Vision for the Local Church in Exile
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - We are back one last time with author
00:00:07.080 | and pastor Ray Orland.
00:00:09.160 | Ray, when you think about your church in Nashville,
00:00:11.960 | what is the vision you send them out with into the world?
00:00:14.720 | What's your vision of a local church
00:00:16.800 | sent out into a world that's hostile to Christ?
00:00:19.840 | What do you seek to instill in your church as they go?
00:00:22.880 | - I don't try to instill in them
00:00:26.200 | an angry determination to go and defeat our city
00:00:31.200 | and defeat our nation and the political purposes of others.
00:00:37.960 | I just don't see that as God's calling upon us.
00:00:40.640 | But instead, Jeremiah 29, seven says,
00:00:43.040 | seek the peace of the city where I have sent you into exile.
00:00:47.400 | And that city was Babylon.
00:00:48.920 | It was not a nice place.
00:00:50.560 | It was infested with idols.
00:00:52.280 | But God is saying in that verse,
00:00:53.880 | I want you to live there.
00:00:55.800 | I want you to settle down there.
00:00:57.520 | Don't try to run away.
00:00:58.920 | I don't want you to be escapist
00:01:00.800 | and bring my peace into that city.
00:01:03.760 | I am going, I'm gonna give you an address
00:01:06.080 | in the suburbs of hell.
00:01:07.880 | And I want you to create beauty for my glory
00:01:10.600 | and for their benefit in that hard place.
00:01:12.840 | So for us, Tony, for Jannie and me,
00:01:17.160 | one thing it means is we have the privilege
00:01:20.560 | of having in our home someone as a long-term guest
00:01:25.240 | in our home, someone who has been very seriously mistreated
00:01:28.520 | and is beginning to put her life back together again.
00:01:32.360 | This person does not know the Lord.
00:01:34.320 | This person has suffered.
00:01:36.080 | And I cannot tell you how joyful it is to us,
00:01:40.240 | how we feel we're the ones receiving the gift
00:01:43.280 | as we want to bring into an environment of peace,
00:01:47.800 | someone who really needs another chance at life.
00:01:50.840 | So I am, you know, in his wonderful book,
00:01:54.440 | "The Church at the End of the 20th Century,"
00:01:56.440 | Francis Schaeffer has a chapter in there
00:01:58.480 | entitled "Revolutionary Christianity,"
00:02:01.120 | in which he talks about throwing our homes open.
00:02:05.040 | He painted the picture in his own home there in Switzerland,
00:02:09.240 | how as they opened their home with radical community,
00:02:13.720 | all their wedding gifts were broken and torn and so forth.
00:02:17.000 | People burned holes in the carpet with their cigarettes.
00:02:19.640 | People threw up on the carpet.
00:02:22.360 | Well, that is actually a privilege.
00:02:24.760 | It's a privilege to give people a place in our reality
00:02:29.200 | for Jesus' sake and to show them a love
00:02:32.600 | they don't even believe exists.
00:02:34.400 | And if they can't see it, how can they believe it?
00:02:37.720 | - Yes, amen.
00:02:38.640 | Ray, thank you for your time
00:02:40.160 | and answering questions with us.
00:02:41.520 | - Thank you, Tony.
00:02:42.880 | - That's been Ray Orland.
00:02:43.840 | He has been our guest the past couple of weeks
00:02:45.760 | as John Piper is on an extended writing leave
00:02:48.080 | working on his next major book project,
00:02:50.120 | which I hope to share more about later with you.
00:02:53.640 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:02:55.920 | You can, of course, search our archive
00:02:57.600 | of hundreds of episodes on our landing page
00:02:59.840 | at desiringgod.org.
00:03:01.680 | At the top of the page, click on the tab that says More,
00:03:03.880 | and then click on Ask Pastor John.
00:03:05.640 | Feel free to take some time
00:03:06.800 | and search our collection of episodes.
00:03:09.440 | Send John Piper a question, get the free app,
00:03:12.400 | do all that from our landing page.
00:03:14.720 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:03:15.640 | We'll see you tomorrow.
00:03:16.800 | (upbeat music)
00:03:19.400 | (upbeat music)
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