Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Jeremiah 29:4-5

Sermon text. Today we return to Jeremiah 29, verses 4 and 5. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Jeremiah 29, verses 4 and 5: 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.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Father, for this wonderful picture in Psalm 45 of the bride of Christ who we are. Help us to remember who we are today, servants of his. Bless us, Lord God, as we attend to his word carefully. Bless us, Lord God, to the end that we may glorify you and rejoice in this wonderful life you’ve given us through the merits of Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Please be seated.

I’ve kind of tethered back to Jeremiah 29 these days. Started here several months ago. We’ll return here after the Advent season, which I’m going to rush a little bit. Angie reminded me this week that I’ve threatened or promised, whichever way you see it, to preach through the seven O antiphons of ancient liturgy, which was the basis for the wonderful hymn, O Come O Come Emanuel—seven attributes of Christ. And so I’m going to begin doing that next week. So for the next seven weeks, we’ll do Advent going through that and then return after the first of the year back to Jeremiah 29.

And probably the next thing we’ll take up from it is verse 6, which deals specifically with marriage and that thing that God places upon us.

I wanted to make a very simple kind of point today from this text. I think the text is quite simple to us in one sense. You know what God commands us in exile. And I guess in a way this is sort of—you know, I’ve been preaching implications of seeking the peace of the city for a number of weeks and now we have the election upon us and it probably will turn out in a way that is maybe not desired and it may or may not mean a fairly major shift in some basic policies of the United States. So whatever may come on Tuesday, I think it’s good for us to return to this theme of exile.

And you know, whatever land the Lord leaves us planted in come Wednesday morning, this is where he has brought us. And so it’s good to remember the simple things in response to this. And the simple thing here is just that God points us to the future. And he does so in a way that says you’re supposed to work, build things, plant things. So he has this future orientation that he brings to us no matter how dire the circumstances.

And that future also is one of enjoying the things, the work that we’re called to do. First work and then pleasure. So we’re to have a future orientation to work—to build houses and then we get to dwell in them. And it’s delightful to dwell in a house that’s thoughtfully constructed and put together. And we’re supposed to plant gardens and then enjoy the fruit of them. And part of the reason for our economic crisis, of course, is that we’ve sort of gotten this mixed up.

We want to enjoy the fruit first and then work to pay off the debt for enjoying the blessing. So the simple command here is a fascinating one given the context of exile and the despairing situation in which they were. He calls them to look to the future and to work and to know that their work will result in blessing to them, that the blessings of their labor will follow. So we work and then we have joy.

But I want to begin by putting this in its right context. We have a lot of emphasis in the Christian church in America these days on service and that’s a good thing but I wanted us to consider first that this simple command to be future oriented and to do work and then to look forward with optimism to the blessings of enjoying that work—this simple command is a command we start with. And so I didn’t read just verse five; I read verse four. So who is saying this? To it is a command. First of all, these are imperatives: build, plant. Then dwell in the houses you build. Eat the fruit of the plants you have grown in your gardens. So they’re commands. They’re imperatives.

Who says? Well, it’s the Lord of hosts. Sabaoth is his name. Sabaoth means Lord of hosts or armies. And so God has caused them to be carried away to Babylon. He reminds them of that: I have caused them to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon. So wherever we find ourselves, it’s the sovereign God who has placed us there, even in difficult circumstances, and he is the Lord of hosts, and that has probably a double reference here.

It reminds them back to the fact that you know, they thought it was Nebuchadnezzar’s armies that had brought them here, but in reality God is the Lord of all hosts and he hasn’t been defeated. He’s actually brought them there. His army has. So Nebuchadnezzar is not the new David. Babylon is not the new Israel. And it’s interesting that he uses Israel. Israel means ruled by God and ruling for God. And remember, these are captives from Judah.

But now Judah is described by this term Israel. The northern kingdom has died and gone into captivity and their name is inherited and will be forever by the Judahites or Jews. So that’s how he addresses them here. But he addresses them as Lord of Sabaoth, Lord of Hosts. I think the second echo that they would pick up in that is that he’s still the Lord of hosts. He brought them here, but he’s also going to bring them back victorious.

So the Lord of Hosts is commanding us how we’re to conquer and how are we to go about conquering the enemies of God in the context of where he’s placed us, who have just razed the temple. And the Lord of Hosts is giving us our basic battle plan. It’s not political. It’s not military. It’s the simple things of life: building houses, planting gardens, and having kids—long-term orientation.

But it’s a command. So the first point I want to make before we get to the future orientation and before we get to work and joy in that order is that God commands his servants. So God is commanding us something here. And now it sounds like, yeah, yeah, we know all that. Yeah, we know that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we do know that. But we probably don’t think about it a whole lot. We are his servants. He has brought us to this place. He commands us to do these things.

We’d probably do them anyway, but we have to put it in the context of command. And this idea of service is what I want to focus on here. And this will probably be at least half of the sermon. So this is a big point to me. I don’t want us to get to considering what we’re to do without the proper context that what we’re going to be told to do specifically comes under the general heading of being servants of the Lord of Hosts. We’re his servants.

And as I said, there’s a lot of service talk these days. And you know, it’s kind of interesting how things kind of are cyclical. The social gospel, which wasn’t really Bible based, took the whole idea of serving the world and serving our neighborhoods and serving others in exclusion of really serving them the best way—to bring them the gospel and bring them into heaven, into relationship with Christ.

The social gospel—this is what really launched the career we could call it of R.J. Rushdoony. This is why he wrote for Christianity Today in the early years. It’s why some of his books were written—he was being funded by men who were concerned that the social gospel had produced kind of a liberalizing effect, not in a good sense but a bad sense, in terms of conservative Christianity. And so the whole reconstructionist, reformation, transformational movement that we’re part of was birthed as a response against that. And we see the very thing now happening where again service becomes sort of the focus in our world in Christianity, it seems to be serving others indiscriminately.

And so what I did was I looked at the concordance this week—simple concordance search, New Testament, the words relating to serving, servants. And there are over 80 occurrences of these words in the New Testament. And the interesting thing is that the vast majority of those words relate to us being servants of God, not servants of people, servants of God. And the second group, much smaller, are servants of Christians—the body, local Christians, people that are starving in other parts of the world, other Christians, Christians serving the body of Christ.

And only tangentially can you get to a few references that may be tied to the sort of indiscriminate service of others that we often think of. So we want to let our minds be sort of thought through. We want to think about that. I want you to think about you being a servant. And a servant, first and foremost and primarily and in some sense exclusively, a servant of God. Are you a servant of God? To what degree is your life seen as service to God? Somewhat? A little bit? Mostly? All of it?

And what we read in the scriptures—and we’ll read here a couple of verses—but you know, as Christians, one of the terms that’s used in the New Testament to define what a Christian is: a servant of God. So this is not some subset of what it means to be saved or to have union with Christ and to believe in him. To believe in him is to serve God through him. So you know, if you’re a Christian, it means you’re a servant of God. And that characterizes all of your life.

Let me read a few texts. Matthew 4:10. Jesus said unto him, “Away with you, Satan, for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’” Now, not only are you a servant of God, but there is a very proper sense in which Jesus our savior tells us that we are only to serve God. All other service has to flow out of our service to God. We can’t serve somebody over here if it’s not an extension of our primary, only service, which is to God.

Zechariah in Luke 1:74. You know, he’s deaf or dumb rather—he can’t speak. Now he speaks. He’s talking about his name is going to be—he’s talking about the naming of his son John and he talks about this in the Benedictus, so-called, one of the great songs of Christmas found in Luke 1. There’s this wonderful prophecy of what’s coming to pass and he’s talking about Jesus and he says in verse 74: “To grant us, God is granting us, being delivered from the hand of our enemies that we might serve him without fear.”

So the whole point Zechariah says of Jesus coming is not to save your soul and take you to heaven or not to give you a better idea of helping other people. The point is to serve him, to serve God, and without fear. And he goes on to say, “In holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our lives.” So there’s a comprehensiveness to who we are as servants of God. This is what Jesus came to do—this Advent season, the wonderful season of Christmas. This is the point: make us servants, first and foremost and primarily, of God.

In Acts 20:19, Paul says that he serves the Lord with all humility, with many tears and trials which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews. So Paul characterizes his entire ministry, which is his life. He says that his life was one of serving the Lord with humility.

Acts 27:23. There stood by me this night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve. So there was an angel of this God and he identifies God as the one to whom he belongs and whom he serves. We serve the one that we belong to. Jesus has redeemed us. He’s purchased us. We belong to him. You know, we got the mark on Margot this morning. Jesus put his mark. He owns her. Okay. I think it was a mark of ownership. And Margot is then saved by Christ to the end that she might serve him. She belongs to him now.

And as a result of that, she is to be a servant of him in all of her life, in everything that she does.

Romans 1:9. God is my witness, whom I serve, Paul says, with my spirit in the gospel of his son. Without ceasing, I make mention of you always in my prayers. So again, Paul identifies himself as a servant of God.

Romans 7:25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh I sometimes mess up and I serve the law of sin. Serving God means serving the law of God. The law is a way of life, but it tells us how we are to serve God. So we’re a servant of God and we’re a servant of his law.

1 Corinthians 7:35. “This I say to you, for your own profit, not that I may put a leash on you, but for what is proper, and that you may serve the Lord without distraction.” So now Paul goes from saying that his deal is serving God—yeah, it’s great, he’s a pastor, evangelist guy—but Paul now tells the average person in the pew that they are also owned by him, that they are also to serve God. And he says the whole point of what he’s writing to them in First Corinthians is that they might serve the Lord without distraction.

Serve the Lord without distraction. Does that bring a little conviction to you? It brings a little conviction to me. I know there are many things that seem to distract me from being a self-conscious servant of God. Measure yourselves. These, don’t let these words fall to the ground. Hear them. Bring them into your mind and into your heart. Think through who you are. Are you allowing yourselves to be distracted by too many things away from the service to God that should be your center, your focus, really all consuming in your life?

Young people, this is what your parents want for you more than anything else. Young adults, young people growing up—you know, we can just summarize what we want. We want you to serve God. Not, you know, for a few hours a week at church or, you know, helping do this or that, but we want your entire life to be serving God. We want whatever amusement you enter into to be part of your service to God, not a distraction from it.

You know, ask yourself this morning—well, Sunday—ask yourself yesterday on Saturday or Friday: what did you do with those 48 hours of Friday and Saturday? Did you serve God without distraction? Paul says that’s the reason why this word is brought to you today: to remind you that you’re a servant of a God who commands you. You’re to serve God without distraction.

1 Thessalonians 1:9. They themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. So the whole point of conversion is moving away from serving idols and moving to serve the living and true God.

You know, Bob Dylan, right? You got to serve somebody. You are created to serve. And either you can serve an idol—actually, you can serve your own belly. Paul says in another place, you can serve yourself. You can make people the primary objects of your service. But clearly, what Paul wants us to see ourselves as is we’ve been converted to serve the living and true God. We’re servants and God calls us to serve him.

Hebrews 9:14. “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” You know, the table’s this reminder that the blood of Jesus Christ was shed. You’re owned by him. He made great sacrifice for you. He went through the pangs of hell for your sake for a particular task or goal. Hebrews says, and that is that you might serve the living God. It’s to be all comprehensive in your life. It’s what the blood of Jesus Christ has come to affect: your service to God.

Revelation 22:4. They shall see his face and his name shall be on their foreheads for they serve him. So in Revelation, we are identified specifically as those who serve God. We’ll serve him perpetually in the eschaton when God returns. When Jesus returns and transforms this world, then we shall serve him with an intensity and focus that we don’t have now.

But now we have the great honor of trying to remove the distractions from our service, to focus everything that we do for the service of God by choice, okay, in the context of temptations to sin. Get ready for the eschaton by declaring yourself today to be a servant of God. Don’t come up with your tribute to God if you don’t tie that in your mind and in your heart to a renewed commitment to be a servant of God in everything that you do without distraction.

I know we sin. I know we fall short. Jesus pays the price for that. But don’t let that be some kind of, you know, distraction in and of itself, cheap grace that allows you to slip away from the whole purpose of this. And that is that you’re to be a servant of God.

You know, the wrong kind of service can be a problem. Not good. God doesn’t say be a servant. He says be a servant of him, be a servant of God. Paul doesn’t say it’s good that you’re a servant of somebody. No, he says you’re supposed to turn away from serving idols and serving yourself to serve God. It feels good to serve other people sometimes, but is that really good for you? Not unless it’s—not unless it’s in the context that God only is—Jesus told Satan, “God is the only one we’re to be serving.”

Now, that service to God takes on service to others. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But you see, service in and of itself is no virtue. It depends on the object of your service. And God wants you this week. I hope these words stay in your heart. I hope I pray to God for myself as well that they stay in my heart and in my mind: Am I serving God in what I’m doing right now? Is this service to God? It’s what God wants us to think through.

I think the wrong kind of service: Luke 10:40. Martha was distressed with much serving and she approached Jesus and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore, tell her to help me.” You know, so we can be so distracted with helping other people, and this is what Jesus tells her in response, that we miss the whole point that who we are to be serving is God himself and he’s there with her.

So service in and of itself can be actually a bad thing. It can be a distraction from our primary focus of what our service is to be: service of Jesus and service of God.

It’s interesting that in Romans 1:29—we read for this reason God gave them up to vile passions. Even their women exchanged their natural lust for what is against nature. And of course we’ve got Proposition 8 down in California that we should be praying about in terms of the vote to prohibit homosexual marriage. You know, the gay community is just waiting for that thing to go down and then they’re going to go back and have all these challenges against all the states that they’ve traveled to California from.

Tens of thousands of homosexuals have traveled to California to get marriages, gone back to their areas. And as soon as this thing is defeated and their marriages stand, they’re going to start in the courts then to make their states recognize these marriages. But how do people get to that state where they’re not only doing the things that God says is worthy of death, but actually encourage other people to do the same?

Well, it’s a service problem. Romans 1:25 says that these are the people who exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. It’s a matter of who they’re going to serve. And you know, the social gospel got to the place—you know, 60 years ago or whatever it was, 70 years ago—where you know, they were about, they were slipping into serving the creature rather than serving the Creator.

Now, when you do that, you don’t really serve the creature either. It doesn’t help people give them a great life and not remind them that, you know, in a few short years they’re going to be burning in the fires of hell. That’s no service to them. But we can serve the creature and it can actually get in the way, and it does. This is why people get so vile: it’s a simple service problem where they’re serving the wrong person. They’re serving, but are serving the creature, not the Creator.

Okay. So, you know, you need to think about this and I need to think about it. It’s a simple point, but it is absolutely profound. When you are on your beds tomorrow night—forget tonight, you’re in a good state of mind today—but tomorrow night when you lay on your bed, I pray to God that the Holy Spirit will bring to mind to you the words of Jesus: that him only shall you serve. And look back on your day and confess when you didn’t serve him, when you were serving the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever.

Pray today, the beginning tomorrow, the beginning of the day. Pray that God might help you to be a servant of Jesus Christ, a servant of God in everything that you do. It’s beautiful in a way because it means that building a house—how do you build a house? You get some boards, you lay a foundation, you’re dealing with mud and concrete and nails and boards and wood. You’re planting a garden. You’re digging in the dirt.

And that’s serving God. That’s how he wants you to serve him. He wants you to serve him in the simple tasks of life. When you’re diapering the baby, when you’re driving to work, when you’re engaging in a sales meeting, when you’re going about your recreation, all of that stuff is comprehensively to come under this category of service to God.

And in Jeremiah 29, he commands his servants and he commands them to do simple things. So simple things are indeed part of what God has called us to do. Now, it does go out from God. Almost all the occurrences—the majority of the occurrences—are service of God. There are a few occurrences where you’re serving the church.

In Matthew 20:28 we read that Jesus said that the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. So he comes as man incarnate, not to be served. So it’s he doesn’t want us to be served. He wants us to be like him, to serve. And specifically, what he’s obviously—he’s told Satan, “God only will I serve.” But that service to God, for Jesus, is taking on the relationship of service to the church. He’s going to serve by giving his life a ransom for many. So he’s serving those that are the elect in Christ, the church, the bride. He’s serving them by dying for them.

In Romans 12:10-12, in the middle of that, in verse 11, we’re told to be serving the Lord. But listen to the context. Verse 10: Romans 12, “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love. So he’s not talking about, you know, love for those outside of the body of Christ who aren’t your brothers. But this is with brotherly love, in honor, giving preference to one another. That’s back to that consider thing we talked about last week. Give preference to people. Think about them. Consider them and give them honor, glory, and weight.

Not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer. So our service to the Lord is directly linked to being diligent in our labors for others. Jesus is the example. He serves the church. We’re to also serve those that we have brotherly love and affection for in the church.

Luke 22:26. “Be it not so among you? For on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger and he who governs as he who serves.” So Jesus now commends them to serve God by serving other people. And this is the way to glory and weightiness—not making others serve us but to serve others. So he’s serving others.

Luke 22:27. “Who is greater? He who sits at the table or he who serves? Is it not he who sits at the table? Yet I am among you as one who serves.” So again, Jesus is serving his people.

John 12:26. “If anyone serves me, let him follow me. And where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, him my Father will honor.” We’re to be servants of Jesus by doing what he did. And his service to God led him to serve the members of the body of Christ. So we’re to consider one another, how to serve each other, as we talked about last week.

Galatians 5:13. For you, brethren, have been called to liberty. Do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. So, there it’s very explicit. We’ve been freed. We’ve been redeemed to serve God. And in that freedom and with that liberty, we’re to use that to, in love, serve other people.

And then there may be a few verses where we could extract out something of a service to a broader population. In Acts 13:36, for instance: for David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep, was buried with his fathers, and saw corruption. So service to God results in serving our generation. And I guess maybe that’s a comprehensive term for humanity during this time period. So I guess we could extract out that we’re to serve those around us who are outside of the church. Today is—you know, yesterday was All Saints Day—and as we think about some of these saints, David and others, David is an example of one who served his generation, meaning he served God by serving other people. But service to God is the example.

Now the point of all that is this: that God commands his servants and our service must be focused, it must be preeminently focused on serving God. That’s the standard. That’s the evaluation you should do every night. Now, secondarily, you know, you serve God when you serve members of the body of Christ. When you’re serving Jesus when you’re serving his bride, and so you’re serving other people.

And then maybe there is this small amount of service done to those outside of the church. Service even there that service is to be, you know, obviously not getting glory for yourself, but done for the cause of Jesus Christ. So serving others in the name of Christ. Love Inc. Activities, for instance, that I’m so pleased that this church is a significant part of. You know, I was asking Matt, why are we doing work out in Sandy?

It’s like, well, you know, they don’t have a lot of churches out there to help and we seem to want to be able to help, so we’re doing stuff way out in Sandy. That’s great. I mean, we hope that churches in Sandy get on board too and serve in their community, but it’s a great thing that you all have earned a reputation as servants to those in need. And we passed out cards in our neighborhood. Some of the young people led by Matt D., did Friday night and we prayed for them as they went out, offering to you, wanting information on widows and single moms and the elderly who need help and service. And we want to do those things. That’s good stuff to do.

But you know, if we get so that becomes our focus and we end up not serving each other in the church, something’s messed up. You know, because all these verses I went through, it says the primary sphere of your service should be to one another. And so, if that gets to where you’re just doing that kind of stuff and you’re doing much service, but don’t have time to think about your service to God, to read your Bible, to pray, to meditate on the word, etc., then that’s messed up.

All these things can become idols to us if they supplant the overarching goal of being a servant of God. So, you know, we’re going to talk about building and planting and enjoying the fruit out of the garden. But understand that the context is that God sees us, calls us to understand we’re his servants.

May the Lord God grant us this week to remember that. If that’s all we can remember from today, let’s remember that it will be transformational in the lives of some of you who have never really considered that your 24 hours a day is to be spent in service to God. Some of us have—we know we fall short, but at least we sort of know that’s sort of what we’re supposed to be doing and it takes a lot of different activities underneath that overarching—but some of you, I don’t think necessarily have even considered that in your life. You’ve been redeemed to serve God. You belong to him. Only shall you serve.

Well, how do we go about this service? So the second point today is that God commands his servants. He commands us to be future oriented and work.

He commands us to be future oriented and to work. We’re to make the best of a difficult situation. Clearly, things were not good. We’ve talked before about the horrible state they were in when they ended up by the river Chebar in Babylon. It’s a bad situation. But he doesn’t want them to give way to despair. He doesn’t want a lot of complaining and bickering. He doesn’t want them to lose hope. He doesn’t want them to think about what happened to them up to now.

I mean, he will draw their attention to that later in the text by reminding them of how they got to the place they’re at. You don’t want to repeat the sins of the past, but when he is opening words to them, he points to the future. We’re a people that are on the move to the future. We don’t moan and groan about what’s happened in the past. We have a future orientation. He doesn’t want us passing time idly either.

You know, it’s a caricature, but to some extent it was true—it may be true in dispensational churches—that well, we just sort of are waiting for the rapture. It’s going to happen any time. And so we just sort of wait around for that. And the world’s a mess. And why polish brass on a sinking ship? God wants us to avoid that. He tells us in the midst of very difficult circumstances, get to work. Do the stuff you’re supposed to do. Build some houses. Plant some gardens. Look to the future.

We’re not supposed to wait around for something to happen. We’re to make things happen. And we make things happen by doing the simple acts of service to God that also serve our families and serve the broader community as well. He doesn’t want us sinking into a demoralizing despair of the situation but rather he wants us to look toward the future.

As Matthew Henry said, let not weeping hinder doing. Don’t let weeping hinder doing. Now, weeping is okay. The scriptures say we’re supposed to be sad over a sad occurrence. You’re not whistling past the graveyard. But 1 Thessalonians 4:13 says that Paul says he doesn’t want us to be ignorant concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. So the specific case is people that have died in the Lord.

But in general, the truth is true to this situation as well. We are to sorrow. Yes, we’re sorrowful when somebody dies. We’re sorrowful when difficult circumstances happen. We may be sorrowful over the events of Tuesday. But we’re not to sorrow as those without hope. We know that God is the Lord of hosts. He brings whatsoever comes to pass. He’s decreed it. So we are optimistic about the future. And God, in his opening words to these very dispirited exiles, he brings them words of hope, saying build.

Build is what the first word you know, out of the prophet’s mouth in terms of his command of his servants. Build. Look forward to the future. Don’t have fear. Why would we want to build houses? You know, they’re just going to tax it and use it anyway. And it’s just build, God says. Well, why do we want to build? I don’t know how long we’ll be here. This is really horrible. I just don’t have, you know, the energy or the spirit. I’m so depressed. Build, God says, look to the future and build.

Don’t fear that your works are of no account. Don’t fear who might steal what you build or eat what you plant. No. God says you’re to look forward to the future. You’re to live your lives with an optimism that indeed things will be better in the future than they are now. And you’re to work on the basis of that.

Persons in trouble are always apt to make the worst of things. That’s the way it is with mankind. We tend to make the worst of the things we’re in. And God says, “Put on a different disposition. Have a different attitude. Look to the future.” Yeah, you sorrow, but not as those without hope. God’s hope is to have the ability to look forward to what God might do in the context of our world. They’re to resolve, in other words, to make the best of a difficult situation.

And no matter what happens on Tuesday, we’re to resolve to make the best of a difficult situation. We’re to build. We’re not to lapse into despondency. We’re to engage in tasks which take time. Building a house, you know, I can’t do that in a day. That takes some time. Planting a garden, you know, takes a while for that stuff to grow. Maybe, you know, months or whatever it might be in the case of vineyards and stuff—years before you get the fruit.

We’re to have a future orientation because the tasks that God calls us to engage in the present are tasks which take time, and they even become multigenerational as the text proceeds. It talks about having kids and multiplying and not diminishing. And we are to raise children who are more diligent than us, who are better servants of God than that generation has been. We’re to—like in Psalm 78—that our seed would be more diligent than us, more faithful covenantally than us.

We know what has happened to us. Let me read a quote from Matthew Henry here. Matthew Henry says, “In all conditions of life, it is our wisdom and duty—our wisdom and duty—to make the best of that which is not to throw away the comfort of what we may have because we have not all we would have.” You know, there are cool things as I mentioned last week—grass growing upward, beautiful trees. I stood outside last night in the heavy rain and how beautiful it was and to see the trees and all this happening.

You know, we don’t have all that we want necessarily, but we have many blessings from God and we’re to rejoice in those blessings. We’re not to think about what we don’t have. We’re to thank God for the present and then work toward the future. Henry says they must resolve to live easy there, to bring their minds to their condition. When our condition is not in everything to our mind, so bring our condition, our minds to our condition, when our condition isn’t to our mind, and then pray and work to the end that condition may improve.

We’re to live 70 years. They were to live 70 years, rather, as though they were the natives of the place and that the habitations were not to be changed. This is Calvin now in his commentary. And yet that they were ever to look forward to a return. But these two things can well agree together. Calvin says it was a proof of obedience when they acknowledged that they had been chastened by God’s hand and thus became willingly submissive to the end of the 70 years.

But their hope, as I have just observed, was to remain in suspense in order that they might not be agitated with discontent, nor be led away by some violent feeling, but that they might so pass their time as to bear their exile in such a way as to please God. So God tells us these things so that we might please him and demonstrate our repentance through our patience and through our optimism about the future in doing what he has called us to do. It is by their patience that they were demonstrating that they really were penitent.

So this is what God calls us to do: to have a future orientation. Ecclesiastes 7:8-10 says this: The end of a thing is better than its beginning. Now, he could state that is the way it is. The end of a thing is better than its beginning. God is moving history forward. The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools. Don’t get mad Tuesday. Stay mad about what’s happening in this country.

That anger rests in the bosom of fools. And then this is a great verse: Do not say, “Why were the former days better than these?” Why were the good old days the best days? He says, “You do not inquire wisely concerning this. You do not ask this in wisdom.” He doesn’t even answer the question as to why. Not denying the fact that sometimes it does look like it was better in the past. Sometimes it was better in the past. But what he’s saying is wisdom is not focusing on the past and complaining about the present. Wisdom is focusing on the future and building, doing the work that God has called us to do.

Psalm 137: By the rivers of Babylon, we wept. Our captors demanded a song of us. How can we sing our song to God in a strange land? The great lament psalm of the exile in Psalm 137. And as I said so many times, this is really answered in Psalm 138.

David says, “I’ll praise you with my whole heart before the gods. I will sing praise to you before the rulers”—in other words, of Babylon, before the rulers of America. We will sing praises to you. I will worship toward your holy temple. I’ll think about your presence in heaven and maybe he’s thinking of Jerusalem too. I don’t know. But we focus on the dwelling of God here and praise your name for your loving kindness and your truth. For you have magnified your word above all your name.

The name dwelt in Jerusalem at that time. But he has magnified his word above his name. We have our scriptures. We have the truth of God in the unscripture word. And that is the presence of God with his people. In the day when I cried out, you answered me and made me bold with strength in my soul. All the kings of the earth shall praise you, oh Lord, when they hear the words of your mouth. They shall sing of the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord.

So he has this confidence even writing in the future of what would happen in the Babylonian exile. The Spirit of God says we’re to have confidence that all the kings of the world will praise God. And we see that as the times unfurl in the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar praises God. So we’re to have an optimism about the future. We’re not to be, you know, focusing about grumbling and complaining in the present. We’re to build for the future.

And secondly, this building prepares us for greater responsibilities. They’ve been thrust out of the Garden of Eden, right? They’ve been thrust out of the promised land. You remember the promised land was where God had given them all kinds of things: “You’re going to have houses to dwell in that you didn’t build. You’re going to have gardens that you didn’t plant. You’ll have cities and technology that you didn’t develop.” I’ll give you all that. He gave it to them. They lost it.

But now they needed to live that way again. They were going to go back and build houses and plant vineyards and build cities again. And they prepare for that future possession of the land by taking the wasteland they’ve been placed in and doing the same thing. Remember, they’re by the river Chebar. They’re in a devastated place. And one of the reasons Babylon had brought them there is to build up that old destroyed city, which had been destroyed in the Assyrian Babylonian wars.

So they were going to be architects of the city. They were to seek the peace of that city. God says they’re to build because when you’re faithful in the small things, you’re getting ready for the greater responsibilities in the future that God will give to you. If we are working diligently here in the present, then God is training us for rule in broader areas as well.

In Amos 9:14, God says, “I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof. They shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them.” So he’s saying, when I bring you back, the cities will have been wasted through the occupation of a foreign army, but you’re going to rebuild the waste cities. You’re going to build houses. You’re going to plant gardens and enjoy the fruit of them.

Well, they didn’t have to wait to get ready to do that. They were getting ready for 70 years. They would have been training themselves in the skills of building houses, planting vineyards, working for the peace of a city—a wasted city—and rebuilding it. And that would get them ready to go back into the promised land and fulfill these very prophecies.

So, you know, God says that part of the difficult times we go through is to prepare us in small ways. How can we run economies if we can’t run our own homes? You know, the financial difficulties we’re in the midst of as a nation. What do they want? What should we do? We should build. We should try to avoid in small ways what our country has engaged in, and we’ve engaged in too, in big ways: debt-driven culture—the opposite of this. Eating fruit and then building a garden and paying off what we bought. God wants it the other way around.

If we are good stewards financially in our homes, then some of us may well be part of the process—the governmental process—of making modifications, amendments, and changes to the monetary system of the nations as well. So God wants us, while you do this, to be prepared for the future in being given bigger responsibilities by doing simply, as servants of God, the things he wants us to do now in the place where he leaves us.

So we’re to do that. Ezekiel 28:26. They shall dwell safely therein. They shall build houses, plant vineyards. They shall dwell with confidence when I have executed judgments upon all those that despised them round about them. They shall know that I’m the Lord thy God. They’re going to come back into the land and God will bring judgment against other nations that have brought judgment. He’s used to punish them, but he’ll punish them, the other nations, and they’ll come back with the responsibility to do just what they’re being trained to do here in Babylon.

They serve in the broader world so that they can be even better at their task when they return. So God commands us. We’re his servants. And as his servants, we’re to build. We’re to think about the future, not about the past. We’re to have optimism. We’re not to ask, “Why were things better back then?” Dog gone it. No, we’re to say, “How are things going to get better in the future?” They’re going to get better as we, as servants of God, build, have a future orientation, and work, and work diligently, and teach our children to work diligently to do the things that God wants us to do.

Third, God commands his servants to, having built, take pleasure in their labors. Build, but then you build homes and you get to dwell in them. That’s a blessing. That’s the reward for our labor. Plant gardens and eat the fruit of it. So there’s this cycle to life that, you know, this is how a new faithful culture will develop in Babylon—is being taught the cycle of life and the proper cycle of life is work first and then joy in the results of that labor. But it’s labor first and then it’s enjoyment.

We get up and we don’t go about recreations first. We work first. And at the end of the day, we enjoy some of the fruit of that labor. And as I said, our culture has gone way wrong because our children think that labor, you know, is somehow secondary, and what we want to do is rejoice all the time. God says you primarily work and you rejoice for the fruit of that labor in small ways. Children, it’s as simple as doing your chores first and then having the Nintendo or whatever it is.

It’s doing your work and then enjoying the fruit of your work. It’s putting obedience first, like your dad does. He gets up and he doesn’t start goofing around. He gets to work and then at the end of his day, he gets to relax, spend time with the family, enjoy the fruit of his labor. This is a basic cycle to life that’s been lost in our day and age. And that’s why our economy is so bad. At least one very simple reason why it’s so bad.

God commands his servants to build, to have a future orientation, and to know that the future God will normally let us enjoy the fruit of our labor. In fact, the labor itself is delightful.

In Genesis 2:8, the Lord God plants a garden eastward in Eden. God’s a gardener. He’s the first one that plants a garden. And he tells his servant David, “He’s supposed to build a house for my name.” So God wants a house built. God’s planting the garden. We’re supposed to be like God. So the labor itself, as we’re servants of God, we’re entering into his labor. He’s a gardener. We’re to be gardeners. He does things in the world. We’re to be like what he does in the world.

Numbers 24:5-7. How goodly are their tents, oh Jacob, thy tabernacles, O Israel. The valleys are they spread forth as gardens by the riverside as the trees of lignin which the Lord has planted. We’re the planting of the Lord. So God is a gardener. He is a planter. We’re supposed to be like him. So part of the joy of enjoying the fruit of our labor is the labor itself because we’re acting out the divine nature in the sort of activities we’re in.

Ecclesiastes 2. This is what Solomon does. He acts like God in Ecclesiastes 2. And there’s a certain sense in which that’s proper. He says, uh, that he made great works. “I builded me houses. Verse four, I planted the vineyards. I made the gardens and orchards. And I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit. I made me pools of water to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees. I got me servants and maidens and had servants born in my house. Also, I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me.”

What’s he doing? He’s tracking the creation week. He makes a world. He plants things like God plants things, and he puts together pools of water after he does this planting stuff. He separates pools of water out to water what he’s done. And then he gets a bunch of people to live in this world. And he mentions with the people cattle, just like in the sixth day, the Lord God has cattle and men together to, you know, populate the earth. Solomon is acting like God.

And this isn’t a bad thing. This is what we’re called to do. We’re image bearers. And we look at God’s creative work, and that’s what we do. We bring light to the world. You know, we bring order and form to the world, and we fill the world. And that’s just what Solomon does in Ecclesiastes 2. Now, he does it under the sun. He does it without reference to God. And because of that, it results in a degree of dissatisfaction.

But don’t think that the problem is doing the work of planting and building. That work is satisfying. It is delightful if we do it as God’s image bearers, as his servants. Again, if him only are we serving and we do these things, we’re entering into divine labors. And that in and of itself is a great joy. And then, of course, the eating of the fruit of the labor—the fruit of the labor—is also joy.

Psalm 128:2. “When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy and it shall be well with you.” Who is this? This is the one who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways—the servant of the Lord. He gets to eat the fruit of his labor. Okay, that’s what Psalm 128 says. And this is a big part of who we are. We’re not guys that, you know, Richard Nixon’s mom, a Quaker, told him, “I’ll work here on earth and in heaven that’s when we’ll get joy.” No. At the end of the day, we get to eat some of the fruit of our labor, the produce of our labor.

Isaiah 3:10. Say to the righteous that it shall be well with them. They shall eat the fruit of their doings.

Ecclesiastes 2:24. After Solomon says all this stuff and how satisfying it was, then he comes to this conclusion in verse 24 of Ecclesiastes 2: Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw was from the hand of God. So this isn’t foolishness from Solomon. This is from the hand of God—that we’re able, after we work, after we thought about the future and planned and built, we are able to enjoy the fruit of our labor.

The labor itself is joyful and eating the fruit of our labor is joyful also. And Solomon says this many times.

Ecclesiastes 3:13. Every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor. It is the gift of God. So these are the gifts of God. This is from the hand of God. Woman says—when he talks about this stuff, he talks about God.

Ecclesiastes 5:18. Here is what I have seen. It’s good and fitting for one to eat and drink and to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life which God gives him. It is his heritage. So God’s heritage is to engage in this cycle of work and then joy, work and labor and then the fruit of our labor being what we get to partake in as well.

So now, part of it, of course, is sharing that wealth with others. And I did want to work in a quote from St. John Chrysostom on redistribution of wealth as we look forward to what might happen on Tuesday. One of the bad things about redistribution of wealth is it takes away the fruit of your labor, right? It in a government way takes away.

Now, Chrysostom was one of these great saints that people remember on All Saints Day—fourth century, early fifth century, silver-tongued orator, known as a great preacher. He was also known for his tremendous care and concern for the poor and selling the possessions of the church or his own possessions to feed the poor. He was into benevolent works toward the poor. So he has the authority to write on this subject that others may not have. He’s known for his benevolent work toward the poor, but he’s also known for his criticism of authoritarian oversight by rulers in the church and state.

This is from St. John Chrysostom: Should we look to kings and princes to put right the inequalities between rich and poor? Should we require soldiers to come and seize the rich person’s gold and distribute among his destitute neighbors? Should we beg the emperor to impose a tax on the rich so great that it reduces them to the level of the poor and then to share the proceeds of that tax among everyone?

It sounds like he’s a modern political commentator here. It’s amazing. Equality imposed by force would achieve nothing and do much harm. Those who combined both cruel hearts and sharp minds would soon find ways of making themselves rich again. Worse still, the rich whose gold was taken away would feel bitter and resentful, while the poor who received the gold from the hands of soldiers would feel no gratitude because no generosity would have prompted the gift.

Far from bringing moral benefit to society, it would actually do moral harm. Material justice cannot be accomplished by compulsion. A change of heart will not follow. The only way to achieve this justice is to change people’s hearts first and then they will joyfully share their wealth.

So methodology—and we’re about to, you know, elect a president, a person who is going to do just what Chrysostom said is so bad—and it’s so bad from today’s text because it takes away some of the ability of people who work to benefit from that work, to eat the fruit of their labor, and it gives other people fruit of your labor in a compulsory way that, as he said, doesn’t lead them to thankfulness or gratitude, but rather this is their right—even though they didn’t work—so to eat the fruit. God commands us. We’re his servants. We’re commanded to have a future orientation, to work, to build and to look to the future. And God commands us then to enter into this cycle of work first and then enjoying the fruits of our labor.

This is what the Lord God tells us simply here. And yet very importantly, building a house is great, but that’s not in and of itself the end. We must build as God’s servants.

Deuteronomy 28:30. “Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her. Thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein. Thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shall not gather the grapes thereof.” Because the curses of God is Deuteronomy 28. Curses of God means that it’s not enough just to build a house because you can build a house and God will let another man live in it. You can plant a garden and let another man eat from your fruit because you’re not doing it for Christ.

Jeremiah 22:13. Woe to him that builds his house by unrighteousness. If we build our house by unrighteousness, the curses of God are upon us.

Zephaniah 1:12. It shall come to pass at that time that I will search Jerusalem with candles and punish the men that are settled on their lees, that say in their heart, “The Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil.” The Lord’s not present. What happens to these men? Therefore, their goods shall become a booty. Their house is a desolation. They shall also build houses, but not inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof.

We’re to build a house, as God told David, a house for God’s name. Our building of our houses, our work, and our enjoyment must be, as we turn back to the first point, servants of God. Or God will remove them from us.

God says, as we sang earlier, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.” Our building must be as servants of God. Jesus said that the wise men and the foolish men hear alike the word of God. You’re hearing alike the word of God today. If they’re wise and foolish here, and you know, you’re supposed to build—you know, you’re supposed to build a house. And some of you will build a house like—pray this isn’t the truth—but it may be.

Some may build a house not upon the rock. Hearing isn’t the thing. The doing of the command of God as servants of God is what Jesus says is building on the rock. That house will withstand Tuesday, will withstand whatever social policies happen in the next four years, 20 years, 50 years, 70 years, may be—who knows? But as we build and enjoy as servants of God, Jesus Christ promises us that is building on the rock and that is building for the future. That is building in a way that is pleasing to God and will yield great blessings for us.

Let’s pray. Lord God, forgive us for not being your servants. Forgive us for building and planning for our own purposes apart from a knowledge of service to you. Forgive us for building improperly with unrighteousness. Forgive us, Lord God, for thinking that we can build our houses without your being the base of it. Help us as we walk forward today with our offerings, tribute to you, Lord God.

May we do so self-consciously committing ourselves as servants of yours, looking to the future with optimism, building and enjoying the fruit of our labor. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.