No matter how much we disguise it, ignore it or play with it – sooner or later reality has the last word!
Growing older is like that…..
You can think positively, take out gym membership, dye your hair and dress like a teenager but sooner or later reality bites.
·You find you can’t read the newspaper anymore.
·There really is a bald spot even if you can’t see it.
·You are dosing off in the chair on Sunday afternoon.
·It takes 3 days instead of 3 hours to recover from a game of tennis!!
Reality bites.
We are living a day of reality TV.
The only problem is that eventually the reality bites.
It’s NOT REAL.
Reality TV is staged sham!
It’s more about ratings than reality!
Reality is a robust thing….
It won’t be fobbed off.
It can’t be denied for long.
It always finds a way to rise to the surface of our lives!
This morning we begin a new series in the book of Jeremiah called Reality Bites.
This is a fascinating and compelling look into the life of faith.
The thing that stands out to me about Jeremiah is that he is so
Non-heroic
In fact it is one of the things that strikes you about the men and women of scripture is that they are disappointingly non-heroic.
Bible doesn’t feed our adolescent need for heroes.
Heroes can inspire but most times they lead to second hand living.
Leads to the sort of thinking that says,
“I’m just ordinary. My job is ordinary. My Church is ordinary. My life is ordinary.’
We spend our time looking for those who are extra-ordinary and wishing we were like them!
Bible doesn’t feed that. It is not true!
Bible keeps bringing us back to the reality that we are followers of Jesus and every one of us has a unique story of faith that is an ORIGINAL and can’t be copied!
But having said that, Jeremiah doesn’t even seem to have the perceived status of a Moses or David.
He is known as the ‘weeping prophet’
There is nothing particularly outstanding about anything he does over a period of 40 years!
Interesting thing about Jeremiah is that he never felt adequate for what God wanted him to do.
He said that right from the start.
Jeremiah 1:4-8
Inspiring stuff!
It all looks so straight forward.
So what happens when the reality turns out nothing like this?
What happens when reality bites?
What does it mean to us when God says,
….don’t be afraid…I am with you and will rescue you
What does that mean in the darkest, most painful and most inexplicable moments of our lives?
Is this all a façade?
Are we kidding ourselves when we come in here on Sunday and it all seems so simple?
How does all this SIT with the harsh realities of life?
Some people think this is a theological issue.
They are forever searching for a Church or for a preacher that can bullet proof them from realities that seem not only to CONFLICT with our faith, but defiantly CHALLENGE the very foundation of them!!
That’s why I love this book of Jeremiah.
We are not going to wade through a whole lot of Jeremiah’s SERMONS we are going to see how he lived with the reality of what God said to him.
This is a book where we see how faith responds when reality bites!
Read Jeremiah 12:1-3
I love the way Jeremiah speaks here.
Lord you are always so RIGHTEOUS but I just want to speak to you about your JUSTICE!!!
Reality is biting hard.
Jeremiah is confused.
Something’s wrong.
Preaching has not changed a thing.
The status quo is even more entrenched.
Ungodliness seems profitable
Faith seems to have little reward.
What does it take for God to produce Christ-like ness in us.
We tend to think that when reality bites we need God’s comfort. Some soothing words of sympathy.
We want God’s assurance that these hard times will be taken away.
Yet that is not what we find with Jesus.
In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus cried out,
If it is possible, let this cup pass….
But it was not possible!!
Whether we know it or not, we have a kind of reflexive theology. We expect that God has a sort of reflex action to our actions.
It’s grounded in that deep, abiding law of life that says,
You scratch my back and I’ll scratch your!
It’s hard for us to think that we can be so faithful to God and somehow God doesn’t return the favour!!!
Jeremiah did everything God asked of him and it seemed God had not returned the favour.
Why do the wicked prosper….
Inherent in that is another question
Why haven’t you prospered me?
At least I have done the right thing!!
Where’s God’s reflexive justice in that?
But it gets worse!
Read v5-6
God doesn’t respond with some soothing words of comfort.
He doesn’t say,
“Hang in there Jeremiah; things are about to turn around; it’s all sunshine from here on!”
God says,
You haven’t seen anything yet!
Eg.
Imagine if you came to me with a real problem and I said,
“You think you’re doing it tough. You haven’t seen anything. Come back and see me when you have a real problem!!!!”
I had a bit of that kind of sympathy last Saturday night.
I was pretty excited when Rod Ferry asked if I wanted to ride one of his motor bikes. I was surprised when he told me to ride his 1150 cc BMW. Big and heavy!
My last bike was a Kawasaki 80cc about 30 years ago!
But I love a challenge.
Rod took off and I followed and Andrew Waldron came behind me.
We were in the hills and I was concentrating so hard to stay on the bike, avoid traffic, and be able to steer, brake, and find indicators and right gears!
First corner we came to was on a hill and about a 30 degree slope to the left. I was going to stop but realized there were no cars coming so at the last minute I accelerated. However I was still in about 4th gear so the bike just stalled and there was that horrible split second, you know you are in trouble!
As the bike started to fall I put my left leg down but I knew it was a lost cause.
Over we went! We, being me and the bike!
The first thing I did was to get up and see if anyone saw me!
Then I became conscious of Andrew Waldron behind me …….laughing!! And saying something like,
“Come on old man, get up and back on your bike!”
Don’t you hate it when reality bites!
He was probably thinking all along – “…he’ll go off on the first corner!”
I tried to pick the bike up and it was too heavy
The angle of the road and the weight of the bike made it impossible.
Andrew had to help me!
This was not what I had in mind. I always envisioned riding off into the sunset like easy-rider and here I was in a heap on the side of the road and I couldn’t even lift my own bike!
Someone whispering in my ear that I was soft and past it!!!
Well, the good news is – I got back on and we road for about an hour and negotiated the hills and the freeways and I had a ball. I’m back!
I’m ready to enter the Paris to Dakar event next January!
There’s nothing worse than when you’ve given something your best shot and it come to nothing.
What happens when reality bites hard as a Christian?
When you’ve given it your best shot and you’re a mess?
When you’ve sought so hard to follow Jesus and now you feel like he’s not there!
When you’ve prayed so long for your kids and there is no hint of change in their heart for God.
When you are so mad with injustice that you just want to throw Christianity away.
Years ago I heard about a minister who was so mad at God he took everyone of the books in his library and burned them.
Walked out of his office, left the ministry and never went back!
I’m not talking about having a bad day; I’m asking, what happens when reality bites hard!
What kind of answer is this that God gives?
Vitezslav Gardavsky, Czech philosopher and martyr who died in 1978 wrote a book called God Is Not Dead Yet and in it he wrote,
“The terrible threat against life is not death….it is that we might die earlier than when we really do die….the real horror lies in just such a premature death, a death after which we go on living for many years!”
Don’t miss this moment for Jeremiah.
Reality has bitten hard.
This is a moment where such a premature death could take place!
He has given his all only to find out that the great mass of God’s people are more interested in keeping their feet warm and their bellies full than risking their lives for the glory of God!!
Why bother?
This challenge to Jeremiah in v5-6 is not God being uncaring and ambivalent to Jeremiah’s pain. He is saying,
“Are you going to live cautiously or courageously?
It’s so much easier to be neurotic, to see the hopelessness in everything. It’s much easier to define yourself by the minimum, where there are no expectations and no responsibilities and no pain!
Jeremiah, if you are fatigued by mediocrity how will you run for excellence!
Do you really want to die and live on or do you want to learn to run with the horses?
I doubt that Jeremiah was spontaneous or quick in his response to God.
The euphoric impetus of youthful enthusiasm no longer drove him.
He weighed his options.
He counted the cost.
He tossed and turned.
The response, when it came was not verbal – it was biographical.
You can see it through the rest of his life.
“I’ll run with the horses!”
Discussion Questions
1. Reality is a robust thing….It won’t be fobbed off…..It can’t be denied for long….It always finds a way to rise to the surface of our lives!
Share a time when you either struggled to deal with a reality or when you finally accepted some reality in your life.
2. Jeremiah was ‘non-heroic’
Heroes obviously have some place in our lives, especially as children. Talk about this, but also about the possibility of living ‘second hand lives’. Living with that sense that we are just ‘ordinary’ compared to people whose lives seem much more exciting and productive.
What difference does being a Christian make to all this?
3. Read Jeremiah 1:4-8
It all looks so straight forward.
So what happens when the reality turns out nothing like this?
What happens when reality bites?
What does it mean to us when God says,
….don’t be afraid…I am with you and will rescue you
What does that mean in the darkest, most painful and most inexplicable moments of our lives?
4. Read Jeremiah 12:1-3
How can Jeremiah think that God can be righteous and yet unjust at the same time?
What sorts of things cause us to have this sort of dichotomy in our faith?
5. Read Jeremiah 12:5-6
There’s nothing worse than when you’ve given something your best shot and it comes to nothing.
What happens when –
·Reality bites hard as a Christian?
·You’ve given it your best shot and you’re a mess?
·You’ve sought so hard to follow Jesus and now you feel like he’s not there!
·You’ve prayed so long for your kids and there is no hint of change in their heart for God.
·You are so mad with injustice that you just want to throw Christianity away.
I’m not talking about having a bad day; I’m asking, what happens when reality bites hard!
What kind of answer is this that God gives?
6. Vitezslav Gardavsky, Czech philosopher and martyr who died in 1978 wrote a book called God Is Not Dead Yet and in it he wrote,
“The terrible threat against life is not death….it is that we might die earlier than when we really do die….the real horror lies in just such a premature death, a death after which we go on living for many years!”
Discuss what this might look like in a person’s life.
7. This challenge to Jeremiah in v5-6 is not God being uncaring and ambivalent to Jeremiah’s pain. He is saying,
“It’s so much easier to be neurotic, to see the hopelessness in everything. It’s much easier to define yourself by the minimum, where there are no expectations and no responsibilities and no pain!
Jeremiah, if you are fatigued by mediocrity how will you run for excellence!
Do you really want to die and live on or do you want to learn to run with the horses?”