10/31/2022
SCRIPTURE READING
Jeremiah 13:15-17
Then I said, Listen. Listen carefully: Don’t stay stuck in your ways!
It’s God’s Message we’re dealing with here.
Let your lives glow bright before God
before he turns out the lights,
Before you trip and fall
on the dark mountain paths.
The light you always took for granted will go out
and the world will turn black.
If you people won’t listen,
I’ll go off by myself and weep over you,
Weep because of your stubborn arrogance,
bitter, bitter tears,
Rivers of tears from my eyes,
because God’s sheep will end up in exile.
SERMON
Keep Your Lights On!
I’ve talked about old Jeremiah before. You know—the one who did a lot of wailing and weeping over the condition of the Jewish people in Judah who were living lives generally at odds with God. And I mean it when I say “at odds.” They weren’t just ignoring God, that he just didn’t matter to them, but doing things that they knew were totally out of bounds. One of their biggest depravities was their worshipping other gods, and still giving lip service to the one and only God. Covering both for extra insurance…
And that meant that they weren’t just worshipping, or paying homage to, these false gods, but were following the practices of such worship, including child sacrifice, temple prostitution, and other abominable activities. How much time and attention they gave to the one and only God is not clear, at least not to me. My impression is that they more-or-less adhered to the Mosaic Law, like observing the Sabbath by not working, cooking, etc., but not with any real heart in it, as Jeremiah saw it. Just going through the motions of centuries-old practices…
Yeah, Jeremiah was a complainer. But he had a lot to complain about. He was watch-ing his nation of Judah go to rack and ruin spiritually. He took a lot of flak for it, too. There were apparently many prophets, many—maybe most—of whom were telling the people all the good things that were coming their way. Jeremiah dwelt on the not-so-good news, that disaster would befall his nation if people didn’t get right with God. He got roughed up a few times, and was pretty much ostracized for his laments.
The version chosen for today’s Scripture reading is from The Message. As you know, it is considered to be a paraphrase of the originals, and not a precise, or even necessarily close, rendering. I have shared many times that I nevertheless find it informative and (can I say this?) entertaining. It was written in contemporary terms, initially in 1993, but with re-newed copyrights in 2002 and 2018. There are some passages that he seems to have strayed a little too far from the Hebrew and Greek texts, when you compare it to other ver-sions.
For instance, in Matthew 7:3 we read in most versions about Jesus admonishing to not try to remove the speck in another person’s eye while having a log or plank in our own. Right off I will say that that has always been for me a metaphor a bit difficult to internalize. How can you even conceive of having such a large item stuck in your eye? Scholars tell us that that was his very point—using hyperbole and exaggeration to drive home his lesson.
Well, the good Dr. Peterson, the writer of The Message, put it this way:
“It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt?”
I have to tell you that that telling is pretty easy to get the point of. Notice that he talks about the sneer on your face and being distorted by contempt. In fact, if he were to follow the general pattern of most translations, he might have referred to one’s own face as being so much dirtier than just a smudge on your neighbor’s face. In many ways he changed the context significantly, but, for me at least, got the point across a lot more directly. Whenever I read that passage in most Bible versions, my thoughts tend to dwell on the bizarre notion of a log somehow being in one’s eye. Maybe Jesus meant something more like a small stick. Maybe a toothpick? Now that conjures up a painful situation, doesn’t it?
But, having your face “dirtied” by a sneer and pure contempt while you go about straightening up the other guy’s attitude—that talks to me.
So now, after that little digression, I want to show the same sort of contortion Peter-son used on Jeremiah 13:15:
He says, “Then I said, Listen. Listen carefully: Don’t stay stuck in your ways! It’s God’s Message we’re dealing with here. Let your lives glow bright before God before he turns out the lights,…”
The NIV says, “Hear and pay attention, do not be arrogant, for the Lord has spoken.”
The NASB puts it, “Listen and pay attention, do not be haughty; For the Lord has spoken.”
“Do not be arrogant”…“do not be haughty”…nothing wrong with those depictions, but for me “Don’t stay stuck in your ways! Let your lights glow bright” really drives the point home. I just like that “lights” analogy better than less colorful words like “arrogant” and “haughty”. Perhaps the reason it has more meaning to me is because I would like to think I’m not arrogant or haughty. But I know only too well that I can get stuck in my ways sometimes, and my lights dim a whole bunch. Jeremiah is telling—correction, God is telling us—that if our lights go out, his will too.
And we know only too well that Jeremiah’s prophecy came true in his lifetime. The Babylonians swept in and did a whole lotta damage. I have read that those Babylonians were despicable in their conquests. Random r**e, widespread baby and child killing, total destruction of the Temple, a complete pilfering of all the valuables, putting rings in people’s noses, then chaining long lines of them together as they marched them off to a lifetime of slavery… I can’t help but think that it was not easy for Jeremiah to not say, “I told you so.”
But I have to remind myself that it wasn’t Jeremiah predicting all this horrible out-come; it was God himself. Jeremiah was the messenger, and a reluctant one at that. Early in his adult life he clearly heard the call from God to be a prophet and warn the people of his country of God’s coming wrath if they didn’t change their ways. He really didn’t want to, and his family tried to convince him to get into some other vocation, but God’s call was too strong. And, at times during his lifetime, he cried out to God that he was being so per-secuted and punished for his “wild” claims, he wondered why God wasn’t protecting him.
We learn, back in Jeremiah 11, that he shared with God, and us, that plots were be-ing devised against him, and that his life was literally in danger.
He was telling people things they did not want to hear!
Life was good. People were prospering. The prophets of the false gods were assuring them that they were entitled to the good things. No harm was going to come to them. They could pay their respects to the one true God, but what’s the harm in throwing in a few more? There were some great advantages in worshipping these gods because they, for the most part, allowed a very debauched and capricious lifestyle—a lifestyle not at all in keeping with God’s standards. Life was (they thought) a lot more fun!
Drinking, partying, sleeping around, or**es, extravagance, wantonness…life was one hug bacchanal. At least that seemed the norm for the privileged folks—those with the means to live with such abandonment. The bulk of the population was peopled with the poor. I’m surmising that the split between the rich and poor was even more pronounced than in modern times. The middle class as we know it may have been a minority at that time, with most of the populace living a so-called hand-to-mouth existence.
Even so, I’m also guessing that they most likely mirrored the vales and mores of the fortunate folks. There may not have been all that partying and gallivanting going on simply because they didn’t have the means, but given Jeremiah’s laments and cries over the whole nation of Judah, they were probably hooking up with all those pagan gods and more or less putting the God of Abraham in the background.
Regrettable, isn’t it?
I’m sure glad that mankind finally got our act together.
I jest, don’t I?
As stated above, Jeremiah’s prophecies were fulfilled while he was living. As we know, many prophecies in the OT didn’t come to fruition for years, sometimes centuries. For in-stance, Isaiah spoke of Cyrus, a Persian king who didn’t appear on the scene for some 100 years later. In Isaiah 44:24 & 28 is this passage:
I am the Lord, the Maker of all things…who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please; he will say of Jerusalem, “Let it be rebuilt,” and of the temple, “Let its foundations be laid.”’
Some Bible scholars opine that these references to a Cyrus of the future were written by later scribes and added to the book of Isaiah. Well, let them think that. There are many prophecies in the OT that predicted future events, and I see no reason to question the verac-ity of their statements. They were, as I said above, mere messengers of God’s revelations to them.
The interesting thing about Jeremiah’s prophecies of doom is that the Babylonians were advancing on Judah as he spoke. They had left a wide swath of destruction and death already. In fact, the king of Judah, Jehoiakim, had gone shopping for help from Egypt but with little success. He knew as well as anyone that disaster appeared to be in the offing, but rather than repent and turn to God, he went right on living the high life and setting an ex-ample for his subjects to fear not.
And he really resented Jeremiah going on and on about God’s coming retribution. Today’s Scripture reading is just one example of his repeated entreaties to turn back to God before it was too late. But what I see in this passage is that he is telling the people that God was ready to turn his back on them, let the chips fall where they may. That he was done.
And that’s just what he did. As quoted above, Jeremiah says, “The light you always took for granted will go out and the world will turn black.” By Jeremiah’s lights, God allowed the abominable Babylonians move on in to his country and reduce it to ruins. He allowed the conquerors to kill thousands and march the rest back to Babylon. He watched as Jeru-salem was reduced to ruins…
The NIV Quest Study Bible asks this question:
Why did Jeremiah ask God to judge the nations that god used to punish Judah? (10:25)
And answered thus,
Because sin is still sin. It is true that Babylon’s destruction of Judah was put to a holy use by God. Nevertheless, r**e, murder and pillage were sins for which Babylon would eventually be judged. Though the Babylonians unwit-tingly fulfilled God’s purposes, they still had to answer for their excessive methods and ungodly motives. They slaughtered God’s people and razed Jeru-salem for their own interests, not God’s.
In other words, it seems so inconceivable that God would use a totally pagan and ex-ceedingly deplorable nation to destroy his chosen people? As alluded to above, he didn’t use them, but allowed the coming events to happen. He wasn’t there to protect them as he sure-ly would have if they had remained true to him.
Of course, as it says in the quoted reference, the Babylonians ultimately paid the price for their overwhelming transgressions. They were defeated by the Persians a century or so later while the aforementioned Cyrus was on the throne, and he was the one, you will recall, who allowed the Israelites to return to their homeland, and he even gave them re-sources to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple.
So, you ask, how is this relevant to me today? My simple answer would be that I see far too many parallels in modern America to ancient Judah. Jeremiah’s repeated harbingers of great calamity befalling his country almost seems as if he could be telling us that very thing today. Let me review what I see as some similarities.
1. A Gallup poll taken in May of this year says that 81% of Americans still believe in “a” God. That may seem impressive, but it’s startling when you see the trend. From 1944-2011 a consistent 98% said they believe in God. In 2011 92%; 2013-2017, 87%; and this year, 81%. While it’s still the vast majority, the trend is precipitous-ly falling. God isn’t relevant. God isn’t real. God isn’t there. God isn’t…
2. Perhaps what is even more astounding is that only 68% of 18–29-year-olds believe there is a God. That demographic represents our nation’s future leaders, the peo-ple who will in the not-too-distant future, hold the reins of power, be running the mega-businesses, and consequently, be the shapers of national mores and ethics, including the Christian perspective and influence.
3. Maybe blame it on the pandemic, but church stats and data suggest in-person attendance is only 36-60% of what it was pre-COVID. Americans’ member-ship in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup’s eight-decade trend,” Gallup reported in a March 2021 post. “US church membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937 and remained near 70% for the next six decades, before beginning a steady decline around the turn of the 21st century. Over the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000 to 13% in 2008-2010 and 21% over the past three years.
4. Crime statistics reflect a growing trend of intentional homicides. Full compilation of these numbers lags, the most recent being 2020. In that year, the number of such crimes per 100,000 people went from 5.07 in 2019 to 6.52, a whopping 28.64% jump!6
5. Experts tend to blame such societal factors as poor educational opportunities, in-sufficient funding of law enforcement, in some cases draconian laws on drug pos-session, widening poverty, the rapid upsurge in drug abuse, increasingly dysfunc-tional families and, simply stated, a decrease in the imbuing of cultural moral standards in our so-called “nice” families.
6. The widening wealth gap seems to be another factor. The top 10% of high-net-worth U.S. families, own 76% of the wealth, according to analysis done by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The bottom 50% own just 1% of the wealth in the U.S. and have a median net worth less than $122,000. The bottom 50% in-cludes 64.3 million families, with 13.4 million of these families having a negative net worth. Is there any doubt that the wealthiest, simply by their economic power, have great influence over day-to-day matters of everyone’s life, including moral and ethical values? This is not to imply that the wealthy are necessarily a bad influ-ence, but we know that ego, greed and self-serving are quite often the drivers of people of great riches.
7. We hear a lot about the “me generation” and instant gratification these days. Whether or not you agree, psychologists, sociologists and other experts see the rise in use of the social media outlets as contributing to that. Just see what so many of your Facebook friends are posting. (It’s always refreshing when someone posts a Bible verse, uplifting poem, inspirational quote or some other enriching item.) We have found seemingly infinite ways to tout our small achievements, family doings, vacation photos and other “brag-points” that in days past would be shared only with intimate friends, if at all even then. Our “me-ness” has gone public.
8. Many experts say our democracy is at more peril today than at any time since the Civil War. Some will say it is even more at risk because they view it like a growing cancer from within. The Civil War was a block of rebellious, breakaway states in-tending to create a new country. In our time now—real time—we are witnessing—and some folks actively engaging in—growing dissension, disparity and division in our political viewpoints and values. The notion of people of differing political per-suasions at one time agreeing to disagree now seems to have increasingly trended toward animosity and outright hate. That’s not healthy for a democratic system to survive.
Yeah, I can’t help but think that if our friend Jeremiah were here with us today, he would be crying out the same laments as he did in his two lengthy tomes in the Old Testa-ment. The one thing they didn’t have that we do, is the presence of Jesus Christ in our lives. But even then, as statistics bear out, most people believe in God, and most people pro-fessing to be of the Christian faith believe that Jesus was (and is?) real, they just don’t let that interfere with their everyday lives. The church and its message hold little interest.
It's regrettable that so many people ignore Jesus’ imploration as recorded in John 15:5-6:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not re-main in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.”
And, as Paul shares in 1 Corinthians 8:6:
“…yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”
Not only do we as devoted Christians believe in God and in Jesus; we believe them. We don’t just believe in them but we know, in our heart of hearts we know, that they are real, that they are alive, and that by believing them, not just knowing about them but be-lieving them, we have the hope of eternal salvation.
But it doesn’t stop there. Believing God and personally knowing him isn’t enough. We are expected to get that Good News out to everyone. My concern is that Christians as a whole aren’t doing a very good job of that. The people out there who step into a church only for a wedding or funeral need us to tell them how our lives have been incalculably en-hanced by our intimate relationship with Christ. James 5:19-20 sums it up way better than I can:
“My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: Whoever turns a sin-ner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a mul-titude of sins.”
Father God, we know that there are so many people in this world, some right in our midst, who do not know you in a real and personal way. Help us, we pray, to be your messenger of peace, joy, love and faith as we interact with our friends and neighbors, and as we seek ways to use our resources to get the Word to all the world. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
