.A Ephesus Family Conference, 5

If you have your Bibles with you, open them once again to look of Jeremiah Jeremiah chapter twenty nine. For those of you who weren't with us in the earlier session, we looked at the most popular verse in Jeremiah chapter twenty nine, the most popular verse in the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. And we talked about the importance of viewing this verse in context. We have a tendency to look at this verse and to rip it out of its context and see this verse as a promise for us for here, for now, as a promise that God always and only intends good things for us. We talked about the fact that that leads us to difficulty when life happens, because difficulties do come, hardships do come, sickness comes, and when those things happen, we have one of two tendencies. Either we say that Satan got in the way of what God intended, or that our lack of faith got in the way of what God intended, and both of those are unacceptable answers. Because God is sovereign, he sits enthroned in the heavens. He does whatever pleases him. Our God is the God who gives us the Book of Revelation, because he knows what the future holds, and he controls the future, he controls the present. We then move beyond the theological difficulty of thinking that way to the textual difficulty of thinking that way. We talked about five rules of hermeneutics, context, context, context being the first three. Fourth one a text can't mean what it never meant, and fifth narrative is not normative. When we looked at the context, we saw that Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven is part of a letter, a letter that was written to a specific people during a specific time, in a specific place, under specific circumstances. Jews, not all Jews, but Jews in the Babylonian pre exile before the fall of Jerusalem the Fall of Judah in five eighty six BC. The Northern Kingdom fell in seven twenty two to Assyria. The Southern Kingdom. The Kingdom of Judah fell to Babylon in five eighty six, but before that there was a group taken away by Nebukandezer into Babylon. Most famous among these is Daniel, Hanna and I, Michael and Azariah, and we know them from the Book of Daniel. They're part of this pre exile group that was taken away. And we saw in the first three verses that Jeremiah is writing a letter to this group. So it's a letter written to a specific group of people in a specific place, during a specific time, under specific circumstances. So the point is this, Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven, is not a promise made to you. It is not a promise made to me. Period. It is not. And again we object to that and talked about the fact that most of the times we objected that, and we say, what all of the promises in the Bible are made to me, and know they're not. Prime example, you will bear a son and you will call his name Jesus. Right, it's a promise in the Bible, not made to you, right, not, no, not, it's not okay. And we do this with a lot of promises. Second Chronicles seven fourteen. My people will call by my name, right. Well, you rip that out of context, and we make it about America and it is not, cannot, and will never be a promise about America. It is us about the temple in Israel. Amen, somebody, it's a promise about the temple in Israel. Right. What I didn't say in the last session is this is that while all of the promises in the Bible apply to us, they're not promises made to us. But they all apply to us in some way. We have to understand them first in order to apply them. There are some promises in the Bible that are made directly to you. You don't have to, you know, figure out how they apply to the original audience, and then apply them to you. They applied directly to you, and you can just have them. You want to go claim those promises, you can, like two Timothy three twelve, all those who desire to live a godly life in Christ, Jesus shall be persecuted. That's your promise. You can. You can have it right here, right now. Just go get it right, claim your persecution in Jesus' name. Right. And so we started with the context, and then we look very importantly at verse four because that next rule, that fourth rule, is the text can't mean what it never meant, right, And we claim that this verse means that if something bad happens to you, it's from somewhere else, because God would not send that upon his people. And we saw in verse four. Thus as the Lord of Host, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. So the boot of the oppressor is on their neck, and God put it there. God did this, He didn't allow it to happen. He did this. He is punishing his people. He has brought this upon his people. He is sovereign, he is God, he is in control. And again this is good news because if God can't control Babylon, if he can't keep Babylon from oppressing Israel, then how can you trust him to get you to heaven? Amen? And know this, All you deserve is death, hell and the grave. Anything beyond that is a blessing. Amen. You don't even deserve the breath that you just stole. Notice I didn't say you borrowed it because you're not gonna give it back, right, You don't deserve that, You don't. You don't. And so let's understand this properly. Then we looked at the fact that this promise is a promise not only is not made to us, but it's a promise that's not for the here and the now. We looked at the fact that Jeremiah says, don't listen to the prophets who are prophesying to you, and you go back to chapter twenty eight, and you know that there was a prophet who was prophesying, Hey, a little while, and this will all be over. That was a he died for prophesying falsely to the people of God. Again, the other principle of Hermaeneutics's narrative is not normative, and as much as we love for that to be true, sometimes right there's a lot of false prophets out there that I just wish would just but they don't. Amen. It's probably good news, because there's a lot of days when I deserve to right, but I don't. But these false prophets were saying it'll all be over, and Jeremiah says, seventy years and I'll visit you. We know that that just gets us to the edict of King Cyrus of Persia. But it's after that, under Ezra and Neemiah later on that Israel comes back into the land as promised, which means that the promise of Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven is not a right now, right here promise. Everyone who heard this promise and received this promise in this letter would die before it was fulfilled. It is a multigenerational promise. So here's what's interesting. We take this promise kicking and screaming out of context, and first of all, we make a theological error in saying that it means that only good things always for me from God. It doesn't mean that. Secondly, we hold onto this promise as a right here, right now promise when in its context it is a multigenerational promise, not a right here, right now promise. It's a multigenerational promise. And here's the third one. Here's the third one. Look with me in verse starting in verse eleven. Now, this is where we suffer a bit when we're reading in the English language, because when we're reading in the English language, it's much more difficult to tell if we're talking first person, second person, third person, right, first person, me, second person, you, third person right? When that's plural, it's problem is it you or is it y'all? See, we Texans have an advantage there. Our English is much better than yours because you know second person singular, you second person plural, y'all. You read that, you know exactly what you need the Texas version of the Bible. You read the Texas version of the Bible. There's no confusion as to whether he's knocked over somebody you or where's somebody y'all. Right, But here we have a difficulty because we don't have a Texan doing the ESV. But if we had a text in doing the ESV, there's something that would become painfully clear here. So I'm going to do a bit of a translation on the fly and see what a difference it makes. For I know the plans I have for y'all, declares the Lord, plans for welfare, not for evil, to give y'all a future and a hope. Then y'all will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear y'all. Now see, we laugh, we laugh, But that makes all the difference in the world. This is not an individual promise. This is a corporate promise. We're piling up problems here, guys. Number one, we rip this out of the context and we make it from me, not for you. Secondly, we make it for now, not for now. Thirdly, we make it individual. When it's not individual, it's corporate. It's corporate. And you say, well, okay, fine, mister. You know text in translation, but my Bible doesn't have the text in translation. My Bible says you, It doesn't say y'all. So how do I know that y'all telling the truth. Well, let's look at it. I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and to hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. So far, I haven't proven my point yet, right, I can still be individual. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Again, that could be individual. I will be found by you, declares the Lord. And I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord. And I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. If it's singular, he's bringing you back in pieces. Amen. That's the only way that this could be singular. The only way that this promise could be a singular promise is if he's sending pieces of you all over the world and he's going to bring all the pieces of you back together in Jerusalem. I don't know about you. I'm not too happy about that promise. But the way this works is if the you is actually y'all, and if the y'all is the nation of Israel as a whole, and not even the nation of Israel as in the individuals here and now, but the nation of Israel as in the people of God God, who will exist for eternity. That way it makes sense. This is not for you, This is not for now. This is for the people of God, and God is saying to the people of God, the boot of the oppressor is on your neck. But that's okay, because your children's children's children will come back to this land as the people of God. They will be restored as the people of God, and I will fulfill my promise to them as the people of God. It's the only way Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven makes sense in context. And ironically, it's because of that that it's absolutely ridiculous and erroneous. To use this verse as a here and now promise for you as an individual. That's abusive. You should be arrested for textual abuse for doing that. You can't do that. It's wrong to do that. Not only is it wrong, but it's harmful to do that, because when you do that, this is a promise for me, This is a promise for here, This is a promise for now. Life doesn't work like that, and it messes up your theology. You go to the doctor and you get a bad report, and all of a sudden you've got to do theological gymnastics to figure out how this verse can be true. And you have cancer. There's a downturn in the economy or maybe just in your industry, and all of a sudden you find yourself unemployed, broke. What are you gonna do with Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven. His plan is to prosper you, and you're broke. What do you do with that? Do you know that there are people who have not walked, but run away from the church because of stuff like this? They gave me Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven. Then I got cancer and then I went bankrupt. They lied to me. Yes, actually they did, because Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven has nothing to do with you not getting sick. It has nothing to you with you not being broke. Here's another problem with this people, and this is something that has just come raining down on me. The last three years, I've lived in the heart of Sub Saharan Equatorial Africa, in Zambia, in South central Africa, and I live and serve among wonderful godly people, Reform Baptists of Zambia, an incredible, incredible movement of God in Sub Saharan Africa. For the last thirty years, this indigenous work has been planting churches, multiplying leaders. It's incredible. And in American terms, these are poor people. These are poor people. You know. One of the things that misusing a verse like this does is it ignores the people of God who don't live here in the center of the universe. Most of the Christians in the world are not prosperous. And for us, as prosperous Americans, to say that this verse means that the people of God will be prosperous is to condemn Christians all over the world who are not. You're following me, because if this verse means that, then what do you say to the Zambian who lives on two dollars a day that what he's not godly enough? What do you say to your brothers and sisters in Indonesia, China? What do you say to faithful brethren all over the world who are being persecuted? You realize, for example, in the twentieth century, there were more people martyred. More Christians were martyred in the twentieth century than in the nineteenth centuries that came before it combined. What do you say to them? If we say that Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven means all good, all the time, prosperity, never poverty, never poverty, what do you say to the rest of the Christian world If that's the way you view this text? That can't be what it means. That has never been what it means. And I told you earlier for those of you who are upset because I took away your life verse, I'm gonna give it back to you. I'm gonna give it back to you better. And here it is. I'm getting ready to give it back to you. This is a multi generational promise. What this means, it's a couple of things. One, the fact that this is a multigenerational promise reiterates the sovereignty of God. How do you make a multi generational promise? I mean, I'm a father. Nine times over, I'm a father. And one of the things you learned being a father is to be real careful about making promises. Amen, you learn to be real careful about making promises. You learn to you learn to say things like, Lord willing, will the do so so so right? You know, Daddy's gonna do his best. I'm gonna try. You know. You you were real hard, you know. And if if as a father, you are going to look into the face of your child and say I promise you, what that means is you have control over the variables so that you can bring that to pass. Did you hear what I just said, which means that as a dad, I would never make a multi generational promise. I Am not going to look in the face of my child and make a promise that I intend to fulfill personally to their children, because I can't even guarantee that I'm going to be around. But God makes promises to our children's children's children because He is suffering he doesn't have to say, Lord willing, I'll see y'all back here if you make it right. No, listen to it again. I know the plans I have for you to close. The Lord plans for welfare, enough for evil to give you a future and a hope. It to give you a future and a hope. By the way, who are they? These are people who are in exile. When you go into exile, what are you thinking. We've got no future, We've got no hope. The Babylonians have defeated us. By the way, let me put another piece to this puzzle. When Nebuca Nezar comes, he sacks the temple and he takes away these instruments of worship. Why do you do that? Because in the ancient world and for most of history, when people went to war, the understanding was, this is us and our God going to war against you and your god, and if we defeat you, it's because our God is more powerful than your god. So we sack your temple and destroy it, or we take away your instruments of worship so that we can display it so that people can see the gods whom we've defeated. So Nebukan Nezzar comes, he defeats Israel again. Seven twenty two, Northern Kingdom fell, the ten tribes of the North. They're gone into Assyrian captivity. They haven't come back. Now Here you are over one hundred years later, and they still haven't come back. They're gone. Nebuk Nezzar and Babylon terrorizing the world. But we serve God right, Sanakarim tribe Sanacharim couldn't do it. We're good right, No, you're not. You're defeated by Nebuka Nzzer, and he takes off the elite of your culture. You're king, sacks the temple, takes away your implements of worship and in your psyche. What just happened is Yahweh has been defeated. Do you understand this. We haven't been defeated. Judah hasn't been defeated. Our army hasn't been defeated. Yahweh has been defeated. It's over, We're done. And then God's prophet writes a letter, and in the letter he says, don't you fret they didn't just show up. I sent them because I'm God. They didn't defeat me. I'm using them because I'm God, you are being disciplined. And oh, by the way, when it's all said and done, I'll get them too, and then I'll bring you back because I God, this is just good, y'all. I told you I'm gonna give it back to you better. Amen, Here's what else this means. What else this means is this? This means that whatever those temporal things are that we're dealing with, they do not change the spiritual reality in which we hope. We're oppressed by the Babylonians. God is still on his throne. Amen. By the way, here's another reality for them. We will never again see that land of promise. We're going to die in exile and God is still on his wrong Because here's what you need to know. That land of promise called Israel is just an earthly picture of a heavenly reality. There is a land of promise to which it points and it's not a piece of dirt. Amen, it's not. We have hope. Because here's the news flash. Last time I checked, the death rate was one per person. Amen. I didn't look today, but last time I looked, the death rate was one per person. Nobody gets out of here a lot nobody nobody, And most people don't just die. They get sick and then they die. So how can we sit here and say that this verse somehow eliminates the singular reality that every human being must face. You see how crazy that is. But this changes things. This change is perspective. Think about it this way. One person goes into the doctor's office with the wrong understanding of Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven. The doctor says, you have cancer, and he's destroyed. Faith is destroyed, hope is destroyed, everything is destroyed. Another person goes into the doctor armed with the right understanding of Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven. The doctor tells him you have cancer. It's a blow. I guarantee you it's a blow. But this person does not respond the same way that the first person did. Is the first person had a wrong understanding of Jeremiah twenty nine eleven. The next person comes in with a right understanding of Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven, and it's a blow. It may set him back, but eventually he's able to sit up and look and say to the doctor, well, I knew I was going home. Eventually, I guess now I know who's my right. This difference means everything in this life. You will have troubles. Now, I told you that this is all about multi generational vision that leads us to multigenerational faithfulness. And we did skip some verses, and I told you that we come back to them, go back to verse five. So here's the question. If you understand that you are in exile, amen, and we are exiles. I don't care where you are, where you live. You're in exile. We are in America. We live in the center of the universe. And let me explain what I mean by that. Historically, there have been great civilizations, those civilizations that basically sat at the center of the universe, and everybody else learned their language and wanted to trade with them and wanted to be them if they could. Today, this, this is that civilization, the United States of America, the most powerful civilization in the history of the world. Right here, right now. Today, we travel the world with a magic passport. It's crazy. Zambians want to go somewhere where they gotta They gotta go here, they gotta go there. They got to send their passport off to the consulate. They got to I don't understanding that. I got the magic passport. Where you want to go wherever? Okay, fine, show up, show on your passport. You got a visa? No, you don't need one. Boom. We're in because we're the center of the universe. The only people that give us a hard time about our passport to the people who hate us. We live in the center of the universe. Our money spends just about anywhere most places you go. You don't even have to exchange it. I'm sorry I didn't get to exchange it. All I have is these dollars. You're good, We'll figure something out. But even though we live in the center of the universe, as Christians, we are strangers in a strange land, and we are exiles because as good as it is, this is not as good as it gets. This is not home. This is not home. We yearn for a city whose builder and maker is God. This is Egypt, Amen, This is Egypt, as wonderful as we have it here, this is Egypt. This is not home. So, as exiles, how do we live? Beginning of verse five? Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce. Number one We lay down roots. We lay down roots. An unusual idea right here. It is here we are, We're God's people. Were where Israel, and all of a sudden, here comes Babylon. We're gonna go into exile. Our god's been defeated. No, our God has not been defeated. Okay, so this is not gonna last long. No, actually it is gonna last long. So what do we do? Lay down roots? Lay down roots right where you are. Heaven is your home, Heaven is what you hope for. But it's not time right now. There's work to be done. So lay down roots and do the work. Build houses, live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce. Be the type of person who lays down roots. It's amazing. When we were kids, we used to play tag, and and we there's a bunch of different ways that people play tag, but we still always play tag where you know, there was there was a base, and if you got the base and you were safe, right, and one person was it and everybody else would go out, and you know, and person who was it gotta you know tag all the other people, and you know the way you could win is you get away from them and hide from them, and you either be fast enough or sneaky enough and you run and dive and get the base, and then you say I'm not it next time because I got the base. Right, you get the base, you're safe. I mean we would dive, crawl, scratch, fight whatever to get to get to base. You know, when you live with a multi generational vision and when you parent with a multi generational vision, you want to raise your children in an environment where your home is base. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, no matter what you go through, just know that if you can get here, you say, lay down roots, lay down roots. As believers, there's another piece of this though. As believers, we have the opportunity not just to view our homes and our houses like this, but there is another house that encompasses this reality. Is the House of God. It's the church. It's the church, the place where the people of God of say, we don't just build houses for ourselves, but we build houses for us. That's what we do in the church. There's a second thing. 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 one of the saddest things that I hear, and I hear it a lot is Christian people who proclaim that they know and love Jesus, who say ridiculous things like I wouldn't want to bring a child into this world. God help us, because if you don't, who else will. If believers don't have enough hope and faith in the one who controls the future to gladly bring children into the world, then there's no hope for civilization as we know it. Think about that, it doesn't pass the thirty five second rule. Thirty five second rule. Close your eyes and think about it for thirty five seconds, and you'll realize how crazy it is. This world is terrible. I am a child of the King. I am a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has called me to bring up children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. He has called us to go forth and take the Gospel to every creature, every nation. We have a mission that hasn't been fulfilled yet. I'm probably not going to live long enough to fulfill it. Let me not reproduce. Do you hear how crazy that sounds? It's crazy. Dog. People who have children are people who have hope people who have hope are people who have children. Amen, somebody we ought to be outbringing everybody. Huh. Christians afraid to bring children into the world because things have gotten so bad. Christians in America who are afraid to bring children in the world because things have gotten so many. Yeah. Yeah, it's getting crazier all the time, isn't it. Someone twenty seven, Someone twenty eight. Children are a blessing, an inheritance. Huh. Our attitude towards children though a boyfriend me and a girl for you, and praise the Lord will finally through. Right, that's our attitude towards children. There's only one circumstance wherein we will allow you, and I'm talking about in the church. In the church. In the church, we look at you like you're crazy. If you got a bunch of kids, two of them, right, If you have two of them, you have the perfect little family. You have more than two. There's only one circumstance wherein we'll give you a pass and we won't look at you like you're crazy and talk about you behind your back. And that is if you get the same sex the first two times and you want to try for the other one, right, then we kind of go, yeah, yeah, you gotta round that out, you got you know. Other than that, even Christian people look at you like you've lost it, like you've lost it. I love it when we walk through the airport, you know, we walk through the airport and we get they don't say a word, you know, and then they look at my wife like we praise people like Susanna Wesley because all the children that she raised, isn't that amazing. We look at heroes from the past who lived in one room shacks and raised ten twelve kids, and we live in three thousand square foot houses with two cars outside and say we can't afford another one. Can't say amen, you want to say out. This is a issue. This is a hope issue. We don't believe that children are blessing. And we believe that there is something more important and more significant than pouring our life and the truth of the Gospel into the next generation. And nothing, nothing is more significant than that. And I'm not sitting here talking to you about this because this is something that I've always understood and always gotten right, I haven't. I told the kids on Friday, Bridge and I got married the summer between my sophomore and junior year in college. I met her January twenty first, nineteen eighty nine. We got married June thirtieth, nineteen eighty nine. Our first child was born ten months later. Because we were efficient and junior year in college. Right, I'm married and have a daughter. And people thought we were absolutely crazy, and I look back on it, and we were. But praise God for crazy, amen. And so we, you know, we kind of chilled a little bit, and it was three years before our next child was born. And then our next child was a boy, and so we had a daughter, and we had a son again, a perfect little family. And the voices, the voices that crowded in on us at that time, the voices, and I wish that we could I could say we withstood, but we didn't. And so when the second child was born, we hired a doctor to speak to God on our behalf, and with his scalpel and his sutures, he said to God, this couple no longer wants you, needs you, or trust you in this area of their life. Several years later, my wife came to me one day, and she came to me. I was sitting down. She knelt down in front of me and put her head on my lap, and she said, I need you to forgive me. Husband's sitting there, a wife comes, I need you to forgive me. All kinds of stuff is racing through my mind right thinking about starting the prison ministry. I mean, what what? And she looks at me and she says she'd never have gotten my two stack. That was wrong. Shouldn't have done it. And I looked back at her and I said, babe, I am your husband called to be the head, called to lead. That happened on my watch. I'm sorry. She looked at me and she said, are you serious. Yes, I am. She said, okay, because there's this procedure and it costs a lot of money. Okay. So we went back and we told another doctor, doctor, please tell God that we don't mean what that other doctor said. And the doctor said to us, after thorough examination, I can't fix this incredible moment in my life as a husband, as a man, because here is the moment. The moment is a decision has been made. There's nothing that we can do about it. My wife is grieving over what happened. I'm grieving over what happened, but I can't grieve too much, because if I grieve too much, it makes her grief even deeper. Several months later, we decided that we would trust the Lord to expand our family through adoption. So we walked into an adoption agency with our two children in tow, and we said to the lady at the desk, we would really love to adopt a couple few kids. And she literally said, wait here, got up and walked away, but is there's something wrong with us? It's something she comes back with the director of the adoption agency. It says, tell her what you just told me. And we told them we would love to adopt a couple of few kids, and the ladies just became extremely emotional because here's what we didn't know. What we didn't know is that in the adoption world, white babies or white families wait for babies. Black babies wait for families. At that time, to adopt a healthy white baby was between twenty four and twenty eight thousand dollars. To adopt a healthy black baby was between six and eight thousand dollars. Because nobody was lining up to adopt black babies, adoption agencies wait watch and pray for black families to come through the door and say will adopt a baby. But overwhelmingly, most adoption agencies rarely, if ever see a black family walk through the doors saying that they want to adopt a baby. And so when we walked through, they had been praying because they have birth mothers who come and say that they want to place their family, their baby with a black family, and the overwhelming majority of adoption agencies in America have to say, sorry, we don't have one and don't even know where to find one. One time we went through this process preparing ourselves for an adoption. Seven times we've adopted one time. We went through the process one time because after we adopted one baby, adoption agencies from all over the place who communicate with one another, right, so we would just get phone calls because we were a black family with a home study proved for adoption, and the overwhelming majority of adoption agencies around the country, if someone comes and says they want to place their child with a black family, they've got to get on the phone and start calling. And so we got call after call after call and adopted seven babies in nine years. And in that same nine year period, we had to turn down three more So I'm not standing here talking about multi generational vision and the multiplication of children as somebody who's always gotten this right, but as somebody who's gotten it terribly wrong. And we got it terribly wrong because we lacked hope. Because bringing children into the world is about hope. When Christ came into the world, hope, Amen, hope, hope. When every one of us comes to Christ in faith and are born again, there is hope. Every time a child is born, we have hope that that child will come to faith in Christ. And as the Kingdom might expand there is hope, there is hope that the Gospel might advance, there is hope, There is hope. There is hope. We lay down roots and we multiply because we have hope. We have hope because we're the people of God, and we believe that God is going to restore his people. So even in the midst of exile, we live like people with hope. Usually people in exile don't multiply because they lose all hope. But God's people are not like that. Even in exile, we have hope. We have hope. Thirdly, verse seven, this one makes almost no sense. Seek the welfare of the city where I've sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf or in its welfare you will find your welfare. This is completely counterintuitive. The boot of the oppressor is on your neck because I put it there. Pray. Yeah, I'm gonna pray. Lord, please get the boot of the oppressor off my neck. Get nebukand desert. Do bad things to him. Do m no, no no no no no no no no no. Pray for Babylon. That's what he says. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. He's saying, seek the welfare of Babylon, because in its welfare you will have your welfare. Why, because you're not going anywhere. You're here. Pray for the welfare of this place where you are, because you're here, and you can only do that when there's hope. Again, this is completely counterinto it, but is it. I'll tell you a story I told the young people on Friday at the school. First time I went to Zambia two thousand and six. I'm there and I'm preaching. I remember two things very distinctly. One, I'm preaching at evangel Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, and this eighty five year old man comes up to me. Papa sing Goo Goo. His son was the pastor of the church, Doctor Graves and Goo Goo pediatricians, a Biblicational pastors, a pediatrician and a pastor, and his dad eighty five years old at the time, by the way, still going strong. It's twelve years later, in ninety seven. Papa sing Goo Goo's still there. He walks up to me, all sprat. He was still driving himself around at the time, and he just, you know, shakes my hand and guts my shoulders. It's your first time in Africa. I said, yes, sir, it is, and he just kissed my face and said, son, welcome home. I just I didn't get over that from my whole trip, right, I didn't get over that for my whole trip. I just lost my father, by the way, my father died in April and in August. My father talked about Africa all the time. I never got to go. And so I'm there, and later on I'm preaching at another church and I stand up there and all of a sudden, it just dawns on me. Several hundred years ago, my ancestors were ripped involuntarily from that continent, thrown in the bottom of ships, brought across the Atlantic as slaves, here under horrendous conditions to suffer inhumanly, for generations, to have the boot of the oppressor on their neck. All hope seemed lost. Language gone, culture gone, freedom gone. But they were brought to the center of the universe. And now, because God prospered the place that oppressed them, their descendants are citizens of the center of the universe. And here I was in possession of some of the finest theological training available on planet Earth, and God took me back there to give it away. Why because He blessed Babylon while my people were slaves in it. And I am blessed because He blessed Babylon, and I can be a blessing because He blessed Babylon generations ago. This would have been counterintuitive today today, Today it is a picture of the sovereignty of God and how he uses even the worst of circumstances. Praise God that my ancestors didn't say, ah, who would want to bring a child into the world under these circumstances? But they did, and by God's grace, we did not disappear, but we thrived. So what does this mean? I'm glad you asked. How do you think about your family? Do you think about your family simply in terms of right here, right now, prosperity for the moment. Do you think about your family just in terms of surviving your children? Or do you think about your family in terms of God's multigenerational purpose and plan and how it is that you can live and invest today with a view toward what God intends to do in the future. In the fullness of time, God sent his son, born of a woman born under the law. His son went into exile so that he could free us. Amen. And because Christ into exile and then went into the exile of the cross, and went into the exile of the grave. Because of his exile, we are made free because of his exile. The Gospel goes forth to every tribe, kindred tongue, and nation because of his exile. Prisoners are set free, as the Gospel goes forth, because of his exile. And it is because of his exile that we can not only survive our exile, but see it completely differently. And we build houses in plant gardens, and we marry and given marriage, and we bear sons and daughters, and we multiply, and we pray, we pray for God to bless the land of our exile. Why because we live in hope. We live in hope. That's why. Can you see the difference this makes? Are their parenting skills? Yes, they're parenting skills. My book's out there and a lot of stuff about you know, the ABC's and one two threes of the parenting skills. Go get that, Go get that great, get them all buy my books. Wonderful. But if you just get parenting skills but do not have the right multi generational vision for what it means to raise children, then what are you going to raise them for? So you can give them more stuff than your parents gave you. That won't change, Babylon. We're about something different. Where about something more? And my prayer for you, my prayer for me, my prayer for us, is that we would take hold of this multi generational vision, and that this multi generational vision would take hold of us, and that we wouldn't just live our lives, we would invest them. We wouldn't just raise our children, we would invest in them for the sake of Christ and his kingdom. For the sake of those who have yet to hear, for the sake of those yet unborn, that Christ might indeed have the fullness of the reward for which he died. Let's wry, Oh God, how we thank you, How we praise you, how we rejoice in you, How we love you, knowing that we love you only because you first loved us. Father, we thank you that even in our worst days, you are still on your throne. Even under our worst circumstances, we are not forgotten that, even in the midst of our exile, we are children of the most High God, sons and daughters of the King, and citizens of a kingdom that is already and not yet. We anxiously anticipate and await the consummation of Your kingdom. In the meantime, Make us faithful, make us hopeful, make us fruitful. We pray this in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen. M