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4 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 5 “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. 6 I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up, and not tear them down; I will plant them, and not pluck them up. 7 I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.
(ESV)
29:1 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. 2 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. 3 The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. It said: 4 “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 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. 7 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. 8 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,1 9 for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the LORD.
10 “For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare2 and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 14 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.
(ESV)
Redeemer Community Church is located in the historic Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, AL. Our church family exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
For more information on who we are, what we believe, or how to join us, please visit our website at rccbirmingham.org.
If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to Jeremiah chapter 29. We've now been in the major prophets for almost forty weeks. This is our third week in Jeremiah. And chapter 29 is one of those chapters I have found myself going to over the years again and again and again. When I was in college ministry, this would be the text that I would preach from on our last gathering together as we were commissioning off our seniors to go into to the real world out there.
Joel Brooks:This is one of the first chapters of the bible that we looked at as a church. One of our core convictions as a church to seek the welfare of the city comes from this passage. So so in many ways, this is foundational to who we are at Redeemer Community Church and it's a passage we've looked at often over the last seventeen years. So, Jeremiah 29, I'll I'm going to read just the first 11 verses there. These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah, the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles and to the priest, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
Joel Brooks: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 Elasah, the son of Shephan, and Gamaria, 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 into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses and live in them.
Joel Brooks: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.
Joel Brooks: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 seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.
Joel Brooks:For I know the plans I have for you, declares the lord. Plans for your welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. This is the word of the lord. Thanks be to god. You pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Father, thank you for speaking through your prophet Jeremiah and preserving these words for us. Lord, would you write them on our hearts? Pray that my words will 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.
Joel Brooks:Amen. Well, after Jeremiah had spent decades telling people that judgment was coming for their sin, it finally happened. The Babylonians, they came, they destroyed Jerusalem. They deported many of the people back to Babylon. So God was punishing his children here.
Joel Brooks:You you could think of it kinda like a a parent putting a child in time out. God was gonna take the Israelites. He was gonna put them in time out in Babylon for seventy years before he was gonna allow them to return. This is the period we know in scripture as the exile. And it deeply shaped the the people of God.
Joel Brooks:A lot of people, they might not be aware of this, but there were actually multiple deportations, multiple exiles. There was the big one that happened in the year May or '87. And that's when the Babylonians came in, they destroyed the temple of God, and they did a mass deportation. But actually, ten years earlier is when they first invaded Jerusalem. And there they destroyed much of the city, and they did a much stronger and a larger and more strategic deportation at this time.
Joel Brooks:Instead of just deporting masses amounts of people, what they decided to do is that they would leave the poor in Jerusalem, but they would deport the working professionals. They would deport the lawyers, the accountants, the craftsmen, the teachers, the city managers, the the power brokers, the musicians, and the artists. All of these were sent off into Babylon. And, what Nebuchadnezzar was doing here was actually, it was it was genius. He he thought this, if you want to change the way a people live, if you want to change how they think, what you first need to do is take the influencers of society away and Babylonize them.
Joel Brooks:And if you could Babylonize them, if you could change them and then send them back, they'll change the rest of society. And he was right. It was a brilliant plan, and he was right. I would like to think, you know, selfishly, maybe pridefully that it would be people like me, pastors that were the ones who changed the culture, changed the city, but that is usually not the case at all. From the pulpit here, I can perhaps change people who will then go on to change the city, but it's typically not going to be the pastors.
Joel Brooks:Nebuchadnezzar, he understood this. Actually, during this time period, God uses the same strategy. I know we think of the people that God uses as, once again, as the professional prophets or the professional ministers. But during this time, God used the young professionals, the working class. So he would use Nehemiah who was just a cup bearer.
Joel Brooks:And he said, now you're a civil engineer, and you're gonna go back and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Or he would use Esther, who's really just a shallow beauty queen, And he was gonna raise her up, give her courage, and she would end up preserving or saving her entire people. Or the Lord would use Daniel. He was just one of the king's magicians or wise men. And he would use Daniel to influence an entire nation.
Joel Brooks:I mean, think of this, you know, centuries after Daniel, why do you think wise men came from the East to go and to worship Jesus? How did they know to follow a star to Bethlehem? It's very likely that was Daniel's influence centuries earlier when he was one of those wise men in the East. So these are the type of people that God uses. He uses the craftsmans, the lawyers, the accountants, the teachers, the artists, the politicians.
Joel Brooks:He uses all of them to affect his change in our culture. This letter here from Jeremiah, it's written to those first exiles. It's it's written to those who were who were deported out the the young working professional class there. They they left the place they knew, the place that was home for them. They were violently ripped from it and placed in this hostile culture of Babylon now.
Joel Brooks:And Jeremiah tells them how to live. Because it had to be a shock living in Babylon. To go from Jerusalem to now being in such a pagan culture. The laws of the land no longer, reflected their moral values. Their schools no longer reflected their religious values.
Joel Brooks:The songs and the arts no longer use the religious vocabulary that they were used to hearing. If just imagine, you know, if all you ever heard was was praise music, you're used to Chris, you know, Chris Tomlin and now you've got, you know, Kendrick Lamar or a picture of my mom like listening to Nicki Minaj. And like you couldn't have more of a a culture shock. It's hard to even process what's happening to them. Years ago, when I was in college, I'm a year ahead of Lauren.
Joel Brooks:So I got to experience Georgia one year before her, and I found out it wasn't exactly, you know, the most nurturing land ever. I mean, we thought it was the promised land. I was able to see, okay, it's not quite that. And so I tried to warn Lauren and say, hey, I know you've you've heard. It's it's essentially like a seminary.
Joel Brooks:You know, when you get to go to Georgia, I'm just warning but it she was still shocked despite my warnings. Her first morning on campus. She has spent the night there. She moved in. She spent the night at Brumby Hall and she is going.
Joel Brooks:She's got a little shower caddy and she is going to take her shower at the end of the hall And out comes from the shower, a girl and she says, hey, you know, trying to make new friends. And then comes her boyfriend right out after her. And it was her first like, oh, oh, I'm not at First Baptist Alpharetta anymore. It can be a shock when you're thrown into environments like this. That's that's nothing compared to what these exiles were feeling.
Joel Brooks:Picture like an Amish person being placed in Vegas. And yet, the people of Vegas slaughtered your parents. That's them. Absolutely nothing about this crowded pagan city appealed to them. They hated Babylon and they hated the people who lived in it.
Joel Brooks:And so, they did what probably most of us would do. Their knee jerk reaction was that they would isolate themselves. They clung to one another. They they lived in separate neighborhoods. They formed their own little communities within this pagan city.
Joel Brooks:They created their own subculture within the larger culture. They circled their wagons. We would call it a holy huddle. They formed this holy huddle and they said, you know what? They looked at that pagan, hostile, evil city and they said, let it burn, let it go to hell.
Joel Brooks:What we're gonna do is we're gonna keep ourselves pure. We're just gonna stay true to one another and forget them. They they, you know, they pull up their phone and they'd they'd open up their Babylonian news app and they would read about all the violence, all the murders, all the evil, all of the theft, all the drugs, all the corrupt politicians. And they were not moved in any way with a heart of compassion. It was serves them right.
Joel Brooks:Serves them right. They're getting exactly what they deserve. I cannot wait to get out of this place. And then they get a letter from Jeremiah. No.
Joel Brooks:No. You are not to have that attitude in you. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. Can you even imagine how that letter went over?
Joel Brooks:I mean, that was a punch. We actually kinda know how it went over because immediately these other prophets, they came up and were like, don't listen to that letter. Jeremiah is a madman. Can't we all agree to that? They thought it was he was crazy for saying anything like that.
Joel Brooks:And, it does feel like madness to receive a letter like this. I mean, these exiles, they had just experienced something that honestly, it keep us in counseling for the rest of our lives. They just saw their families slaughtered. Their homes burned to the ground by these people. And now, they're supposed to seek their welfare?
Joel Brooks:Now, they're supposed to pray for them? Babylon Babylon, it was not just a bad place. It was actually the epitome of evil. Babylon becomes the symbol for an evil society for the rest of the bible. In Revelation, you read this.
Joel Brooks:Babylon is called the great mother of prostitutes and the earth's abominations. Saint Augustine would call Babylon the city of evil or the city of Satan. And yet, god tells these exiles, pray for them. Seek their welfare. The Hebrew word for welfare there or peace or prosperity might have in your Bibles.
Joel Brooks:It's the word shalom. Seek their shalom. Shalom is a very rich Hebrew word. It means peace, prosperity, wholeness, and spirit, and in being. Seek the shalom of your enemies.
Joel Brooks:Pray for them. I'd actually not noticed this until fairly recently. But as far as I can find, this is the only time we have in the entire Old Testament that God tells his people to pray for their enemies. Elsewhere, I mean, they're going in, they're destroying enemies, or they're praying that God would judge their enemies. I mean, you have Psalms like this, Psalm one thirty seven.
Joel Brooks:O daughters of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed. Blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us. Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock. That's what they wanted to sing. That's what they wanted to pray in this time.
Joel Brooks:You know, that that song, those prayers that actually reminds me of a lot of what we what we come across on social media all the time. I mean, you read some of those posts or you you watch some of those reels. Oh my gosh. Christian apologists destroys atheists. I mean, we love that, don't we?
Joel Brooks:Or Christian man, blast, woke, liberal, professor. You all know what I'm talking about. You read this and you're like, yeah. That's what we want. We we we want to destroy them.
Joel Brooks:We want to bash them. Don't delude yourself in thinking, oh, I'm just trying to reach an olive branch out and then have No, you're not. You want to trample over your enemies. Put them in their place. That's in it's in us, it's what we want to do.
Joel Brooks:And Jeremiah says, No. Stop it. Here at the lowest point in Israel's history, He says, there's a better way, and he points us to Jesus. That's what he does here. Here, we get a foretaste of the peace and the forgiveness found in Christ.
Joel Brooks:He's pointing us to Jesus who tells us to pray for our enemies, to bless those who persecute us, to forgive others as God has forgiven us. And we have the power to do this because God has given us his shalom. He's provided it for us. We should have been judged. We're the ones who should have been slaughtered.
Joel Brooks:And instead, God sent his son to be judged for us. Romans five actually says that we have peace, shalom, with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And that while we were still enemies with God, he reconciled us to himself by the death of his son. So what we see here is in the midst of this dark time, in the midst of this exile, we begin to see a gospel light beginning to shine. Do you know why Jeremiah says here that when you seek Babylon's welfare, you will actually find your own welfare?
Joel Brooks:Says, you'll you'll find your welfare as they're finding their welfare. It's it's because this, as you begin to show the love of God, to bring the shalom to the world, you begin to understand God's heart for yourself. That He loved you when you were an enemy, and He loved you as a sinner. So you begin to experience His shalom. Make no mistake, Babylon was an enemy.
Joel Brooks:But God is showing them here, but they're not only an enemy. Yes, they're an enemy, but they're not only an enemy. They're also a people created in my image, and they're a fellow sinner in need of the same grace that I had to give to you. I shared this story a few years ago, but it's worth repeating. My old preaching professor, doctor Robert Smith, his son was murdered fifteen years ago.
Joel Brooks:He had already worked as a Or he had already lost his wife to cancer, and then he loses his son. So was the worst day of his life. Four young men came in to rob the convenience store where his son worked as a cashier. He was so nervous. His son Tony was so nervous his hands were shaking, he couldn't open the register.
Joel Brooks:And so one of the guys just shot him. They caught and they convicted the man who shot his son. He was a 17 year old boy. And doctor Smith, he felt compelled to write him a letter and to let him know that he forgave him. He said, writing that letter to this boy who killed his son, he said, was not hard.
Joel Brooks:It was impossible. He said, but God empowers us to do the impossible. He actually received a letter back from this young man three years later. I'll read it to you. Dear mister Smith, let me say that I'm truly sorry for your loss.
Joel Brooks:I really am. Also, hope that this is really you that I am writing to because I have received a lot of threat mail from your family members and friends. So that's why I never wrote back. But today, I thought I should give it a try because I really wanted to talk to you. I've been locked up three years now.
Joel Brooks:It's the worst three years of my life. I don't think that I'll make it much longer. You know, I actually grew up in church my whole life. I just hung out with the wrong crowd that night. I'm sorry.
Joel Brooks:You probably even know my pastor. I hope to hear from you very very soon. Thank you for forgiving me. Can you keep praying for me too? This is getting too hard for me to bear, and sometimes I feel just like giving up on life.
Joel Brooks:Doctor Smith, he just kept writing him letters and started to go and visit him, and he still does to this day. If you were to ask doctor Smith about it, he would say that's been painfully good for his soul. So it's been like pouring alcohol in a wound. It has hurt but he knows that it's cleansing him. He said it's driven him over and over and over again to the gospel in which he knows this.
Joel Brooks:His son took the life or his sin took the life of someone else's son. It was because of his sin that God sent his son Jesus. He says that every time he goes and he visits, he is reminded of the very gospel that changed him and saved him. The Beeson Scholarships actually was set up in honor of doctor Smith's son and and doctor Smith will tell you that his hope is that someday when that murder is released that he applies for it and gets it. And some of you you hear this and you're like, I mean, those stories are incredible.
Joel Brooks:There's a wonderful wow. I I can't ever be that. Some of you you're hearing this and you're thinking, Joel, know what you're saying, but if you knew me, if you knew all my sins, if you knew all my struggles, if you knew the baggage I bring to the table, there is no way in the world you'd ever think that I should be bringing any kind of help to others. I can't help others because I need help myself. Well, if this could be said of the exiles, this could be said of you.
Joel Brooks:I mean, these people, they were not sent off into exile because they were good, faithful, obedient people. They were sent into exile because of their sins, because of their faithlessness. And and yet God says this is, yes, I have sent you off into Babylon because of judgment, because of your sins. But that's not the only reason I have sent you. We read this.
Joel Brooks:Notice verse seven. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. He wants the Israelites to know this. The Babylonians didn't capture you, I sent you. Okay?
Joel Brooks:You're not a captive, you're a missionary. Yes. You were there because of your sin, but it's not the only reason you're there. I'm gonna use you in this moment to sanctify you, to purify you, to teach you about me and then you're gonna take the same shalom that I'm giving you and you're gonna give it to others. He's gonna use them to start redeeming Babylon.
Joel Brooks:Listen, it doesn't matter where you are in life or how you got there. Whether your life has been one train wreck after another train wreck after another because of your sin or if you've just been living a faithful success to success, which I doubt is anyone in this room. It doesn't matter. Just know this, wherever you are, you have been sent there by God. Wherever you are, wherever you find yourself, you are sent there and His purpose for you is to now experience His shalom and to bring His shalom to the world.
Joel Brooks:So how do we do this? Well, first off, we don't assimilate. We don't become like the culture around us. Now we keep our faith. We still hold to God's word.
Joel Brooks:We don't assimilate, but neither do we just circle our wagons and isolate ourselves from the culture either. Instead, we build. We plant. We marry. We intertwine our lives with the people around us.
Joel Brooks:We intertwine our work with all the the systems around us in order to bring God's peace to it. Jesus actually tells us the same thing as Jeremiah in Matthew chapter five when he says, you are the salt of the earth. To be the salt of the earth, it probably has a number of of nuances to it. But one of the things that most certainly means is you were to act as a preservative. Remember, there's no refrigeration during this time, and so if you had meat, it was going to rot unless you did one thing.
Joel Brooks:You work salt into it. So when Jesus says that you are the salt of the earth, he's not saying, hey, go out and be the spice of life. That that's a bonus. What he is saying is, get out there and preserve this world. Take your life and to mix it into the people, into the systems that will rot without your presence there.
Joel Brooks:Bring my my my gospel in it and you preserve this city. That's what he means when he says, you're the salt of the earth. Salt is only useful when it's worked into things that would rot without it. And that's our mission as a church. Jesus is telling us to work ourselves into the world and keep it from rotting.
Joel Brooks:We are to work ourselves into the school systems. Work ourselves into the arts. Work ourselves into the laws and legislations and the politics. Work ourselves into the financial markets. And preserve them.
Joel Brooks:Our goal when we go into these places is not to gain power. It's it's it's not to gain money. It's to be a gospel presence and to show the love of Jesus. The name of our church is Redeemer Community Church. The reason that we picked this name is because Jesus is our Redeemer.
Joel Brooks:He has redeemed us and also, now wants us to be a part of his redemption in this city. So these Israelites, they're now in the midst of this rotting community of Babylon, and they're hearing from Jeremiah from the Lord that they're to preserve it. How? Well, he says simple things here. Build houses and live in them.
Joel Brooks:In other words, you gotta do away with this renter mentality when it comes to the world. You gotta commit yourselves. You gotta grow roots. Be a part of building the community. I mean, these exiles, they were hoping to only be there for a few weeks, maybe a few years, and then they would come back.
Joel Brooks:And God's like, uh-uh, seventy years people. Settle in. Interact with people. Become somebody's neighbor. Build a house.
Joel Brooks:Don't build a fortress. And by that, don't don't set up barriers in such a way that that keep the pagan neighbors at bay. I mean, this is what they were doing when they got Jeremiah's letters. They were they were trying to set up all these boundaries and these borders so they wouldn't even have to interact with the Babylonians. They congregated together.
Joel Brooks:They rented their houses together. They only tried to do business with one another. They formed that holy huddle, refusing to go out into the city because they would be scared that they'd be corrupted. Plus, they wanted nothing to do with these people. So they became this fortress.
Joel Brooks:Church, once we become a fortress, how will sinners ever know Jesus? I mean, once a church becomes a fortress, they they they have to, you know, literally swim over our moral moat and then come break in the doors to ever even hear about Christ. And so so we're supposed to be this opening home, bringing them in. Yes. Our call is for their repentance.
Joel Brooks:But we are to go to the center. Jesus, he modeled this for us. Jesus left his heavenly home to live amongst us pagans. He left a place of peace, and he came to a place of violence. Think of it.
Joel Brooks:He left of a place where angels are doing nothing but praising His name day and night, and He came to a place where we insulted and mocked Him. He left His holy huddle of heaven, and He came to earth. And when he came here, he did not isolate himself. He was called a drunkard and a glutton, not because he was those things, he did not assimilate, But because He was always around the people who did those things. Reaching them, showing them the gospel.
Joel Brooks:Church, we need to ask this question. When you read through the gospels, one of the things you'll notice is that sinners were attracted to Jesus. Always attract they were just attracted to Him. The proud were not, but the sinners were attracted. So you ask this question.
Joel Brooks:If sinners seem to always be drawn to Jesus, why is it that sinners are not easily drawn to the church? What are the barriers that we're putting here? Have we become a fortress? Have we isolated ourselves? Do we like just throwing those truth bombs, watching the world explode?
Joel Brooks:It's tough questions. Have we forgotten that we were once enemies, just like the world, in need of the saving grace of Jesus. Now I hope we never ever stop things thinking, God's grace is so amazing that He would save me. If that's not where you are, course, you're to bash the rest of the world because they're different from you. But we need the grace of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:So we build homes, we plant gardens, eat of their produce. I think one of the things that Jeremiah's hinting at here is, we're to work hard to bring life into the community. Planting a garden is never the first thing you do when you build a house. You fix up everything else first. You know, you you make your repairs, you do some remodeling, fix up the kitchen how you want it, you do all that thing because you're building equity into your home.
Joel Brooks:It's a good thing. It's not a bad thing to do that. Hopefully, you know, maybe ten years later, if you sell your home, can sell it for a whole lot more than it's worth. Working on a garden, however, will not increase the value of
Cole Ragsdale:your
Joel Brooks:home. I promise you, when it comes to sell your home, you're not getting 1 dime back. None of that time and energy you spent, none of the money you spent in your garden, you're not getting any of it back. And Jeremiah says, that's exactly the point. Because your investment is not your home, it's your neighbors.
Joel Brooks:Your investment is your community. That's where you're to spend your life and pour it out. Work hard. Bring life to your community. Make it a better place.
Joel Brooks:Do you know your neighbors? Get to. He says, raise a family. They were to take wives. They were to have sons, daughters.
Joel Brooks:One way to change the church is to simply raise a godly family. You raise them. You you teach them God's word. You you teach them to love Christ, how they're dependent upon His grace, but then you don't keep them from the world, then they're unleashed as missionaries in the world. That's how we bring Shalom to the city.
Joel Brooks:Now all of these things we're being called to do as a community. Throughout the entire chapter 29, you will not once have a you that's singular. All the yous are plural. Every you. Because if you were to go out and try to do this in isolation, make no mistake, you will assimilate.
Joel Brooks:You will become just like the pagan culture. We do this in community with one another. We need to confess our sins to one another. We need to remind one another of truth. We need to be reading God's word together.
Joel Brooks:We don't do this alone. In other words, we actually do become a holy huddle. We become a holy huddle. We're reminding ourselves of all the truths of who God is, allowing him to build up our church. We're living stones, but we don't only look inward.
Joel Brooks:We're a holy huddle that also looks outward. And we begin to change the world. I can't preach on Jeremiah 29 and not mention at least verse 11. I know we're out of time. Here we go.
Joel Brooks:Most famous verse in Jeremiah. I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. I love this. I I don't know if you've noticed this before. God doesn't say you'll know his plan.
Joel Brooks:He says, I know my plans. A lot of you are going through life like, I don't think anything's going according to plan. He never told you he would tell you his plan. But know that no matter what's happening in your life, it's going exactly according to God's plan. He knows his own plans and he's working them out.
Joel Brooks:And his plan is to bring you shalom. His plan is for your prosperity. It's hope. It's for your future. And so know that since we have that certainty in our life that we will spend forever in peace with Christ our savior, that empowers us now to bring that love and that shalom to even the most darkest place.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me church. Lord Jesus, may we never never never get over your grace towards us. We were your enemies and you saved us. Even more than that, we read that we were dead. Dead people can't do a thing.
Joel Brooks:We're dead. But through your spirit, you made us alive. We owe everything to you. And, may we take that same grace, that same life that you've given to us, maybe we'd be a conduit of that to this dark and dying world that needs it. And we pray this in your name, Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen.