The text for today’s message comes to us from the prophet Jeremiah, the 11th chapter:
The Lord made it known to me and I knew; then you showed me their deeds. But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter. I did not know it was against me they devised schemes, saying, “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more.” But, O Lord of hosts, who judges righteously, who tests the heart and the mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you have I committed my cause.Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
These words from our reading today of Jeremiah are AWESOME!!!! Did you read them? Did you pay attention? At our first glance, our FIRST glance, it’s SO easy to see Christ here. I love it! I was a gentle lamb led to the slaughter. They devised evil schemes. Let’s destroy His life, kill him, crucify Him, that no one will remember Him. But God will have His vengeance on them, He will judge them righteously.
I love when the Old Testament is so clear, so easy, so prophetic. You gotta remember: the God who wrote the Old Testament knew everything that was going to happen to Himself. The God who met face to face with Moses, the God who preserved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, the God who promised a child to Abraham and Sarah, the God who walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, that very God is the God who died for us on the cross of Calvary. It’s easy for Him to prophesy through His prophets what will happen to Jesus. It’s His plan; it’s His will, His desire.
So, for us to look at the Old Testament and see these words that so clearly predict even the very words that the Pharisees and Sadducees will whisper to themselves in the secret, dark time of the night, it’s AWESOME!! God is so cool, isn’t He? I love seeing God, I love seeing Jesus in the Old Testament. It’s like God knew what He was doing when He wrote the Old Testament… oh wait… He did.
And this is all great. And we’ll come back to it. But, first, I want to open this up a little bit. Is that okay? You see, if we only see Jesus in this specific passage of Jeremiah, if we only spend our time with Jesus in this passage, written 600 years before Jesus was born, then we miss completely what’s going on in Jeremiah’s time. We miss completely what the prophet himself was facing. We miss what these words meant to Jeremiah at the time he wrote them. Let me go back up into Jeremiah. Let’s get a little context, okay?
Jeremiah writes at the beginning of chapter 11:
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Hear the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel...And Jeremiah goes on. Go back and read it. So, what’s going on? God is going to prophesy through Jeremiah, and Jeremiah then is supposed to speak to the men of Judah, those who are living in Jerusalem, basically all of God’s chosen people. God tells Jeremiah to remind the people there that because of their sin, they deserve death. They deserve to be cursed by God and sent into the everlasting fires of hell itself. But, God has mercy. God still speaks to His people. God reminds them that, because of His own righteousness, He has saved and rescued and redeemed His people. His people. God’s people. God will be their God, and His people will be His people; and because of this relationship, God continues to bless His people with the promised land. And Jeremiah says, okay.
Then God prophesies to Jeremiah a little more:
And the Lord said to me, ..."Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but everyone walked in the stubbornness of his evil heart. Therefore I brought upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did not.”God’s letting Jeremiah know that He remembers that Israel has disobeyed God, time and time again. God told Israel to listen, but they wouldn’t and they didn’t. Actually, it gets worse.
Again the Lord said to me, “A conspiracy exists among the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They have turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, who refused to hear my words. They have gone after other gods to serve them. ...For your gods have become as many as your cities, O Judah, and as many as the streets of Jerusalem are the altars you have set up to shame, altars to make offerings to Baal."Okay. Yikes. Did you hear this? A conspiracy? Judah and Jerusalem, God’s chosen nation and God’s holy city, both are moving to do unrighteous things. They start conniving amongst themselves to actually kill Jeremiah! They are going to cut off God’s Word from themselves. And once they’ve decided that, the rest is easy! They start sinning the ways that their fathers did. They went after false gods. They went after loose women. They starting stealing and robbing and murdering. They started doing all the “fun” sins. They did everything God had commanded them not to do. To make it worse, they know that they’re sinning, but they don’t really care. “God will accept my prayers,” they say, “God will accept my worship.”
They go to the temple and they participate in the sacrifices that the Lord set up for them to atone for their sins. But even while that is happening, they turn their backs and run to the false gods, the gods that they think will give them what they want, they run to the evil Baal, and offer up THE VERY SAME SACRIFICES they are supposed to offer up to God!! They offer up the incense, they slaughter the bulls, they eat the meat offered up to the mute, dumb, stupid god. And they think the Lord of Hosts, Yahweh Sabbaoth, won’t notice. They’re idiots! They’re sinners.
And God tells this to Jeremiah. God won’t listen to these sinners. They can cry, they can scream, they can gnash their teeth, they can cut their skin open, trying to do something, anything to get the true God’s attention, and all that they will get is God’s prophesied destruction. All they will get is dead.
You almost could put that old song, so famously and well-sung by Johnny Cash in here.
Well, you may throw your rock and hide your handNow, things should seem pretty dark, shouldn’t they? But it gets worse:
Workin' in the dark against your fellow man
But as sure as God made black and white
What's down in the dark will be brought to the light You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time, run on for a long time
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
“Therefore do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer on their behalf, for I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their trouble. ...The Lord of hosts, who planted you, has decreed disaster against you, because of the evil that the house of Israel and the house of Judah have done, provoking me to anger by making offerings to Baal.”We go from this beautiful picture of Christ, but when you add in the context of the chapter up to the reading for today, ugh, we get this nasty, dreary, depressing, picture of US.
“Wait, did he say ‘us’?” I did, didn’t I? Yes, this is written about a people 2600 years ago now, a people who turned their back on God, a people who don’t care what God’s done for them, and a people who retreat into their own sins, offering up the very worship demanded by God to false gods, our false gods. Money, sex, pornography, hatred, lying, slander, gossip, party politics… these are our gods, O people! We worship them gladly, don’t we?
Oh, if only I could have another thousand dollars this month, everything would be fine. I could get the new iPhone 5! I could make the payment on my house. Oh, if only I had her for my wife, oh, if only my husband looked better, I would be happy. Oh, if only we could get a Republican in office, a Democrat in office, a Libertarian in office, things in this country would finally be right!
We worship our own gods, my friends. We all do. We are a stubborn and stiff-necked people, who, even after hearing the love of Jesus Christ, go back to living sin-filled lives! We offer ourselves up on the very floor to our gods, thinking “if only I had this… then all would be perfect, I’d be happy, we’d have what we need.” And we forget that in the very sacrificial life, death, and resurrection of Christ, we have ALL we need! Even should we be starving today, even should our health betray us, even should we lose all we own, even our own lives, you know that you will be preserved into everlasting life with Jesus Christ and have your rest, your needs met, and will be with your Lord face-to-face. What more could there be to need?
And yet, though this is our most grievous sin, and though God once prophesied destruction and exile on His people, this text was completed, it was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. For now we return to the prophesy of our Lord: I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter. They devised against me, saying, let’s kill Him!
And Jesus, oh Jesus, most precious Jesus, you knew that this would be the case! You knew that this would happen! And even then, you still deigned to come and be with your people! You deigned to come, to take on human flesh, so that we could kill you, Jesus! Oh Lord, have mercy on us, a wicked and wretched people! Forgive us our sins! Forgive us for not trusting you! Forgive us for seeking after our false gods.
And, my friends, He does. He does. Jesus forgives you all of your sins. How do you know this? Because… what do we have at the front of this church? What stands above all other things? What is it that is brought to the forefront our our minds, what is before our eyes each and every time we walk into this holy sanctuary of rest? The cross. The cross. We lift high the cross, certainly, but maybe we should put it right in the doorway of the sanctuary. Maybe we should make it so that there is no way that you could avoid it here. For our Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross, this hideous ornament of torture and death, for you. We don’t just put crosses up because they’re pretty. We put the cross up to remind us that God loves His people so much, that God loves you, that though we sin and sin much and often, God sent His Son to die for you. If it had been an electric chair, if it had been an iron maiden, if it had been a noose that had killed our precious Lord and Savior, we would have those hanging up in front of this church.
The cross is there to remind us that though we sin in the presence of a jealous and righteous God, He loved you enough to send His Son, Jesus Christ, into our flesh, so that He might live among us for a time, fulfilling the Law of God, fulfilling all the prophecies uttered in His name, and die for us on that cross of Calvary. But it does not end there, for the cross, death itself, could not hold Him and in conquering light, Jesus burst forth from His grave on Easter Sunday, resurrected from the dead, with the promise that we, too, will be saved, that we too will be resurrected, that we too will live in the promise of Jesus.
Jesus knew what He was talking about when He prophesied through Jeremiah. Jesus knew what He was talking about when He sent His Holy Spirit to inspire all of Scripture. Jesus knew what He was talking about when He promised that the one who is baptized and believes in Him would be saved into everlasting life. Though we are sinners, we are sinners redeemed, bought back from sin, death, and the devil, and we need not fear God’s destruction, His exile, His wrath any longer, but we plead mercy in the very blood of Jesus Christ, the very Jesus we are baptized into, the very Jesus we eat and drink from this altar.
Jesus has come, my friends, into this world to redeem you. He has saved you from all of your sins, even the ones that grieve you most. Jesus has come to this sinful world, and He has saved you on the cross, taking the punishment that was meant for you, taking the destruction that was meant for you, taking the exile from His Father that was meant for you, and fulfilled all things, all righteousness, for you. He did all this, my friends, because God loves you and because He could do nothing less. He has saved you, now and ever, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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