0:00
Amen. Thank you and it's time for children's church downstairs. Paper notes. That's a problem. It'll be alright.
0:21
I know this part. Raising nostalgic prologue. This kind of is the beginning of every service but this one in particular, last week, I was not here. Thank you, Brad to Brad where he's probably serving down. There he is.
0:35
He was up here last week and I really appreciate what you had to say and thank you for that. Good job. Wonderful. I was thinking back a lot on the road because I was on the road. I literally watched last week's service from between Rawlins and Rock Springs to the first service.
0:51
I mean, in Pinedale for the second service in a U Haul truck moving the stuff for Van and his family and so, Van and Lauren have arrived and their kids are here and it's pretty pretty neat but all of that has reminded me of our arrival here when Paschal was six years old. You know, she was out here every summer anyway when we were working out here when I was working as a carpenter. From the time she was 0.5 old. So, I've got a lot of memories flooding back because they've got kids from about eight, six, five, you know, one And so I've got a lot going on in my tear ducts. And I was thinking about the arrival here.
1:32
I officially started June 1, but part of that time was getting here. And then the first Sunday that I was here was 06/09/2012 as the lead pastor. I've been here for a couple of summers as an intern but I sat right here and there was missionaries speaking and the missionaries spoke on a passage and he was planning on speaking that passage. He didn't know anything about this church getting a new pastor. He didn't know anything about it but for me, it landed so well in my lap.
2:01
It was something that I don't think I'd ever considered before though I'd read it. I'm sure many times but it was helpful and so with Van arriving this time, this has been on my heart, on my mind, and as I traveled the miles, I thought, you know what? I'm going to do this. So, from Mexican missionary, we were in Mexico for Latin America for seven and a half years. Part of that time in Mexico, part in Costa Rica, we served there.
2:25
But when we were in seminary, we started coming out here four months in the summer, like I said, from the time Paschal was a year and a half old, And moved here when she was six and now she's a sophomore at Auburn for crying out loud. Yeah. Oh, boy. We've had this amazing time here and this is not like the ending of that time. People worry about that.
2:51
Every time I get nostalgic, they're like, oh, this isn't the close of that. No, we don't plan on going anywhere else, do anything else but it's it's this, I think, is the New Testament parallel to the passage and it might seem like a weird one but I'm going to read this first and then we'll get into the passage. I am amazed at what God has done in the last fourteen years. Just amazed. Overwhelmed and I love it and I hope this message lands and sticks with y'all as long as it's stuck with me.
3:24
This part might seem off the cuff but I I don't know ever want to do an Old Testament message without bringing it forward. So, here it is. You've heard that it was said. Jesus is saying this, sermon on the mount. Jesus is saying this, you've heard that it was said.
3:38
They heard the oral tradition and they heard the whole Old Testament, right? You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy but I say to you, love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. So that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your father who's in heaven for he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. He's saying, if you just act like the rest of the world, what good is that to you?
4:08
Right? If you just act like the rest of the world, he's saying, I want you to act like me. That's God the father saying that through his son right here. So, how about a major prophet for a change? We've been in the minor prophets for weeks now and the weeping prophet, the weeping preacher is going to call us to Jeremiah.
4:28
How about that? Jeremiah and if you don't know much about the book of Jeremiah, I know there's some of you who read the book of Jeremiah on a loop and I appreciate that. That it's a good book. It's worth the read. Jeremiah though had forty years of virtually fruitless ministry.
4:50
He was saying the same thing over and over and over and over again, and the people around him would not listen to him. So, you get the weeping prophet. Right? So, his these are his greatest hits. We'll get up to where we're going by just sharing some of his.
5:07
You might know these. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I consecrated you and I have appointed you as a prophet, a preacher to the nations. That's Jeremiah and his preaching still happens every day. It's going to happen today right here.
5:25
It still happens all the time. Jeremiah one eight, do not be afraid of them. Public speaking is the worst by the way. Right? It's terrible.
5:33
Most people are more afraid of that than they are deaf. In the funeral, people would rather be in the box than be the guy up front. Do not be afraid of them. I like the King James on this one. Don't be afraid of their faces.
5:50
When you look out at em, you see all these faces. Don't be afraid of their faces For I'm with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. For a guy coming from a a construction background which fits both of us to get up and start looking out at people's faces. It can be pretty overwhelming but Jeremiah had that same issue. Don't be afraid of their faces.
6:09
This is what the Lord says. Jeremiah six, stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths. Ask where the good way is and walk in it and you will find rest for your souls. There's a lot of good.
6:24
There's a lot of good in the Old Testament. There's a lot of good in the tradition of God, right? Jeremiah 17. I use this one a lot in marriage counseling. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure and who can understand it?
6:43
If out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks and this is true, then sometimes we say stuff we don't even understood why we said it and if we double down, we are going against the godly way. Humility before God is good. Heal me, oh Lord, and I shall be healed. You're the only hope I've got. Save me and I shall be saved for you are my praise.
7:09
Amen. Jeremiah 31. The Lord appeared to us in the past saying, I have loved you with an everlasting love and I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. It is, by the way, the kindness of God that leads to repentance, right? And then, this one in Mexico, they call God's telephone number.
7:29
It was one of my pastors that said, this is God's telephone number. Jeremiah 30 33. Call out to me and I will answer you. And I will tell you great and unsearchable things that you do not know. Pray, pray, just pray.
7:44
And who can forget this classic? Jeremiah twenty nine eleven. Jeremiah twenty nine eleven. If I ask y'all to say it, you would say it in unison. It is the second most quoted.
7:55
Oh, no. It's the second most googled. Second most googled verse. John three sixteen being the first. Probably because of all those football players with it written on their face.
8:04
Or the rainbow haired guy at the at the game. Jeremiah twenty eleven nine eleven is the second most googled verse. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Their plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Their plans to give you a hope and a future.
8:20
That's beautiful and that's why we hold on to it and that's why we put it on bumper stickers. That's why it's on coffee mugs. That's why it's memory verse for most of us. It's really really good but you know, all of the minor prophets that we have seen so far have been pre exile. Jeremiah served long enough that he was pre exile and exile and so, today's message is going to be, that's the end of my nostalgic prologue by the way.
8:50
If I didn't know it, I know it now. Jeremiah twenty nine one, this was what the guy presented. My very first sermon, the first sermon that I heard here at First B as the pastor was from a missionary to China and this is it. Now, these are the words of the letter which Jeremiah, the prophet, we know who Jeremiah is now. Sent from Jerusalem.
9:14
So, Jeremiah had forecasted the exile and when the exiles were taken, they took the best and the brightest. You know that from Daniel and the Hebrew children, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, all Babylonian names, right? They took em and gave new names. They tried to instill their culture in em. They were trying to separate out and cause trouble but Jeremiah stayed back in Jerusalem.
9:38
He had forecast the exile and it did happen but he sent this letter from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders of the exile. Actually, if you look up a lot of different verses, I mean, a lot of different English translations of this, it gets at the heart of this. The rest of the elders sounds like Jeremiah is one of em and he sent it to the rest of em. In a lot of English translations, it says, to the residue of the elders. The residue is what's left.
10:04
Some translations even say, they're surviving elders because in the battle that led up to the defeat, that led up to the exile, a lot of the exile, that a lot of elders had been killed. So, these are for the ones who were left and for me, in the monstalgia, I think of the elders that we've lost since I've been here and the the surviving ones we have now and if we were separated by a long distance and I had a word for from the Lord. It says, I'm sending it to the rest of em, the residue, the surviving elders who are exiled. He's sending it from Jerusalem to Babylon and to the priest and to the prophets. Now, the priest away from the temple, that role is severely diminished but there's still a teaching component to priest and prophets or preachers, ones.
10:57
This letter is for all of those and it doesn't stop there. It says, and for all of the people. All of the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. If you remember your fourth grade social studies textbook, you'll remember the Fertile Crescent. Right here, the Fertile Crescent.
11:16
If it's it starts right here, Israel or Palestine all the way up through Syria over towards what was Assyria, Nineveh is up there at the top of the curve and then down. Babylon is here. It's about 50 miles from modern day Baghdad. A lot of that zone is in Iraq. A lot of the Fertile Crescent is.
11:35
And so there are rivers, you know, the Tigris and Euphrates are there. Those are the rivers of Babylon and this is that journey from Jerusalem walking, trudging on, being led into exile away from your homeland and how horrible does that sound? It's rough. Trail of tears sort of situation. Psalm one thirty seven, by the rivers of Babylon.
12:04
There we sat down and we wept when we remembered Zion. You know? Now that in my head is from the seventies. It's reggae song by the melodians. It's from the nineties by Sublime.
12:19
There's a lot of that in my head all week long. I've been dancing on one foot and singing by the reavers of Babylon, which you might think is cultural appropriation. But hey, they stole it from the Jews. Okay? Psalm one thirty seven is our book too.
12:35
Okay? Where we sat and remembered I am. That's such a beautiful thing to think. It gets worse from there. I'll come back to that.
12:45
Now, this was after king Jechaniah and the queen mother, Nashti was her name. Time frame is after 597 because that's when the Exodus started the the Exodus from. That's a bad way to put that. That's when they started the exile. Okay.
13:00
It was 597. So this is after the start of it. The high officials had already been led away. Best and the brightest like I said and the leaders of both Judah and Jerusalem. Judah being the Southern kingdom and Jerusalem being the capital and the center point, the epicenter of the religious worship, the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem and this, the craftsmen, the builders, and the metal workers, the artists, they had departed from Jerusalem.
13:31
He took people to help beautify because Jerusalem was absolutely fantastic. The first time that it says in the Old Testament, anyone was filled with the Holy Spirit. It was the God building the tabernacle. Temple. Building the temple.
13:45
So, he took the leaders away. He took the craftsman and the metal workers, artists typically always lead the way, took them and they departed from Jerusalem and this was after that. So, time frame is five ninety seven BC or so. Like I said, Jeremiah had been prophesying before but he also prophesied during the exile. The letter was sent by the hand of Elasa who had helped Jeremiah out of a tight spot earlier.
14:10
They were, it sounds like friends. So, the deliverer of the letter was Elasa, the son of Shaphan and Gemariah, the son of Hilkiah. We don't know who those are but it they are mentioned in second Kings. So, whom Zedekiah, the king of Judah, sent to Babylon, to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. I don't think we think of this this way nowadays.
14:33
If a king takes over, he just says he's king over. All that he's conquered, right? But this one, he left Zedekiah in charge as king of Judah but he's the king and Zedekiah is just a puppet king and we see from second king Zedekiah was a terrible king. He was awful. He was weak and he did not care what God had to say about something because he was paying more attention to what Nebuchadnezzar said about whatever it was.
15:01
Zedekiah king did evil in the sight of the Lord. He was a bad king. There were no good kings, right? In Israel, there were couple in Judah but this one was not one of em. He sent to Babylon this letter to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon and this is what the letter said.
15:15
So, you can look back to second Kings 24 if you want to. This is what the Lord of armies. The God of Israel says to all of the exiles whom I have sent. Now, that's not Jeremiah speaking. That's God speaking.
15:29
God is speaking and saying, Nebuchadnezzar took these people. I sent you into exile. So, if you're in your head always wrestling between the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. Nebuchadnezzar get is responsible. Yeah, he was he was a king conquering king, right?
15:46
But God says, I sent you into exile. There's a duality there. Who is the author of scripture? They're like 40 human authors and God wrote the Bible. So, whom I have sent into exile?
16:00
I sent them from Jerusalem where they were comfortable in their religious practices that Amos says, I detest those religious practices. You're not about the right things. I hate the songs. I don't like anything that you're doing. You're not paying attention to things you should pay attention to.
16:14
You should not be. He's classically, you know, comfort the afflicted but afflict the comfortable, right? That's the job. So, God says, I've sent you from Jerusalem to Babylon and his imperative start right there. Build houses and live in em.
16:34
Plant gardens and eat their produce. If you go back to when they were entering the promised land, this is a real stark contrast. He said, I'm taking you into the promised land. You're going to live in houses you didn't build. You can drink from wells you didn't dig.
16:53
You're going to eat from produce and vineyards that you had nothing to do with planting And this in exile is different thing. He's saying, when you get there, put down roots. Plan on being there for a while. He's already told him before this, it was going to be seventy years. Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce.
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Take wives and father, sons, and daughters, and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands. Plan on being there for a while. Now, they were supposed to marry within the the tribes. Right? They were.
17:29
But he's saying, plan on living life there. It's not going to be a short thing. So that these new marriages, kids marrying and whatnot so that they may give birth to sons and daughters and I want for you to grow in numbers there and I don't want for you to decrease. If you read the first few lines of the book of Exodus, it says in the Hebrew children there in Egypt. Increased in number and they became a mighty people there in Egypt, in exile.
18:02
Again, it was away from where they were. God brought them back in. They're in the promised land. They grow away from him. And we've heard the minor prophet saying, talking about this for weeks now.
18:15
He doesn't want for him to decrease. He doesn't want for him to languish. He wants for him to increase. So that already is looking like he wants their good, and we already know twenty nine eleven is what we're working towards. But think about that.
18:31
Seek the prosperity of the city where I have sent you into exile. How hard would that be? You just walked the trail of tears and you're here in Babylon now and what your heart is telling you is not to pray to the Lord on behalf of those people. No, I don't want to pray for those people. These are our captors.
18:57
These are our oppressors. If you fast forward to the New Testament, it's the almost exactly the same attitude they had towards the Roman government, right? It's it's honestly, it's the attitude that a lot of believers have now to any government or any place where they might feel uncomfortable. Seek the prosperity of the city where I've sent you into exile and pray to the Lord in its behalf. Now, this this thing that I've already kind of hung my way through by the rivers of Babylon.
19:28
There we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion in the song by Sublime and then the other by the Melodians. It goes to Psalm 19 right there and it says, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. Oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer. That's beautiful. That's wonderful.
19:48
But I'm going to show you what's the next thing they said here. Okay? It says, upon the willows in the midst of our journey, we hung up our harps. We were carrying them and carrying everything we could carry with us and from there, our captors demanded of us songs. I play another one of those songs.
20:09
How great is our God? They're they're mocking them. Their captors are demanding of us songs and our tormentors, jubilation. They were saying, oh, get all happy. What are you so upset about?
20:22
Come on in. Sing for us one of those songs of Zion. Isn't it beautiful? How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? I mean, they literally were thinking, how are we going to do temple sacrifice?
20:35
We don't have a temple. How are we going to do this? How are going to sing songs to the Lord in a foreign land? And then, if I forget you Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill, craftsmans and metal workers saying, may my right hand just forget everything it ever knew about what it is that I do. I don't I can't take joy in the things that I took joy in because I'm in this place.
21:00
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I don't remember you Jerusalem. If I don't exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy. This is the way they felt and what they're missing was home. They're super duper homesick. They didn't say, may if forget you, oh Lord, it was if I forget what I know.
21:20
Jerusalem, right? If I don't remember you, if I don't exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy. Remember lord, this is okay, they're calling out to God. That's good. Remember lord, against the sons of Edom, those bad guys.
21:36
The day of Jerusalem. Remember lord, the day of Jerusalem. Those who said, lay it bare. Lay it bare to its Remember those bad guys. Lord, remember them.
21:46
Daughter of Babylon, you devastated one. Blessed will be the one who repays you with the retribution which you have repaid us. That's the way of the world. That is the way of the world. He brings knife, you bring a gun.
21:56
He puts twenty years in the hospital, you put him in the morgue. Right? That's the way of the world. It's the way of the mob. It's the way of every worldly institution.
22:07
Daughter of Babylon, you devastated one. Blessed be the ones who repays you with the same kind of reputation that you repaid us. Blessed will be one who seizes and dashes your children against the rocks. That's not something to sing about. It's an imprecatory psalm.
22:23
It's very honest and if we're honest, we feel like this sometimes. But what God says is to seek the prosperity of the city where I've sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its prosperity will be your prosperity. This is not prosperity gospel, okay? I just have to say that since that's a term. Prosperity gospel is health and wealth forevermore.
22:49
No. Seeking the good for the city in which you dwell is what he has charged us with though and in some cases, it's Babylon, right? I don't feel that way here. I don't feel that way here. I I I did like Georgia.
23:02
I did like Mexico. I did like the other places that God has allowed us to live. I don't feel like it's exile. I don't feel like that at all. I hope you don't ever feel like that.
23:11
Fan. Yeah. But when we left Mexico coming back to The States, I did feel this. I felt it for years. I wanted to be where I thought God had put me.
23:21
I wanted to be where I thought he had planted me. And the truth is, he wants us to bloom where we're planted now, right? He wants us to be used where we are to love the enemies and pray for those who persecute you wherever we are and so in different places in the world, it might be different from some of y'all who have missionary kids in Africa. It'll be primitive religion that's surrounding them and cursing them in some ways. Where I was, there was Santeria.
23:50
Oh, another sublime reference. Didn't mean to do that. I didn't didn't even think of that one. But there literally was centurillo all around us. And when we got there, they left little little piles of chicken bones out in front of the house cursing us.
24:04
It's hard not to have a moment of few people, you know, and Jeremiah had that moment a lot. You people, these people, lord, Moses had that a lot. These are stiff necked people that you've given me. Be different than the world. That's what he's saying.
24:24
Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you so that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your father who's in heaven because God sends the rain on the just and the unjust and he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good. So here we go, ten eleven and twelve and we'll go to communion. For this is what the Lord says, when seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you to bring you back to this place. I'm bringing you back around.
24:54
I'm not forgetting about you. This exile that you had was for your good. For I know the plans that I have for you, and I know you don't understand them. I have plans for prosperity and not for disaster. I have plans to give you a future and a hope.
25:13
And then, he says, you will call on me, and you will come pray to me, and I will listen to you. And I'll listen to you because you're calling on me from a whole heart. It's going to take some time for the damage to be repaired, and the damage is being repaired in exile. And that's the plan. That's going by its plan.
25:39
Now, it goes on to say, listen, there are a lot of other folks who are going to tell you that it's going to be over real quick. Don't worry about building that house. Just hang out for a little while. God's taken us back to Jerusalem. They're but they're false prophets and they're not telling you the truth and I love you enough to tell you the truth.
25:55
You're going to be here a while. So, bloom where you're planted. There's a there's a whole book which called Bloom Where You're Planet by a guy who's doing a study of Jeremiah 29 specifically. I'm telling you because I want you to seek the good of the city in which you dwell and I he wants that not just for the priest and the prophets. He wants that for all of the people that are here.
26:16
So, some of some of you are here going, I can't believe I finally got to get to this beloved wonderful place and then others are like, I can't believe I'm still here. Some of you might feel like I can't believe I'm still not married. I can't believe that I'm unemployed. I can't believe that I'm and you're going through a time and you may actually, one of the lines and I haven't I don't have it up here, but it says, you're listening to the dreams of false prophets that you're begging them to have. You want to hear what you want to hear.
26:47
You don't want to hear what you don't want to hear. And so I'm telling you what you don't want to hear, but it's the truth. Seek the prosperity. So this is to the rest of the elders and pastors and all the people attending first week. Seek the prosperity of the city where I've sent you.
27:03
Here, Wilson, Victor Driggs, Tetonia Felt, Pinedale, Moran. I've got folks all over this place. Texas, I got a few visitors here too today. Seek the prosperity of the city where I've sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord on its behalf.
27:22
What does that look like? You ever listen to a Jewish service? One of the first things they do in their service is pray for the and by name usually. Pray for the leaders of the city in which they live and then the state in which they live and the country in which they live and sometimes it's three gritted teeth and it would be for me too. But it's a command.
27:45
We're to seek the prosperity of the city where we've been sent into exile. Pray to the Lord on its behalf and and its prosperity will be your prosperity. I'm thankful that that was the first message that I heard. It landed in my lap well. I have a write up for first being the Bible coming up soon and there's something in there about the the lines I can't remember it exactly.
28:13
We're going to communion. Let me look it up. Anybody got a phone? Psalm 16? I feel a sense of extreme blessing to be able to be here.
28:28
Thank you, sir. An actual Bible. Oh my goodness. Thank you. Thank you.
28:31
Thank you. The lions have fallen to me in pleasant places. The lions have fallen to me in pleasant places. The Lord is my support. He is my portion.
28:49
He is my cup. You support my lot, my family. The lions have fallen to me in pleasant places indeed. My heritage is beautiful to me and I will bless the Lord who has counseled me. Indeed, my mind instructs me in the night and I've set the Lord continually before me because he's at my right hand and because he's at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
29:13
Doesn't matter if I'm by the rivers of Babylon. Doesn't matter where I am, what situation I find myself in. God is my refuge and my strength. We find that in Jesus name and so, I'm going invite the elders to come forward right now and we're going to go into a time of the Lord's supper. We'll get a couple of y'all are going play something pretty.
29:37
I'm going to try to sing it. Okay.
