Posted on July 3, 2026 Posted By: TJ Schultz Categories: Sermon Notes

Note: This manuscript isn’t a transcript of the sermon, but a planning guide showing what the speaker intends to say.

[Pointing to the screen] What does it mean to do this? What is truly at the heart of what it means to love your country?

It’s got to include rooting for the US Men’s Soccer team.

When our team wins a knockout round game, in the same week as our 250^th birthday—loving your country means pretending to like soccer.

Loving your country means you wear t-shirts like this.

I have this shirt. Heather wouldn’t let me wear it this morning.

I love this country and I love celebrating our country. When I lived out west, we spent two 4^th of Julys in a row, in Jackson, Wyoming. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you may never know what it is to be a true American until you celebrate the 4^th out there. It starts with a cowboy gun fight on the street. Then a rodeo. And wraps up with fireworks. I’ve never felt more ‘Merican.

There’s so much about this country that I love. We are ridiculously blessed with diverse and exquisite beauty.

I cherish the genius of our nation’s founding because it wove together a vision of ordered freedom that honors both human dignity and acknowledges human depravity—something that resonates deeply with a biblical view of the world.

I am grateful for a system of governance that is designed to diffuse power, compel accountability, and assumes no single leader or party can be trusted with unchecked authority.

I value our judicial structure because it elevates the rule of law above the rule of personality, creating space for justice, correction, and reform across generations.

I love my country. I want the best for my country. I want my country to live out and live up to its founding documents. But it would be inappropriate to use this time, in this place to preach the “gospel of America.”

Could you imagine inviting me to your kid’s birthday party? But when I show up, I bring a cake that’s all about my kid. When it’s time to sing, I sing to my kid. When it’s time to open presents, I pull out a gift and present it to my kid. Would you want me at that party? You’d probably say something like, “Rick, I’m glad you love your kid. But this party isn’t about your kid.”

When we gather together, the spotlight is on Jesus alone. We make a big deal out of Jesus alone. We celebrate Jesus, and Jesus alone. So, I want to wrestle with this question from the posture of wanting to honor him, and be like him. My goal today is to present a gospel shaped answer that could be held up and held out in any country and any point in history: past, present, or future. Let me start by sharing a deep-down assumption that I carry.

If it isn’t true for Christians EVERYWHERE, it isn’t true for Christians ANYWHERE.

There isn’t a version of Christianity that’s true in affluent countries but is different in developing countries. There isn’t a version of Christianity that’s true in countries that protect religious freedom, but a different version in countries that sanction religious persecution. There isn’t a version of Christianity that’s true in red states, but a different version that’s true in blue states. Are you tracking with me? Whatever it means to love your country, the answer is the same for Christians in any country and any time.

Let’s start here.

1 PETER 2:11-12 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

This says we are foreigners and exiles. They each mean something distinct, and when paired together give us a framework for how to view ourselves and our relationship with whatever country or community in which we live.

FOREIGNER:

paroikov someone who lived in a community long-term, followed its laws, contributed to its economy, and cared about its wellbeing, but who did not hold the rights or ultimate identity of a citizen.

EXILE:

parepidnmos a sojourner passing through — present, but never fully at home.

This idea, that we are present, but not at home, shows up in the very beginning and weaves its way through the Biblical story. This is how Abraham described himself.

GENESIS 23:4 “I am a foreigner and stranger among you…”

Peter used both terms deliberately, echoing how Abraham described himself. He's telling the church: this has always been the posture of God's people.

EXILE IDENTITY:

Abraham lived in Canaan without owning it.
Joseph served Pharaoh's Egypt without worshiping it.
Daniel rose to the highest levels of Babylonian and Persian government without bowing to their gods.
Esther worked inside a pagan palace to save her people.

None of them withdrew. None of them assimilated completely. All of them held two loyalties in careful, costly tension.As followers of Jesus, it’s the same for us. Let’s go back to the New Testament.

PHILIPPIANS 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul says our citizenship is in heaven, a word the Philippians, living in a Roman colony proud of its citizenship, would have immediately understood. We are not people without a country. We are people with two: one temporary and one eternal, one earned by birth or naturalization, one purchased by the blood of Jesus.

As followers of Jesus, we live in tension. We’re not in limbo. But there is a tension. We are exiles.

An exile is fully PRESENT but never fully at HOME.

And that raises a tension we must face honestly. How do we love the place we live without placing our hope in the place we live? How do we have hope for it, but avoid the ditch of placing our hope in it? How do we contribute to the good of our nation without falling into the ditch of trying to control people with whom we disagree?

So, I want to walk us through a framework:

We are exiles, not warriors.
We are ambassadors, not saviors.
We love our country as we love our neighbor.
We trust the King of kings to handle the rise and fall of nations.

This isn’t about withdrawing from public life. This is about entering public life with the right identity, the right expectations, and the right mission.

We have been given a template for how to do this. The template I’m talking about goes all the way to back to the 600s BC. It was when the Israelites were literally exiled in Babylon.

JEREMIAH 29

Will you grab a Bible and find this passage? It’s in the Old Testament. If you open to the very middle, you’re in Psalms. Go forward five books, and you’ll find Jeremiah. This may not answer all our questions. And yet, it gives us all the clarity we need.

JEREMIAH 29:4-11 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes, this is what the LordAlmighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord. This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

The full text of the letter goes on to explain a bit more, but this contains the heart of it. They will be in exile for 70 years. The last verse we read, Jeremiah 29:11, is a verse that’s crocheted onto pillows and printed on inspirational posters. “I know the plans I have for you..to give you a future and a hope.” It sounds so encouraging and inspirational. But it didn’t feel that way to them. It sounded hopeless.

They were defeated by a foreign army. Taken against their will to a foreign country. They wanted to go home and God said, “No. Most of you are going to die here. What I want you to do with your time here is to make this country, the country of your captors, better than how you found it.” Whoa.

Historically, it unfolded like this:

605 BC: First deportation. Young nobles like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are taken to Babylon.
597 BC: Second deportation. A larger group goes out, including King Jehoiachin and many leaders.
Early–mid 590s BC: Jeremiah sends his letter to the exiles (Jeremiah 29), calling them to settle in, build houses, plant gardens, seek the welfare of the city, and accept a seventy‑year horizon.
586 BC: Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed. The unthinkable happens. The center of their religious world is gone.
539–538 BC: Babylon falls to Persia; Cyrus allows exiles to return, beginning the long rebuilding.

What’s the backstory? How did this get started? Israel didn’t wake up one day to find a push notification that they were going into exile. This was the culmination of centuries of drift—idolatry, injustice, ignoring the prophets. When God established Israel as a nation, he made a covenant with them. They were supposed to be a nation of priests. They had a purpose. That purpose was to be a missionary nation, serving as a light to the world. The purpose was to represent God so that people from all the surrounding nations would be drawn to him.

But they abandoned their purpose. Being invaded and being dragged into exile was punishment. And yet, that’s not exactly what this was about. By being dragged into exile, God was dragging them back to fulfill their original purpose.

Exile wasn’t about PUNISHMENT as much as it was about PURPOSE.

The Babylonian armies were not an interruption to God’s plan; they were instruments in God’s plan.

Why does this matter to us? Because Jeremiah’s letter gives us a theological GPS:

You are not home.
You are loved.
You are sent.
You will be here a while.

Jeremiah 29:11 sits right in that tension.

JEREMIAH 29:11 “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

That verse was not originally printed on graduation cards. It arrived in a letter carried to refugees, telling them:

You are going to be in Babylon for decades.
You should plant your life there.
You should seek the good of the city that conquered you.
Your hope and future are secure, but they’re on God’s timeline, not yours.

That’s exile theology. And the New Testament picks it up.

EXILE THEOLOGY:

Holy nation, foreigners and exiles (1 Peter 2:9-11)
Ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20)
Citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20)

I want to contrast this with another way of thinking. I wonder if you’ve heard of this cycle before? If you have, you’ve probably heard this line, maybe in a podcast or a meme. You might have heard it from a Christian online personality.

STRONG MAN/WEAK MAN CYCLE:

“Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.
Hard times create strong men.”

There’s enough truth in that to make it sticky. It’s an observation about how prosperity can breed complacency, and how crisis can force courage. But if we’re not careful, we turn that cycle into our mission:

Our job is to be the strong men who keep us out of hard times. If we just fight hard enough, we can hold the line. We can save our culture. We can keep the good times going.

Who wouldn’t want to keep good times going? It makes a lot of sense to me why this has such strong appeal with good-hearted, intelligent people. The problem is that’s not the Christian mission.

Can Christians contribute to the good of their country? Absolutely. We should. Jeremiah explicitly tells exiles to “seek the welfare of the city” and to pray for it. If you are familiar with the Old Testament book of Daniel—the account of his life and the lives of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—that happened when the people received this letter in Jeremiah 29:11. While the people were supposed to build their lives and invest in the good of Babylon, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were working in the government of Babylon.

And sometimes these men had to make hard choices. Would they remain faithful to God, or assimilate, go with the flow, make small compromises, and leverage their government positions to stay safe? They chose faithfulness even though it put their lives at risk. That’s exile theology at work.

In the New Testament, believers are told to do good, seek peace, and bless even when mistreated. But notice the difference between Exile Theology and the Strong Man/Weak Man Cycle:

Scripture calls us to be faithful, not to manage history.
Scripture calls us to love neighbors, not to guarantee that our grandchildren inherit “good times.”
Scripture calls us to bear witness to Jesus, not to ensure our nation never experiences “hard times.”

We are not culture warriors with a divine mandate to save civilization. We are ambassadors with a divine mandate to represent Jesus.

The “strong men, weak men” cycle can become a secular eschatology: the story we secretly believe about how the world works. When that happens, we end up trusting human strength more than divine sovereignty, and we measure spiritual success by whether “our side” wins.

That’s not exile theology. That’s anxiety theology, and it’s anti‑Jesus.

Whichever country we live in, and whatever time we find ourselves in, this should be our disposition and commitment.

We will CONTRIBUTE to the good of our country but refuse to believe it’s our job to SAVE our country.

Our job is to know who the King is, who we are, and what we’re sent to do. Let’s go to the text that gives us our job title.

2 CORINTHIANS 5:20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

We are ambassadors of the King. We represent him. And we carry good news. God is not holding people’s sins against them. He offers reconciliation, forgiveness, and new life to all who trust in Jesus. We are his ambassadors, and we carry that message.

Ambassador is not a cute metaphor. It’s core identity. And identity drives activity.

AMBASSADOR:

Represents a king in a foreign land.
Speaks on behalf of that king, not himself.
Lives under that king’s values, not the host country’s norms.
Works for reconciliation, not domination.

That’s who we are. We’re not warriors whose devotion to Jesus is expressed by doing battle with people who threaten our rights or our vision of the common good. We’re not secret agents whose devotion to Jesus is only expressed in safe company. We are ambassadors whose devotion to Jesus is expressed by loving God and loving all others, at all times, even when it’s risky.

Think about what this means for how we love our country:

Ambassadors tell the truth about their King even when the host nation isn’t interested.
Ambassadors serve the common good because their King cares about justice and mercy.
Ambassadors don’t fight the government; they’re there to embody another kingdom.

QUESTION:

How do I fight to win my country back?

That’s not the question an ambassador asks. This is the question an ambassador asks.

How do I represent King Jesus well in this country, right now?”

ANSWER:

We honor rulers while remembering they are not ultimate.
We engage in civic life without letting our hope rise and fall on election cycles and court decisions.
We refuse to treat our political opponents as spiritual enemies.

That’s ambassador work. That’s exile faithfulness.

So how do we love our country—any country, in any era—in a way that’s truly Christlike and truly hopeful?

Let’s combine Jeremiah’s letter and the tone of the New Testament.

HOW TO LOVE OUR COUNTRY:

Embrace the call to build, plant, and bless.

Jeremiah tells exiles to build houses, plant gardens, marry, have children, and seek the welfare of the city. In our language, that means:

Put down roots. Don’t live like you’re just passing through in a way that excuses disengagement.
Work. Create. Contribute. Use your gifts for the flourishing of your community.
Pray for your leaders, even when you don’t like their decisions.
Support what is just, resist what is unjust, but do both with humility and love.

We love our country by serving it as if it were a big neighbor God has placed on our street.

HOW TO LOVE OUR COUNTRY:

Reject the warrior identity.

The warrior posture feels righteous. It feels strong. It feels like “strong men preventing hard times.”

But the New Testament trajectory is clear:

“Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing. (1 Peter 3:9)
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. (Matthew 5:44)
Seek peace and pursue it. (1 Peter 3:11)

When we slip into warrior mode, we start to think:

WARRIOR MINDSET:

My job is to defeat the people who are ruining this country.
My job is to ensure my group stays in charge.
My job is to preserve my preferred culture at any cost.

But ambassadors think differently:

AMBASSADOR MINDSET:

My job is to represent Jesus, even to the people I think are ruining this country.
My job is to show what the kingdom of God looks like in the way I treat my neighbors, coworkers, and leaders.
My job is to trust Jesus with history while I obey him today.

Ambassadors can’t be culture warriors because warriors are trying to win; ambassadors are trying to witness.

Let’s talk practically, in our own setting.

If we at Autumn Ridge take this seriously—if we embrace exile theology, ambassador identity, and Jeremiah’s call to seek the welfare of our city—what does it look like?

We will be deeply ENGAGED, but not deeply ANXIOUS.

We will vote, serve, lead, and advocate where we can.
We will care about policies because policies affect people Jesus loves.

And yet, we will refuse to let the nightly news and our algorithms disciple us more than the Scriptures do. We will not surrender our emotional stability to the latest headline. Fear is anti‑Jesus.

We will treat every neighbor as a person to LOVE, not a problem to SOLVE.

Including:

The neighbor who flies a different flag.
The coworker who posts things you disagree with.
The local official whose decisions frustrate you.

We will pray for their blessing. We will look for ways to do good. We will not confuse opposition with permission to withhold love. Let’s sit with that for a second. We will not confuse opposition with permission to withhold love.

We will remember we’re AMBASSADORS of King Jesus, not representatives of ____________.

We could fill in the blank with all kinds of things. This means:

Our primary allegiance is not left, right, or center. It’s up.
Our primary message is not someone’s talking points, it’s the good news of Jesus.
Our primary metric of success is not “Did our side win?” but “Did we represent Jesus well?”

If we suffer, we want it to be for doing good, not for being obnoxious.

We will love our country as a GIFT.

We should be grateful. We should celebrate what is beautiful. We should grieve what is broken. We should work for good and reform when necessary.

But we will not tie our hope to the survival of any particular cultural arrangement. Our hope is tied to a crucified and risen King who will renew the world.

What I’m suggesting we do is love our country the way Jesus loved us.

He stepped in and was fully present in our world, as one of us.
He loved and served us.
He confronted when necessary.
He was full of truth and grace.
He sacrificed himself for our well-being.
He even gave up his rights and privileges for our benefit.

When we are captivated by that, we will be compelled to love like that. May God bless America, and may God bless every country, through his people who happily embrace being exiles and ambassadors—who make it their mission to love their countries the way Jesus has loved them. May that be true of us.

ambassador, citizenship, newsfeed

Message Notes: Love for Country