
Rooted: Our Call to the City (Jeremiah 29)
***This my take on the much written about Jeremiah 29 as a missional manifesto, enjoy, and love your feedback.
Christ calls dead people and makes them alive. Christ creates the church universal (all believers) this way and these believers ideally form into smaller churches local to their geographic — relational proximity. The church universal is the body of Christian believers heading towards a heavenly home with Christ but they are not there yet. On this side of eternity, the body of Christ (church) bands together in local living churches to live out what it means to follow Christ together. The church is united with Christ, but doesn’t dwell with him bodily yet. Jesus is King of all, yet evil still prowls. Living on this side of eternity is a tension filled battleground of the already and not yet. So how should the church sojourn among a city of man with a vision for the city of God?
The paradigm of city living amongst Christ opposed culture is Jeremiah 29. God exiled the Jewish nation from the Promised Land of Israel and specifically the city of Jerusalem because of covenant unfaithfulness on Israel’s behalf. They were taken captive and forcibly immigrated to Babylon, the great city of paganism, evil, and opposition in the Old Testament. The Babylonians kept the Jews in order for Jewish population to serve and bring further advancement to their own nation. God struck down a false prophet named Hanianah that prophesied that Israel would soon be delivered out of captivity and back to Jerusalem. (Jer. 28:3–4) Instead God gives the prophet Jeremiah a true word about living in a hostile city by faith in a sovereign God. Jeremiah’s prophecy gives us a programmatic approach to living as urban believers in cities that oppose the gospel:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29:4–7)
A Four-Fold Life in the City
1. Praying Up: Genuine Care
God is concerned with the hearts of the Israelites toward their neighbors. It would have been easy to hate the Babylonians. They burned Jerusalem. They killed their countryman. Israel is currently in their captivity, under their rules, and forced to live, speak, and eat in their culture. Yet verse 7 clearly instructs them to pray not for their destruction, not for the death of their king, not for them to die in their sins, but for their welfare. The Hebrew word for ‘welfare’ here, shalom, could be translated ‘peace.’ And biblically a shalom-peace does not connote the absence of conflict per se, but the presence of God. Shalom is the state of God’s presence, power, and way in the midst of a situation. There’s a rightness to shalom that harkens back to when God walked in the cool of the evening with man in the Garden of Eden. But it’s also a prophetic vision of the coming kingdom of God in the New Testament. But even in the Gospels the kingdom is still a mustard seed version of the consummated kingdom with Jesus’ bodily earthly reign to come.
2. Rooting Down: Staying Put and Flourishing
Verses 5–6 builds an alternative vision of embracing the city. Instead of a church leaving the city using geographic space for comfort or culturally rejecting the city and wider culture through fundamentalism (i.e. Christian sub-culture). God instructs them to build houses, live in them, plant gardens, and eat the fruit. This command intentionally echoes the first part of the creation mandate of humans to work, live, have dominion, and thrive from Genesis 1:28. God will be keeping his promises even the midst of chaos. Food will come from the ground. They must stay put through the seasons and years to receive the yield of gardens. Verse 6 tells us the houses they build will be full of people as God will continue to divinely bless their marriages with offspring echoing the second part of the creation mandate to ‘be fruitful and multiply.’ They are even told not to decrease! This means the Jews must not stop living. They will continue to be their own people. God doesn’t instruct them to marry Babylonians, gardening and house building is a distinct neighborhood making. But God doesn’t say flee, hunker down, or reject. He says live in the city.
3. Living with God as Center: Peace through Presence
When God’s people are the people of God, then God is there. It may bring judgment (see Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19) but it also brings a measure of peace that’s supernatural, fragrant and attractive. To some this gospel presence will be an aroma of death, but to others an aroma of life. (2nd Corinthians 2:16) In this way, the Jewish people served Babylon. They were witness of model citizenry and neighborliness when they could have been plotting a rebellion. In their politics, worship, and lifestyle, they represented a people whose hope laid with their God, not the frail human rulers of Babylon.
God does not permit worshipping their idols, inter-marrying with their people, or suggest starting business with the Babylonians. But he clearly expects them to become neighbors, part of the local economy, and grow their numbers in the larger population of Babylon. Verse 7 states: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Israel will find it’s welfare/peace in the welfare/peace it brings to Babylon. God’s appeal to cultural mandate is the uniting factor of obedience. Keep creating, having children, and living well as obedience to God in home and work will be the aroma of Christ. God’s people are called to ‘center’ themselves on the core ideas of what it means to be human and live before the face of God amidst of sin-warped city. The Jews will find peace in being a God-centric peacemakers in their city. This leaves room for Daniel’s stand against forced pagan worship (Daniel 3), but the everyday life is to be blessing to their lost pagan neighbors. Tim Keller comments on Jeremiah 29:7 and describes this living for peace among a pagan place this way, “God ties, as it were, the fortunes of the people of God to the effectiveness of their urban ministry.”
4. Living Outward: Choosing Non-Isolation with Evangelism
Jeremiah 29 is written to Israel and the church today has both continuity and discontinuity with Jeremiah’s Israel (depending on where you are on the spectrum of covenantalism to dispensationalism). However, let’s assume what can be canonical deduced that Israel’s call to the city in Jeremiah 29 has merit for the church today but also a few key differences as the church is a new creation with a gospel message to spread empowered by the Holy Spirit.
The first major difference is the commission of Israel was a generally a ‘come and see’ gospel to the nations. Nations were to observe and be drawn to Israel as the shining example of nation living under and with the true God. Their lives, laws, and way of worship were to be attractive and God would shine as the center of their lives as creator, provider, protector, deliverer, healer, and the forgiving one. This continues in Jeremiah 29 as Israel is called to seek the peace of the city, but isn’t called to directly proclaim the truth of God nor proselytize. Israel models life with God and their multiplication strategy is to have more biological children. (Jeremiah 29:7) However, the church has a clear commission to take the gospel to the nations (Matthew 28:18–20, Acts 1:8) and believe in the power of God for multiplication through spiritual regeneration over biological birth. (John 3:1–21, Acts 12:24) Given the above praying up, rooting down, and peace through presence, the church is given a final action to practice thoughtful, loving, and patient evangelism. Evangelism in this manner is the kindest of all actions. It’s a supernatural transfer, proclamation, and demonstration of the life and work of Jesus Christ. The gospel is the greatest need for a city because it’s the greatest needs for a person and a city is it’s people.
Second key difference from Israel is Jeremiah 29 is the spatio-temporal distinctiveness of Jewish cultural identity is replaced by a spiritual communion across and through all cultures in the church universal. There is no ‘Christian’ culture. The world’s cultures all have elements of creation and fall intermingled and the Christian is called to live their culture out in a Christian manner. This is how Christians in a city can demonstrate their ‘good deeds’ in understandable ways to the culture around them. (Matthew 5:16, 1st Peter 2:12). Israel had the law, distinctive food regulations, a language, and a specific home in the land of Israel. Christians have super-natural life as members of Christ body. This means Christians must live out their culture accepting the good, redeeming what they can with the power of the gospel, and rejecting the outright evil. In this way the church ‘loves’ the city. They proclaim the truth of the gospel, the most loving of all actions. The church seeks to live beautifully with careful thought to accepting, redeeming, and rejecting culture.
Last, the church seeks their neighbors’ good and explains clearly when seeking their neighbor’s good is controversial. Keller explains, “As future citizens of heaven, Christians must see and avoid the idolatries and injustices of their culture, even as they continue to enjoy its common grace blessings.” It’s help to think of the church being ‘for’ the city over ‘loves’ the city. Often, love describes an agape love that’s unconditional. However, there are many things the church is called to resist, protest, and be against: harmful policies, companies, or institutions that hurt things like families, the poor, the environment or systemic race issues, which discriminate or hold citizens down. Against sex trafficking, drug trafficking, and violence. The church should love their city, but a sojourning church’s love will ultimately be tension filled existence of wanting the truth of gospel, a beautiful existence, and neighbors’ good. Therefore, being ‘for’ the city might be a clearer path than our culturally muddled term ‘love’ of the city. Here is an adapted chart from Tim Keller’s showing different Models of Urban Ministry, highlighting the different postures of the church towards the city. The four-fold approach is represented by final view.
ï We despise the city. Church as fortress. Forgetting city as Jerusalem, the good of the city.
ï We are the city. Church as mirror. Forgetting city as Babylon, the bad of the city.
ï We use the city. Church as consumer. Forgetting city as battleground, Great Commission at stake.
ï We are for the city. Church as light, salt. Four-Fold approach.
Movement in New Testament:
A Movement that Prays, Stays, Pursues Peace, and Evangelizes the City.
Christ becomes victor by dying outside the gates of his fore-fathers, the city of David. Christ’s attitude towards the city tension filled. He loves it, longs for it, and sees the city as more than brick and mortar. The people of the city are lost without their shepherd. Christ uses a metaphor situating himself as a mother hen who longs to gather Jerusalem’s people under his wings. (Matthew 23:37) The imagery of the Psalms can’t be missed. (Psalm 17, 91, etc.) Yahweh, God himself, is the one who David cried out for the protective wings of a mighty God. Jesus also can’t stand religious authorities gathered there, pompous political figures, and ultimately the people f Jerusalem in mob-like fashion have Jesus crucified after a sham trial. The city was a symbol of refuge in the Old Testament, a concept created by God giving greater safety, justice, and support to man’s life. Yet the city would be no refuge for Jesus. He breathed his last, dies on a cross, and arises again to make peace between God and man, then launching his global evangelism mission for the world.
Apostle Paul continues the pray, stay, peace, and evangelism model in his own approach to new cities and leaves it as a template as he moves form city to city. Paul’s letters are filled with prayer, affirmation to stay working among the people and taking on the challenge of loving the poor (1st Thessalonians 5:16–17, 12–13, Galatians 2:10). Paul prescribes a peace seeking presence and character in hostile circumstances (Philippians 4:5–9) and emphasis on evangelism. (2nd Timothy 4:5, Romans 10:11–15) It is widely affirmed Paul influential cities as his general mission strategy guided by the Spirit and he left an adapted Jeremiah 29 model in place.
Peter gives us another model of this by refusing to leave Jerusalem (staying and praying) even in persecution because of his permanence in authority and influence for the region. Peter’s work to preserve the church in the holy city (peace) and continue evangelism is noted (1st Peter 3:15). Peter will only be unseated from Jerusalem to die in the greatest city of the age, Rome. Furthermore, the great sending church of Acts is Antioch. (Acts 11:26, 15:22) giving us our first the model of a multi-cultural and intentional missionary sending. Diversity of leadership gives plausibility to cross-cultural mission Paul and Barnabus were sent on. The church has tremendous opportunity in the rapidly diversifying cities of America. Mission means go, but it always means pray, stay, seek peace, and evangelize in the city.
