Living as Exiles

Being an exile

About a month or so ago, I made a decision to join the local gym here in Tanilba Bay. Now, there are ways in which you can arrange for a personal training to help you set up a routine for yourself. Possibly if I was smart, I might have pursued such an arrangement.

So, after paying my money I open the door to the gym and take that first step.

I stood just inside the door and gazed around. I saw a mass of large scary looking equipment. There were a handful of people using the equipment in such a way that they looked exactly like they knew what they were doing.

And I thought to myself - what do I do now?

Now, I can’t quite remember exactly when I had previously gone to the gym, but I’m thinking it’s over 20 years ago, and even then, I never went that frequently.

As I stood there staring at the equipment, I felt: I do not belong.

If I had not paid a bunch of money to walk through the door, I would have been much more tempted to turn around, walk out that door and not return.

Not because it was a bad gym, but because I didn’t belong.

Now perhaps some of you might be thinking that you’d never be so silly to pay money to put yourself in such a situation, but yet, I’m sure you’ve had those moments when you feel you don’t belong.

Perhaps you go to a party with a group of people you don’t normally spend time with. Or you go to a fancy restaurant when you’re more used to fast-food variety of restuarant.

Whenever we go somewhere that is out of our comfort zone, it’s hard, and our every instinct tells us to turn around and leave.

Sometimes this might be a good instinct. If you’ve stumbled onto a place that is immoral or likely to lead you down a destructive path, sometimes you are best just to turn around and walk away.

Now today, my intention is not just to talk about places in which we feel awkward.

I want to talk about something more serious.

You see, there is another type of clash that many of us here will have felt. The clash between the Christian culture that many of us have become accustomed to, and the culture that surrounds us.

For many of us, we find ourselves naturally drawn to Christian circles. Our friends are Christians. Most of our activities find ourselves surrounded by Christians. In the moment that we step out and mix with people who aren’t Christian, we really notice it.

Now look, I do recongise this is not the case for everyone. Some of you quite possibly spend a good portion of your time in a non-Christian setting, but yet there is part of us that is really drawn to the Christian crowd.

It’s not that we like to hang with Christians because we have it all together. In fact, we’re usually very much aware of how flawed Christians are. It’s also not because Christians are all alike. The reality is when you’re with a bunch of Christians, you tend to find more diversity then in other groups that tend to form.

No, the reason Christians usually like being with other Christians is because your with family. And no matter how much your family might drive you crazy, you still love them.

So, here’s the thing… this leads to a tendency of separating ourselves from the world.

The more we do this, the more we start to notice differences.

We notice that as Christians we have a different value system.

For the believer, what God says matters. For the unbeliever, its the current accepted way of thinking that matters.

For the believer, traits such as humility, self-sacrifice and integrity matter. For the unbeliever, the desiable character traits are self-confidence, ambition and resourcefulness.

For the believer, if it honours God, it’s good. For the unbeliever, if its good for me it’s good.

As believers, we might not always live up to the values we hold, but part of being in community is holding each other to account when we don’t. Outside Christian community, the values that stand counter to what we hold are actually celebrated.

Now, the reality is, as much as we might like to spend our time with those who hold to Christian values, unless you go as far as the Amish and completely cut yourself off, we are going to interact with the world around us.

And so the big question that I want to explore today is: what should this look like?

How do we operate as believers living in a world of people who stand opposed to God and God’s way of operating?

The Exile

Well, let’s just hold that question because I will come back to it.

I want to shift gears now as we look at a letter Jeremiah sends to Jews who have been exiled to Babylon.

But let’s get the background first.

We’ve been leading up to this point throughout the book of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah has been warning the people of Jerusalem, that if they don’t shape up quickly, they’re going to face the same thing that happened to their northern brothers when the Northern kingdom had been completely wiped out by the Assyrians and marched off their land and into exile.

It has been a devastating blow, and the people of Jerusalem were following a very similar path.

Now, we’ve been following the geo-politics of the land of this time throughout this series. It had been the year that Jeremiah had been called by the Lord as a prophet that the last of the strong Assyrian leaders had died. A shift in the world super power had then started to take shape, with the Babylonians becoming stronger and stronger.

As I mentioned last week, in the year 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar had announced his arrival on the scene with a dramatic victory over Egypt. This was also the year that Jeremiah had first prophesied that the Jews would be sent into exile for 70 years.

The year 597BC then became a very dramatic year for the city of Jerusalem, because they suffered a big defeat against Nebuchadnezzar, and significantly took away 10,000 of the best and brightest of Jerusalem.

There was still an even bigger defeat coming, one that would also destruction of the temple and the breaking down of the walls, but that is still another 10 years or so after the first group being taken into exile.

Now, if you were here last week, you would have heard of the false prophet Hananiah. He was speaking shortly after this first group had been taken into exile, and he made a prediction that people loved to hear.

He told people that God would restore everything in just 2 years time.

It was a clear contradiction of what Jeremiah had been saying, and the way Jeremiah 28 ended, was with a very premature death of this false prophet.

But laying aside this premature death, we now have a large number of people who have been displaced and are pining for home. Now, if it were true that God was going to restore everything in two years, well… that kind of changes how they go about their time in exile.

You see, if you knew everything would be restored in a relatively short period of time, you would more likely just grin and bear the tough situation, and effectively wait things out till the change comes.

Your an exile - but not for much longer, so just ride this one out.

I suspect that Jeremiah is getting wind that this kind of attitude was starting to spread. And so, Jeremiah decides to pen a letter which is going to give a very different perspective.

Well, we’re even told who delivers the letter. Verse 3 tells us that Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah get the privilege of delivering the letter.

Build and settle down

The message is not: “hold tight for things are about to change” rather, it is: “build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce”.

In other words, this is going to go on for some time, so make the most of it.

He goes on in verse 6, “Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage… increase in number… do not decrease”.

This is a bit of a tangent, but did you know there are people in our society today that are making concious choices to not have children because of the state of the world we live in. In one sense I get it… why would you want to bring a child into the world when you think there is so little hope for that child?

I suspect the Jews in exile were thinking something similar, but Jeremiah says, there is a reason not to give up in this way, because this is not the end.

There’s almost echo’s of Genesis 2 here. Remeber God told his newly created image bearers to go and multiply. In a sense, God’s saying - look this is not done, that creation mandate still stands - you need to continue growing.

Now, these commands so far, while very different to the conclusions you would have formed if you knew you were only going to have a short stay, but they kind of make sense.

Verse 7, however, well, you might think it could have sounded like a step too far.

The request: “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper”.

Now you need to recognise, there would be a lot of hatred being felt towards the Babylonians. These were cruel people.

These were the people that had forcefully taken them from their land. They had terrorised them. They were not nice people.

Every fibre of your being would be a desire to see them suffer. Sure, they might feature in your prayers, but I think these would be impreccatory prayers. That’s just a fancy way of saying prayers that call down God’s judgement on your enemies. There’s a number of Psalms that would help you in this regard.

But Jeremiah’s letter’s saying: no no. Not prayers to curse Bablyon, but prayers to bless them.

Why do you want to bless such a wicked nation? Well, the answer is actually quite simple. It’s because if they prosper, you will prosper.

This shouldn’t actually be all that complicated. If you are living in a place, you want it to go well.

You know, if I can make a quick observation about our own culture - sometimes it seems in our polarised political culture, that if the government in power is not the one you support, we sometimes seem to want them to fail, always highlighting the failures that we perceive… almost in the sense that their failure vindicates our perspective. What if we prayed for the government to succeed. But by that, I don’t mean a prayer that says, help them come to their senses and succeed in the way I think they need to succeed, but actually, pray that they succeed in what they intend to do?

Now that might seem outrageous. What if what they are doing in actually harmful to our country?

And maybe there might be a case when we just can’t in all good conscience pray this way, but the principle Jeremiah is suggesting here in verse 7 is that as much as possible, we should work in a constructive way with the city, not standing in opposition. Because the more we do this, the better it is for us.

The whole basis for this logic is that these exile are going to be in this situation for generations, but there is a promise to come after 70 years.

For I know the plans...

You see, this is the context for Jeremiah 29:11. Many of you will be familiar with this verse. It’s a commonly used verse that people use to help people through hard times.

It says: “For I know the plans I have for you’, declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

It’s lovely, because God is describing something beautiful that is coming there way.

Something that might get missed when this verse is used is actually the fact that in this original context, they’re actually being told to settle into their situation for another 70 years. The big change to their circumstance is actually not coming for a few more generations.

But that being said, this verse is actually a really encouraging one. Because it’s saying, yes, I know things are hard, but God has not forgotten you, and you are still in God’s plan - and that plan is good.

It’s possible your current set of circumstances might stay for a little longer, but God certainly does have a plan for you.

Our situation

Well, let me come back to our situation.

There is a sense in which we are like these exiles. But it’s not an exact parallel so we do have to be careful here, but let’s think about it.

As believers, we are citizens of heaven.

I mentioned before that we like to be with other believers because they are like family.

In a similar way, we can say that other believers are our fellow citizens. When we are with them, it is like having a glimpse of home.

Now, here’s an interesting phenomenon that I see happen. For some believers, there becomes a very strong fascination with end times, and to a degree I get it. You see, we believe that at some point in the future, Jesus is going to return, and when he does, there will be a separation.

It will be a cosmic and spiritual homecoming. A time when there will be no more tears or pain for the old order of things will have passed. It will be beautiful.

But here’s the thing, when we get to the point where we think, it’s going to happen imminently, we become a bit like the exiles in Babylon who think their release is only a year away, so let’s bunker down and just wait it out.

Could it be, that God actually wants us to build houses and settle down. Could it be that God wants us to be seeking the peace and prosperity of the city in which we live?

It is possible that the return of Jesus is imminent. But the reality is, we don’t know, and Jesus was very clear, the date is not what we should be seeking after.

But this being said, our situation is not exact to these exiles. For starters, we’re actually natives of this foreign land - we’ve just been called out of it and into a new type of citizenship.

But we also live in a different time of salvation history.

We live in a time when Jesus has come and has changed everything for us.

We live in a time when God’s plan for you is clear - his plan is that he wants you to be in a right relationship with him.

The way that we seek the peace and prosperity of our city, is actually in mission. We share the good news of what Jesus has done.

The purpose statement of our church is to love the community like Jesus does, to passionaitely share in the good news and the good things God has done for us, and to serve our community as servants. This is the mission God has set for us. This is how we will seek the peace and prosperity of the Tilligerry Peninsula.

Conclusion

The reality is, living as Christians in our wider society can be difficult and it’s not always easy to navigate. We are like exiles in our own community, but we need to avoid the temptation to just clump together.

God has put us in a bigger community and he wants us to live here. There are times we need to stand opposed, but generally speaking with should work with, and not opposed to those in power.

We do need to be wise, seeking God’s wisdom in all matters as we move through our navigation of these foreign lands. It is a wrestle, but one that we do with a posture of prayer.

When we seek God, we will find him with all of our heart.

Let me pray...