Jody Killingsworth: Goo morning. Feeling at home as a Christian in America today? Encouraged by all the cultural and institutional support you get for the views that you hold? It's Pride Month. Pride, Month. It's Pride Month. Search your calendars in vain, you will, for "Humble Yourself in the Sight of the Lord" Day.
Biblical Christians today feel acutely, as God's people have many times before felt, that they are strangers in a strange land. Scriptural terms and descriptions, for this experience, are many. The Bible describes God's people as peculiar, as pilgrims, wanderers, strangers, aliens, but the most poignant term of all is the term, exile. Faithful Christians in America today are feeling like exiles in their own country. An exile is a displaced person who is living against their will, against their desires, in a place that they don't naturally belong or come from.
They're brought there by their circumstances, sometimes as a judgment from God, but not always. And they spend a lot of their time wishing for home, longing for home. They face a lot of unique difficulties there in their foreign land. They're socially marginal, and they're living on the fringes of society. They're uniquely vulnerable to the power and the control of the surrounding culture and its systems.
And that's especially true when it comes to the surrounding or prevailing religious nature of that culture. It's very hard not to succumb to its pressures and capitulate to its demands. Does that sound familiar? The experience of a biblical Christian today is a lot like that. We're like exiles in our own land, surrounded by a foreign and a hostile culture, and we wish things could be different.
Now in an ultimate sense, of course, we are not on foreign soil. Despite the decline that's going on around us, this is still and always will be Christ's country, just as Venezuela and Honduras and Uganda all submit to and answer to the Lord Jesus Christ ultimately.
The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof,
It says in
Psalm 24. The king and the fullness thereof. It says in Psalm 24. The kingdoms of this world have become not are going to become, but have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, Revelation 11. Hebrews 2 says that there is nothing that has not been subjected to him, to Jesus.
Nothing. But it's very important to read on and to understand the implications of the next phrase. The author says, yet, nevertheless, we do not yet see all things subjected to him. And that's where we live. Christ's dominion spreads over land and sea, but it has not been fully worked out and realized yet in history.
It's his by inheritance, by decree, by rights. But he's up in heaven at the hand of his father waiting with his feet propped up on a stool for God to establish victory for him and dominance over his enemies. And that's true at the very best of times. In the heyday of America's Judeo Christian Civic Religion with the 10 commandments and all the court houses and prayer in the schools, long before there was ever any thought of a pride month. God's people were waiting on a better country to come.
Scripture's words. He waited in the land of promise as an alien, dwelling in tents with his sons who are fellow heirs of the same promise. And they were looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. That text goes on to say that while they were there waiting, they were going about confessing that they're strangers and exiles in the earth, and that they're seeking a country of their own, love, but a heavenly one, a heavenly country to come. That's how we're to live.
That's how
it should be with you and me as God's people today, even today, that we are looking for kingdom. It's one thing to say that. We all agree. It's another thing to put it into practice to live it out. What does it actually look like?
What does it mean to live this reality, to live out this faith of Abraham today? There's a lot of scriptures that we could turn to that could tell us how to do it. Exile is a major theme of the scriptures. You could probably, I think easily, well say that it is the theme of the whole scriptures. It is all about restoration from exile, Adam and Eve, Jesus Christ bringing us back to God, bringing us back ultimately to dwell with him forever.
So exile is the common experience of all of God's people, and a lot of notable big biblical figures have experienced a lot of their life in exile. But there was a time in God in the history of God's people where they experienced exile. And it was a situation, I think, very much like ours today. And God spoke into that situation through his prophet to give his people direction, practical direction, about how they should live in that day. And that was in the day of Jeremiah the Prophet.
The people of Israel had long enjoyed their own land By the time that Jeremiah came along, they'd been in in the land of promise for a long time. But they had not remained faithful to the Lord. God was very patient and long suffering with them. He gave them a lot. He looked out for them.
He put up with a lot from his people. He disciplined like them like a father. He cared for their needs. He gave them kings to lead them. He gave them prophets to speak his word to them.
But they did not follow the Lord or listen to his word. They turned from their God to idols made with human hands. And they bore the characteristics of those idols in their life. They gave themselves to evil practices and and to rebellion. And that continued generation after generation.
And the overall trend was one of decline and decay. Finally, the Lord's patience had run out. And after warning the people many times and giving them many chances to repent, he'd raised up 2 foreign powers, mighty empires, to come and invade his land and to carry away captive his people into exile. These powers were the Babylonians and the Assyrians. The Assyrians invaded the northern tribes in the 7th century BC And the Babylonians came and destroyed Jerusalem and took cap about 10,000 of their best and brightest back to Babylon to help their economy back there.
And to help their economy back there. And it's God's faithfulness continued to his people through that whole period. He continued to send them and give them prophets who spoke his word, and those words were often consoling words, kind words, words of promise and of restoration to come. In Judah, in the southern kingdom, during the Babylonian captivity. He wasn't taken to Babylon himself, but he was left behind to speak to the poor, trouble, subjected people of and one instance though, Jeremiah wrote a letter to bat to the captives in Babylon to give them particular instruction from the Lord about how they should live.
That letter is full of wisdom for us. I wanna read the first half of that letter to us and draw a few points from it this morning. This is Jeremiah chapter 21 verses 1 to 14. This is God's word and it is eternally true. These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the eunuchs, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elisah, the son of Shephon, and Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah, king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. It said, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent in exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce.
Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name.
I did not send them, declares the Lord. For thus says the Lord, when 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you the promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will 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 which I sent you into exile. This is the word of the Lord.
There are no shortage of voices today speaking about what's going on society, what it all means, and what we should do, if anything, about it. Our own fearful hearts are the loudest of these voices. But the voice we should all care about is the Lord's voice. What does the Lord say to us? What does he make of the situation?
What is it about? And how should we respond and live? So what I want you to do is gather up your own fearful thoughts, messages, and all the voices around you. Call them to mind, and walk with me through this letter of Jeremiah's, and compare that advice to the Lord's advice. Okay?
First of all, we see here from the letter that it was not a call to hopeless hand ringing and worry, but to the normal building and planting fruitfulness of life. How many of you fear what's going on today around you? How do you act in response to that fear? Maybe you get angry and bitter. Maybe you stock up ammo and beans.
Maybe you latch on to some political figure or religious figure that you think has the answers is gonna turn the tide. Maybe you latch on to a theological fad that you think is the answer, the trick that's going to change minds. Or some culture warrior in the media that you think has the hope of turning the ship around, and you spend your days and your hours fixated on every word, hanging on to every word. What does God say? He says, build, plant, get married, have children, find good spouses for your sons and your daughters, so that they can do it all over again for future generations.
In verse 6 he says, multiply and don't decrease. That's the first part of the advice. What are these things? These are the normal things of life. The normal things of godly life, life lived before God.
Panic. It doesn't sound like crawling into a hole. It's not finger pointing. It's not inaction. It's not some revolutionary new idea.
This is as old as the hills and twice as dusty. This is what God said to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Keep and cultivate the garden where I have put you.
What's good for paradise, apparently, is good for Babylon. God wanted his exiled people to give themselves to the normal things of godly life. We should give ourselves to these things too now more than ever. As a sign of our faith and that God is in heaven, and he has good things in store for us in the future. King David mourned in Psalm 11.
The counselors that were surrounded by him, they were saying, with the foundations destroyed. What can the righteous do, David? And what was his response? He probably had to pick himself out of the dirt for up out of the dirt for a while because he's probably discouraged by their counsel. But he looks to heaven and he says this.
This is his response. Listen, guys. The Lord is in his holy temple. His eyes behold. His eyes test the sons of men.
He test the righteous and the wicked. He hates the wicked and their ways and he will deal with them. But he loves the righteous, and they will uphold his face. Do you believe that? Best of your moments, how would God have you live in light of that belief?
When the foundations are destroyed, and they are, what can what practically can the righteous do? We can give ourselves in faith and hope to the normal stuff of building godly lives, building godly homes, being fruitful, having children, building the church for God's glory for future generations of God's people to come. That's what we can do. In some real senses, cultures just culture life is life. There's a lot of ungodly people.
The vast majority of ungodly, godless people in this world are doing the same thing, living their life, building their homes, loving their children, trying to find good futures for their children. There's nothing unique in that. But what matters entirely, what changes everything is why you do those things. God would have us do those things for his glory hope, knowing he's our father and looking out for us, that he will bless us and care for us and provide, and that there is a future for us. That's good.
It matters. It makes all the difference why we do it. When people refuse to live their lives and build their homes and pursue things for God's glory and in relationship to him, Then that and that culture cannot help but behave in ways that are increasingly godless, fruitless, and absurd, counterproductive. That's what scripture testifies all over the place about idolaters and the fruit of their lives. Homosexuality is fruitless.
It is self refuting. Think about it. I'm sorry to have to ask you to, but think about it. It is fruitless. It only consumes what others produce.
It produces nothing of its own. It cannot last. And if it does and succeeds, God has shown us in his word that he will not allow it to last. Sodom. Transgenderism, the latest fad, is like it.
Fruitless, absurd, delusional, an attempt tragically absurd. And the people who promote it cannot endure. But those are the delusions that our nature our nation is caught up in. You know that. This is what the whole month of June is now set apart to celebrate and promote.
What can the righteous do about it? Well, you can have children. You can build your home. You can build the church. You can celebrate life and fruitfulness and good things and wholesome things.
You can do this in faith trusting God. That's what you can do. The sons of men and he loves the righteous and the righteous will see his face. You can live as if that's true.
It's the most strategic and hopeful
thing we can do. And It's the most strategic and hopeful thing we can do. It's not a quick fix. Chesterton said, you can't grow a beard in a fit of passion. This is not revolution.
This is playing the long game. We're working for generational growth and change. We're aiming to be here in a 100 or a 1000 or 10000 years if the Lord should tarry. We want the church to last no matter what happens to America. We want America reformed, if she will be, but if she won't, and even if we have to bear the ill effects of her downfall, we are aiming to see the American church outlive her.
Empires come and go. And as much as we love our empire and enjoy the privileges of being a part of her, our hope is not in our earthly country, our its constitution, its rule of law. Our citizenship is in heaven from which we eagerly wait for a savior. Our hope is in the coming kingdom of God. And we believe that Christ's church will endure throughout all time, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
And we want our work and our prayers, and if need be our blood, to be used of God to ensure that. That's the first thing. Practically, there is much we can do. That'll keep you busy. That's enough for a life.
Annie? It's enough for a life. And God loves it and smiles on it when we do it in faith for his
glory and for the good of his kingdom. And God loves it and smiles on it when we do it in faith for his glory and for the
good of his kingdom. And for the good of his kingdom. Secondly, this is not a call to anger and resentment, hostility, but to neighborly generosity and loving prayer. There's voices in America today, even in the church, and especially I'm sad to say in the reform church, that are agitating for physical and violent pushback against the liberal half of America. 1 or 2 of them, I think, are crazy enough to be serious.
The most of them though, the vast majority of the rest, I think, just flirt rhetorically with the idea to attract followers. They're tapping in to the resentment of the deplorables. I'm a deplorable. And they're building their brand and their churches On the back of that resent. I could start wearing Defy Tyrants T Shirts in the pool.
And if I, in addition to that, grew my beard halfway down my chest. Grew my beard halfway down my chest, this church would grow fast. Fast. And I hope you would not be happy with me if I did it because of what that would do to the sweetness of our fellowship and our witness. I'm not a pacifist.
I believe there is a time to defend what is precious with force. But scripture's standard for what justifies revolt against the lawfully established authority is extremely high. You gotta turn over a lot of biblical stones to put together a case for that. There's much more case to be made for revolution and reform. Well, revolution and revolt in the temple than there is in the streets.
The patience and submission commanded in scripture for Godless Roman authority is astounding. It makes me uncomfortable. One of the qualifications surely for a justifiable revolt or overturn of a government has to be that it's got a reasonable chance of success. There was way more going for the American Revolution in terms of success than there ever is for all of the bearded reformed men in America getting together and trying to swear off with one state's National Guard, let alone the full power of the American military might and surveillance industry. Wake up.
I mean, get real. We got to listen to God's voice in scripture, and not the fear in our hearts or the voices that play on that fear. First 7, seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Seek the welfare of it and pray to the Lord on its behalf For in its welfare, you will find your welfare. We're to love our enemies, and bless those who curse us and do good to those who hate us and despitefully use us.
That's the way we reflect the perfections and the character of God, who loved us, his enemies, and made us his friends. Faithful Israelites like Joseph and Daniel teach us what it looks like. Those men use their gifts and wisdom to bless and assist their foreign captors in practical and generous ways that saw their saw to their preservation. Not many of us are likely to find ourselves in such a position of influence. As we know from the New Testament, there's not many noble or mighty or wise that God has called.
But we all have places of interaction and influence in society. What's your attitude in your heart toward your unbelieving coworkers, fellow students at school, citizens in this city? Barely tolerated, and own word is there to be love. They're there to be they're there to be recipients of our blessing. Blessing.
So are you a good employee? He works hard to help his boss or supervisor succeed, be profitable. You're diligent with your time, faithful with your time for the Lord's sake. Are you doing everything that you can, to make your presence felt for good in our community? Matter because you have loved them, helped them, borne their burdens with them, ministered to them.
Porch night. They used to in their old neighborhood invite people over to their house on a monthly basis. There were a lot of young kids in that neighborhood at the time that needed fathering and mothering. Porch. And that gave gave gave them lots of opportunities to meet needs.
They would actually sit. They'd have snacks. They'd sit around and at some point in the exchange conversation, they'd say, let's go around. Is there something that you can that you need that we can pray for? That's astounding.
And that allowed them to meet lots of needs, emotional, spiritual, physical, in the lives of their neighborhood. Jeremiah also commends prayer for the welfare of our community. Do you pray for Bloomington, its leaders, Ellettsville and its leaders, Nashville, Bedford? The apostle Paul writes in 1st Timothy chapter 2 to Timothy and he says, I urge Timothy that in treaties and prayers, petitions, and be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Do Do you want to lead a good, quiet, dignified, tranquil life? Pray for your leaders. Pray for your city, pray that they might be saved, pray that they'll rule justly. And give thanks for them. Did you notice that it said with or thanksgivings should be offered for all in authority?
Give thanks for them. They What they do is hard. It's harder than it looks. You probably wouldn't do better. And you know there's something worse still than having to live under somebody's authority and rule that you disagree with.
You know what that is? Not living under anybody's authority and rule. Last week, Pastor Max was preaching about waiting, and I'm going to repeat the same joke as best I can that he used, because it really hit home with me. But if I did that, if I prayed for people and that are an authority in our community that I disagree with, how would my family and my home group learn to despise the people that I despise? The hearts of our citizenry and our leaders are in the hands of the Lord.
And the mercy that he has on them and the wickedness peace. So pray for them. Okay? Pray for them. Give thanks for them.
Ask God to help them. Your welfare and theirs is bound up together. And it's important to realize from this passage clearly why that is. Look at verse 7. You can see it in other places in this passage.
But look at verse 7. It says, seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, where I have sent you. Israel's captivity was God's doing. It was something he was doing. It was something he had brought about.
The prophet Jeremiah understood that. Even before it happened, Jeremiah put a yoke physically around his neck and he walked around pleading with people to do the same spiritually, practically, whole. And so, Just put your submissively put your head through the hole and submit to what God is doing. Would you please And there were false prophets abounding in that day that were were saying, no, no, no, no. We got this.
God's gonna look out for us. He David and Goliath, guys. Remember David and Goliath? We'll hold up here. God will send deliverance for us.
That's what this that's the story that's being told. Jeremiah kept saying, no, it's not. It is not. Would you please City was completely destroyed. Lots of suffering.
They should have listened. God decreed through Jeremiah that the captivity captivity was gonna come and that it was gonna last for 70 years. And so it did. There was nothing anyone could do about it.
But even in Babylon, there were false prophets saying. So even when they get there, prophets saying, you guys don't even unpack. It's just going
to take a couple of years. God's going to send the deliverance and we're going to be out of here in no
time and back home. Trust us. That's why this letter was sent. Because Jeremiah knew better. And so he said, do what I'm telling you.
Can submit. This is what it looks like to submit. Jeremiah's letter was one more in a long line of calls to reject false hopes and delusions of grandeur and to humbly accept what God was doing, what God was doing. He says in verses 8 through 9, don't listen to the false prophets who are telling you otherwise. They're dreaming dreams.
It's a lie that they're prophesying. Don't listen to it. For thus says the Lord, verse 10, when 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. So Jeremiah was saying, don't listen to those who are telling you this is going to get sorted out quickly. It's Is there anybody in the American church who is, and get about the work that I have commanded you to do, the normal work of life?
Is there anybody in the American church who is calling the church to submit patiently to what the Lord is doing in our land as a judgment on us. Now there's not a one to one comparison that can be made between Israel and the church, certainly not between Israel and America, nor between Babylon, historical Babylon, and an American culture today. We don't have any word from the Lord that our present situation of captivity is going to last 7 years, 70 years, 700 years. We don't know. I don't know.
God can send revival and he can turn things around. We've seen that happen in history. Remember, a couple of weeks ago? But I'm not I am not saying that we should give up hope for dramatic change, turn of events, But here was a people handed over for a long period to a state of exile because they were awash with sin and rebellion. We find ourselves facing a similar situation, surrounded by enemies, hostile territory, not like what we want, is it may be somehow possibly connected to our sin.
Possibly connected to our sin. There's lots of people who claim to understand the situation that America is in perfectly well. They know exactly what's going on and who to blame for it. It's the liberals. It's Hollywood.
It's the academy. It's state funded education. It's fiat currency. It's atheists. It's Marxists.
It's the corporations. It's Planned Parenthood. It's that corrupt media. It's the feminists. And there's lots of problems in all those areas.
And I'm all for us understanding and discerning what those problems are, and knowing the consequences of ideas and discerning the times. But it's our job as the church to be salt and light. Spiritually in our land? Light is attractional and it casts out the darkness. So why does darkness abound and so few care about the things of the Lord?
We've lost our taste. We've lost our light. We've hit it under a bushel. All the sins of the world are represented in this room, What's surprising is that we tolerate it, that we have agreements with one another. That as long as you have the right kind of spiritual tone about you, look the right part, you know, dress and speak in the right ways, that we just have a truce with one another and understanding that we don't dig deep, that we accept our sin.
And we hire ministers and pastors to affirm it, and sometimes to celebrate it, and to lead us in the proud demonstration and act that we put on. The church today is full of sin, and our shepherds have not made their mission made it their mission to root it out, and we have not wanted them to do it. We need some Jeremiahs. Jeremiah's letter is not a call to exiles to specialize in examining the world's problems, but rather their own. It's a call for the people of God to mourn their own sins and to seek God in repentance.
Where there's repentance for sin, there is great hope. Where there's repentance, there's hope. God is merciful. He is willing to receive those who are contrite in heart and humble of heart. And it often takes very hard and painful things for us as his people to acknowledge our sins and to turn to him and remember him.
To humble their hearts and make them truly seek. Before this, they were not willing to listen or submit to his word, so he had to bring them low. He knew it was gonna take about 70 years for that to be done right, for it to work. He's the doc and he knows his patient. He knows us and exactly how many years the American church must labor in a hostile land in order to return fully to him.
He has often used times of declension and persecution, difficulty to purify his church and to cause her to turn to him. Can you trust him and what he's doing? Jody doesn't know what he's doing, how long it's gonna take. Tucker Carlson doesn't know. God knows.
Can you trust him? But he knows what he's doing. And you know what? He doesn't just know what he's doing. He knows his mind about it.
Look at it in verse 11. I know the plans I have for you. What are those plans for? He's declared it. Plans for welfare and not for evil.
To give you a future and a hope. Do you think the Lord knows what we need? Do you think he knows that we need the current political climate to be humble and to learn humility and to seek him again and to be purified. He does. He knows his mind and his purpose.
He is our hope, and we must return to him. Not our hope is not America. It's not a politician. It's not a conservative Christian media company finally getting established. It's not a Christian Netflix.
It's not a culture warrior. It's the Lord. That's the only hope, the Lord. Will you trust him? If so, then use the time that he has put us in.
Use it. Use the experience of our present exile to give yourself to the normal things of godliness in faith, and humble your heart before the Lord and reflect on your sins. Let's all of us do that. What's gonna happen if we do? The Lord spells it out.
Verse 12. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart with all your heart, does he do you think he knows what it takes to get us to seek him with all our heart? When we seek with all our heart, we'll find him. I will 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've driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place which I sent you into exile.
This election cycle is gonna be a zoo. There's gonna be chaos. There may well be violence. There's certainly gonna be a lot of strong opinions. I am not saying that we should pull back from politics or be disengaged.
Let's do what we can. Every vote matters after all. Has that ever felt more hollow? But please, if we're gonna get worked up about something, let it be our personal sins. The sins of our church, of our family.
Let's get real serious, real agitated, real belligerent about rooting out sin in our life and purifying our hearts before God. I don't wanna hear what you think about Joe Biden. I just don't. It doesn't matter. I don't want to hear what you think about Donald Trump or any of the court cases.
It doesn't matter. What I wanna hear about is your own heart before God, your repentance, your sorrow over your sin, the real sin that you're facing and battling with and can't get the victory over. Would you please pray for me, pastor, and help me? That's what exile is for. And the sooner we accept it and humbly and sincerely seek the Lord, the sooner we get to go home.
Okay? Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Your word is life. Your word is truth.
It sets us free. We want to trust you. We want to live by faith. We want everything you have ordained to produce its good fruit in our lives, in our homes, in our ministries, would you humble our hearts? Would you help us to set before ourselves again in renewed hope and in real faith the daily work of serving you, building our lives, building your church, trusting you for the future.
And heavenly father, we ask that you would bless us and purify us. And would you see us through the coming days years in peace. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.