Immanuel Sermon Audio
Immanuel - City
Amen. Thank you guys for leading us in worship this morning. We're going to sing a couple more songs when we're done with the sermon. There's an outline in your bulletin. If you like to follow along on the outline, the passage this morning is Jeremiah 29. You know, a preacher's worst nightmare is preaching in front of a bunch of preachers. So in seminary, you got to take preaching class. And it's just brutal to stand up before a bunch of guys who think they're better preachers than you are and to deliver a message and then to allow them to critique you and give you feedback and maybe a little bit of encouragement mixed in there somewhere. And so this isn't quite preaching class, but for former pastors, that's pretty darn close. So pressure's on this morning. On Sunday mornings, we've been taking a break from our normal series. We've been working through the Gospel of Luke and we've taken a break in that study. And we have taken a few weeks during the month of September to talk about our church mission statement. We're on the screen. Manual Baptist Church, God with us for His glory, for the world, for this city, and for you. Obviously a play off of our name, a manual, which means God with us. It was part of the opening song that was playing when the slides were running earlier. And in this series, we're just trying to all get on the same page by asking the question, what does that mean? What does it mean that God is with us for His glory? And we talked about that two weeks ago when we looked at Isaiah 6. What does it mean that God is with us for the world? And we talked about that last week, Matthew 28 in the Great Commission. Next week, what does it mean that God is with us as a church for you as an individual? But this morning, what does it mean for us that God is with us for this city? And we're going to look at Jeremiah 29 in just a minute. Really this is the perfect morning to talk about the idea that God is with us for this city. And we look back and we celebrate 75 years of existence in Odessa, Texas to say, what does it mean that God has been with this church for the last 75 years? And again, the men who shared during breakfast made this point, I'll make this point one more time just to make sure you get it, is not a celebration of us. This is not, let's pat ourselves on the back. We've done a really remarkable job for the last 75 years. This is God has been faithful to our church for the last 75 years. What does it mean that He has been and will continue to be with us for the sake of Odessa? 75 years is a long time in case you didn't know. And I got to think in this week about 75 years and I wasn't around 75 years ago. Most of you were not. A few of you were, not many of you, but a few of you were. And so I just did some research. What was going on 75 years ago, 1939, some of these pictures will be obvious. There won't be any guessing involved, but some of you maybe can help us out with some of these pictures. January, in 1939, who is that? Amelia Earhart, officially declared dead. January, 1939, February, 1939. Anybody know who that is? Anybody? History buffs? Neville Chamberlain. Neville Chamberlain. In February of 1939, Neville Chamberlain took to the Airways and told Nazi Germany, "If you attack France, you attack us." So if you try to drag them into a war, you're dragging us. He was the prime minister of Great Britain. You're dragging Great Britain into the same war. So that was February 1939. March, 1939. Gandhi began his famous hunger, fast, protesting British rule over colonial India. That was March 1939, April 1939. Nothing to guess here. Just a picture of the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck was published April 1939. On a lighter note and much more relevant today, May 1939, Batman made his first comic book appearance, May 1939. So if you've got one of those originals, you've got something valuable. Hold on to that. What about June 1939? The first Little League World Series baseball game played in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. This picture is from 1960. If you look close, you would see it says 1960 at the bottom. That's the oldest picture I could find of a Little League team. So you get the idea, 1939, first Little League World Series game played in Williamsport. July, very next month, still on baseball, that is Lou Gehrig. I won't ask who said Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. And in July 1939, he gave his last public speech. And so you may know Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS disease, some of you had water dumped on your head over the summer because of that. This was him. July 1939, he gave his last public speech and it began, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." So famous speech, famous line, July 1939. August was a good month, 1939. The Wizard of Oz was premiered in Hollywood, August 1939. September, the first shots of World War II were fired. September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, that was in September, October. Look at this picture. What do you think that is? Any ideas? This was a big month. Somebody should know this, October 1939. It was the first time anyone bought a pair of nylon stockings, October 1939. For sale at a department store in Delaware, and I don't know if those ladies were the original purchasers, but they looked appropriate. November, who do we got for November? Anybody know? Al Capone, released from Alcatraz, November 1939. One last one. Anybody ever flown out of this airport? LaGuardia, New York City, open for business, December 1939. So a lot of big things happened in 1939, and in West Texas, about the middle of the year, there was an open air revival down on Sam Houston Street, and at that revival, 70 people came together, covenanted together to form the Immanuel Baptist Church. I had a great time looking back over some of these pictures from the good old days, the open air revival, and some of the original buildings, and the original members, and things like that. Because I looked through those pictures, the thought occurred to me that a lot of things have changed in 75 years. Here's a couple of things that haven't changed. Obviously, I could say God has not changed. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, forever. That would be the easy thing to say. Here's another thing that hasn't changed. We're still sinners. You can go back to the original 70 who sat out on these benches in 1939 in Sam Houston Street, you can tag and chronicle and list out every member, every person that's come through the doors of this church since then. You can list everybody who's here today. We're all sinners in need of a Savior. And you know what happens when you put a bunch of sinners together? We screw stuff up, and it gets messy. And sometimes things don't go exactly like we would hope they would have gone. So you can look back over 75 years and you can say, "Here's some amazing, some great, some fabulous things that happened." And we look back with fond memories for those things. You can look back over 70 years and you can say, "You know, there were some unfortunate things. There were some things maybe we would do different, some things that we regret." But here's the point. Over the last 75 years, God has been faithful to this church, and in spite of who we are, He has used us. And our prayer is that in spite of who we will continue to be as sinners in need of a Savior, He will continue to use us going forward. For His glory, for the world, for you, and this morning we're thinking about the idea that He might use us for the good of Odessa, Texas. And so if you have your Bible, take your Bible out, look at Jeremiah 29, we're going to read 14 verses in Jeremiah 29, then we're going to backtrack a little bit and sort of try to make sense of what Jeremiah is saying and then we will apply this to our church. So Jeremiah 29, beginning in verse 1, this is the Word of God. 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 all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Jack and I and the Queen Mother, the eunuchs, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah, the son of Shaphon, and Gimeriah, son of Hylkiah, whom Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, it said, the letter said, "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 their produce, take wives and have sons and daughters, take wives for your sons, 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. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you and do not listen to the dreams they dream. For it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name, I did not send them," declares the Lord. For thus says the Lord, "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans for wholeness 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 in the exile. Let's pray together. Father, we are here to worship you, to think about who you are, to think about your plans and your purposes and your actions. Father, we are grateful for seventy-five years of faithfulness to this church, seventy-five years of using us in spite of us. But, Father, as we read from the book of Jeremiah, we are reminded that you go back way farther than seventy-five years. And your plans and your purposes and your ways and your wisdom are far beyond what we can imagine. So as we read this old story about you and your people and your relationship with your people and your promises to your people, give us eyes to see the truth, give us hearts to receive it. Father, we pray all of these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Take your Bible. We're going to work our way back up to Jeremiah 29, but go back to Jeremiah 1. Before you can really make sense of the letter that we just read, you need to understand a thing or two about Jeremiah. For some of you this might be review. For some of you this might be new. But look at Jeremiah 1, beginning in verse 1. The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom, Jeremiah, the word of the Lord, came in the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Joash, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month. Now, if you ever read the Old Testament, those verses don't make a lot of sense to you. But here's the general idea of how the book begins. There's a guy named Jeremiah. His dad's name is Hilkiah. He comes from a priestly family. He lives in the nation of Judah as opposed to the nation of Israel, the northern kingdom that had broken off and already been taken into captivity. He lives in the southern kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem is the capital. And he lives in the twilight years of that nation's existence. He lives during the last few kings who sat on the throne of Judah before they were all hauled out out of Jerusalem into Babylon into captivity. So that's who Jeremiah is. Now look at verse four and five. These are words that you've seen on coffee cups, crocheted on the wall, all sorts of places. The word of the Lord came to me saying, verse five, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah, I knew you before you were put together in your mother's womb. I knew you and I had a plan for you. I destined you. I consecrated you. I set you apart to be a prophet to the nations. If you stop right there, you leave with the warm fuzzies thinking, what a nice story. What a nice, just what, God grows up in the more godly southern kingdom of Judah and he's from a priestly, a religious family. And so they talked about the things of God. And we know who his dad was. He grew up with a dad, what a blessing that is. And God knew him. And God set him apart to do something special, to be a prophet. Before he was born, God had this plan for him. That's just so warm and comforting. And then you read the rest of the chapter and the rest of the book. And the warm fuzzies go away pretty quick. Because in the rest of chapter one, God says, here's the deal. I knew you. I know you. I have a plan for you. You've been consecrated to this. It's going to be tough. You're going to be a prophet to the nations. You're going to speak against Babylon and all these other kingdoms, yes. But you're also going to speak to Judah. And I'm going to send you to the people in Jerusalem and your job in Jerusalem is to tell all the folks, look, you have rebelled against God long enough. His patience has run out. You will be conquered by a pagan, wicked king and you will be hauled into exile. I told you some things never change. One thing that doesn't change is people like their ears to be tickled in the past and the present and tomorrow. That's true. And it was true in Jeremiah's day. So when he waltzes into Jerusalem and he starts saying, here's the deal. You guys are doomed. Destruction is coming. Exile is coming. Nebuchadnezzar is going to haul you out of here. Nobody wanted to hear that. And because Jeremiah kept preaching it, nobody liked Jeremiah. In fact, he was the least popular guy in all of Judah. When they picked kickball teams, no one wanted Jeremiah. When you're sitting at the temple, worshipping, and the guys on the back row were making spit wads and spitting them up in somebody's hair, they're aiming for Jeremiah. When you decide who gets the swirly, who gets the wedgie, who are we going to pick on, who are we running up the flagpole? I got a good idea. How about old Jeremiah? Maybe we won't be able to hear him if we run him all the way to the top of the flagpole. Put him up there. No one liked this guy. And I make light of it, but the fact of the matter is he was persecuted severely because he did what God set him apart to do. So the next time you see Jeremiah 1-5 crocheted on the wall and it's so pretty and nice, or you see it on your coffee cup or somebody plasters that on their Facebook wall, Jeremiah 1-5, I knew you. I know the plans I have for you. I formed you. I've set you apart for something. You just remember that for Jeremiah, that meant a life of pain and suffering and rejection. Did God know him? Yeah. Did he have a plan for him? Yeah. But it didn't create warm fuzzies for Jeremiah. It meant you will be an outcast all of your life. People will hate you. They will literally try to kill you. That's who Jeremiah was, and that's what his ministry was. Now take your Bible and flip forward to Jeremiah 28. Let me give you one example of how this worked out in his life. Jeremiah 28. There's lots of examples in this book about Jeremiah being persecuted. Here's one. Jeremiah 28 verse 1 says, "In the same year in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah in the fifth month of the fourth year, Hananiah, underlined that name, Hananiah son of Azure, the prophet from Gibeon, spoke to me, the me is Jeremiah, in the house of the Lord, in the presence of all the people saying, and you can go on and read later what he said. Here's what I want you to see. In front of everybody, this false prophet Hananiah stands up and he calls Jeremiah out. Now what has Jeremiah done to be called out? Loved God? Done what he said. That's all Jeremiah did. Hananiah stands up in front of everybody publicly and in front of all these folks in the temple he says, "This guy's full of it. He's a liar. He's a con man. Not only is he a liar and a con man, but he is a national traitor. We ought to try him for treason." Listen, Judah's the greatest nation in the world. We have the greatest God in the world, Hananiah said, and our God loves us no matter what. Nothing bad is going to happen to us. Do not listen to that man. Jeremiah is a liar. He hates this country and we ought to get rid of him. That was Hananiah. That was Jeremiah's life. Man after man after man standing up calling him a liar, calling him out publicly and trying to turn the tide of public opinion even more against Jeremiah saying this man is guilty of treason. You can read in chapter 28, it's one of the more amusing chapters in the Bible. God is not thrilled with the false prophet, Hananiah. So he comes to the true prophet, Jeremiah, and he says, Jeremiah, listen. You just walk out there and you tell everybody that this guy is about to die. That's what you do. You just go out there and you tell him, "Hannah and I is about to die." So he goes out there, he tells everybody he's about to die. Seven months later, guess what happened? Dead. But that was Jeremiah's life, preaching the truth for God in suffering as a result. Now take your Bible and look at Jeremiah 29. This is our passage, Jeremiah 29. Verse one is sort of introduction. He's writing the prophet to the elders, the priest, some of the other prophets, all the people who were taken into exile. So radars going off and you're saying, "Wait a minute. We're jumping forward here. He's writing a letter. He's not saying exile is coming. He's saying exile has already happened now. And here's a letter he sent to the people who got hauled out of there. Hananiah was wrong. It wasn't going to be all roses the rest of the way. Jeremiah was right. He really was speaking for God. And now Jeremiah writes to these people that Nebuchadnezzar hauled out of town. Verse three, he sends the letter with some of his friends, Elisah and Gomoriah. And look what he says in verse four, an amazing verse. "Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon." He's about to say some stuff, but before he says some stuff, he says, "I'm the one who sent you into exile." You understand, this was the worst thing that had ever happened to these people. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to any of these exiles. Their nation is conquered. Their friends and family members are slaughtered. They are forced to leave their home and go to a foreign country against their will. They are leaving the promised land going into exile. It is the worst thing that has ever happened. And what does the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, say? Does he say, look, this is a really bad thing that has happened. And sometimes I just kind of have to allow some of these bad things to take place. And you know, maybe in the end we can fix this. He says, listen, make no mistake about it. I understand that Nebuchadnezzar marched into town and hauled you out of here in chains, but don't forget for a second that I am the one who sent you there. I sent you there. So there's a lot of folks here this morning. A lot of different lives represented here, a lot of different circumstances. Maybe you sit here in church this morning and you say, my life has never been better. Things are great. Maybe you sit here this morning and you say, this has been the worst week of my life. Either way, it doesn't matter because what you learn from verse four is that whether things are good in your life or whether things are horrible in your life, God is in complete control of your life. God said to these people, I know that you just went through the worst thing that ever happened to you. I'm the one who sent you there. You keep going and look what he says in verse five and verse six. He says, take wives, have sons, daughters. Take wives for your sons, give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters. Grandkids multiply there and do not decrease. These people were depressed, forced to leave home, family members murdered, everything they own left behind. They go to a new place and God says to them basically, hey, put your big boy pants on. You got lives to live. I didn't ask you if you wanted to go to Babylon. I sent you to Babylon. Now that you're there, get on with it. Get married. Have kids. Grandkids, build a house. Build them a house. Get on with life and quit throwing a pity party. Quit worrying so much about your situation or your location or your circumstances and just live. And you hear that and you say, oh, so it's all about us. We just do whatever we want. Look what he says in verse seven. It's not all about us. He says, but seek the welfare of the city that I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf. Seek the welfare of the place that you end up. Don't just be a critic and gripe about it. Don't just point out all the things wrong with it. Don't just complain about how immoral or how wicked it is. Seek the welfare of that city and pray to the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel on behalf of the city that you find yourselves living in. Seek the welfare of that city and pray to the Lord on its behalf. Give verse eight and nine. He says down there in verse nine that there's going to be some guys who show up prophesying in God's name and he says, I did not send them. There's going to be a lot of voices rattling around in your head. They're not all mine. And just because somebody claims to be speaking for me and just because somebody says this is what the Bible says does not mean that they're speaking the truth. So you need discernment. These false prophets were going to come to the exiles and they were going to say things like this. Man, it was a lot better in Jerusalem. Let's just pack it up. Let's make a run for it. Let's escape. Let's just try to make it. We don't want to be here. Let's just go back home. This place is wicked. There's not a temple to worship Yahweh. We can't offer the sacrifices. We just need to leave this place. We just need to go home. And God is saying through Jeremiah to these people, you don't listen to that. I sent you here and I've got a plan in it and I've got a purpose in it. Don't listen to these people who come and all they do is criticize this city. All they do is gripe about this city. All they do is whine about it and they just want you to flee. I have sent you here for a purpose so you don't listen to these guys. And then look at verse 10 to 14, just skimming through these verses. He says, "The plan is 70 years. When the time's up, I'll let you know, 70 years we're going back. When the time is completed for Babylon, I'll visit you, I'll fulfill my promise. I will bring you back to this place." Now look at verse 11, "Wouldn't you love for this to be your theme verse for life?" Apparently, a lot of people do because I see it on Facebook all the time. You see it on camp T-shirts all the time. You see it plastered all over the place in Christian context. "I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans for wholeness and not for evil to give you a future and a hope." We like that. God has plans for me, a future, a hope, wholeness, all that good stuff. Let me just encourage you to think about a couple of things. When you look at Jeremiah 29, 11 and you think about that maybe being a life verse, understand that when God said those words, He said them to people who had just experienced the worst thing in their life. The worst suffering that they could imagine, they just went through. And then God has the audacity to say, "I got a good plan for you guys, for wholeness, for peace, for prosperity. I'm going to bless you. I'm going to be with you. I have a plan. Understand where they came from." And I also want you to understand this was a specific promise for a specific people at a specific time. You and I don't have the liberty of yanking this verse out of Jeremiah and plastering on a t-shirt and saying, "Aha, life motto. God has plans for me and it's all going to be good." Somebody this morning, I won't mention who, somebody mentioned Joel Osteen this morning. You don't get to do that. You can mention Joel Osteen. What you can't do is yank Jeremiah 29, 11 out and say, "Plans for good, plans for prosperity, plans for peace, plans for health." That's not how it works. You can't just yank verses out of the Bible willy-nilly and say that it's your verse. Here's what you can do. You can learn from Jeremiah 29, 11, and you can learn that when these people were at the lowest of the lows, God was not in heaven ringing his hands. God was not in heaven worried about what was going to happen next. He said to these people, "I sent you where you are. I take full responsibility. I don't have to pass the buck to anyone. I sent you here. I did it. I have a plan. It's going to look like 70 years and when it's up, I have a great plan for you. But look, you've got 70 years. It's not going to be all that great in the meantime. So what do you do for 70 years? Get married. Go on dates. Have grandkids. Build a house. Add on to your house. You're going to be here a while. Live your life in the place that I sent you. But I do have plans for you. You want to know how to really apply Jeremiah 29, 11 to your life. Take your Bible and just flip over to the right. Sometimes in the Bible, when you read a verse that you don't really know how to make sense of or how to apply, you ought to just keep reading a little bit further. You get to Jeremiah 31 and he's still talking about all these things that God's going to do for his people. Look at Jeremiah 31, 31. What are these plans that he has for his people? Jeremiah 31, 31. "Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant," underlying those words, "a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah." Not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day, I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant, they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord, but this covenant, this is the one I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, "Know the Lord," for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. We hear Jeremiah say there's going to be a new covenant. As a believer, your mind ought to fast forward to the night that Jesus ate the Passover meal with his disciples and he did something that no, I mean no self-respecting Jew would ever do in a thousand years, he changed the Passover. God said, "You celebrate this forever." If Jesus has the audacity, the night before he's crucified with his best friends to sit around the table and to say, "Fella's here's the deal," it's not about Egypt. Has nothing to do with Pharaoh, it's about me. And I'm making a new covenant in my blood. And when Jesus said that bells and sirens and light bulbs and flashes of lightning should have been going off in their heads, somebody should have whipped out the scroll of Jeremiah 31 and said, "Wait a minute. You mean this new covenant, the one where you will forgive our iniquity and remember our sins new more?" That's about to happen. That's exactly what's about to happen. You understand that when Jeremiah tells these exiles, "I have a plan for you and it's great. It's fabulous. The plan that's so great and fabulous is not, I'm going to take you home and give you a new house in Jerusalem." That's not the plan. They are going to go back to Jerusalem, but the plan is that there will be a new covenant. That blood will be shed once and for all to wipe away your sins, to provide forgiveness for your iniquities so that your sins before God will be remembered no more. That's the plan in Jeremiah 29, 11. And God says to these people at the lowest moment in their life, "Here's what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to do the greatest thing I could ever do. I'm going to send someone to die for you. They're going to give their life for yours so that you can stand before me whole and complete and in peace." That's the plan in Jeremiah 29, 11. Now, all of that said, what does it mean as we think about this story, Jeremiah 29? What does it mean that God is with us for the good of our city? For most of us, our city is Odessa, some of you are from out of town, so you can apply it to Abilene or Dallas, Fort Worth or wherever you may be from. What does it mean that God is with us for the good of our city? What would it look like for you and I to seek the welfare of this city and to pray to the Lord on its behalf? Three quick ideas. Number one, God's desire for the good of Odessa should move you to action. I hope that you're not wanting me to give you specific step-by-step ABC 123 instructions because I'm not. What I am going to say is it should move you to action. It's not good enough to just sit back and be a wishful thinker. Man, I wish this was different in my town. Man, I wish that this problem didn't exist in my town. Man, I wish that we didn't have to worry about this in my town. My 29 is a call to prayer and I hope that you do pray for your city. There's lots of things that we need prayer for, but I also hope that you are moved in some way, shape, or form to action. When he says, "Seek the welfare of your city," he doesn't mean come, sit in a pew Sunday morning, sit back, complain about how bad things are and wish that they were different. Seek it. Go out and work for it. Look for it. Fight for it. This desire on God's part for the good of our city should move you to action. Now what does that look like for you individually? You've got to figure that out. It probably looks different for you than it does for me or for you than the person sitting next to you. I can tell you one way as a church family, one small way that we try to do this is we are partners with Gonzales Elementary School. Do we go to Gonzales and preach sermons? Not that I'm aware of. We go and we pray for that school. We pray for those teachers. We donate supplies to that school. We try to encourage those teachers. Why? Because we want to seek the welfare of our city. You may look at that partnership with Gonzales and say, "That's just kind of, why are we doing that? Did we get cornered into doing that? What's going on?" No. That's intentional. That's our church saying, "God is with us for the good of this city." That means we need to do what Jeremiah was called to do. We need to seek the welfare of the place that God has placed us corporately. That's one way we do it. Visually, there's a million ways you can do that. The point is you must be moved to action. Number two, God's desire for the good of Odessa should make you cautious. Here's what I mean. When Jeremiah wrote this letter, he gave the exiles a heads up and he said, "Look, there's going to be some people who come and they claim to speak for me and they don't and you don't need to listen to those people." And so as you think about, "Okay, I need to be moved to action for the good of my city." In some way, shape, or form, I need to be moved to action and to be praying for the good of my city, you need to make sure that you are a follower of Jesus first and if I can use this term, a politician second. You're a Christian first and a good member of the community second. You're a Christ follower first and a civic participant second because there's two dangerous things that could trap you up and trip you up. On the one hand, you could start believing the folks who say, "Look, it's hopeless here. It's not going to get any better. Just give up on it. Why are you even trying? Why are you wasting your time?" Jeremiah 29, God said to these folks, "Look, seek the welfare of the place that I've sent you. 20 years, make a difference while you're there. Don't believe the lie that it's hopeless, but on the other side, you might fall into the danger of the folks who say, "We can make this a perfect place, baloney. We're not perfect people. We're not going to make it a perfect place. Our church is not a perfect church. We're certainly not going to make this a perfect town, but somewhere in the middle in there, you're realistic enough to say, "I live in a place that needs change, that needs somebody to seek the good of those in this community." I know that I'm not going to ever make it perfect, but I'm trying to do what God has called me to do, to use His presence in me to seek the good of this city. And as I do that, I'm cautious. One last idea is this. Number three, God's desire for the good of Odessa should mold you into a missionary. Mold you into a missionary. Bottom line is that God has placed you here for a reason. God has placed you where you are for a reason. And maybe there's a timeline on that. Maybe at some point, God moves you to a new community, to a different city in the state of Texas. Maybe He moves you to a new state, maybe He moves you to the other side of the world. Maybe He just leaves you here forever. Maybe this is home, home, home. The only home you know. However it plays out in your life, understand that God is as in control of your days and times and locations as He was these exiles. It's no surprise to God that you live where you live now. And what He's calling you to do is to be a missionary, be molded into a missionary for the good of your community. The neat thing for those of us who live in Odessa right now is that in a very real way, when you seek the good of Odessa, you seek the good of the world. My family went to the park the other night. We were the only white people there. There was a Hispanic family there. There was a family from Africa who was there. There was a family from Asia who was there. There's all sorts of people there. And you look around there and you say, "There's all sorts of people from all around the world right here in my city. The opportunities that you have. The relationships that you can build. The connections that you can make now are invaluable and may go away tomorrow." Jeremiah 29 is calling you to be a missionary to those that God has placed in our backyard. I want you to bow and I want to pray for you and I want to pray for our church. And I want to just pray that we would have wisdom to apply Jeremiah 29. Father, we thank You for Your presence with us in this church. For the last 75 years and the promise that You will be with us going forward. Father, I look out at the individuals in this room and I know that some of them have just experienced some of the hardest, most difficult things in their life. Some of them are right where they want to be and life is good. But Father, all of us need to remember that You are in control of our lives. That we are not here in this church, in this community by accident. Father, we believe that You are with us, not just so that we can meet together on Sundays and sing a few songs and have a Bible lesson, but that You are with us for the good of the people around us, for the good of the people in our community. So as a church and as families and as individuals, give us wisdom about how we can pray and how we can seek the good of this city. Father, our prayer is that You would continue to use us at a manual Baptist to bring glory to You, to make disciples around the world, and to be a light and to be salt right here in our own community. Father, I pray for folks who are here this morning who maybe have never put their faith in Jesus Christ. They have never entered into this new covenant. They have never trusted in the blood of Jesus that washes us wide as snow. Father, I pray today that You would open their hearts, I pray that You would write on their hearts, Your law, that they would be Your people and You would be their God. Father, I pray for the other folks in this room who know You and who love You, that You would give us direction, that You would give us guidance, that You would be with us even now as we worship. We love You and we pray in Your name, amen.