This morning, we are we are going to start, I guess, a a mini series on who we are as as people of God, as a church. This month, as we, I guess, head into a new financial year for us and also wanting to neaten up a few things and and do a bit of housework in our church. In terms of membership, we thought that it's it's a good thing to to look at what it means to be the church both at a local level and the universal level, the theology behind the church. But this morning, we're going to be dealing first and foremostly at the most basic element of who we are as Christians. What is our identity based on?
If you consider yourself an Aussie, you would have watched the movie The Castle. Has anyone seen that? Okay. Great. I reckon if, if you are a, an immigrant coming into the country like I am, it should be made compulsory viewing to get an understanding of the Aussie way of life, the Aussie way of of thinking.
It's a it's a story, The Castle. It's a movie about a typical Aussie battler family dealing with the daily ups and downs but also in particular dealing with the forced sale of their home as an airport that they live next to is expanding. And they they go through the high courts and all those sort of things. It's a it's a great great story. At one point in this story, Darryl Kerrigan, the dad of the family, makes this statement.
He says a man's home is his castle. A man's home is his castle. And he goes on to say that his house is not for sale because it's not a house. It's a home. And that's why I find this movie so so moving and and so inspirational because it touches on this idea of home being more than a house, more than a a place of residence.
It's a home because for him it contains memories, contains the pool room where all the great achievements of the family go towards. It contains happy times. It contains sad times. It's a place where you've raised your children. The place where you've spent so many Saturday mornings working in the garden in order to make it look at least a little bit civilised.
Home is your castle. Home is where the heart is. But what happens when you lose that home? When all those memories are taken from you and you're left in the cold? When your home is gone, where do you search for your heart?
Perhaps for the immigrants of some South Africans here or Dutch immigrants going back a generation or so, or the children of immigrants, you might be able to relate to this feeling of losing your home. If you leave your home, where is your home now? What is your identity, in other words? What do you build your identity upon? This morning, I want us to look at Jeremiah 29, And we come to a time of immense upset and calamity, a time of complete and utter disillusionment, and a crisis of identity.
At the time of this passage, God's people were living in Babylon far far away from their homeland and a multitude of these questions lingered in their heads. They questioned as a nation who they were on the brink of annihilation. What is their identity now as a nation, as individuals? Their faith is questioned. Their God is questioned.
Let's have a read of of Jeremiah 29:1. 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 Jehoiakim and their queen mother, the court officials, and the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and artisans, had gone into exile from Jerusalem. He entrusted the letter to Elasa, son of Shaphan, and to Gamariah, son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to king Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. It 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 fulfil 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 a hope and a future. Then you will call upon Me and come to 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 I 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 I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile. So far our reading. Now we dealt a little bit two weeks ago about Lamentations that was also written by Jeremiah.
The the emotion of of this of this moment, of of this time. But once again, God speaks through Jeremiah to his people. This time, however, instead of a a prophecy of doom and gloom, Jeremiah is instructed to write a letter to God's people with words of hope and reassurance. And I'd like us to have a look at these words this morning. And I believe from this that we see four facets to God's answer for the Israelites' question, who are are we?
If our home is gone, where is our heart? If our home is gone, where is our heart? The very first thing that we see in this letter that I wanna point out is that we see God's control, His sovereignty again all throughout it. Immediately, the emphasis is placed on God. Have a look at verse four at the start of this letter.
This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says to all those I carried out into exile. And then again in verse seven, also seek the peace and the prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Verse 10, verse 14, I will gather you from all the places that I have banished you. Over and over again, God is making the point that this hasn't happened accidentally. This hasn't happened by some great plan or or cunning device from king Nebuchadnezzar.
This has happened because God has allowed it to happen. He is in control of this whole story. There was no good luck or bad luck involved in this at all. God is firmly in control of what is happening to the Jews. And as much as they hated it, God is only acting on the warnings He had made to Israel that we talked about two weeks ago.
Now it would have been very hard, very difficult in the the fog of war in the days of the exile. They were right in the thick of it. They were there to see their their husbands killed, their their wives, their mothers raped. Their experiences were terrible. They would have been witness witnessing some horrific events.
All of their wealth, we they saw was stripped away from them, and all they loved and held dear was was taken away or was destroyed. And so you can understand that they didn't have the perspective to see God's hand in this situation. A hand of reprimand and correction? Yes. But still, God's hand.
If the Jews had known their God, if they had known His character, they wouldn't they would have known that despite being angry, God wasn't going to abandon them. God couldn't abandon them, not only because He loved them, but because of the promises He had made and those promises He would never forsake because God is not in the business of breaking His promises. It was God, in other words, who carried them into the exile, but it would be God again who would bring them back. I will gather you from those places that I have banished you. Two weeks ago, like I said, we looked at Lamentations and we saw the lament of Jeremiah, the same prophet as Jerusalem was destroyed.
And in the midst of it, Jeremiah cries out, great is Your faithfulness. Great is Your faithfulness. You were faithful to those warnings, God. You'll be faithful to Your promise to bring us back. Even though this was a terrible chapter in the life of Israel, God is still the great author of the story.
And it remains true for us. God is writing the story of this world, which includes your story. And it remains true that God is writing an epic tale, and we are the characters in this story of deliverance and renewal. And whether we are rich or poor, whether we are healthy or sick, happy or sad, God is and will always be that author.
There are no plot holes in His story. There are no plot holes in His story. God never has the writer's block. Believe it even in the pain or in the loss that God is in control. That is the first thing that we see here.
The second thing we see in this letter is that God is telling us, telling His people to live in the present. After asserting that He is in control, God turns Israel's attention to their present situation. Now we know there had been three waves of of exile for Jerusalem. Three waves of exile. The first group to leave, we which we also read here in verse two, were the the leaders, the craftsmen, the the noble, the noblemen of of Judah.
Among this first group was the prophet Daniel who later became the prime minister of Babylon. The Bible says that he was chosen, because of his high aptitude for learning. Now this was around the turn of the century, June. A second wave, however, of exile took place a few years few years later in May. And then finally in May, the the the city of Jerusalem is brought low and the temple is destroyed, and it's sort of the the utter and final exile of the city of Jerusalem and of Judah as a nation.
So there is approximately sixteen years from the first exile to the final third exile of, an in between stage. And and you might not have known this, but it was actually a much longer process than you may have initially thought. They estimate that estimate that this letter was written between the third the the second and the third exile. The second and the third exile. And I'm getting to my point here.
It means that by the time the exiles received this letter in Babylon, there was quite a bit of time that had passed, maybe at least ten years. Ten years. And now God is telling them, don't hold on anymore. Build houses, settle down, Plant gardens and eat what they produce. Go on with your life, in other words.
Live in the present. Ten years have passed. Start making yourself comfortable. And we have to understand what an amazing statement this was. Shocking, really.
Remember that the Jews saw themselves as the chosen people of God, that their their town, their city, their their nation was holy. They were commanded not to mingle with the other nations. In Jerusalem, there were were no meet and greet breakfasts with other nations or or the gentiles. And now, not only does God tell them to settle down and get comfortable, He goes further and has the audacity to say, marry off your children. Marry off your children.
In other words, God is telling them to quit lingering on the past and focus at the life at hand. Gone were the glory days. Beautiful temple, a place of worship destroyed. Now they were in a new nation and a new culture. And God says to them, in this new nation, in this new culture, build houses.
Settle down. Plant gardens. If we look at those requests, we see a few interesting points. First, the suggestion to build houses and plant gardens is an external and need based, opportunity as opposed to marrying and having children, which is an internal and want based, thing. Let me explain.
By building and building houses and planning gardens, God is saying, look after your physical needs. Look after yourself. Put food on the table. Put a roof over your head. The things that are necessary for daily survival.
Now no doubt that the Jews are obviously doing this because they've been surviving for at least ten years by now. But in their minds, they may have still be been holding on to the fact that they may only be here for a little while. God is going to bring them back or or they have to, remain strong, cling to what they know. But what God is emphasising here was their attitude in doing this. The fact that God told them not only to build a house, but also said to them, settle down.
It gives a sense of coming to peace, coming to terms with their situation, doesn't it? It's not just a shelter. It's putting your roots down. It was time to view their life a little differently. A a change of attitude was in order.
And this is supported secondly in suggesting that they have kids marry off and and letting them have grandchildren. God is addressing the internal aspect of the situation as well. The the buildings and the the gardens, that's all external physical needs. But now it's really close to home. It's it's my kids we're talking about here.
It's their futures. Here, you have a choice. You have to have a shelter. You have to have a garden. But now, you have to decide to let your children marry.
It meant that you had to cast off any hope of returning to Judah in the short term at least. Because we know you can't move an entire family with all their relationships and and everything attached very easily. The command to marry off your kids hits close to home. It affects their heart. It influences their desires and it caused God's people to reevaluate what those desires were in the first place.
Marrying your kids off with a view to them having grandchildren is having a long term vision, isn't it? It's thinking generations ahead. It meant, in other words, that you were in this for the long haul. In essence, God is adjusting their heads. Instead of looking to the past, God has suggested living in the present and having hope for a good future here and now.
And this required a huge amount of humility. This required a huge amount of humility. It meant that they had to be prepared to change perspectives on this culture, this new place that they were in, to change their assumptions, their their presuppositions of who God is and how He interacts with us and how He interacts with the world. I wanna ask you this question. How is your attitude currently with where you are at?
Are you simply building houses and not settling down? We're living in the past longing for the glory days, the golden temple, the the way we used to worship. Perhaps God is asking you to let go of things that are cultural and not critical. Perhaps perhaps God wants you to settle down and not only just settle down, but to enjoy life. To celebrate those marriages.
To have the feasts. To have the joy. Maybe it's time to wholeheartedly embrace your situation with joy rather than with bitterness. The third thing we notice in our text is the command to listen to God's voice, to listen to God's word. One of the biggest causes for Israel's resistance to settle down was in fact the false prophets and the diviners that were amongst them, and they preached against integration.
We see in verse eight, God says to the Israelites, do not let the prophets and the diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. In the midst of this confusion, of this pain, Israel tried to listen to voices for direction, which is understandable. Right? They needed to be guided in their life because life had become so misguided.
So they turned to anyone who had a voice. Anyone with their voice big enough and loud enough to listen to. Just like my dog that runs to the first human voice they hear in a thunderstorm, Israel ran to anyone who was willing to speak. Now Israel, with this long history that they've had with false prophets and kind of resulted in how they ended up where they were, they went back to that old way. And in this love hate relationship that they had with the prophets, love hate because they loved hearing what they wanted to hear from them, but hated because the the consequences were so severe and they tended to be wrong, surprisingly.
It felt like these prophets were were saying things that were correct, stirring up the people to resist this integration, which they thought was the right thing. But again but again, they didn't understand God's plans. The reason why Israel was in Babylon was because they had become tangled up in either their dead religion or an idolatry of themselves in their selfishness. Now with this exile, there was a chance for new birth, for rejuvenation, a new opportunity to discover who God really is. But these false teachers, again, misinterpreted the situation and began to tell God's people to stubbornly cling on to what they had done before.
There will always be people in your life that are like this who oppose what God is wanting to do in your life. We know as well as that that we have a great adversary called Satan whose main job is to do that as well, who seeks to destroy our faith. Be aware. I think that's the greatest, bit of advice. Be aware that there are still false prophets, false teachers, impostors around us who have loud voices and say things which could make a lot of sense to us on a human level.
They could be very close to us as well. They could be in our friendship circles. We could be having barbecues with them in the on the patio. They could be in our sporting teams, in our, school P&C committees. What makes them so dangerous is that they don't necessarily say things that are terrible or, obviously sinful, but they say things that sound good to our ears.
2 Timothy 4, and we have the situation where Paul speaks about people who oppose the gospel. He says that we, or the church gather people around them, a great number of teachers that say what their itching ears want to hear. They gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. And that's how false prophecy works. It sounds so good, so close to the truth sometimes.
And we might really want to believe that as well, but they may not be coming in the name of the Lord. So how do we distinguish them? How do we make sure that those in influencers and impostors in our lives don't have sway over our life? Well, Matthew 7 says that you will know the impostors by their fruit. You will know the impostors by their fruit.
Bad trees produce bad fruit. Do they sow seeds of unity or confusion? Do they try to encourage you in your faith or do they try to break you down? Do they sound holy but their lives are a complete mess? You may know these prophets.
We have to listen, however, to God's voice, to God's word, to hear from Him, and to be obedient to Him rather than listening to the voices of impostors even when they sound good to the ears. And then lastly, our fourth and final point is coming to terms what God desires for us. Coming to terms with what God desires for us. After we listen to God's word, not the the word of the impostors, we are to be obedient to it. You see, after seventy years, Jeremiah said, God would bring the Jews back to their homeland.
That was a promise. That was a prophecy. Their punishment would not be forever. God would not be angry at them forever. When planning seems futile for the exiles, the Lord has plans again for His people.
The famous verse from Jeremiah that people quote so often refers to this. You've heard it before. For I have plans for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Now this is not some nice zen statement to give to someone after they graduate high school. This has a serious context, a monumental worldwide implication.
This promise was given in the face of terrible oppression and a complete sense of hopelessness, not just simply not making your QTAC, selections for university. What seemed to be the end for the Israelites as a nation, as a people, was actually just the end of a cheap religion. What seemed at a as a cataclysmic death of a nation was just a renewal, a rebirth that God was wanting to start. And the promises made in verse 13 of this letter, you will seek Me and you will find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. You will seek Me, you will find Me if you seek Me with all your heart.
You see, all along, God's desire was for His children to be in a relationship with Him as father, but that relationship was clouded and cluttered by stuff. The pomp and the ceremony of their religion at that time took God out of their worship. But now that Israel had been stripped of all that like we sung this morning, they could rediscover God if they would just seek Him with all their heart. It's they would just seek Him with all their heart. And this is ultimately the message of Jeremiah's letter.
Home is where the heart is. Home is where the heart is. And the heart should be, can be with God. You will seek Me and you will find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. God made the promise to them that after seventy years, He would bring them back from captivity.
Now, the original Hebrew word here is much more than than what the English version suggests. It's much richer, implies a full restoration of life. The bringing back of captivity is is a restoration of life in all its dimensions. Not only would God return them to their homeland, but He would restore them. He would return them to a place of peace and prosperity, a place where they would experience the presence of God.
God would once again become a representative in their life. He would become their cornerstone. The language here indicates much more than a a practical physical side of life, however. There is a movement here from the physical to the eternal, supernatural, and ultimately internal aspect. On that day, prosperity becomes not wealth, but fulfilment.
Prosperity becomes not wealth, but fulfilment. Peace becomes not safety, but unshakable hope. The presence of God becomes not death, but life. If you read on in the next chapter, chapter 30, Jeremiah receives another word from God, which says, in that day, declares the Lord Almighty, I will break the yoke off their necks and will tear off their bonds. No longer will foreigners enslave them.
Instead, they will serve the Lord their God and David their king whom I will raise up for them. Almost 600 years later, that man would come. A descendant of David who would break off the yoke of slavery and the bonds of sin. In his death on the cross, Jesus brought that real peace, that real prosperity, that real hope, and the presence of God. But this time, the scope is much much bigger than they would even begin to imagine.
Not only Israel, but the whole world. When God said He had plans, He had big plans. He had plans for the whole world. God said to Israel, I have plans to give you hope and a future. And that future and that hope was made possible only in the person of Jesus Christ who broke the yoke of slavery.
Friends, the plans and the promises of God is found in its fulfilment in Jesus Christ. And our identity is no longer in our culture. It's no longer having a good old Buddha Borschtian loftus, missing childhood memories, missing memories of a of a bygone era. Our identity is no longer in our professions. Our identity is no longer in what you studied at university or how many likes you get on Instagram or how popular or well respected you are amongst your friends at school or university.
Our home, our identity is in Christ. If home is where the heart is, then our home is with Jesus. Physically and spiritually, our hearts need to rest on the understanding that God is the author of our lives, that we live in His story, not our own, not someone else's story. We live in His story. And don't scramble anymore for a self made piece.
Don't scrape together ragtag bits of different identities and cultures trying to form something out of that. Don't hold on to past hurts or or fears of a future. We need to be careful of other authors and how they try to write their stories into our lives. We need to know how God's story ends. This world is not our home.
This world is not our home. We're just passing through. We belong, body and soul, in life and in death to our faithful saviour Jesus Christ. In Him, we find ourselves. In Him, we find our identity.
It is fulfilled in Him. You will seek Me and you will find Me if you seek Me with all your heart. Home is where the heart is. Let's pray. Lord, it's so difficult.
So difficult coming from past hurts and present frustrations and future fears. It is difficult, Lord, to to build our hope on simply You and You alone. But, Lord, our only joy, our only peace, our only satisfaction will be found in that. Lord, and for many of us sitting here as immigrants and children of immigrants, we know this pain, but not even, not even simply immigrants. Father, we all wrestle with issues of self esteem, issues of identity, issues of feeling unworthy or not good enough.
God, pray through Your spirit that You will reveal our worth, that You will reveal the delight that You take in us. Lord, we want to, right now, take that identity, who we are, our culture, our family background, everything that is us, everything that is tied up into who we are. We wanna place that, Lord, in Your court. We wanna place that before You, Lord. And, Lord, whatever is unhelpful, whatever is not edifying to us for the building up of who we are, Lord, strip that away.
Wipe that away. Get rid of it in our lives, Lord. Lord, give us that joy. For some of us who are struggling with building homes and settling down and living in the present, enjoying the present. Father, give us the strength to do that.
Father, for those of us who are dealing with some really serious stuff in the past, give us also the realisation that You are doing something new, that You have new plans, that You have a hope and a future in store for us, That those sufferings that we have endured are not worth comparing to the glory that awaits us. Renew us. Renew our spirits, Lord. Renew our identity, who we are. We wanna be a church that is known to be disciples, followers, sons and daughters of the living God.
We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.