The Vineyard Church of North Grand Rapids, MI

Hope for Families in a Broken World

April 29, 2007
Jeremiah 29:4-11

33 families suffering immensely in the wake of VT shootings.
Indonesian friend: Randy Sinbolon, 18yo, son of translator at church-planting school, Sumatra, wondering if America is safe for Indonesian students, does everybody have guns, are college students in danger all over our country, would he be safe at Calvin College.

Is America really safe? Should I raise my kids in America?

Islamic Website: how to raise teens in American culture, quotes US sources for telling information:
-Nationally, nearly one million young women under age 20 become pregnant each year.
-In the U.S., 1 in 4 sexually active teens become infected with an STD every year.
-Homicide is the second leading cause of death for persons 15-24 years of age and is the leading cause of death for African-American and Hispanic youths in this age-group
-Approximately 240,000 to 360,000 of the nation's 12 million current undergraduates will ultimately die from alcohol-related causes--more than the number that will get MAs and PhDs combined.
-Hours per day that TV is on in an average US home: 7 hours, 12 minutes
- The content on American TV, too bad to mention

Clearly, things are getting worse in America, its not the same world Beaver Cleaver grew up in, its not safe to send our kids out after dark, to sit our kids in front of the TV, send our kids to school, even to the neighbors. Its not safe to have the neighbor kids over to house, at least without a hold harmless agreement.

Evidently, our fears are having an impact, as a country we're having less children than ever. Since, at least the 1960's young Americans have been asking the question: "Is it really a good idea to bring children into a world like this?" Our birthrate has been on a steady decline ever since.

We're also getting married less than ever.
- number of singles has quadrupled since 1970, 31% of adults in this country are single.

We're ending our marriages more than ever.
21st cent - ½ to ¾ -- "till divorce do us part"
200,000 marriages a year end before the first anniversary

Its just not safe to get married anymore; at least not without a prenuptial agreement.

How do we respond to a world that's not safe for kids and marriage? Pull the kids out of school, move to another country, hunker down and wait for Jesus to return? Do we picket, write letters to the editor, start a culture war?

Let's open our Bibles today. I'm always surprised how relevant, how timeless, how wise and how challenging the Bible is. Every time we open it we find it fresh, inspiring and suprising. Sometimes our world, the world of school shooters and global terrorism seems so far from the world of the Bible, but what we find in these pages is a world very much like our own.

This morning I want to look at a familiar passage (one of the most misrepresented texts in the Bible) for a glimpse at God's direction us modern Christians.

Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the plans I have for you...
Photo: graphic moral decay overlaid with text: "For I know the plans"

1. One of the most misused texts in the Bible: we rip it out of context. We individualize it. We put it in our pockets (that's mine! For me myself and I). You've gotta be careful doing that, to take a promise given to another group of people living somewhere else.

2. We rarely read other promises. Here's an iron-clad, surefire promise:
- 2 Timothy 3:12. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
No one wants to claim it.

- Great Commission: there's no, "lo I am with you" without the "go ye therefore" (we'd like to reserve that for missionaries or the original apostles)

3. We're secular humanists (we don't even know it).
Why am I here? To consume and enjoy. That's how we interpret Jer 29:11
Our first thought in Jeremiah: God just said to me, I'm going to be healthy and wise.
"I prayed for it and if I don't get it in 24 hours, something is wrong. We do it again, and if it doesn't work, the first thing we do is find another 127 people to pray with us. And if still doesn't work, we try to find a Christian help book to tell us another button to push (another prayer, etc.) He says right in his word that his plan for me is prosperity.

Let's ditch the sacred souvenirs, the jesus junk, the Christian mega-marketing industry, and find out what Jeremiah 29 is all about:
Jeremiah gives the exiles 4 directives that we'll take a look at this morning.
Putting Jeremiah 29 in its place
People in exile. Gone is the promised land.

Babylon: Carried off to modern day Baghdad (80 miles S)
Archaeological inscriptions confirm Jehoachin's presence

A city of excessive wealth, luxury, sensuality, vice and corruption, excessive wickedness that completely disappeared by 141 BC

The original sin city: Las Vegas of the ancient world.

Babylonia was a nation built around the worship of false gods. Not the kind of a place a good Jewish parent would want to raise kids, not a place that supports traditional family values. They certainly didn't hang the 10 commandments in their courtrooms.

In 597 BC, the first wave of Jews were ripped from their homes, their towns and cities ransacked, and dragged to Babylon.

Many cities throughout history have been compared to Babylon, its sort of a euphemism for excess: ancient Rome, modern New York, America, Europe, the Western world.

Let's start reading at verse 4

4 Directives from Jeremiah
1. Be patient; God has sovereignly brought you here (v.4).
Jeremiah is clear, its God that has brought you here. There's no amount of prayer and fasting that's gonna change that, no amount of wishful thinking. In verse 8, he even warns the exiles, don't let your prophets deceive you, this is not going to be over soon. You're here because God has brought you here.

Zimbabwe: no future for my kids, could it be that God has brought us here?

That's where some of us live in today's economy. We're really not making it in the globalized economy. What was God thinking, leaving us here. Some of us are wondering how we can raise kids in this hypersexualized, hyper-violent, hyper-materialistic culture? What was God thinking, placing me in a culture like this?

And we're tempted to pull out, to retreat, move out to the country, lock the doors, pull the kids out of school. Some of us are just retreating into our minds; today's problems are just too overwhelming, we're looking the other way while our kids are growing up.

But Jeremiah reminds us, God has brought you here, God knew the culture, the economy would get this bad, he placed you here at the start of the 21st century in Grand Rapids. He knew the challenges you'd face.

The second directive from Jeremiah:
2. Settle down and build a life, a family and a future. (v.5-6)
Don't give up on marriage, family. Increase in number, don't decrease. You see, God's plan for the world has always been accomplished when his people get married and multiply. Fill the earth (Genesis 1:28). They wasn't just the God's plan in the beginning, but here too, in exile in Babylon. In fact, establishment of God's kingdom, his active presence in the world, always involves marriage and families.

Singles, newly married - this series is for you! Get out a notebook.
WARNING: this is uncomfortable

What's the big deal about marriage? Healthy marriages reveal God. Eph 5:25 5 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her... "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." [c] 32 This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Social arrangements don't reveal God: love without commitment is

What's the big deal about parenting? Parents prepare the next generation to receive the gospel. Luke 1:17, And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous-to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."

What's the big deal about families? Why is God into big families? Families are a constant source of God's blessing. Gen 22:16-18, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring [a] all nations on earth will be blessed, [b] because you have obeyed me."

ILLUS: Carleton family: I mocked them; Bill & Debi committed to raising the next generation of kingdom advancers.

Countercultural: This flies in the face of 21st century American values. We have backward ideas in our culture about marriage and children. We're absolutely commited to indvidualism: life, liberty and the pursuit of my happiness (my happiness).

Stats on Birth Rate: below replacement rate in US 1.9 (almost 40% are born to a single mom)
France 1.5, Muslims birthrate 6/family, in two generations France will be a Muslim country by birth alone
Italy 1.1

Deirdre Macken, an author, feminist and mother, laments in her 2005 book at how her peers forgot to have children. As an active part of the feminist movement in the post-Vietnam era, Macken wonders out loud in her book if her generation didn't "take things too far" with the "agenda." She says, our hopes were high, our income was skyrocketing, our options were opening up, both in marriage and family, but somewhere along the line, we forgot to have children!"

In our nation, we are absolutely committed to the pursuit of happiness. If you've noticed in the news, since the Supreme Court abortion case ruling a couple weeks ago, much of our nation has been in an uproar over what has been called a "disaster for women" an "erosion of rights and lives of mothers." In this country, we're far more committed to our lives (our rights to happiness and fulfillment) than to those of children.

And despite the anti-abortion a stance of many Christians and churches, this same attitude has crept into the church. Many of us are convinced that family planning is a private matter. The number of children I have is between me and my spouse. And statistically, most of us are deciding that fewer is better. The prevailing attitude in many churches is "a boy for me, a girl for you, praise God we're finally through." Unwrittten rule 2 children per family (exception, same gender, one more try).

What do you say to yourself when a family with 4,5,6,9 kids walks through the doors of church Sunday morning? "Haven't you figured out that happens yet."

MY STORY: Married ‘young' and in college (you're just kids!), to tell you the truth, when I'm in some circles and the topic of marriage comes up, I feel a bit old-fashioned. I still feel that with many college friends: 26? I can't imagine being married at 26? I'm still not making enough money to afford a $100,000 wedding.

When we first got married, we both wanted a big family, but a college professor warned us that the world was facing a population crisis, "Am I helping to destroy the planet by having another child?" We decided that having a couple kids (maybe 3) would be acceptable, but then the question of timing came up: we don't want to rush, I mean we've got to cherish all the freedom we have as a young married couple, (the freedom to spend money like there's no tomorrow, the freedom to have a motorcycle, the freedom to do whatever we want whenever we want), but then it happened, an accident at 25, and Jack came along. And MUCH to our surprise, Jack has been the best accident we've ever gotten into. But everyone I've talked to has warned us, two children will be much harder, maybe too hard. Maybe you're biting off more than you can chew. Can you really afford it? And I'd really like more kids, but even as Lauren and I discussed the sermon yesterday, we're still questioning, "do we really want all the trouble of a big family; wouldn't life be easier with less children; let's decide after this second one if we can really handle a third."

And in the background of all this 21st century middle-class speculating about marriage and children, our birthrate is falling rapidly.

Friends, we value prosperity more than we value our children. Our comfort, our self-determination, self-fulfillment. We value ourselves more than we value our spouses and our children.
The good life in America doesn't include more than 2 children.

Why is it that in the 3rd world the poorest of poor still view another baby as a blessing from God? But in this the richest nation in the world, most of us can't afford to have another?

According to the Bible, marriage is a gift, children are a gift. A greater gift than material wealth, a greater gift than a fulfilling career or calling. A greater gift than recreational pursuits.

I'm not telling you how many children to have, but I am telling you this, we need to rearrange our priorities. We must seek God's input on the size of our families. Its not enough to stop when we're satisfied. We need to let God reshape our thinking about marriage and children.

Jeremiah tells us a third thing in his letter to the exiles: "seek the peace and prosperity of your community." God doesn't care if your city is filled with corruption, debauchery and moral decay. God is clear with his people, don't try to escape the place I've put you. I've put you there to be a blessing. To live exemplary lives, to have marriages that draw your neighbors toward me, to have kids that grow up into leaders in society.

3. Become a community of hope
Young people today: I want to talk to you especially this morning. Many of you are thinking about your calling, your career, your purpose in life.
You need to know that great marriages and great families are a calling. Now God does call some people to celibacy, sometimes God calls special agents who serve him in special ways (Paul, OT prophets), but for many of us,

most of his church, he calls to marriage and childraising. And that's significant. Because most of don't view it as a calling. Our society teaches us to think that good parenting is old-fashioned. At most, parenting is a pastime: a enjoyable pursuit if you can fit it between your career and your friends. Make sure you really enjoy life before you settle down and have kids.

But here's what God says: you want to make a big difference in the world, you want to make a world-changing difference, do you want to make your mark in the world, to really leave a legacy? Build a great family, start with a great marriage, show the world what faithfulness looks like, raise a hoarde of kids that love God and love people.

Because children aren't just a blessing to their parents, children are actually a blessing to society. Children that are raised in homes that place Jesus' kingdom at the center are a constant source of blessing to a community. Parents that raise their children to love God, love people, and share his gospel are a blessing to everyone.

Thriving marriages are a gift to society that needs to see the faithfulness and love of God. Healthy families are a gift to a neighborhood, a school system. Big families that share are a gift to families that are struggling, a gift to single moms and dads.

Young people: if you're holding off on marriage and family, I'm not suggesting you run to the chapel, but you need to check your heart, are you delaying because God has called you to, or because you're afraid, or because you don't want all the trouble, or because you want to keep you freedom. Think about it, not everyone is called to parenting, but everyone is called to something. Do you know why you're in school, why you're in your career track?

If you're already a parent:
Now I'm not sure where you should send your kids to school. I'm not saying you should send your kids to this school or that school or home school, but I am saying God has called you, whether you're single, married with/without children to be a blessing to your city. To seek the best for your city, to pray for your city. To transform the city God has placed you in. Retreat is not part of his plan. God has placed you here with a purpose, and its not to hide out at Kregel's until he gets back.

GRANDMA: she was frightened by the way the world was changing: "I hope Jesus doesn't find you at the movies"
Where would we want Jesus to find us? Let him find us hard at work building marriages and families that make our neighbors hungry for God.

And yet its so hard to raise kids. The most educated & accomplished in our society are still struggling with building a marriage and raising kids.

Maybe you've actually used that one on your kids, maybe you feel like your losing the culture wars with your kids, one movie at a time.

Just like the exiles, you may be asking, God, I don't think I can raise my kids in this culture! This is a long way from the promised land! This is a long way from where I grew up! How do you expect my marriage to make it in this sexually-dysfunctional culture? How do you expect my kids to survive with the internet?

God would say to you, I know I have the plans I have for you, a hope and future. I haven't put you here and left you alone. You know right where to find me, seek me with all your heart.
4. When you've run out of hope, remember your future.

YOUNG PEOPLE: the only thing you've decided about marriage is that you don't want to be a statistic, or you don't want to be like your parents

GREAT PAINFULNESS: I'm aware that some of you live with great pain because of children, some of you because you're a single parent struggling to parent alone, or because your spouse isn't really present as a parent. You're trying to raise your children

When you're on God's mission, you can rely on God's promises. God would say to you this morning, I know the plans I have for you

MINISTRY: CHANGE our language about marriage and family

stuck in the battle, parents who aren't sure how to go on with their kids, young people who are battling with whether to have kids at all.

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