1This is the message which came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year Zedekiah was king over Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar. 2(At this time the army of the king of Babylon was beseiging Jerusalem and Jeremiah the prophet was imprisoned in the courtyard of the guard in the royal palace of Judah 3where King Zedekiah had imprisoned him...
6Jeremiah said, “The Word of the Lord has come to me, saying, 7‘Your uncle Shallum’s son Hanamel is coming to see to you, to ask you to buy his field in Anathoth, since you have the right of first refusal.’
8“Then my cousin Hanamel came to me in prison, just as the Lord had said. He said, ‘Please buy my field in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, because you have the right to redeem it. You are my closest relative. Please buy it.’
“Then I knew that it really was from the Lord.
9“I bought my cousin Hanamel's field in Anathoth. I paid cash, 17 silver shekels. 10I wrote out the deed, I had it notarized, I arranged for witnesses, and I had the witnesses confirm that the money was the exact right amount. 11I took the original notarized deed and an official copy 12and I gave them to Baruch the son of Neriah the son of Machsaiah in the sight of Hanamel my cousin, in the sight of the witnesses to the signing of the deed, and in the sight of all the citizens of Judah who were there in the courtyard of prison. 13I directed Baruch before all those witnesses, 14‘The Lord of the Heavenly Armies, the God Israel says to take these documents, the original and the copy, and seal them in an airtight container so that they might last for many years, 15because the Lord of the Heavenly Armies, the God of Israel wants you to see that someday they will buy houses and fields and vineyards in this land again.’”
1.If you live sheltered by The Most High,
you will be under the protection of The Almighty.
2.I have made the Lord my shield and my fortress. He is my God and I rely on him.
3.He will protect you from the hidden trap, from horrible diseases.
4.You will be safe under his feathers. You will be secure under his wing.
His truth will be your guard and your safety.
5.Day or night, no danger will frighten you,
6.not even the epidemic that strikes by night,
nor the contagion that kills thousands by day….
14.Because you trust me, I will rescue you. I will protect you because you know my name.
15.Call me and I will answer you. I will be with you in trouble.
I will rescue you and I will honor you.
16.I will fill you with long life, and I will show you my salvation.
6If you can combine godliness with contentment, you win. 7You didn’t bring anything with you into the world, and you can’t take anything out. 8So if you have enough to eat and shelter, that is enough. 9Those who want to get rich fall to temptations and traps, wild, uncontrollable longings which can sink you to the very depths of destruction. 10The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. It has deceived people from the faith and caused a lot of great pain.
11But you, Child of God, run from this. Chase after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, humility. 12Fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold onto eternal life, to which you were called and have confessed the great confession before many witnesses. 13I command you before God who gives life to all and Jesus Christ who testified the great confession to Pontius Pilate, 14keep the commandment spotless and wholehearted until our Lord Jesus Christ comes. 15In his good time he will reveal the blessed and only master, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. 16He alone has eternal life. He lives in unapproachable light. No human being has seen him or can see him. To him be eternal honor and power. Amen.
17I command those who are rich in this realm not to get big-headed and not to rely on uncertain riches but on God who richly provides all things for us to enjoy. 18Do good, be rich in good works, be generous, share, 19treasure up for yourselves a great foundation in the coming realm, one that can receive you into real life.
19There was a certain rich man who dressed very well every day. 20There was also a certain poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who was laid by the gate of the rich man’s estate. 21He longed to be filled with crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. And the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22One night the poor man died and was carried into the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23Tortured in hell, he looked up and saw Abraham a long way off, and Lazarus in his bosom. 24He cried out, “Father Abraham! Help me! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool my tongue. This fire is burning me!”
25Abraham said, “Son, remember you received your good while you were alive, while Lazarus only got bad things. Now here he is being comforted, and you are being tortured. 26Besides, there is a huge canyon between us, so that anybody who wants to go to you can’t, and nobody can cross over to us.”
27He said, “Then I ask you, Father, to send Lazarus to my family. 28I have five brothers, you see. Have him testify to them so that they won’t come to this torture chamber.”
29Abraham said, “They have the Bible. Let them read it.”
30He said, “No, Father Abraham. But if someone came from the dead, they would change their ways.”
31He said to him, “If they won’t listen to the Bible, they won’t be persuaded even if somebody rises from the dead.”
SAY WHUT? I DON’T THINK SO
A SERMON FOR THE 21ST SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME—C
Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, imprisoned Jeremiah for the best of reasons. Jeremiah had committed one of the most repugnant crimes possible to human beings. In a time of great national crisis, when emotions were at their highest, Jeremiah dared to be right when everybody else was wrong. He had been saying for years, "People! If you don't stop OFfending God, he will stop DEfending you. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon will bring his army here and destroy our nation."
When the people refused to listen, Zedekiah had no better course of action than to put Jeremiah in prison. After all, he was discouraging the military and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
God spoke to Jeremiah in prison: "Jeremiah, remember your cousin Hanamel?"
"Uncle Shallum's boy, the one who is always hatching hare-brained schemes to get rich quick and never has two shekels to rub together?"
"That's the one. He's broke and needs cash, so he's coming to ask you to buy his portion of the family estate back in Anathoth."
"Thanks for the heads-up, Lord! I'll find a way to let him down easy."
"No, Jeremiah. I want to you to buy his field."
The Bible doesn't record that, but I'm convinced Jeremiah said the Hebrew equivalent of those words of wisdom and prudence.
"Listen, God, I'm no expert in real estate, but that parcel is in a war zone. Surely its value is a tad depressed. This can't be a wise use of the limited resources you have placed under my stewardship."
"Not only do I want you to buy it. I want you to buy it with all the pomp and circumstance and ritual and ceremony you can drum up. I want you to take the deeds and see to it that they last a long time. Israel is finished for now, but I'm not finished with Israel. There will be real estate business here again."
The Bible is full of "Say whut?" moments. God had Moses throw his staff to the ground and the staff turned into a snake. Moses, being a smart man with good reflexes, ran and his from the snake. But God said, "No, Moses. Come back here and pick that snake up by the tail."
Ken Medema wrote a piece in which Moses says, "God, obviously you aren't from around here. We don't pick up snakes. And if we have to, we don't pick them up by the tail! They can twist around and bite you!"
"Moses. Pick up the snake by the tail."
By the Red Sea, with the Egyptian army racing up on them, Moses asked for orders. God said, "Stretch out your staff and part the sea." The next morning, when the Egyptian army was closing in on them through the dry sea bed, God told Moses, "Stretch out your hand and make the sea return."
And here is the difference between the saints and the sinners. Both of 'em say "Say whut?" because they're not stupid. But only the saints have the courage to follow up "Say whut?" with "Okay."
By the way, have you ever noticed that God didn't say, "I'll part the sea for you" or "I'll turn that snake back into a staff for you"? He said, "You do it." Hold that thought. We'll come back to it.
Two years later, when Moses told the people to cross over into Canaan and take the land, they said, "Say whut? They have fortified cities there! They have armies with BIG MEN there? And you want us to just take it? I don't think so."
And there you have the distinctive cry of the sinner: "Say whut? I don't think so."
Courage is not a feeling. If you don't feel fear, it doesn't mean you're brave. It might just mean you don't understand what's going on. Courage is a decision. Courage is knowing exactly what could go wrong, and doing the right thing anyway. Courage is not something you're born with or born without. Courage is something you either choose to use or choose not to lose.
Courage is the essential ingredient in all virtue. If you only serve Jesus when it's safe, you're not much of a servant. If you're only good when it's convenient, what are you good for? Not much!
And conversely, cowardice is the basis for all evil and all sin. Like courage, cowardice is not a feeling. It is a decision, the decision to allow fear to control you. We do not lie, cheat, and steal because we're strong and daring, because it's fun. We lie, cheat, and steal because we're AFRAID we won't get what we want any other way.
Strong people don't hurt other people. They strengthen other people. Courageous people don't threaten other people. They encourage other people.
How often have you been emotionally battered by other people. I've got news for you. They weren't strong and brave. They were weak and cowardly. They were terrified you were going to see how weak and cowardly they are. And that is why they hit you with their "Do-unto-others-before-they-do-unto-you" strategy.
Don't get me wrong. Fear is useful. Fear helps you not drive too fast on slick roads. Fear reminds you to lock your house and your car when you leave them. Fear will keep you out of trouble.
But an unscrupulous enemy can use fear to manipulate you and hurt you.
I understand when lions hunt, they'll place the young lionesses, sharp of appetite, tooth, and claw, on one side of a herd; and on the other they'll put an old lion, toothless, clawless, useless, harmless, and he'll roar like thunder, and panic the herd into the literal jaws of death. If they would run toward the roar, toward the fear, they would be safe. They'd probably trample that poor toothless old relic to death.
The bravest person ever was Jesus. The night before he died he was so scared of what was going to happen that he wept, he sweat blood, and he pleaded with God to find another way. Then he stood up and embraced his death.
The strongest person ever was Jesus. He could have summoned twelve legions of angels to rescue him, but he lay back and let them drive railroad spikes through his wrists and ankles into two-by-fours. He let them torture him slowly to death.
That day Satan threw everything he had into Jesus. He was going to show this Nazarene upstart a thing or two! But when Jesus died, Satan looked down at him ammo box and it was empty. All his knives and spears were broken and blunted. His claws and teeth were broken off, permanently embedded in the dead body of Jesus. All he had left was his voice. All he can do, to this day, is scare you until you run, panicked, right into the gates of hell.
Do you remember when you were a teenager and they passed that liquor bottle to you, something inside you said to pass it on, but another voice in you said, "Say whut? I'll lose my friends?" That was the voice of Satan.
Every time you are "tempted" to do something good and your heart starts to pound, visions of what a price you could pay flash into your mind, that is Satan, that toothless lion, calling forth a "Say whut?" from you, hoping for an "I don't think so."
What are we afraid of? Why didn't God just liberate his people from Egypt? Why didn't he just empty the land of Canaan so his people didn't have to fight for it? Why did he make Jeremiah waste that money on useless land?
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world."
Several years ago a good friend of ours pastored a church near here, a church known as a clergy killer. She tried hard, she worked and prayed diligently, but finally she had had enough. But before she left, she told me she felt guilty. She said she had about 200 members, almost all of whom were good people, only two or three bad ones caused all the trouble. She hated to leave the overwhelming majority of good people for the couple of evil ones.
I told her she was misunderstanding her situation. "What you really have there is three evil people and 197 craven cowards who sit on their hands and let their evil neighbors crucify one pastor after another."
British Prime Minister Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Martin Luther King said, "In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."
Bishop Desmond Tutu said, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
Our cowardice doesn't just offend God and make us petty little sinners. Our cowardice allows Satan and the forces of evil unopposed control of this world.
When Winnie went on a missions trip to eastern Europe in her college days, the team leader told them of having led another youth team in missions in Africa. One day they accidentally wandered into an active war zone and were surrounded by angry men with guns. He was terrified, sure that he could be dead at any moment. But he was also reassured: he was doing God's work, God's will; and he realized at that moment he was the safest man on the planet; not that he might not die, but even if he did, he was going to be fine.
Run to the roar. It's the only safe then to do. When you are faced with an opportunity to do good and fear raises its ugly head, when you feel yourself saying, "Say whut?", remember that is a toothless lion trying to scare you away from real safety.
It's time for our offering. "Where there are two or three Methodists, there will be an offering." I want this to be a "Say whut?" moment for you. I want you to give more than you intended to give. I want you to exceed your budget a little. Make this a token of a new life for you, a life of courage, a life that says to God, "Okay, Lord, lead on," after you've said "Say whut?"
Will you stand for the Doxology?
Lord, thank you for this opportunity. In our giving now, give us to ignore fear, which is the roaring of our toothless enemy. Let us defy him, run toward his harmless roaring, into the safety of obedience to God. Amen.
[THE INVITATION--AFTER THE OFFERTORY]
I have chickened out on God, and it has caused harm to others and never done me any good. So have you. So has everyone in this room. Whatever your sin, I guarantee you your sin twin is here. At least one person in here is guilty of the same sin. We all have things in our lives we hope no one will ever found out. Right?
But we are here because we want to do better. We pray for each other here, we eat together, we laugh together, we learn together. We've got a bunch of Sunday School classes, each one full of struggling sinners meeting weekly to help each other grow more and sin less.
God's going to win, and all those in God will share his victory. The only safe thing to do is face your fear and run toward the roar of fear, the roar of toothless Satan. We will run better together. Come join us. Or come to this altar and get cleansed of your latest cowardice, get cleaned up and strengthened for a new start, as we sing this powerful and absolutely prophetic hymn, "We Shall Overcome."
