"Take Heart"

Dan Newburg

First Baptist Church of Devine

2022 Chronological Bible • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago • Presented 2 years ago

Jeremiah 37

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Well, with tomorrow’s arrival, every school around these parts will have welcomed students back to class.

I’ll ask our kids and teens, aren’t you so excited to be back at school?

I won’t be asking teachers and staff for fear that we wouldn’t be able to control their enthusiasm.

All kidding aside, I’m sure there are a number of us here who would much prefer that tomorrow was something we didn’t have to face. Maybe it’s the fear of the unknown that comes with tomorrow. For you students, you’ll really get to meet your teachers tomorrow. For our school staff, you’ll really get to measure whether you’ve prepared properly. School aside, for others, tomorrow has its own set of concerns.

I think in some sense, there’s longing within our hearts that seems to be satisfied when we gather as God’s people to worship him. It’s in our worship where we’re invited to reflect upon the indescribable and uncontainable nature of the Lord who has placed the stars in the sky and told every lightening bolt where it should go. And for God to see the depths of our hearts and still love us the same, words flee from our lips. What can we say other than the chorus of “Indescribable”? “You are amazing God.” And because of his amazingness, the heart’s response of the redeemed of God is the testimony that we could sing of his love forever!

Forget tomorrow because when we gather and we sing and we pray and we hear for these few precious moments together, we are a shadow of what’s to come that Jesus let John see when he was on the island of Patmos. Looking to eternity’s future, John writes, Revelation 7:9-10 “9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!””

I look forward with expectation to that glorious day, when you my brothers and sisters, are joined together with our brothers and sisters across all time to sing praises to our King! Glory! And I look forward to these times because we right now but for a moment testify to what’s to come.

Tension

It may not be the case every time we gather, but I think the idea resonates with us that we are deeply connected to that world that is Christ’s Kingdom that has not fully come. That perfect world that is coming that we’ve been given new life to live for. That Kingdom that we’ll carry in to our tomorrows for as many tomorrows that the Lord sees fit to grant us. It’s with expectation for that world that will be ushered in fully when Jesus returns that I’ve left church many Sundays ready to run through a wall like the Kool-Aide man for Jesus.

And yet the simplicity of Christ’s Kingdom that I’ve been born of the Spirit into seems to be challenged. Before God called me to be a pastor, I was a software engineer working in corporate America and, like you, all that we would sing about in church or what the preacher would talk about would get complicated pretty quick. I remember opening my computer to an employee-only website to be greeted by a company-sponsored blurb to indoctrinate me to the LGTBQ+ agenda all in the name of diversity. I know what the Bible teaches about sexuality, but I also remember wondering what would happen to my employment if I didn’t go to same-sex weddings and affirm that lifestyle. As a parent of two children, I wonder not if, but when, one or both of my girls will be faced with a teacher or a peer who wants to use pronouns that don’t align with their biological gender. Uncle Sam and God’s Word don’t agree on that one these days.

And what I realize now more than ever is that we are inextricably caught between two worlds - this present, fallen world and the new creation that is to come. Yet the question that lingers is how are we to live between these two?

Text

Stay faithful

As we have been reading along chronologically these last few weeks, we’ve been hearing from God through two prominent voices: the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Just two weeks ago, our studies during this time saw us reading from the chapter of Jeremiah just before this morning’s text, yet much has transpired in the life of Judah since we read of Jehoiakim cutting up the word of God. As we enter into Jeremiah 37, Jeremiah has been preaching for about 40 years. When you and I have been on the job for forty or more years, we get recognized by plaques and other mementos that bear witness to the appreciation that others have for staying with things for so long. Yet the sad news for Jeremiah is that his popularity around Judah has only declined since the early days of his ministry. It turns out that preaching a message of repentance for four decades wasn’t earning Jeremiah photo ops in the Judah Gazette or getting him awards for his mantle. It turns out that the word of God spoke through Jeremiah was actually really unpopular. The message that Jeremiah continued to proclaim was no longer worthy of front page material and would only make the papers, so to say, if there wasn’t anything else to fill page six and it might come under the heading, Jeremiah is at it again - When will he stop? No one wanted to hear any of the warnings that Babylon was going to conquer Jerusalem if the people did not repent and return to the Lord. If there was anything that was common among Judahites, it was their collective inability to hear.

Neither among those who walked the streets of Jerusalem or those who led the nation was there anyone who paid attention to the word of the Lord. For decades Jeremiah had been warning that the Babylonians were coming, but he was dismissed. His message was ignored because God’s covenant people had forgotten how longsuffering God is, only to look at the situation and assume that because Jeremiah’s been saying this “forever” and the enemy still hasn’t come, that he must be crazy. The sin of God’s covenant people had blinded them to the true nature of God, assuming that God would never allow his temple and his holy city to be burned. No matter what lengths Jeremiah or Ezekiel were led to by God, the mere suggestion that God’s covenant people would be sent into exile was laughable. Plus, even though the spies would return from the north with reports of the army that was amassing, in their ignorance, the generals of Judah would convince many that the defenses of the kingdom have never been stronger. So when the news came out that neighboring Egypt was sending their army, well, that put all fears to bed. God’s covenant people had drawn their hope from every place imaginable, except for the faithful God of the covenant.

Isn’t that the way it is for people? People get filled with false hopes that things will get better without Jesus. They’re convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that God would never allow things to get worse and so they remain in their brokenness, clinging to false hopes. This is the evil of idols. Idols are what we turn to that present us with something to hope for or hope in, but the sad reality is that those idols can never deliver what they promise. These idols blind and deafen their followers to God’s Word in whom the only true and lasting hope can be found. The tragic nature of it all is that they’ll never see God’s salvation and deliverance because these idols have kept them from the grace of God that leads to faith and repentance. This is what idols do to us, they give us a false sense of hope for a better future where our hope is in the idol, not in God.

Judah’s idols are too plenty to number and each one is equally devastating. Idols for these people then are the same for you and I today. For example, consider how much you and I long to be recognized and rewarded. No one else thinks as much of us as much as we do ourselves. And I know this is true because their wasn’t a promotion that I wasn’t given that I didn’t deserve!

Another guy who thought he was due was named Benedict Arnold. He was a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. As the war raged on, he abandoned his compatriots and joined forces with the British army. Now, if history is an interest of yours like it is mine, you’ll find that there’s no one single thing that made him betray the Americans, but his sense of self was at its root. He had been wounded in battle and at the same time, had been passed over for some promotions. It didn’t help matters that he married a woman who was loyal to the King of England and probably very lovingly shared with her husband her perception of the ill treatment he was receiving. And with time, Arnold’s hopes became cemented in the British cause because he thought their future to be brighter and he gained personally when they gave him a greater rank than he had with the Americans. Yet it’s said that upon his death bed that his heart was filled with regret and he told those who gathered around him, “let me die in the old uniform in which I fought my battles. May God forgive me for ever having put on another.”

And in every sense, as this chapter opens, it’s God’s prophet Jeremiah who is invited to put on another uniform. He’s still going around, preaching the Word to whomever he encountered, but no one’s listening. They’re reading the Jerusalem news and praising the salvation that comes from Egypt because the army that’s been besieging Jerusalem has withdrawn for the time being. And the messenger of the current king Zedekiah comes with the king’s request, Jeremiah 37:3 “Please pray for us to the Lord our God.”

This is significant, right? The king of Judah asking for prayer? Maybe this guy finally had a sense for the truth, maybe in his heart he knew that this message that Jeremiah had been preaching was right and so he asks the messenger of God to pray. But that’s all the king said to Jeremiah. Pray for us. The king was still so entangled by sin that he was stuck and he could not come to God in repentance and faith.

King Zedekiah was made in the image of God. You and I and everyone in this room are made in the image of God. We each have the God-given ability to hear the voice of God and I’ve got news for you, God’s talking to us around the clock, yet the idols of the world are attempting to drown out his voice. We need God’s grace to hear his gentle, inviting, guiding whisper.

God had been calling for a nationwide repentance that would have to start with the leaders setting the example. So the Lord sends Jeremiah to the king with a tough message. I mean, imagine the pressure to change the message. The king of the nation had sent a personal request for prayer and on top of that, Jeremiah’s feeling the pressure of going to prison. It’d be easy to say something crowd-pleasing, to avoid any conflict and not make any waves. But God’s message hasn’t changed. Apart from understanding his grace and returning to him in repentance and faith, God would use the Babylonian army and exile to turn the people’s hearts.

By the grace of God, the Lord has given us his gospel message of salvation. And the gospel is so rich and bursting with wonder! That God would let us enter heaven! There are things about the gospel that are easy to accept and there are just as many things about the gospel that are difficult to accept. For example, that in the his grace, God, John 3:16 “gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” and that a proper response to the grace that would send very God Incarnate to a cross, would see us come to him repenting of our sin that nailed him to it, confessing that our only hope and trust is Jesus Christ. That’s a difficult truth because we naturally desire God’s grace without repentance. We want the ticket punched to Heaven without a sense of the cost to pay the fare.

I believe the world views the gospel of Jesus Christ as a basket filled with mostly apples with a few onions sprinkled in the mix. The apples are absolutely delicious, but no one sinks their teeth into an onion. The first perspective to living between the two worlds we’re caught between as Christians is to stay faithful by unapologetically preaching and living the apples and the onions of the gospel. As we preach, we trust God will work in peoples’ hearts. Jeremiah rightfully did not change his message for the king. He was faithful to the word of God.

Stand firm

Now after his faithful preaching of the word to the king, we see in Jeremiah 37:11 that Jeremiah was about to leave Jerusalem for a short time. The Babylonian army had retreated thinking that the Egyptian army was coming.

Jeremiah wasn’t abandoning anyone, his plans were to return to Jerusalem after he took some time to go to the territory of Benjamin to get his share of the property among the people there. And as he was setting out on his way, he was stopped by the guard of the northern gate. He was arrested and accused of deserting to the Babylonians. He was sent to a house that was converted to be a prison and there he was beaten and left for a long time. No doubt, Jeremiah must’ve felt that death was looming.

Even with a threatening army just to their north, the king of Judah had absolute control over the people in Jerusalem. Many people take the message of their political leaders as absolute truth, but not all do. There may have been a few who heard the word of God through Jeremiah and desired to submit to the Babylonians, but the king’s decree prohibited anyone from obeying the word of God. If the king didn’t believe it was going to happen, no one was going to be allowed to believe in a way contrary to him.

What am I saying? I’m saying that King Zedekiah not only personally rejected the word of God, he was stopping other people from obeying the Lord, too. Last week we considered the danger of following our hearts, well Zedekiah was following his here and just like each of us, Zedekiah’s heart has deceived him. He had heard the word of God, he knew better, but he was acting and leading out of fear. That fear led him to do things that he believed would preserve himself and his rule and that fear actually kept others from doing the right thing in turning to the Lord. What we look into in this scene, what we stare into, is the face of pure evil, for it’s evil when someone or some entity stops someone from coming to God and obeying God. That. Is. Evil.

Zedekiah might have thought himself to be sooooo right and Jeremiah sooooo wrong. The Egyptian army was coming and the Babylonians had retreated. But Jeremiah wasn’t wrong. The Babylonians would return as God had spoken and Jeremiah continued to preach a message of surrender to Babylon which was God’s way and their hope. This was God’s word to them. They needed to surrender to this truth because it was a matter of life and death, yet they continued in their rebellion against God’s word.

Here’s the thing, anyone who does not accept God’s word as God’s word cannot understand it. And because they cannot understand it, they cannot surrender to it. And for those whom God has saved, he has shown the light of the gospel into our hearts and revealed to us the magnitude of our sin and the even greater depths of his mercy and grace. In saving us, God has not saved us to be a compromising people, friends. The word of God does not change and we have been saved to speak and live that word before others, without compromise. Yet the loudest voices in our society no doubt play on our fears knowing that we’ve entered the time 2 Timothy 4:3 “when people will not endure sound teaching.” And because they have "itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.” It’d be so easy to change the tune of God’s message to gather crowds, but it’s a more difficult path ahead for those who stand firm in the gospel. Standing firm is the second perspective to living between the two worlds we’re caught between as Christians.

Standing firm in the gospel comes with consequences. Standing firm in the gospel means you will be rejected. It means you may be persecuted. It means you may be imprisoned and even put to death. When Jesus was preparing his disciples to stand firm in the gospel before his death, he taught them John 15:18-21 “18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. 21 But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.”

Application

The message that God has given to both you and I is the gospel. The message that’s most succinctly stated in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 “... Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” And from our text, we can see before us the two perspectives that we can and must apply to our lives in response to God’s saving us - we must stay faithful to and stand firm in the gospel. On this truth we cannot waiver.

And there’s something more here for us to consider that compelled Jeremiah and can empower the Christian as we live between these two worlds. Jeremiah had been telling everyone to not resist Babylon, that it’s through the death of the nation that God has said will be their hope. Jeremiah didn’t consider his welfare in proclaiming this message, he trusted in God to care for him. Jeremiah didn’t esteem his own life, he esteemed the One whose hands his life was in. Jeremiah didn’t fear death, he knew the power of the Almighty over death.

What compelled Jeremiah was the foreshadow to the work of Jesus Christ. The nation had to die so that it could be resurrected. It would not be by the might of the sword to persevere but by the power of God to give life to what is dead.

Friends, if you think this is just 3,000 year old happenings, I’ve got news for you… Our society is collapsing and this is not because of any one person or any single term. It’s dying. For nearly 400 years, self-interest and individualism have been gaining momentum where now in Western society, the frontlines of the war against Christianity are gender and identity politics. This isn’t all. There is an American-based advocacy group representing individual chimpanzees and elephants in court, seeking to earn the animals the legal protection of personhood. I could go on with the idolatry and heresy.

Here’s an onion: there will be many self-proclaimed saviors of nations, but they will not lead in Christ’s truth. Like Zedekiah, they will just catalyze and weaponize our fears. There will be many who say things that sound good, but the fact of the matter is that society is collapsing and it must die. Job 12:23 “23 He makes nations great, and he destroys them; he enlarges nations, and leads them away.” Here may be one more onion: the hope of the Christian has never been in a perfectly moral society, but our hope has been and must be in the crucified and risen King through whom all has been made and by whom all things will be made new.

And friends, this is where we must stay true to the word of God, because we know that opposition and persecution will come to us when we do. Yet what will propel the Christian is the truth that it is our God who has the final say over life and death.

Inspiration

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the amazing Christian martyr of Germany, said, “Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ.” Not to the triumphant, not to the victorious, but to the suffering Christ.

Great leaders have always demanded personal allegiance. King Arthur bound his knights to him by rigid vows. Giuseppe Garibaldi, nineteenth-century Italian patriot, offered his followers hunger, death, and Italy’s freedom. Sir Winston Churchill’s stirring speech in the House of Commons in May of 1940 is best remembered by the dramatic words: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

Action

Like them, Jesus said, Luke 9:23 “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Allegiance to Christ is to follow the suffering of the Messiah. Yet, unlike anyone else, Jesus’ call is one of eternal and lasting significance. Jesus also said, Luke 9:24 “24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

Friends, that’s a call to take heart. Following Christ between these two worlds demands that we stay faithful, stand firm, stay true to the word of God.

Maybe for you, this talk of death has brought some measure of fear to you. I’m not suggesting that there should be a desire for it, I’m talking about the absence of fear of it. If you fear death loved one, then you aren’t living. For when salvation is properly understood, that fear of death is replaced with the hope of Christ because he is risen. Would you surrender to the King who was crucified for your sin, buried, and raised by the power of the Holy Spirit three days later? In his grace, God has done this for you because he loves you. Would you repent of your ways and trust your life to Jesus Christ?

The only salvation for humanity is our Redeemer Jesus Christ, and he lives. We have no need of fear, for Christ has defeated death. His kingdom is coming. Until then, stay true to the word of God.

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