A sermon based on Jeremiah 8: 18-9:1
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 24th, 2018
(4-12) Sermon Series: Jeremiah: Prophet to the Nations
At the end of last year, a Thai soccer player attempted to win a tie-game with a final kick. The ball struck the top of the goal post and went straight up into the air. The goalie on the opposing team began to celebrate by running out onto the field. His celebration was premature, however. While he left the goal unattended, the ball came down bouncing with a back spin until it bounced right in to the goal. This meant the opposing team broke the tie and won the game. The moral of the story: It’s not over, until it’s over.
In a similar situation at McGill University in Canada, the engineering and medical faculties had an intramural basketball game. The score was 33 to 34. With about a minute left, the engineers stole the ball, and then froze it with excellent passing and ball handling until the clock ran out. It was kind of like a 4 corners strategy invented by the late Dean Smith. Unfortunately this did not work, because when the final whistle blew, they then realized that they were the ones behind. They were so wrapped up in freezing the ball, and keeping things like they were, they had lost track of the score.
I’m afraid that we in the church can do the same thing. We can go into a 4 corners kind of strategy, trying to keep our buildings, our budgets, our programs, and even our baptisms like they are or were. But by freezing the ‘ball’, when we ought to be in a full court press, life goes on, but leaves us behind. We mistakenly think we can keep things like they were, but we can’t. As Jeremiah told his people in today’s text, “The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved?” The spiritual point here is that you can’t freeze the way things are: Times change. Season’s change. The world continues to be on the move. As the Insurance commercial says, “Life keeps coming at you, and fast.”
IS THE LORD NOT IN ZION? (19)
Jeremiah’s sobering point to his people is that you can’t take the salvation you have established in the past and make it your salvation for the future. Faith doesn’t work that way. It’s much like it is with food, or anything else in life. If you eat a good meal today, you can live on it a little while, but it will not keep you alive for long, unless you keep eating. It’s the same for exercise, and for most everything else we do to keep ourselves alive. We can’t do something one day, and keep it. We either ‘use it’ or we ‘loose it’.
Of course, we don’t like to talk about our ‘salvation’ this way, but in the New Testament Jesus does. When Jesus was warning his disciples about the ‘things to come’, he warned that only those who ‘endure to the end will be saved’ (Matt 10:22, 24:13, Mark 13:13). These kinds of texts are enough to shake us out of our spiritual comfort zones, aren’t they? Even the Apostle Paul echoed that salvation is not ‘worked out’ in a moment or instant, but salvation most continue to be ‘worked out’ in our lives with ‘fear and trembling’ (Phil. 2:12). What Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul are all saying is that we can’t simply carry the relationship we had with God in the past into the future, without living it out day by day.
This is exactly what did not happen in Jerusalem, in Jeremiah’s day. This is why our text today begins with questions, rather than answers: “Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” The point Jeremiah was making is that things have change? The LORD is not with at Zion with his people, because God’s people are not with God. Things have changed. It isn’t God that changed, but the people have. They had exchanged the truth of God for all other kinds of ‘images’ and ‘idols’ (19b). The spiritual situation in Jerusalem was much like the relationship between a wife and husband driving down the road in their old ‘bench seat’ car. The woman used slide over and sit close to him while he put his arm around her. The wife complained: “You don’t put your arm around me like you used to.“ The man, who was driving, looked at his wife who was now sitting next to the window. He answered. “Yes, honey you’re right. Who moved?” This is exactly how the spiritual situation was in Jerusalem. It wasn’t that God had taken his salvation away from them, but that God’s people had moved away from their God and their salvation.
If you want to think about how much our society has moved in its values and ways of thinking, let me ask you a question to think about. The answer might astound you. This question is: Who is the best known person in the world today? If you said some preacher like Billy Graham, you would be wrong. If you said a great politician, or even a sports figure, you would be wrong. If you said the Pope, you would also be wrong. Even if you said some celebrity or entertainer, like Lady GaGa, you would be wrong. And if you said Jesus of Nazareth, you would be wrong too. The answer to who is the best known person in the world is Mickey Mouse! Think about it. Here is a cartoon figure of a person who does not, and has never really existed, but he is better known that the Christ who died for the sins of this world. That’s the kind of world we live in.
Now we can understand that the world might know more about Mickey Mouse better than the true Son of God, or more about Disney World, that it does about the Church, but what how much does the church know these days? We can say that the church still knows who Jesus was, but how much do we know about who Jesus still is? In other words, how much do we know about how to ‘be’ and ‘become’ a disciple living for Jesus in today’s world? Can’t we, like Jerusalem did in Jeremiah’s day, also get lost in our ‘images’ and ‘idols’ too? Can’t we come to church questioning whether or not ‘the LORD is in Zion’ or at work in us? And if God is ‘at work’ in us, how do we know, what does it mean, what should it mean, that is not just another ‘idol’ or self-prescribed ‘image’ of the kind of ‘faith we want, instead of the kind of ‘faith’ that we really need? What does it mean for us to say that the “LORD “ is “IN ZION?”
THE HARVEST IS PAST (20)
Someone has said that they have no fear whether or not the church will succeed, but that it will succeed in those things that do not matter. No matter how many barns are built, how much cattle is bought, how much seed is sown, or how much land is cultivated, the farmer is a still a failure if he does not bring in the harvest.
The failure of the ‘harvest’ is the tragic event that Jeremiah alludes to in this text. Here we have one of the most haunting statements in the Bible. Jeremiah explained to his people that in this moment there is nothing more they can do. It’s too late for them. The season for harvest has come and gone: "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved" (Jere. 8:20). This is so negative. It’s so depressing. How could a preacher or a prophet say something like this? The answer is that he wouldn’t, unless it was true.
This was the political and religious situation of God’s people in Judah and Jerusalem at the beginning of the 6th century, right before their nation was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. Jeremiah had been warning of doom and disaster because of their rebellion against God. In this very chapter God declared that their ‘fields would be given to conquerors’ (v.10), and that the people would ‘perish’ even in their ‘fortified cities’ (v14) and that they would ‘look for peace’ but ‘find no good’ and ‘terror’ instead (v.15). The sounds of war horses were already being heard in the north, and soon they would ‘devour’both the ‘land’, the ‘cities’ and the people who ‘live in’ them (v.16). It was not a pretty picture. The political situation was already at the point of no return. The people were still saying, ‘peace, peace,’ when there was in reality, ‘no peace’ at all (v11).
Jeremiah had preached that only God could deliver Judah them from the armies of Babylon that were marching toward the city (7:23). But they did not listen. Instead they formed an alliance with Egypt to fight the Babylonians (2:18, 42:14ff.). But Babylon defeated Egypt and then turned and marched on Jerusalem (46:25-26). They surrounded the city and laid siege to the people. Back in those days people lived within the walls of the city, and the crops were outside the walls. The Babylonian army simply waited for the people to run out of food. All the people could do was watch the crops spoil, the harvest wither, the summer end, and then say, "We are not saved." They learned the bitter lesson that there is no loss, like the loss of the harvest. Eventually, because they left God, they ended up losing it all.
How does a tragic story like this speak to us, still today? Of course, we don’t want it too. None of us want to hear, look, think, or reflect upon what is happening right before our own eyes. We want to ‘freeze’ our churches or try to make them ‘the way we were’ or even try to make them what we would like for them to be, even though it really does look as if the ‘harvest is past’. This is not something we would ever want to believe. This is something we would like to think we can still turn around. Maybe we could just start a new program in the church. We might try to build up our youth or children’s ministry. Maybe we could try to go back to something we did in the ‘good ole’ days, thinking we might make church like it used to be? If something like this doesn’t work, we can resort to blaming somebody. We could blame the teachers, the leaders, the deacons, the members, or maybe even the pastor. It’s got to be somebody’s fault, doesn’t it? Somebody has to be able to ‘fix’ this, or ‘make it happen’ like it used to happen, don’t they? Who would dare say we’ve already reached the ‘point of no return’? Who would dare preach a sermon like this? Jeremiah did.
If the truth be told, according to Jeremiah it was, for his people, too late: “The harvest (was) past, the summer (had) ended, and (they were) not saved” (v.20). The plug had to be pulled. The respirator had to be removed. Israel was gone. Judah was breathing her last breathe. It was time to call the undertaker, make the funeral arrangements, and for the people who remained to pay their final respects. As God told Jeremiah in 8:13, comparing Judah to a unproductive vine: “When I wanted to gather them, says the LORD, there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them?” Sad. Tragic. Makes you want to cry. Jeremiah did. Again, this is why we call him ‘the weeping prophet’. As Jeremiah says in the very next verse: “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me (21).”
FOR THE HURT OF MY PEOPLE I AM HURT (21)
In the church today, and in our world, most of us are feeling a some ‘hurt’ and a little ‘dismay’ too. Church simply doesn’t ‘work’ like it used to. Most everything I learned in Seminary to prepare me for ministry doesn’t fit today. Most every way we built our churches back in the 1950’s, seems to work against what we need to be doing today.
In fact, those few churches that appear to be growing are nothing like what church ‘used to be’. As one pastor of a large, growing church told me, “We have a lot more unchurched people attending than we have members, than we have disciples or than we have Christians. And we see that as a good problem,” he said. Perhaps it is a ‘good problem’, when you have a lot of people coming to church who change what church once looked like, if the people going there actually ‘grow’ and ‘go’ back into their communities and make a difference. But I’m still not sure that ‘growing’ spiritually or ‘going’ back into their communities is really what these young, new, contemporary style churches have learned to be about. I hope they will get there. I’m pulling for them. I’m certainly not against “God” working in ‘new’ ways, with new ‘ideas’, but I’m also not sure how good going to a church fits what “I” want, does for the good of the church and for the needs of the world. That’s what still concerns me.
Perhaps my greatest concern, however, is what happens when so many communities no longer have people to witnesses to the good news of Jesus right where they live. As Jeremiah rightly saw it, the concern is not just that there no harvest this year, or that fall is coming, but that there is no more harvest, no more summer or growing season, that that there will be no more ‘salvation’ for anyone at all. My concern is not what is changing, but what will be no more: no more witness, no more love, no more community, and no more place for children, elderly and lost souls to find their way home. As Jeremiah says, ‘the harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are NOT SAVED”. This is the kind of ‘impossible’, ‘never again’ situation that makes Jeremiah’s heart ‘hurt’.
The writer of Ecclesiastes once wrote: "Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come…, and the years draw near when you will say you have no more pleasure in them" (Eccl. 12:1). Doesn’t a text like this make your heart ‘hurt’ for the increasing amount of young people who say that the church means nothing to them. What will this mean for them, in the years to come? How will they have faith? Who will believe in anything, if you don’t find ‘hope’ when you are also young?
Several years ago a famous evangelist, unscientifically, but wisely concluded, after many years of surveying the crowds that came to his crusades, that if a person isn't saved by the time he is 21, the chances are 5,000 to 1 that he will ever be saved. If he isn't saved by the time he is 30, the chances are 15,000 to 1 that he will ever be saved. If he isn't saved by the time he is 40, the chances are 30,000 to 1 he will ever be saved. If he isn't saved by the time he is 50, the chances are 150,000 to 1 that he will ever trust Christ as Lord and Savior. When our youth leave this church, much of our harvest is passing, and we don't even realize it. When people get older, their heart is hardening, and they don’t even realize it. You think about it: how many do we baptize over 60? How many over 70? How many over 80? It’s practically none.
Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist, told a story of how one time he was preaching a crusade in a large city, and he was preaching on this text, Jeremiah 8:20. When he gave the invitation, the man's wife who was sitting next to him, who loved the Lord Jesus, begged him with tears to go forward and give his heart to Christ. But he adamantly refused to do it.
Many years later Moody was back in that same city preaching a crusade. There was an older man who had contracted a terminal illness, and he asked to see the great evangelist. Well, Moody and his song leader, Ira Sankey, went to see this man whose hair was now gray, whose face was now wrinkled, whose body was now withered with age and disease. When Moody walked into his bedroom, his sweet godly wife was kneeling beside his bed pleading with her husband. The man was mumbling something. Moody leaned down to hear what this man was mumbling. He was repeating over and over: "The harvest is past, summer is ended, and we are not saved."
Moody asked this wife why he was repeating that verse. She said, "You preached on that text the last night of your crusade here many years ago. My husband heard that sermon and adamantly refused to be saved. That's why he is repeating it now." Rev Moody got on his knees and began to plead with that man to come to Christ. But the man just kept shaking his head and repeating over and over, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." Dwight L. Moody said that man died about sundown with gritted teeth and clinched fist, saying, as he went out into eternity, with these last words, "The harvest is past." Doesn’t that ‘hurt’ your heart to hear something like that?
IS THERE NO BALM IN GILEAD? (22)
Jeremiah’s heart does not stop hurting all the way to the end of today’s text. The text ends with one of the most ‘memorable’ questions in all the Bible, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored (v.22). The heartbreak Jeremiah feels goes right into the next chapter and the verse that gave Jeremiah his nickname, ‘the weeping prophet’, where he cries out: “O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!”
Last year, right before Christmas, we had two funerals back to back, one for our beloved DeEtte Renegar, and the other for the feisty, energetic Lenette Murphy. Then, on Christmas Day, I got the news that one of my colleagues in ministry, Ed Bettingfield, lost his wife in a house fire on Christmas Eve. It was believed to be started by their Christmas Tree. Teresa and I have had an artificial tree for 10 or so years, but this year, because the tree was worn out, we decided to get a real tree again. After I heard about the fire, the day after Christmas, I was so shook up, I couldn’t burn the light again, even though the tree seemed to be in good shape.
What an event like this teaches us, is that are things in life that bring us to the point of no return, like an illness, an accident, a natural disaster, or a house fire. Just like that, it can all be over, or we can lose someone precious to us. Of course, we don’t want to think about it, but it can and it does happen. There are still things that can hurt us that we can’t be healed from, can turn around, or can’t change, and must learn to face, to deal with and finally, to accept.
Interestingly, what Jeremiah meant when he asked, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” is not one of these ‘unchangeable’ things. God’s people did come to the ‘point of no return’, but it didn’t have to be that way. They could have learned. They could have changed. They could have avoided the great disaster that came, but they would not face their rebellion and the reality before them and find the healing they needed. The doctor was in in Gilead, right across the Jordan river, but no one wanted to go and fetch him. The people’s health could have been ‘restored’, but Judah decided they knew more than the doctor. They decided they could live by their own diagnosis, and make up their own concoctions. That’s why the healing did not come—no because there was no doctor or healing ‘balm’, but because they wouldn’t admit they needed it. Then, it was too late.
Several years ago, when we lived in Greensboro, Teresa and I were returning from a Halloween “Trunk of Treats” event at church. There were still “Trick or Treaters” in our development at Forest Oaks, but there was a bit more commotion than normal. Children and adults were wandering, looking around, calling out a child’s name. When we stopped to asked what was happening, they said a Three year old child in our neighborhood had wandered away from home. We decided to drive around a bit too. The Firemen came. The whole community, it seemed were going up and down the streets calling out his name.
When we arrived at the home, where they child was last seen, we discovered it was his grandparents house. The child had come to visit, and was in a different, more unfamiliar place. Right behind the grandparents home was a lake. The grandparents didn’t think he would come down that far. They had thought about putting up a fence. They had thought about making a gate on the pier, but they never did. If you guessed what happened, you’re right. Later on that evening, after hours of searching, the underwater rescue found the child. He was discovered only in 8 feet of water, only about 5 feet away from the pier. One moment, the child was with their grandmother, but when she turned away just a moment, he was gone. Can you imagine how heartbroken that grandmother must have been? Can you imagine how many times those grandparents wished they had not built on that lake? Can you imagine how many times they wondered why they didn’t put up a fence or a gate?
There is a poem that haunts, but it’s true:
When the choir has sung its last anthem, and the preacher has prayed his last prayer,
When the people have heard their last sermon, and the sound has died out in the air.
When the Bible lies closed on the altar, and the pews are all emptied of men,
And each one stands facing his record, and the great Book is open, what then?
When the actor has played his last drama, and the mimic has made his last fun,
When the film has flashed its last picture, and the billboard displayed its last run,
When the crowd seeking pleasure have vanished, and gone out in the darkness again,
And the trumpet of ages has sounded, and we stand before Him, what then?
When the bugle's call sinks into silence, and the long, marching columns stand still,
When the captain repeats his last orders, and they've captured the last fort and hill.
When the flag is hauled down from the masthead, and the wounded afield checked in,
And a world that rejected its Savior, is asked for a reason, what then?
"The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." The time between when the harvest is ripe, and when the harvest is rotten, is so very short. The harvest is great, the need is for laborers. Will you understand the help and the healing that is offered right now? And if not now, then when? If we wait too late to find the healing, what then? Amen.
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