A passage in First Peter chapter two. So, as is our custom, we're going to read God's word aloud together and I can't find my reading glasses this morning. Signs that I'm losing it, y'all. So, y'all are going to have to do a really good job reading out loud for me this morning. Let's join our voices as we read God's word.

This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent to the elders, the priests, the prophets, and all the people Nebuchadnezzar had deported from Jerusalem to Babylon. This is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles I deported: Build houses and settle 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. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive. For this is what the Lord of 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 in my name. I have not sent them. 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. For I know the plans I have for you. This is the Lord's declaration, plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. You will call to me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you. 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. And now this is from First Peter:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His possession so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits. — 1 Peter 2:9-12

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

I wanted to know if anybody has visited the Republic of Molossia in this room. Anybody been to Molossia before? I wasn't really, I'm not really surprised to hear that. Molossia was founded on May 26, 1977 and it's located in Nevada and it's what's called a micronation. It's ruled by one Kevin Baugh who is the founder and sovereign. There's this movement afoot in the United States called micronationalism where people have a piece of property and they declare themselves independent countries inside the United States.

So Molossia, you can't laugh at this. It's 1.3 acres, but it has its own navy which is made up of three inflatable rafts. It's got its own postal system and they have a special Molossia stamp that you can only use in the 1.3 acres that is Molossia. It has its own currency. It has a telegraph service. It has a unit of measurement and a flag and anthem and national symbols, holidays. It even has its own railroad. It's a miniature railroad, a model railroad, but it's a railroad and it's visited every year by about 14 people. So big tourism trade going on in Molossia.

Now if you Google Molossia, you'll find out Kevin Baugh, he's kind of tongue-in-cheek about this. This is actually somewhat of a joke about his kingdom, right? His sovereign nation that he's founded. But I highlight this absurd little movement because I want to reintroduce how foreign it is when Christians talk about God's kingdom. This is what this sounds like to lots of people. Y'all do what? You're thinking, what's going on? That God has a kingdom? Now, where is this place? And some 1.3 acres in Nevada somewhere? Right. It sounds that absurd.

We've been working through this new, old mission statement for our church and today we're going to talk about what does it mean to display God's kingdom, Christ's kingdom. What does it mean that Christ has a kingdom and what does it mean that he's a king? And it feels like to many people as abstract and weird as Molossia. But let's look at these two passages. I had you read two passages this morning. One from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament and we'll start here. Which of these passages is about the gospel? My guess is that most people would choose the last part of the passage.

That last passage, which is from the New Testament book of First Peter, talks about Jesus dying for our sins—you being brought out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. You being made alive. This is what people internalize as the gospel. The second passage, the first passage we read from Jeremiah, is from an Old Testament book—a letter to these exiles in Babylon. And for many people, that reads like instructions on how to relate to the surrounding culture. But which of these passages is about the gospel? Here's my point for today: both.

Let me give you background on the Jeremiah passage. Jeremiah 29 is a letter that God wrote to the exiles from Jerusalem. In May, the country of Israel was overrun by the superpower of the day, Babylon—King Nebuchadnezzar. If you don't remember that from history, maybe you remember from VeggieTales: "Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar." His army had a method of conquest. They would come through a country and do two things: first, they would take everything of value—all the gold from the temple—and then they would take every person of value. So they took all the leaders of the country and left everybody else. But they left an entire nation without its leaders, and all the leaders were deported over a thousand miles away to Babylon.

What's happening in this moment is that both the people in Babylon and the people back in their devastated, war-torn homeland are wondering: Where is God? What is God up to? Some of the prophets at that time—one of them mentioned here, Hananiah—come and say, "Don't worry guys, God's got this. In two years it's all gonna be better." But this passage says, "Don't listen to those prophets. Here's what I'm telling you. This is what God says." And He gives instructions on how they're to live and make their lives useful and meaningful while separated from their homeland a thousand miles away in a foreign country where they're not allowed to worship the way they were before. They don't have the language or customs. Everything has been destroyed and ruined in their lives.

The premise of His message is this: you exiles will be there in Babylon for seventy years, and you need to come to terms with that fact. Yet Babylon is not some bad place—it's a place where God is at work. Jeremiah says something really odd here. He says, "Who sent you into exile?" And I'm sure everybody listening to this letter being read aloud would be like, "Well, Nebuchadnezzar—hate that guy, right? He's the worst." But this is what the passage says: "No. I, God, says, I sent you. I put you where you are, and I have purposes for you there."

This is summed up in one word: seek the welfare of the city. In Hebrew, it's shalom—the word for peace. Shalom is used in Hebrew as a greeting—hello or goodbye—but it means so much more than what we think of as peace. It means much more than an absence of conflict. It means universal flourishing. Everyone thriving. And without understanding shalom, we miss what really matters for us. This is where it hits us, because we can live as church, churchy people with a view of Christianity that has half of a gospel.

What God Is Doing in the World

Shalom is what God is up to in this world, and He's inviting His people to be a part of it. He's inviting us to be up to this in the world. Let me show you how Christians think about the world.

This is an old diagram that was used for years to help communicate the gospel to people. Does anybody know what this is called? The bridge, right? The bridge diagram. There are two cliffs—us on one side, God on the other. Our sin and death separate us from Him. In order for us to know Christ, to know God, Christ comes and dies on the cross, and His cross is like a bridge that we can cross over and be with Christ.

Now, that is true. That's a great diagram that's been useful for years and years. Yet if that's all you understand of the gospel, that's about half of it.

A couple years ago, an InterVarsity leader named James Chong came out with a new illustration, and I'm going to walk you through this. He says, if you ask anybody about the state of the world today, almost nobody is like, "Man, it's going great right now. I mean, we're just killing it."

The Broken World and God's Restoration

You know, I couldn't be any more content or happy about how things are going. They acknowledge that the world's broken. It's marked by suffering and injustice and alienation and all kinds of problems. People have lots of understandings about how we'd fix that, but this is how people would understand the world—we live in a world where there is a lot that is broken and wrong.

The Jews to whom Jeremiah is writing would say the same thing. Our temples have been destroyed. We're in a foreign land a thousand miles away where we don't even speak the language. We have no freedom to worship or to go back home. We're living as refugees.

And then Chung capitalizes on the universal hunger for a better world. He says, you know, that universal hunger—all the hungers that humans have—point to something that satisfy them. The sense that we're hungry means there's something such as food, or that we're thirsty means there's something such as water. The fact that we long for a better world means that there either was one or there will be one.

This is when he draws another circle, and this one represents the good, created order of Genesis chapter one. People living in harmony with one another and with God and with the created order. This is how things were designed to be, right? This is how things were supposed to be. Designed for good.

The Fall and God's Response

And then he asks this question: How did we get from circle one to circle two? How do we go from left to right here? And of course, he introduces the idea of sin and evil. Sin is humanity's fundamentally turning away from God and his ways and setting up the self on the throne. And once people did that, they began to use the natural world and human relationships. We began to use each other and take advantage of each other. Shalom was shattered and we were alienated from each other.

This is how he describes it. It's not just the sense of alienation—things have been damaged. This is not the world that God made it to be. Damaged by evil.

But this is the next part: God loves the world and people in it, and he didn't leave us alone. The good news is that God has returned to the planet in Jesus Christ. The next circle here represents his son—that's what the arrow represents—coming into this world to die on a cross. His life-giving ministry was one that showed miracle after miracle. This is what I'm planning to do—restore things, make things right. This is what most Christians would actually describe as the gospel here: restored for better.

This is what Peter says in verses nine through ten:

God called us out of his darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, now you are a people. Once you had not received God's mercy, now you have received it.

But here's the question: Are we done?

The Gospel Goes Beyond Personal Salvation

A lot of Christians would say, yeah, that's it. Creation, fall, redemption. Praise God. That's the gospel. But that's not all the gospel.

There's a tendency within the Christian church to shrink God and to shrink the gospel of Jesus Christ down into a personalized, individualized salvation. And if you stop here, this is why Christians are boring to a lot of people because we have this great thing that's like me, and that's nice for me, you know, it doesn't really change anything or anyone. And it feels as culturally irrelevant as the kingdom of Mesopotamia.

But we wouldn't want a gospel that ends here. I want you to think about this. We wouldn't want something. We intuitively know that there's something really deeply wrong in this world. Would we want a God who simply has a salvation plan that's like an escape hatch for you out of the bad? No. We want something. There's something in us that longs for all things to be made right. The best vacations and meals and times with friends are like a taste of—like, there's gotta be something else behind this.

God's Kingdom Program

So he draws a fourth circle. God has begun a program of restoring shalom. His son came to put things right and will one day put everything right. And right now, it's the privilege of the church to be able to embrace this and participate in the gospel of the kingdom.

Now, I know when we think about king and kingdom, this is a little fresh on our minds. Maybe more today than if I preached this sermon a month ago. How many of y'all watched the coronation? Anybody watch? No. Okay, four of you, right? Yeah, four of you weirdos watched the coronation. But we all know, like, maybe if King Charles was more exciting, we all would have watched the coronation. Hard to get worked up about this one, but it's not part of our lives directly.

And yet this language is so much part of the church. We pray the Lord's Prayer. We pray:

Your kingdom come, your will be done.

We're praying something about the Lord healing and making things right. So what is it?

What is it we mean when we talk about Jesus and his kingdom? It means that Jesus really is a king. When I first came to Raleigh twelve years ago, the church gave me an iPhone that had belonged to a former employee. What was on the bill was "Christ the King," and that's what would come up on people's caller ID. I didn't realize this, so I had several really bizarre interactions with car repair places where I'm calling to check in my car and you can hear the person pick up the phone and say, "Hello?" because Christ the King is calling them. This is called to glory, right here, right now.

I think sometimes it feels funny and weird for us to talk about Jesus as a king. But to affirm Jesus as a king—it's not just about saying "I submit myself to you." It's to bow my knee, like what we see happen in Europe that's weird to us, when people bow down to a sovereign. This is part of what it means to be a Christian and to have a king: we submit our whole lives. We say, "Jesus, you're worthy of all of it. All of my time and energy and imagination and creativity. All of it is under your command and for your use."

The Jews in Babylon knew about kings. They had seen the raw power of King Nebuchadnezzar. This was not just imagination—they knew. But this is what's being told to them in this letter: God is a king way beyond even the power and the glory of King Nebuchadnezzar.

I have sent you into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. — Jeremiah

God is saying, "I'm a king even in charge of what Nebuchadnezzar was doing. I'm behind all of it." Jesus has a real kingdom. If you actually met a micronationalist at a party like Kevin Ba, you'd ask, "Where's your kingdom?" And he could pull out his phone and show you pictures of Molossia—three acres. When we say Jesus is a king and he has a kingdom, we also mean a real place. We mean something real, not just up in heaven but here.

The gospel of the kingdom is not just about salvation—it's about shalom. It's not simply a collection of individuals who are forgiven, who say, "Yes, Jesus is a sort of a king over me." It's also a royal nation. We are a royal nation, a holy priesthood, a new society.

This is why we think about this: if the fall has damaged more than just individual people, then what we look for in restoration is more than just personal salvation. The effects of the fall are much bigger than sin. If you have a nephew who has some form of physical impairment, if you cut yourself shaving this morning, if you've got a chronic illness—these are all effects of the fall. If fallenness is bigger than just sinfulness, then redemption has to be bigger than just forgiveness.

His death on the cross and his resurrection—the Bible says these are the first fruits. They're the beginning of what God is going to do in everything. They're the first buds and blooms on the bush and flowers in the field, like spring is coming and it's going to be everywhere.

I borrowed this week from Thomas Deschamps: you know those snow globes you have at home with little kids? You shake it up and it's supposed to show you a magical universe inside, a magical little land. This is really what it means to be a Christian—for people to be able to look at our lives and look at our churches and say, "Gosh, look what God is up to. He's creating something beautiful and powerful."

This Christmas, we went through the Book of Revelation just briefly, a little overview of what's involved and God's pictures he gives us. It's almost like when you've had babies and you get these ultrasound scans—these pictures in utero of what the baby looks like. You're like, "Man, that sort of looks like your nose. That looks like your features." That's what the Book of Revelation is for us—these prenatal baby pictures of God's kingdom.

Remember what we read in that? You don't go to Chick-fil-A and buy a twelve-pack of nuggets, eat them, and throw away the trash thinking that's what God plans to do with this world. Is he going to pluck all the chicken nuggets—all you—out of there, take the trash, wad it up, and throw it away? Or did we read about how God is going to make all things new? He's not just going to rescue chicken nuggets.

He's going to make it all new and kingdom work then is bringing the future reality of what God is doing into the present. It's showing off as far as the curse is found that new heavens, new earth, all things new in the now, in the right now. This is the only way that God's instructions to these people living as exiles in Babylon make any sense at all. Listen to verses five through seven:

Build, plant, have families, increase in numbers, seek the shalom of the pagan city to which I've called you, even pray for the shalom of Babylon. — Jeremiah 29:5-7

Strive for flourishing for everybody, for all the boats to rise up because the water level's raising. We want to think of God who gives us comfort in the midst of the storm of this world but what if God is in charge of the storms? And what if part of what it means to be a Christian is to see the weather change? God's mission in our world is not just our comfort or even our little kingdoms but his kingdom.

I wonder how the refugees in Babylon would have heard this letter. I'm sure it would have been bizarre. We lived in Philadelphia for sixteen years which is a city full of large immigrant populations that settle in different neighborhoods and therefore have different neighborhood identities. Some are disappearing over time but they still have a flavor to them. Large cities have little Korea. They have little Chinatown. They have a Ukrainian district. They have an Italian market. They have these little areas and refugees go into a city, into a foreign place, and they build a little micro culture, a micronation that is what it was like overseas in this place and yet God is telling these refugees to do the exact opposite. Be a part of everything. Infiltrate everything.

The Distinction Between Church and Kingdom

If you think that God only cares about the church in the world, then God's call for the to seek shalom, to pray for the thriving and flourishing of everything makes no sense to you but this is where it gets confusing to us. I want to just remind you of the difference between the lines. There's some lines between the church and the kingdom. The church and the kingdom are not interchangeable terms. This isn't the kingdom of God, right? The church is the people. God's kingdom is his reign and rule. The church is not all there is to the kingdom of God. Rather, the kingdom of God is all the realm where God is at work through his people in the world.

Abraham Kuyper, who was Prime Minister of The Netherlands in the first part of the twentieth century, said this: there's not one square inch of territory in this world over which Christ cannot say mine. Not one square inch. That's apart from his reign and rule. So, the world is supposed to see in us what family life and business practices and race relations and arts and interpersonal relationships can all be in restored beauty under the kingship of Christ in all parts of life.

So, where is God's kingdom? It's in the church part of it but thank the Lord, it's not all of it. It's how God's people are at work all the time in all the places you are all through the week. Here's how the church relates to the kingdom. This gathering is like home base. We come back here to get reencouraged, to connect together, to remember, oh, this is what we're about. This is how God's at work in us. This is how good God is. We come back together. We're reminded. This is kind of base camp for the kingdom. The church provides an impetus for the kingdom. We train up people to go out and encourage you but you don't either live in home base or you never need it. You come back to it.

So, the kingdom is God's people permeating the world and every sphere of human existence for God's glory. It's never just inside of us. It's never just inside of us. I'm using that word permeate really intentionally because it's not conquest. It's not a fight. It's not triumphalism. It's loving engagement with all the parts of the world.

The church, we have a limiting factor on what we do. This is part of my job, right? We make disciples and we train people and that's what the church is supposed to do but the kingdom, that's what we're supposed to do and it's limitless and encouraging. If Abraham Kuyper is right, if there's not one square inch where God can't say mine, right here, mine. Then, we can't leave an inch of our lives without asking God to fill up these parts.

So, the things that you do for your job, nine to five. Is that part of the scope of kingdom work? Is when you go in and you work with all the different places that you work with, all the people you work with. Your work is so important to the Lord. It really matters. In your neighborhood, in the way that you relate to the people in the apartment next to you, is that a place where God's at work? That too is part of his kingdom. So, kingdom work. Let me remind you of this.

It's everything from the grandiose stuff we hear of in churches—like William Wilberforce overturning the slave trade, AIDS medicine going to Africa, medical care in low-income communities, ESL programs. It's all those things, but it's also taking care of your elderly neighbor. It's being a great employee when you don't have to. It's loving the unlovely. It's forgiving your mom. It's bringing those kids that drive you nuts next door to church with you. It's growing a garden. It's running for office. It's creating beautiful art. It's being part of the neighborhood watch in your neighborhood.

If you're like, "I don't know where kingdom work happens in my life," you don't have to look very far. One of the things I love about this congregation is the creativity and the imagination. I hear stories of the ways that God is using you for things that aren't just explicitly about conversion and prayer. Those are, of course, things that we really believe in, but even just the way that you do your work, the way that you care for people—see, if Christians think all they do is just go to church, then churches think all that we do is stay in business.

Churches usually measure effectiveness by three things. Do you know what these are? This is a pastor thing: butts, bucks, and buildings. How many butts we have in the seats? How many bucks we have in the bank? And our building? I just don't think that's how God measures the effectiveness of his church. That's a sad measuring stick. If that's what you think or if that's what churches think we're about, it's like we're all playing Game of Thrones, fighting for who has the biggest kingdom. I just don't want to play that game. I don't think we want to play that game, do we?

There's so much that you're involved in day to day. I want to push on you to ask the question: As far as the curse is found, where is God giving me opportunities to show forth his rule and reign in this place? Where do I have a chance to do that? When we embrace the gospel of the kingdom, amazing things can happen.

This is why part of our mission statement says, displaying Christ's kingdom in our lives. I want to give you two words in closing to help you remember what this is: different and difference.

Different and Difference

Listen to Peter. How does he call the church to live? If you look in this passage, he says this:

Calling you to live as sojourners and exiles. Literally, resident aliens. And then he has a command attached to that. I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. — 1 Peter 2:11

When Christians hear that, we always think of sex for some reason, but that word actually in the Greek just talks about over-desires. And what I want to point out is the ruling desires. It really comes down to the question: What do you want out of life? What are your ultimate desires for this life?

If I surveyed this crowd—if we were doing Family Feud—I think the top five answers would be something like this: safe schools, great neighborhood, meaningful relationships, financial success, rising property values. Maybe something like that, some version of that.

If I went and did the same survey in Raleigh, preparing for Family Feud, you know what I think the top five answers would be? I think they'd probably be safe schools, great neighborhoods, meaningful relationships, financial success, and rising property values. The same.

So here's my question: Do we want anything different in life than just people who don't know Jesus as king? Do we want something more? Are we different? Do we live like aliens and strangers in this place? Do we have deeper desires and bigger longings because we have a king than just for me?

All of you who call yourselves Christians, you could say: there was one time in my life where this world felt like home, but now you feel a lot of times weird and never quite at home here because this isn't your home. God has designed you for a new heavens and new earth where he's going to live with us in perfect harmony, when everything will be restored. So it's just not going to work for all the ways that we want it to work and feel worked.

My urge to you is: can you lean into some of that and long for something bigger than just for stuff to work, for a parking place at Costco, for the little things we're like, "Oh, this made my day"? But long for something deeper.

Is there anything different about you than your neighbors? Is there anything deeper? There's a way in which our lives should not be entirely logical to people around us. They should look at us and go, you know, there's a lot of things I really like about you, but you're just a little weird. Because you don't seem like you're entirely fit. You want stuff that's not just for you. Different. Different and difference.

Well, some of you might say, wait, but doesn't Jeremiah tell them to do all the things that everybody else does? Build houses, plant gardens, marry in Babylon. It sounds like they're supposed to do everything the same as everybody else. I'm glad you noticed that. Glad you're paying attention.

Look at verse 10. He says, when seventy years are over in Babylon, I will visit you. I'll fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. — Jeremiah 29:10

So these people are told, you got seventy years to live in Babylon, and I want you to build houses and build vineyards that you're not going to live in and the fruit of which you're not going to harvest. I want you to live here like you're here forever knowing that you're not.

Now, I want you to think with me. What is seventy years? Seventy years biblically defined as a lifetime.

Lord, teach us to number our days. You've given us maybe seventy years or eighty if we have the strength. — Psalm 90

That's our lifetime. That's your lifetime. My dad is 76. This is probably his last year. All of us have a number. You don't know it, but you have a number. And I want you to think about that number. You have seventy years here. How will you spend them? Do you want this to be just about you? Or is there a bigger kingdom that God is inviting you into? A bigger view of the world. To live as people who are different, who make a difference.

This is why Peter says, conduct yourself in a way with Gentiles, non-believers, so that they may speak against you but will nevertheless see your good deeds. They'll look upon you and say, gosh, you know, I don't really like all the things you're about, but man, I can't help but notice. Different. Difference.

God seeks to reconcile all things to himself. This is what he's going to do. He's going to make all things new. We've been saved to be invited into—not because we have to, because we get to—be a part of his shalom work in this world.

Our mentality should therefore be this prayer: Lord, would you make me useful where you've put me? Where you've put me today with the people you've given around me, in the context you've given me—would you make me useful?

We Are the Plan

See, here's my last push. We are the plan. Now, I don't want to put too much on us. We don't have to do anything. We are saved entirely by grace, and we can be chicken nuggets if we want to. But I think the Lord is inviting us to something bigger and deeper and wider than just our own flourishing. But raising...