Summary
Praying for the City
When the Babylonians decimated Jerusalem in 586 BC and led God's people into captivity, false prophets sprang up promising a quick return—two years at most. The true word of the Lord through Jeremiah was harder and longer: seventy years. God's discipline upon an unrepentant people would not be brushed aside by wishful thinking. Yet within that hard word came a startling instruction about how the exiles were to live in the meantime.
In Jeremiah 29:4-7, the Lord tells the captives to build houses, plant gardens, marry, and raise families in Babylon—and then this: "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." The Hebrew word translated "welfare" is shalom—not merely the absence of conflict, but a positive desire for peace, prosperity, and abundance. God's people were to want good things for the very city that held them captive, and they were to ask Him for those good things in prayer.
Psalm 122 supplies a serviceable outline for that prayer. Though written about Jerusalem, its petitions transfer to any city: pray for prosperity ("may they prosper who love you"), pray for safety ("peace be within your walls"), pray for leadership ("security within your towers"), and pray for the people ("for the sake of my brothers and companions, I will say, 'Peace be within you.'"). Prosperity, safety, leadership, people—a fourfold pattern by which Christians can intercede for the place God has set them.
Something striking happens when God's people pray this way. At the close of Matthew 9, Jesus tells His disciples that the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few, and He instructs them to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send out laborers. In the very next breath—what we now call Matthew 10—Jesus summons those same twelve disciples and sends them out. They become the answer to the prayer they were just asked to pray. This is no accident. When the Lord prompts a prayer, He very often intends to use the one praying as part of His answer.
That pattern shapes the church's life in exile from her true homeland of heaven. We pray that suffering would be relieved, and the Lord puts meals into our hands to pack for the hungry. We pray for the gospel to go forth, and He raises up classes, mission trips, online witness, and supported missionaries reaching the ends of the earth in obedience to Matthew 28:19 and the concentric movement of Acts 1:8. We pray to grow in faith and in love for one another, and small groups multiply. We pray for the glorification of God, and voices and instruments are gathered to do exactly that. We pray for the youngest, the unchurched, and the less fortunate—and the Lord opens doors, such as a tuition-free preschool prioritizing families who could not otherwise afford a Christian education for their children. See “Praying for the City” 10-9-22 for a fuller treatment.
The grounding of all this is the gospel itself. Jesus Christ is the Light of the world who scatters our darkness; He is salt who has purified us by His blood at the cross, who preserves the faith He has birthed in us, and who flavors our lives with His grace. The One who is light and salt now calls His people to be light and salt in the world. Until our exile ends and we are home, the call is the same call given to the captives in Babylon: seek the welfare of the city, pray to the Lord on its behalf—and rejoice when He answers by saying, "I know who's going to answer that prayer. It's you."
Video citations
- “Praying for the City” 10-9-22 — With your Bibles, please, with me to Jeremiah the 29th chapter for our study today. If you're using a Pew edition of Holy Scripture, you're going to find Jeremiah the 29th chapter on page 690 in the…