Jeremiah 20:7-13
Pastor Troy Slater - Our
The Sixth Sunday after
Pentecost - A June 22, 2008
I imagine most of us have had some
tough jobs in life. But I think Jeremiah
probably has us all beat. Jeremiah is of
course the prophet who recorded God's Word that serves as our Old Testament
text for this morning from Jeremiah, chapter 20. And talk a about a tough
job. I mean as a prophet, the
Lord would send Jeremiah to tell the people how it was. And it was, in Jeremiah's day, not too
good. And as a result Jeremiah had to
preach a lot of law - "Repent! Repent!
Repent!" was often his message. And for that Jeremiah did not win too many prophet of the year awards.
For example take this account which immediately precedes our Old
Testament text for this morning - this account of a portion of Jeremiah's
ministry … (read Jeremiah 20:1-6). No I
don't think Jeremiah was probably on Pashhur's
Christmas card list.
To be a prophet of God meant not
to preach what the people wanted to hear - rather it meant to preach what God
needed to say. And sometimes what the
Lord needed to say was "You're heading down the wrong path. If you continue in your sin and unrepentance from that sin - well then you're headed for
destruction, for damnation - you're on the highway to hell." Such was Jeremiah's job.
Now to be sure Jeremiah did also get
to preach the good news to repentant sinners.
He did get to share God's forgiveness, God's restoration, God's message
of life forever in the promised land for God's
repentant people. But to preach that
forgiveness, he first had to preach judgment; to preach the Gospel he first had
to preach the Law; to preach restoration he first had to preach destruction. And again, needless to say, it did not win
Jeremiah a lot of friends. And such is
Jeremiah's lament in the first part of our Old Testament text. "I
am ridiculed all day long, everyone mocks me. … so the
Word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. … All my
friends are waiting for me to slip, saying, 'Perhaps he will be deceived; then
we will prevail over him and take our revenge on him.'" With friends like those, Jeremiah needed no
enemies. .. But such was Jeremiah's job,
a tough job indeed. …
Now I think we can see some obvious parallels
here between Jeremiah's situation and our situation today as the church. I mean in a whole lot of circles today, even
within a lot of churches, it's not real popular to stand up and say, this
certain type of behavior is wrong - sinful - goes against the Word of the
Lord. I mean for example, in the world
or even in the church today how popular is it to say, "It's a sin for a
man and woman to live together before marriage." Not very. Of course the temptation is to go along with the
ways of the world, to compromise God's Word to us, to be friends with the
world. But to resist such a temptation -
to stand up and say, "thus says the Lord",
not very popular.
Or, even in the church - again for
example - tell someone that they are in the wrong - say, that they treated
someone badly. What do they do? Well, what do we so often tend to do when
someone tells us we are in the wrong? We
get defensive, right?
I mean we love to hear about our
neighbor's sin, but brother, don't dare tell me about mine. … Pride, is what it is, isn't it? Sinful, ugly pride. Such is often our problem and such was
certainly the problem of the people to whom Jeremiah was called to preach
repentance to. …
But there is something else in this Old
Testament reading that I would like to focus on for the rest of our time this
morning. For there is
something else about Jeremiah's situation that we can probably all relate to. And that is that we too, like Jeremiah, face
times when it seems the whole world is against us. Times when it even seems as if God is against
us - times we cry "Why God are you allowing this
to happen?" but God is only silent.
That's where Jeremiah was an dwell, maybe
you've been there. … Yes maybe you've been there too. …
But I think that as we do look at
Jeremiah - as we lament the common sufferings we share with him, it's also
important to look at how Jeremiah handled his situation. Yes he did lament his situation; we can see his
grief and his sorrow. But we can also
see that Jeremiah knew something - or perhaps it was that through his suffering
he was brought to know something.
And that is, that he knew, he was brought to realize, his total and
utter weakness in the face of life. He
came to confess his total and utter weakness in the face of life. I mean listen to His confession here again: "The Lord is with me like a mighty
warrior; so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and be thoroughly
disgraced. Sing to the Lord! Give praise to the Lord! He rescues the life
of the needy from the hands of the wicked.".. "the Lord rescues the life of the
needy." Where is Jeremiah
turning to for help? Who is his mighty
warrior? His savior? Is it himself? No, absolutely not. Rather Jeremiah confesses his help, his strength is only in the Lord. In other words, through his trials and
troubles, Jeremiah is brought to realize and to confess his total and complete dependence
upon God. …
This morning we continued and will
continue again next week - so I certainly encourage all of you to come - but it
is a Bible study on "suffering" using that issue of the "Good
News" magazine that was recently placed in your church mailbox. At the very least certainly read through that
issue - certainly a lot of great help there in learning to find hope and even
joy in the face of suffering. But the
basic point of the whole issue is that suffering is actually God's way of
working his good and gracious will in our lives. Through suffering the Lord teaches us to rely
on Him and on Him alone - He teaches us how truly and totally dependent upon
Him we are our Creator and our Savior. In
other words through suffering, the Lord drives us to acknowledge our
weakness. Through suffering the Lord
drives us to acknowledge our weakness. …
Of course that's not always so
popular, is it in our day and age - to admit weakness and dependence. I mean modern man refuses to be weak - after
all we've got it all figured out. We
don't need God - we've got ourselves. I
was watching the Glen Beck show the other day and he had as a guest some guy
named Ray Kurzweil.
Apparently Mr. Kurzweil is a futurist who is
convinced that if he can just keep himself alive another 15-20 years, human
technology will be to the point where he will be able to live forever. Asked about his spirituality Mr. Kurzweil said that science and technology is his
spirituality - with human intelligence he had all he needed. Sad, sad, sad to say the
least. One can only hope and pray
that such a person will be brought to repentance and to the joy of God's
salvation in Jesus before he inevitably enters death door. For death - brought about by our sin - does
ultimately shatter all our vain illusions.
Death is the ultimate witness that we are weak, we are frail. Modern man may think he is in control, but
truth is, we have no control over our destiny, do we? No control.
And speaking of no control, some of
you might have heard the story that came out of the Chapman tornado about the
woman in the basement of the home right next to the Lutheran church. As the tornado passed directly over the
two-story house it lifted the entire house off of it's
foundation, twisting it and placing it against the church next door, all the
while pelting this woman with chunks of concrete. I had a chance to see that house this week
and I must say I could not imagine the terror and just the helpless feeling
that woman must have gone through as destruction reigned all around her. There's really only one thing you could do at
such a time - remember you are in God's hands.
He is protector, He is your mighty warrior, He is your Savior, or, like
Jeremiah confesses, He "rescues the life of the needy". Helpless, weak, needy. That is what we all ultimately are -
dependent upon God.
Of course that's the message of the
cross, isn't it.
We are weak, but He is strong - strong to save. We are weak but he is mighty to deliver. The horror of the cross tells us in fact that
we were in such bad condition - helpless and weak - that it took the Son of God
- yes the very Son of God to come down from heaven, be conceived by the Holy
Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffer under Pontius Pilate, be crucified,
die, and be buried. That's how in
trouble we ultimately are on our own.
That's what our strength got Jesus.
Crucified, died, buried. But yet
in His suffering, in His apparent weakness, Jesus saves, Jesus rescues, Jesus
delivers me and you.
It's not knowledge or technology that
is our strength. It's not mankind's vain
attempts at immunizing itself from death and destruction. It's God who is our strength. The Lord God who made us
and gives us every breath. It's the
God who so loved us that He became one of us and walked the way of
weakness. It's the God who went to the
cross - emptying himself of all pride and human glory, giving Himself into
death that we might have forgiveness and life.
Our strength is our God who rose again over death and the grave on the
third day. That's where our power is; that's
where our hope is; that's where death is conquered; that's where the sorrows and
suffering of this world become God's tools to draw us ever closer to Himself. The cross
and the empty tomb of our Lord Jesus, that's where our strength is.
So in the face of suffering, what do
we do? In the face of an unbelieving
world's rejection of the church's call to repentance and to receive Christ's
blood-bought forgiveness, what do we do?
Well, we do what Jeremiah did. Or
rather we do what the Lord brought Jeremiah to do. We trust in God. We look to Him. We look to the cross and know, "The Lord
is with me like a mighty warrior … Sing to the Lord! Give praise to the Lord! For He rescues the life of
the needy." Yes he rescues
the life of even me and of even you.
Amen.