A Tale of Two Cities

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times in Jeremiah 29

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That's how the Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities, opens. And it will, child, keep singing. And it's how we'll lead into our sermon tonight from Jeremiah 29.

Dickens' novel deals with various themes of like hope and despair and light and darkness and these sorts of things. And when we come to Jeremiah 29, we have some similar themes, maybe a bit of a stretch, but maybe you might say it this way, God is telling his people in Jeremiah 29 to have the best of times in the worst of times.

This is around 597 BC, and his people are exiled, and God is explaining to his people how they ought to live in Babylonian captivity, how they ought to live in exile, how they ought to live in the city of the enemy, if you will.

And what we'll find in our text tonight and through the sermon tonight is that there's a parallel with the church. And maybe calling this sermon A Tale of Two Cities is too cute. Really, it's more like the idea of life in two cities.

We live in two cities. And if you're not sure about that yet, hopefully by the end of the sermon, you'll understand what I mean by that. So Jeremiah 29, verse four, would you stand with me as we honor the reading of God's word?

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've sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf. For in its welfare, you will find your welfare. Father, would you bless the preaching of your word tonight?

Lord, I feel like this is an important truth, an important theological concept for our church body, for myself to grasp and to understand. So would you help us to understand it well? Give us grace. We pray that Christ be exalted, Holy Spirit.

We pray that you'd be present. Bless the preaching of the word. Strengthen us tonight. We're desperate for your movement. Would you work in the hearts of your people? Would you send revival even to this place and help us to be better citizens of both kingdoms?

We pray it all in Christ's name, amen. You may be seated. We are going to finish Psalm 119. We are, at some point. However, there's some things that have come up. Really, it's just been my preaching. There's some things that have come up in the preaching, but I thought, you know what?

I would like to address what I'm going to address tonight. The first thing that came up is, last Sunday morning, I preached from Psalm 87. We talked about the city of God, and we talked about the church, and we talked about what God's doing and how God is building his city.

And then, this morning, I preached about Nineveh, and we talked about the wickedness of that city and God judging that city. And so you see there where we have, we have two cities. We have the kingdom of Christ, if you will, and we have the kingdom of this world.

But I want to be careful. It's really hard for people, and I'm not saying I've got it figured out perfectly, but I've seen so many people go to various extremes on this. I've seen on one side, you may have the Anabaptists who would say, well, it's all about the kingdom of Christ.

Reject the city of man in totality. Don't run for office. Don't be involved in anything. Renounce your citizenship completely and just kind of live separated. Well, I think that's wrong. On the other side, you might have, maybe we could say the reconstructionist view or the theonomist view, kind of that brand of post-millennialism, and you have too much focus, I think, less focus on the kingdom of Christ or trying to merge the kingdom of Christ to the physical things of this world.

And so I think that's wrong as well. And what I think is the biblical and the balanced view I hope to present to you tonight. We'll start, and we're gonna do all that with the awareness that we have business meeting.

We'll start with just some preliminary aspects from the text. I told you that this is written to the exiles and you see it's plainly there. Let me just walk through the author, the recipients, the instruction, and then the parallel.

And the parallel is where we're gonna begin the sermon. So the rest is introductory. Let's just go. The author, you see there in verse four, is God. This is God to his people. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel.

That is, it is God who is going to give this instruction to his people. And I want you to notice something else too. It's kind of like this morning. Remember this morning how God used Babylon to bring about judgment on Nineveh, but also God uses Babylon, look in verse four, to exile his people.

He says, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. So again, the Babylonians are just instruments in God's hands and God is the one who sent his people into exile.

And so it's important for us to remember tonight that God is the author of this. Secondly, the recipients. The recipients are the covenant people. They are God's people under the Mosaic covenant here.

They are his people. We have Israel, the God of Israel. His instruction to them is this. Think about this. 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've sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf.

For in its welfare, you will find your welfare. Now this is difficult and it's hard for us to wrap our minds around, but essentially the people of God are in enemy territory and God is instructing them to live in such a way that you're seeking the peace and welfare, even of your so-called enemies.

Because the point is, as you seek to live life in this city, as you seek to plant gardens and to have children and to build houses and to seek the welfare of the city, when the city benefits, you benefit.

That's the point that God is giving to his people. And you need to trust me, essentially the Lord is saying, you need to trust me and when the 70 years are up, God brings his people out of captivity and back to his chosen place of dwelling, back to Jerusalem.

So that's the author, the recipients, the instruction, kind of lays out there for you the context. But here's the parallel and here's where we're gonna preach and here's where you need to know the context for us in 2025.

I'm gonna read, let's just do this. Just get your Bibles with me. I'm just gonna read through several passages. Actually, these are not in canonical order. I didn't write them out that way. So first, I wanna, they're all New Testament though.

I wanna look at 1 Peter 1, 1 Peter 1, 1. I'm just gonna read all these and then we're gonna make the connection. So 1 Peter 1, 1, 1 Peter 1, verse one. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion and Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

Now, here's what's interesting, what Peter is doing, he is referring to the church as the elect exiles, as though we live in exile. That's interesting, isn't it? Okay, go to 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 2.

1 Timothy 2, verse one through four. Paul says, 1 Timothy 2, verse one through four. First of all then, I urge that supplication, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings, and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, okay? I'll comment in just a minute. If I comment on each one, it would take a long time.

All right, Philippians three. Philippians chapter three. Philippians chapter three, verse 20. Philippians chapter three, verse 20. So far, we have heard from Paul and Peter, and now we have Paul again.

Philippians chapter three, verse 20. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then finally, I think there could be more, but let me just read from Hebrews 13.

So now, we're not sure who the author of Hebrews is, but we've heard from Peter, we've heard from Paul, and now we hear from the author of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 14. Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 14.

For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Now, what am I trying to say based on these New Testament passages? What I'm trying to say is, of course, this is not a one-to-one correlation I'm saying here, but I am saying that the New Testament writers seem to pick up on this idea about the church that it's a similar situation, if you will, of Israel in exile in Jeremiah 29 and the church in exile today.

Our citizenship, Paul says, is in heaven. We're to pray, Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, we're to pray for our leaders. We seek the city that is to come, so all the things here are temporal, and we are, explicitly stated, elect exiles.

So there's a parallel between this passage in Jeremiah 29 and the church today. In fact, Edmund Clowney says this, like Israel in captivity, the church will pray for the peace of the city where they dwell as resident aliens, but they have no abiding city here.

They seek to Jerusalem to come. Until then, their spiritual weapons have the power of Almighty God to accomplish His purposes of redemption. In the pursuit of holiness, in the proclamation of the gospel, in the service of the poor and friendless, the church of Christ builds a spiritual culture, a foretaste of the kingdom to come.

The Context, Contrast, and Commission of Two Cities

Okay, let me walk through this now in just a brief outline. First, the context of two cities. Number one, the context of two cities. While we speak of two cities today, I'm speaking of two kingdoms. I'm speaking of the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of this world, the city of God and the city of man, the church and the world.

This is the reality. If you are in Christ, if you're in Christ, and if you're outside of Christ, you live in one kingdom, okay? You live in one city. If you're in Christ, you are dual citizens of two kingdoms, as it were.

I know our ultimate citizenship is in heaven, but you still are part of this world, right? You're not in heaven yet, and so you still live and breathe and move and interact with the kingdom of this world.

So we have two kingdoms. That's the point. Now, what Christ has come to do, Matthew 16, 18, is to build His church, to build His kingdom. And so by His righteous life, by His perfect life, by His death on the cross for us, by taking on the wrath of God, by dying and then rising again from the dead, He is building His church.

His church is built, as we talked about a couple weeks ago, by His own flesh and blood, by the Spirit of God, through the proclamation of what God has done in Christ. The Spirit of God is building the church.

Even today, the church is being built. And the church is being built, what you need to understand, the church is being built in, as it were, enemy territory. The church is being built in the kingdom of this world.

Now, the kingdom of Christ, I'll just define it this way. The kingdom of Christ is where the rule of Christ is recognized and rejoiced in. That's the kingdom of Christ. It's the church. That's the context of two cities.

Secondly, the contrast of the two cities. So the kingdom of Christ is the one that recognizes God's rule and rejoices in God's rule. It doesn't just acknowledge that Christ is king, but rejoices that Christ is king.

Now there is a sense, where is Christ not king? Christ is king everywhere, right? There is a sense, certainly, that we would say Christ is king even over the kingdom of this world. The problem is, with the kingdom of this world, it does not recognize, nor does it rejoice in, the kingdom of Christ.

Rather, it rejects and rebels against Christ's reign. That's why, for example, I'll flip over to 1 John. That was another, this is what John says about it. It's 1 John 2, 15 through 17. That's why John says it this way.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride and possessions is not from the Father, but is from the world.

And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever. Okay, so do you understand? Do you understand that there are two kingdoms, as it were? There are two cities.

There are two ways that we need to understand our life in this world today. We are in the church. We are in the city of God. We are in the kingdom of Christ. At the same time, we cannot escape the reality that we still live in the kingdom of this world, though the kingdom of the world has no mastery over us.

The kingdom of the world has no authority over us in terms of Christ's authority. It has no ownership of us. You understand, hopefully. And these two kingdoms are opposed to one another and ultimately the kingdom of Christ will win out.

Now, thirdly, and this is where we'll come back to the text, the commission of the two cities. So the context of the two cities, the contrast of the two cities and the commission of the two cities. Now, the city of man, the kingdom of this world does not have a formal commission, you understand.

But under the influence of Satan, it ultimately is what? Trying to steal, kill, and destroy. That's John 10. That's what Jesus says about the thief. If you give your life over to the kingdom of this world, you can ultimately bet, I can tell you, this is what's gonna happen, all right?

So young people, oh, actually, it doesn't matter. Young people, old people, everyone in this room, listen. If you give your life over to the kingdom of this world, what ultimately happens is your life will be stolen and killed and destroyed.

That's the commission. Oh, by the way, don't think for one second that the kingdom of this world is not seeking to make disciples. You talk about things with our children and you hear the world, you hear particularly like, you hear people say, don't indoctrinate your children.

What do you think the world's doing? Did you know, by the way, that, I'm gonna just say this. It's probably okay in this context and if you have a problem with it, we'll talk. It is true, though. Do you understand that, just statistically, liberal mindset, they don't reproduce.

What I mean is like statistically, liberal families, they don't have, they're no such thing, right? They don't have children. I mean, maybe like statistically, conservative families have more children.

It's just a fact. Okay, well, how come in the world then, like how come it doesn't just take a generation or two and there's no more liberalism? Because liberals are doing what? They're making disciples.

They're making disciples. So you say, well, I'm not gonna indoctrinate my children. I'm not gonna teach them. You know, I'm not gonna do these things. I want them to just have a free mind. Well, when they go off to university, they'll come back liberals.

That's just what happens. So the commission, and that's just a fact. Now, the commission of the world then, although it's not formal, is they wanna make disciples. They want to have people as good little worldlings as it were, as those who would love and serve the grand cause of the world, which is antithetical to everything that is Christ.

Okay, what's the commission of the church? Well, unequivocally, we hold to, I'm gonna give you it in two categories, but unequivocally in priority, we hold to the great commission, right? Matthew, in fact, let's say this real quick.

Let's go there, Matthew 28. Let's just read it again, because I need to show you something from there. So in Matthew 28, somebody asked David Miller one time, how many points should a sermon have? And David Miller said, at least one.

And so this sermon is coming to a point in just a minute. Matthew 28, 19, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

Now, let me say something here. In verse 19, make disciples of all nations, contextually, grammatically, theologically, in all ways. This text is not saying to disciple governments. That's not what it's saying.

It's not saying create Christian nations. Rather, the text is saying, make disciples out of all nations. That's what we're getting at. And we'll talk about more of that in just a minute. But the whole point is that the church's great commission is to go and to preach the gospel and it is the kingdom of Christ's kingdom, Christ's city, our responsibility, our great commission to take the gospel to all nations, to preach the life, death, burial and resurrection of Christ to preach repentance, to preach faith, to plead with sinners.

2 Corinthians 5 .20 says, as ambassadors of Christ, we implore you to be reconciled to God. This is our commission, to implore the world to come to Christ, to implore the world to leave their kingdom, as it were, and to submit themselves under the kingship and authority of Christ.

This is the church's great commission. Okay, but tonight, and that's the priority? Unequivocally so. But tonight, what I wanna talk about for the rest of our time is the church's good commission. So this is the church's great commission, but there is also, in a sense, I hesitate even to use the word commission because I don't wanna compare these things, as though the church has two missions.

The church doesn't have two missions. It's one, the glory of Christ, to proclaim his fame across the world. But if I can keep the alliteration, the great commission, and here's the good commission. This is still applicable, I believe.

This is still relevant for us as a church today. So I'll go back to the text in Jeremiah 29. I'm gonna start in verse five. 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.

So what I wanna talk to you about tonight for just a few more minutes is I wanna talk to you about how we live in these two cities. Okay, because here's the idea. You're hearing me about preaching about the church and our priorities at church and we build our lives around the church.

So am I saying then, quit your job and just depend on some sort of donations and just completely let's all move and go out to the hills somewhere and get away from society? No, that's what maybe the Amish, or maybe it's what the Amish try to do.

Well, why don't we do that? Because I think this text speaks into it and I said the New Testament parallel. But here are the ways that the church should live as the city of God in the city of man. The first is prayer.

I wonder how much we complain about our government, how much we complain about our leaders, how much we complain about what's going on versus how much we what? How much we pray. The text explicitly says there in verse seven, pray to the Lord on its behalf.

That is the city in which you live. Pray to the Lord on behalf of that city. Sometimes I think, and I think about maybe the people out like Westboro Baptist or whatever, it makes me think like, you wanna see the destruction of America.

That's what it sounds like to me. I don't want to see the destruction of America. I want to warn against the destruction of America. I want to show us that if we keep going in the way that we're going, God has every right, already has every right to judge us and destroy us, but I don't wanna see that.

I wanna see America's welfare, why? Because in America's welfare is my welfare. So what the text says, by the way, the word for welfare, I don't know if you notice in your text or how it's written in your translation, but it's the Hebrew word shalom.

It's the Hebrew word shalom, which has the connotation of peace and joy and all of these things. So the first way that we live in the city of man while being in the city of God is that we pray for our country.

We pray for our leaders. We pray for the state of our nation. Secondly, prioritization. So number one, prayer. Number two, prioritization. Let me just say this. While we live in the city of man, our focus, our priority is always God's kingdom above man's.

Always.

I'm saying, how do we benefit those around us? How do we benefit America? How do we benefit our friends? How do we benefit our neighbor? How do we benefit society? One way, always keep the kingdom of Christ first.

Matthew 6 .33 says what? Seek first the kingdom and its righteousness and then all these things will be added to you. Jesus seems to be suggesting there, doesn't He? That even before you think about your own food and your own clothing and your own shelter and your own children's well-being, that above all those things, we're gonna seek the kingdom of Christ.

We're gonna seek the furtherance of the church across the nations and that's gonna be our first priority, always. How do we benefit the society around us? Seek the church first, right? There's people on this snowy January day driving by the church and seeing the parking lot full.

What are they?

It's a testimony, right? It's a testimony to our friends and our neighbors and our countrymen of the prioritization of the kingdom of Christ. Now you're gonna laugh at this one and you'd expect me to say this one.

I have six children. Prayer, prioritization, but I mean it. Thirdly, procreation. Look at verse six. 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. Now I wanna be careful. There's no, I'm not, you know, there is this idea of the quiver fool movement or whatever and trust me, in my own family, I've heard all the jokes.

Are you guys the duggars? You know, Stephanie, be out or your boy, you got your hands full, which is kind of rude, right? Or you know what causes that, all those kind of jokes.

But let me say this.

I do not think that every person, every family needs to have six kids. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that every family has to have X amount of children. I believe that becomes legalistic. But I will say this.

There is something about those who hope in Christ, even though they're surrounded by ungodliness, even though they look at, oh, I couldn't just bring a child into this world.

Why not?

Our hope is not in this world, right? Our hope is Christ. Our hope is in Christ's kingdom. So there's not an X number of children that you have to have, but there is the reality of those who love the kingdom of Christ, of those who have been born again, they have families.

And as a general, I'll say this, so this is offensive, but as a general, I'm just gonna say, God's general rule, celibacy is not the norm. It is a calling and it has happened and it does happen, but I'm just telling you, it's not the norm.

As a general rule, God's will for our children is that they would grow up, get married, have babies. That's just the reality. Now, I'm not saying that we have to put a number on that, but I am saying those who want to benefit the kingdom of this world seek to have children and raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Prayer, prioritization, procreation. Fourthly, participation. Now, let me say this. Sometimes, and the reason I bring this up is I say, well, the priority is the church, amen. But sometimes people can think that that means, well, I can't participate in anything that just benefits my town.

My town yesterday, they had a trash cleanup. You guys know it didn't because you're in the same town. But I didn't participate. Why did you not participate? Because I'm all about the kingdom of Christ.

Okay, but if your town has a trash pickup and you help pick up trash and you help clean up the city or you help sweep a street or whatever the case and you're better in the city, that also benefits you.

That's part of what the text is saying. I'm just saying we need to be careful of becoming Anabaptists. That's a pull. So one, you can become an Anabaptist and separate from everything. Or the other is you can conflate the kingdom of this world with the kingdom of Christ.

We don't wanna do either of those. But we wanna be careful of thinking, well, I can't participate in anything that is benefit. The school board is having a fundraiser for the baseball team and they're selling spaghetti or whatever.

Well, I'm not gonna do that.

Why?

Because I don't care about those things. Yeah, but you know what? Benefiting your town, benefiting your city. It's part of Christianity in the sense that when the town is benefited, when your area is benefited, you're benefited, right?

I mean, that's what the text says. Seek the welfare of the city where I've sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf. Or in its welfare, you will find your welfare. If you use the Hebrew word shalom, seek the shalom of the city where I've sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf.

Or in its shalom, you'll find your shalom. Just a thought. Now I'm gonna say a couple of points. Boy, I gotta land the plane. But I'm gonna say a couple of points that you might surprise that I would say it.

You shouldn't if you've been around me long enough. So we have prayer, prioritization, procreation, participation. Fifth, politics. Politics. You wanna benefit the society around you, be involved in politics.

Now let's be careful here. I don't mean that every single person should run for office. Some of us, we're not fit to run for office. It's not our calling. This is a weird thing. This weird thing that happened years ago.

We believe this lie that the church should not be involved in politics. Now you look at the political landscape today and you ask yourself if you think that was a wise strategy or not. Now I understand you can make politics an idol and we see it.

And we need to keep separate politics in the sense of like, you know, if President Trump came, and I know that we're favorable to some of his mindset and policy, but he came and he said, I'd like to address your church on Sunday morning.

We would tell him no. It's just not appropriate. Now you wanna come on a Monday night and you wanna speak? Well, we'll talk about that. But you can't come on a Sunday morning. That just wouldn't be appropriate because on Sunday morning, we're gathered to worship.

You understand?

So we do keep these things separate. But let me just tell you this. Christians can run for office and they can, like, what do you want? Like, think about this, for example. Who do you want in the highest office of the land?

Who do you want as our mayor? Who do you want on the school board? Do you want unbelieving heathens or do you want Christians? Think about that, right? But if we all have this mindset that none of us are gonna run, none of us are gonna be involved, you know what we're doing?

We're handing the political landscape into the kingdom of this world. Does that make sense to you? So we care. We care. When I vote politically, I don't necessarily think to my mind Jeremiah 29 7, but when I vote politically, I am operating on the principle of Jeremiah 29 7, which is I'm gonna vote what I think will bring the greatest welfare to the nation.

Why?

Because the text says the best for the nation will be the best for the church. I wanna see economic prosperity. I want to see peace within our borders. I wanna see strong and secure borders. There's nothing, like you've been made to feel bad.

You've been made to go, well, that's not Christian. No, we want strong borders. We want a healthy economy. We want these things.

Why?

Because the benefit of the nation, it also benefits the church. Not that we're dependent on it.

We're not.

That's something else to keep separate. If America collapses, the church will continue. But it's not wrong to desire the good of our country. Furthermore, in politics, we care about injustice. So we should care about abortion.

We want righteous law. So I'm not a theonomist. You can Google that and look that up more. But I'm not a theonomist. I'm not a reconstructionist. So I don't think that we take the Old Testament laws and when we just impose them upon our land, I don't think that's the way.

But I will say this. What kind of laws do we want in our land? Don't we want righteous laws? So we should vote for righteous laws. We want abortion to be outlawed. We should vote that way, right? I care about the injustice in California.

And North Carolina.

Now, I know that demographically, I'm more affiliated with the people of North Carolina, I'm sure, than what's happening in California right now. But I still care about the people in California. I feel like what has happened to them is an injustice.

And I care about these things. And that's going to inform my prayers. We prayed for them this morning. That's going to inform my voting. I'm going to be involved in politics to a certain extent.

Why?

Well, because I live in two kingdoms. I hope that makes sense. Two more, and then we're going to wrap up. All right, six. This is the one that may surprise some of you that I would say this. But so prayer, prioritization, procreation, participation, politics.

Sixthly, patriotism.

What?

Yes, it's okay to love your country. It is okay. In fact, not only is it okay to love your country, I believe as citizens of both kingdoms, we ought to love our country. We ought to want. Now, if ever there's a conflict, do you understand?

If ever there's a conflict between allegiance to the flag and allegiance to the cross, you understand that I'm saying it's unquestionable that our allegiance is to Christ. But as we live in this country, we want to see her prosperity, don't we?

We want to say I'm grateful to be an American. I'm not disparaging our brothers in Mexico. I'm not disparaging people around the world. But I thank God that I live in this country.

I'm grateful for it.

And you shouldn't feel ashamed about that.

You should feel grateful.

I got no problem with Canada either, brothers and sisters, or Belize, or any of those countries. I'm just grateful to be an American. And it's okay. Now, yes, can you take patriotism just like you can politics?

Can you make it an idol? Can you take it too far? Yes, of course you can. But you can also make your family an idol, right? So is the response to making your family an idol to just not care about your family?