize this group of people, then all of Israel will follow suit, and he's right. He's right.
And so he gives these people, these teenagers, he gives them a new place to live. He gives them new things to learn, new foods to eat. He even gives them new names. They are stripped of their very name. They had God honoring names.
Now they're given names after pagan gods. They're just completely stripped down. And so what did they do? You could feel that dilemma. Do they do they just refuse?
Do they just say no and they just isolate themselves, Or did they just say, hey, we hit gold. I mean, we're gonna be treated like royalty. We're gonna be the leaders in this new society, and do they just completely assimilate? Or do they somehow walk that narrow road of engaging? Well, they accept almost everything asked of them.
Everything except to eat of the king's food, which they said they would not be defiled by doing this. We're not really sure why eating the king's food would defile them. It wasn't because they were vegetarians. You've heard that before or that this story is really about how you should become a vegan. Likely, they refused to eat from the king's table because all of the meat in that day would have been sacrificed to idols or to pagan gods, and by accepting and partaking of that food, you're in a way accepting and partaking in idol worship.
And I think they were saying we will not we will not participate in pagan worship. We draw a line there. I think that was the reason for it. And so they abstain from eating meat and drinking the wine, and they asked to be given vegetables and water instead. I hate to tell this to to the vegans that are out there, but, the point of the story is that this is actually an inferior diet to what the king was giving.
It was an inferior diet. Anybody who's ever had bacon or sausage knows that. And what's going to happen is God's going to have to do the miraculous to keep them fit. God's gonna have to work to actually keep them growing and bigger and stronger compared to what they were eating. And God does this.
He grows them bigger. He grows them stronger than all the others who are eating the richest food, and he does this in just 10 days. This is a miracle what God is doing here. God honors the risk that they took, and he honors their faith. And then, God's gonna do the same thing for them with their education.
If they wanna serve the king, they have to study sorcery, they have to study black magic, they have to study astrology, all the things that the Babylonian wise men would be studying, and they did. You're gonna find out in Daniel chapter 4, Daniel, he made a 4.0 in all of his his courses. He actually was a valedictorian of his class. He he raised up god raised him up, and he became the chief of all the magicians. Yet despite studying sorcery, astrology, all of these things that just make us cringe, despite all of that, Daniel and his friends actually grew in real wisdom.
And what's happening is once again, they are taking an inferior food in their classes, and God is doing the miraculous, and God is growing them in real knowledge and real wisdom of the Lord. He's doing this because of their faith. It's like they they had faith. God, protect us as we do these things. God, we we still, we want to worship you, but we know we have to we have to study these things.
And so God took that inferior food and he still grew them. And because they sought God in the midst of all this, they did not need to fear what they were studying Because it would not capture their hearts. We will see this later. We'll see the fruit of this later when he come to Jesus. Why in the world are Magi traveling 100 of miles, astrologers from the east or from Babylon?
Why are they coming to worship at the feet of Jesus? Well, somebody 100 of years earlier had to tell them to look for certain things. You see the influence of it even 100 of years later of what Daniel is doing here. His investment was worth Daniel rises to the top of his profession without ever embracing it. Daniel and his friends were in the world, but they were not of the world.
But Daniel knew if he ever wanted the king's ear, he would have to excel as a wise man. I mean, he could have just thought, oh my gosh, I've been thrown into this pagan world. I'm just gonna wait it out. We could have got, hey, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Let's let's just, let's just gather together.
Let's just form our little support huddle group here, and let's only meet with one another. We could wait this out. Why get involved? But they didn't. He could have isolated.
He could have assimilated, but instead Daniel and his friends became salt. They settled down in a pagan city and they prayed for it, worked hard for it. They sought its welfare, and I am sure that this put him in a sticky situation after a sticky situation. That's what salt being salt does. Some of you are in those situations in your professions.
I know a number of you are professional photographers. I feel like you have to either be able to play guitar or shoot a photograph to be part of this church. You you know how easy it is to either isolate or assimilate as a photographer? You know, you could say, I will only shoot Christian marriages. That's it.
That's it. Well, you just isolated yourselves. You just said you will only be around Christians. Or you could say, you know, I'll do anything. It doesn't matter.
I, it, you know, I will shoot whether you've just, if you've been living together for 40 years, if it's not even a heterosexual, but a homosexual marriage, I will gladly, I will do that and where's the line? Where is it? That is a hard place to be. You can either completely isolate yourselves or you can completely jump in. Being salt is hard and it keeps you on your knees praying, spirit of God, what do I do?
How can I glorify your name in this? You know, Lauren and I feel this with one of our family members. Has 2 children through 2 different women. He's not married. His whole history of horrible choices, and we ask ourselves how how do we relate to him?
What what do we do? Do we just remove ourselves from him? Like, I'm sorry, but, you know, we're the Christians. You've rejected all this, and we're not having any interaction with you. We don't want our children around you?
Or do we act like there's no problem at all? You know, we just know there's hey, everything's fine. Everything's great. What do we do? Oh, I wish I knew the answer, but it keeps us on our knees as we're trying to find out how can we, in a God glorifying way, engage.
But I know this, if I were to just isolate myself, he would never hear the gospel. If I were to just completely jump in and accept and assimilate, he would never hear the gospel. I've got to somehow engage. Brings you to your knees. What we're looking at here in this letter is nothing short of the gospel that God became flesh and entered into our messy lives to preserve us, to save us.
We would have certainly rotten apart from him, And my prayer for us as a church is that we would become the salt and the light that God has called us to be both in this community and the communities where we work and the communities where we live. Pray with me. Our Lord Jesus, we are grateful, thankful that you left your home. The comforts of it, and you came and you entered into our messiness, in which you traded songs of praise for insults cast at you because the end result of all that was our redemption and our salvation. Lord, and because of that, your, and your spirit living inside of us, Lord, we want to show that same love to the world around us.
Lord, you did not give us just a little cup of your spirit for us to sip on. You gave us a fountain, meaning our lives are to overflow into those around us, And I pray that would happen in this place with this people in the name of Jesus. Amen.