Living in Exile
Are you homesick?
Do you feel disengaged, disoriented, and dispossessed in a world where nothing is familiar? Is there a feeling of hostility from or toward you as you confront the values and cultures around you?
There is actually a biblical illustration of a people who experienced what you are experiencing. Listen to this message.
SUMMARY from a Third-Party AI.
In this meeting, Tom Sims addresses the theme of living in unfamiliar or challenging environments, drawing parallels between the biblical exile in Babylon and contemporary feelings of displacement or homesickness. He explores how individuals can cope when their surroundings and values change, emphasizing three key actions: embrace, engage, and endorse. Sims encourages embracing one’s current reality as an ‘exile,’ engaging fully in life by building relationships and participating in the community, and endorsing the welfare of the city or locality by seeking its well-being through prayer, work, and civic involvement. He references Jeremiah 29 to illustrate how the Israelites adapted their faith and community practices in exile, suggesting that faith can thrive anywhere. The meeting concludes with a call to action for participants to reflect on how they can live purposefully and at peace in their current circumstances, while maintaining hope for a better future.
The Outline:
29:1
These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
29:4–7
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:
Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.
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.
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.
Embrace Your Exile
· You Are an Alien in a Strange Land
· You Are Sent
Engage in Life Where You Are
· Cultivate Relationships
· Live Your Life
Endorse the Welfare of the City
· Seek and Work
· Pray
Call to Action
- Reflect on and consider the assignment: What does it mean to embrace your exile? Take time to think or write about how you can embrace your current situation, as suggested by Tom Sims.
Back to the Third-Party Extra Set of Ears
Living in Exile: Coping with Radical Change and Displacement The speaker addresses the experience of living in a place or time where one’s values and environment have radically changed, drawing parallels to biblical exile and personal experiences of homesickness. He emphasizes the universal feeling of displacement in contemporary society, noting that people across political and cultural spectrums feel uncomfortable or alienated. The discussion frames this as a spiritual and existential challenge, asking how to find a sense of home and peace when one’s surroundings are unfamiliar or even hostile.
Biblical Guidance: Jeremiah’s Letter to the Exiles The meeting centers on Jeremiah 29:1, 4–7, where the prophet instructs exiles in Babylon to build houses, plant gardens, form families, and seek the welfare of their new city. The speaker interprets this as a call to settle down, live fully, and contribute positively to the community, even in unfamiliar or adverse circumstances. The biblical narrative is used to provide hope and practical guidance for living faithfully in challenging environments.
Three Key Responses: Embrace, Engage, Endorse The speaker outlines three main responses to living in exile: embrace, engage, and endorse. ‘Embrace’ means accepting the reality of being an outsider and recognizing one’s dual citizenship (earthly and spiritual). ‘Engage’ involves actively participating in life, building relationships, and not isolating oneself. ‘Endorse’ means seeking and working for the welfare of the local community, regardless of differences. These responses are presented as essential for finding peace and purpose in unfamiliar or challenging settings.
Faith Adaptation and Community: Lessons from Jewish Exile The speaker highlights how the Jewish community adapted during exile by shifting from temple-based worship to a focus on the Torah and the development of synagogues. This adaptation allowed their faith to become portable and resilient, able to thrive in any location. The lesson is extended to Christian faith, emphasizing that faith should not be tied to buildings or institutions but should be vibrant and adaptable, centered on God’s presence and word.
Call to Action and Spiritual Encouragement The meeting concludes with a call to reflect on what it means to embrace exile, engage in life, and endorse the welfare of the community. The speaker encourages listeners to find peace and purpose by accepting their situation, living fully, and working for the common good. He reassures that ultimate belonging is found in God, and offers a blessing for peace and hope, referencing the promise of a better world to come.
Unedited Transcript
00:00:01
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.
00:00:07
Well, that’s a song that popped up in my mind as I was thinking about homesickness and not feeling at home and living in Babylon and living in exile.
00:00:22
How many people are singing, I can’t feel at home in this world anymore?
00:00:29
If that’s you, hang on.
00:00:32
We’re gonna talk about how do you live in a strange land?
00:00:37
How do you live in Babylon?
00:00:40
How do you live when the scenery around you has changed?
00:00:45
How do you cope when the values around you and the atmosphere of values has changed?
00:00:54
When there is radical change
00:00:58
in your environment, or in your living conditions, or in what you might otherwise call home.
00:01:06
What does it mean to be homesick?
00:01:10
I remember being dropped off at college, and it was just in an instant after they’d got in the car, unloaded.
00:01:20
Parents were gone, everyone was gone, everyone was new.
00:01:25
My room was new.
00:01:27
My living environment was new.
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How I took my meals was new.
00:01:33
I was not home.
00:01:35
I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.
00:01:39
I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.
00:01:45
And then how do you make yourself at home?
00:01:49
Well, the hymn writer said, Oh God, our help,
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In ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.
00:02:11
It helps to know where home is.
00:02:14
And so I invite you to come home with me for a moment in prayer to our Father, who’s never moved and yet moves with us.
00:02:26
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
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And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine
00:02:56
Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and forever.
00:03:02
Amen.
00:03:05
Jeremiah was a prophet before and during a time of exile.
00:03:12
And Jeremiah told the people, you’re going to be ripped out of your homes.
00:03:21
You’re going to be overthrown.
00:03:24
You are going to be taken into captivity.
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He warned them.
00:03:30
And then he gave them hope.
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He said, someday you’ll return, but not your generation.
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But there will be a return.
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There will be a rectification.
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There will be a rededication.
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There will be.
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But what do you do in the meantime?
00:03:49
And in this passage of Jeremiah 29,
00:03:54
And we’re simply going to look at verse one and then verses four through seven.
00:03:59
He talks to them about how to live when you’re not at home, not at your ultimate home, your comfortable home, your familiar home, the home that you would choose.
00:04:12
How do you live in what might be a hostile environment?
00:04:18
How do you live in an environment where your values are not honored?
00:04:24
How do you live in a place and a time that is unfamiliar and contrary to the things you live and believe and the way you want to live and would hope to live?
00:04:39
How do you live in what would seem to be a situation that is divorced from God, and yet, how do you live in such a way that you are always at home?
00:04:53
in God I think we’re living through turbulent times and there is not a person in my country or really in any country who feels completely at home we all feel the sting of certain kinds of hostility we all feel like we’re on unfamiliar ground in our world in our
00:05:22
context and I speak from America we have red and blue and right and left and both ends of the spectrum and everyone in the middle in the middle has legitimate cause to feel displaced to feel uncomfortable to feel certain kinds of hostility to feel unfamiliarity how do we live
00:05:50
And listen to these words from Jeremiah.
00:05:52
These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem.
00:06:12
They just took all these folks out of their country and put them somewhere else.
00:06:18
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
00:06:28
Build houses, live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce.
00:06:33
Take wives and have sons and daughters.
00:06:37
Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters multiply there.
00:06:45
Do not decrease.
00:06:47
but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf.
00:06:58
For in its welfare, you will find your felt welfare.
00:07:04
Settle down, be at home, temporary home, but be at home and live your life.
00:07:15
and I’ve got three key words here embrace engage endorse you can look for them embrace engage endorse first embrace your exile embrace your exile I think it’s always incumbent upon us to realize the way things are
00:07:42
in Niebuhr’s beautiful prayer the extended portion of it that is often called the prayer of serenity he expresses this feeling help us to accept this world the way your son did not as we would have it but as it is that’s part of it you know the other part of it is to work to make it better to change it but in the meantime
00:08:11
We have to come to terms with the fact that this world is not our home.
00:08:17
We’re just a passing through.
00:08:20
And that’s reality.
00:08:24
God has called us to live on an eternal plane with an eternal perspective, but not blind to our surroundings.
00:08:35
Not to live in denial, not to say, okay,
00:08:39
You know, it looks like I cut my hand, but it’s not really cut.
00:08:42
You know, in the eternal sphere, it is whole.
00:08:46
I am healed.
00:08:48
It’s not bleeding.
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No, it’s bleeding.
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We live in time and space.
00:08:55
So as we embrace our exile, there are two parts to that.
00:08:59
One is you’re an alien in a strange land.
00:09:03
You are.
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I am.
00:09:05
We are.
00:09:07
Take a moment to think about it.
00:09:12
We’re citizens of two kingdoms, the kingdoms of this world, but the kingdoms of this world are enveloped in and becoming the kingdom of our God and of His Christ who shall reign forever and ever.
00:09:22
But in the meantime, we’re strangers, we’re aliens, we’re ambassadors for Christ.
00:09:31
That’s the second part of embracing our exile.
00:09:35
Twice in the passage, Jeremiah says,
00:09:39
We’re sent.
00:09:42
We’ve been sent.
00:09:44
Now, you know the word in Greek, and this was not written in Greek, but it got translated into Greek.
00:09:51
And for send,
00:09:55
is the same as the word for apostle apostles apostle one who is sent so the hymn I learned as a royal ambassador as a kid was I am a stranger here within a foreign land my home is far away beyond the golden strand ambassador to be ambassador to be
00:10:23
from realms beyond the sea.
00:10:25
I’m here on business for my king.
00:10:30
So what does it mean to you to be an alien and a stranger and also an ambassador?
00:10:37
And what is the culture that you maintain?
00:10:41
That’s not a superficial culture based on language and food and custom, but beyond that,
00:10:49
What does it mean, as N.T.
00:10:51
Wright would say, to think Christianly in this strange world?
00:10:59
I’m going to leave that for you to chew on.
00:11:01
There’s a whole lot more we could say or write or think, but I want to leave that as an assignment for you.
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What does it mean to embrace your exile?
00:11:14
The second thing is, engage in life where you are.
00:11:20
Don’t cloister yourselves.
00:11:21
Don’t pull your curtains down.
00:11:23
Don’t lock your doors and hide behind them.
00:11:27
Don’t be a stranger, even though you are a stranger.
00:11:33
And so Jeremiah says, cultivate relationships.
00:11:37
Go ahead, get married.
00:11:38
Go ahead, attend your children’s weddings.
00:11:42
Go ahead, build friendships, build relationships in this world where you live.
00:11:51
There are those in this world today who would take the dividing lines of ideology and say, don’t have any friendship outside these lines.
00:12:01
I think that’s disastrous.
00:12:05
I think we should cultivate relationships and friendships across party lines, ideology lines, lines of religion, lines of culture, lines of geography.
00:12:18
The more, the better.
00:12:20
But really what Jeremiah is saying is don’t stop living.
00:12:26
Live your life, cultivate relationships,
00:12:31
Live your life.
00:12:33
Live it to the fullest.
00:12:35
Buy houses.
00:12:37
Do business.
00:12:41
Yes.
00:12:42
Here’s what the children of Israel did in Babylon.
00:12:46
They maintained their faith.
00:12:50
But they could no longer build their faith around a place like the temple or an object like the ark or the altar.
00:13:00
So they built it around the Torah.
00:13:04
They built it around the Word.
00:13:07
They began to develop a rabbinic form of Judaism, the teachings of the Torah, the Word.
00:13:16
And they came to understand that God could be present with them in a strange land, away from a house, away from laws that were
00:13:29
a built around their faith, around a legal system that was built around their faith.
00:13:34
They could be the people of God.
00:13:37
And so they developed a place to go that kind of a movable feast.
00:13:42
It could be in any village.
00:13:45
And they called it a synagogue.
00:13:48
And the synagogue was built up around the Word of God, the truth of God.
00:13:55
and a recognition that God was always present in his word.
00:14:00
And so they began to live their lives.
00:14:03
And Judaism took on a new reality and a new vibrancy and a prepared Judaism for, you know, becoming a faith that could be anywhere at any time.
00:14:20
Can your faith be anywhere at any time?
00:14:23
That’s the essence of the Christian faith, that God is with us in Christ, that Christ is incarnate in our hearts, that He comes to live within us and among us, and that the church is not a building.
00:14:39
It’s not an institution.
00:14:40
It’s not a set of laws.
00:14:42
It’s not a culture.
00:14:44
But it is a living faith, a vibrant faith that says, You can be at home where you are.
00:14:54
Follow me anywhere, Jesus says to us.
00:14:58
That’s embrace and engage.
00:15:02
Embrace your exile.
00:15:05
Engage in life where you are and among the people where you’re scattered.
00:15:10
And the third thing is endorse.
00:15:14
Endorse the welfare of the city or town or village or locality where you are.
00:15:23
are Jeremiah says seek and pray and work for the welfare of the city where you are because in its well-being you find your well-being I live in a place outside of a major city in the Central Valley of California
00:15:51
What goes on in Fresno affects me, as well as so many other people.
00:15:59
And I live in America.
00:16:01
And what happens in America affects me and my family and our well-being, that of people I love.
00:16:11
And so, I also live in this world.
00:16:16
And what happens in another part of the world affects me.
00:16:21
And that’s Jeremiah’s rationale here.
00:16:24
We are all a part of our communities.
00:16:31
And he specifically says, start with your city, start with the place you live, and endorse its welfare with your life, with your prayers, with your work, with your thoughts, with your deeds, with your influence.
00:16:52
Now, we come at it from different perspectives, don’t we?
00:16:56
And when we find ourselves in a room full of people who see it differently than we do, it’s really hard work.
00:17:04
It’s really hard prayer to find that common ground.
00:17:08
But you know what?
00:17:11
It’s God’s work.
00:17:13
It’s kingdom work.
00:17:16
Working on civic affairs.
00:17:20
is the work of the kingdom of God, because we’ve been sent here.
00:17:26
We’ve been sent to our time.
00:17:29
We’ve been sent to our place, and we’re on mission.
00:17:35
So if I go back and say, I’m troubled.
00:17:40
I’m stirred up.
00:17:42
I feel out of home.
00:17:44
I don’t know where I am.
00:17:47
but I must embrace the reality of my exile that brings peace and then I must engage in life where I am and that brings even more peace because it says you know celebrate celebrate dance to the music because you know we come to the party and find that God is here and since God has been able to make his home with us
00:18:16
we can certainly make our home with God and with God’s people and then the third thing that gives us peace living in Babylon living in exile is to have a purpose to endorse the welfare of the city to seek and work for it and to pray for it does that give you something to chew on today the call to action is chew that
00:18:42
See if you can digest it.
00:18:44
See what comes out.
00:18:46
See how that encourages you to live your life today.
00:18:51
I understand you don’t feel at home in this world anymore.
00:18:55
You weren’t meant to feel ultimately at home.
00:18:59
You have a longing for something greater, for something different.
00:19:06
When the new world is revealed and when the saints
00:19:12
Go marching in.
00:19:14
Oh, when the saints go marching in.
00:19:17
Oh, Lord, I want to be in that number.
00:19:21
When the saints go marching in.
00:19:25
There’s a better world a coming.
00:19:27
New heaven, new earth.
00:19:29
Thank God.
00:19:30
Thank you, Jesus.
00:19:32
And may the Lord bless you and keep you.
00:19:34
The Lord make his face to shine upon you.
00:19:36
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, give you peace.
00:19:42
And I’ll see you at home.
00:19:44
God bless you.
00:19:45
Amen.
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