What should you do when tyrants are in control? In this encouraging message, Scott Brown examines Jeremiah 29:1-14, encouraging those living in exile to “Build, Dwell, Plant.” In other words, don’t waste your exile pining away. Don’t waste your exile getting caught up in distractions, move forward, be productive, do the powerful things, and don’t be frustrated. Don’t let the bad guys get you down. Get your wife at the table and design your home. Settle down. Stay put. Plant crops. Be self-sufficient. Plan weddings. Have babies. Make your house a house of prayer. Be a force of peace in your community.
Please open your Bibles to Jeremiah chapter 29. And this text forms the heart of the message we want to communicate. And we're going to read verses 1 through 14. This is the holy and true, fully sufficient, inerrant, sweeter than honey, Word of God. Verse 1, Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the remainder of the elders who were carried away captive to the priests, the prophets and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon.
This happened after Jeconiah the king, the queen mother, the eunuchs, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the Smiths had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elasa, the son of Shaphan and Gomorrah, the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to Babylon, to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, saying, and this is the letter verse 4 thus says the Lord of hosts the God of Israel to all who are carried away captive, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters. And take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands so that they may bear sons and daughters, that you may be increased there and not diminished.
And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive and pray to the Lord for it. For in its peace you will have peace. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners who are in your midst deceive you, nor listen to their to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed, for they prophesy falsely to you in my name. I have not sent them, says the Lord. For thus says the Lord, after 70 years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you and cause you to return to this place.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord. Thoughts of peace and not of evil. To give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and go and pray to me, and I will listen to you, and you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.
Would you pray with me? Father, we want to do your will. We need to do your will. We're living in a strange land. We are so thankful that you are the King of Kings and Lord of Lords of that land and all that's happening in it and I pray that you would bind our hearts together in unity to love you and keep all of your commandments, and to live the ways that you have designed for us to live in this generation, this particular generation that we find ourselves in at this very moment.
Amen. So obviously this chapter is written to a people who are in exile. And of course, we're conducting this conference to encourage the Christian community to live biblically in their time of exile and we've called this conference build dwell plant which is just taken from this text and it's pivotal that the Church of Jesus understands how to live biblically in their families and in their churches and in their workplaces and we're here really to encourage you to live differently and to reap the fruit of that living differently. This has been very big on my mind lately, just in the last year or so. I've been performing weddings of kids that have grown up in my church.
And I've been performing weddings of young men and women that I've known throughout the country through our ministry at Church and Family Life. Some of them are former interns. Some of them are just kids that I've known, the kids that have listened to me over the years, really from their youth. And of the last eight weddings that I've performed in my own church, all the kids grew up in that church. They heard probably 500 of my sermons.
They probably went to 30 conferences over the last decade and a half. But what was happening behind all that is that their parents really were living differently. They didn't live like everybody else in Wake Forest. They didn't live like everybody else in America. They didn't educate their kids like everybody else in America.
They didn't conduct their church life like everybody else in America. They didn't think like, dress like, act like. They tried to the best of their ability. And nobody can do these things with any kind of perfection. We all know how sinful and weak we are.
But here's the reality. The kids that grew up in those families, their families decided that they were going to live differently. And they did it. And now I'm doing the weddings of their kids, and they're marrying in the Lord. And they're marrying so much stronger than I was.
I was sitting down with one of them who's 28 years old. And he has six kids now. And I said, did you realize what I was doing when I was 28 years old? I said, I just married Deborah when I was 28, and I had $800. And he's 28.
He has six children. And he has a company with 12 employees. And that's just a picture of all the kids that I've married in my church over the last several years. They're way far ahead. They're buying houses when they're 19 years old.
And it's because they didn't spend their, their parents lived differently. They didn't spend their lives in a sports-driven, entertainment-driven world. They didn't play, they didn't spend their youth playing video games. Years ago, I began to chastise fathers for allowing their children to do that. And these parents, they educated their children at home.
They didn't let 13-year-olds mentor their 13-year-olds. They kept their children from youth culture, and they educated them, and they taught them how to work. And now, I've got a whole bunch of new tithers in my church. These are the kids who used to be nine years old, because they're working now, and they're productive, and they're way far ahead. And it's just been so striking to me, the impact of living differently, the impact of at least attempting to live biblically, to order your whole life by the Word of God.
These parents were in church every Sunday. These parents were at prayer night every Wednesday night. They wrapped their whole lives around the local church, not around all the institutional entertainments of the society. They lived differently. And you know what?
It was very well apparent. And they were marginalized because of it as well. But I look back now, and I'm so grateful for these families. They stepped out of the river of the American nightmare. And they really stepped in to the waters of the blessings of God.
That's what they did. So I'm just here to say, live differently. Live biblically. You can't lose. Now, we're living in the midst of a government right now that's trying to tell us how to do everything.
Where to go, how to travel. They're telling your wife what she can wear on her face. We have a government right now that's telling us that we must inject untested, unknown toxic biologicals into our bodies. They're telling us we must do that in order to function in society. So the church is being challenged.
The church was told it had to shut down last year. And the church had to decide whether they were going to obey Caesar or whether they were going to obey God. And frankly, the ones who decided to listen to Caesar were harmed greatly. And the ones that didn't, they thrived. But we have so many things going on in our culture right now.
We have a sexual revolution going on right now, where people are so confused, they don't even know how to be sure about what gender they are, even though they have 3 trillion cells in their bodies screaming at them, either male or female. So we're living in a world where the pressures are really heightening. We're living in a moment where you have an environmental movement where the politicians and the business titans are trying to scare us about everything. I was just reading a book by one of the founders of Greenpeace. You remember Greenpeace, the scientist Patrick Moore.
He tells a story of his founding Greenpeace. He really did want to save endangered species. But what he says in his book is that Greenpeace was co-opted by liberals, and their entire efforts were for fundraising to scare people. And so he quit Greenpeace several years ago. He got out of the organization he founded.
He said, what the governments of the world, what the left wants to do, and they do it really only to raise money, they tell you about things that you can't see. They scare you at things you can't see. And he says, they're trying to scare you about CO2. You can't see CO2. They're trying to scare you about things that you have no way of verifying on your own.
You have no way of verifying what's really happening with polar bears. You have no way of verifying what's really happening in the Barrier Reefs. Because you're not there. You have no way to understand what's really going on with the polar ice cap. They're scaring you with things that you cannot see.
And they're raising billions of dollars to do it. That's why he got out of Greenpeace. So we're living in a time where you were your governments and your companies want to scare you to death, to drive you into fear. And it's really incumbent upon every Christian to call his brothers and his sisters out of fear and into faith into obedience to just do the things that God has commanded to do. You know we have a social justice movement going, trying to teach you how to completely revamp the way that you relate with people, that you're going to begin relating with people on some level of oppression.
You're going to look at people's eyes and you're going to say, how are you oppressing me? Rather than like a Christian and saying how am I forgiving you how am I patient with you how am I kind with you there's just a complete unraveling of biblical morality biblical view of the world of nature sexuality of everything And that's the world that you live in. And young people growing up in this world need to understand this is a really different world than I grew up in. It's a completely different world. But God has in his word everything you need for life and godliness to face this world.
Don't be afraid of it at all. God is all in his word. And the church should be the most fearless of all people in the world. They should be the happiest people of all the world because they know who's in control. And so Christians are, you know, living like strangers in a strange land And they've been given divine commands in order to navigate the world that they're living here.
And I'm really here to say, don't waste your exile by pining away. Don't waste your exile by getting caught up in distractions. Don't waste your exile by following the voices of the ungodly. Follow God. And do the powerful things.
Don't be paralyzed. Don't be frustrated. Don't let the bad news get you down. Don't let the bad guys get you down either. And what you find in this passage is Bill Dwell plant.
He's writing to people in exile. In other words, he's saying, get your wife at the table and plan it all out. And build a house. And then settle down and dwell in it. And get out the architectural drawings and create a home, a real home, in the midst of a pagan land, and plant crops, and be self-sufficient.
And you single men, go out and pray that God would give you a wife and then go have babies. You parents, go find wives and husbands for your children. And find yourself in a blessed community, in the community of the King. And he's really saying, look, plan wedding celebrations. Watch the babies grow.
And when you have those babies, you encourage those babies to multiply, too. And then make your house a house of prayer and get on your knees and pray for your city and pray for the people around you and live at peace and be a blessing. That's the, well, I'm going to unpack these things as we go on here, but that's really the essence of this message that has come from God through Jeremiah to this people who are in exile in Babylon for 70 years. You know, be a blessing. In Isaiah 38 16, Isaiah tells the people of Israel that they're free because they know how to live and he says oh Lord by these things men live these things by the word of God.
And in all these things is the life of my spirit. So you will restore me and make me live. Indeed, it was for my own peace that I had great bitterness. But you have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption. For you have cast all my sins behind your back." He's talking about the power of God in salvation.
When one is born again, they're given a new life, and God casts your sins behind him, and he buries your sins in the bottom of the ocean. He separates your sins as far as the east is from the west, and you're never the same again when you turn to Jesus Christ. And he's talking about the fact that this is how man lives by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So here's what I'm trying to say. Christians know how to live in exile.
God has told us how to live in exile. And He's told us these things all over the Word of God, but we're driving down into Jeremiah 29. This is a letter that God wrote to people in exile. And one of the blessings, one of the great blessings, of knowing the Lord is that we have a word of truth to guide us. We have commands.
We have principles. We have role models. We have the Holy Spirit. And so we know what to do. We can wake up in the morning and we can know how to conduct the thoughts and the meditations of our hearts.
And it's such a blessing. And Jeremiah is writing these things, and he's using an imperative in verse 6, that you may be increased there and not diminish. This is a time for the church to increase. Jeremiah is here to tell us that about our times as well. So don't retreat, don't withdraw, don't withdraw from society, don't withdraw from the economy.
Don't withdraw from people. Don't be insecure. You know, when I was raising my kids, one of my daughters, my youngest daughter, Claudia, When I would get her on the back of my motorcycle, she would always say, push it, Papa, push it. OK? That's what I'm saying to you.
Push it, man. Push it, woman. Push it, you young people. Don't retreat. Don't hold back.
And if you're a daughter and you're sitting on the back of your daddy's motorcycle, you want to encourage him, too, and tell him, push it, Papa. Push it. Go for it. Obey God. Don't regard this world at all.
And one of the reasons Jeremiah is saying this to the captives is it's going to be a long exile. It's going to be three generations. The people who read this letter are going to be dead by the time they get delivered from exile. This is a long-term plan. But we're going to unpack all of these things as we go on.
So that's the introduction to Jeremiah 29, but we'll continue to introduce it here in this message. But I just so desire that Almighty God would be Almighty in us by the power of the Holy Spirit under the direction of the word of God, and that we wouldn't be frozen in our frustration. We wouldn't just spend all our time pining away and talking, jabbering endlessly about how bad things are. We're talking about what we can do, and we can do a lot. OK, verses one through three.
This is a letter to captives. I hope you have your Bible with you, because we're going to be focusing on these words here. Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the remainder of the elders who were carried away captive, to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon." Now notice who this letter is to. Well, it's to everybody. It's to the highest and the lowest who are held captive in Babylon.
Now, who are these people that had endured a tyranny that no one here has ever endured. Their properties were confiscated, their cities were destroyed, Their best and their holiest men were transported to Babylon. Daniel and his friends were castrated and given pagan names and family members had been killed and there was no temple and they were about 900 miles away from home and their king's eyes had been gouged out. It was hard, Harder than it is for us without question. In fact, in Psalm 137, there's a picture of how they felt.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion." In other words, the worship of God. We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst of it, for there those who carried us away captive asked us to sing a song, And those who plundered us requested Mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? Well, God would have them sing a song of Zion in the foreign land.
And actually, their captors were asking them to sing those songs. And in fact, Nebuchadnezzar actually turned and protected Jeremiah until he was killed. He says, if I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. If I do not remember you, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth. If I do not exalt Jerusalem as my chief joy." In other words, while they're in exile, what they have is they have the memory of the worship of God in Zion, in the temple of God.
They remember the power of God in the temple, the beauty, the life-giving nature of the worship of God, of bowing down before God and then learning from him. They realize that if they forget Jerusalem, if they forget Zion, it's really over for them. But as Psalm 137 makes it very clear how they felt, it was very hard. Matthew Henry was commenting on this text. He says this, the case of these captives was very melancholy because they, being thus distinguished from the rest of their brethren who continued in their own land looked as if they were greater sinners than all men who dwelt at Jerusalem.
In other words, the captives were melancholy, most likely because they felt that they had been judged to be worse than all their brethren, the brethren who were left back in Jerusalem. Of course, Jerusalem was no place to write home about. It had been bombed out and destroyed. It was wrecked. So this is a, this is a letter.
Now I want you to look at verse four. The letters from somebody. Four words. The Lord of hosts. The Lord of hosts.
Uh, this term appears all over the old Testament and the new. Literally it means the Lord of the armies of heaven, the Lord of the armies, the Lord of the vanquishing armies that control everything in the world at the bidding of God. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel to all who were carried away captive whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon. It was God, God alone, using Nebuchadnezzar to carry these captives away. This is what God did.
And he is the Lord of hosts. He is the God of Israel. He's the one who opens and no one can shut. He's the one who makes alive and who kills. He's the one of whom nothing can hold back his hand as Daniel reports in Daniel chapter 4.
He's the King of Kings. He's the Lord of Lords. This is the one, this is the hand behind the captivity. And anyone who's in captivity must remember that above all else. It is God who has done it.
If there's a tyrant, it's God who has appointed him. If there's a restriction, it's God who has ordained it. If there's a difficulty, it's God has brought it upon his people for his own good. For he causes all things to work together for good. For the called.
In other words, for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. But it doesn't work out very well for the rest. But God uses it for blessing for his own people. OK, let's back up just for a minute. Let's have a little hermeneutics lesson for a second.
How do you interpret this? Well, this was written to a particular people at a particular time who were captives in Babylon. And a number of things that we notice about this context is that Jeremiah has just delivered 28 chapters explaining the sins of the people, 28 chapters. And now in the 29th chapter, he stops to encourage them. And he's really telling them what they ought to do but he first of all tells them who's behind the curtain.
He's telling them who's controlling the events. Now Jeremiah lived, he wrote, before Nebuchadnezzar attacked. He anticipated the attack. He saw Nebuchadnezzar's armies at the gates of Jerusalem. He was there when the attack took place and his ministry span 40 years.
But there's one thing that young people should never forget about Jeremiah. Jeremiah started writing and preaching when he was 17 years old. Of a 17-years-old, don't underestimate the usefulness of a 17-year-old. And if you're 17 or around there, don't underestimate what a holy man or a holy woman can be in the world, as was Jeremiah. Jeremiah preached for 40 years.
Tradition tells us that he was finally stoned. Because he was always giving bad news. The things that he said weren't really appreciated by the intelligentsia, or the political powers or the people either who are also in fear and we're looking for safety except everywhere except from God. So Jeremiah in chapter 29 brings comfort. You know, well, as we read this, I think we have to keep two things in mind.
First of all, this wasn't written to you personally. This was written to people in captive in captivity. Uh, And they were engaging in specific sins. And it's really very helpful to go back and see what kind of sins God was punishing them for. And Jeremiah has been rebuking the people for following after the patterns of the nations.
Jeremiah says, do not learn the ways of the Gentiles. Well, they had been plunging their whole lives in the ways of the Gentiles. And they had adopted the lifestyles of those around them. They wanted to be like the world. They wanted to be like the nations.
And Jeremiah was attacking this practice among the families of Israel. And he also was attacking the hypocrisy of the priestly class, of the priests and the Levites, and their fake worship. And so he wasn't that much appreciated, because he was telling people to live differently. Stop living like the Gentiles. And that's what you should do.
And that's what you should train your children to do is to stop living like the Gentiles and live holy in Christ Jesus. Now they were thrown into captivity. Why? Well, there were actually were a number of reasons. God explicitly makes it clear that they were thrown into captivity because they didn't celebrate the Sabbath for 490 years.
They didn't celebrate the Sabbath. They didn't regulate their life according to the law of God. By the way, did you know God wants to control your life? God wants to control your time. He wants to control your week.
And he was telling his children to set aside one day in seven to worship him. It was a day for delight. It was a day to plunge themselves into the beauty of the kingdom of God and to set aside a whole day, not a half a day, not a little portion of the day, but the whole day. And they rebelled for 490 years. And so God did some math.
He was very merciful to them. Instead of putting them into exile for 490 years, he put them into exile one year for every seven years that they did not celebrate the Sabbath. Jeremiah says, and Isaiah says the same thing, you're walking in Eastern ways. They're walking just like the people around them. And they had their little worship light life where they would show up and pay their little homage and then go do their own thing.
Well that's what Christians are doing today. And they despise the day of the Lord, the Lord's Day. They think just like these people who are thrown into captivity. But I think we should just recognize that the captivity happened to chastise the people of God for rejecting the Sabbath day. They weren't taking God seriously, That was it.
I mean, that was the whole bottom of the whole thing. So while, while this book, this letter is not written to us specifically, It was written for us. It was written for our instruction. And so we should take it seriously. I don't want us to think, well, this wasn't written to me.
Well, it wasn't written to you, but it was written for you. Open your Bibles to 1st Corinthians 10, and I'll tell you how we ought to interpret these Old Testament narratives and the commands that exist in those narratives like we have in front of us. Now, this helps us to interpret our Old Testaments. You should not be setting aside your Old Testament, because these things were written for a particular purpose. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 6.
Now, these things became our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. He's talking about the children of Israel. These things were done, and these things were written as an example. So this is an example in Jeremiah 29. Why?
That we should not lust after evil things as they lusted." He's talking about the children of Israel going through the wilderness. And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." Of course he's talking about at the the base of Mount Sinai when Moses came down with the law. Nor let us commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell. Nor let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted and were destroyed by serpents, or complain as some of them also complained and were destroyed by the destroyer.
Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. So they were written to set before us an example. They were written to admonish us, to chase us away from a worldly life, and they were written because God is the God of all of history. He, the ends of the ages are in his hand. And then in verse 12, the Apostle Paul to the Corinthian Church is attacking their pride and their self-sufficiency.
And so he tells them, therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation is overtaking you except such as is common to man. But God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry." So these things are written to slow you down, to tell you the truth about your life. And they're also written to help you to humble yourself and to recognize that there is a way through all this, that no temptation will fall upon you, but that God will not give you a way of escape.
Now that way of escape might be through death. That way of escape may be through some manifestation of obedience to God, some act of faith. That escape might mean you get thrown in jail. But no one can take your hope. No one can take away your joy.
No one can take away the strength that you have in your soul. Because who you are really isn't bound up in your body. It's bound up in your soul. And he will always give your soul the sweetness of honey in the time of trial. He'll always give you a way of escape.
He won't always give you an easy way, But he'll give you a way through. So this is a letter to help the captives go through, and we who are captives in exile. Now, the promises here also, just in terms of interpreting this, it's important to recognize that the promises here are actually focused, not on the individual. They are plural. They're focused on the people of God.
It's really a disclosure of the power of the true people of God. The true converted, the true Christians, not broad evangelicalism. As Kirk told us last night, 54% of them who say they're Christians believe that homosexual marriage is legitimate. Not them. Those aren't Christians.
He's talking to the true church here. And this corporate promise Is a promise for the prosperity of the true church and the true church alone. And these people will be brought back, but it'll be a long time. So this was written specifically to direct the captives and comfort the captives. And while it wasn't written to 20th, first century Americans in a totalitarian, in a semi totalitarian age, it was written for us as an example.
Now the truth is the people of God in every generation are always exiles And there's a real sense that the Church of Jesus Christ in 21st century America is in exile. 1st Peter 2 9 through 12 makes this very clear. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim what? The praises of him, the happiest people on the land. The praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people, but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.
Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works which they observe glorify God in the day of your visitation. Don't expect that everybody around you is going to be happy with you because you're such a Christian. 1 Peter 3.13 tells us that we may suffer because we live differently. 1 Peter 3 verse 13. And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good?
But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed. And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear." And then he tells us in 1 Peter 4, he says that we should no longer live the rest of the time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime doing the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. In regard to these things, they think it's strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you.
In other words, You are living strange, and they're going to think you strange. You cannot be a true Christian in this world without being strange, without being an outcast. If you're going to live godly in Christ Jesus, They will speak evil of you. Now they might speak nice to you if they're sort of nice people to your face, but they will think evil of you and speak evil of you when you're gone. That's the way it is.
That's the real world. They will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead that they may be judged according to the men of the flesh but live according to God in the spirit. In 1st Peter 4.14 we are told that we'll be reproach for living differently. We ought to live differently, but in living differently we shouldn't have rose-colored spectacles on and act and think that everything will be fine in all of our relationships in the world.
It won't be fine. I'm just gonna say if you think it will be fine, you just need to grow up. It won't be fine. And Peter makes that clear. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, or happy are you, for the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
On their part he is blasphemed, but on your part he is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or a busybody in other people's matters. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this manner." And then in verse 19 in 1 Peter 4, he says, Therefore let those who suffer according to the will of God commit themselves, their souls to him in doing good as to a faithful creator. In 1 Peter 1, we're told that we're foreigners, that we are exiles. Peter is writing, quote, "'To the pilgrims of the dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and sanctification of the Spirit for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
Grace to you and peace be multiplied. He's writing to people who've been thrown out of their countries. They are in the dispersion. They've been dispersed. They can no longer live where they used to live.
And he says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time in this you greatly rejoice the while though now for a little while if need be you have been grieved by various trials that the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having you have not seen you love, though now you do not see him, yet believing you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. And then toward the end of the chapter there in first Peter four, he says, since you've purified your souls, this is verse 22, since you've purified your souls, in obeying the truth through the spirit of sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible through the Word of God, which lives and abides forever." And then these words.
I'll never forget reading them when I was in my teens. I was probably 17 when I read these words, and they just floored me. All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass the grass withers and it's flower falls away but the word of the lord endures forever. This is the encouragement that I bring you today, is to live by the Word of God. All flesh is like grass.
All the machinery of the world will fail, But God and his ways will endure forever. And that's why it's so important that you live differently, not just for the sake of living differently, but for the sake of the fact that all flesh is as grass, and it will be blown away. Isaiah tells us that there's a way that God is going to get rid of the nations. You know what that is? He'll blow on them, And they'll be gone.
He says they are nothing. He says they are less than nothing. And so we don't subject ourselves to them in the ways that they want us to do. So all this to say, the Christian in the 21st century, no matter where he lives, is living in exile. The Christian always lives in exile.
And this is nothing new. He is a stranger in a strange land, 1 Peter 1 17. He's a sojourner. He's an alien, 1 Peter 2 11. And Christians, as a result, they live a life of estrangement because they live differently.
I was struck by a citation by Miroslav Volf where he explained this living differently, this estrangement. He says, a new estrangement, which a Christian way of life creates. If you don't want to be an alien, if you don't want to be a sojourner, do not become a Christian and don't call yourself a Christian. And don't pretend that using Christian terminology makes you a Christian. What makes you a Christian is the way you live.
Jesus told us this in Mark 13 13. You will be hated by many for my name's sake, but the one who endures to the end shall be saved." So what we are, we're temporary residents. We live between two worlds. We're outsiders. We experience social marginalization.
And that's happened from the beginning. And you know what happened to Priscilla and Aquila might happen to you. Remember what happened to Priscilla and Aquila? They were thrown out of Rome by the Emperor Claudius. They were thrown out of their home.
And they had to leave. Now they came back. But they never stopped preaching the gospel and being a blessing to the Church of Jesus Christ. And that's why Peter tells these exiles of the dispersion who'd been thrown out of their cities, out of their homes, and away from their families. He says in 1 Peter 2 verse 9, but you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light, who once were not a people, but now are the people of God." So this is a letter.
And it's a letter from the Lord of hosts, from the Lord God Almighty, from the Lord of the armies of heaven, from the Lord of the one who controls every earthly army, for the one who controls every earthly policy of every politician that ever came down. It was God who did it. That's what Isaiah says. He looks around and he says, oh, it was you who did it. So we have to understand that.
You know, the Lord Jesus Christ made his will very plain. That he desires his disciples to stay in the world. He said, I do not pray that you should take them out of the world. Can you imagine the disciples? They're probably thinking, oh no, why did he pray that to his father?
He said, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Jesus prayed to his father that his father would not take his disciples out of the world, but would leave them in the world. Because they are not of the world. So I hope you're not waiting for the rapture because God does not God's will primarily to rapture you out of the trouble.
There will be a day when he'll, he'll bring the living, the dead before him. You can call that the rapture if you want, but God has no intention of taking his people out of the troubles of this world. And all you have to do is look back at the entire corpus of the word of God. That is not God's design, except at the last day and the final judgment. So he begins to give commands and we encounter the first one in verse five.
Build houses and dwell in them. This is the didactic section. Build houses and dwell in them. Now remember, this wasn't written primarily to us, but it was for us, for our example, for an example. And he uses this word dwell, dwell, And it's a word that's used all over the Bible.
And it means to abide. It means to settle. It means to establish, to remain, to stay, to tarry. I'm just reading words out of a Hebrew lexicon. To dwell.
The word appears in the New Testament as oikeo, to live, to dwell. It's a word for house. And it has to do with the admonition to put down roots. Don't run. Stay.
Build. You know, if you've moved a lot, you know this. When you move long distances away, it sets you back. Some say it sets you back five years economically when you do that. And you revamp your whole life, your whole network, the economy of your life shifts.
And years ago, I read a book called The Millionaire Next Door. So it's really a good book. It's very surprising, because what the author contends is if you look at millionaires, they just do some really plain, ordinary things. They don't buy brand new cars, and they live in their house for 30 years. They just keep doing what they were doing.
That's what they do. And it's certainly not a Christian book. But I think it does carry some of the water that this term carries. To go be faithful in the place that God has called you. You don't have to go somewhere else.
You can do the will of God right where You are. And I'm not saying that people shouldn't move. Please don't think that I'm saying that. There are times to move. And my view of the world is, if you're not near a good church, you should go move toward a good church.
And stay there for a long time, and build that church up for decades, and be faithful to it. So I'm not making necessarily an argument against moving, but I am making an argument against this constant movement that we often have a tendency to because we're afraid of something that might happen to us. Secure your home. It's interesting. The Puritans, they had an average of 10 or 12 children.
And they would raise those children in what we today call tiny houses. Imagine 10 children in 600 square feet, 700 square feet. That's what they did. When I bought my first house, the average size of a house, I think, was 1, 100 square feet. That was the house that Deborah and I bought when we first got married.
But now it's like more than double that. Somehow we need so much. But this is about dwelling in houses. I can't help it. I'm going to quote Matthew Henry again.
Let them take pleasure in seeing their families built up and multiplied for though they must expect themselves to die in captivity yet their children may live to see better days. Make a home. Create a home. Create a culture in your home. What is a home?
It's a picture of heaven in the Bible. I'll refrain from giving a whole biblical theology of a home, but it's fascinating to see that doctrine in the Bible. So have a family and teach your family and settle into home life. Have a repetitive, regular, consistent, blessed home life. Moses instructed the children of Israel to do that same thing in Deuteronomy 6 where he said now this is the commandment and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess that you may fear the Lord your God to keep his all his statutes and his commandments which I command you today you and your son and your grandson all the days of your life and that your days may be prolonged.
Therefore, hear O Israel and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you. A land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, When you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So it shall be when the lord your god brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you a large and beautiful cities which you did not build houses full of all good things which you did not fill, hewn out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, when you have eaten in or full. Then beware lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt and from the house of bondage. You shall fear the Lord your God and serve him and shall take oaths in his name. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you.
For the Lord your God is a jealous God among you, Lest the anger of the lord your god be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth. You shall not tempt the lord your god as you tempted him at Massa. You shall diligently keep his commandments, the commandments of the Lord your God, his testimonies, and his statutes which he has commanded you. And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with you and that you may go in and possess the good land which the lord swore to your fathers to cast out all your enemies before you as the lord has spoken. I'll be expanding on this and the next time I stand before you will continue on to develop this whole instruction of building houses and dwelling in them and then we'll work our way through the rest of the passage.
So to be continued in the next session, would you pray with me? Lord, I pray that you would give us such a heart to keep all of your commandments, to live differently in this world, as a holy people, a people for your own possession, not owned by the governments of the world, not owned by the entertainments of the world, not owned by the sports industrial complex of this world, not owned by the morality of this world, not owned by the educators of this world, but owned by you. Amen.