No Balm in Gilead. PPT Sunday 1 st December 2013 Rev. Chris Murphy. Jeremiah 8

Transcription

1 No Balm in Gilead PPT Sunday 1 st December 2013 Rev. Chris Murphy Jeremiah 8 Heavenly father we humble ourselves before you, may your word be our rule, your spirit our guide and your greater glory our greatest desire. We pray in Jesus name. Amen A couple of years ago I was with a friend down in Cornwall and we were driving from Camborne to Plymouth, at least that was the plan. He was driving, I was navigating and he didn t know the West Country very well so being from Plymouth I was supposed to be the knowledge as it were. Anyway if you know the road very well, you drive up from Camborne and you are supposed to take a right at Bodmin to join the A38 to get to Plymouth. We missed the turning and we headed straight on up the A30. It was about Jamaica Inn before we realised where we had gone wrong. So we turned round and came back. Now my friend who was driving began to question my intelligence which I wasn t that happy about. So my excuse was Oh well, I didn t see the sign I m sure you have used that one yourself from time to time. So he said to me Well have a look at that sign in the distance there was a sign about ½ mile away down the A30 and he said As soon as you can read what it says on the sign just say. So we travelled down the A30 and we got closer to the sign.. and we got closer and closer and he said As soon as you can read it just say. And we got closer and closer until we were about 10 metres away from the sign and through squinted eyes I said Bodmin 6 miles. And it was at that moment I realised that I needed to get some glasses. That was two years before I got married and so I spent two years wearing glasses that didn t suit me. I ve been told that I wear glasses that suit me now by my wife. Anyway this is all a roundabout way of saying you can t see stuff unless you have got the right lenses.now some of us have very good eye-sight and we don t need glasses. Our lenses in our eyes work very well. But some of us need glasses so that we get the correct lenses so that we can see. Now in the Old Testament Genesis Chapter 12, God says to Abraham he makes a promise to him and says I will bless those who bless you and all nations on earth will be blessed through you. Now Abraham was the father of the Jews but what God is saying to Abraham is that not only will the Jews be blessed but all nations in the world will be blessed through the Jews. And you see what happens is the Jewish people are to act like a lens through which the rest of the world can see God. So they were in a very privileged position the Jewish people. And God gave the Jewish people commandments and laws to obey. Now God in the Old Testament defines himself as a God of the orphan, God of the widow, God of the foreigner, God of the poor. You see God defines himself as the God of the most vulnerable people in society. That is who God is and so as he gives the Jewish people laws and commandments to obey, that scheme of ethics as it were is to provide a lens so that the Jewish people can reveal God to the world. Do you see that? As the Jewish people look after the poor and the orphan and the widow and the foreigner, they are able to reveal to the world the heart of God. It s amazing. The Jewish people by the way they live their lives provide a window, a lens through which the rest of the world can see

2 God. And what s amazing about this is God is beautiful and we find beauty attractive. So as this beautiful God is revealed to the world all nations will be attracted to him by this lens that the Jewish people are providing. And you see the Jewish people have a great responsibility to do a good job of providing this lens. Will they provide a clear and good lens or will they provide a distorted and perverted lens? You see how the Jewish people behave really determines whether people will see God or not. And the thing is that if the Jewish people don t behave the way God wants them to behave then the rest of the world won t be able to see God clearly. They won t be able to see who he is. How can people worship a God they cannot see? How can people worship a God they don t even know is there? So the Jewish people have a great responsibility to reveal God to the world. And if they don t they are guilty of robbery. Have a think about that. The Jewish people if the fail to provide this lens are guilty of robbing God and the reason for that is God is God of all the nations not just the Jews and God deserves glory. He deserves to be worshipped from all the nations. But if the Jewish people by the way they behave stop people from worshipping God, they are robbing God of the glory that belongs to him. Do you see that? Guilty of robbery. And the thing is what we see in Jeremiah 8 is that the people of God, the Israelites, the Jewish people are guilty of robbery. Jeremiah 8 shows us that they do not give or they do not reveal God to the world. And therefore they are guilty of robbery. Have a look at verse 4. These people are supposed to be an example to the nation. Verse 4 When men fall down, do they not get up. I suppose some of you have had children or grandchildren and you ve seen a toddler learning to walk, you ve probably seen a toddler topple over from time to time as they are learning to walk. Now does the toddler stay on the floor? No, I suppose sometimes they do but they will if the learn to walk they will get up. People learn from their mistakes but not the Jewish people. You see what God is saying is you don t need to be Jewish in order to learn from your mistakes. It s common sense, if you fall down you get up. If you turn away, you turn back. Except that the Jewish people don t do this, they don t seem to have any common sense. No one repents of his wickedness saying What have I done? ( verse 6 ) each pursues his own course like a horse charging into battle. And here we have these Jewish people who are supposed to be at the forefront of God s salvation plan, showing an example, leading the way. And rather than doing that, they are doing well they are doing the opposite, they are charging down this course to destruction and no one can get them off the course that they are charging down. Verse 7 Jeremiah says even animals seem to have more common sense than the Jews, even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove the swift and the thrush observe the time of migration. Look at the animals even the animals have common sense but the Jews don t. The Jews do not know the requirements of the Lord. And then we see verse 8 that they have been studying God s laws all their life. They say We are wise for we have the law of the Lord. But actually they are handling God s law falsely. You see they are supposed to be an example but they are not being an example at all. These people are supposed to reveal God s truth. But they don t.

3 These people are supposed to reveal God s wisdom but they don t. They are supposed to be at the forefront of generosity if they show God s generous heart to the world but verse 10 says They are greedy for gain. These people are worse than if they had no law at all. These people would have more common sense if they were animals and these people are stopping the nations from coming to God. They are distorting the true image of God and they are robbing God of the worship he deserves to receive. Now what is the consequence of this? Verse 13. I will take away their harvest declares the Lord. There will be no grapes on the vine, there will be no figs on the tree and their leaves will wither. Now at one level we know exactly what Jeremiah is talking about here because the harvest represents material blessing I suppose. And what Jeremiah is saying is that he is going to take away their material blessing. I am going to take away the things they need and the things that they enjoy. But actually the metaphor works on a much deeper level. And this is where we turn to Mark chapter 11. Jeremiah is not just talking about material blessing. In Mark chapter 11 we have a confusing struggle. We have two stories which are inter-woven and they both seem a bit confusing at first. We have Jesus and the Temple and we have Jesus and a fig tree. Now Jesus curses a fig tree. Does that not strike you as odd? That he should curse a fig tree what is all that about? It s not like a fig tree could do anyone any harm. I mean, why does he do that? But the interesting thing is that Jesus goes to the Temple that s in verse 11 and then he goes to the fig tree. And then curses the fig tree. And then he curses the temple. And then the fig tree withers and dies. And then the temple well we don t know what happens to the Temple we are not told but we do know that in AD 70 that the Romans came to Jerusalem and they destroyed the temple and so you see what happens. What happened to the fig tree happened to the temple. And Mark has done this deliberately, he has interwoven these two stories to make us compare and contrast the fig and the temple. The reason Jesus curses the fig tree is because it bears no fruit. He could be forgiven for thinking that it had fruit because as Jesus looks at the tree from a distance he sees all the leaves. Now on a fig tree the fruit comes first and then the leaves follow so if you see leaves on a fig tree you would think that there would be fruit. So Jesus goes up to the fig tree and discovers that despite all this leafiness there is no fruitfulness. You see the leafiness of the tree disguises the fact that it has no fruit. Now think of the temple. The temple looks very big and grand and very religious. There are religious people there doing religious things dressed in religious clothes. And it all looks very impressive, they are doing sacrifices in the name of God and there are these people wearing their flowing robes. And it all looks very - leafy. But where is the fruit? And so Jesus curses the Temple because, despite all its leafiness there is no fruit. Now turn back to Jeremiah 8. Jeremiah 8 verse 13 I will take away their harvest declares the Lord, there will be no grapes on the vine, there will be no figs on the tree and their leaves will wither. What I have given them will be taken from them. And Jeremiah s point is I think is the same as Mark s point that the Temple will be destroyed. Which is no surprise because we say last week Jeremiah 7 that people were saying and they were trusting in deceptive words This is the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord and they think that because they have the Temple of the Lord that somehow God s blessing is upon

4 them. And Jeremiah is saying that you have this temple, you have this religious system, you have all this stuff and it looks so impressive but God is not impressed because there is no fruit and because there is no fruit he is going to take away what you have. Now you can probably see where I am going with this because the New Testament church in many ways replaces the Old Testament people of God. The New Testament church is like the Old Testament Jews and so we as a church are this lens through which people look to see God. You see the thing is whether we like it or not we are a lens. It s not like we can chose not to be. We are - where people look if they want to see God? Well they look to the church and the question is are we providing a clear lens through which people can see the true God and all his beauty or are we providing a distorted and perverted lens which makes God look ugly. And here s the real shock - that we can make God look ugly through religion. That s what the Old Testament Jews were doing. They had their religion and their religious system and it made God look ugly. And are we the kind of church that s making God look ugly? You see you can look at the church and people despise the church really. You see the church is just like the world. The world people expect the church to be different from the world but the reason they despise the church is because the church acts just like the world. And in the world all the sort of important people are revered and in the church all the important people are revered. And we are not supposed to be like that and the thing is that God doesn t care about Bishops and Archdeacons and he doesn t care about the structures of Anglicanism and he doesn t care about deaneries and dioceses. He doesn t care about flowing robes and rituals. He just doesn t care about those things. All those things are just stuff, they are just external stuff. What God cares about is our hearts. God doesn t care about all the leafiness, if we are to put it in that language, God cares about the fruit. And where is the fruit? Are we a fruitful church? That s the question. Now I don t know if you saw this in Jeremiah but - have a look down at verse 11. Jeremiah chapter 8 verse 11. They dressed the wound of my people as though it were not serious. Peace, peace they said when there is no peace. Have a look down a verse 15. We hoped for peace but no good has come for a time of healing but there was only terror. Have a look at verse 22. Is there no balm in Gilead, is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people. This theme of wounding and healing keeps coming up again and again in Jeremiah and so people of Israel are thinking we are wounded, we are wounded we are looking for healing and they look to religion to heal their wounds. And there is no healing in religion. There is no healing in religion and so the question is where is there healing, where can we find healing? And I suppose that is where we have privileged knowledge in a way that people of the Old Testament didn t. They were searching for healing. But we know because Isaiah tells us. By his wounds we have been healed. He s obviously talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. And so as Jesus dies on the cross, he heals our wounds. And we look to religion to heal our wounds and it cannot heal us. The only thing that can heal you is Jesus Christ. And so what lens are we providing to people for them to see God? Are we providing a lens of religion or are we providing the lens of Jesus Christ? Well it s worth thinking about. Are we the church, are we the kind of church that cares more about maintaining the status quo, about maintaining church structures, about maintaining the style of

5 leafy religion or are we the kind of church that cares more about providing a crystal clear lens so that the people outside the church can look in and see the beauty and glory and majesty of God. Let s pray. Heavenly father we thank you that as New Testament Christians we have the privilege of revealing you to the world. Please forgive us father when we have not done that in the way we should have done. Forgives us the times when we have trusted in empty religion. When we have trusted in formulas and structures and the wisdom of man. Please forgive us for that father and help us to hold out Jesus Christ. Please Father help us to show Christ to the world that they would come to know you through him. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.