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It is our joy as Your people, Lord, to offer ourselves back to You

again and, at this point, to present ourselves in front of You and say,

“Lord, here we are. What is it that You wish to say to us? How would

You direct us? How would You exhort us? How would You confront us?

How would You encourage us?” So, come and speak. We are eager

to listen. We pray in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

 

 

The Exile Chronicles: Chapter four.

 

Imagine if you woke up and found yourself in a place that was far from home, far from where you lived. What would you do? In that moment, where would you direct your energies and your thought and your time, your resources?

 

Well, you’d spend all your time and energy thinking about getting back home, right? And trying to figure out a way to do that and trying to figure out a way to bring along with you as many people as you could.

 

Well, that’s the question that Jeremiah answers in the passage that we are looking at today. But it’s not exactly the answer that he gives.

 

Let’s look at that on page 1221 in the pew Bible, Jeremiah chapter 29 beginning at the start of the chapter.

 

Jeremiah 29:1-14:

 

This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. (This was after King Jehoiachin and the queen mother, the court officials and the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the artisans had gone into exile from Jerusalem.) He entrusted the letter to Elasah son of Shaphan and to Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon.

 

This is what the letter said:

 

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. Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord.

 

This is what the Lord says, “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to 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 will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

 

Now, two points of reference that I think might help explain, clarify what’s happening here:

 

The first is the political reality: what’s going on around Judah at this time roughly around 600 B.C.?

 

Well, for years Egypt, their neighbor to the southwest, had been the primary world superpower and Judah had been a vassal nation to Egypt paying annual tribute to Pharaoh Necho and looking to Egypt for its help and its needs. .

 

And then in 605 B.C., Babylon, their neighbor to the northeast, had risen up to power, and now Judah has become a vassal nation to Babylon paying annual tribute to King Nebuchadnezzar and looking to Babylon for help. At least it was supposed to.

 

But the very first moment when King Nebuchadnezzar seemed to falter—when the power of Babylon seemed to be in question, when Egypt seemed once again momentarily to rise to a place of power—the king of Judah jumped ship from Babylon and pledged anew his allegiance to Egypt. Mistake.

 

This infuriated Nebuchadnezzar who’d not lost any of his power. He stormed to Jerusalem and he laid siege to the city. And then in 597 when he defeated the city, he hauled off the cultural capital of the nation to his city, Babylon, where he was engaged in rebuilding the greatest city in the world at that time.

 

II Kings chapter 24 tells the story that serves as the backdrop to this passage. It says:

 

At that time the officers of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon advanced on Jerusalem and laid siege to it, and Nebuchadnezzar himself came up to the city while his officers were besieging it. Jehoiachin king of Judah, his mother, his attendants, his nobles, and his officials all surrendered to him.

 

In the eighth year of the reign of the king of Babylon, he took Jehoiachin prisoner. As the Lord declared, Nebuchadnezzar removed all the treasures from the temple of the Lord and from the royal palace, and took away all the gold articles that Solomon king of Israel had made for the temple of the Lord. He carried into exile all Jerusalem: all the officers and fighting men, and all the craftsmen and artisans—a total of ten thousand.

 

Now, from other books of the Bible we discover that the prophet Ezekiel and a young nobleman named Daniel were among this first group that were taken into exile. You might find it interesting just to look at the opening chapters of those two books, Ezekiel and Daniel.

 

Now, interestingly, tablets found in the ruins of ancient Babylon which are called the Babylonian Chronicles tells this same story—this same series of events—from King Nebuchadnezzar’s perspective including at the end of the account a phrase that he uses when he says that, after he deposed King Jehoiachin, he set up a king in Judah who was a man “after his own heart.”

 

So, as it says in Jeremiah 29:1, Nebuchadnezzar carried Judah into exile.

 

But there’s another dynamic that led to Judah being carried off into exile, and that’s the spiritual reality: that’s going on within Judah?

 

You may remember that in Deuteronomy chapter 28, Moses describes what will come of the people of God if they honor Him and serve Him and love Him and what will happen to them if they rebel against Him and turn to other gods. After listing a series of lesser consequences, Moses says that if the people persist in their unbelief and in their disobedience, then this happens—Deuteronomy 28:49: 

 

The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you do not understand, a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young.

 

They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down.

 

Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other.

 

This is the very thing that now is happening 600 years later.

 

But what we see here is that Babylon is merely the agent that God has used to bring about His purpose.

 

In Jeremiah 29:1 it says: “Nebuchadnezzar carried them into exile.” But in Jeremiah 29:4 it says, “God Himself brought them into exile.”

 

So the people of God were brought forcibly 900 miles along the trade routes across the Arabian Desert to Babylon.

 

They moved into a city, Tel-Aviv, along a canal called the Kevar River that was just southeast of the city of Babylon in what would essentially have been the suburbs of Babylon.

 

They weren’t dispersed among the population, but they were allowed to live wherever they wished, to develop communities of their own, to earn a living in whatever way they wanted, to assemble whenever they wished. In fact, that’s just what they did. This is where the origin of the synagogue is first found is in the community assemblies of the people of God in Babylon.

 

As it happened, they all settled together in the same place. They built homes side by side in the same city. The temptation, of course, would be for them to live far removed from their enemies—those unpleasant foreigners among whom they were forced to live—and to sit and wait huddled together for their deliverance to the promised land.

 

It would have been natural for them to have kept entirely to themselves, to have thought only about themselves, to have offered their services and developed their goods and created their works of art exclusively for the benefit of other fellow Jews and perhaps those few who found their beliefs attractive.

 

Jeremiah offers to them some surprising advice, however. You see this in verse 4:

 

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens….. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage…. Increase in number there; …. Also [verse 7], 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.”

 

Now, this advice from Jeremiah would have been surprising for three different reasons:

 

First of all, none of them expected that they would be there for any duration at all.

 

All the prophets around them were saying that they would be returning from exile in no time.

 

Jeremiah chapter 28 verses 1 and 2 records the prophet Hananiah, a false prophet, saying, “I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon [God speaking]. Within two years I will bring you back….“

 

So the people in Tel Aviv, the Jewish people in Tel Aviv, believed that the rapture back to Jerusalem could come at any time so they were encouraged to live with their bags packed and to ignore those people around them.

 

To which Jeremiah says, “Your hope is absolutely real. You can trust that God will take you home. God has not forgotten you. He has a plan for you. He has a hope and a future for you and He will fulfill it.” “But,” Jeremiah says, “that hope is deferred. You will be there in Babylon for a long time.”

 

In fact, for the amount of time that was typically understood to be a lifetime.

 

Isn’t that interesting?

 

Now seventy can be a literal period of time, but it’s often a figurative expression that means God’s perfect period of time: seven (the number for God), ten (the complete number). So, God’s perfect amount of time will be fulfilled and then you’ll be returned.

 

So, Jeremiah is saying this is going to be an indefinite period of time, so live your life where you are not merely where you wish you were.

 

In fact, it would not be until 538—sixty years from this point—that the first group would begin to make their way back.

 

So, Jeremiah’s advice to seek the peace and prosperity of the city and to pray for it would have been surprising first of all because they didn’t think they were going to be there for long.

 

But secondly, this is their mortal enemy that Jeremiah is talking about. Nebuchadnezzar not only defeated the city of Jerusalem, their prize, and swept its king and its finest intellectual and artistic leaders away into exile, but they plucked these people off of their land away from the people that they loved and from the city where their temple was located and the center of their worship life.

 

But then it got worse: after another act of rebellion by another unthinking king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar stormed back in 586 and he destroyed nearly every city that had a wall around it in the entire land of Judah and then Jerusalem itself including the temple—desecrating the sanctuary and bringing back its sacred articles.

 

So the Jewish people would have been filled with hatred for those who had brought them there to Babylon.

 

You get a sense of the seething hostility when you read Psalm 137 that begins by saying:

 

By the rivers of Babylon [next to the Kevar River] we sat and wept.

 

But then you can see over time their sorrow again turns to anger, as so often undealt-with sorrow can in us, and you hear the rage at the end of the Psalm where they say:

 

O daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—he who seized your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

 

Jeremiah is saying to serve them?

 

But there’s a third concern. Not only are they thinking they won’t be there among these people for long and that they are mortal enemies, but this is also a blatantly pagan nation.

 

Babylon means gate of the gods and according to accounts that come to us from the time that the nation of Judah was being kept there, there were 55 temples to the god Marduk; 50 temples to other gods including Ninmah, the goddess of the underworld, Ishtar the goddess of fertility, Ninurta and his consort Gula; 180 shrines for Ishtar; 300 shrines for the earth gods; 600 shrines for the gods of the heavens; and lots and lots of other altars and shrines.

 

Once a year the city of Babylon celebrated the New Year as their most important religious festival of all. They gathered together idols of all of the gods and goddesses—all of different beings that were worshipped, and they were all lined up along this thousand foot long processional way that was this majestic masterpiece of city planning and landscaping and architecture with these enameled baked walls with 120 lions, colorful lions, on these 40 foot high walls: 6 foot high lions kind of prancing down the side of this procession way—a paved road on top of asphalt with red and white paving stones and at one end of this was the Ishtar gate and at the other end of it was the temple to the god Marduk.

 

Once a year the king would arrive in his boat and get out and walk along in this procession as all the people gathered and all the gods and goddesses gathered, and he would walk to the temple of Marduk and there he would sleep with the temple prostitute as all watched as a way of seeking to further the fertility of the land as an act of worship in that place.

 

So this would have been obviously abhorrent to the Israelites that this would be the sort of place in which they’re living. And Psalm 16 and lots of other places capture this sort of feeling the people would have had—the Jewish people would have had—toward those who pursued these immoral pursuits.

 

Psalm 16 says:

 

The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips.

 

Meaning there’s no way I would pray for them.

 

It’s interesting that in another situation as Israel was dealing with two nations that were both pagan and were the enemies of Israel, the Amonites and the Moabites, described in Deuteronomy chapter 23, they’re told:

 

“Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live.”

 

That’s how the NIV translates it. But that’s not what it says.

 

It says literally:

 

“Do not seek the peace of them as long as you live.”

 

The only other place in the Bible where I can find this same expression that Jeremiah uses here. And it’s what we would have expected. These are your mortal enemies; it’s a pagan nation. Don’t try to serve them. Don’t try to honor them. Avoid them. Stay away from them. Run to your Jerusalem.

 

But that’s not what Jeremiah says. In fact, he says just the opposite. He says,

 

“I know you won’t be there forever.

And I know that their actions have wronged you.

And I know that their beliefs have wronged your God.

Nonetheless, 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.”

 

These are imperatives. Jeremiah is commanding them to do this: God through Jeremiah.

 

Jeremiah is saying this: God will bless you in these surroundings.

 

That part they understood.

 

This is the part that they had forgotten: God intends that you would be a blessing to others in these surroundings.

 

Now this would have struck them as a revolutionary idea because they forgot the second half of their basic charter as the people of God that was handed to them in Genesis chapter 12.

 

When the people of God were first initiated, God says to them,

 

“I will bless you and you will be a blessing. All nations on earth will be blessed through you.”

 

They remembered that first part about them being blessed and they forgot the second part about the way that God intended them to be a blessing.

 

You are there to be an influence for good. I have put you there so that you would be an influence for good. It is untenable to God that His own people would be in that place and that their stay there would not result in blessing to the community and the nation in which they lived. That is incomprehensible to the God who has called these people into being.

 

So what does it mean for us to seek the peace and prosperity of the city?

 

Seek means often simply to search for, but it’s also used often in a different way to convey the idea of caring deeply about something, being concerned for something.

 

The opposite of this is to dismiss it as unimportant.

 

God, through Jeremiah, directs the people to care deeply about the well-being of the city in which they live, not to dismiss the city and its occupants as being unimportant. And then He says, “Seek peace and prosperity.”

 

This translates—these two words together translate one word in the Hebrew—which is the word shalom. In fact, this word shows up four different times in this passage. In verse 7: Seek the shalom, the peace and prosperity of the city. If it prospers in its shalom, you too will prosper; there will be shalom for you. And in verse 11 God says, “I have plans to give you shalom, to prosper you.”

 

Shalom comes from a root word that gets at the idea of finishing something or making it sound—making something complete, having satisfaction.

 

This is the kind of verb that gets at the sort of thing that you might think about when you think of shoring up a bridge that is structurally unsound or healing a disease that has robbed a person of his vitality or reconciling two estranged friends or strengthening an unstable economy or finishing out a room that has been roughed in. Those are all images of this idea of completion, fulfillment, wholeness, unity.

 

And the word shalom captures all of those ideas: well-being, prosperity, health, satisfaction, fulfillment, harmony, absence of strife, tranquility, restored relationship with God, restored relationships with others. It is the word into which are packed all of the expectations of what the world will be one day when God has the last word and to describe all of what the world once was before sin entered in.

 

So if you want to know what shalom would mean in your relationships in this community, in this nation, in this world, all you need to do is answer this question: how would it look if humanity had never sinned and rebelled against God?

 

That’s shalom.

 

Jeremiah says, “Seek the peace of the city and pray for it.”

 

Leaders, use your leadership skills to make a difference.

Teachers, share your knowledge to instruct and equip.

Craftsmen, use your skills to beautify and to improve.

Politicians, use your gifts to pass just laws and to pursue those who are unjust.

Business leaders, use your gifts to better the well-being of those in this community.

 

The temptation is—that while we are in exile—is to bide our time, to wait until we are brought home, to focus only on ourselves and on those who might be taken with us.

 

In other words, to focus exclusively on salvation—ours, and those we are seeking to reach.

 

It’s possible, Jeremiah says, to become so Jerusalemly minded they you are of no Babylonly good.

 

I went up this past week to Wheaton to be able to hear my good friend, Mark Labberton, preach. He’s just come out with a book called Dangerous Worship

on some of these themes that I would really encourage you to pick up. And this is something he said in his talk that relates directly to this. He said,

 

“The question is not how do we fix Babylon, but how do we embody the heart of God for this world? When we seek the welfare of the city, we act like the God we worship, responding in a God-like way to a world in need.”

 

God’s heart is for those that he has rescued in Christ, but we see clearly even in the teaching of its rescuer, Jesus Christ, that God’s heart is for the entire world.

 

Matthew chapter 5 verse 43:

 

“You have heard that it was said [Jesus says], ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you [why?], that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”

 

When we do that, we imitate our heavenly Father.

 

And Jesus goes on and says,

 

“He causes His son to rise on the evil and on the good. He sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

 

And we are called to do the same: to be concerned for all.

 

God loves all men, not only those who love Him. And so should we. He doesn’t reserve His care for those He is rescuing, nor should we.

 

We can sometimes see everything in our engagement with the world around us through the lens of salvation. And this passage encourages us to think more widely.

 

Lesslie Newbigin, the British missionary to India, once pointed out that in the New Testament

 

“the church is only ever designated by reference to two realities: one, God in Christ, and the other, the place where the Church is.”

 

He goes on to say that “the relation[ship] between the Church being in that place and the…reality of that place itself is intended to be intrinsic, inseparable…. It is not just that it happens to be located in that spot on the map. It is the Church of God for that place, and that is because the Church does not exist for itself, but for God, and for the world which Jesus came to save.”

 

So, what would it mean for us as a believing community, as a church family, to seek the peace, to seek the shalom, of this city?

 

I think it means first that we would recognize that opportunities to make a difference in ways that reflect and represent God in our interactions with others are presented to us by God all the time. And one of the steps that we can take is simply to be intentional—seek to identify those, or to go out and look for those so that we can respond to them.

 

Ask, “Where is there evidence of the fall in my neighborhood, in this community, in this state, in this nation?” And then set about responding to it.

 

That’s what we hope to be doing together as a congregation two weeks from yesterday on Saturday, February 9^th when we are having “The Other Day.”

 

And my encouragement, our encouragement, is that every single one of you would do something, It doesn’t matter how small or insignificant or short a period of time it may seem to you, but that everyone of us would do something to make a difference in a practical way for a person in need in this community: a widow, an orphan, a poor person, a person in prison, a person in grief, an alien or stranger, someone who is lost.

 

We are encouraging you to come up with a way to serve face to face a person in need in this community as a family, as an individual, with other families, as a growth group. And if nothing else comes to mind, we would encourage you to join in on one of the projects that we are going to be developing for that day—the primary one of which will probably be to join together and to help with flood relief in the counties north of us.

 

Here are two examples of responding to opportunities that God puts before us to seek the shalom of the city.

 

The first is the orphanage and community center that we served in Merida when we were there. I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to see some of the pictures of that.

 

That was begun not as a government effort or as a church effort, but because a man and his wife realized that there were some families in the neighborhood that lived around them where there was abuse going on of children.

 

And they went before God and said, “What can we do?” And they purchased a small piece of property and began to scrape together money to build a facility on it so that there could be counseling offered to women and children who were abused and so that there could be a place for the children from those broken homes to be tutored and encouraged in their education, and where there could be Christian instruction.

 

But then in the backyard they grow fruit and they raise chickens and eggs and they raise talipia fish and they purify water because they’ve identified eighteen specific families that have a crisis of poverty that they’re facing and this is a practical way for them to make a difference in those eighteen families.

 

There are no churches supporting them. The only support is coming from this man Victor’s brother who lives in Minneapolis doing construction work and is sending back everything he possibly can to try to help his brother.

 

Now Victor and his wife feed eighty kids every week and they have bought a second piece of property in an even poorer part of the city and they’re reproducing the same thing all over again.

 

Here’s another example closer to home that has been so moving to me.

 

This is the example of Peg and Lowell Landrum.

 

The painful and unexpected circumstances of their son, James, being sent to prison could have paralyzed them and moved them to retreat from the world. Instead, they recognized in that circumstance a chance to help others in a similar situation. They realized that when someone comes out of prison, he has nothing: no more than what he’s wearing and maybe carrying—no money, no clothes and a record that makes it difficult to get an apartment and difficult to get a job and difficult to get a new start.

 

So, first a friend of James who got out with James at the same time was somebody that they sought to befriend. They got him some clothes and some furniture and helped get him set up in an apartment and their small group from Covenant here—their growth group—joined together with them in trying to solve the challenge of getting him a job and providing some financial resources and praying for him.

 

Then, he knew someone else who was getting out who had no one to help and asked that the Landrums might be able to help him. So they me him at the bus—having never met him, helped him get some clothes and find a place to stay and scrabbled together a car that he would be able to use.

 

And then another person who knew James in prison suggested that somebody else write to James and ask for help when he was getting out. So, two guys got out at the same time and the Landrums helped both of them to get a place to stay including having both of them live in their house for a few weeks.

 

They had one contact with another family in this church, Jerry and Janet, who’ve just moved here and he’s started a new Great Harvest business in the community. So, the Landrums connected one of these friends with Jerry, and Jerry was able to get him a job and help get him set up.

 

There was another contact with another person in this church that led to the donation of a car for one of these guys.

 

Then a parole officer, who had heard about what was going on, called and asked if they could help out another guy who was in need, and then another parole officer asked after that.

 

“God has done some amazing things,” Peg said, “And He’s done some amazing things in the hearts of these men.”

 

You know, seeing grace. Not hearing grace, but seeing grace.

 

“God is moving and it’s such a joy to watch,” she said.

 

And then she said—and this is really an encouragement to all of you—she said, “Our church is just precious. These men have communicated to me that they have felt the kindness of this church, they feel really comfortable here in church, and they don’t feel intimidated or judged.”

 

That says something hugely important about us as a church family—that you can be welcoming and not judging in those kinds of ways.

 

God is at work all around us all the time creating opportunities. Let’s just pray for eyes to see them. God does not call us to change the world. He just calls us to perhaps make a little difference in the life of the person who’s standing in front of us at that particular moment.

 

But I believe that God would have us be more intentional in creating opportunities that will benefit this community. Let me give you an example of a picture of that. Think especially of your vocation.

 

You have a medical practice or you run a business or carry out your duties of office or carry out your research. All of those things can be directed more and more purposefully to that which brings about the betterment and the wholeness and the well-being, the welfare, of this community and its occupants.

 

Here’s a picture that has begun to stir in my mind as a result of my extended work with the Long Range Planning Team. And I just want to put this in front of you and see if this is something that God may want to stir in some of your hearts and lead us together to explore doing.

 

In our work with the Long Range Planning Team, we met with 57 different community leaders and the question we asked them was: what is the greatest need that you see in this community and how might the church respond?

 

We got some interesting answers like a request for a fire truck, but we heard remarkably consistent things across the board. When we talked with those who were involved specifically in the community of Lafayette, we heard of a lot of pressing needs related to things like poverty and homelessness and drug rehabilitation, child abuse and neglect, low cost housing, and some of those kinds of things.

 

The needs in West Lafayette, while they are less obvious and perhaps things that we might characterize as being less of a crisis nature, are still every bit as important and real. And these are some of the things that our community leaders identified as being some of the ways in which we together might experience shalom in this community:

 

Gathering places: a coffee shop, a restaurant or hang-out place for 20- or 30-somethings who are moving into the community as a result of the research park.

 

Creating ways of getting involved in one another’s lives as lives are so segmented and separated. To find ways to bring young together with old and students with townsfolk and nationals with internationals. To give aging adults a place and a purpose.

 

Support for aging parents or long term healthcare needs.

 

Park and trail and recreation space: sports fields, basketball courts, soccer fields, open space, paintball. A youth center. A recreation center. A fitness center.

 

Programs to strengthen the family and to equip parents to give them prevention skills and to create healthy homes. Settings in which dads and their kids can play. Instruction on how to be an effective parent. Daycare centers.

 

Meeting space requirements for both large and small spaces for not-for-profit groups.

 

Art display and performance space.

 

Places where study skills can be strengthened and English as a second language taught and cross-cultural navigation can be encouraged.

 

A storm shelter. Emergency response support. And so on.

 

Some might see those as all the tasks of the church to do. I’ve come to see those in a little bit of a different way but as being no less important. I believe that those are not necessarily the things that it is the church’s structural responsibility to bring about, but it is the Body of Christ’s privilege and responsibility to respond to some of those needs vocationally through our own work and effort.

 

So the vision that’s been forming in my mind is this. I’ve thought of it in terms of calling it Portico. The Portico, Solomon’s Portico, was the covered walkway that surrounded the temple in Jerusalem. The temple is obviously the place where the believers would gather together for worship that was meaningful for them. Out beyond the Portico was the city in which business was carried out and education took place and homes were lived in. But the Portico itself was the place where townspeople and believers would come together and interact and rub shoulders and encourage one other and teach each other and share resources and invite one another into their lives.

 

So, what would happen if we did something like purchasing together a piece of property like the Amphitheatre property or a large piece of property up at the intersection of 65 and 43 or up along Salisbury? To find a beautiful piece of property that was wooded and attractive and then there we not only built a new church facility that was designed to be a place that served the needs of the community, but there also we’d gather together a variety of businesses run by Christian entrepreneurs who had a vision for making a difference, seeking the shalom of the city in this place. And each of the businesses would be inter-related so that this would begin to become a gathering place, a natural drawing place for people in the community to come and to hang out and to spend some time together and that might include things like a youth center, a recreation center, recreation fields, a fitness center, hiking and biking trails, meeting spaces, art display and performance space, a coffee shop and restaurant, child care, and an adult day care.

 

What do you think?

 

Would you join me in praying about whether that might be something that God would have us do as a way of seeking the peace of this city?

 

[Question from congregation] What’s an adult day care?

 

An adult daycare is [thank you] that’s when kids take their parents and drop them off! Adult daycare is when those who have aging parents that don’t live in a separate residence—adults who are committed to being with their parents in their later years, their aging years, but that have need for extra help when they go off to work or something. It’s a place to bring those older adults so that they can have interaction and also medical support and company.

 

This world is not your home. But until you are brought home, it is to this world that you are called. It is into this world that you are sent. “So, seek the peace and prosperity—seek the shalom—and the well-being of the city into which I have carried you,” God says.

 

Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers—if it experiences shalom, so will you.

 

I have a video clip I want to show you. I won’t.

 

Go home and watch Amazing Grace this week and when you get to about 31 minutes and 7 seconds into the movie, pay attention to the conversation between John Newton and William Wilberforce when William Wilberforce is describing to his pastor that he may be considering stepping out of public service and entering into a life of contemplation and solitude as a follower of Christ. And John Newton says, “You are not of this world, but you are in this world and God has put you in this world. So make a difference in this world. Whatever it is that God has put on your heart, go and do it for God’s sake.”

 

Those are God’s words to us this morning:

 

“Seek the shalom of the city into which I have carried you. Pray for it because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

 

Amen.