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Nov 03, 2024

Come What May (Nov 2024)

Come What May (Nov 2024)

Passage: Jeremiah 29:1-7

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: General Topic

Historians will decide whether this election season has consumed a nation unlike previous national referenda. Come what may, what is our mandate, and the promise upon which it rests?

 

CENTRAL TEXT: Jeremiah 29:1-7

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. 2 This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the eunuchs, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. 3 The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. It said: 4 “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 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. 7 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.

 

PRE SERVICE TEXT: Jeremiah 29:7

7 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.

 

PRAYER/SCRIPTURE READING/CONFESSION OF FAITH: Heidelberg Catechism, Questions 1, 105-107

LEADER: What is your only comfort in life and in death?

ALL: That I am not my own,1 but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life9 and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

LEADER: What is God’s will for you in the sixth commandment? 

ALL: I am not to belittle, hate, insult, or kill my neighbor—not by my thoughts, my words, my look or gesture, and certainly not by actual deeds—and I am not to be party to this in others; rather, I am to put away all desire for revenge.

LEADER: Does this commandment refer only to murder? 

ALL: By forbidding murder God teaches us that he hates the root of murder: envy, hatred, anger, vindictiveness. In God’s sight all such are disguised forms of murder.

LEADER: Is it enough then that we do not murder our neighbor in any such way?  

ALL: No. By condemning envy, hatred, and anger God wants us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to be patient, peace-loving, gentle, merciful, and friendly toward them, to protect them from harm as much as we can, and to do good even to our enemies.

 

BENEDICTION: Hebrews 13:20-21

LEADER: Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

 

POST SERVICE: Jeremiah 29:7

7 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.

 

 

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Romans 13:1-7; Revelation 13:1-8
  • Revelation 13

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 

  1. Why do most discussions of politics or religion tend to devolve into less than charitable conversation? Why might a Christian be uniquely furnished to comport themselves with charity even while having deep and principled disagreement with someone?
  2. Try to imagine what it would be like to be uprooted and resettled in a foreign land whose leadership overtook and conquered your homeland. What might it have felt like?
  3. Summarize in your own words the substance of Jeremiah’s inspired word to the exiles of Israel in Babylon. What is unexceptional about that urging? What would be a shocking recommendation?
  4. What is required of those who would not merely tolerate those of a different political conviction, but to hold them with regard and charity? What conspires against that? 
  5. Have you ever had a good faith conversation with someone who did not share your political convictions? What was it like? Was it ever difficult? Were either of you any different following the conversation-even if your convictions remained intact?
  6. Why does the gospel form a person into someone who can disagree—even vehemently–with someone over a matter of public good and public policy, but not at the expense of holding them with respect and even seeking their good?

 

QUOTES:

 

  • The awareness that God acts in history in ways that we can only know in the context of our culturally determined experience should be central to a Christian understanding of history.  Yet the Christian must not lose sight of the fact that, just as in the Incarnation Christ's humanity does not compromise His divinity, so the reality of God's other work in history, going well beyond what we might explain as natural phenomena, is not compromised by the fact that it is culturally defined.
    - George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture

  • We must heartily hate the world enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it is worth changing.
    G.K. Chesterton

  • For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more--remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words.
    - J.R.R. Tolkien

  • We shouldn’t be shocked or scandalized by deep disagreement in the commonweal. While God’s Spirit has been unleashed in history and in the church, the kingdom is not here yet. And so politics is the hard work of forging a life in common despite the fact that we, as fellow citizens, might be animated by fundamentally different visions of the good. . .our political institutions are not immune to incursions of grace.
    - James K.A. Smith

  • I keep finding reasons to see my political adversaries as human.
    - Larissa Phillips

  • While all the powers of good aid and attend us,
    boldly we’ll face the future, come what may. 
    At even and at morn God will befriend us, 
    and oh, most surely on each newborn day! 
    - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Powers of Good,” December 28, 1944

 

 

 

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