This text begins with one of the great statements that you find in the prophets. Thus says the Lord of hosts. Verse 4. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away captive, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit, Take wives and beget sons and daughters.

And take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands so that they may bear sons and daughters, that you may be increased there and not diminished and seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive and pray to the Lord for it for in its peace you will have peace for thus says the Lord of hosts the God of Israel do not let your prophets and your diviners who are in your midst deceive you nor listen to your dreams which cause you to be dreamed for they prophesy falsely to you in my name I have not sent them says the Lord for thus says the Lord for after 70 years are completed at Babylon I will visit you and perform my good word toward you and cause you to return to this place for I know the thoughts that I think toward you says the Lord thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope then you will call upon me and go and pray to me and I will listen to you and you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart I will be found by you says the Lord and I will bring you back from your captivity I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you says the Lord and I will bring you to the place From which I cause you to be carried away captive The grass withers the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.

Let's pray. Father, we pray that your word would come and penetrate our hearts, that we would receive with meekness the implanted word. And here, right at the beginning, that you would take us off on a journey into your holy word one step at a time to lead us to understand the will that you have for us in this pagan land that you planted us. We thank you, O Lord, that you are our God, that it is the Holy One of Israel who has planted us here. And so Lord, I pray that you would pour your grace out upon these people and give us all a sense of your glory.

Amen. Well this this chapter is a pastoral letter to the captives that Nebuchadnezzar took to Babylon and Jeremiah 29 paints this beautiful picture of God's instructions, for how God's people would take dominion in their time of captivity. And what you'll notice here is that the Lord through Jeremiah is prescribing their behavior. This is what God does. He teaches his people how to live and frankly if the Word of God isn't teaching you how to live, you're not reading the Word of God rightly, because that's what we have here.

What we find here in each phrase of this text is a pattern that you see all over Scripture, and I want you to notice the practicality of these verses. Notice the category of God's commands to the captives in these verses. These commands are all focused on family life, and what happens in your household. And in Babylon, God had designed the family to be the center of discipleship. Their places of worship had been destroyed.

And now they had to engage in alternative ways, except in their families, because God had always told the families of Israel to be centers of discipleship. So what God told the captives to do in Babylon is a very practical vision for our everyday life in our Babylon. Let me take it a little further. Jeremiah's instructions focus on taking dominion where? In your physical world.

I think that's very interesting. Notice the earthiness of these commands. Notice the everyday lifeness of these commands in your house. Now, the speakers that we've gathered here are going to speak of many spiritual applications of how family life operates in a pagan society, But this text actually speaks on the physical, the actual physical things that happen in a family. And I think there are many reasons for that because we exist in physicality and frankly we are not ascetics.

Our pattern is not the fifth century ascetic Simon the stylite who lived on a pole for 37 years to avoid worldly distractions and devote himself to prayer. Our pattern is not St. Francis of Assisi living a life of radical simplicity and a detachment from the physical world. Our pattern is not Gnosticism, which rejects the material world for the embrace of esoteric knowledge. Christianity is not put off by the physical world, and that's the world that you find here.

And what you find here are instructions for God's people to live faithfully, practically, energetically, and optimistically in the land, in the physical surroundings that they create in their own homes. And so in this message, I want to emphasize 10 really timeless actions for your physical life in Babylon. Notice the sort of the structural physicality of these verses, the nuts and bolts of everyday life. But before we get there, I want to just give us some general observations about Babylon. Because I think we should ask, how is Babylon like the times that we live in?

I'm just going to itemize a few things fairly quickly. Unfortunately, there's so much to say about Babylon that can't be covered here in this message But the first thing to recognize is the wealth of Babylon Babylon's greatest wealth and splendor took place during the time of Nebuchadnezzar around 562 BC. The temple complexes lined the streets. It was a remarkable city. Babylon was a mega city.

Herodotus described it as 56 miles long and the walls of the city 80 feet thick and 320 feet high. So he mentioned that there were hundreds of bronze gates along the walls. There were large houses in Babylon, two, three, four bedroom houses with thick walls, central courtyards and bedrooms and kitchens. The average household had three slaves in Babylon. Babylon was a wealthy city.

The paganism Babylon was in your face. Everywhere you turned, you could see paganism. There were about a thousand roadside shrines in Babylon. It was a city of demons. Golden images of Marduk were everywhere.

Just think for a minute the impact of the Hebrew children as they were brought over 500 miles from Jerusalem as they entered into ancient Babylon to see this massive city like nothing they had seen quite like it before not such paganism that they had ever seen before. Their eyes must have been bulging out as they were walking down the streets of Babylon to see where they had been taken. Now, there were tremendous challenges for these captives in Babylon. They had just suffered a tremendous defeat. The captives had lost everything.

Daniel and Ezekiel were probably right around 20 years old. They were most likely torn out of their families. Their worship, which they loved, was disrupted. The Hebrew children were made eunuchs. Imagine the heartbreaking fact of being made a eunuch when you're 20 years old.

And yet God was keeping his promises to his people in Babylon, even in the midst of their suffering. Consider the temptations to compromise. Babylon was meant to be for the Hebrew children an indoctrination center for the best and the brightest Hebrews. The Hebrew children were renamed. They were given pagan names and yet they would not be defiled as Daniel 1 9 says for example Daniel Daniel's Hebrew name was God is my judge when he came into Babylon he was renamed Belteshazzar, Bel, protect his life.

And these things happened to them to assimilate them into Babylon. And yet they were bold men in Babylon. This is such a critical thing to recognize, they became ambassadors. Let me just say this, when you're living in Babylon, the devil wants to take your children. The devil wants to assimilate your children into Babylon.

The devil wants to finally kill your children in Babylon and if you don't understand that you do not understand what time it is here in the United States of America because everywhere Babylon is barking at your heels through various various means that are so obvious to us. Notice also Ezekiel and Daniel, these bold men, they actually grew up during the revival of Josiah. And these young men forged faithfulness into their souls during that revival. And I think it's important to ask what kind of young people are we cultivating in our families and in our churches? Are we cultivating these kind of men who can walk into Babylon and respectfully face off with Nebuchadnezzar and say, we will not serve your gods?

And even if he kills us, we know that he is our God these kind of boys just don't happen and we we really need a generation of Ezekiel's and Daniel's and Hananiah's and Michelle's and and Azariah's but I I will guarantee you this you will not have a generation of boys and girls like this if you bring them up in this entertainment saturated world if you let them waste their lives in the ways of the world You will not have a generation like that. These kinds of young men just don't happen. They are made, they are disciplined, they are directed. They have fathers that actually take authority in their lives to lead them to the clearest waters and the greenest pastures. Let's talk about the meaning of Babylon.

There's a lot to be said about this. The negative meaning is really arising out of its origins in the Tower of Babel, where the people said, let's make a name for ourselves. We want to be our own gods. We want to exercise our own truth and do whatever we want to do with our bodies. The name Babylon really represents the abominations of the earth.

Babylon is a technical term in the Bible to represent any entity or any city in opposition to God. Of course if we read about Babylon we know Babylon will be destroyed, fallen, fallen is Babylon. Babylon has no chance for survival long term. And Daniel and Ezekiel will find themselves in the center of God's redemptive mission. God's redemptive mission is that his people are in exile and he comes and he rescues them from the jaws of the tyrants and that's what we find here.

I know living here in this Babylon many many conservatives think that we've just escaped judgment as a result of the flip of the administration. I submit to you that America has actually not fundamentally changed. The people have not changed. The churches have not changed. There is a vibe shift that's encouraging.

The woke movement has been slowed down, but be aware it's not dead in this world. There has been a mood change. We should be encouraged but what's replacing what's replacing this is not Christianity It's actually a secular religion. I Don't think it's time to declare victory in America And let's get some perspective on this. We should never forget when the Babylonian captivity happened.

It happened 10 years after Josiah's revival. The revival did not turn back the wrath of God on his people and judgment fell hard on God's people in Israel. What else do we learn from Babylon? How about this? God is sovereign for those who are in captivity.

God takes responsibility for the captivity. In verse 4, it's very clear. He says, I have caused them to be carried away. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords Jesus Christ is the Lord of all the nations he does in earth and in heaven as He pleases Jesus Christ said all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth God's people can always know That God is in control in Babylon So there's some background I wish I had more time to talk about Babylon. It's such a fascinating place.

So there are ten actions that the captives are commanded to mount. And the first is in verse 5. Build houses and dwell in them. He's telling them to abide, to settle, to establish, to remain, to stay, to tarry there. The language is the language of a house to actually make a home, a physical home, create a physical home life.

And this just bears witness to the truth that believers are builders. And what they do in their physical world is that they pour footings and they lay foundations And they raise up bearing walls in their homes These things are are physical These load bearing walls that we erect in our houses they create Sacred spaces A home was actually designed to be a sacred space. It's actually designed to be a picture of heaven. If you study what the Bible says about homes, you know that's true. And they are urged to stay and build.

If you read the New Testament, if you read the Gospels and the book of Acts particularly, and you see manifestations of this in the the epistles, what you find is there is an enormous amount of spiritual life that takes place in houses. It's a remarkable study and there are just dozens and dozens of manifestations of the work of Jesus Christ in a home. Your home is a really important place. And I think what God is telling the captives is to build homes and establish your sovereignty and the government of God in your house, in your physical space. Now, you might say, this could also be taken metaphorically, possibly.

I'm gonna take it literally about the physicality of the life of the captives. And there's a second action. Plant gardens and eat their fruit. Notice the simplicity and the earthiness of this command. Plant gardens, that means working, and eat their fruit, that means enjoying.

That's the life in your family. It's the working and enjoying. That's what families should do. Children should grow up working. Now farming, which is implied here, is not easy.

It's hard work, but there's a reward, but you're completely dependent on the sovereignty of God for the reward. Farming implies a certain attitude and It's a positive attitude that you believe that when you plant those seeds, that God will bless them in the way that he has designed. If you're going to be a farmer, you have to be some kind of an optimist. You're not blind, but you've got to be an optimist because actually you do want to eat. And you need to eat.

And this again focuses on taking dominion, breaking up fallow ground, sowing seeds, watering, fertilizing, removing rocks, watching for disease, chasing off the birds and the predators, and waiting patiently. You know, this is a picture of home life. You know, children should be brought up with vigorous work in their home. Children should be working alongside their parents in their homes, teaching them how to be faithful, how to do things well. In our home when our kids were little, when we were outside doing outdoor yard work, we had this to say, work hard, work fast, don't stop, look for more.

Work hard, work fast, don't stop, look for more. We wanted to have workers like that. And I'm thankful we actually do have workers like that. What this is saying is, look, we're gonna be a family and we're gonna work hard and we're gonna enjoy the fruit of our labor. And we're gonna focus on provision.

And it's very interesting if you go to Psalm 128 you find this phrase when you eat the labor of your hands you shall be happy and it shall be well with you here you have a picture of a family and they're celebrating they're rejoicing in the simplest thing the simplest thing called Food what they grew and giving thanks for it and enjoying and rejoicing whatever came out of their labors By the way in October Church and Family Life is going to put on a conference at the Ark in Kentucky and it's called the secrets of a happy home and The men who are going to come and preach Kevin Swanson and Carl Macleod and myself. We're going to preach on Psalm 127 and 128 this is such an encouraging passage for families and it just gives a picture of a happy and a fearless family living in the land so the second action is to plant gardens and eat their fruit. And before we leave that point, I just wanna look at all the young people and the children in the eye. And I wanna say to you, do everything you can to Make your house your home, the most beautiful, the most functional, the most abundant, the best food, the best place to have people, the place of hospitality where people are taken in and encouraged and given rest.

You kids can have a tremendous impact on the strength of your home by powering up in your home Don't be lazy. Don't make your home like a flop house Make it a house of Dominion So then the third action take wives and beget sons and daughters. That's verse 6. Now this is a word that's obviously delivered to a particular subsection of society. It's delivered to single men.

This is a command for single men. And what God is saying is get focused on getting married. That's what men should do. They should get ready, be focused, and be ready to get married. And notice the language of Scripture, And that is that in the Bible, and it's interesting because it's very consistent, daughters are given in marriage, but sons take wives.

That's the exact language in verse six. Take wives and beget sons and daughters. And a woman must be given to a man before he can take her. In other words, he needs to have the permission of the father. Now, maybe she doesn't have a father, And that's very common in our culture.

So she should find godly men, pastors, you know, men who really know God to help her through that. But daughters are given in marriage and sons take wives. The mission of life before God is so big you need a helper. You need someone to come alongside you to help and and the objective is clear multiplication beget sons and daughters this is just a command of Scripture people get married and they think well we can we can do whatever we want no you take a wife and you begat sons and daughters. That's actually what your body tells you to do.

And God tells you to do it as well. So find a woman to marry and have children. You know, I've heard people say, oh well, I don't know if I want to bring children into this world. This world is so bad. Well, I hope your world is not bad because you have complete governance over your world and you bring those children into a little piece of heaven and you bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord because that's what God calls you to do in a pagan land.

Take life seriously and prepare your fields and get ready to be married. You know, I'm concerned about young men who don't work during their youth, who spend their youth playing with their toys and wasting their life, and they don't set themselves to make money when they're really young. Now I'm not complaining in this sense. In the local church that I'm a pastor, the young men have actually worked hard in their youth and they've been ready for marriage and ready to buy houses early in life, and I'm really grateful for that. But take note, you single men, here's a command from God Almighty, take wives and beget sons and daughters.

Notice the physicality of life. And then the fourth action, this one is actually directed to parents. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands that they may bear sons and daughters. This has to do with parents who have an architectural mindset. They're architecting the future.

They actually have a multi-generational mindset. They really care about the generations to come. And parents have a role, a pivotal role, to play in the marriages of their children. And this is an argument for careful parental involvement in the marriages of sons and daughters. Children make a terrible mistake when they disregard the counsel of their fathers and mothers when it comes time to getting married.

When they think their parents don't know enough and they actually fall into an explicit violation of the fifth commandment to dishonor their father and their mother. And if children dishonor their father and mother in their marriages, and I've seen this happen a number of times, They blow up their families for 10 15 20 years and sometimes the wounds never heal Because they dishonored their parents They did not wait. They did not listen to advice obviously parents are not perfect and There are wicked parents. So you during the during the Reformation? 25% of the population had taken vows of celibacy, and so you had Luther and Calvin that were often encouraging children to defy their parents and get married.

So there are actual occasions where children should defy their parents. Those are probably rare, even with unbelieving parents. But it's very important that you create a very strong bond with your parents and that the parents create a strong bond and interaction when it comes time to be married. Honor your father and mother. Why?

That it might be well with you. Children who do not honor their father and mother, it doesn't go well with them. They bang their head against the wall often for years and years. The most successful people that I know honored their fathers and mothers even when they were unbelievers. So this fourth action is take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husband.

The fifth action multiply and increase in the land. This has to do with increase. Christians are fruit bearers. Christians have their eye on increase. Christians are not cruisers.

Christians take ground and they make progress. The church also, it's a fruit bearing institution. Jesus Christ made it very clear that the Christian was a fruitful person. You know the parable of the fig tree, there was no fruit. What was wrong with that?

Well, there was no faith. Let me say it this way. Neither the family nor the church is a minimalist society. It's a maximalist society. It goes for it.

It increases. It seeks to bear fruit in various ways that God has given the means to do. These are imperatives that you might be increased, that's one word in the text, and multiply. This is the same word in Genesis 127 that you may increase in other words more larger Numerous this is what Christians do he says and not diminished Now this obviously has to do with filling homes with children. Now you can, we can talk about all the nuances about how many children you are, how many children you are commanded to have.

Here's what's really obvious in the Bible. Be fruitful and multiply. Have a bunch of children. You just can't refute that. And I think families have to figure out what exactly that looks like.

This is multi-generational faithfulness. Some of you have really large families, you know, that's really, really a blessing. And you children in these large families, you need to recognize what a privilege it is to have siblings, to have experienced multiplication in your family. It's actually a good thing. Now, I guess the problem with large families is they need large houses, they need large cars, They need an enormous amount of food.

They have gigantic medical bills from time to time. So if a man and a woman is going to decide to have a big family, that father better have a big life to support that family. And he should have time. He should have bandwidth in his life to shepherd these children and not just leave them alone. So the command, multiply and increase in the land and not diminish.

Hey, remember the children of Israel? They went into Egypt with 70 people and they emerged with over 2 million That's the kind of thing we're talking about here be fruitful and multiply the sixth action Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive. In other words, don't be a troublemaker. Don't be obsessed about Nebuchadnezzar's problems. You work out your own problems.

Don't rebel against Nebuchadnezzar. Maybe it's a backhanded way of saying, hey, you remember what caused your captivity? Your disobedience. God brought you here for a reason, and you've been carried away to Babylon for your sins. The captives are commanded not to make trouble for Nebuchadnezzar.

Now the false prophets told them, hey, this is going to be short. Rebel against Nebuchadnezzar. And Jeremiah with the word of the Lord in his mouth, said, No, do not follow these false prophets. And by the way, one of the false prophets was so dramatic in his little prophecy that God killed him for his false prophecy. Because God's plan was for his people to go into the land and to thrive there.

And by the way, if you read across the scriptures about what happened in Babylon, God actually sent his people in Babylon to bless in two ways. He sent his people there to bless his people because he promised to protect them in Babylon. The people who stayed in Jerusalem were gonna be destroyed. The people who went to Babylon were gonna prosper. He also sent them to Babylon to be a blessing to the Babylonians.

And there they were, a productive, prayerful people that were living life large in Babylon as best they knew how to do. And then the seventh action, pray for the city. And pray for the city, pray to the Lord for it, for in its peace you will have peace Well, this is what Daniel did It's really reflective of Psalm 55 evening and morning and at noon I will pray and cry aloud to you and you will hear my voice. That's what happened to the captives in Babylon. They cried out to God.

You know one of the critical functions of a believer in a pagan society is to pray for civil rulers We know that from first Timothy 2 verse 1 where the Apostle tells the people of God therefore I exhort first of all that supplications prayers and intercessions and giving of thanks be made to all men for Kings and all who are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence I think first Timothy 2 1 is a commentary on Jeremiah 29 verse 7 to pray for the city. Pray for the peace of the city so that you can run your business, so you can raise your family, so you can be a prayerful family. The eighth action, endure. This is going to be a long season. That's what verse 10 says.

For thus says the Lord, after 70 years are completed in Babylon. In other words, God is telling these people, this is your life. You will not be raptured out of Babylon. You're going to be in Babylon for three generations. For 70 years, you're going to be in Babylon.

So settle in and bear fruit. If this was delivered in our time, if we were taken into captivity today, this would mean that our captivity would last until 2090. God isn't planning for a short trial for the people of God and there's no miracle escape, There's no SWAT team at the border. There's no rescue operation. Settle in.

Occupy until he returns. And by the way, when Daniel goes into the lion's den, How old do you think he was? He was probably 80 years old when he went into the lion's den after Nebuchadnezzar and Darius was king. Daniel probably died at age 90 and the people reading the letter would die before the captivity was over. These promises are for the rising generations and I think what God is telling these people is don't waste your exile in paralysis and in frustration Take dominion go do the physical things build a life build a house Do the nuts and bolts and then the ninth?

Thing believe the promises he says I will visit you and perform my good work to you and cause you to return to this place. In other words, he's promising he's going to bring him back to the land. Believe the promises. He's promised to rescue them in his own time. But until then, they should build and dwell and plant.

And then he says that he has secured a future and hope. Verse 11, for I know the thoughts that I think toward you says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope. What a blessed verse that is. I don't know how many refrigerators I've seen that verse on. It's extensively misused in greeting cards and salutations at the end of emails and things like that.

But let's be very clear what he's talking about. He's not talking about you personally. He's talking about you corporately. He's using the plural. He's talking about the people of God.

And what he's saying is that God is going to preserve his people in every generation. And yes, some of them may be martyred. That's not what this promise is about. This promise is God's faithfulness to preserve the seed of the woman until the end and take his children to heaven. He will prosper his church from one generation to the next.

And even when you are in chains, even when you have been made a eunuch, even when you've been separated from your family, even when you've lost everything, God will keep his promises. That's what that verse means. You can guarantee that God is preserving his people for all eternity. And if you're one of his people, well that is you, and you should take that personally. And then finally, the final admonition, I'm just characterizing this as worship God verses 12 through 14 then you will call upon me and go and pray to me and I will listen to you and you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart I will be found by you says the Lord again this is a call to worship God.

Here's my question for everyone here tonight. To examine their hearts and ask, am I a person that calls on the name of God? Am I the kind of person that desires to listen to God? Am I the kind of person who is seeking God? Am I the kind of person that desires to listen to God?

Am I the kind of person who is seeking God? Am I the kind of person who's seeking the Lord with all my heart? In other words, are you a saved person Has God changed your heart? Has He secured His salvation to you? Has He made it plain to you that you love Him and that you are called, that you want to follow Him, that you don't want Babylon, you don't want the ways of the Gentiles you want this clear waters of Shiloh that flow softly You want God?

Resolve that in your mind. Who are you really? Living in Babylon I think this also implies the worship of God as the people of God would gather in small gatherings when they were in captive, when they were captive in Babylon. The people of God have always gotten together in places to sing and pray and to read the Word of God and to hear the voice of the preaching. This is what God's people do, they gather together.

And I wanna submit to you that the most important place you ever take your children is to worship God in a local church. And I hope you're existing and dwelling in a local church and you faithfully bring your children to the worship of God and you guide them through the worship of God and you're like this tour guide leading them to the living waters and showing them the greatness and the beauty of Jesus Christ that you're showing them how great he is he is the Lord of hosts he is the ruler of the kings of the earth and they have no reason to fear so Jeremiah's So Jeremiah's instructions focus on taking dominion in your physical world. There's an earthiness about it. There's a realness about your home and the walls of your home and the door posts of your house and your gates and what you're doing inside that home. Make your home a little piece of heaven in the midst of Babylon.

Now the other speakers are going to come and really elaborate on many many factors of life in Babylon that are more spiritual. I wanted to start out with the physical life in Babylon. So go and build houses and dwell in them. Plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters.

Take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands. Multiply and increase in the land. Seek the peace of the city. Pray for the city. Endure.

It'll be a long season. Believe the promises and preserve the worship of God in your house that you're building and dwelling. Would you pray with me? Oh God, we thank you for the practical nature. We thank you for this physical world you put us in to take dominion of it to carve out beauty to exercise our creativity and put our resources to work to create a beautiful land in the midst of Babylon Oh God I pray you'd empower these people to engage these beautiful and physical things in their lives that you might be glorified in this Babylon in which we live.

Amen.