God's Welfare Plan

Well, happy Labor Day weekend. I'm Brian Loretz, and it's just a joy to serve here. And as we are just continuing to get to know each other, you should know something about me. I'm a huge lover of jazz.

You really don't understand. I love jazz so much, we actually named our middle son Miles after Miles Davis. And then I read a biography on Miles Davis after I named my son Miles and wished I hadn't have done that. It's like I tell Miles all the time, we're going to redeem the name. We're going to redeem the name. You should also know that when Cory was pregnant with Miles, I actually wanted to name him Coltrane after John Coltrane.

My wife had to stop me. She says, I'm praying with you about Miles, but Coltrane is a bit much. You can't love jazz without loving John Coltrane. John Coltrane to me is the best saxophonist there ever was. In fact, in the 1950s, as he's just moving towards the zenith of his powers, he actually plays on the number one selling jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue. And then it happens. Right around that time when he is in demand, everyone wants him, he finds himself at death's door, having overdosed on one of the substances that he was addicted to.

Isn't it interesting? He's extremely popular, extremely wealthy at the time, and extremely empty. But God used this in a very significant way in John Coltrane's life. It was at this moment when he's at death's door that he would have a conversion experience, a Damascus road experience like Paul had in Acts Chapter 9 that would totally just turn his world upside down. So much so that not long after this experience, John Coltrane would record one of the most important albums in any genre. It's called A Love Supreme. And if you have the vinyl copy of that, like my middle son Miles has, and you read the liner notes, here's what you'll see John Coltrane saying.

Will you look at it with me? Coltrane says in the liner notes, In the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of God a spiritual awakening which has led me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through his grace. All praise to God. It's at that moment where Coltrane kind of says, I don't exist to fulfill my own mission in life. What if God has actually given me this gift of music to leverage it to advance his purposes and his mission in and through my life?

In fact, not long after this, John Coltrane is actually playing one of the cuts from A Love Supreme at a club in San Francisco. And right when he gets done, he mutters words under his breath that only a few on the front row heard. It's the Latin phrase, nunt demitas, nunt demitas.

It comes from a Latin prayer that simply means, Lord, let your servant depart in peace. Do you hear the satisfaction there? Again, it's as if Coltrane is saying this gift of music isn't just for me. I want to leverage it for God's good purposes, for his mission here on earth. See, what Coltrane teaches us is a valuable lesson in life. That when we live for our agenda, when we live for our mission, we end up not fulfilled but empty. But when we tap into something that is outside of ourselves, when we tap into God's mission for our lives, we catch the side effect of fulfillment along the way. This is exactly God's point when we come to Jeremiah chapter 29.

In fact, if you've got your Bibles, I want you to just navigate there with me right now. A little bit of the setting to Jeremiah chapter 29. The people of God, for centuries, really since day one, God says to them, I've created you to live on mission. He sets them free from the nation of Egypt.

He takes them through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. And finally, they end up in the promised land, surrounded by these secular nations. And God's call is, I want you to live on mission right here. This is your mission field, and yet, if you know anything about the history of Israel, they continue to neglect God's missional call on their lives.

And they chose to live for their own mission, their own agenda, and it did not work well with them. In fact, over the years, over the centuries, we see in the Old Testament God pleading with Israel, live on mission, tap into my agenda, neglect your agenda, and live for mine. And over and over, Israel rejects.

And meanwhile, God graciously sends prophet after prophet after prophet, and they turn them down. The result being that finally, they end up in what's called the Babylonian exile. That's right where Israel is when we come to the book of Jeremiah. In fact, if you want to hear more about how Israel felt, I'd encourage you to write down Psalm 137, because in that Psalm, it says that by the rivers or waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept.

Here's Israel. They didn't find fulfillment when they lived for their own mission. They only found sorrow and emptiness. You know, someone once said the problem with life is that it's oh so daily. That resonates with me. I don't know if it resonates with you all at all. It really resonates with me.

You know, here we are, as many of us are tuning in as followers of Jesus Christ. And you know, if you're not careful, you can just wake up one day and realize that life for us has been all about paying our apartment rent or mortgage or man, what am I going to major in? What am I going to do for a living? Kids and our needs, our needs, our needs.

And you can literally wake up one day and realize I've really been living for myself. And you can find yourself drifting from the mission that God has ordained. There's one word I want you to write down in Jeremiah 29. It's the word mission. It's all about mission. That's what this call is to this people of exile. I want to define this word mission to you. And I want to draw you into three key truths that you and I, as followers of Jesus Christ, are going to have to tap into if we're going to find the kind of nunct demetus, the kind of fulfillment John Coltrane and so many others who are followers of Jesus Christ have found throughout the year.

But first of all, let's read the text. Beginning in verse one of Jeremiah 29, it says this. These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and watch this, and all the people.

Now let me just stop right there and say this. This letter isn't just for those who are in full-time vocational ministry. It's not just for prophets. It's not just for priests. It actually says it's for all the people.

So if you're a barista at a coffee company, if you're a landscaper, if you're a full-time stay-at-home parent, whatever it may be, this is a call for you and I as well. Whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Verse two, this was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother of the eunuchs, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem.

The craftsmen and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elisah the son of Shaphan and Gammari the son of Hilkiah whom Zedekiah, man reading the Old Testament is going to increase my vocabulary, king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. It said, underline verse four, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles, here it is, whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives, 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 don't decrease. But seek, underline this, seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and prayed to the Lord on its behalf. For in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets or your diviners who are among you deceive you and do not listen to the dreams that they dream. For it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name.

I didn't send them, declares the Lord. For thus says the Lord, when 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. Now if you've been around the church for a while, verse 11 may sound familiar. 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. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will 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. So God's called you and I to live on mission.

What does that mean? Again, I want to draw your attention to verse 7. He says, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Now in order to get our arms around this, I want to take you to a passage of scripture that I believe every follower of Jesus Christ should be familiar with. It's Genesis chapter 12, verses 1 through 3. It's what theologians call the Abrahamic covenant. I love what Pastor Tom Nelson of Denton Bible says of Genesis 12, 1 through 3. He says it's absolutely important Christians understand the Abrahamic covenant because it will help them, here it is, palm their Bibles.

I love that imagery. Genesis 12, 1 through 3 is huge for us to get a grip on what God is doing throughout redemptive history. The essence of Genesis 12, 1 through 3 is simple. It is God saying to Abraham, the father of the Jews, I'm going to use you and the Jews, my people, to be a vehicle of blessing to the world. In fact, all of the scripture can be seen in this light.

Let me give you a couple of examples. Later on in Genesis, there's a Jew by the name of Joseph. He's one of the patriarchs, one of the fathers of the nation of Israel.

Through a set of circumstances, he finds himself in Egypt, this Gentile nation, the leading nation of his day. He's second in command, navigates this Gentile nation through a famine, and literally the whole world seeks an audience with Joseph. Do you not see the Abrahamic covenant, God using a Jew to bless the world? Or come to the book of Daniel. Here is Daniel, a Jew, during the same period of time that Jeremiah is written in, the Babylonian exile. And yet God uses this Jew, Daniel, to lead Nebuchadnezzar to faith in God in Daniel chapter four, and to lead Darius to faith in God in Daniel chapter six. And then ultimately, God uses the ultimate God Jew, Jesus Christ, who would get on a cross and die for the sins of the world. Don't you understand that the whole Bible is an unfolding of the Abrahamic covenant? And now, what is he called, you and I, as followers of Jesus Christ, too?

No, we may not be ethnic Jews, but we are part of the covenant people of God. And it's the church of Jesus Christ that has been called to live out his mission. And what is that mission? Again, verse seven tells us, but seek the welfare of the city. What does this mean? The word seek in the Hebrew literally means to look intently.

It literally means to investigate. Welfare is the Hebrew word shalom. We oftentimes think of shalom as peace, and when we think of peace, we think of the absence of strife or struggle or war.

But to the Jew, shalom was much more than that. It was actually, listen to this, comprehensive wholeness, comprehensive wholeness. What is God saying? I want you, those of us, whether you may be in Alamance County or Chapel Hill or anywhere in the Triangle or wherever you may be tuning in from, I have called you, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, to engage in my mission to look intently for ways to bring comprehensive wholeness to wherever you may live. Now, what does that mean?

One more thing, and then I'll show you how this applies. If you want to know what it means to bring comprehensive wholeness, just look at the life of Jesus. Jesus came to this earth to bring welfare, to bring shalom, comprehensive wholeness. How did he do it? He did it in two ways. One, he did it spiritually. Oftentimes, Jesus would say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

What is he doing? He's calling people to turn from their sins, to turn from death to life. But secondly, we also see Jesus healing people, feeding people, clothing people, meeting their sociological, tangible needs. So what does it look like to seek the welfare of the city? Every time you and I share our faith, we are seeking the welfare of the city. Every time we engage in making disciples, producing, reproducing followers of Jesus Christ, we are seeking the welfare of the city. Every time we engage in foster care or adoption or helping to feed or jump in on something like Serve RDU, a wonderful ministry opportunity here, we are engaging, we are seeking the welfare of the city.

And friends, don't you understand? This is what God's called us to. It is this mission that is to be primary and preeminent in our lives. My father in the ministry is a guy by the name of Bishop Kenneth Ulmer. He has taught me just about everything I know about ministry. Now, I don't mind sharing this story with you because he shared it one time when I worked for him in front of 13,000 people.

So I don't think I'm giving anything away here. But he talks about the time when he was in college and he was given this assignment to write this paper. And so, man, he labors really hard for weeks over this paper and he had spent a lot of time and he was so confident. I don't know if you've ever had this experience where you just knew it was going to be an A. It's almost like he slammed that paper down on the professor's desk.

Since the satisfaction, I've aced this bad boy. A couple of days later, he was shocked when he got the paper back, flipped to the back page, big red letter F that was circled. It's not enough to put the F on there, but you've got to circle that thing.

Big red letter F circled. And these words, words to this effect, the professor says, Dear Ken, it's obvious you spent a lot of time on this paper. Your exegesis was deep.

Your insights were wonderful. The sources on the bibliography surpassed the minimum required. Man, this is a wonderful paper. However, the professor said, next time I would suggest you read the syllabus first. Great paper, wrong assignment.

I wonder how many Christians will stand in the presence of God and will hear God say, man, wonderful. You got the degrees and the letters behind your name and you provided a certain standard of living and you did wonderful things, but you really did the wrong assignment. Next time I'd encourage you to consult my syllabus, the Word of God. When we consult his syllabus, we see that one of the things on that syllabus every Christian is called to is to seek the welfare of the city. It is to live on mission for God. That's when true fulfillment happens.

But what does this look like? Number one, there's what I would call the foundation of mission, and it's the fact that God's called us. Look at verse four. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles, and I wanted you to underline this phrase, whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Now, isn't this interesting? I've given you the historical context and I've told you that really what caused them to be in Babylon was their sin. For years they rejected God, but if you read Jeremiah 29 multiple times, God says, no, no, I've sent you here. I've sent you here.

I've sent you here. In other words, God says, I've actually called you in Babylon. Now, remember, the Abrahamic covenant is all about God's hearts for the world. God doesn't just care about Jews. He just wants to use Jews to bless the world. So what does God do?

Okay, you won't listen to me. I'm actually going to bring a Gentile nation who's not only going to bring judgment on you, but I actually want to flip the script. I actually want you to carry out my mission through your lives, even in the midst of your rebellion, and be a blessing to this Gentile nation. Man, God is so much God that even in our rebellion, He can redeem it for good purposes.

I want to be careful there. I'm not greenlighting sin or disobedience or whatever, but some of you all are watching and you're wondering, man, can God use me of all the stuff that I've done? Just look at Israel. God says you're in Babylon. Yeah, your sin caused it, but even though you may be in a place you don't want to be, I can still use you exactly where you're at. In Acts chapter 17, here's Paul. He's on Mars Hill, and one of the things Paul says in Acts 17, it is astounding. He's preaching to these Gentile philosophers, and he says God has predetermined the places we will live.

Isn't that interesting? God has predetermined the places we will live. In other words, if we're here, we're here on assignment. God has determined that we would live here. For those of us tuning in from the Raleigh-Durham area, I got to tell you that this is one of the best places in the world to live, and it's not necessarily what you think I'm going to say.

Look at these stats on the screen. Over 1 in 10 people in the Raleigh-Durham area were born outside the United States. Raleigh-Durham is 80% higher in our non-U.S.-born citizens than the rest of the United States. Of the foreign-born people here, 43% are from Latin America. 34% are from Asia, and 9% are from Africa.

Listen to me. One of the things I adore about this church, and I've seen a lot of churches, and I've worked at several churches in my lifetime, I haven't seen anything quite like the summit. The way you all support foreign missions, I hear there's over 200 full-time missionaries right now from the summit church internationally. Some of you are watching this, and God's going to literally call you and go somewhere else, and we encourage that, and we support that.

But if I read these statistics right, we also need to consider that not only is God going to send some of us to the world, but God is actually bringing the world to us. So if you're a barista, a landscaper, a full-time mom, a college student, a professor, if you're in the medical profession, wherever you may be, you need not look to overseas as your mission field. You need to see right where you're at as your mission field. God's called me there. You need to see yourself as the chaplain of your apartment building or your cul-de-sac.

You need to see yourself once students get back on campus as the chaplain of your dormitory or frat house. This is God's call. He's predetermined that I would be here. One of my best friends in life is, actually by top 40 hits, is the number one record producer of all time. I won't say his name. For years, he was the executive music producer on a television show that if I said its name, you would know. As he took this job, he and I spent a lot of time together and he was just wrestling because Hollywood can be a very dark place. He says, Brian, I want you to understand, I've sat in on some of these meetings and man, they're not passive to the things of Christianity.

They're actually very hostile. And yet I believe, Brian, that God's called me there. That's my mission field. So he crafted a plan. He says, now I'm going to pray like crazy that God would use me.

I actually feel compelled to not even let anybody know that I'm a Christian right away. He says, my first step is I'm going to wow them with my work. I'm going to produce the best music they've ever heard in their lives.

And sure enough, this is what happened. Over the next year or two, he starts producing this music, he starts winning awards, and all of a sudden he says, the cast and crew start coming to me. We start having these conversations. He goes, Brian, the conversations get deeper and they're starting to open up and bear their souls.

And over time, I get to talk to them about the hope that I have in Jesus Christ. He gets to plant seeds for the gospel. It all began with him embracing the fact that God sent him there. That is his mission field. That is the call of God that is on his life. And he embraces it. Oh friends, that God would open our eyes.

No, I'm not saying that you need to take 90 minute lunch breaks on your job to do 90 minute Bible studies. But what if we live with more intentionality? What if we actually saw it as our mission field?

The great D. Martin Lloyd-Jones says it this way. He says, if God were to call you from where you're at and you were to move, you were to leave your cul-de-sac, you were to leave your apartment once you graduate from college, and there's not a palpable sense of loss among some people there. He says, I don't think you lived on mission. When we really live on mission, there should be a sense of a void when God pulls us out of that neighborhood, that school, and moves us somewhere else. Dear friends, are you embracing the call?

Having moved from the foundation of mission, he now moves to what I call the fundamental of mission. Look at verses five and six. I wanna read some verbs to you, and all of these verbs are imperatives. They're what we would call commands.

You ready? Verse five, he says, build houses, live in them, plant, eat, take wives, have sons, take wives, give daughters, multiply. All of these verbs aren't suggestions, they're commands. And they all fall under one kind of title, ownership. Now again, Psalm 137 tells us that when they first get to Babylon, they're on the outskirts by the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept. God says to them, by the rivers of Babylon, get up, I actually want you to move into the city.

He says, I want you to actually build houses. You're gonna be there for a while, I want you to own it. This is fundamental when we talk about mission. The principle of ownership and mission is a powerful combination to leverage and maximize gospel influence.

It's very important. See, I think mission without ownership is a heartless colonialism. What I mean by that is that's kind of the history of the early American missionary movement, where we sent people out, but they would get to these other places, but there was no sense of I wanna own this place and I wanna really kind of incarnate myself into the culture and love these people.

Now it was more of a let me recruit you into my thing. It's a heartless colonialism. But ownership without mission is consumerism. When I'm just here in Raleigh-Durham, and I have to tell you, Raleigh-Durham, I'm loving it.

Absolutely loving it. You can keep the humidity. But everything else, it's a great place to live. But if I own living here and neglect the mission, I'm being a consumer. If I really wanna leverage and maximize gospel influence, I need to own and live on mission. Let me draw your attention to Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 1960s, Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, they had made huge legislative gains. There was the Civil Rights Act, there was the Voting Rights Act, huge accomplishments. And after these accomplishments, King looked around and said, we're not done. He set his sight up north to a city called Chicago, and specifically looking at the problem of injustice and poverty. But King decided, I'm not just gonna hop on and off airplanes from Atlanta to Chicago. King actually did the unthinkable.

He moved his family into an apartment in the hood. King says, if I'm gonna live on mission, I gotta own the place. Friends, that's what I wanna encourage you. And I just gotta tell you, since being here at the Summit Church, there's a culture of that here that is absolutely inspiring to me. I've heard incredible stories of many of you in the last couple of weeks. I've heard stories of some of you who've literally moved out of your neighborhood here in the Triangle because you wanted to move into an international community to live missionally among them. Others of you have heard stories of you moving close to pregnancy crisis centers. You didn't wanna just speak against abortion or vote a certain way. You actually wanted to live among these young ladies who are in this traumatic point in their life and offer them a sense of hope. And that's owning it.

That's owning the place. Some of you are college students, and you're going, well, I'm from out of town, out of state, I'm only here for four years. What would you say to me? I'd say to you what I've always said to high school students who've graduated from churches, I've pastored and they've come to me and says, look, pastor, I'm going back east or wherever it may be to go to school. I'm away from here.

What do you recommend? Own it. You don't know what God's gonna do with your life.

You may be there longer than four years, so I want you to jump in and join a church and serve in ministry. Own it. Have a sense of ownership. This is where God has called you.

He's predetermined for you to live here. Don't just live on mission, but own the place as well. Thirdly and finally, God's called us to live on mission. We've gotta embrace this call. This is the foundation. The fundamental is we've gotta own this call. Thirdly and finally, what fuels the call? What fuels mission? Look again at verse 11.

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. Again, remember the historic context. Here is Israel. They have blown it. Not just one time, not just multiple times.

They've blown it over centuries. Yet what does God say to them? I got good plans for you. Plans to give you a future and a hope. You know what we call that? We call that grace.

What fuels mission? Grace. Listen, let me let you in on a secret. You won't wake up every day feeling like seeking the welfare of the city. There's gonna be plenty of stretches in your life where you won't feel like it. In those moments, I want you to divert your attention to the grace of God.

Don't you understand? We were God's mission field. You and I were God's mission field. And Jesus left the comforts of heaven. We're saved by grace through faith because of the mission of Jesus Christ.

Friends, when I really let that sink in, that fuels it. All of us have either read or seen Les Mis. What a story. In this story, the protagonist, Jean Valjean, he's living on mission. He's seeking the welfare of his city. He's caring for a little orphan girl. He's just got this mission-mindedness. Well, where does it come from?

You know where it comes from. Early on in the story, fresh out of jail, he spends the night at the bishop's house, stills the silverware, and he's eventually caught, brought back by the authorities to the bishop and in an astounding act of grace, the bishop sets him free. The authorities leave and the bishop says to Valjean, with this act, I've set you free.

Now go and do likewise for others. Valjean never gets over this grace. And this grace fuels his mission. Friends, not only did Jesus Christ live on mission, but need I remind you and I, we are Israel. Living in sin, and just like Israel's sin got them into bondage to Babylon, our sins enslaved us. Not just to sin, but to the enemy. But ultimately, if you keep reading Jeremiah 29, God says, here's the promise, yet future in 70 years, I'm going to come and rescue you.

And just like with Israel, it was prophesied centuries in advance that a rescuer, a deliverer would come. His name is Jesus Christ. And we are saved not by our moral strivings, not by our good intentions. We are saved by the grace of Jesus Christ. Oh friends, may we never lose sight of that grace. Because when we really reflect on that amazing grace, it will drive mission in our lives.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your call. Life is so much more than letters behind our name, zeros in a bank account, where we went to school, where we live, zip codes. Those things don't fulfill ultimately, but it's when we live outside of ourselves and tap into your mission that now there's a sense of fulfillment. And Father, I'm well aware that several people in these home groups scattered abroad may be saying, I've drifted away from the mission, or I've never embraced the mission. I see first of all your grace, that you promise a future and a hope through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. We receive that today in the name of Jesus. Amen, and amen.