Let's come to the Lord one more time and ask for His help. Dear Lord, please bless us now as we come to Your Word. Help us to know what You want us to know. Believe what You want us to believe. Do what You want us to do. Open my lips that I may speak only what is true and edifying and open our ears that we may hear Your voice in Jesus' name. Amen. The Church Father and in the Catholic Church, the Saint Augustine lived from 354 to 430. Maybe you've heard of him. He is by most accounts after the close of the biblical canon, the most important theologian in the history of the church. He was the bishop of hippo in North Africa and he was 56 years old when he was told the unthinkable that the great city of Rome had been sacked. Everyone was shocked. How could you not be shocked? How could Rome have fallen into these crude, Germanic peoples probably originated in Scandinavia, the Visigoths. They just sound like scary people. How could this civilization of the Greeks and the Romans be coming to an end? Rome was ancient. Rome seemed to be the most important city in the world. It was in the center of the world as they saw it. Rome was invincible. Wasn't it? It would be as if on September 11, 2001 not only did the planes crash into the Twin Towers and saw that great tragedy and active violence and war. But then, Gihadist extremists took over the entire city or laid to waste the entire great city of New York to crash into the Twin Towers and unleash that damage was shocking to take over the entire city and on its way the collapse of an entire civilization unthinkable. That's what Augustine faced. For the next 16 years he worked on one of the most important books ever written. Here's the title in Latin. De Quimitante de Contra Paganos. The city of God against the pagans. You may have heard of it, the city of God. There were chiefly two purposes in writing this massive work. One, he set out to defend Christianity. If you know something of church history you may recall that it wasn't too long before this that Constantine had his famous conversion and began moving the Christian church from a place of persecution to a privileged place in the empire. And it was on its way to becoming something of a Christian empire. And so it occurred to many people. Now, when did this great cataclysmic event happen? Well, it happened after we turned away from the gods and goddesses of our fathers, the Roman pantheon of gods, and we turned to this strange god Christ. And so Augustine set out to defend Christianity against these charges. And then the second main purpose was to explore the relationship between what he called two cities, city of man and the city of god. How do we make sense of such a cataclysmic upheaval in the world as they knew it? These two cities, city of man, city of god, are not exactly heaven and earth related to that. But in Augustine's reckoning, there are actually two cities that exist on earth at the same time. Here's what he says. This race we have distributed into two parts. The one consisting of those who live according to man and the other of those who live according to god. And these we also mystically call two cities or two communities of men, of which one is the predestined to reign eternally with god and the other to suffer eternal punishment with the devil. And so Augustine traces these two cities. He uses that as a metaphor, not a literal city, but two communities of people throughout history all the way from Cain and Abel. He shows how the world is divided into these two groups. The earthly society, he says, expresses itself in Rome and Babylon and lives according to the values of the world. And then the city of god was present in Israel, and now he says his presence in the church and lives according to heavenly values. The city of man, he says, no matter how impressive it looks, as impressive as Babylon or Rome or New York City or London or Paris, no matter how impressive it will always pass away. Should the Lord delay in coming the great cities of the world pass away? The city of god, however, no matter how small, no matter how troubled, no matter how seemingly unimpressive that city will last forever. So the question uppermost in Augustine's mind, and it's a question relevant for us, how do we live as the city of god in the midst of the city of man? It's not a simple question to answer. On the one hand, you might say, well, the city of god must live in opposition to the city of man. And that is part of the answer. We have different values, different beliefs, different goals, increasingly in this country. Christians, I mean, real, Bible-believing, born again, love Jesus with all our heart, believe every single word in this book. Kind of Christians will have to get used to living as cognitive minorities. And there will be an opposition. We will be distinct, and at times we will have to work against the city of man for the sake of the city of god. But it's not as simple as just saying the two are mortal enemies. Because the city of god should also influence the city of man. We are to be salt and light. We make things taste better. We make things brighter. So navigating these two cities. How to live as the city of god in the midst of the city of man is not easy. Now, if you saw the preaching schedule in that little bookmark, you see that for most of this fall, we're going to be in two seven-part series. We're going to look at the seven churches of revelation, which has everything to do with how do we live as the people of god in the midst of this fallen world? That's what they were facing. And then we're going to do a second seven-part series on the person of Christ and the famous 316 passages in the New Testament. John 316, but there's a lot of other famous 316 passages. And we're going to focus on the person of Christ and what that means as we live in this world. These two weeks, this morning and next week, and it coincides very nicely with the Sunday school class that Eric is teaching, are here to orient us and reorient us at the beginning of this fall semester, the beginning of this new ministry here to think about this question. How does god want us to live in the world, but not of the world? Now, thankfully, we're not facing the total collapse of civilization. Let's be thinking, well, it's not quite as bad as a gust in today, but we can see the foundations being shaken. What does it mean to be salt and light? What should our posture be toward our city, toward our country? How can we be prepared to talk to our neighbors about Christ when they may disagree fundamentally with not only the conclusions we reach but the very starting places and assumptions we have? These are the sort of questions I hope we'll be thinking about in these two weeks together. So I want you to turn in your Bible, and yes, I know that introduction counted against my time. I understand that. Don't fret. I've done this before. Jeremiah 29 verses 1 through 14. Jeremiah 29, 1 through 14. Jeremiah's letter to the exiles. 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 who nebuchadnezzar had taken his exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Chicaniah and the queen mother, the unix, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the metalworkers had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elisa, the son of Shafan and Gamaria, the son of Hokia, who was at a chia king of Judah, sent to Babylon to the nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. That's all introduction. This is going in the royal mail bag, and it's heading off to the nebuchadnezzar to read and share with the exiles. It said, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles, who might have sent into 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 this 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, 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 to clear 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. 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 in common, 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. Here is what is going on. Jeremiah, the prophet, was born in a little town called Anatoth, just a few miles north east of Jerusalem. He was called to be a prophet around 627 BC, and he ministered for forty years. Those were forty terrible years. Jeremiah began his ministry under the reign of Josiah, the last good king, the last real king, and then came a series of puppet kings. Jehoah has, Jehoia Kim, Jehoia Kim, and Zedekiah. Didn't even go to the trouble of giving them different sounding names. During this time Babylon overtook Assyria as the superpower in the region, Judah tried to do everything it could. So Israel was already overtaken by Assyria in 722, and now the superpower in the region is Babylon and Judah, the southern kingdom is left, and Judah did everything it could think of, except obeying God. Everything else it could think of to put off the eventual Babylonian destruction, and so it sided with Egypt and it sided with Babylon, and then it tried to rebel, nothing worked. Judah was in big trouble from this big bully Babylon. And Jeremiah's job was to give Judah bad news. In fact, he was almost always telling them what they did not want to hear. The people wanted to believe the false prophets. That Babylon would not be victorious or if it was, it would not be for very long, but Jeremiah had a word from the Lord, and he said, Babylon, though they are wicked. That's true. Don't miss that part. He wasn't on the side of the Babylonians. He wasn't in cahoots with the Babylonians. They're wicked, but God's going to use this wicked instrument to punish our people. This did not make Jeremiah popular. His hometown plotted against him. People tried to kill him. He was persecuted and reviled. If there was an autobiography, he could have entitled it, hey, don't shoot the messenger, the life story of Jeremiah. It did not like Jeremiah. He never married because the Lord told him not to take a wife, and the future wife of Jeremiah probably appreciated that. In the whole book of Jeremiah, we only have a record of two people who listened to him. Baruch, his scribe, and an Ethiopian eunuch named Ebid Melek. It was not a glamorous job that the Lord gave him, but he spoke the truth. In 605 BC, Babylon took the first exiles from Israel, from Judah, off to Babylon, and there were multiple deportations over a couple of decades. More and more exiles were sent from Jerusalem over to Babylon. All the way until 587 when Jerusalem was destroyed. So here we are in chapter 29, probably sometime in the 590s, before Jerusalem has been destroyed because Jeremiah's back at Jerusalem, but he's sending a letter over to the north and to the east to Babylon in order that they have instructions on how to live. He is going to tell them how they are to live as God's chosen people in a strange land. How do they exist as the city of God in the midst of a very corrupt wicked city of man? Now, though we are not in this same situation, thankfully, the New Testament does put us into an analogous situation. So we're right to draw application from this letter. True, we haven't been deported. We're not facing 70 years of explicit punishment and yet, doesn't the New Testament depict God's people not so much like the Israelites in the promised land as we are exiles? You think about the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, you have the city of God and the city of man are the same. And after that, the chairman puts a flaming sword. You can't go back in there. It isn't until the end of Revelation where the city of God and the city of man become the same again. You remember that from Revelation 11? You may not have known there, but you've heard it from Handel's Messiah and the kingdom of this earth, this world, become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. That happens at the end when the New Heavens and the New Earth literally come down. That's the picture. And we have this New Garden city. So in between the beginning of Genesis and the end of Revelation the city of man and the city of God do not completely overlap. That's why in 1 Peter we are often called Strangers and Aliens. Some translations we are called exiles, the elect exile of the dispersion. We are those people who are not yet in the promised land. And no matter how much influence we may have, and certainly throughout much of history in this country there has been a tremendous Christian influence and that is to the good. And we ought to do that as we'll see in this text. And yet we must always keep in mind that the city of God and the city of man have not come together fully and they won't until the end. We too, no matter how godly your neighborhood may be, or even if you live in the South. We're Strangers, we're aliens, we're exiles. I belabor that point for you to understand that Jeremiah's letter is for people like us. Not identical, of course. We're not promised that we're not seven years, not identical. But the basic contours are the same. Israel of God in the midst of Babylon. Because Paul will later call the church the Israel of God and Revelation makes clear that the worldly system is like Babylon. So Israel of God in the midst of Babylon, that's us. There are three commands for the exiles in Babylon and these three instructions will be useful for us as we think about living in the city of God as the city of God in the midst of the city of man. Three instructions, number one, settle down. I'll settle down as much calm down but it's okay. Get some roots, get established. You see this in verse five? Build houses, live in them, plant gardens, either produce, take wives, the sons and daughters of your wives or sons, give your daughters and mayors, they may bear sons, multiply, do not decrease. You have to remember they are in Babylon, the Babylonians crush. They crush the Israelites, they crush their enemies, kill them, women and children, dashed infants against the rock. This was a godless, corrupt, punishing, despicable enemy. They were certainly more godless than this country. And yet as one author puts it, Jeremiah sounds like he works for Babylonian realty. Check out our four bedroom homes, our lush gardens, our bustling commerce. Let's come to Babylon, a wonderful place to raise your family. Now it's true, they didn't choose to relocate to Babylon, they were forced there. But now Jeremiah absolutely astonishes them. Remember the false prophets are telling them this is going to be quick. There's a false prophet named Hannah Nia in chapter 27 and 28. There's another false prophet in chapter 29. Jeremiah, and they're all saying to basically the same thing. There's going to be short, two years, tops. So this is uncomfortable, but don't worry, don't make long-term plans. Best to just bring your tents, not your bricks and mortar. And Jeremiah says the opposite, nope, it's not going to be short. It's going to be 70 years, and so you need to settle down. Plant crops if you're only going to be there for a couple of months. You don't bother to be giving away sons and daughters and marriage. And be looking forward to increasing and having children, unless you're going to be there for many years. So Jeremiah says, you're going to make a home in Babylon. And you're going to multiply, I hope. I don't want you to be scared. I want you to stay put. I want you to carry on with life. It's not a vacation. It's not like two years of graduate school. It's not even a short-term prison sentence. This is your life for a full 70 years. And the psalmist says that the span of life is 70 or by reason of strength 80 years. This is a lifetime you're going to spend in Babylon. Now for sure, the Israelites were not to be corrupted by the Babylonians. And while they were there, God gave them through the Babylonians a certain amount of freedom. We can read from Ezekiel and he's ministering there to the exiles. We see that the prophets were able to minister to them. They still have elders, so they have some sort of their own worship, their own religious system. So the Babylonians deport them but they're not constantly putting them under their thumb. They were allowed to live a fairly normal life. And even though they had no choice in the matter, God says you're there and you ought to make the best of it. And so he says to us as strangers and aliens, settle down and try to live a fairly normal life. Stick around if you can. Get involved where you are. You are here and I know we live in a transient society and people are moving all the time. There's good reasons to do so. But where you are, the old adage is true, bloom where you're planted. If you're here, make roots, grow, blossom. You can think about how this word from Jeremiah to the exiles must have been initially so discouraging. But if they step back and think about it, it should have been encouraging. The discouragement of course is we are going to be here for a long time. Maybe you're discouraging. I want heaven. You mean Jesus isn't coming back tomorrow? Check back tomorrow. Yeah, you're going to have to find a way to make it in a fallen world. Sometimes as nasty and brutish and sometimes doesn't like Christians. So that's this discouraging but hopefully they would have also been encouraged because it means though we're in Babylon, though we're exiles, though we're strangers. So this is not our permanent home. There is a way to be faithful here. Settle down, find a place to live. Get a job. Get married. Have children. That's what he tells them to do. To have, now the Lord may not give you all of those things. We understand sometimes you want the job you can't have it, you want marriage, it doesn't come, etc. Is so far as your April, settle down. I remember when I was in college and I grew a bunch in my faith. I often say I grew like a weed and that's the right analogy because I grew fast and there were also a lot of weeds. And maybe you had this experience or young people, maybe you'll have this experience in college. I was on fire for the Lord and that was good but I remember talking to my roommates. We're both on fire for the Lord thinking about how radical we were going to live our lives. Had this serious moment, I didn't act on it. We had this serious conversation. Do you think we should just probably never get married? We should probably maybe drop out of school. If we were really spiritual, are we wasting our time learning these things? Can we just be in a kabut somewhere, reading our Bible? Or just soaking up all we can? You have that radical edge where you think if I'm really, really faithful to Jesus, nothing about my life is going to look normal. I think that's what the kids say. But Jeremiah tells the ex house, no, it's all right. In fact, I'm telling you, radical life, you know what radical means root. Radical life means you have rootedness. And so if you're there in Babylon, you're saying what are we going to do? I'm going to serve Yahweh. I'm on fire for Yahweh. It's good. But you're going to be there for a while. So get a house, get a job, get a wife, get a husband, have some kids. Which is settle down. Number two, settle down. Number two, seek the welfare of the city. Part of this verse, many of you in verse seven, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. You may know that that Hebrew word is Shalom. Well being contentment, wholeness. God is telling the exiles seek the prosperity of the city. Do everything you can to further the good of that city. Yes, even Babylon. They sing impregnatory Psalms against Babylon, Psalm 137. This is why as a Christian you have to hold a lot of things true at the same time. On the one hand, they could sing impregnatory Psalms because Babylon was wicked. And they deserve to be punished. And at the same time, Jeremiah can tell them, yeah, but as Babylon goes, so you go. Now notice, we don't want to overstate verse seven. It doesn't actually say anything about it. And then you're going to build the kingdom. No. I mean that you're going to work and bring this tremendous revival. Well, that would be nice. Actually, it says, rather matter of factly, if you're smart, you're going to work for the welfare of Babylon because you know where you live, a Babylon. So if Charlotte falls into disarray, that's not good for you. And if you pretend to be super spiritual and say, doesn't matter what happens, in our country, we don't care about liberty, freedom. No, you will be made to care. And as the city goes, and as your state goes, and as your country goes, it will mean things better or worse for you. And it's welfare, you will find your welfare. This is why being in the world, but not of the world, is a complicated thing. It means that we give no ultimate allegiance to a country, a city, a school, only Christ is Lord. And if we have to choose between serving Christ and serving some other interest, we always choose Christ. But that doesn't mean that under the Lordship of Christ, we don't also pursue and support other good things. Come back to Augustine. He used the language of ordered loves. You've heard of a love or something being disordered. Well think about what that word literally means. It means you love something out of order. You love God. You love Father, Son, and Holy Spirit most. And underneath that love and devotion to God, you can love other things. In fact, you should. You should love your parents. You should love your children. There's a very appropriate way patriotically to love your country. You may be able to love your college football team. Maybe you can even love your favorite TV show. But if the order gets out of whack, and all of a sudden your favorite pizza place is higher than your child, not a good order, or if your family and having great times at the late comes ordered all the way above Jesus, that's not the right order either. Ordered loves. Seek the Shalom of Charlotte. Seek the welfare of America. It's a mistake to always be against the place you live, never for it. That's why we get involved. Government, education, art, literature, media, or you work with the poor, you work with the addicted, you work with prisoners, or you work with at-risk moms, or you learn how to fix things or build things or grow things. Listen to this very carefully. This point is very critical. The mission of the church is not the welfare of the city. This is not the mission of the church. This is not what Jesus told his disciples before he sent into heaven. Now you're going to be close with power from on high, and I want you to seek the welfare of the city. No, as we've heard in some, these will cause, make disciples. So seeking the welfare of the city is not the mission of the church, however, as disciples, as we're scattered in our various communities and jobs and schools throughout the week, we do seek the peace of the places that we inhabit. So you understand there's a difference between the church as the church, and the church scattered throughout the week. As we go into our places of work and school and neighborhoods and extracurricular activities, we do seek the peace of this place. But our marching orders, the reason we send out missionaries into the world, is to make disciples. This wasn't Jeremiah's way of saying, I want you to redefine what temple worship is about. I want you to think of synagogue worship in a different way. The great commissions focus on testifying, bearing witness to Christ, making disciples. And yet as disciples, we are given this opportunity to seek the peace of our city. Look at verse 7. Now, how do we do that? Well, one of the best ways you do it, pray to the Lord on its behalf. We often get so overwhelmed, I do, this is a massive thing. I reform the whole country. You know, you can't do that. You can't change the world in that way. But can you pray? Prayer, one author says, is the civic responsibility of the Christian. Another author pointed out this is the only verse in the Old Testament where God's people are specifically told to pray for their enemies. The world around you may seem like your enemy, and sometimes it is, but you must also pray for your leaders. Pray for your school, your government, your country. Pray for the welfare of the place in which we live. So settle down, seek the welfare of the city, and finally, keep the ending in mind. Sorry, I tried to get an S word, but keep the ending in mind. Jeremiah is very clear in this entire book about the ending for Israel. The ending we even read about it here is restoration and return in 70 years. Look at verse 11. 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. So it's not all bad news from Jeremiah. Some of you have this and some cross stitch hanging up on your house. We got a sticker on your phone and it's great verse. And then you get the Christians who swoop in, maybe they got a semester of seminary under their belt. Hey, you like Jeremiah 29-11? Are you coming back from exile in 70 years? Get the sticker off. Well, it's true. It is about the immediate context of returning from exile in 70 years, but it's a good verse. It's good. Have the verse. Love the verse. Put the bumper sticker on your car. It's a good verse. So long as we understand some of the immediate context and we don't misunderstand prosper to mean you get rich, you get everything you want. It's a wonderful promise to God's covenant people to us that God's alternate plans for us, even in the midst of difficulty, are for good. Repentance and renewal. Look at verse 13. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Important. Then seeking the welfare of the city is seeking the Lord with all your heart. And if you just seek the welfare of the city, you don't even have to be a Christian to want your city to be good. You have to be a Christian to also seek the Lord with all your heart. So the ending for Israel is good. The ending for Babylon is bad. Chapter 50 is entitled in the ESV judgment on Babylon. Chapter 51. The utter destruction of Babylon. So there's bad news here for Israel in the 70 years, but there's worse news for Babylon. Which is why we must always keep the ending in mind. The world is not our home. Judgment is coming. This is where some well-meaning Christians and churches miss the mark. Because maybe they want to hunker down in verse 7 and they get all excited about the Shalom stuff. And we're going to be the Shalom Christians and we're making the Shalom in the city. Good. But they forget about the only one who can bring lasting Shalom. The only one who can provide the basis for real peace. The only one who can actually bring lasting welfare between God and man. They might not seek the Shalom of the city because it's going to make it into the new heavens and the new earth. I said no because this is just common sense. This is going to be good for you. Don't think we are just called to be good neighbors in the city. We are. We are also called to point people to the king of the city. Israel couldn't see this as clearly as we can because we know the Prince of Peace. We know the one who stood on the mountain before he ascended and told his disciples all authority in heaven and in earth had been given to him. We know the one who can reconcile Jew and Gentile, strangers and aliens through his blood. So as we in our individual lives seek the welfare of the city as we ought. Don't forget to talk about Jesus. He's the only one who can give us the peace that we all really need. If you love God and love your neighbor, you will care about their health, their employment, their freedom, their well-being, the well-ordered society. You'll care about the city. You'll care about their souls. We go forth to seek the welfare of the city of man, but also here's where it's hard to be Christians. We seek the welfare of the city of man, but we also are calling people out of it into the city of God. Do you see how all three of these instructions must be held together? And if you just run off to one or the other, you're not going to be the sort of mature Christian that God wants you to be. Settle down, seek the peace of the city, and keep the ending in mind. If you don't settle down, if you don't do that part, you're going to be rootless. If you don't do the second part, you're going to be heartless. And if you don't do the last part, you're going to be Christless. If you don't keep the ending in mind, that God doesn't call the church to some city renewal, civic reclamation project. Doesn't call us to make America a Christian nation. Does call us to be salt and light? It's influence in so far as we are able and to seek the welfare of Charlotte, of North Carolina, of the United States, unapologetically, because we know that as the country goes, things can go better or worse for the Church of Jesus Christ. We don't relish the thoughts of persecution. There's a reason why the vast missionary forces in the last 200 years have come from North America, from the British Isles. It comes from places where there's prosperity, where there's freedom, where there's rule of law, where there's order. And now great missionary forces coming from Korea, from some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, from Brazil. So we do seek the welfare of the city, but we must not forget to keep the end in mind. It's okay to love this place here on Earth, so long as that love is not disordered. Because we don't love this place best and we don't love the people on it most effectively, unless we love the heavenly city to come even more, and we call people to join us on our way to the other side. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we give thanks for your many graces, your many kindnesses to us. And wherever we need to hear your word this morning, some of us, it's that word to put roots, to make the best of where we are, and that it's okay to settle down and try to live something of a normal life. Other people may have forgotten the interest we have in seeking the welfare of this place in which we live. And perhaps others have forgotten the eternal perspectives and the final reward coming in the final judgment as well. So Lord, keep us, we pray, walking with you, and we look forward to all the glorious things you will do through Jesus as we follow Him. Amen.