October 27, 2013

This is the final sermon post for the month. We usually have a guest speaker during our service on the last Sunday of October. He comes and talks about the work the Gideon International group does. If you have every been in a motel and opened the night stand drawer, then you have seen the fruits of their labor. Because of his participation in the service my sermon is a little shorter. It also has some sentences scattered in there that are reminders for me in case I need to adjust the length of the sermon right before I begin so this one might not be written as well as some of my other ones. In any case, I hope you have received some measure of blessing from reading these posts this month. Each sermon I prepare is based on something I need to hear so if I need it, perhaps someone else out there does too. 

Current Conditions

Jeremiah 29:4-14

October 27, 2013

⁴ Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. ⁷ But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. ⁸ For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, ⁹ for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord. ¹⁰ For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. ¹¹ For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. ¹² Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.¹³ When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, ¹⁴ I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

The Word of the Lord

(Thanks be to God)

Usually when we hear the term “current conditions” we think about the weather. We might pull out our smart phone and click on the weather channel app and check to see what the temperature is outside. Just like it’s been cold here this weekend, so to were the hearts of the people of Israel toward God during the time of the prophet Jeremiah. His message was one of repentance initially but actually turned into a message of destruction. God told Jeremiah in chapter 1 that he was chosen before he was formed in the womb and that he was consecrated as a prophet even before his birth. Jeremiah was warned that his message would not be popular but that God would always be with him. So what was his message? That the nation would be conquered and people would be sent into exile from their homeland. All this is going to come about because of the actions of the people. The most heinous of them was their pattern of idolatry. They had made offerings to other gods and worshiped the works of their own hands. (Jer 1: 16) Because of this turning away from God He was going to bring their enemies from the north down to destroy Jerusalem and scatter the inhabitants. You can imagine that this was not a popular message to hear. Jeremiah was severely scorned for telling the people how bad they have been and how it is now time to feel the wrath of God’s judgment against them. He was forced on a couple of occasions to hide in fear for his life because the leaders of the nation were direct targets of Jeremiah’s writings and they were not happy about it.

How many of you would rather turn on the TV and hear someone talking about how blessed we are to live in this country and how we are blessed by God and everything is going great? All we have to do is keep doing what we are doing and just believe in God and all you troubles will disappear. Or would a message like we are sinning against the Lord by worshiping things other than Him and our time is coming when we will no longer be a nation and we will be conquered and sent from our homes be what you would rather hear? That is what Jeremiah was up against. The people didn’t want to hear his message. God had protected them in the past so they weren’t worried about it. The problem is they had turned from God with their worshiping habits so God was about to lift that protection from them. Jeremiah was letting them know that.

Edward Snowden is currently seeking asylum outside of the US for his actions in leaking documents about the US government. Now I am not comparing his actions with those of Jeremiah from the standpoint of right or wrong, but what I want you to think about is what Snowden is going through and how it compares to what Jeremiah went through. Both had some scathing things to say about the leadership of their country. Jeremiah very much loved his country and it pained him to see the people living in such a manner that God saw it necessary to exact judgment on them. Yet, he continued to deliver the message in spite of the dangers it posed to his own well-being. Snowden, right or wrong, is running under the same kind of fear for his safety because of his message. Jeremiah was a prophet of God. He was sent by God to deliver a message directly to the people. I don’t believe that Edward Snowden is a prophet of God. But you can get a sense of how Jeremiah felt when his countrymen, friends, and even family began to turn against him because of the destruction he was foretelling.

Our passage today contains a very popular verse, “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” When we single out that verse and focus only on it, it appears to give us a promise of a successful and pain free life. I do believe that this verse contains a promise to us today but we really need to look at it in the context of the rest of the writing to get a true sense of what all that promise contains. Our selection this morning is part of a letter written to the Jews in Babylon from Jeremiah contradicting what Hananiah, a self proclaimed prophet of God, had recently told them. Hananiah tells the people in exile that God is not going to leave them in this foreign land for 70 years as has been prophesied, but that he is in fact going to deliver them back to their homeland in two short years. He claims to be speaking on behalf of God and has a message that certainly is acceptable to the people. In the preceding chapter Jeremiah has an exchange with him over his prediction. He basically says that I hope you are right and the displacement only lasts two years, but I hate to tell you this, but that isn’t what God told me. Hananiah, then in a powerful display breaks the wooden yoke that is around Jeremiah’s neck and likens it to God breaking the yoke around the people that Nebuchadnezzar has on them. Jeremiah’s response is that the wooden yoke will now be replaced by a yoke of iron. He then goes on to predict the death of Hananiah with in the year. The last verse of chapter 28 tells us that he did die in the seventh month of that year. His death is the result of claiming to speak for God when he did not. That had to be disheartening to the exiles because their hope of a quick return appears to be dashed. So Jeremiah writes the letter to the exiles telling them how to live. He tells them to settle down, get married, marry off their children, and basically settle in for the long haul. This means that there are those among them that will never see their homeland again. 70 years is longer than most of them will live so put returning out of your mind and make the best of your current situation.

Story of Joseph sold into slavery as Biblical example of taken from homeland. It is all about perspective. From God’s point of view this was a good thing for the Israelites and Joseph came to understand that as well.

Speaking of perspective: Illustration: It’s something like what Coach John McKay of Southern Cal said to his team after they had been humiliated 51-0 by Notre Dame in 1966. McKay came into the locker room and saw a group of beaten worn-out and thoroughly depressed young football players who were not accustomed to losing. He stood up on a bench and said, "Men, let’s keep this in perspective. There are 800 million Chinese who don’t even know this game was played." That’s what you call perspective.
(SOURCE: Steve Farrar, "Family Survival in the American Jungle," 1991, Multnomah Press, p. 40.)

Imagine if in you were suddenly plucked from the United States and forced to live in Nazi Germany in the 40’s, or the Soviet Union in the last half of the 20^th century, or now taken to an Islamic Middle Eastern country and told you would be there 70 years so you might as well make the best of it. Jeremiah even goes on to say that the people should pray for Babylon and its success. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. These are not easy words to hear. Hananiah’s message was much better. However, his message was not from God. Jeremiah goes on to warn them not to listen to those diviners who claim to speak for God; they are deceivers and are not sent by God. But all is not lost for the people of Israel. What follows is that popular verse. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. The promise is to the nation of Israel that He will restore them to their homeland; that they will not cease to exist as a nation. Individually, there will be heartbreak and suffering. But as a nation they will rise again from their captors.

In closing, how does this apply to us today? One viewpoint is we are all exiles from that perfect homeland called heaven. While we spend our time here on earth we are to make the best of our current situation. If we look at it in more of a microscopic view, our present situation, where we live and work, who we associate with; we are in those positions because God has us there. We are to make the best of our current condition until that time that God sees fit to place us somewhere else. If you look back on your life and the journey you have embarked on, I think you will see those times in your life that didn’t make sense at the time but now have a clearer meaning because of where you are now. Sometimes there are things we yet do not see their value but God will show us in His time. God does surely know the plans he has for us and those plans are certainly for a future of hope, but He requires of us to make the best of our current condition, through both the good times and the bad times, until that time comes when we see His plan fulfilled.

Let us pray.