Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept as we thought of Jerusalem. We put away our harps. For our captors demanded a song from us. Our tormentors insisted, “Sing us one of those songs of Jerusalem!” But how can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a pagan land? -Psalm 137:1-4 (NLT)
That was the question of God’s people, “How can we find joy, here?”
“This is the wrong place; we are with the wrong people. Our dreams have turned to nightmares!”
This week we are going to look at one of the most catastrophic episodes of Israel; it is called “The Exile.” The question we will consider is the question of the Psalm, “How can we find joy when we are stuck?”
There are many people who will give you advice on how to get “unstuck.” But that is not the right question. We should ask, “Is joy possible when there is no getting ‘unstuck?’” Can we find beauty in the now? In the “not yet unstuck, stuckness?”
The answer is, “Yes!” Sunday we will ponder the path to “How?”
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: One Story: Digging Deeper
February 20, 2013
Exile: Living in the Bucket of Babylon
Psalm 137:1-4; Jeremiah 29
Okay, so we have been going through the One Story from the beginning of the Scripture until now. We are in that chapter of the exile. It’s a hard chapter. We’ve talked about how the kings kept getting worse and worse in Israel. In 722 BC, they were just totally wiped off the map. The southern kingdom (Judah) lasted about 120 years longer, but their kings were rotten also.
It brings us right up to the brink of our story today. The situation that kind of sets the stage for the passage we’ll be reading is actually the destruction of Jerusalem. So I need like four or five kids who would be willing to represent Babylon. Let’s take orange. Perfect. Gray, you’re so earnest. You have to come up. Yeah, striped shirt and checkered shirt. Come on. You two ladies, come on up. You guys will be the fearsome armies of Babylon. Come on up. A few of you guys. That’s perfect. That’s wonderful. Very eager.
Ladies and gents, come on over here. This is a bucket. It says “Babylon” on it. Do you see that? Babylon. Okay. So you guys are going to be kind of over here in Babylon. I don’t know if you noticed… Fearsome armies in rank, shoulder to shoulder. That’s good. Two rows. Yeah. That’s great. Okay. This is why Babylon was the terror of the ancient world. It was because they were sending out soldiers like this.
Over here we actually have Jerusalem set up. You’re going to have to use a little bit of imagination. The Israelites did not wear green fatigues, and they didn’t carry World War II machine guns, but these were just regular, run of the mill army men. You guys can imagine, right, this is the city of Jerusalem? Okay. You’re over there in Babylon. You’re in the mighty and powerful empire. Okay?
Now here is what happens. You guys pretty much conquer this entire stage if it was the ancient world. So you’re all kind of running this. You’re making the king over here pay you some taxes, pay you lots of money actually, so you don’t wipe them off the map. Then one day the king here decides (Jehoiachin is his name) he doesn’t want to pay you guys. So how does that make you feel? Mad.
He says, “Hey, we’re not going to pay you anymore. We’re actually going to do our own thing. We’re going to be totally okay with it.” So what do you think you would do it if you were a mighty and powerful army, and you have a little kingdom, a little city over here (Jerusalem), and the kingdom of Judah all sort of against you? What would you do? Well actually the first thing you would do is not destroy it.
You would grab your bucket. So one of you guys grab a bucket. You’d come over here with your armies. The first round, in 597 BC… The first thing you’d do was just take the very best leaders from the city of Jerusalem and from Judah. So everybody grab a handful… A couple of the army men. Not all of them, but a few of them. That’s good. You don’t want to destroy the city yet, though. Okay. Just a handful of them. There you go. That’s good.
So you take most of the leaders off and throw them in your bucket. Good. That’s great. Perfect. That’s about right for the first round there. Okay. That’s enough. Throw them in the bucket right there. Then you go back to Babylon, just like that. So that was the first round of exile. They came in with their big armies and they carried off a bunch of the best leaders.
So if you read the book of Daniel…Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Daniel, all these guys probably would have been carried off in that first pickings of the best leaders. Okay? These guys didn’t really learn their lesson because about 10 or 11 years later, do you know what they did again? They said, “Do you know what? We’re going to stop paying you again.” Because they started paying you. Once you came, you kind of threatened. You took away 10,000 all of the best leaders.
They started paying you again, but then about 10 or 11 years later, King Zedekiah decides, “I’m just not going to pay anymore.” Now this is like strike two. How do you feel about that? Very mad. Very mad! Okay. So here’s what happened. You come over, and you surround the city. It’s actually a siege. That’s good. Excellent. So armies of Babylon, you’re surrounding the city. You don’t attack it yet. You’re just outside of it. You don’t let any food or water come in or out of the city for two whole years.
It was bad. It was a bad siege. I mean, people inside, because they couldn’t get any food or couldn’t get any water, were miserable. They were terrified of the Babylonians. So they decided they were going to try to escape. Some of them tried to escape. One of the kings went out the sidewall. That didn’t work very well, and it made the armies extremely mad. Here’s what the armies did.
I mean, this is the city of Jerusalem. You see the temple right here nice and gold with the two great pillars out front that Solomon had put there. Here’s the city. The armies of Babylon absolutely destroy Jerusalem. I mean, they knock the walls down, and the handful of survivors they picked up, and they carried off. They carried off those survivors back to Babylon after they had destroyed everything.
They didn’t take everybody. In the Bible it says there were a handful of people who were still in Jerusalem, but they were the poorest of the poor. The way Jeremiah describes it is he says after this happened, the place where Jerusalem used to be became a land where the jackals would run freely. The coyotes, the wild dogs, would walk through because it was so empty and absolutely devastated. Okay, guys. Thanks so much. Good job. Let’s leave the exiles here in Babylon. Thank our armies. Very good. Very good. You devastated Jerusalem, just like Nebuchadnezzar.
You know, it’s interesting that when many ancient armies when would siege a city, they would sit around the outside. The most damage would be to the walls around the city. But when the archeologists look at the cities that were attacked by the Babylonians, they would destroy the walls, but they would also go right into the center of the city and completely level it.
So that’s what seems to be what happened also in Jerusalem. They went right into the middle of it. This beautiful, fantastic gold temple of God, remember? We talked about this a few weeks ago where the presence of God had come during the time of Solomon. The priests could not minister in there. This is like the very meeting place of heaven and earth. That beautiful temple was absolutely smashed and destroyed.
Many people died. A handful of people were left in the land. A bunch of them were carried off to Babylon. That’s the exile of the Jews. We have the destruction of Jerusalem. We have the exile of the Jews. It’s interesting, because the question comes up…How did these people feel? Right? What was going through their heads? They’re thousands of miles from home. The Babylonians let them hang out kind of along the canals near the river Euphrates.
If you read the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel is writing from this situation right here. He says, “I was over by the shores of the river Kebar, near the Euphrates, all the way over in Babylon.” How did these guys feel? I mean, I think you could connect with this if you are relating to this whole story. Psalm 137 is one of the most famous psalms written from the exile. Listen to what they say.
They say, “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion,” which is what they called Jerusalem. (Psalm 137:1) They’re sitting by the shores of the water, and they’re weeping thinking about Jerusalem. It says, “On the willows there we hung up [our harps] our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors…” (Psalm 137:2-3) “They wanted us to laugh.” “…mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:3-4)
This is the exile right here. You’re in the bucket of Babylon, and you’re saying, “How in the world do we sing a song of praise to God from this place right here?” It’s so bad that even those who managed to bring instruments along with them couldn’t even play them. They couldn’t even bring themselves to play the harp or to play the lyre. They took the instruments. They took them off their stands, and they put them away. I don’t want to ruin Gardner’s guitar, but the imagery is really powerful.
This is how they feel. It’s actually kind of like a classic situation. What these guys are experiencing at this stage of the Scripture in the bucket of Babylon is what we call sometimes like the desert valley. You know, we’re walking through the desert, or we’re down in the valley. Maybe sometimes we say you’ve hit rock bottom.
That’s where they are right now. This is the dark night of the soul. This is in the bucket of Babylon. The question then is, when your heart doesn’t want to worship, your hopes are dashed, your city lies in ruins, what do you do? What do you do when you find yourself in this difficult, broken place? What do you do when you find yourself in a situation, looking around going, “This is awful”?
I mean, it can happen to us at any age. You could be at school. The first day of school you get in. You sit down. Your teacher is there. You really have this feeling your teacher does not like you at all. She is making life hard on you. All of your friends are in another class. You’re sitting here. “What do I do? I feel like I’m stuck in exile. I’m stuck in the bucket here. What do I do?”
Or it could be like when you move to a new city or a new town. You start walking around, and you’re looking for somebody to get to meet. You’re like, “What am I doing here? I don’t know anyone. I don’t have any friends. I feel alone and lost and broken.” It could be like when you join a sports team, or you get involved with dance, or you get involved with little league or soccer or something like that.
You pay a whole bunch of money. It’s amazing how expensive sports are these days. You pay a whole bunch of money, or maybe your parents pay a whole bunch of money. You’re out there. It’s like the third day. You’re committed, and you can’t stand it. You’re like, “Get me out of here. I can’t do it. This is awful.” You feel committed. You feel like you’re locked in. You’re stuck in the bucket. What do you do in that place?
You’re at your work. This is the job you’ve had. You’ve had it for a few years. The management changes, and stuff gets really rotten. All of a sudden you just feel like you can’t do one more day. The fact that right now it’s Sunday evening and you have to get up tomorrow morning and go to work makes your stomach turn. I mean, we’re familiar. I think all of us can connect with these sort of situations when we find ourselves in the bucket.
Sometimes it’s something that happens to us. Sometimes we get sick, or someone in our family gets really, really sick and broken. It’s a shame. You watch people suffer around you, and it breaks your heart. You just feel like you’re in the bucket. Or maybe it’s something you do. For these guys, they persistently ignored the Word of God. They kept running from God. They killed the prophets. They didn’t want to listen to what the prophets had to say. I mean, they kept sinning over and over and over again.
The Scripture said, “Hey, if you don’t live by my law, this is going to happen.” That’s exactly what happened. Sometimes it’s not what happens to us. Sometimes it’s not just the situation we’re in. Sometimes we are the source of our own bucket. We make decisions and decisions and decisions, and all of a sudden, we find ourselves stuck far from home, going, “What in the world do we do here? There’s not one ounce of my heart that wants to worship God.”
So this is an important passage of Scripture for us. This is an important place, because all of us find ourselves in the bucket at some point or another. Now the nice thing is in Jeremiah 29, we find Jeremiah the prophet has written a letter to the exiles in Babylon. So these guys are sitting here. They’re not praising God. They’ve hung their harps up. They’re feeling rotten. All of a sudden, a letter is delivered.
It says, “To the leaders in exile from Jeremiah and God.” So they receive this letter. “What are we supposed to do? What are we going to do out here?” It’s interesting because out here in Babylon, there were certain people who were standing up. They said, “Hey, we’re prophets. We’re hearing from God, and we have good news. This is going to be over soon. Probably just a year, maybe two years, and we’ll go back home. We’re going to rebuild Jerusalem.”
All the people over here are kind of going, “Oh great. Okay. Well, we’re getting out of this bucket really soon. That’s awesome. Phew! If we could just hold on for a little bit.” Then this letter arrives from Jeremiah. This is Jeremiah 29, verse 4. If you want to read about the intro to the letter and who delivered it, that’s the first three verses of chapter 29. Verse 4 begins this way. This is a pretty intense letter. I mean, can you imagine opening up a letter, and it says, “Thus says the Lord of hosts…”? (Jeremiah 29:4)
Oh boy. No, like, “Hey, exiles. What’s up?” Or, “This is Jeremiah. We miss you guys.” “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ‘Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.
But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.’ For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them,’ declares the Lord.
For thus says the Lord: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.
You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.'” (Jeremiah 29:4-14)
You have to think for those people reading this letter it probably was comforting in some ways. It probably was really challenging and discouraging in some other ways. Most of them were hoping this would be just a short thing, but it wasn’t. It says really clearly, “Hey, you’re going to be out here 70 years. Get used to it.” “Oh no!” “But God still cares about you guys.” There are both things happening here.
What you find as you look at this letter is you get some really good insight from God. This is like God’s advice…how to survive and thrive in the bucket. Here’s what God says to these people. He says, “There are a few things you need to know, and there are a few things you need to do.” So the first things, the stuff you need to know. First off, verse 4, and then he says it again in verse 7 just so they don’t forget.
God says, “I have sent you to the bucket. I have sent you,” because in these moments, we’re tempted… When we end up in that rotten spot, we feel like we’re in exile, or we feel like things are falling apart around us. Rock bottom. Dark night of the soul. The valley. When we find ourselves in this place, the first temptation we really have is we start believing this is not God’s plan. This is outside of his control. You know?
You say, “Oh man. I’m off the reservation with God here.” Here’s what God wants these guys to know. He says, “I’ve done this. I’ve sent you here. I am in control of this situation. I know it feels like everything is falling apart, but I am totally in control.” The second thing these guys need to know is not just that God sent them here, because once you say, “Well, God sent me here,” it’s like, “Oh well great. So thanks a lot. That’s really comforting you sent me here, but were you just going to let me die out here?”
There’s a second thing they need to know, and this is what God tells them. He says, “I have plans for you, good plans. Plans for shalom. Plans for a future.” I mean, this Jeremiah 29:11 is one of the probably most often quoted graduation card verses. You know? You open it up. You just graduated high school. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.'” (Jeremiah 29:11)
You read that, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s wonderful.” When you put this in context, it’s actually an odd verse to be quoting when you’re graduating high school, because it’s written to people who are absolutely at the bottom of the barrel. But it’s a great verse. If you got that card when you graduated, I would cherish it. If you gave that card to your son or daughter when he or she graduated, I think it’s fine. The Lord is good with it. He still has plans. You don’t have to be in the bucket for him to have plans for you.
God didn’t just send them here, but he has a plan for them. That’s important. It’s important to know they’re not just out here drifting around, because when you get out here, sometimes we’re tempted to think, “Man, God has left me. Maybe he sent me out here, but he is not out here with me. He has left me, and I’m just drifting. I have to make my own way.” That’s not what God is saying. “I have a plan for you.”
Then the next thing they need to know is he goes, “You know, when you seek me with all of your heart, I will be found by you.” Here was a group of people. They don’t even want to turn their faces to God and sing because they’re so broken. The Lord is saying, “If you turn to me, I will be found by you.” That’s what else happens out here in the bucket.
This is the place where you start going, “Man, is God even there?” We think maybe God has completely left us in this place. God is saying, “No. Seek me, and I will be found.” It’s just like we were looking at last week, that father from the parable of the prodigal son. The moment that son appears on the horizon, the father runs to him. God is saying, “I will be found by you.”
I can remember in my own life. It was the summer after my junior year in college. I got an internship in Costa Rica. It was great. It was a fun internship, but I guess it’s hard to equate Costa Rica with living in the bucket of Babylon. Spiritually, it was one of those seasons where I was kind of down in the bucket. I knew I needed to connect with God in some way, but I kind of felt like I was drifting in life. I didn’t have a lot of direction. I didn’t feel like I really knew God very well at that point.
I had grown up with some faith, but this was like the real turning point for me personally where I had grown up with some faith, and I got to college. I just explored and made my way through college a little bit. Then I’m off in San Jose for a whole summer pretty much by myself. I was staying in a host family’s home. They kept these mountain birds in their home. They were birds that woke up at dawn or sometimes before dawn every single morning. They would roost just outside of my bedroom window.
They were beautiful birds, but they had the most piercing… It would have been impossible to sleep. No person could have slept through these birds. So every morning in Costa Rica, I’d be lying in bed sleeping, and I’d hear the birds start squawking. “Well, that’s that for the morning. It’s not even light outside. Love these mountain birds.”
You go to Costa Rica for the ecotourism and to experience the wildlife and all the rest, but there’s a downside. There’s a dark side to the wildlife. That’s why it’s called wildlife. You’re not supposed to keep those birds in your house. Let them be in the wild, far from you. Every morning I’d hear them squawk like that.
If I had to be honest, during that time in my life, I wouldn’t say I had encountered God very regularly. I would pray occasionally and stuff, but it wasn’t like I was meeting God. In that time, I don’t know why it was, but 1 Peter was like the book of the Bible. I had brought my Bible with me, and I decided, “I’m just going to start reading 1 Peter.” The birds would squawk. Open it up. First Peter. I’d start reading it.
Do you know what happened? As I started to seek the Lord, he was found by me. Every morning, the birds would squawk. First Peter 2. It was a really sweet time for me, kind of feeling in the bucket in some ways spiritually, away from God, and coming back to the Scriptures. They were alive in a way that I just had never experienced before.
God was speaking to me about the everlasting, the living hope that comes through Jesus and the way to walk through challenges in life and imitate Jesus. All of these passages were just speaking to me to the point where I began to look forward to the birds squawking in the morning because it just opened up… I don’t know if you have this confidence, but this is God’s heart. When we seek him, he will be found by us.
When we’re in the bucket and we feel like he is so far away, we can’t even stand the idea of holding our harps to sing a song to God, he wants you to know, “This is important. Okay? This is not outside of my control. I’ve sent you here. Do you know what? I have a plan, and it’s a good plan for you out here. Another thing: if you turn to me, I will be found by you.”
It reminds me of that passage from Lamentations we read at the beginning of this service. This is what Jeremiah is saying. He is walking through the rubble here. He says, “‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul…” (Lamentations 3:24) What do you need in the bucket? You need the portion of the Lord. You need to know him, turn your face to him. The birds are squawking, and there he is. He will be found by you.
So these are the things you need to know in the bucket (a few of them). Then there is also some stuff God tells the exiles they need to do. In verses 5 and 6 he gives them a bunch of commands. He says, “Build, live, plant, eat, marry, multiply.” Just like that. Build, live, plant, eat, marry, multiply, put in some roots. It was interesting. A number of years ago we had the opportunity to go to Algeria. In the southern part of Algeria there is a refugee camp of some people who used to live in a country called Western Sahara.
That country (Western Sahara) had been ruled by the Spanish, but then in the 1970s, the Spanish said, “Okay, we’re kind of moving out. We’re not ready to keep doing this.” So they withdrew. When they withdrew, actually Morocco is right there. I don’t know if you know your Western African geography. I don’t know it very well, but Morocco is right next to it. They just came in and sort of took over Western Sahara.
Half of the people in Western Sahara fled. They got out of Dodge. They’re like, “We’re leaving.” So they ran out into the desert in the middle of Algeria, and the Moroccans took over. Then they built a thousand-mile earthen wall. I mean, it’s just a mound, like this. They put a million landmines in it so the people over there who had fled (the exiles, the refugees) could never come back to Western Sahara. They’ve fought back and forth ever since.
When we went there, there were five refugee camps just in the middle of the desert. They have no running water, no wells or anything like that. They’ve been there now for more than 40 years. It’s a fascinating story. They’re Muslims there. They speak Spanish. We would sit in the tents with them, and they’d have these elaborate tea ceremonies.
It takes really about two hours to drink sufficient tea with them. You have to pour all four cups, and you get the bubbles right. Then you cook it for a little bit. You live in the Sahara, so there’s not really much to do. So we’ll do several hours of drinking tea. Then we’ll do it again. It’s wonderful actually. I feel sometimes in the busyness of life, if we had more tea ceremonies, we might be a little bit more rested.
Here’s the interesting thing and the reason we talk about these guys who are kind of exiles just out in the middle. They’re living in their own bucket. Here’s the thing. They’ve been there a little more than 40 years now. You walk through, and they don’t really have any permanent structures. The roofs are all just tin roofs. Many of them still live in tents almost 40 years later. They have a few rudimentary buildings made out of concrete blocks. I remember asking, “Why is this so undeveloped after all these years?”
They said, “Because we want to be able to leave this place at a moment’s notice. As soon as we can go back, we’re going to go back. We want, as soon as we leave, the desert will just come and blow away the entire memory that we even lived here.” There was a guy who went over…because one of the struggles they have is finding good food. Of course it’s hard to farm in the middle of the Sahara, but this really brilliant agricultural engineer worked out with some technology some ways to keep some water in the sand so you can grow a seed and actually get a crop.
So he was able to go to these people and say, “Hey, I can help you build a garden in your yard.” Well, it’s not really a yard. It’s just your little sandbox, I suppose. He says, “I can help you with this” in their little courtyard. Nobody wanted to do it. Nobody wanted to plan a garden, for the exact same reason. “Anything that puts down roots here means we’re wanting to stay here, and we do not want to stay here.” That was their heart.
Does that make sense? No. No, absolutely. So here’s the thing. I mean, they’re in a place they don’t want to be, so they don’t want to show any sign that says, “We’re going to make it work here.” They’re just going to live as lightly as they possibly can so they can leave as soon as they can. Here’s what God says to these guys in a similar situation. “Hey, build, live, marry, plant.” All these guys wanted is to get out of the bucket as quickly as possible. Do you know what God told them? “Beautify the bucket.”
It’s interesting because those words that are used with these guys, what God tells them to do, they’re the same words God was giving to Adam and Eve back in Genesis 1 and 2 when he put them into Eden, this beautiful garden in the midst of a pretty wild creation. It was beautiful. It was a good creation, but it was wild. He put them in the midst here, and he says, “Hey, guys. Be fruitful. Multiply. Cultivate the garden. Expand this thing.”
Now he is coming back to these guys who were in a rotten mess, feeling like they were far from home and totally broken. Here’s what God is saying: “Okay. Put down a few roots here. Carve out a little portion of Eden in the midst of the mess.” Isn’t that interesting? “Seek the peace of the city.” That’s the next thing he says. You have to imagine if these are the people who came in, smashed your city, lots of people died, carried you off over here and you’re back in Babylon, you hate these people.
These are the people who killed you! These are the people who are oppressing you. You don’t want to help them out. God says, “Seek their peace. You’re in the midst of a broken place.” Seek their shalom, is the Hebrew word. It means wholeness in every good sense of the word. All of the excellence, justice. “Seek the welfare of this city, because in this city’s welfare comes also your welfare.”
Then the last thing he tells them to do is to pray for it. “Pray for the city. Don’t pray they’ll be destroyed. Pray on behalf of the city.” This is a great prescription. God tells them not to try to escape this season. He says, “Embrace it. Live here like you’re going to stay. Put down some roots. Don’t just try to get out of the bucket. Let’s make the bucket beautiful. Don’t sit around and ask why. Instead, ask, ‘What for? What for? What for? What’s the purpose for which I am here?'”
It’s interesting because if you look at the promises God made to Israel and the plan God had for Israel, he said, “You guys are going to be a light to the nations.” During the time when they were living, they had Jerusalem in their own little country, very little light was shed to the nations. After the exile (and the word is Diaspora, the flinging out of the people outward) happened, there were Jewish communities all over the ancient world, into Egypt and Babylon, as far as India and to the north into parts of Greece. All these Jewish communities settled.
What happened actually is there began to be these little bits of light as people figured out how to live in these challenging situations all around. They began to show little bits of light. Actually several hundred years later when Jesus was on the scene… He died and rose again. The first apostles, the church, went out, and they began preaching. What did Paul do whenever he went to a new city? He looked for the synagogue. He’d go to the Jews first.
How did the Jews get there? They were scattered back here. They’d been living there for years. It was like God, a hundred years in advance, was setting up little outposts of folks who had a little bit of knowledge about God so when Jesus was on the scene and the good news was fully released and the kingdom of God was being announced, the apostles, the early missionaries went about, and they found these places. They had a little bit of community. They had a little bit of a landing place going to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles.
So what does this all have to do with us? God gives them some things they need to know, and he gives them some things they need to do. How does that connect to us? Well, it’s not just that we are occasionally in difficult situations. It’s not just that we sometimes feel like we are in exile ourselves. Actually when you read the beginning of 1 Peter, he addresses that letter. He says, “Hey, all you guys who are scattered about, the dispersion…”
If you read the beginning of James, he is writing to all the believers who are scattered about the entire Roman Empire some time later. He says, “Hey, you guys, the 12 tribes in the dispersion.” He is writing to the believers, the Christ followers. The word James and Peter are using is the same word in the Old Testament (in the Greek translation of the Old Testament) that was used to describe the exiles.
Peter and James were saying pretty much everyone who is following Jesus in some way is like an exile. Why? Well, what is an exile? An exile, a person who has been taken from their home, is a person who is not living in the place where they’re meant to live. That’s an exile. When we begin following Jesus, we’re born again. We come into the kingdom. We become citizens of that kingdom. Our true home, our destiny, becomes eternity with God, life in the new heaven and the new earth. That is our true home.
Yet we still live now in the midst of a lot of brokenness. We find ourselves in all kinds of different buckets. So these words God speaks to the exiles in Jeremiah about what they need to know and what they need to do are not just words for us when we’re in really rotten situations. They’re words for us all the time, wherever we are. We need to keep in mind, “Man, Lord. Did you send me to this place? Lord, do you have a plan for me in this?” Yes, he does.
“Lord, if I seek you right here, will you be found by me?” “Yes. Yes, I will.” “What do I do?” “Live here. Seek the peace of this region. Seek the goodness of the city.” Join the homeowner’s association. Be the president of the homeowner’s association. Get on the school board. Seek the goodness of the city. Figure out how in your class you can lead. Get a little prayer gathering together at your work.
My brother just got a job. It’s his first job, and he is doing a great job with it. He has a group of folks. Friday mornings they get together and they pray. There are a handful of other believers at his workplace. That’s the sort of thing you do when you’re living as a person of the Diaspora, an exile. Maybe you find yourself in this bucket in the midst of the world. It’s not a Christian company or anything like that. You just find a few people to get together. Start praying together. Sink down some of those roots.
Some of you guys know Sadie Krawczyk (Brian and Sadie). They’re leading the lot out in Monroe. Just recently she got that amazing job as the sort of urban planner for Monroe. She is doing that not because it’s just a good job but because it’s what God tells people to do. “Hey, you’re in this situation. It’s a challenging situation. Your true home is the new heaven and the new earth, eternity, heaven. Right here, put down some roots. Make this city beautiful.”
How do we think creatively? How do we listen to God? How do we pray? How do we sort out what it means as students in school, students in university, working, raising our kids? What does it look like to obey these commands, these things the Lord spoke to his people in this letter? That’s on a daily level. Also again, what does it look like when maybe you are in that tough spot?
You’re not just sort of the daily citizen of God’s kingdom walking through the broken world, but maybe you’re really in that place where you feel like your home is in ruins or your family is coming apart at the seams. Maybe you’re in that place where you feel like in a few minutes, Gardner will begin leading us in song again, and your heart just doesn’t want to turn to God. It’s like, “I’ve hung up my own harp.” Maybe you’re in that place.
Maybe you’re just feeling like you’re at rock bottom, wondering where God is and what he is doing. Where’s the hope? Here’s what you need to know. This is what the Lord says to you. “Hey, listen. I’m here. I’ve sent you. This is not outside of my control. I’ve sent you. I have you. I have a plan for you.” You have to recognize this. This is important. This is one of the most important things…that we can grow up.
It was interesting. I was at a wedding last night, sitting next to a young man. He is a great young guy. I just met him. He is working a really good job now. I was asking him kind of what his parents had done that really impacted him. He was valedictorian at his high school in Atlanta when he graduated and everything else. He is just a hardworking guy. I was like, “What do you think…? What happened? How did you end up like this?”
He goes, “You know, I think my parents continually affirmed there was a sense of destiny to my life. There was a direction to it. There was something that mattered.” He is not really a believer. He doesn’t know everything about God, so we were talking about God in those terms. I thought, “Man, that is so much like what God is saying to these guys in the bucket here.” “Hey, I have a plan for you.”
This is so crucial, because we forget that sometimes. We get caught up in the day-to-day grind of life and work, and we forget God has a plan…a good plan…for hope and for a future. Let that settle in and then seek him. “Lord, I’m in that tough spot. I’m in the bucket. What is your plan here?” The good news is when you ask him about it, you turn your heart to him, he says, “I’ll be found by you. I’ll meet you in this place.”
The answer you might get might not be the one you want, and he might say, “You’re going to be here a little bit longer than you were thinking at the time,” but here’s what he wants you to do. Live. Live right here. Beautify the bucket with me. Seek peace. Begin praying for what’s around you. I mean, it’s one of those simple things, but you get into a situation like at your work, and you just feel like your boss is driving you nuts. All the people around you are crazy people.
You start getting so frustrated that you forget to pray for those people. Yet here’s God saying, “Pray for the people around you in Babylon. Yeah, those ones, the ones who came in and destroyed your city and ran off with your family and everything else. Pray for those people.” Actually, one scholar says it’s the only place in the Old Testament that talks about praying for people who would be your enemies. Jesus, of course, in the New Testament brings it back.
That’s our challenge. Maybe the Lord is speaking to you in one of those areas. Maybe the Lord is just kind of bringing back some truth into your heart. I’m going to close us just with a word of prayer, and we’re going to just worship. We’re going to thank God. Whether you’re in the place of the tough bucket or you’re just kind of walking through life trying to sort out what it looks like to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom, we need God’s help in this. We need his grace to sustain us in the bucket.