Isaiah 58 vs 1 through 11 You Can Make the Sun Rise!
Context for this message. this is the fourth time I wrote a message on this passage and I like how this one sounds. So the background is various congregations in differing situations. This was written for the Sunday a few young people professed their faith in Jesus. I wrote this to encourage them in their walk with a vision for what their lives could do for our communities.
In his fascinating book on spiritual disciplines, Dallas Willard lists fasting is one of the disciplines that is to be encouraged in the Christian’s life. But he doesn’t list it as one of the first to be pursued. Because fasting is so easily misused or abused. Fasting, You see, is not just going without food for a certain amount of time. It involves also so directing one’s thoughts that we use the time saved from eating. To be in closer communion with God. And furthermore, it is to be used to overcome the natural tendency to go with our bodily instincts. Just because our stomach growls and says, I’m hungry, doesn’t mean we have to give in to it. We can, by means of our inner resources of spiritual strength, overcome our usual tendency to go with the flow of whatever our bodies tell us. But there is also the problem that some of us have and that is that our bodies are affected by diseases of sorts and we must control our eating patterns because of the disease. And for people like you, you are on a constant controlled diet or else your natural desires would literally kill you. For you, the idea of controlling your intake of food and when you eat and when you drink, is not at all new. It is how you live. And for the rest of us, we have no idea of what that is like.
My point this morning is not to talk about that kind of fasting. Instead, I want to think with you about what God considers to be fasting. Because while the physical act of fasting is a good discipline to be pursued, God has some other ideas about what needs to be done in our lives. And he calls it fasting, and I think I know why. It’s because we have to control our natural tendency to go with the flow of things and have to live our lives in such a way we do not allow our natural desires to kill us with laziness.
Come back with me about 2700 years to a land called Babylon, and to a book that some political exiles carried with them, the book of a great preacher from 2 generations earlier. The prophet Isaiah had a real problem to address. By the power of the Spirit of the of God, he had been able to teach his followers some poetry that spoke to the needs of God’s people over the ages. And the problem he was addressing was the problem of how do God’s people fast? How do they deal with the fact that their fasting didn’t seem to be doing any good for them?
Now that question is 1 which is common today as well, isn’t it? Suppose you were to go to any gym in the area when the coaches are working with the basketball team. Drill after drill, workout after workout, Drenched with sweat, Their lungs burning from all the exertion, The team members look at each other and say, why? Why did I just shoot 100 free shots? Why did I run 5 miles? Why am I doing this? Is all this discipline doing me any good? I came here a star in my own mind. My dad told me I was the best player he ever saw. Why does it seem I have to prove that to these coaches? Is there any point to this? It doesn’t just happen at a gym, it happens everywhere. In offices, it happens. In factories, it happens. In homes, it happens. Everywhere, people are forever asking why we should put any effort into anything. Why not just go with the flow?
Isaiah had to deal with that question as well as he spoke for God to his people. They were wondering why they should be fasting when it doesn’t seem to do any good. God didn’t answer their prayers. You see, they practiced fasting for the purpose of making sure their prayers would be heard and answered in their way. But for some reason, it didn’t seem to be working out that way. They would fast and pray and fast and pray and God didn’t seem to notice. They felt like God was ignoring them. In fact, they felt like God was just plain not around. Even though they were going through all the right motions to make sure he was there.
Now that sounds like what people say to me from time to time. I pray, but God doesn’t seem to answer my prayers. I ask God to help me and I still do poorly. I go to church but I don’t get anything out of it. I read the Bible, but I don’t think it does me any good.
Isaiah, speaking on behalf of God, says, But on the day of your fasting, you still do as you please. You oppress people and don’t think anything of it. You fight and slap each other around and act like you’re fasting is so hard to do. It looks more like an excuse for a day off than anything else., says God.
Then God goes on to tell them, you think that you are living in a Dark World. You want my light to shine upon your way. You want the sun to come up on you and give you the light of day. Well, you can make the sunrise. You can make the sunrise. God says it twice. He wants to emphasize that this is something that people can do. They can go from the dark of night to the light of day. And they can do it by practicing the kind of fasting that God would choose if He were going to give some instructions on fasting.
I think it was nothing short of amazing to the people who heard it in Isaiah’s day, and it continues to be a shocking description of fasting to us who live our lives today and think that fasting has to do with denying ourselves some food for a while. It has to do with your way of life, says God. It has to do with a way to live and to relate to other people. It has to do with caring about each other and about those who cannot care for themselves. It means that we have to refuse to go with the flow of our natural desires and begin to go with the flow of God’s Spirit. For the Spirit of God is working against the evil that we find in our world every day. And the evil is not that different today than it was then. The shape of the evil has changed some, but the prevalence of an evil nature that works to the detriment of 1’s fellows is still common.
Notice with me this morning what some of the issues are as far as Isaiah is concerned. He begins with this, Loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke to set the oppressed free and break every yoke. These are timeless problems. Where do we see injustice today? We see it wherever the weaker are set upon by the stronger. Then God wonders whether his people even see it. Do we see the oppressed in our society? Do we know anyone by name that we would call oppressed?
I believe there’s oppression all around us. I believe there are people who are being oppressed in our own communities and who need the fasting of God’s people to be set free.
The fasting God chooses is to share food with the hungry. There are always hungry people who need to be fed. When we take our food offerings in our church, we share our food with those who are hungry, But could we make this a lifestyle instead of a once in a while matter? Would it be possible to find ways to eat more simply and so to use less of the food available for ourselves?
Or look at it this way, There are any number of people who should be at tables with others. In our own county, about 1/4 of the living units are occupied by just one person. They all eat by themselves. They are people who are hungry. For the food of fellowship. I know people who have lived away from family for many years now; they know what it is like to go for months with just each other and the kids to eat with. One gets very hungry for the food of fellowship. People who live around family and have occasional get togethers with them have no idea how some others of their neighbors long for just that sort of fellowship and have no way to get it.
God’s way of fasting encourages us to share our food with the hungry. But to do that requires us to refuse to go with our natural inclinations and find ourselves going with the flow of God’s Holy Spirit.
The next line says, provide the poor wanderer with shelter, Period. It is necessary for us to be aware that homelessness is something that God expects the church to do something about. It’s all too easy to go with the flow of our natural inclinations and do nothing about homelessness. The God challenges us with the call to not turn our backs on our own flesh and blood. And we say, well, when my sister is homeless, I’ll take her in. Well, the words flesh and blood in the original here have the force of humanity. God says, don’t turn your back on any human being who’s without a home. People take more pity on dogs and cats than on the humans who waste away like litter on the streets of our city.
God says, do you want to find power in your prayers? Then you need to start doing something about the wanderers God is worried about. Why? Because when you do that, you make the sun rise in your life. If you will do whatever you can for those who need you, and they’re all around us, if you will give of yourselves for them, God says, Your light will break forth like the dawn.!
Then you will call and the Lord will answer you; And you will cry for help and the Lord will say, Here I am! Why? Because this is what God is about in the world. He’s about turning us away from our self-centered ways. He is calling us to turn from our own sense of what we want, to love him above everything else in the world and to love our neighbor as ourselves. That’s what God is doing and establishing the church in the world. That is the kind of fasting God wants us to practice.
What is the point of all of this? It’s this: God knows we are all too ready to develop a ritualized religion which we think is supposed to put us in touch with God, but actually draws us away from Him. He wants to breakthrough that and give us a religion that is active in loving him and our neighbors. We cannot do that unless we trust Him and give our lives to Him in faith. We have to let go of ourselves and spend ourselves with the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed. Then we will be disciplined spiritually and will be living God’s way instead of our way. Our way is the darkness of sin. God’s way is the glory of sunrise. You can make the sunrise. But. Will you? That is God’s challenge to you this week
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Isaiah 52 The Postman
The context for the first writing of this sermon was a class at Princeton Seminary for my master’s degree in preaching. I have used it several times over the years since I love the concept of beautiful feet bringing good news.
When I was growing up on a farm in Northwest Iowa, I would often look for the cloud of dust rising over the hill to the south that signaled the approach of the postman with the daily mail.
He carried the newspapers, the letters, the postcards – yeah this was a long time ago. When communication was done by hand and the equivalent of today’s texting was done on postcards. As the postman drove the country roads, his wheels would kick up a cloud of dust and when we saw that at about the same time each day, we knew he was on the way to our neighborhood.
Everything he brought was eagerly anticipated. I couldn’t help thinking about that scene as I thought about what it would have been like to see the approach of the messenger in ancient times. Our postman came daily with news from all over the world. When my neighbor was in the navy, his ship was a part of the blockade of Cuba during the presidency of John Kennedy. We would pore over the newspapers to see if there was ever any mention of his ship.
When my brother was serving with the Air force in Vietnam, the newspaper was the primary source of information about his unit. And always, it was brought to us by the postman, his wheels churning up a cloud of dust a mile away and heralding his approach. And always we would wonder what sort of news he would bring.
The approach of the messenger was similar in the ancient world. The Scriptures contain more than one story about seeing a messenger approach, but I want to point us to one in particular.
In II Samuel 18, King David had fled from Jerusalem when his son Absalom had tried to take the throne of Israel in what we would call a coup. The matter came down to a battle between the troops loyal to David and those who were siding with Absalom. After Absalom is killed, the battle winds down, and there are two messengers dispatched from the battlefield to the city where David was left for protection.
A watchman, studying the landscape from the roof of the city gate, saw first only one of the runners and reported that fact to the king. Then the second runner became visible and the watchman said, It seems to me that the first one runs like Ahimahaz the son of Zadok. And David replies, He is a good man, he brings good news.
But they do not know for sure until the runner arrives to announce the message. Undoubtedly, that was typical of the way the sequence often worked itself out. First the runners are sent. Then, the watchmen saw them and tried to guess what the message would be. And third, the messenger actually arrived and spoke the message.
That is the situation that lies behind this passage in the prophecy of Isaiah 52. Jerusalem has been destroyed. Zion, the city of God, has been lying waste for many years. She has become a widow with no children. No one is left to care for her. Her busy streets and markets are silent. Her walls, once thought to be impregnable, have been broken through in many places. The mountain peaks, once the boast of her generals, now look more like monstrous jaws about to crush her bones in order to extract the last of the life-giving marrow inside.
In this vision, Isaiah surveys the tragic state of Jerusalem. He lifts his tearful eyes to the mountains. Those mountains of which Israel had sung about on their way to worship. I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of the heavens and the earth.
Isaiah needs a message from the Lord, the king, the lord of hosts, the mighty one, for these broken people. They have borne their exile from the land not with stoic confidence, but with hearts heavy with grief. He needs a message from the Lord, his helper, the helper of Israel. Isaiah needs to spark the imaginations of those exiles, to set a fire of hope and faith burning in their hearts.
It was like the days in my youth when the postman brought the newspaper telling of how the air base my brother was stationed at had come under attack. And every day we would lift our eyes to the hills waiting, waiting, for the messenger, the postman to bring us a letter that would tell us, I’m OK.
We needed to hope, but all we had to go on was “no news is good news.” Until….. again the letter would arrive. We would heave a sigh of relief and lift a prayer of thanks that all was well. For us it was a matter of only days, at most a week.
Israel had given up hoping. It had been too long. People who had been children when they were led away into captivity were now grandparents. They needed a strong message of hope to stir them. And Isaiah finds that message for these despairing exiles in the vision of the sighting of a messenger.
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news. A messenger is coming. A messenger is coming over the mountain pass. His running is like that of Ahimahaz the son of Zadok. He is a good man. He brings good news.
Israel, do you know what the messenger means? It means your God is still in this world battling for you. The lord has not abandoned you after all. Look! God has sent his messenger and you can see he brings good news.
Indeed, the letter they carry is one of tremendous good news. They have been commissioned to proclaim peace, to bring good news. To proclaim salvation, to say to Zion, Your God reigns!
The messengers shout Peace. Not an empty peace like the false prophets had done just before the exile. They had said, Peace, Peace, when there was no peace. Those messengers were not sent to proclaim the sovereignty of the Lord. But these are. T
he messengers kick up a cloud of dust as they run. Never mind the dust, these are beautiful feet. No more hanging your heads in sorrow. Lift up your heads. Redemption is drawing nigh! These messengers, Israel, these messengers bring good news!
Oh, those elderly Jews who had been led in captivity from Jerusalem would have remembered what it looked like to have those messengers coming over the mountain passes near Jerusalem. The last time they saw such a thing, it had been messengers bringing really bad news of the approach of the Chaldean army that was destroying the land as it moved toward the capital. And ultimately destroyed it.
Isaiah stirs their imaginations and that of their children and children’s children by telling them of a vision of a new set of messengers approaching over the mountain passes. These messengers bring good news of peace. Your God reigns!
What I find fascinating about his vision and this passage from Isaiah as we read it in this year of our Lord, is this, I hear the messengers shouting to me. In my mind’s eye I see the cloud of dust and it reminds me of the way we looked for the postman and the news he would bring us of battles half-way around the world.
And I feel in my heart the stirring of hope that comes when the messenger is on the way. In our day of instant communications, we still long to hear good news don’t we?
In my classes on the media at the University of Phoenix, we have a week devoted to how the news affects our view of the world. And the truth of the matter is that for many of us, the way we see the world is colored by what we hear on the news. What we see on the news.
And it is such bad news, isn’t it? I have many students, and they tend to be in the age range of 25-35, who have stopped listening to the news because they cannot stand it anymore. They find their lives being weighed down by the bad news that seems to grow stronger every month.
So they begin to follow the news about celebrities and devour all the news about Kim Kardashian and her baby bump.
They want to know what cool thing Kathy Gifford did to shock the world on New Year’s eve.
They want to follow Lady Gaga on Twitter so that they can know that the world is OK because Lady Gaga had lunch today.
They will follow the news about whomever they can, just so they do not have to listen to the bad news that is marching over the mountain passes in their lives.
No work. No money. No life. It pains me to see this. I turn my eyes to the hills, and I ask, where does my help come from? My help is in the name of the Lord, the creator of the heavens and the earth. So I realize that what I need to do is hear again the messengers shouting out to me, Your God reigns.
Because I will readily confess that I am all too saturated by the bad news. I hear bad news every day. No matter where it is coming from. We are in trouble in the world. There is not much of a future for my children and grandchildren. The lure of the almighty dollar is turning far too many eyes toward the lives of the rich and famous.
We want the rich to pay. We want the rich stop oppressing us and our families. We want freedom. But we have no freedom when we find ourselves in debt up to our ears.
But wait, I hear the voice of the messenger shouting out good news! Your God reigns! There will be peace. there will be salvation. You just need to lift up your eyes, redemption is drawing near!
My students need to be able to see that modeled for them. They are longing for someone somewhere, somehow, to bring them good news. And it is not just my students. It is the people of this city who need to hear good news. It’s people who work with you. Who live near you, who are burdened with pain, with sorrow, with defeat.
They need some good news. They need to hear that God has not given up on our world. A hundred years ago, a theologian named Abraham Kuyper was a messenger of peace for people. One of his favorite lines was, there is not one square inch of this world over which Christ does not say, it is mine!
Perhaps you saw it on your facebook page after the shooting in Newtown Connecticut. God why did you not stop the shooting? And God replies, I’m not allowed in school anymore.
When Christians think along those lines, its no wonder that people fall into despair. For we have swallowed the idea that if a few guys in Washington DC say that God is not allowed in the public schools, then God simply walks out. The good news of the messenger is that Your God reigns.
There may be rebellious pockets of resistance, but there is not one square inch of this world, over which Christ does not say, it is mine. That is still true.
And the day will come when before the nations he will bare his holy arm and all the world will know that Jesus Christ is lord. And every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord.
So church, lift up your heads! Salvation is on the way. Look, the messenger is on the mountain pass, he is kicking up dust as he runs. And he runs as though he is Ahimahaz the son of Zadok. He is a good man, he brings good news!
As you leave this place of worship today, may you go with a vision of the glory of God as king rising before you. Take a look at your feet, they are beautiful feet as you go into the world out there and you bring the good news that Our God reigns.
Isaiah 40 31 Hope in the Lord
The context for this message was the installation of a friend of mine as the pastor of a struggling church.
Isaiah 40:31 but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
That word hope is one which is difficult for us. We live in a culture that is rapidly losing hope, especially in the camp of those who claim to be believers in God. Oh my, Christians had better wake up and do something. I hear it again and again in the Facebook posts of my friends who are alarmed by developments in our country and around the world.
There is no hope. There is no hope. Perhaps you have felt that way from time to time. Perhaps you have found that like Old mother Hubbard, you went to the cupboard to get your child some hope, and when you got there, the cupboard was bare. Alas, there is no hope! We have no future! We have no hope.
The thing about hope is that it is something that one cannot see. The book of Hebrews tells us that faith is the substance, the contents, of what we hope for. So when our hope cupboard is bare, our faith has very little in the way of contents either. When we have no faith, and no hope, our love runs dry. And we walk around as if we are those really popular things these days – the zombies – the walking dead.
Our lives are filled with pessimism and with doubt. We wonder if God is still in control of the world. We join our voices to those of the agnostics who say if God is good, he is not great, and if God is great, he sure ain’t good.
We sound like what I imagine the people of Israel sounded like as they sat in Babylon and wept next to the river. They believed that all we lost. They had lost all their hope for a future. They had no reason to think that God had anything for them in their lives at all. They sat there and wept. And longed for the good old days when they sat under their olive trees and drank the wine from their grape vines. They longed for the times when they could go to the house of the lord to worship.
All that was now gone. They found themselves deep in despair.
No hope, no future, no reason to go on. We might as well close up shop and eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.
Then they discovered an old manuscript from the prophet who had lived a hundred and more years before in the land of Judah. As they made their way through the book, they saw how Isaiah had again and again warned the people that God would not allow them to continue in their corrupt ways and that the day would come when they would be cast out of their land. And all it did was create more tears.
Then they came to a section which we call chapter 40 and there they read, comfort, comfort my people says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and tell her that she has received double for all her sins. Then as the lines continued, they came to a place where the great prophet had written this – those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.
The word Isaiah used was an old, old word in the Hebrew language. It originally meant to twist two things together— it was like making a rope. When I think about that I get the image of twisting myself into a relationship with God. Isaiah says that when I do that I am engaging in hope.
But here is the thing, to do that twining of myself into God, I need to believe that he is capable of helping me.
Isaiah says, Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? 22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. Why do you complain, Jacob?
Why do you say, Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God”?
28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall
; Then he goes on,
but those who twine themselves with God will renew their strength, they will rise up in wings like eagles!
Like R Kelly the hip hop artist who has some real evil in his life, but he had this wonderful song, that goes like this
I used to think that I could not go on
And life was nothing but an awful song
But now I know the meaning of true love
I’m leaning on the everlasting arms
If I can see it, then I can do it
If I just believe it, there’s nothing to it
I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day (Night and day)
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar
I see me running through that open door
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly hoo (Read more: R. Kelly – I Believe I Can Fly Lyrics | MetroLyrics)
Now, the biggest problem with this is summarized for us in a poster one can find in college bookstores. It features a flock of turkeys, and the caption reads, it’s hard to soar like an eagle when I’m surrounded by all these turkeys!
Yes turkeys can fly, but only with great effort on their part. And they never soar like an eagle soars.
A church secretary I had a few year back was, together with her husband, an avid birder. That meant that they always went to places where they could see birds they had not yet seen or where they could photograph birds they held in great esteem.
One summer she came back from a trip to the mountains of Idaho and had all these photos of an eagle’s nest. It was located on top of a pillar of rock that stood off from the rest of the mountain they were on. They had their telescope they used for birding focused on the nest and from time to time they would see the eagles bringing food for their young.
What is interesting about that is when an eagle hatches it is not feathered at all. But soon its feathers grow and it increases in size. But this is the important thing – eaglets don’t fly. They just sit there and enjoy the view. (I think there may be parents here this morning who can relate to that!) But when the eaglets are big enough and feathered, the parents need to teach them to fly like eagles.
Perhaps you have a hummingbird that visits your flowers like my wife and I do in our backyard. That hummingbird beats its wings so fast one can only see a blur- the wings are going about 50 times per second as it hovers to get a drink from the flowers it visits. Eagles don’t do that. Eagles have to do like the r Kelly song and they have to believe they can fly, that they can soar!
What that means is that the eagle is capable of staying aloft for extended periods of time with almost no energy output. They simply spread their wings and soar. That is one of the more amazing things about eagles. They don’t labor hard to remain aloft. They simply rely on the wind beneath their wings. One might say the eagle hopes on the wind. The eagle entwines itself with the wind and becomes something that it is not by itself. But combined with the wind, it soars.
The baby eagle, when it first learns to fly, needs to learn to trust the wind. To let the wind lift it to heights far above the earth.
Isaiah says, those who entwine themselves with the Lord will renew their strength, they will rise on wings like eagles. That means that it is not up to us.
If it is to be, it’s up to me, is a slogan I learned as a youth. But in the context of my flight with God I have discovered that if it is to be, it is up to God’s wind, his spirit beneath my wings.
In the Biblical languages the same word is used for wind and for spirit. As my good friend takes the leadership role in this church, I want to remind him and all of you that, Lord, if it is to be, it is up to thee.
And Isaiah tell us that those who entwine themselves with God will renew their strength! This congregation has had some difficulties in the recent past. But, that does not mean that your cupboard is empty of hope. For where there is an empty cupboard today, God promises to blow with his wind and to lift you far above where you can get if you try to flap your own wings and fly like a barnyard turkey.
Just to end this with an image you might be able to relate to.
When we come to the end of a service, the pastor raises their hands and gives a blessing from God. It’s as if they are spreading their wings and getting ready to fly. So, when you see that, remember that when that blessing falls upon you, God is saying to you, You can fly. You can fly when you entwine with the God who wants to be your strength and your wind!
Is There a Balm in Gilead? Psalm 4, Jeremiah 8: 18-9: 1,
Context for this message is an urban congregation finding themselves in a church conflict that had caused the atmosphere in the congregation to become toxic
When he was growing up, Ben was nourished and nurtured on the Word of God. By the time he was twelve, he had stood before the congregation and had declared that he was a follower of Jesus. He had gotten involved in the ministry of the church. He went on mission trips. He was a young man about whom I was grateful to God that he was one of those that I had the privilege of pastoring.
Then when Ben turned 18, he moved out of his home, he moved in with a girlfriend. He stopped attending worship. He told his friends that he no longer needed God. He was through with God. In fact, he told the elder who went to see him one day, I no longer am in need of fire insurance. You can keep your God and your church and I’ll get along just fine without any God.
My heart breaks when such a thing happens. It seems to me to be so like what was going on in Jeremiah’s day when the people of Israel decided they no longer needed this God who was telling them what to do. They wanted a god they could tell what to do. They wanted to have their gods do for them all the things they wanted and so they started looking for a way to dump the god that was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and instead found that they could manipulate the gods of the peoples around them. That was much more to their liking.
But they discovered that God, the true God, then brought them into judgment and they were carried off into a land that was not their own.
And suddenly they discovered that they were in dire need of the God of their fathers. And there is repentance and mourning. But God seemed so far away. And Jeremiah laments the sin of the people and he asks, is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
What is it that is going on here Lord? The cry of the people has gone up, the harvest is passed, the summer is ended and we are not saved. How long does it take for God to save us? We’ve repented for a few months now? How long does it take, O God?
The people have realized their sin, but, but where is God? Where is God? Where is God when it hurts so badly? What do we do now? In our lives too, we find ourselves going off on our own directions and we want our way or no way. And, I’m telling you, as the pastor of people like that, I find myself mourning over them.
But I am not going to tell them they can go any way they like and that God will simply coddle them. I’m telling you that now.
When someone wants to go off in their own direction and not seek to humble themselves before God, I am going to be like Jeremiah. He was a man who no one listened to, but he was walking with God. Jeremiah was a man who did God’s bidding and was disliked by everyone. He did not have a great ministry.
In fact, most of us would say that he was way too stubborn. Couldn’t he figure out that the people didn’t want the sort of God he was proclaiming? Why keep it up?
I think the answer is in how Amos once put it; the Lion has roared who can but prophesy? But Jeremiah saw that to proclaim a different God was to miss out on the calling God gave to him.
But all through church history, God’s people have tried to have the church made in their image rather than in the image of God. God’s people have not changed much over the years.
Why, because I have people who are facing in two opposed directions and there will be no joint worship of the Lord, not if I have to worship with them! Then I’m out of here!
Then I begin to weep over the way people on both sides of an issue define themselves in opposition to others. I am convinced we struggle not with flesh and blood with but with the principalities and the powers of this evil age. Then with Jeremiah I cry out to God, is there no balm in Gilead to heal these people? Is there no way to have a cure for the sinful heart that refuses to call on the name of a holy God with someone else who is not like themselves?
I mean that! I weep over the way people act. I cry out to the Lord to seek his holy face and to ask him what do I do with these people who are so difficult to deal with? What do I do? then I realize what a friend I have in Jesus for I can take everything to him and he will hear and he will take my anxiety and my struggles and he will give me peace in their place.
How about you? Do you ever think too, wouldn’t it be great of we would just take everything to Jesus? Let’s sing of that together.
BREAK to sing Whata Friend We Have in Jesus
Help us o God our savior, for the glory of your name! Help us o God, our savior for the glory of your name! As we read this we see that the psalmist really did have something to weep about. Jerusalem had been sacked and the temple had been defiled. The holy of holies had been trampled by heathen feet. and God had not reached out and saved his people.
Why not? well, it was because they had abandoned God long before and he was done with them.
O help us God our savior. The people are learning to repent and come home to God. They are searching for a place of refuge in a world that is intent on destroying the place of the Lord’s dwelling. Just think of this. In our own day, here in the United States: every week we have about 20 churches that hold their first service of worship. There are about 20 new churches every week. Just think of that. In a year that’s over a thousand new churches. We can rejoice at that, can’t we!?
But maybe we need to also realize that every week in the United States 27 churches close their doors. So that we have a net loss of 7 churches every week. That’s over 350 in a year.
Since I have been a pastor, that means we have closed over 9000 more churches that we have started. I think you and I need to cry out to the Lord to save us here in the United States for we have become a nation that doesn’t want to have to put up with other people any more.
We have rejected the Lord’s community of faith and we will soon be paying a heavy price for it. Oh Lord save us from ourselves! In this place and all over this nation. We are failing to uphold your righteous cause. We have instead gone each one his or her own way. We are a people who need to repent. God we need you so much!
Sermons and Meditations by Bob Zomermaand 