Build and Settle

Last week, we learned that: the fields of our community may be riper for harvest then we sometimes think they are. God can take barren and unproductive places and people and, by His Spirit, change them. we are exiles living in a foreign land. in order to further explore these ideas, we are going to spend a few weeks working through a passage from the book of Jeremiah.

“This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”  (Jeremiah 29:4-7)

At this time in the life of the people of Israel, they had been exiled due their general disobedience and ignorance of God. 15 years into the captivity, a false prophet by the name of Hananiah was urging the Israelites to resist the Babylonian empire and ignore Jeremiah’s conflicting words, as they would be freed from captivity within two years. Jeremiah had repeatedly declared that the captivity would last 70 years in total, just as the Lord promised.

God encourages some seemingly counterintuitive actions – “build houses and settle down”. Why build houses and settle down in a foreign land? Even at 70 years, if the exile is a temporary measure, this seems like a significant task, does it not? Why settle down if the people of Israel will only one day be uprooted again?

Have you ever heard the expression that as followers of Jesus, we are aliens or strangers in this world? As we buy into this concept, we tend then to be very unconcerned with the “things of this world”; in fact, we often express a disinterest or disengagement with what is happening more generally in our community.

“To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.” (1 Peter 1:1) “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul”. (1 Peter 2:11) Traditionally, this word ‘exiles’ has been translated as “aliens or temporary residents”, allowing us to interpret that we are just those who are passing through, en route to some distant place in the future.

The Greek word however means a “resident foreigner” and comes from another word meaning “to make oneself at home”. Though we might be strangers, we are resident strangers making a home in a foreign land. “Our citizenship is in heaven”. (Philippians 3:20) Though we find our citizenship in heaven, we still must make our home here. We are not just passing through; we are resident foreigners, establishing a home in this world.

One way in which we live as resident foreigners is to live as those abstaining from sinful desires. Our enemy does not want us squatting in his kingdom, so his tactic is to coerce us to give into our sinful leanings, putting our heavenly citizenship on the backburner. We ought not behave as those belonging to the kingdom of darkness. We ought not cordon ourselves off from the world, but we ought to be actively exposing deeds of darkness in our community through the way we live our lives. We ought not be so engaged with non-believers that we find ourselves drawn into their deeds of darkness, rather we ought to influence them towards the light of Jesus Christ. We are to engage in life in the world, avoiding sinful desires and remembering that the only treasures worth accumulating await us in our eternal home.

We are to live as those “chosen … to be obedient to Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:2). Obedience is not only avoiding that which is wrong, but it is also doing that which is right. We are to consistently and continually engage in good deeds as led by God’s Spirit, not as an act of salvation, but as evidence of our salvation. We are saved to be obedient to Christ, which means that we will be engaged in the good works that He laid out for us in advance for us to do.

We are to live as those who “live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us”. Our lives ought to be lived “among” those who do not yet know Christ and our good deeds ought to be visible to them The way we live ought to result in others glorifying God. Our status as resident foreigners is intentional because not only are we exiles or resident foreigners, but we are also “Christ’s ambassadors,  as though God were making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

None of this can happen however if we do not live as those who build houses and settle down among those who do not know Jesus as Saviour. It takes time, effort and commitment to live as a “resident foreigner”. Finding ourselves engaged and rooted in our community in a God honouring way takes time. It requires effort to engage in the community - you must be willing to exert some effort to get to know those around you. We have to be willing to remain committed to this sort of thing; because we cannot do these things overnight, we also cannot expect that we can extend ourselves once and then find ourselves rooted in our community.

“Who was that masked man?” The Lone Ranger Disconnected Not relational A stranger “Who you gonna’ call?” Ghostbusters Known and connected Rooted Available

My prayer for us is that we would become a people deeply rooted in our community, a known and available people actively engaged in coming against the evil present in our community for many, many years, rather than a church who mysteriously and rapidly sweeps through town, unknown and then is gone.