Can you remember back to a time when you thought you were so right when in fact you were so wrong!
I was driving on Monday night passed Unley Shopping Centre and noticed cars banked up through the lights.
Up ahead someone had stopped in a no parking zone to get money out of an ATM.
Quite dangerous! As the cars in front pulled out and moved past I saw the man standing by the front of the car so I stopped, put the window down and re-educated him on few things….. in love!
The man just looked at me and said,
“It’s not my car. I’m just crossing the road!”
Then he said something else!
As I drove off, I thought..
“How did I get that so wrong?”
“Why did I stop in the first place?”
“I hope that bloke doesn’t come to Church this Sunday!”
We look at some people this morning that got it so wrong and the problem is – like me - they made up their minds before they got the right information!
Read Jeremiah 42:1-3
We need some background here.
Over a 20 year period between 606 BC and 586BC Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon had invaded Israel and systematically removed Jews into captivity. Ultimate and highly symbolic culmination of the defeat was the destruction of Solomon’s temple in 586BC.
From our view point we can see that this period of history was not only about MILITARY EXPANSION but also SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE.
Babylon was the superpower and their history books will show that taking Israel was just part of their successful and ruthless expansionism of the 6th Century.
But the Bible tells us that history is ultimately HIS-story!
This part of history is about much more than military superiority, it is about God’s sovereignty.
God gave Israel into hands of Babylon.
God used Babylon to judge His people for their sin
In the midst of international intrigue and conflict God is doing something and it would be 70 years before it became obvious!!
We would do well to remember that!
God doesn’t go absent in the mess.
God is not powerless in the chaos.
God is not mocked by apparent defeat.
We crave God’s immediacy.
This generation has been raised on McFaith that wants a drive through Christianity that only has a 60 second wait from the time we put our order in to the time that God delivers!
This generation craves spiritual immediacy and God won’t always deliver on that!
Back to the story!
There was some left in the land by Nebuchadnezzar.
He appointed Gedeliah as Governor.
Jeremiah 40 tells us what’s happening to Jeremiah in all of this.
Read v1-4
Wow!!
What an offer!
Jeremiah has been preaching for 40 years and has nothing to show for it!
His ministry is a catalogue of pain, abuse, loneliness and hurt.
Now there is an offer of good times!
Time to kick back in the sun.
Time to lay down the prophetic edge and sip on some of Babylon’s famous date and honey wine!
Time to replace the stress of ministry with the relaxation of self indulgence!
Sounds good to me!!!
Know what he did?
….. the commander gave his provisions and let him go. So Jeremiah went to Gedeliah…and stayed with him among the people who were left behind in the land. [Jer 40:5-6]
Love this guy!
The story gets messy!
Gedeliah is assassinated by a man called Ishmael.
Won’t go into it but Ishmael was in the line of David.
This was a man with Kingly heritage.
Maybe he was miffed that a commoner had been appointed Governor!
Who knows? Human relationships are complicated things!
Then Johanan comes to the rescue.
He is a good guy.
Read Jeremiah 41:11-18
The people are terrified when they think what Babylon might do to them when they hear that the appointed Governor has been assassinated, so, led by Johanan, they decide to flee to Egypt!
Here’s where it gets really interesting!
Having already decided to go to Egypt, they come to Jeremiah and ask him to pray for them.
Prayer request: Should we go to Egypt
Read Jeremiah 42:2-6
That is strong stuff!
It’s amazing how pious we can sound.
It’s amazing how religious we can sound when we think we know what God should do.
·Nothing wrong with the decision to pray, but there is a problem when we only pray so that God can RATIFY what we have already decided!
·There is a problem when prayer is only a way of patronizing God before we do what we want to do.
·There is a problem when praying is simply playing the partand rather than submitting the heart!
…. Whether it is favorable or unfavorable…we will obey
This is great stuff!
But there is something not quite right here.
v2…. Please hear our petition and pray to the Lord YOUR God…..v3…. Pray to the Lord YOUR God who will tell us where we should go and what we should do.
There is a sense of distance with God already and Jeremiah picks up on it.
Notice v4 I will certainly pray to the Lord YOUR God as you have requested….
The people subconsciously want to leave themselves with an out. They want an escape clause. They want a 21st Century Post Modern attitude that says,
Your God says different things than my God and I will decide which God is right!
Jeremiah won’t have a bar of it.
He says, My God is your God and He is OUR God and it is GOD to whom I will pray!
v7 ….ten days later the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah
Don’t you love the way God does things?
Why not 10 seconds, 10 minutes?
How long does it take God to answer a simple question?
Wrong question –
How long does it take God to prepare us for the answer?
Read v8ff
Answer was clear.
God wanted them to stay in the land and He would bless them.
Even in the midst of catastrophe of exile, God shows a glimpse of his mercy and power.
Even now God is saying,
Don’t look to Egypt for your salvation!
How do they respond to the message?
Read Jeremiah 43:1-3
Can you hear it….. the Lord OUR God has not sent you…
We know what God is saying, you are just listening to Baruch, son of Neriah….
“All along they had regarded God as a power to enlist, not a Lordto Obey!” (Kidner)
This is another example in a long line of examples in history of where we use God to rubber stamp what we are going to do anyway!
So much of the baggage the Church carries in the 21st Century is the result of this kind of heart.
In face of the Word of God we some manage to say,
Buy my God says differently!
It has its roots in Garden of Eden.
God spoke and then Satan came and asked Eve
Has God said….
That should have been the end of it but Satan managed to get Eve to think that God meant something different to what he said!
She found a way to do what her heart really wanted to do!
That’s the core of the human struggle.
We ALWAYS want to find a way around what God says.
It’s not that we don’t want to hear from God, we just want God to say what we want to hear!!
What happens to us that we can make such good promises, such strong resolutions and yet be so unwilling to do what God really says!
In a nutshell?
Egypt is too good an option!
It offers immediacy.
To people who are –
·worn out with fighting,
·tired of being a remnant,
·sick of the uncertainty,
·confused by the circumstances of life
Egypt looks very attractive!
The VISIBLE REALITY of Egypt seems so much more attractive than the INVISIBLE REALM of God.
Egypt is an everyday option.
It will come to you again and again.
Don’t keep struggling– head for Egypt.
Don’t keep persevering – head for Egypt
Don’t keep praying – head for Egypt
Don’t keep waiting – head for Egypt
Don’t stay in minority – head for Egypt
I would be lying if I told you I have not hankered after Egypt many times….a day!!!
God’s word is clear.
Don’t go there.
Find me here! Where? There! Yes where you are!
Even Jesus faced that.
Father if it be possible, let this cup pass from me
[Neil translation: Father, if it’s possible, let me go to Egypt!]
You know this story has an ambiguous end!
It’s not neat and tidy.
Johanan and his people go to Egypt and they force Jeremiah to go with them.
Flannery O’Connor – American novelist mid 1900’s once remarked that she had an Aunt who thought that nothing really happened in a story unless someone got married or was shot at the end of it.
Life rarely has such definitive endings.
Life is ambiguous.
There are loose ends.
It takes faith to live with loose ends.
It takes faith to live with ambiguity and absurdity,
It takes faith to live with chaos and uncertainty.
Listen to Eugene Peterson in his book
Run with the Horses
Jeremiah ends inconclusively. We want to know the end but there is no end. The last scene in Jeremiah’s life shows him, as he has spent much of his life, preaching God’s Word to a contemptuous people [Jer44]. We want to know that he was finally successful so that, if we live well and courageously, that we will also be successful. Or we want to know that he was finally unsuccessful so that, since a life of faith and integrity doesn’t pay off, we can get on with finding another means by which to live. We get neither in Jeremiah. He doesn’t get married and he doesn’t get shot. He is in Egypt, the place he doesn’t want to be, with people who treat him badly, he continues determinedly faithful, magnificently courageous, heartlessly rejected – a towering life terrifically lived.
Discussion Questions
1.Share a time when you thought you were so right when in fact you were so wrong!
2.Over a 20 year period between 606 BC and 586BC Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon had invaded Israel and systematically removed Jews into captivity. Ultimate and highly symbolic culmination of the defeat was the destruction of Solomon’s temple in 586BC.
From our view point we can see that this period of history was not only about MILITARY EXPANSION but also SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE.
Babylon was the superpower and their history books will show that taking Israel was just part of their successful and ruthless expansionism of the 6th Century.
But the Bible tells us that history is ultimately HIS-story!
This part of history is about much more than military superiority, it is about God’s sovereignty. God gave Israel into hands of Babylon.
As Christians how do we live with the present realities of life and also the reality that God is doing something much bigger?
Does that make us more unwilling to face present responsibilities?
Does it make us more aloof to our world?
Does it tend to make us socially irresponsible?
Does it make us ‘futurists’ who find it hard to live where we are, with what we have?
Discuss
3.Read Jeremiah 40:1-4
After all these years of rejection and suffering, Jeremiah finally gets a break.
He is offered an out.
He can finally escape from all this and think about nobody but himself.
Share a time when you felt this was a good option.
Why do we get to this point from time to time?
Why do some people take that option?
4.Read Jeremiah 42:2-6
Nothing wrong with the decision to pray, but there is a problem when we only pray so that God can RATIFY what we have already decided!
Discuss how that happens in our lives.
Share a time when you just wanted God to ratify some decision in your life
…. Whether it is favorable or unfavorable…we will obey
Why are our promises to God so hard to keep?
Why is our worship often more grandiose than our actions?
What is happening in our hearts?
Is it too simplistic to say we are hypocrites or is it more complicated. Is it not the basic struggle of the heart that wants God to say what we want to hear?
How does all this relate to what Paul says in Romans 7:14-20
5.Read Jeremiah 43:1-3
What lies behind their response?
“All along they had regarded God as a power to enlist, not a Lordto Obey!” (Kidner)
Discuss.
6.The Jewish people wanted to go to Egypt
To people worn out with fighting, tired of being a remnant, sick of the uncertainty, confused by the circumstances of life
Egypt looks very attractive!
The visible reality of Egypt seems so much more attractive than the invisible realm of God.
Egypt is an everyday option.
It will come to you again and again.
Discuss.
What sorts of things attract us away from where God wants usd to be?
What does ‘Egypt’ look like today?
How can we encourage each other to ‘stay!’
Even Jesus faced that.
Father if it be possible, let this cup pass from me
[Neil translation: Father, if it’s possible, let me go to Egypt!]
Discuss the depth of Jesus request.
How strong was the pull to run?
7.Life rarely has definitive endings.
Life is ambiguous.
There are loose ends.
It takes faith to live with loose ends.
It takes faith to live with ambiguity and absurdity,
It takes faith to live with chaos and uncertainty.
Discuss.
Do we try and make Christianity to definitive?
What are the areas that you find really difficult to exercise faith?
What things do you want God to make a lot clearer?
The ‘ecstacy’ he was referring to had nothing to do with drugs!!!
But it is a stark reminder this morning that there is a history being written with our name on it.
What will it reveal?
What will it say?
When your name is mentioned, what springs to mind?
Reading about Nelson Mandela
Bill Clinton once said,
Every time Nelson Mandela walks into a room we all feel a little bigger, we all want to stand up, we all want to cheer, because we’d like to be like him on our best day.
Let’s see where it all began for Jeremiah.
In fact that is at the heart of this book.
Where did it all begin?
Read Jeremiah 1:4-5
In a day of the quick fix, the short span and the next best thing, have you got a heart to stop for a while and take this in?
In a day when we are obsessed with WHO we are, how much do you really want to know about yourself?
Jane Sanders was having morning tea with us on Thursday and suddenly she declared that her baby had the hiccups!
This little baby that has not seen the light of day is now the subject of a sermon.
He or she is touching our lives just because he or she got the hiccups!!
God says, I’ll tell you something even more amazing.
I have been thinking about you before you were even conceived!!
… I knew you…I set you apart…I appointed you
One of the things we need to restate is that REALITY doesn’t begin with us, it begins with God!
Long before we got interested in God, He was interested in us.
Long before it ever crossed our minds that God might exist, God planned our existence.
Long before we wondered where God might fit into our thoughts, God knew where we fitted into His thoughts.
We think God is the object of our inquisitive minds.
In fact we are the object of God’s indescribable grace!
We fight with this sort of thing!
It contradicts my sovereignty.
It upsets my theology.
It messes with my reality.
WE can’t help thinking everything starts with US.
Every now and then God just blows away all the dust and says something that seems so outrageous and incomprehensible to us.
Before you were born I…..
Jeremiah’s story didn’t begin at birth!
My story was not just shaped by my parents, or by those euphoric days in Wallaroo, or by my school teachers…. They are all part of a much bigger, richer history!!
…..I set you apart
I love all this.
We spend so much time trying to prove how God doesn’t violate our free will.
We seem to be paranoid that God would never ask us to do something we really didn’t want to do.
We love to protect ourselves from fear, danger, embarrassment, failure as though that were the most important thing in life. Then this reality hits us…..
….. set you apart
I’ve already decided some things for you?
I am the potter and you are the clay!
Since when did the clay determine what it would and wouldn’t be?
We need a God revelation of how this changes our lives.
I know that when people find out I am a minister it can change things. I don’t make a lot of noise about it!
Other day I went into Baker’s Delight.
Crowd in there.
Young lad said,
“How are you today?”
I said, “Splendid. No complaints!”
“Wow! No complaints” he said, ‘What do you do for a living?”
“I am a Baptist Minister!”
Right there and then I felt all these people in the shop just slightly look in my direction!
For the first time in my life I wanted to say something more.
I wanted to say,
“Before I was in my mother’s womb, God called me to be a preacher!!!”
However, I decided against it!
But I have been challenged by this all week.
God is not just a spectator to this world.
God sees the evil, the cruelty, the unhappiness and illness.
He knows the superstition, and ignorance, brutality and pain.
God has not been idle in this great battle for the hearts of men and women.
Jeremiah was set apart for this contest.
So are we.
The whole notion that being a Christian is just a ticket into heaven is foreign to the Bible.
We have been set aside for God.
We have been set aside for the gospel.
We have been set aside to follow Jesus
We have been set aside to be people of the Spirit.
We have been set aside for battle.
Remember those days at school when a group of kids had to chose two teams. One by one they would be chosen till there was only a few left.
They knew that nobody wanted them.
They knew they were the liability.
They knew they were the token picks!!
I think some of us feel like that about being a Christian.
It’s like we think God just put us on the team to make up the numbers.
Not true.
I have a place that no one else can fill.
God is not just looking for sporting heroes, university graduates and high achievers to carry the gospel into a cynical world.
Before I was good for ANYTHING, God decided I was good for what HE was DOING.
Secularization is giving too many Christians a huge inferiority complex!
…. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations
Literally I gave you to the nations
How do you like that?
Before Jeremiah was born, God has given him away!
While we argue about how that fits into our systematic theology of free will and election – we miss the glorious truth that God is such a GENEROUS God.
16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[a] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. [John 3:16]
Here’s the truth this morning –
God has already given you away!
We can fight it.
We can hang on to our independence.
We can go along with attitudes of our culture.
We can huddle in the safety of obscurity.
We can long for old safety and warmth of the womb.
Or we can grasp that God has given us away to the nations!!
Read v6-8; 17-18
When we were kids in country, we used to play games that are not allowed today.
Ferocious battles where we would throw rocks at each other!
We were somewhere between Roy Rogers and Mad Max!
Sounds dangerous, but it wasn’t quite like that.
We would get these big old tins and gouge a couple of eye holes in – that would be our helmet.
Rubbish bins in those days were made of iron, so we would use the lids as our shield.
We would launch into those battles full of confidence.
There was never any thought of injury or pain.
We knew it was more about persistence to overcome the others!
Jeremiah is right.
He was not able to do what God called him to do.
But God says,
“I’ll turn you into a iron pillar, a bronze wall….”
This is a message for this hour when so many Christians backing away from the fight!
So many today are no longer willing to line up behind the Word of God because of fear.
So many are believing the fallacy that the gospel of a crucified, resurrected Saviour is redundant in a self assured, self taught, self made world like the 21st Century!
How did God make Jeremiah into iron pillar, bronze wall?
Read v11-12
Bit of a word play here.
Word for almond = shaqed
Word for watching = shoqed
God says to Jeremiah.
Wherever you see the shaqed remember that I am shoqed
I am watching over my word.
I will be true to my word.
Just a sure as the almond branch will bring forth almonds I am watching and ready to honour my word, to judge sin, to change lives, to comfort hurting, to inspire the hopeless….
There is no life of faith without a sustaining vision like this!!
Do we still feel pain? - yes
Do they still have questions? - yes
Do they still grow tired? - yes
Do they still look fragile at times? – yes
Do they ever feel like quitting? - yes
Do we have all the answers? – no
Does everything work out nicely? – no
Do we always know what will happen next? – no
What is the hallmark of an iron pillar or a bronze wall?
v19 …. They will not overcome you
You will take a battering but will not be beaten!
"How Great Thou Art" is a beautiful hymn written in 1886 by Carl Boberg. Boberg, a Swedish pastor, "was caught in a sudden thunderstorm while visiting a beautiful country estate. As the storm passed, giving way to the songs of birds and a green countryside glistening in the sunlight, Boberg composed the nine original stanzas of this hymn" as a poem. Years later, he was surprised to hear his poem being sung by a congregation we has visiting, the words having been set to a traditional Swedish tune.
"In time," according to one website, "the hymn was translated into German and Russian and was noticed by a British missionary who was serving in Ukraine. That missionary, Reverend Stuart Hine, was visiting a home in the Carpathian Mountains" where he was inspired by the conversion of several new Christians. After witnessing their faith, he wrote the last verse that we sing in today's hymnal: "And when I think that God, His Son not sparing, sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in; that on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee, how great Thou art! How great Thou art!"
Discussion Questions
1. The interesting thing about the introduction to the book of Jeremiah is that it begins with 8 names.
There is a history being written with your name on it.
Just go round the group and share a couple of things that come to mind when your name is mentioned! Do it for each person.
2. Read Jeremiah 1:4-5
… I knew you
Long before we got interested in God, He was interested in us.
Long before it ever crossed our minds that God might exist, God planned our existence.
Long before we wondered where God might fit into our thoughts, God knew where we fitted into His thoughts.
Discuss
How does this impact our view of free will?
How important is it in understanding who we really are?
Does it encourage us or unsettle us?
3. ….. set you apart
Do you think God would ask us to do something we don’t want to do?
Give examples – either from your own life or from the Bible.
I think some of us feel like that about being a Christian.
It’s like we think God just put us on the team to make up the numbers…..Not true.
I have a place that no one else can fill.
Discuss
God gives some Christians huge influence or responsibility, while others very little.
How do we measure our worth in the Kingdom of God?
4. …. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations
Literally I gave you to the nations
How do you like that?
Before Jeremiah was born, God has given him away!
If there is one last thing we fight for, it is our independence. We love to think that, in the end, we decide what we will do and when we will do it.
How does it feel to know that before we were born, God gave us away?
What difference does it make to our lives when Paul says, 9Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. [1 Corinthians 6:19-20]
5. Read Jeremiah 1:6-8; 17-18
….fortified city…iron pillar….bronze wall
Does that sound like you?
Does that sound like the 21st Century Church?
Why do we find it so hard to share our faith?
Is it possible to stand up strongly for Jesus and not be obnoxious?
How do we find a way through the problem of being faithful to Jesus and causing conflict with others because of what we believe?
6. "How Great Thou Art" is a beautiful hymn written in 1886 by Carl Boberg. Boberg, a Swedish pastor, "was caught in a sudden thunderstorm while visiting a beautiful country estate. As the storm passed, giving way to the songs of birds and a green countryside glistening in the sunlight, Boberg composed the nine original stanzas of this hymn" as a poem. Years later, he was surprised to hear his poem being sung by a congregation we has visiting, the words having been set to a traditional Swedish tune.
"In time," according to one website, "the hymn was translated into German and Russian and was noticed by a British missionary who was serving in Ukraine. That missionary, Reverend Stuart Hine, was visiting a home in the Carpathian Mountains" where he was inspired by the conversion of several new Christians. After witnessing their faith, he wrote the last verse that we sing in today's hymnal: "And when I think that God, His Son not sparing, sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in; that on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee, how great Thou art! How great Thou art!"
This is such a great hymn and certainly has inspired generations of believers.
Discuss how much it really changes us.
How have you seen ‘How Great God is’ this week, last week?
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?”
Weren’t you on the edge of your seats while I was reading this passage! Sometimes we think that every time we read the Bible the hairs on the back of our neck ought to stand up!
But when you read about who begat who, and what to do when you break out in boils or when your ox falls into a hole or who brought what to the Temple on the day of dedication – it doesn’t do much!
All Scripture is inspired but not all scripture is equally inspiring!
The bulk of this passage is right up there with filling out your tax return or re-writing Church By-Laws or attending a lecture on the subtle differences between micro and macro economics between 1940 and 1963!
Jeremiah could have said, “The Lord said, buy some land and I did!” But instead we get all the excruciating detail of a land transaction that happened 2600 years ago.
We read how he weighed the money, signed the deed, sealed the deed, got witnesses to deed and then put the deed in BC equivalent of a safety deposit box – earthenware vase!
Thankfully, this whole passage is rescued by that famous verse little further on …..Jeremiah 32:27
I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?
What is going on here?
Why are you going to be surprised when I tell you this laborious account is one of my favorite passages in the OT?
This is not just about a property sale!
This is about a vision that God has for his people 70 years down the track!
v1 tells us that settlement on Jeremiah’s property took place in the tenth year of King Zedekiah, king of Judah. That may be more trivia to you, but it places these events in 587BC, the year the army of the King of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem [Jer 32:2]
Within a matter of months Jerusalem would be in ruins.
Within no time the land would be desolate.
Before long the bottom was going to fall out of the housing market.
The land was under siege!
Here’s Jeremiah buying up property!!
This looks like one of the worst investments in real estate history.
I love the way this all happens.
Read v6
God tells Jeremiah that Hanamel is going to come along and ask him to buy the family farm!
Good old Cousin Hanamel!!.....Don’t you just love him!
He’s one of the great bwheeler-dealers of the OT.
There’s someone like this in every family!
They’d sell their mother if they could get the right price.
Hanamel is no fool.
He can read the real estate guide.
He knows what’s coming.
So he comes to Jeremiah and makes him the offer of a life time.
I think you should buy the farm!!
Never forget this name – there is a lot of Hanamel in all of us!
Who does want to get out while the going’s good?
Shake the dust of my feet; abandon commitment; grab what we can; sell the land; change my name to Hanamel Ryan, Hanamel Jones, Hanamel Smith. Let’s all embrace
Hanemal-ism.
Think of the Church.
Who will join all the crowd of the last 20 years as they jump ship.
Sure it’s listing.
It’s in trouble.
Time to bail.
Time to cut the commitments to lost cause.
Who wants to stay on board in days when the value of the Church is plummeting!
There are Hanamel’s everywhere who will sell up while they can even if it means leaving brother’s or sisters to carry the can!
You know what?
Whilst I am tempted to be a Hanamel I aspire to be a Jeremiah!!
This was a man who was not only able to preach outrageous things he was willing to do outrageous things.
I know in my own life that this outrageous gospel is not always matched by an outrageous life!
My talking about it is much more colourful than the doing of it!!
But I don’t aspire just to have a passion for a concept, or a belief or a theology but to see what it looks life in life!!
God told Jeremiah to invest in land while the Babylonians were rumbling on the outskirts!
The first 3 rules of Real Estate are….
Location, Location, Location!
Value of a property fluctuated according to what’s happening around it.
I have a house at Morphetville that would escalate in value if I could transplant it on the bowling green across the road here!!
All about location!
Right now there were Babylonians standing at the gate to the farm and God say to Jeremiah.
Buy it!!!
Stop for a minute.
Are you with Hanamel or Jeremiah?
What do you see in that plot of land?
What do you see in the Church?
What do you see down the track?
I say again that while part of me wants to EMBRACE Hanamelism, but I ASPIRE to be like Jeremiah.
To not only speak the Word but risk living it.
To see a future where others can only see a past.
And in the midst of a Church in 21st Century that so often appears to be on the verge of losing its way I aspire to be a risk taking, field purchasing, gospel believing man who sees a hope for my grand children’s children in the very place where it would be so easy to sell out!!
Read Jeremiah 32:15
Jeremiah buys the farm and in doing so he says
I purchase this land, not as a smart real estate investment, no, I purchase this land because my hope in God is unshakable. We shall live again in this place!
Jerusalem will yet thrive under the hand of the living God!
Can you see how this painfully boring passage throbs with life when we see what is really happening?
Can you see the implication in this day of ours?
Don’t miss it!!
What kind of vision do you have for this city of Adelaide?
Do we just look back with everybody else and talk about the city of Churches that has now become night clubs and restaurants?
Do we just lament in the decline in the Church as inevitable in a post modern world?
What kind of vision do we have for UPBC?
Are we just happy to be surviving where others seem to be falling?
Is Hanamelism knocking on our door – while we may not be prepared to jump ship, we keep our distance and reserve our right to bail out at a moments notice!!
Jeremiah bought a farm because God promised to do something with them in 70 years time.
What investments are we making in the Kingdom of God that will still make a difference in 2078?
We are talking about renovations that are about the future of this Church.
They are about saying to our world that God is doing something here and we are in it for the long haul.
I can see Hanamel coming!!
Count me out!
I want to see it before I commit to it!
I’m only passing through, I don’t want a financial burden, I just want what the Church can give me today!!
God is saying – commit to the future!
Houses, field and vineyards will again be bought in this land
I want this place to flourish again and again!
We are talking about a Church Plant.
Do you know one of the common responses we are getting…
We understand the need for it and we support it but we just can’t see it happening at UPBC!
Hanemalism is alive and well!
Hanemal couldn’t see how his land would be worth anything within months let alone years.
All he could do was offload his responsibility and say “all the best” to Jeremiah!
Jeremiah bought real estate at the worst possible time in the worst possible location.
He drove a stake called HOPE right in the ground of that old farm and said – this is God’s ground!!!!
We can spend our days bemoaning what’s happened to the Church.
We can identify where it’s all gone wrong.
We can speak about the impact of globalization,
the rise of militant Islam,
the power of the media
the spread of secularism,
the appeal of philosophical mysticism,
the seduction of materialism,
the saturation of knowledge and technology,
the loss of innocence and the absence of morality
All these things are making such a din in our heads that we miss the call of God
Buy up the land
Invest in the future
Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land…..
Funny thing about this passage!
This sale is made public and every boring detail is recorded, so that no one would ever forget – the transaction?
No! They would never forget how God forged a future out of nothing!!
Can you see the gospel in all this?
God sees our ruin, our pride, our pain, our confusion, our pathetic attempts to be like God –
He invites us to bring them to the Cross.
That’s where God invested in our future.
People looked at Jesus and mocked
Hail King of the Jews….He saved others, He cannot save himself…..
Even the disciples were overcome with Hanamelism – they cut there losses and ran!
But three days later Jesus rose from the dead
God says to us
I have plans for you….beginning now they will stretch into the whole of eternity
No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind conceived what God has prepared for those who love him [1 Corinthians 2:9]
Folks this is not about the power of positive thinking.
Christians are realists!
We don’t pretend things are better than they are.
We acknowledge the reality of the world we live in, our own frailties, sense of mystery…..
We know our prayers are not always answered the way we ask
We know that we are not immune from tragedy.
We know life often seems unfair, unreasonable and inexplicable
But towering about all this is the reality of HOPE.
It runs all the way through Scripture.
From the moment Adam and Eve sinned and God set out to redeem them, right through to the book of Revelation which concludes with the great words Amen. Come Lord Jesus [Rev 22:20], the Bible is a book of HOPE!
It compels us to live.
It inspires us to confront what seems to be hopeless.
It refuses to throw up its hands and say,
Its all too hard, who am I to make any difference?
It calls us to invest in the future.
Jeremiah bought a property that his cousin wanted to sell
Jesus died and rose from the dead for people like us who didn’t deserve it
God makes this preposterous offer of HOPE!
I like what Napoleon Bonaparte once said:
“Leaders are always dealers in hope.”
How much more so Christians?
Discussion Questions
1. All Scripture is inspired but not all scripture is equally inspiring!
Discuss.
Why does the Bible have so much detail about things that seen so irrelevant to people like us?
Discuss how you read the Bible.
Eg. Genesis to Revelation; With help of Devotional Book; Passage from OT and from NT etc.
2. Read Jeremiah 32:1-2; 6-9
Babylonian soldiers were at the gates of Jerusalem and God tells Jeremiah to buy some property.
What is unusual about that?
Discuss other examples in the Bible where God asked someone to do something unusual.
What does God require of us that some might think is strange?
Can you share a time when you just knew you should do something even though it seemed a bit odd?
3. Read v6-8
Hanamel – Never forget this name.
There is some Hanamel in all of us.
The need for self preservation; the temptation to get out while the going is good; to jump ship; to leave the farm and all its debt to someone else; to look out for our own interests first.
Hanamelites!
Discuss the temptation to be a Hanamelite!
How does this impact the Church?
What does Hanemalism look like today?
4. Read Jeremiah 32:15
Jeremiah bought a farm because God promised to do something with them in 70 years time.
In the midst of a Church in 21st Century that so often appears to be on the verge of losing its way I aspire to be a risk taking, field purchasing, gospel believing man who sees a hope for my grand children’s children in the very place where it would be so easy to sell out!!
Discuss.
It might all sound like wishful thinking but what can we do that will give future generations the best opportunity to be part of a vibrant Church?
What do you think the Church will look like in 70 years time?
Why?
5. Jeremiah was called to make an investment in the future.
How have previous generations invested in UPBC for our benefit?
How does this passage impact our attitude to –
Church Renovations
Church Plant
What do you say to statements like–
We should be spending money on mission not buildings…
We shouldn’t go into debt in uncertain times like this…
A Church Plant is a good idea but I can’t see it happening at UPBC…
We’re OK the way we are….
6. We can spend our days bemoaning what’s happened to the Church.
We can identify where it’s all gone wrong.
We can speak about the impact of globalization,
the rise of militant Islam,
the power of the media
the spread of secularism,
the appeal of philosophical mysticism,
the seduction of materialism,
the saturation of knowledge and technology,
the loss of innocence and the absence of morality
All these things are making such a din in our heads that we miss the call of God
Buy up the land
Invest in the future
Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land…..
Discuss
Have we become experts in what is wrong that we are not motivated by what is right?
Have we identified all the problems of our Post Modern era but have little heart for any solutions?
Are we satisfied with excuses for the Church not being what it should and could be?
7. This whole story of Jeremiah buying property is a story about HOPE.
It is grounded in the hope of what God will do.
Hope is the constant theme right through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation
Discuss.
Give examples of people in the Bible that lived in the reality of hope.
8. The Cross is the place where God invested in our future.
Discuss
Christians are realists!
We don’t pretend things are better than they are.
We acknowledge the reality of the world we live in, our own frailties, sense of mystery…..
We know our prayers are not always answered the way we ask
We know that we are not immune from tragedy.
We know life often seems unfair, unreasonable and inexplicable
How does the Cross impact this kind of reality?
9. Read Jeremiah 32:27
What does this have to say to us today in the light of the context in which it was given?
I want to speak this week and next on matters that may appear to some of you to be on the edge of unbelief.
In fact I hope you will see that it is actually the very opposite. That, in fact faith thrives on the edge of belief!
I take great heart from Jeremiah.
Not once in this wonderful book, but 7 times we find Jeremiah on the edge.
These passages are often referred to as his ‘confessions’ or his ‘laments’
Call them what you like, but don’t underestimate the depth of their pain and honesty!
Read v18
I want to talk about incurable wounds!
When is enough enough?
Ever had those times when you think – I can’t take any more…. And then some more comes!
Ever get to that point where you won’t answer the phone or you hear a knock on the door and you make out you’re not home!!!
Or you just want to book a one way ticket to the Bahamas.
What do you do when you’ve had enough as a Christian?
What do you do when you’re disappointed with God?
I want to share with you something of the re-occurring tension I have lived with in 30 years of ministry.
It has to do with the matter of EXPECTATIONS and REALITY.
Christianity invites us to live with high expectations.
The more we discover about God – the more we know what this God COULD do in our lives.
I was the last generation to have one of those PROMISE BOXES! Remember them!
Pull out a scroll each day and be reminded what God COULD DO!
Problem comes when the God we KNOW doesn’t act in a way we KNOW he could!
Job 29:18…..
“I THOUGHT, ‘I will die in my house, my days as numerous as the grains of sand. My roots will reach to the water, and the dew will lie all night on my branches. My glory will remain fresh in me, the bow ever new in my hand.’”
I thought…. that’s how I imagined my life would run.
But then he hits us with reality in Job 30:16
“My life ebbs away; days of suffering grip me. Night pierces my bones; my gnawing pains never rest….
His sentiments are similar in many ways to those in the song sung by Fantine in Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.”
She’s a young single mother who is jobless, homeless, and unable to provide for her child because she was fired for refusing the sexual advances of her boss. In her earlier years she had found the love of her life, the father of her child, and been ecstatically happy. But one day he simply walked out and never returned. And thinking back on her life she sings this song,
“I had a dream in time gone by,
When hope was high, and life worth living.
I dreamed that love would never die,
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.
I had a dream my life would be,
So different from this hell I’m living,
So different now from what it seemed…
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.”
That’s what I’m talking about. Job had a dream of how his life would be and even how it would end, but now,
“Life has killed the dream he dreamed.”
There is something in us that says that somehow faith should be able to keep dreams alive!
We want to believe that faith can make everything the way it SHOULD be.
Part of our problem is that we think faith only has a spiritual dimension.
If we are right SPIRITUALLY then the rest of our lives come together.
That’s why Christians find it hard to be ‘RIGHT’ with God and yet have such physical, emotional or personal problems.
Something says it shouldn’t be like that!
Eg.
William Cowper
He wrote what I believe is the most stirring hymn ever written.
God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines Of never failing skill, He treasures up his bright designs, And works his sovereign will.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head.
Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain.
William Cowper lived a troubled life and in many ways God never made it plain!
He was so overwhelmed at one point he believed God was asking him to take his own life!
After time in a private asylum, he recovered his reason. Cowper moved to the country town of Olney, where John Newton, the ex-slave trader, was pastor. Soon they became close friends.
In 1771, Newton, became concerned with Cowper's increasing melancholy. Hoping to lift his spirits by keeping him busy, Newton suggested that he and Cowper co-author a book of hymns. Newton himself often wrote hymns to illustrate his Sunday sermons. "Amazing Grace" is one of the 280 hymns he wrote for the Olney Hymns.
Cowper wrote 68 of the hymns, including "Oh for a closer walk with God," "God moves in a mysterious way," and "There is a fountain filled with blood."
Cowper continued his struggle with faith until his death on April 25, 1800.
The last 10 years of his life he fought a terrible fear that he was doomed to eternal damnation.
His poem Castaway sums up his thoughts.
Tells of crew being washed off boat in a wild Atlantic storm.
The last stanza says,
No voice divine the storm allayed,
No light propitious shone,
When, snatched from all effectual aid,
We perished, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he.
There is still this subliminal message in Christianity that if you just have faith, all the other pieces of the puzzle will fall into place!
How long to do we keep the hope that things will change before we accept the reality that they won’t!
Is it an act of un-faith to accept what we think God should change?
As a young pastor I desperately wanted an answer to this crisis.
I read books, I prayed, I asked questions, I studied Bible.
I have taken in all the movements of the last 30 years –
Pentecostalism, Signs and Wonders, Church Growth, Purpose Driven, Music and Worship and the Emerging Church……
And still in all of this we come back to this.
Where is God in the contradiction between my expectation and reality?
This is the very tension that Jeremiah lived with throughout 40 years of his ministry!
We might think that Jeremiah’s main problem was the people.
It wasn’t. Jeremiah’s problem was with God.
Read v15-18
Jeremiah could handle the reality of judgment on the people, but he couldn’t handle God’s indifference to him!
It’s like he says,
I can understand your activity toward the people – I can’t cope with your inactivity toward me!
In all of this will you notice how Jeremiah begins…..
…. You understand O Lord
Some of you know I have 6 letters written on my desk.
BEIHDN – But even if he does not
I have written another 4
YUOL – You understand O Lord
Jeremiah does not pretend to understand what’s happening but he does not lose his senses!
He knows that God knows!
With that he unloads!
I find all this interesting because when Jeremiah is in public he is absolutely fearless.
When he’s preaching he is as tough as nails.
But in private he is plagued by hurt, fear and doubts!
He prays, but it’s not quite like the prayer we sing about.
Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer
That calls me from a world of care
This time of prayer was anything but sweet!!
PERPLEXED – v16
I devoured your word. I couldn’t get enough of it. They were my heart and soul. I staked my life on them!
But faithfulness to your word has left me confused!
LONELY – v17
I have made the sacrifices. I know what it is to pay the price. Ministry has cost me and I’m not sure it’s been worth it!
HURT
I understand hurt is part of the deal, but the pain is unending and the wounds are incurable.
I feel like I’ve been tricked.
It’s like a stream that should fill up with spring rains – when you get there its inexplicably empty.
Jeremiah is saying,
God you are not there when I need you most!!
How does God respond to this?
It’s like God says,
Jeremiah I like it when you talk straight, because that’s how I want to talk to you!
Read v19
….if you turn back, I’ll take you back
Seems tough doesn’t it.
God saw something that we tend to justify.
Self-pity!
When I look at Jeremiah I think his self-pity is justified. That’s our problem.
When it’s all said and done – we still have a last line of attack that says,
‘I deserve better than this!’
Nothing will feed disillusionment quicker than self-pity.
Nothing will squeeze the life out of faith quicker than feeling like we’ve been given a raw deal.
This is a tough book!
Remember in Jeremiah 12 just after Jeremiah got news that people from his own town had threatened to kill him, he complained to God and God said,
….if you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses. v5
I don’t want that kind of raw truth.
That’s not the kind of life that we are told about when someone shared the gospel with us.
God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life…..
When it gets too hard to bear and I want to throw it in, all God says to me is….
When you come back, I will take you back…..that you may SERVE me.
Don’t miss that!
I think of Peter.
How he wanted to throw it in.
It was too hard…..He blasphemed…..He denied.
He cried.
One day Jesus said to Peter
Do you love me and it broke Peter’s heart.
Peter had looked for a way OUT but Jesus was looking for a way IN.
Who did God chose to stand up on the day of Pentecost?
The one who came back from the edge!
The name Rosie Ruiz is part of history.
On April 21, 1980 she crossed the line as winner of 84th Boston Marathon in a time of 2:31:56 seconds.
Incredible improvement of 25 minutes on New York marathon just 6 months earlier.
Incredible feat until someone questioned her.
Then it came out that no-one else could remember her along the course.
She had joined the race in the last mile!!
Rosie denied it all.
She was analyzed as a sociopath.
She lied with no sense of conscience, no sense of the enormity of what she was claiming.
In short, she thought that all that mattered in a race was the prize.
She wanted the wreath without running.
She wanted the recognition without the pain of the contest.
How many of us want to take part in the celebration of the gospel but we don’t want to run the race.
Who will be there when the race takes its toll, when we hit the wall and are not even sure we can finish it?
YUOL…… you understand O Lord
We want to finish, but it will only be by grace!
Discussion Questions
1.How do you recognize when you’ve had ‘enough’?
How do you deal with it?
2.Christianity invites us to live with high expectations.
The more we discover about God – the more we know what this God COULD do in our lives.
Talk about the things we know from the Bible that would lead us to have high expectations of God.
Why does this knowledge of God only heighten our disappointment at times?
3.Part of our problem is that we think faith only has a spiritual dimension.
If we are right SPIRITUALLY then the rest of our lives come together.
That’s why Christians find it hard to be ‘RIGHT’ with God and yet have such physical, emotional or personal problems.
Discuss
How long to do we keep the hope that things will change before we accept the reality that they won’t!
Is it an act of un-faith to accept what we think God should change?
4.Read Jeremiah 1:15-18
….. you understand O Lord [YUOL]
How important is that to us?
What difference does it make?
What deep hurts surface in these words of Jeremiah [v15-18]
Why are these things so hard to bear?
5.Read v19
When you come back, I will take you back…..that you may SERVE me.
Does that seem harsh to you? Why?
Why do we have a problem when God speaks so directly to us?
What does it say about our expectations?
6.Self-pity!
When I look at Jeremiah I think his self-pity is justified. That’s our problem.
When it’s all said and done – we still have a last line of attack that says,
I was walking through shop at Marion this week. Young Mum walking along in front of me with a wide pusher. Either she had twins in it, or two very young children. But both of them were screaming! Very loudly! I couldn’t see the Mum’s face but I had that distinct sense that she could’ve just let go of the pusher and kept walking!! Then this older lady walked passed from the other direction, looked at these two little darlings in the pusher and she smiled this most compassionate and loving smile, as if to say, ‘Aren’t they just beautiful?’ I wondered how the Mum felt. She’s probably thinking, I just want to leave these kids in a change room somewhere and this old lady is making THEM seem like the most desirable things ever born, and ME seem like the worst mother on the earth! I wanted to grab the old lady and say, ‘Forget the ‘aren’t they cute’ routine – go back and say to that Mum ‘I had times when I wanted to let go of the pusher too!!!’
This morning, on behalf of all of us who made life a little challenging for our mothers, I want to publicly thank you for not letting go of the pusher!! We hear so many mushy things about a mothers love – How they give up last piece of the pie …. all that kind of thing but I think THIS is the true mark of Motherhood! When you had every reason to walk away – you didn’t! More than anything else that reflects what God is like!
We see it here in Jeremiah 29 For 30 years Jeremiah has been preaching. Not what the people wanted to hear. God is serious about righteousness! Jeremiah’s rebukes had become like a re-run of an old movie. Everybody knew the lines and they could just switch off when they had had enough! In fact at one point Jeremiah took a scroll and wrote to King Jehoiakim. As the words were being read out, the King took a knife and cut them out of the scroll and threw them into the fire ….until the whole scroll was burned in the fire [36:23] There were so many other preachers who were much more exciting to listen to. Prophets who told the people what they wanted to hear – that Jeremiah was just an alarmist, a fly in the ointment. God would never allow any disasters to fall on them. They were privileged. They were the people of God! Then it happened. Beginning in 606 BC and concluding in 586 BC Nebuchadnezzar swept across from Babylon and DISMANTLED the nation, DESTROYED their temple, MADE A MOCKERY of their supposed privileged position with God, SHATTERED their cozy little world and DRAGGED most of the people into captivity. When they got there – the people sulked! Read Psalm 137 They still didn’t get it! All they could do is get mad at the Edomites and the Babylonians for what they did. …. How can we sing songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? Problem is, they hadn’t been singing the songs of the Lord in their own land. It had been a farce.
The first thing you discover about farcical faith is that can’t help you when it really matters The song dries up. Faith is only meaningful in the temple…. When it is surrounded by all the religious paraphernalia. It is not transferable. What a waste! God help us if our Christianity only thrives inside a Church building! The PREACHERS in exile still didn’t get it! Jeremiah 29:8-9 The prophets preached the injustice of it all. They told of dreams they had where God revealed they would go home soon. They managed to manipulate self pity into neurotic fantasies. They gave the people a religious reason to be lazy, angry with the world around them. They became parasites on society, irresponsible in their relationships and indifferent to reality in which they lived! Worse part about all this – that’s how the world often views the Church! They see us as neurotic, separatist, and indifferent to the reality of the world in which we live. We are like a little enclave that doesn’t know where we fit in the big wide world! Jeremiah, who was still living in Judah, writes to the exiles. Says….. In short You’re going to be there for a long time. Learn what it’s like to live as people of God THERE and then God will bring you back Oh, and by the way – God hasn’t forgotten you. He hasn’t taken his hands off the pusher! He has plans for you! Read v11 We often pluck this verse out and use it as some kind of ‘feel good wish’ for someone but it’s important we understand the context in which it was given. This verse was recently ranked as the 29th most popular verse in all the Bible. Something in us loves these kinds of verses. You often see them on plaques with the most beautiful, idyllic background. But that was not the setting in which it was given. God says, First thing you need to know is you are going to be there for another 70 years! God’s plans involve NOW! God’s plans include the ordinary, the colorless and the everyday. Christians are perennial dreamers. We are so prone to live in the world of what God could do, or will do, or is going to do. We are incurable futurists and it robs us of the courage to live in the present. We stake our hope on what we haven’t got yet and that diminishes the value of what we do have!! Read Colossians 1:15-20, 2:9-10 God says to his people. Sure I have plans for the future, but my plans start where you are right now! They don’t look that exciting to you, but they do to me! Read v4-7 There is a corporate and a personal message in this for us this morning.
a) Corporate The Bible says we are strangers and aliens. That will not come as a surprise to some people! Lot of Christians are very strange! 1 Peter 2:11-12: 11Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12Live 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. I wonder sometimes if we realize just how strange we are. Test it out tomorrow at work. While you work away I want you to sing out loud the choruses and hymns we sang this morning. Burst out with a strong rendition of – Great is Thy Faithfulness Then invite everyone to lunch room while you tell them about the sermon from Jeremiah you heard yesterday. Invite them back the next day to spend the whole lunch hour in prayer. Invite them to follow Jesus and make sure you tell them it might cost them everything they have! You see, we are odd! We may feel very comfortable here this morning in our little enclave, but it’s anything but normal out there! This passage tells us how to live as exiles, not like someone out of the X-files! God’s plans are not just religious and spooky; they are very ordinary and plain. ….. build houses, 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 may have sons and daughters; increase in number, do not decrease…. This Church is taking this last part very seriously!! God is saying to us Live out real, authentic lives in the midst of the world in which I have put you. Get among others who are building houses, planting gardens, marrying and producing…… That is my best plan! Get involved on school committees, the local footy clubs, the bushwalking society or meals on wheels. Be connected with people at what ever level God has equipped you for. That’s why I still play tennis. People are not afraid of me on the tennis court…..until I start serving! They don’t mind if I’m a minister. They find it cute!! If I invited them to my office at the Church 9am on Monday morning, most of them would freak out!! God says, play tennis Playing tennis for Jesus doesn’t guarantee you’ll win, but it does put you in a place where God can live and shine and even speak through you. All the Jews hankered for was to get back to Jerusalem. God says, you need to learn how to live in Babylon! It can be tough! We find ourselves between two extremes.
We are so separate and different that we become the stereotype dorky Christian Or
We get so happy living in Babylon that we want to take up permanent residence there. We no longer see Babylon as a mission field but a playground!
That’s challenge we face in 2008! There is something that will keep us on track Read v7 In addition to taking our place in society we must remember to pray for it! Wherever God puts you, pray for it! Whatever committee, whatever team, whatever group, whatever friends, whatever place….. Pray! Let God work as we pray!
b) Personal All of us, at different times, find ourselves where we don’t want to be. Sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes inexplicably – we are in wrong place. Crisis, death, betrayal, loss of job, sickness, breakdown, We feel angry, hurt, sad, confused, and lonely In a foreign place…. Exiled! All we want is to get back to the way we were! We want a quick fix. Ticket back to Jerusalem! We have choices. We can pine for the good old days. We can become hardened and bitter. We can become aggressive and harbour grudges. Or we can see that God still has plans for people just like us. People in exile. People who have failed. People who should just be wheeled into a change room and left for some old lady to come and take pity on! But God hasn’t taken his hands off the pusher. I will help you build where you are…. Read v12 I have had some words in my head for weeks now that I shared with you a couple of months ago. C S Lewis ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” The great Lion Aslan is the Christ figure and in the book there is one significant point where the youngest of the children who have set out on their adventure into Narnia, Susan, meets Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. And this is what we read: ‘As Susan heard the strange name, Aslan, she began to tremble, "Oh", said Susan, "is he quite safe?" "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king I tell you." Of course God is not safe. He sent His people all the way to Babylon so they would find him. But He is good! All of us are given moments, days, months, and years of exile. What will we do with them? Wish we were some place else? Complain? Escape into fantasies? Drug ourselves into oblivion? Or build and plant and marry and seek the shalom of the place we inhabit and the people we are with? Exile reveals what really matters and frees us to pursue what really matters, which is to seek the Lord with all our hearts.
Eugene Peterson: Run With the Horses
Discussion
Questions
All of us tend to tune out to things that we hear over and over again. We hear things but they no longer impact. What sort of familiar messages no longer have the sort of impact on us that they should? Can we do anything about this?
There was no shortage of preachers in Jeremiah’s day who were giving the people what they wanted to hear. What are some of the messages the Church is sending out today? What are the most important things we should be saying as a Church in 2008?
Read Jeremiah 29:11 This has been raked as the 29th most popular verse in the Bible. Why do you think it is so popular? God’s plans involve NOW! God’s plans include the ordinary, the colorless and the everyday. Christians are perennial dreamers. We are so prone to live in the world of what God could do, or will do, or is going to do. We are incurable futurists and it robs us of the courage to live in the present. We stake our hope on what we haven’t got yet and that diminishes the value of what we do have!! Discuss Read Colossians 1:15-20, 2:9-10
Read Jeremiah 29:4-7 1 Peter 2:11-12 talks about Christians being strangers and aliens in this world. Why is that the case? How does it show itself? What is God asking His people to do in these verses? Why is it so important? We find ourselves between two extremes. We are so separate and different that we become the stereotype dorky Christian Or We get so happy living in Babylon that we want to take up permanent residence there. We no longer see Babylon as a mission field but a playground! Discuss
Read Jeremiah 29:7 How many of us see it as all that important that we pray for all the groups, clubs, people etc. that we are involved with? How does praying for them change us?
All of us, at different times, find ourselves where we don’t want to be. Sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes inexplicably – we are in wrong place Crisis, death, betrayal, loss of job, sickness, breakdown, We feel angry, hurt, sad, confused, and lonely In a foreign place….Exiled! Describe what happens in your life at these times? What do you find helpful? How do you respond from a faith perspective? Note: Be honest in this!!
All of us are given moments, days, months, and years of exile. What will we do with them? Wish we were some place else? Complain? Escape into fantasies? Drug ourselves into oblivion? Or build and plant and marry and seek the shalom of the place we inhabit and the people we are with? Exile reveals what really matters and frees us to pursue what really matters, which is to seek the Lord with all our hearts.
I was particularly moved on Thursday when I saw a photo of group of people who had gathered at Elim Christian College in Auckland to mourn the death of 6 students and a teacher the day before in a kayaking trip that went terribly wrong.
The father of one of the girls who was drowned said what everyone else wanted to say,
“We are saying to God, Why has this happened? Where does this fit into your plan? I do not have an answer to that.”
This message is part of a series in Jeremiah called ‘Reality Bites’
This is the kind of reality that we cannot avoid?
These are the kind of questions that will inevitably be asked somewhere in our lives.
Sooner or later we will come to the same haunting realization that this father came to,
‘I do not have an answer to that.’
The inevitable question that follows,
How does this affect your faith?
Can faith withstand the unfair, inexplicable and unimaginable?
Yesaterday, after the wedding I spoke to a Uniting Church Minister.
He told me about something that happened 14 years ago while in ministry at Booleroo Centre. A vibrant 36 year old Kindegarten teacher, married with 2 children 10 and 7, suffered a stroke. Lost use of every part of her body. All she could do was breath and move here eyes. Her mind was as bright as ever in all this.
She spent 3 months in Hospital and 2 years in Julia Farr Centre. Now needs constant care as she is confined to wheel chair, with a little more but very small amount of movement in her body.
Told me he was talking about his wife!
What do we make of the passage we read this morning?
What kind of Potter is at the wheel?
v1
Have Thine Own Way, Lord. Have Thine Own Way.
You are the potter. I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after Thy will
While I am waiting, yielded and still
That hymn has a special affinity with us.
Written by a lady who was named Sarah Pollard at birth, but she didn’t like the name Sarah, so she adopted the name Adelaide.
She was an interesting lady who wanted to go to Africa for missionary service and was really distressed when her plans continually came to nothing.
One night, completely discouraged, she attended a prayer meeting where she listened to an old lady pray. Rather than pray for all manner of blessings, this dear old lady poured out her heart to God for an understanding of how God works in our lives.
Adelaide Pollard went home and read this passage about the Potter at the wheel. That night, before she went to bed she wrote all 4 stanzas of this hymn.
v3
Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Wounded and weary, help me I pray!
Power, all power, surely is thine!
Touch me and heal me, Savior divine!
Read Jeremiah 18:1-4
….. go to the Potter’s house
Things have changed in our day.
This generation thinks of the Potter’s house as the place where Harry lives!
But in Jeremiah’s day – it was a common place.
Today God might say to us,
Go down to Macca’s or Starbucks and there I will give you my message.
You know the biggest problem for God is to break into our everyday world.
·How can God get us to see the serious in the midst of the frivolous?
·How does God give us a revelation in the midst of the routine?
You see Israel couldn’t grasp why Jeremiah was making such a fuss with his preaching.
These were tumultuous times.
Powerful empires were ready to strike at their land.
Conventional wisdom said that disaster could be avoided by making political deals with other nations.
Assyrians from North would think twice about invading if the Israelites had Egypt by their side.
So the nation becomes more secularized, politicized.
With it comes a weakening of spiritual foundation.
Mark explained last week, they adopted all sorts of godless beliefs and practices in the temple, yet when they came to worship they cried out,
….the temple, the temple, the temple of the Lord [7:4]
But they couldn’t see, the Lord was no longer in the temple!
No amount of religious jargon could make up for the rottenness that filled the temple!
I just wonder if you are dosing off now thinking….
“How did those people ever get like that?”
That’s the problem – we can never see where WE are at!
I read an article during the week that tried to wrestle with what’s happened with the Church in the last 30 years.
We have engaged in cultural understanding.
We have tried to react to the growing sense of irrelevancy of Church in secular society.
We have tried to come to terms with traditional church, mega church, emerging church and ‘I’ve had enough of Church!’.
We have become user-friendly, seeker-sensitive and almost obsessed with not offending a world that takes pleasure in reminding the Church of all its historical baggage.
No one can argue with the passion to be culturally and personally relevant with our faith, but at the same time surveys reveal the Church has all but lost its passion for gospel.
It shows up a deplorable lack of knowledge of the Bible.
It shows that this generation has little place for prayer.
It shows that more than ever we are fearful to stand up for what we believe.
We have engaged in environmental issues, justice issues, poverty issues, political issues, all of which are necessary, but we have lost our heart for that which matters most!
Put it simply –
What if we save the planet but never see a member of our family come to Christ and be saved?
This seems like a flash back to a by gone era, but in fact it reveals just how much we have been duped into losing a sense of reality!
We have come to think it’s either/or.
God says I want you to save the planet, but I want you to do even greater things – be engaged in saving lives, seeing people brought the Kingdom of God!
How does God show us what’s really happening?
Says to Jeremiah
…. Go down to the Potters house and there I will give you my message
What did he see?
Read v3-4
He saw something being RE-MADE!
I saw it the other day at a servo.
I went in for one of those ‘wild bean’ coffees.
Told bloke I wanted flat white, extra hot in a take a way cup.
I watched him!!
When he was finished I noticed he had made a cappuccino in a glass and it had no steam coming out of it!
Before he gave it to me he saw the words that were about to come out of my mouth and he said,
“I don’t think this is hot enough”
He tipped the whole lot out and started again!
That’s what Jeremiah saw!!
He had seen it a thousand times before, but this time he saw something else.
He saw what God could do!
God broke into his everyday world and showed him something extraordinary!
God is a God who can re-make us!
Jeremiah saw God remaking the clay!
God making something out of the mess.
God reforming the clay into something magnificent.
Isn’t that something that burns away deep in heart of everyone of us?
Older we get -
·the more we are saddled with the limitation of our past;
·the more we are burdened with what we can’t change.
·the more we wish we could rub it out and start again!
Eg.
‘Extreme Makeover began in November 2002 in UK. Idea was simple – turn ‘ugly ducklings into swans’
Involve plastic surgeons, eye surgeons, dermatologists, cosmetic dentists, makeup artists, hairstylists and personal trainers bring about this transformation.
We shouldn’t be surprised at popularity of such shows. Thought of a complete make-over lurks not far beneath surface of every one of us.
Year’s ago Andrew Lloyd Weber was asked to explain the popularity of “Phantom,” in Phantom of the Opera. He said it was because, like the phantom, everyone has parts of themselves that they feel they need to hide.
Can you imagine Jeremiah?
He has been preaching destruction upon the nation.
He has revealed the broken heart of the God they spurned.
Read Jeremiah 2:4-13
What now?
Is that it?
Has the Potter done with this clay?
Does he dispose of it as a bad loss?
Jeremiah looks spellbound as he watches the Potter take that clay and crush it, and then reshape it into something that ….seemed best to him v4
Here are a people on the brink of disaster and Jeremiah sees what God can still do!
What is the message he has to take back to the people?
Read v11
…..turn [repent] from your evil ways
Let’s go back one step.
Why is this so hard?
Why is turning around so difficult?
It’s like the old joke –
How many Baptists does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: What do you mean ‘change’!
Why do we find it hard to change?
Even worse – why can we see what we should be and still not change?
Part of the problem is that we see change as something we have to DO. We tend to think change depends upon acting on certain facts, analysis or information. We approach change by engaging our LEFT BRAIN!
What we’re missing, says John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor and expert on organizational change, is the RIGHT BRAIN. “Behavior change happens mostly by speaking to people’s emotions and feelings.”
I find all this very interesting because by and large the Church has always tried to bring about change of heart by engaging the left brain.
We preach the message and that message is largely about facts, information and analysis.
In fact for a long while, we were warned off engaging people’s emotions and feelings.
It was like that was only a shallow response to God!
That’s why God took Jeremiah to the Potter’s House.
Up until now he had been faithfully preaching the message but now, everywhere he went, he had a vision of the POTTER!
He was moved by what he saw.
It stirred his heart and it empowered his message.
Christian history has been a struggle of faith that keeps reverting back to words, creeds and clichés.
We become left brain believers who are no longer moved and stirred into action because we have lost the vision of the Potter at work.
That’s why the 10 Commandments couldn’t do it.
Though shalt not – cannot change us!
That’s why the Pharisees couldn’t do it.
More rules and regulations just make us more creatively deceptive than holy!
We will never begin to change until we have a life changing vision of Jesus on the Cross, taking that which is marred and broken and useless because of sin &ndash