Discipleship: Go To The City | Jeremiah 29:1-14 | Jarryd Cole

Welcome to the Ambassador Church Podcast, a church in the city for the city, on Milwaukee's east side.

We pray this message meets you where you are, challenges your faith, and draws you closer to Jesus.

And welcome to Ambassador Church.

If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Jared.

I get to be the lead pastor here at Ambassador Church.

And so if you're new to the room, welcome.

We are shutting down our three-week series on uh discipleship today.

But before we get into that, a couple announcements for you, okay?

You've been coming around for any amount of time.

Uh, you know that next week is something really special in Life Ambassador Church.

Ambassador turns one next week.

Get up for our one-year birthday uh happening next week.

Excited about that, October 4th.

Uh, here's what you need to know.

You've probably got one of these cards coming in today.

This is uh, yes, your invitation, but guess what?

Uh you're already here.

So that means this is not for you.

This is for somebody else, okay?

Someone in your life uh who is close to you but far from Jesus, someone that maybe you're thinking about, man, I wish they could hear a gospel message.

I wish they could be a part of a church that really loves the city of Milwaukee and hear about what we're about, okay?

Invite them out to our party.

Uh, we would love to have you here.

10 o'clock a.m.

We're only having one service that day, okay?

10 a.m., one service, but there's a block party afterwards, 11:30.

Why?

Because Ambassador is high on celebration, okay?

Anybody else like parties?

I like parties.

Uh, so we're throwing a party for our one-year anniversary.

Come out.

Uh, we're gonna have free t-shirts, free merch for the first 200 people that come.

Uh, we're gonna have bounce houses for the kids, bring the family, we're gonna have food trucks, uh, so many different things, games, all of that.

Uh, but we wanna um yes, celebrate what God's been doing in life in Ambassador Church.

Uh, I'm floored.

I don't know about you.

Um, some of you are new to the room, okay?

Uh, but I'm floored at what God has done over this last year.

And next week, we're just going to look back and celebrate what he has done and even look forward as we're praying for him to do uh even more.

Okay.

And so that's the one year anniversary.

The second thing is this uh Ambassador Men, that's also coming up.

Uh, any boys in the room, make some noise, make some noise, make some noise, make some noise.

I love it, I love it, I love it.

Ambassador men, uh, we're coming into a life in our church where we're doing heavy on discipleship.

Okay, so we started city groups, exciting.

We started ambassador women, exciting, and now we're kicking off ambassador men.

October 10th is our first gathering, 8 to 10 a.m., right here in this space.

Uh, scan that QR code right in front of you right in front of you're a man of 18 years old or more.

Um, come out to this event.

If you're in college, doesn't matter.

If you're a community side, doesn't matter.

Uh, come out to Ambassador Men.

We'd love to be with you.

Uh, we're gonna have breakfast, fellowship, um, time to connect with other guys.

We'll have a short testimony, a short message, and then time to get in small groups.

And listen, guys, I know um I said this before, but this is something that so many of us in the room could take or leave, right?

You get invited to an event like this, and you're just like, man, I could take or leave, they don't really need it.

But here's what's true as Christian men in the room, we need people in our lives, we need community.

And ambassador men exists to plug that gap to say, man, doing this Christian life, doing life in general, but Christian life is uniquely difficult.

And we're saying, hey, you don't have to do that alone.

Come and be with the band of brothers and learn how you can be sharpened and follow Jesus together, okay?

Uh so ambassador men, scan the QR code, sign up.

It's really quick.

Uh, we need to know how much bacon to get for the room, all right?

All right.

Well, hey, uh, if you have your Bibles with you, grab those.

We're gonna jump into the word today.

Uh, we're gonna be in the book of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah's in the Old Testament.

It's a little hard to find.

If you have to use a table of contents, don't be shy.

Go ahead and do that.

Uh if you're in the book of Isaiah, you haven't gone far enough.

If you are in the book of Lamentation, you're gone a little bit too far, right in between.

And we're gonna be in Jeremiah chapter 29.

Jeremiah 29 · chapter mention

And as you're turning there, just a little recap from where we've been over the last couple of weeks.

We've been unpacking a series on discipleship, unpacking our three-part discipleship strategy.

They're gonna pop up here on the screen for us one last time.

And here's the kind of people we're hoping that we become an ambassador to church.

People who grow in our new identity, people who gather around the table, and people who go to the city.

So if you were here two weeks ago, we talked about just that growing in our new identity.

And when we place our faith in Christ, what's true about us, we say yes to following Him, but then not only that, but something ends up becoming different with us.

We become changed people, we're transformed people, and we are becoming transformed people.

This is what's true when we place our faith in Jesus.

We begin to grow in this new identity.

We talked about that two weeks ago.

And last week we talked about gathering around the table.

And this is a unique kind of discipleship strategy that we want to have.

But when we say this, what we mean is that, man, uh, we can't underestimate the type of stuff that happens when you gather with other people around the table.

When you share a meal, when you share a drink, right?

How many of you guys know that stories get shared, tears get shed, so many different things.

There's correction, there's encouragement, there's rebuke, all the different kinds of things necessary for the life of the Christian that happens when you gather around the table.

And here's what's true we can do this as we lean into one another, we learn from one another, and we love on one another.

I think Jesus desires this for us.

And this is also true.

We learn that we don't just gather on the table with the people that we like, okay?

The heroes in our lives, but we also gather with the villains, the perceived people that are hard to love in our lives.

And if you want to know who's hard to love in your life, and maybe you don't have those people in your life, you're probably the one that's hard to love, okay?

But that's just what's true.

We all can be that to somebody.

And so when we invite people to our table, yes, our heroes, but also our villains.

We learned about that last week.

And this week we're setting it down.

Just talk about go to the city, which means this we move towards the city out of love and hope, seeking its welfare and discovering more of its people.

See, I remember uh when I was talking about moving to Milwaukee to plant this church.

We haven't always been here.

I'm not from here.

I'm from Kansas City, Missouri, born and raised, went to Iowa, played uh college basketball for the University of Iowa.

My wife did too.

I love my wife, been married for 13 years.

Uh, we have four kids, uh, and I played her one-on-one for her heart, and I won.

Okay, so loving basketball style.

It was amazing.

But I remember when I got the call to ministry and we were talking about moving to Milwaukee to start this church.

Uh, so many people, okay.

We spent like two and a half years in Madison right down the street, and so many people at our sending church were like, Oh, we're excited you're here.

We can't wait for you to plant a church.

Where are you gonna go?

And as soon as I said Milwaukee, so many people were like, Why Milwaukee?

You know, and maybe you've felt this too.

You even live here yourself, right?

And I thought that was strange until I started visiting here and meeting community members and different just random people.

We talked to people in stores and parks and even some of the pastors.

And I tell them, hey, we're coming to start a church in Milwaukee.

Like, man, that's amazing, but why Milwaukee?

You know, and I'll never forget this one interaction my wife and I had.

We came up here one time and uh we were bringing our kids and trying to get them acclimated to the city.

We went to this park, Northwestern Mutual Community Park, down on the Summerfest grounds.

You guys know about that park, amazing park.

My kids love it.

Uh, we went there one time before we lived here, and we met this couple and this woman of this couple, we were having a conversation.

My wife was talking to her, obviously, because they just hit it off.

It was great.

Uh, and we were talking about the church.

We're coming to start a church in Milwaukee.

And she goes, But where are you guys gonna live?

And we're like, Well, we're gonna live in Milwaukee proper.

And her just face just like, Are you why?

Like, are you are you sure?

And she did everything she could in her power in that moment to be like, you should probably live somewhere that starts with the W, actually.

Are you guys you guys know how that is?

The city of Milwaukee has a reputation.

Listen, Milwaukee isn't unique in that because most cities everywhere, here's what's true: people tend to flock to the suburbs, and for a lot of reasons, I don't want to overgeneralize people, okay, but for a lot of reasons, but one of them is this kind of fear because they're afraid of what they'll experience and what they'll see in the urban core that they might be in.

And listen, I'm not here to dispel any of the challenging things of the city of Milwaukee.

I know they're here, trust me, I've experienced them.

You'll hear about that in a little bit.

But what the scripture calls us to, and I believe this deep down in my heart, is not that we run away from the tensions of this city, but that we run towards it and we actually be a light in it.

How many of you know?

That's the call of being a Christian.

So as we get in the book of Jeremiah, this is the charge that he's gonna have for his people.

So if you're in the Bible, I want us to begin reading in Jeremiah 29, verse 1.

Jeremiah 29:1

They're in exile, and we'll see some of that here in just a second.

Verse 1 through 3, here's what it says.

Uh, this is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining exiled elders, the priests, the prophets, and all the people of Nebuchadnezzar had deported from Jerusalem to Babylon.

This was after King Jeconiah, the queen mother, the court officials, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the metalsmiths had left Jerusalem.

He sent the letter with Elisha, son of Shaphan, and Gomariah, son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to Babylon to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and the letter stated.

Before we get into what the letter stated, first of all, there's a lot of hard names, okay?

Give me some grace.

But before we get into this letter, I want us to know right here, first and foremost, that when the text starts off like this, these kind of parts can be often skipped over.

You hear a lot of names, you hear a lot of people, places, all these kind of things.

And you can think, man, why does this matter in the text?

I think here's why some of this matters in the text uh more so than not.

It's this reason right here.

It's because stuff like this actually gives credibility to the Bible.

You guys know this?

Like some people have questions when they come to church about the Bible, like, how can I know it's true?

How can I know it's real?

One of the main reasons why you can know the Bible is true and you can trust it is because it gives you names and places and dates of people.

Like this is one of the greatest arguments for the validity of the Bible.

Because what's true is like this, this letter wasn't written too far away from when these things happened.

So if this was false, if this wasn't really true, and if you're in the room today and you're wondering, can you trust the Bible?

Can you trust the things of the Old Testament?

Yes, you can.

And the reason why you can is because when these things were written, they were written in a time where somebody could have been like, hey, this is what this letter says.

I wonder if this is true.

And they could have gone and had the conversation, they could have gone and asked.

And so if you're wondering, man, um, what kind of book is the Bible?

It's not a it's not a book of fiction, it's not a book of folklore, it's not a book of myth, but it's a historical document with people, places, and events in such an amount of time where the direct audience really could have dispelled any of the claims if they wanted to in that day.

But here's what's true, they couldn't do it.

Why?

Because the Bible is for real.

So I love this.

Why we don't skip over things like this.

But here's what the letter stated, okay?

Jeremiah's writing this letter.

Here's what the letter stated.

Verse 4 it says, This is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Here it is.

Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce, find wives for yourselves and have sons and daughters.

Find wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage, so that they may bear sons and daughters.

Multiply there, do not decrease.

Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to, and pray to the Lord on its behalf.

Why?

For when it thrives, you will thrive.

For this is what the Lord of the armies, the God of Israel, says Don't let your prophets who are among you and your diviners deceive you, and don't listen to the dreams you elicit from them.

For they are prophesying falsely to you in my name.

I have not sent them.

And this is the Lord's declaration, for this is what the Lord says.

When seventy years for Babylon are complete, I will attend to you and will confirm my promise concerning you to restore you to this place.

I love this great restoration, for I know the plans that I have for you.

You know this verse.

This is the Lord's declaration: plans for your well-being, not for your disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

You will call to me and search for me with all of your heart.

I will be found by you.

And this is the Lord's declaration, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and places where I banished you.

This is the Lord's declaration.

I will restore you to the place from which I deported you.

That's the end of the text for this morning.

So we need to know a little bit about what this is talking about right here.

Okay, at this point in the life of Israel, the people of Israel are in exile.

They're being held captive by this world superpower named Babylon, okay?

And they're gonna be in captivity for 70 years.

It's a long time to be without your people, to be without your place.

But I love the turn in the text because God says, Hey, I'm not gonna keep you there, but I'm going to restore you.

I love that this is true.

But until then, what Jeremiah wants the people to know right now is that they are living as exiles in a fallen world.

So the question that people are wrestling with, the thing that people need to know is how do we do this?

Okay, how do we live as people who love the place that we're in, even though we're exiles in it and we're in a fallen place, we're even being a little bit mistreated.

You have to understand where these people are in the text.

These would have been Israelites who would have been forced away from their home.

If you've ever experienced anything of trauma before, anything that was out of your control, and you ended up in a place that you didn't really want to be, you can understand that maybe there was some overwhelming sense of sadness from these people.

There was confusion, there was disappointment, there was depression, there was anxiety.

I want to humanize these people for a minute.

In the book of Psalms, there's this psalm in Psalm 137, 1 through 6.

It won't pop up here on the screen.

I just want you guys to listen to this because this psalm is a song that kind of gets you into the mind space of where these people might have been as they're in exile and captive to Babylon.

Here's what it says: it says, By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and we wept when we remembered Zion, Jerusalem.

There we hung our lyres on the poplar trees, for our captors there asked us for songs and our tormentors for rejoicing.

They said, Sing us one of your songs of Zion.

But how can we sing the Lord's song on foreign soil?

If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill, may my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, may me, may I lose the ability to even speak if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem as my greatest joy.

When you think about these words coming from the mouths of these people in exile in Babylon, you've got to know these are words of people who are in social, in emotional, and spiritual crisis.

They're living as exiles in a fallen world.

But this isn't only true of them.

Here's how I want to bridge this gap to us here in our day, okay?

Because we have to understand we are also living as exiles in a fallen world.

Do you guys know this?

As we're Christians living in this life, we have to know that there is a home that we are destined for that we are not quite in yet.

And some of us really get this, don't we?

And some of us really don't get this.

Why?

Because we live in a time and a place where we feel a little bit comfortable.

We're like, hey, things aren't really that bad.

I can come and go however I please, all these different kinds of things.

And so it's hard for us as Christians to believe, hey, in our cushy place in first world America, that we could possibly be exiles.

And I want you to know, Christian, that yes, you live here, but this is not your permanent address.

You belong somewhere else.

And so it's helpful for us to know that we are exiles even now in this place.

But for some of us, we don't have to think too long to know that we're in dark, desperate times.

Amen.

There's just a sense of always waiting for and anticipating the next thing.

Do you ever feel yourself doing this?

I do this sometimes myself.

You just live on edge, one disaster after another.

You guys mind if I just share my thoughts for a moment, really quick?

You can say yes or no, I'm gonna do it anyway, okay?

Yeah.

Here's what I believe.

When history looks back on American society from the last 30 years, 2000 to 2030, I believe scholars will name it the Great Unraveling.

The Great Unraveling, the loss of shared truths, the loss of shared trust.

Think about it.

Some of you are old enough to remember this in the room, some of you are not, but there's been a lot of things that's happened in the last 26 years, and there will be more in the next four years, towards 2030.

But just to give us a little recap, like there has been an unreal affront on humanity in our country with all of the violence that's happened in the last 26 years.

You think of Columbine, one of the first like mass school shootings, like that actually kicked off something that, if you remember, for the last 10 or 15 years, like has been just almost normal.

Do you guys know that?

Like some of you are in college right now, and some of you graduated college recently, and you were in college still when you were hearing on the news all these different kinds of things, gunmen on campuses, all of this kind of stuff.

Virginia Tech, Parkland, Sandy Hook, Charleston, Las Vegas, like so many more.

Our years have been marked by this.

The World Trade Centers, don't forget 9-11.

We just celebrated that.

The war on terror that came after that.

We have growing and solidifying political villainism, and all the violent threats that's happened because of it, the killings, the assassinations, the assassination attempts of our nation's leaders, most recently, Charlie Kirk, what a tragedy.

The racial and social unrest of 2018 and early 2020s, all of this, the killing of Ahmad Arbery, Brianna Taylor, George Floyd, all of the riots and the virtual vitriol that kind of took place after that.

There's a dying trust in law enforcement and the authority structures in our society.

There's cases upon cases all over the country and all over the world, even of abuse and secrecy, missing people, the mistreatment of kids, and there's silence about all of it.

Like, need I go further to tell you that we live in a dark, dying, and decaying place.

I think scholars will look back on this season of American society and call it the great unraveling.

The decline of shared truths and shared trust.

And as believers, here's what's true.

We should be people who grieve this.

That the people we've become and the world and the cities that we live in are full of evil.

And so we need to know, Christians, that we are not home.

That should ache our hearts.

We are exiles and we should be longing for the home that we belong to.

But here's the difference between us being exiles now and Israel being exiles in Babylon.

We're actually not being punished, okay?

We're actually being commissioned.

We're on this side of the cross.

And so, no, what when you believe in Jesus, you're you're free.

You're no captive to anybody, okay?

But we are being commissioned to still live on this side of eternity as ambassadors for the kingdom.

Jesus even says in John chapter 20, hey, as God has sent me, so the Father has sent me, so I have sent you to his disciples.

John 20 · chapter mention

That is us.

Also, we're not without a home.

The Israelites, they were without home in Babylon.

They didn't have the place to call home, the temple and all that Jerusalem didn't have that.

And listen, we may not be all the way home, but we do have a type of home, meaning we're not estranged from God even right now, like the Israelites were when they were captive in Babylon.

But what remains is this gap between our earthly home, what we experience now, and our purchased heavenly home by Jesus that we will experience in due time.

So the question we have to ask this morning, y'all, is as disciples of Jesus, how do we live as exiles in a fallen world?

Here's the answer.

We don't shrink back, and we don't just wall ourselves off from the world and all of society and wait for Jesus to crack the sky, although that would be nice, okay?

It'd be the easy thing to do.

But here's what I want to press us into this morning.

I want to press into living meaningful lives as exiles in a fallen world.

Not afraid, pulling away from the culture around us, but pressing in and living faithfully as a remnant for God and an ambassador language.

This is what we call in our discipleship strategy: going to the city.

So here's what we're gonna do for the rest of our time this morning.

We're asking the question what does the people that go to the city look like?

Here's three things, three marks of going to the city.

Going to the city means establishing your roots.

Going to the city means discerning the truth, and going to the city means hoping for Eden.

Okay, first one.

Going to the city means establishing your roots.

Look back at verse 4 of Jeremiah 29.

It says, This is what the Lord of Armies has said.

This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles that I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Build houses and live in them.

Underline that, plant gardens and eat their produce.

Underline that, find wives for yourselves and have sons and daughters.

Find wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage, so that they may bear sons and daughters.

Multiply there, do not decrease, pursue the well-being of the city that I have deported you to.

Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.

In other words, God is saying, Hey, kick off your shoes, let your hair down and stay for a while.

If we firstly want to know what it means to live as exiles in a fallen world to go to a city even when we don't think we should, here's the answer just kick it for a little bit.

Take your shoes off.

Enjoy it.

Stick around.

Don't flee from it.

Seek its welfare.

Do these kind of things, right?

He says, build houses and plant gardens.

He's saying literally, hey, just get comfy as you're sitting here.

Don't just wish it by.

Don't wish that you were somewhere else, but live in it for its purpose.

Build houses and plant gardens.

Like work here, get jobs, make a living.

You have to interact and buy resources.

Like you, this is language for saying, hey, don't pull yourself away from the society, but live into it, expend your resources, live among the people, do these kind of things.

Like that takes trust in a place where you're not comfortable in, where people have just exiled you, where you're looking around every corner and you're just like, man, I don't know when the next disaster is going to come.

Jeremiah is saying from the Lord, and even in a place like that, he says, Hey, get comfy, stick around, build houses, plant gardens.

Just find meaningful romantic relationships.

Like I want you to see just how dire the situation was that the people of God were in.

They were in exile for 70 years.

Okay, which means a lot of the people who are directly affected by the exile would have been adult age.

So they were for sure not going to inherit the return to Jerusalem after the 70 years was over.

And if you think about it, not even the kids they have, many of them may not even enter back into Jerusalem.

But who would?

They're grandkids and their great grandkids.

And what Jeremiah is telling the people, he's saying, Hey, I know you're in a tough situation.

I know it's going to be hard to kind of produce and grow in this place because you don't want to contribute to a society like this.

But he's like, hey, don't be afraid.

Have kids, get married, do this kind of thing.

And as you do, pass off to them the greatest thing you can ever pass off to them.

Remind them of the God that they serve.

Remind them.

Even though you may not make it, even though your kids may not make it, your grandkids will.

And the thing they need to know is the goodness about me.

How many of you in the room are thinking about the decisions in your life right now, not just for you, but for the generations to come?

Are you thinking about that?

And maybe for some of you thinking, like, yeah, I'm thinking about that.

And the world's crazy, and so I'm bowing out.

I think the scripture will cost us something different.

Why don't you lean in?

More ambassadors.

Get married, have kids.

Tell them about the good things of God.

Have meaningful and romantic relationships.

He says, pursue the good of the city.

Like in a place like this where they didn't want to be here, absolutely nothing to do with it.

God says, hey, pursue what's good.

Are you pursuing the good of the city of Milwaukee?

An ambassador church, we want to be a church like this, where one of our models is we want to be a church in Milwaukee for Milwaukee.

What that means is that we just don't want to be a church that's about Sunday mornings.

We love that you're here.

We love gathering here.

But you want to know what it would be a miss on our part if this is all that we ever did.

If all we ever did was come here and sing songs and hear sermons like this, and it never impacted our heart to move our feet and to move our hands and say, hey, we care and love about the city that we're in.

We might as well not even gather, y'all.

We might as well not even gather.

Because it doesn't, the Christian life isn't about what you what you know.

You do need to grow and what you know about God.

But you also need to put into practice the things that you know about God.

Many of us in the room who've been about around the church and Jesus and Christian culture for a long time, there's not much else you really need to know.

You know it's true.

You need to do something with what you know.

We need to be people who care about the places around us.

So if you want to know how we do that here at Ambassador Church, we partner with so many nonprofits, so many organizations in the city, ministries who are doing great work.

Hope Street Ministries, Safe Families, Bridge to Brighter, Kinship Food Center.

Okay.

We do an annual impact offering every single year.

We're going to be kicking up one here in a couple weeks.

We're going to have it go through the end of December.

What we're saying is we want to come alongside one of our local partners this year and say, hey, we see you, we love you, and we want to help you provide for the city in a really meaningful way.

And we're going to ask you to be a part of that.

We're going to ask you to give generously to that.

Why?

Because we want to be a place in the city of Milwaukee where we care about not just the people in this room, but also the people in this city.

Amen?

Just pray on behalf of the city.

Church, what is your greatest prayer for the city of Milwaukee?

I wonder what would happen if the prayers that you're praying for this city were answered.

Would it be for the well-being of the city or would it be for its demise?

Would it be a benefit to the marginalized of our city?

Would the have nots be just as blessed as those who have?

Would this be true if you were to pray for the city?

I want us to see this.

But if we want to be people who go to the city here in Milwaukee, these things have to first be true of us.

Jeremiah says it for his people, it's also true for us.

So the first thing we have to know is that going to the city means establishing your roots.

But secondly, it means this it means discerning the truth.

Look at verse 8.

It says, For this is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, continues to say.

He says, Don't let your prophets who are among you and your diviners deceive you, and don't listen to the dreams that you elicit from them, for they are prophesying falsely to you in my name.

I have not sent them.

This is the Lord's declaration.

So we need to know for this one is that we need to be people who are discerning the truth.

If we want to be people who go to the city.

Jeremiah's letting us know about a couple different people who pop up right here in this passage, the prophets and the diviners.

Prophets, if you're new to the church, these are the people who are responsible for being the spokesperson of God.

They say things from their mouth, they tell the people, they inform the society, and these things typically come true.

Okay, there's spokesmen for the voice of God, but then there's diviners.

And these people, you can think of them today in our age as like the people you go to with the crystals and the magic ball, eight, like magic crystal ball, like all that kind of palm readings.

Okay.

These were the people who would kind of hijack the spiritual realm in order to say some things that they think might be happening.

Okay.

They were false prophets of a sense, but even more deeper than that, they were diviners who would hack into the spiritual realm and be like, hey, I think this is what's going to happen.

And what God is telling Jeremiah to say to the people, he's like saying, the prophets are corrupt right now, and the diviners are also corrupt.

Here's what we need to know.

In this time, these spokesmen were trying to convince the people of God of something that wasn't really true.

If you look back in some of the other passages, other chapters in the book of Jeremiah, uh, you run into this other prophet, he's a false prophet.

His name is Hananiah.

Okay, this passage has somebody specific in mind.

And I love kind of this reality that there's this prophet named Jeremiah in this book and this prophet named Hananiah.

Like, I don't know what kind of Mario Wario like stuff is going on with these names.

But it's Jeremiah and Hananiah, okay?

And if you look back, you can kind of see uh that Jeremiah gets this word and vision from God, and he's charged with telling the people about it.

But Hananiah claims that he also has his word from God.

But the first word that comes to Jeremiah is this word about the captivity in Babylon, they're supposed to be there for 70 years and they're supposed to be doing this thing to live into this city.

But Hananiah, he comes and claims he has a word from God, and he says, No, no, no, it's not 70 years, it's just two years.

Like God is gonna come and do his thing in two years in, like y'all are gonna be up out of here.

So, uh, how do you relate to a place when you're just gonna be here for two years?

Don't get comfy, don't buy homes and build gardens, don't get married and have kids and marry your kids off and do all that kind of stuff.

Don't pray for the city, don't live for the city's well-being.

If you're only here for two years, you're hearing you out.

Just hey, lay low for a little bit.

False prophets.

You know what the people of God needed to hear?

They needed to hear the word of Jeremiah that they were gonna be in exile for 70 years.

And many of you, those of you who are 20 and up, you're not gonna even make it back into Jerusalem.

But in the meantime, enjoy your life, serve the place you're in, raise up the next generation, and remind them of their God.

This is what they needed to hear.

So in our day, here's what's true.

We have, I think, too many false prophets today that continue to speak to God's people as if they are God's representatives to God's church in America.

False prophets of today, they're not quite like the ones in the Old Testament, but here's what I think they're doing.

I think that they are trying to lead us in a way to live in a means that is not of Jesus.

Like some are still playing the when Jesus comes back, when we're gonna be an eternity type game, okay, which is a really dumb game to play.

I hope you're not playing that game in this room.

Don't play that game.

You can't figure it out, you won't know.

But some are still playing that game, but others are doing something else.

They're leading us astray by telling us how we are supposed to live here as exiles in our day.

And there's two thought paradigms that tend to get put against one another.

Okay, the first thought paradigm is this is conviction versus compassion.

There's prophets in our day that are trying to speak to the voice of the church, the people of the church.

And they have this argument versus conviction and compassion.

And what they're doing is say, hey, uh, people of God, you can lend your ears to these voices.

You can say, Hey, you're only supposed to be a person of conviction.

Only be a person of conviction.

Dig deep into the word, hear the truth, and only be convicted and only live convicted.

Don't live any other way.

And then there's other voices that say, only live with compassion.

Only live with compassion.

Be nice and merciful and kind.

Anything goes.

Love is love, all this kind of stuff, whatever it might be.

But here's what's true: we need to be people who live with both conviction and compassion.

The prophets, false prophets who will tell you that you have to choose one, conviction or compassion, they're false.

Here's what's true: conviction and compassion.

Why?

Because compassion without conviction, this enables.

It feels everything, but it stands for nothing.

You want to know what you're not called to as a Christian?

To not stand for anything.

You are called to stand for something.

But when you don't stand for anything, here's what's true: empathy and sympathy, which these are good things, by the way.

They become good things that become God things, and all we do is become people of comfort.

And we want to comfort the people around us.

Why?

Because we care too much about their feelings and we care too little bit about their souls.

So what happens?

When we have conviction without compassion, this doesn't enable, but this alienates, it pushes people away, it creates this kind of separation, it stands firm, it has a solid foundation, but it feels nothing.

And we need to know that that's equally as wrong.

It fights culture, it feeds our desire to win and be right at the expense of the care for the people around us.

Like this is a false way to live.

And we can be tempted to bend our ears to these false false voices, either way or the other.

If you don't know which way you lean, ask the person you came here with.

I'm sure they would love to tell you.

Like there's a way that we tend to lean, but we need to know we need both conviction and compassion.

But not only this, we also need, or there's this other paradigm, and it's the truth and grace paradigm: conviction and compassion, truth and grace.

And just like conviction and compassion, there's voices that will say, hey, Christians, you need to only speak with truth, truth at all costs, by any means necessary.

Just say the truth thing and be the only people who say, Hey, only be people of grace.

Only offer grace.

Who are you to judge?

Why not just be a grace-filled person?

Listen, this isn't no secret.

I'm not trying to mislead you.

What's true about truth and grace?

We need both.

We need both.

Truth without grace condemns.

It can be accurate, yes, but it's also crushing.

Grace without truth coddles.

We've said this before here.

It tends to offer a sense of forgiveness without repentance.

Uh, there's an old theologian in passion name, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who called something like this when you have grace without truth, when you have a type of grace that just coddles the people around you, he says that's cheap grace.

You ever heard that phrase before?

Cheap grace.

And what it does, yes, it builds a type of comfort around you, leaves people comfortable around you, but it doesn't help anybody change.

And you want to know what's true about every single one of us in the room, there's a level of change that the Holy Spirit needs to have in us.

And when we're grace only and know truth, we actually stifle the work that the Holy Spirit might be able to do, not only in you, but in the people around us.

We have to be people of conviction and compassion.

We have to be people of truth and grace.

So going to the city means establishing your roots, it means discerning the truth.

And lastly, it means hoping for Eden.

So here's the last of the text today.

It says, For this is what the Lord says, when 70 years for Babylon are complete, I will attend to you and will confirm my promise concerning you to restore you to this place.

Restoration.

For I know the plans I have for you.

This is the Lord's declaration.

Plans for your well-being, not for your disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

And you will call to me and come to pray to me, and I will listen to you.

You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart.

I will be found by you.

And this is the Lord's declaration, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and places where I banished you.

This is the Lord's declaration.

I'll restore you to the place from which I have deported you.

So after 70 years, God's promise is that he will come and restore the people of Israel.

So what Jeremiah is doing is giving his people this reminder that there is coming a day.

He's saying, Hey, don't forget, y'all.

Yes, the punishment, 70 years in exile, but also there is coming a day when the world won't be like this anymore for you.

There won't be any more exile.

You'll return to what you know, you'll be able to rebuild the temple, all these kinds of things.

God has not forgotten you.

This is what Jeremiah wants the people to know.

And I love this text because it kind of echoes Genesis here.

Don't you love when the Bible just plays off of one another?

When you read a portion of the text and it gives you echoes of somewhere else in the text.

I love this.

On Tuesday nights, we do a college ministry here called Talk Company.

And the last couple of weeks, they've been walking through the beginning of Genesis, just the first three chapters.

And I love that you can kind of get echoes of the first three chapters and even kind of some of the Abrahamic covenant as you think about what Jeremiah is saying here to the people.

You can hear this kind of garden and covenant language when you think back to Genesis and Genesis 1 and 2, the command of Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, and for them to be a blessing to the people around them.

You hear the echo as Jeremiah commands the Israelites to plant roots and to be about the well-being of the city.

But you also get this kind of account of the post-fall reality, that the world is full of sin.

Why?

Because of Adam and Eve, and the exile is here for the Israelites.

Why?

Because of the sins of the people.

Both were plunged into this new world reality in which they had this onslaught of feelings of hey, things aren't as they ought to be: sadness, overwhelm, anxiety, depression, feelings that they didn't think they should be feeling.

For the people Jeremiah is talking to, it's a return back to rebuild Jerusalem and their way of life, worshiping God.

But for us, it will be a future return back to Eden.

And this is how this applies to us, because there is something far greater, I need you to hear this Christian in the room, that is awaiting for you as you are here as exiles in a fallen world.

There is something far greater than Adam and Eve could ever have dreamed to experience being banished from the garden, than the people of Israel could ever experience by thinking about returning back to Jerusalem.

Y'all, on this side of the cross, there is something far greater for you to experience that God has to offer you.

What's coming for you is not the same thing that was of old, but a new thing coming for us is the new Jerusalem, coming for us is the new Eden, even greater and more developed than the last.

Life as it was always meant to be.

I love Tim Keller, a late pastor.

Um, he has a quote about the end times and Eden coming.

And here's what he says, and pop up here on the screen.

Tim Keller says, Eden was meant to be developed into a city.

The new Jerusalem is Eden restored and finished, a garden city.

What a beautiful picture.

With the river and the tree of life running through its streets.

So I want to talk to the people in the room right now who may be burdened and laden by some of the pain that you can experience in this life.

It might be something a little bit more personal.

Like, here's what I want you to know that there is coming a day when God's people won't experience the world like we do right now, and yet it will be fully restored.

Better, much better than you can ever imagine.

There's a famous verse right here in the middle of this passage, Jeremiah 29.11.

Many of you know this story, for I know the plans I have for you, plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and I hope.

Maybe you've heard the translation that says, plans to prosper you, not to harm you.

Some of you probably have this on a coffee mug at home.

Or you grew up with one on a coffee mug at the crib, maybe it's on a blanket.

I don't know.

Like this is just what happens in the Christian world.

It's a good verse.

But I want us to take into context so we can understand further what it means because this is not an individual promise, but it's a corporate promise.

Church, this is not like everyday hope.

This is an everlasting hope.

It's an eternal hope.

And so I hope, like when you think about Jeremiah 1011, that you become a person who puts it in this context and understand that this isn't just for like your job that you have.

This isn't to be like, God, my job situation is so terrible.

I think you have a different purpose and whatever for me, my school situation, my relationship, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is.

Jeremiah 211 is not hope for your circumstances wholesale, but what it is is a hope for exiles that you hold on to when life feels unbearable, and the only thing you can speak from your lips is come, Lord Jesus.

It's hope for that.

It's when life feels difficult to manage, when it feels hard to get up in the morning, when it feels difficult to walk, when fear has overtaken you, when your ground that you thought was firm once before has shaken and it's quaked, and you don't know how you're gonna make it out of the rubble.

Jeremiah 29, 11 is hope for you.

To say, hey, life won't always be like this.

Trust me, if you are a person of God, if you are a person push your faith in Jesus, what's true of you now is that your eternal future is secure.

It doesn't matter what your life looks like right now.

It's not that God doesn't care about it, but it's that you can live in a different way.

Why?

Because it's not your eternal place.

This isn't all that there is.

So people who go to the city, we have to have this idea that our eyes are focused on heaven.

Here's the key takeaway for this morning.

Jesus helps us maximize our exile by going to the city while keeping our eyes on heaven.

And this is my prayer for this room that we be people like this.

I want to end with a story this morning.

My wife and I, we've our family have been here, it'll be two years in December.

In May of 2025, we just moved here.

It's been a couple months since we had lived in the city.

And I told you about Milwaukee, right?

The city of Milwaukee, in many cities across the country.

I'm not dogging on Milwaukee.

I love this place.

But we heard all these different things about what happens in the city of Milwaukee, and you know what we thought?

We thought, hey, we would fly above the fray.

Why?

Because we're different and we're here for the admission of God, right?

Nothing's gonna happen to us.

What happened a couple months until living in our home?

We live right here in the heart of the city, right off of MLK and North Avenue.

Don't know if you guys know what that means, but it's in the heart of the city.

In May of 2025, tragedy happened right across our street, a homicide.

Welcome to Milwaukee Gift for the Cole family.

I wasn't in town, my wife and kids were here, and I remember the frantic call like it was yesterday.

I'm in Colorado, Donald Work trip.

My wife calls me and says, Hey man, I can believe this.

Gunshots, about 20 of them, right around our neighborhood.

Immediate death.

Young 19-year-old, Zakari Robinson.

I'll never forget his name.

Senseless killing in the city of Milwaukee, right across the street from my house, in a bare parking lot.

Yo, we have a college ministry here at Ambassador Church.

You know where 19-year-olds are supposed to be, not buried six feet deep.

They're supposed to be hearing about the hope they can have in Jesus Christ.

So that they can have an eternity and a hope to look forward to that is beyond anything they can experience right here in this life.

That's where 19-year-olds should be.

I grieve that my family has experienced this.

I grieve that my kids have to learn those skills.

I'll never shake.

My wife told me, my oldest, she's 11 years old.

The first thing she heard, she heard the gunshot, she dove right to the floor.

We've never lived anywhere where she's had to practice that before.

She's learned that over time.

And I hate that she's had to learn that in the city of Milwaukee.

My heart is griefed.

And the deepest prayer I've had to pray from that point on is this, hey Lord, please don't let my heart grow cold for this city.

And I would imagine I'm not the only one in this place that has to pray that prayer.

And so I beg with you, if you're a person in this room that has to pray that prayer, would you just pray that prayer?

Would that just be true of you?

I can stand up here and say this right now.

Even in the midst of that, a year from that incident, just a little bit more, I still love the city of Milwaukee.

I love our house, I love our neighborhood, I love the people that we meet, I love what happens there.

The sirens have become just kind of a little bit of white noise for us, my family, at this point.

But we love this place.

And my heart is that we would be a people who grow to love the city of Milwaukee too, and we'd be people who go to the city, living as exiles in the fallen world, saying, God, hey, this might not be what I want it to be.

We may not be in our home, our eternal home, but we're in a home for now.

And so would you help us live in this place, pursuing the good of the city and praying for this city?

This is my hope for us.

So as we wrap up this series, here's what we need to know: growing in our new identity, gathering around the table, and going to the city is how I'm praying that God helps us become ambassadors for the city of Milwaukee.

Would you pray?

May this be true for us.

Father, we love you, and we're grateful for this morning.

We're grateful for your word, we're grateful for your truths, and we're grateful for how you challenge us.

Would we heed the prophetic voices from the word of God that overlay onto our own experience?

Would we not be people who look at the word, we hear the words, we be convicted by them, we leave it right here?

But would this be something that changes us and transforms us?

We be people who live as ambassadors, who move our feet and we move our hands for the city that you've called us to?

We talk about calling a lot in the Christian faith.

You know what calling is?

Calling is where you have us.

So would we be people who answer the call to be a faithful presence in the place that you have us, right here in the city of Milwaukee?

Would we love it?

Would we care for it?

Would we seek its well-being?

Would we not retreat here, but would we engage here?

We'd be people who pray for the welfare of this city.

This is my hope for Ambassador Church.

I pray this be true of us.

We love you, Father.

We praise in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.

Thanks for listening to the Ambassador Church Podcast.

To learn more, visit ambassadormke.org or follow us on Instagram at AmbassadorMKE.

And if you're in the Milwaukee area, we'd love to see you this Sunday at 9 or 11 a.m.

at 2308 East Bellevue Place.

Grace and peace.