Planting Gardens in Babylon
Faith in the Public Square • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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OPENING — The Letter That Arrived
OPENING — The Letter That Arrived
It's 594 BC. You're a Jew living in Babylon.
You didn't choose it. You didn't ask for it. You're just here.
Eleven years ago, Nebuchadnezzar's army came through the first time. Took the nobles.
Daniel, his friends, a few hundred others (2 Kings 24:1).
Three years ago they came back.
That time they took you (2 Kings 24:10-16).
You watched parts of Jerusalem burn on the way out.
You walked, in chains, close to a thousand miles.
You passed towns you'd only heard about in stories. And you ended up here. Babylon. The city everyone used to whisper about. Now you live in it.
You don't speak the language.
You don't eat the food.
The gods here are strange, the architecture is wrong, the waterways aren't the ones you grew up next to.
Every time you look up at one of those massive ziggurats, you remember what the temple used to look like back home. Before it got looted.
Some of you are working as slaves.
Some of you, if you were lucky or well-connected, got folded into the civil service.
Either way, you're a captive. You're not going anywhere on your own.
But here's what's keeping you sane.
There's a prophet back home named Hananiah.
Word of his preaching has made it all the way out here.
And Hananiah is saying it's almost over (Jeremiah 28:1-4).
Two years. That's all.
Two years and Babylon falls and you go home.
You want to believe him.
You need to believe him.
Because two years, you can survive.
Two years, you don't have to unpack.
Two years, your kids don't have to learn this language.
Two years, and you'll tell your grandkids about the time you lived in Babylon.
Then the letter arrives.
It's from Jeremiah.
The prophet still back in Jerusalem. You trust Jeremiah. Everyone does.
And you open the letter expecting, hoping, that he's going to confirm what Hananiah's been saying.
Listen to what he actually wrote.
4 This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon:
5 “Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce.
6 Find wives for yourselves, and have sons and daughters. Find wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease.
7 Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.”
That's not what you wanted to read.
Build houses (v. 5). That's not a two-year verb.
Plant gardens. Gardens take seasons, years, sometimes decades.
Marry. Have kids. Let your kids have kids (v. 6).
Seek the welfare of Babylon. Pray for Babylon (v. 7).
The city that burned your temple.
The city that took your friends.
The city whose gods you're supposed to hate.
God isn't getting you out. Not soon. Not in two years. And He's asking you to stop waiting.
Now, let me tell you why we're starting here this weekend.
Every one of us in this room feels something like that disorientation.
Maybe not all at the same level. But it's there.
You turn on the news and you don't recognize the country.
You go to your grandkid's college graduation and you don't recognize what they're teaching.
You sit across the table from your own adult daughter at Thanksgiving and realize she doesn't believe what you raised her to believe.
The ground has shifted. It shifted fast.
And a lot of us are doing one of two things with it.
Some of us are looking for Hananiah.
We want somebody to tell us it's going to turn around in two years.
Pick an election. Pick a movement. Pick a personality.
Something's coming that's going to fix this and get us back to normal.
And some of us have just checked out.
Stopped watching. Stopped engaging. We're going to hunker down, circle the wagons, wait for Jesus, and let the world burn.
Here's the problem. God's word to the exiles was neither of those.
He didn't say, "rescue is coming, just hang on."
And He didn't say, "pull back, wait for me." He said plant a garden in Babylon.
That's what we're going to spend this weekend talking about.
How to live faithfully right where God has actually put us.
Not where we wish He'd put us. Where He actually did.
And I want to say this before we go any further, because the rest of this sermon depends on it.
Look at verse 4 one more time.
4 This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon:
Whom I have sent. He owns it.
You didn't end up in your cultural moment by accident.
You didn't lose the culture war.
You're not a refugee from a better time that God somehow failed to protect.
He sent you here. On purpose. For His reasons.
For a plan that's longer than you'd like and better than you can see.
So the question tonight is not, "when is this going to end?"
The question is: what are you planting?
The Verbs That Give You Away
The Verbs That Give You Away
Look at verse 5 with me. Listen to the verbs.
5 “Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce.
Nobody in this room builds a house they're planning to leave in two years.
You don't pour a foundation for a rental.
You build a house when you mean to stay.
And gardens? A garden is a confession. It says, "I'll be here when the tomatoes come in." It says, "I'll be here to pull the weeds in July and can the peppers in September."
You don't plant a garden in soil you're planning to abandon.
God could have said, "survive."
He could have said, "endure."
He could have said, "hang on, I'll be back for you soon." He didn't.
He said build. He said plant.
Now verse 6.
6 Find wives for yourselves, and have sons and daughters. Find wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease.
Not just have kids. Get your kids married. Have grandkids. Three generations deep.
Think about what that timeline means.
The person reading this letter in Babylon is being told that his grandchildren will be born in this place.
His grandchildren will grow up speaking this language.
His grandchildren will know Jerusalem the way your grandchildren know the 1950s. As a story. As something somebody once told them about.
That's the future God is handing them.
And He's saying, don't shrink. Don't hide. Don't wait it out.
Multiply there. Do not decrease.
I want you to feel the weight of that. Because this is where most of us get it wrong.
When the culture around us feels strange, or hostile, or like it's moving away from what we believe, our instinct is to shrink.
Pull in.
Have fewer conversations.
Make our circle smaller.
Keep our heads down.
Maybe move somewhere safer.
Maybe just stop engaging.
God tells these exiles the opposite.
Grow. Root. Multiply. Take up space.
Your presence in this place is not a mistake, and it is not temporary, and it is not something to minimize.
Live here.
Now look, maybe you’re sitting here tonight and have been tempted to check out.
I understand it. I really do.
Some of you have been watching the ground shift your whole adult life, and you're tired.
You've fought the good fight (2 Timothy 4:7).
You raised your kids the best you knew how.
And now you're looking at the world your grandkids are inheriting and you're thinking, "Lord, just come get us. I'm done."
I get it. But hear the text.
God's word to tired exiles was not, "rest, it's almost over." His word was, plant anyway.
Remember v. 4.
Who sent the exiles to Babylon?
Not Nebuchadnezzar. God did.
Nebuchadnezzar was the instrument. The sender was the LORD of hosts.
The same God who parted the Red Sea. The same God who gave them the land in the first place. The same God who will one day bring them home. He sent them.
This changes everything about how you see the commands that follow.
Because if Nebuchadnezzar sent them, then building a house is just accommodation. It's giving up. It's waving the white flag.
But if God sent them, then building a house is obedience.
Planting a garden is obedience.
Raising a family in Babylon is obedience. It's not defeat.
It's faithfulness to the God who knew exactly where He was putting them and exactly what He was asking them to do there.
Let me say that plain. If God put you where you are, then the life you're living right now isn't a hallway between the life you wanted and the life you're going to get back someday. It is the assignment.
So what are you planting?
I'm not asking you what you wish you could plant.
I'm asking what's actually going in the ground. In your home.
In your neighborhood.
In the relationships God has actually given you.
With the grandkids who don't believe what you believe.
With the neighbor who votes the other way.
With the coworker who thinks your faith is a problem.
With the local church that needs somebody to show up on Tuesday and help.
Some of us have spent the last ten years mourning a country.
That's understandable. It may even be right.
But God didn't send you here to mourn. He sent you here to plant.
So what are you planting?
Seek the Welfare of the City
Seek the Welfare of the City
Verse 7.
7 Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.”
Seek the welfare of the city. Not tolerate it. Not endure it. Not survive it. Seek its welfare. Go after it. Pursue it. Work for it.
Of what city? Babylon.
Stay in that word with me for a minute. Because we read it too fast. To us, "Babylon" is just a Bible word. To them, it was a name that carried every worst memory they had.
Look at 2 Kings 25. This is what Babylon meant.
8 On the seventh day of the fifth month—which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon—Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guards, a servant of the king of Babylon, entered Jerusalem.
9 He burned the Lord’s temple, the king’s palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem; he burned down all the great houses.
The temple. Solomon's temple. The place where God had put His name.
The place every faithful Jew for generations had traveled to and worshiped in. Babylon burned it. Down to the ground.
And now back up one verse. Verse 7. King Zedekiah had just been captured trying to sneak out of the city during the siege. Listen to what Nebuchadnezzar did to him.
7 They slaughtered Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes. Finally, the king of Babylon blinded Zedekiah, bound him in bronze chains, and took him to Babylon.
The last thing King Zedekiah ever saw with his own eyes was the murder of his children. That's Babylon.
And pretty much every family reading Jeremiah's letter had a version of that story.
Somebody they lost. Something they saw. A scar they carried out of Jerusalem.
And now God is them to seek the welfare of that city. To pray for it. To work for its good.
Now back to Jeremiah 29:7
7 Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.”
The Hebrew word for well-being here is shalom.
In most of our Bibles it gets translated "peace," but shalom carries a lot more than that.
Wholeness. Flourishing. Things the way they're supposed to be.
When a community has shalom, relationships work, the economy works, the weak are cared for, justice holds. It's not just the absence of trouble. It's the presence of good.
God tells them to seek that. For Babylon.
And then He tells them to pray for it.
I want you to stop and imagine what that prayer sounds like. You're a Jewish father in 594 BC. You lost your home. You watched your city burn.
You walked a thousand miles in chains. And now God is telling you to get on your knees, next to the bed your kids are sleeping in, in the house you're building in Babylon, and pray for Babylon.
Pray that their crops come in. Pray that their king governs wisely. Pray that their streets are safe. Pray that their children grow up well.
That's not natural. That's supernatural. No human being prays that prayer on their own. That prayer only happens when God tells you to pray it.
Now here's where this text presses on us. Because we are tempted to do the exact opposite with our culture.
We're tempted to see our culture as an enemy to resist.
We track what's wrong. We count the losses.
We make lists of the things we're against.
And yes, some of that is necessary.
There are things we need to name and oppose.
We're going to talk about some of those things on Sunday.
But if all you ever do is resist, you've missed half the assignment.
Because God did not tell the exiles to resist Babylon.
He told them to bless Babylon. Those are not the same thing.
You can resist what's wrong and bless the place at the same time, but if resistance is the only gear you have, you are not being faithful to this verse.
Let me say it sharper. If the only way the unbelievers in your life experience you is as someone who's against things, you're not obeying Jeremiah 29:7.
If your neighbor has no idea you're a Christian except for the bumper stickers and the yard signs, you're not obeying Jeremiah 29:7.
If your coworker knows your politics better than they know your kindness, you're not obeying Jeremiah 29:7.
The exiles were told to seek the city's shalom. That means going after its good. Its flourishing. Its wholeness. Actively. On purpose.
And then there's that last line of the verse:
7 Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.”
Your shalom is tied to theirs now.
You can't flourish while the city around you withers. Your good is bound up with your neighbor's good.
That's why you pray for them. That's why you work for them. That's why you plant something that feeds more than just your own family.
Some of you have been praying for a long time that God would rescue you from your culture.
Can I suggest that the more biblical prayer is that God would use you for your culture?
You're not here to fight this city. You're not here to flee it. You're here to bless it.
So what are you planting? And who's it feeding?
The Voices Selling Shortcuts
The Voices Selling Shortcuts
Jeremiah 29:8-9
8 For this is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: “Don’t let your prophets who are among you and your diviners deceive you, and don’t listen to the dreams you elicit from them,
9 for they are prophesying falsely to you in my name. I have not sent them.” This is the Lord’s declaration.
This is God interrupting His own letter to warn them about the voices they've been listening to.
Telling you a different story. They're compelling. They feel like hope. They're lying.
So who were these voices?
Jeremiah 28. The prophet Hananiah. In 594 BC in Jerusalem, Hananiah was a rock star.
He stood up in the temple, in front of the priests and all the people, and he made a promise (Jeremiah 28:1-4).
Two years. Within two years, God was going to break the yoke of Babylon.
The vessels Nebuchadnezzar stole from the temple were coming back.
King Jeconiah, who'd been carried off in the first deportation, was coming back.
And all the exiles, every last one of them, was coming back. Two years. Guaranteed. Thus says the LORD.
It was exactly what everybody wanted to hear.
And Jeremiah, standing right there in the same room, said this.
6 The prophet Jeremiah said, “Amen! May the Lord do that. May the Lord make the words you have prophesied come true and may he restore the articles of the Lord’s temple and all the exiles from Babylon to this place!
And then he says in 7-9, prophets throughout history have mostly preached war and destruction. The prophet who preaches peace, we'll know is true when his peace actually shows up … So let's wait and see.
Hananiah didn't like that answer. He took the wooden yoke off Jeremiah's neck, broke it in front of everyone, and said this is how God is going to break Babylon's yoke. Two years (Jeremiah 28:10-11).
Jeremiah walked away. God sent him back a little later with a harder word. He told Hananiah: the wooden yoke you broke? God is going to replace it with an iron one. And by the way, you will be dead before the year is out, because you have taught rebellion against the LORD (Jeremiah 28:13-16).
Two months later Hananiah was dead (Jeremiah 28:17).
Now listen to me carefully.
Hananiah was not a pagan. He wasn't a priest of Baal.
He wasn't some outsider sneaking into the temple.
Hananiah was one of them. He spoke their language. He used God's name. He quoted the covenant. Everything about him looked right. And he was a liar.
That's what makes this so dangerous.
The voices God warns the exiles about in Jeremiah 29:8 are not obvious enemies.
They're insiders. They sound like you. They use the words you use.
They claim to speak for the God you worship. And they are telling you a version of the story that God never told them to tell.
Who is your Hananiah?
I'm not going to name names. I don't have to. You know the voices.
The ones promising you that if you just get the right person elected, America gets saved.
The ones promising you that if you just fight hard enough in the culture war, we win it back.
The ones telling you that the church has been too soft, too accommodating, too nice, and what we really need is people who will finally stand up and punch back.
The ones on the other side, too, telling you that if the church just updates itself fast enough, softens itself enough, trims off the hard parts of Scripture, the culture will come around and love us again.
Every one of those voices is selling you a two-year fix.
Every one of them is telling you that the exile is almost over and rescue is just around the corner if you'll get on board with the program.
And every one of them is a Hananiah.
Three Marks of a Hananiah:
Three Marks of a Hananiah:
First, a Hananiah flatters your tribe.
He tells your side what your side already wants to hear.
Real prophets almost always rebuke their own people first.
Hananiah told the people in Jerusalem what the people in Jerusalem wanted to believe. Jeremiah told them what they didn't want to believe. One of them was lying.
Second, a Hananiah promises a short timeline.
Two years. If someone is telling you that the problems the American church is facing are going to resolve in an election cycle, or a news cycle, or a movement, they are not speaking from the same book Jeremiah was.
God's timelines are almost always longer than we want.
Third, a Hananiah gives you an enemy to hate instead of a neighbor to love.
Jeremiah told the exiles to pray for Babylon. Hananiah told them to wait two years for God to crush Babylon.
One of those prophets was producing disciples who looked like Jesus.
The other one was producing angry people. You can tell a lot about a prophet by what kind of people his preaching is producing (Matthew 7:15-16).
Jeremiah's word to the exiles was harder and slower. No shortcuts. No two-year rescue. Build houses. Plant gardens. Pray for the city. Trust God for the long haul.
That is still the word tonight. No shortcuts. The voices promising you one are lying to you, and they're probably lying to themselves too.
So what are you planting? Because gardens take longer than election cycles.
The Plan That Makes It Livable
The Plan That Makes It Livable
Now, verse 10.
10 For this is what the Lord says: “When seventy years for Babylon are complete, I will attend to you and will confirm my promise concerning you to restore you to this place.
Seventy years.
Do the math with me. If you're fifty years old reading this letter in 594 BC, you will be one hundred and twenty before the exile ends.
You are not going home.
Your children, if they're young, might make it. But you? You are going to die in Babylon.
And then verse 11.
11 For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
We love this verse.
We put it on graduation cards and coffee mugs and tattoos. And we have almost entirely ripped it out of its context.
Verse 11 is not a promise to an American teenager about her career path.
Verse 11 is a promise to a Jewish father in Babylon who just found out he will die before the exile ends.
Now this is stunning.
In that context. To those people. With that news.
Plans for your welfare. Plans for a future and a hope. How can God say that to a man who's going to die in Babylon?
Because the plan is bigger than his lifetime.
The word there for well-being is shalom. Same word we saw back in verse 7.
Now He uses the same word for His own plans. I have plans for your shalom.
Not plans for your comfort. Not plans for your convenience.
Not plans to get you out quickly. Plans for your wholeness.
Plans that put everything right. Plans that reach past Babylon and past this exile and past your grave if it comes to it, all the way to a future where the whole story gets finished.
Now hear how this lands on us.
You may be planting in soil you will not harvest..
Some of you have been praying for grandchildren who still don't believe. You may not live to see them come home.
Some of you are trying to be faithful in a country that may get harder before it gets better. You may not live to see what comes next.
Some of you are pouring into a local church that is smaller than it used to be, and you are wondering if any of this is working. You may not live to see the fruit.
Hear me.
That does not mean you're planting for nothing.
It means you're planting for a harvest that God will bring in on His timeline, not yours.
Most of the exiles who got that letter died in Babylon.
But seventy years later, their grandchildren walked back into Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple (Ezra 1:1-4; Ezra 3:8-13).
The gardens they planted in 594 BC fed the generation that came home in 538 BC. God kept His word. It just took longer than anybody wanted.
That is what verse 11 is actually promising. Not a short rescue. Not a comfortable life. A future and a hope, on God's timeline, tied to God's plan, secured by God's character.
And that is why the commands in verses 5 through 7 are livable.
You don't build a house in Babylon because you're giving up.
You build it because the God who sent you there has plans for your shalom.
You don't pray for the city because you've forgotten Jerusalem.
You pray for it because the same God who has plans for you has plans that reach past your lifetime.
You can plant, and keep planting, and keep on planting, because the harvest is guaranteed even if you're not the one who sees it (1 Corinthians 3:6-7).
6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
7 So, then, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
The exiles could plant gardens in Babylon because God had not forgotten them.
You can plant in 2026 because God has not forgotten you either.
So what are you planting?
As We Close — The Question You Carry Home
As We Close — The Question You Carry Home
Let me tell you where we're going this weekend.
Friday night we're going to sit with 1 Peter 2.
Peter calls us sojourners and exiles (1 Peter 2:11), which is just the New Testament way of saying what Jeremiah said first.
We're going to talk about how you hold your convictions without becoming bitter. How you stay engaged without being absorbed. What it looks like to live as a resident alien in a place that isn't ultimately home.
Saturday we're going to spend time in Colossians 4. Paul tells us our speech should be seasoned with salt (Colossians 4:6).
We're going to talk honestly about what it looks like to have hard conversations with people we love.
The adult child who's walked away. The sibling who thinks our faith is the problem. The friend who's been hurt by the church. How do you talk about Jesus in those conversations, when the stakes are high and the ground is delicate?
Sunday morning in our study we're going to go somewhere harder. Micah 6 and John 11. How do we hold truth and tears at the same time? How did Jesus do it (Micah 6:8; John 11:35)?
What does it mean to stand on conviction while genuinely mourning with people who are hurting? That's not an easy session. We need it anyway.
And Sunday in worship we close in Hebrews 12 and Philippians 3. The kingdom that cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:28). Our citizenship in heaven (Philippians 3:20). Where we actually belong, when everything around us feels like it's moving.
But all of that, every session, every text, every application, assumes something. It assumes you have accepted the letter.
The letter says you are not lost. You are sent.
It says the ground you're standing on, strange and uncomfortable as it feels, is ground God put you on.
It says the voices promising you a quick rescue are lying. It says the plan is longer and better than you can see.
And it says, right now, tonight, in 2026, in this country, in this church, in your home, at your job, with your neighbors, with your family, plant something.
You may not harvest it. That's alright. God will.
The question tonight is not when does this end.
The question is the one you've been hearing all night.
What are you planting?
Let's pray.
