“Those Who Trust In the LORD.”

A sermon based upon Jeremiah 17: 5-10

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time,  July 1st, 2018 

(5-12) Sermon Series: Jeremiah: Prophet to the Nations

Robert Fulghum tells about meeting a young American traveler in the airport in Hong Kong. She was tensely occupying a chair next to his. Her backpack bore the scars and dirt of some hard traveling. It bulged with mysterious souvenirs of seeing the world.

When the tears began to drip from her chin, he imagined some lost love or the sorrow of giving up adventure for college classes. But then she began to sob ” a veritable flood of tears.

She was not quite ready to go home, she said. She had run out of money. She had spent two days waiting in the airport standby with little to eat and too much pride to beg. Her plane was about to go and she had lost her ticket. "She had been sitting in this one spot for three hours, sinking into the cold sea of despair like some torpedoed freighter."

Fulghum and a nice older couple from Chicago, dried her tears. They offered to take her to lunch and to talk to the powers that be at the airlines about some remedy. She stood up to go with them, turned around to pick up her belongings. And SCREAMED. They thought something terrible had happened to her but no...it was her ticket. She found her ticket. She had been sitting on it for three hours.

"Like a sinner saved from the very jaws of hell," writes Fulghum, "she laughed and cried and hugged us all and was suddenly gone. Off to catch a plane for home and what next. Leaving most of the passenger lounge deliriously limp from being part of her drama."  She had been sitting on her ticket the whole time.

THOSE WHO TRUST….  (5)

In our text today, Jeremiah reminds the people of God that their ‘ticket’ to the promises and possibilities of God is ‘trust’.   “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him” (17:7).    Here, Jeremiah understands that nothing is more foundational to the human person than trust.   We first learn to trust the world around us because our parents love and care for us when we were dependent children.  If children are not cared for properly, trust is difficult for them for the rest of their lives.  Trust is at the core of what it means to believe, and to believe and have faith is at the core of what it means to trust.

When Jeremiah speaks of trust, we need to understand that trust is not only a religious concept.  Trust is a religious concept because trust is the very stuff of life and hope.  This week we are commemorating America’s 242^nd Birthday as a nation.  We are a nation that was born out of the shared ‘trust’ and belief that freedom was a better way of being a people than what was known before.  Recently, I came to appreciate the struggle for liberty even more as I was introduced to Alexander Rose’s novel about the American Revolution and the American revolutionary spy ring commonly known as “Washington’s Spies”.  The AMC TV network made a movie on that book, focusing on the life of one of those patriot spies, Abe Woodhull who lived on Long Island.   It was Abe Woodhull and that spy ring who kept the continental army led by General George Washington informed of British movements near New York.  Washington relied on a cabbage farmer to give him some of the most important intelligence gained during the Revolution.

Rose’s account is an incredible retelling of how our American forbearers wagered their own lives and livelihood in the faith and trust that liberty was worth the risk.  They did not know how England would respond to their opposition.  They also did not know who would win the war.  They did not know whether they would live or die in that struggle for liberty.  Remember Patrick Henry’s words, “Give me liberty, or give me death.”  Most specifically, those ‘spies’ who served George Washington and the American Colonies, risked everything they had because they believed that freedom was worth more than anything else in life.  Independence, liberty and freedom was their greatest ‘trust’.

Jeremiah reminds God’s people, that while trust is foundational to human life and prosperity, they need to take care about who and what they put trust in.   He told them that the LORD would bring a ‘curse’ upon “those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD” (Jer. 17:5 NRS).  Those are very strong words, which could make the LORD look like an evil tyrant as bad as the king of England must have looked to the American colonist. 

But Jeremiah does not mean that God is against anyone.  If “God is love” as the New Testament attests, how could this be?   What we need to understand is that when Jeremiah used the idea of being cursed by God, he did so within the ancient Jewish perceptions that God, the LORD, was responsible for both the good and bad of life.  You can especially see this in the story of how God allows Satan to ‘test’ Job with heartbreak and heartache.   In that world, where there were not yet enough resources to understand how there could be any randomness, chance, or unpredictability in the world or universe, people reasoned that since all things were ‘created’ by the LORD, all things had to be ‘caused’ by the LORD too.  Today, we would understand much differently, that while the LORD has created the potential and possibility of life, God has also given us, and has given life and nature its own freedom, own ‘mind’, choices, and creative powers.  In other words, our God is not the kind of God who keeps all the powers of life only for himself, but he makes humans ‘co-creators’ and responsible care-takers, who work with God to become ‘masters of our own fate and captains of our own souls.’   

My point in explaining all this is to help us understand better what Jeremiah means when he speaks of people being ‘cursed’ when they lose trust in God.  Jeremiah means that when people only ‘trust in mere mortals and make their flesh their strength’ and leave God out of the equation of their lives, when we put our trust in lesser things, life turns against us, rather than works for us. It was not an accident, that the United States government voted to put the phrase “In God We Trust” on the American dollar.   This statement first appeared on American currency during the civil war, but was not made the official American motto until 1957.  It became a reminder to a growing, prosperous and affluent nation that if we are not careful, our greatest trust and our greatest need to trust in God,  can be displaced by lesser things.

This is exactly what happened to the people of God in Jeremiah’s day.  They had exchanged their trust in the LORD for trusting in themselves and what they believed they could accomplish on their own without God’s help.   But instead of increasing in prosperity and success, Jeremiah points to how they had become a people hopelessly struggling like a unfortunate ‘shrub’ planted in a parched wilderness (v. 6).   People who misplace their ‘trust’ are a people who end up starving for the bare essentials for life, faith, and hope.

Frank Campbell, who was once pastor of First Baptist Church in Statesville, gave a powerful illustration of misplaced trust way back in the 1980s, when he quoted American financial expert David Harrop who once lamented how many people wrongly measure their own worth based on how much money they have.   As a pastor of a well-to-do church, Dr. Campbell also noted how many people had sat across from him in counseling sessions who had more money than they ever needed, but they were miserable and struggling in their emotional and spiritual lives (From ‘God’s Message In Troubled Times’ Broadman Press, 1981, p. 66)

 When we put our ‘trust’ in lesser things, we will find it hard to get through troubled times, and no matter how well we have it, hard times will come.   This is exactly what Dr. Campbell observed when a very successful young couple started having serious martial problems.  He had been counseling with them, but one evening he received a phone call from the wife who informed him that she taking the young children and was leaving town and leaving her husband.   It wasn’t long after that, that a very irate husband called, demanding to know where his wife had gone.  Campbell observed, here was a couple who had everything one could possibly want; they were wealthy, well-educated, and very successful in their careers.  They carried real clout in the church and community too and where shakers and movers in various civic organizations.  They had everything you could imagine, he noted, except that they had lost trust in each other and they had also lost their trust in God.  When that trust was lost, their lives became a barren, parched wilderness having little to sustain them as a couple or as a family (Campbell, p. 69).

I THE LORD TEST THE MIND…SEARCH THE HEART (10)

If we lose ‘trust’ in each other, or we lose our trust in the LORD, what do we really have?   There are many things people go after in life, but what do we have really have left when we lose trust?  We’ve all seen it happen.  Some of you have tragically lived through the loss of trust in others.  Most of us have been hurt by someone you once trusted.  There is no pain greater and no hurt any worse than the loss of trust.  Humans can survive most anything, if we know people really care for us and about us.   The apostle Paul suffered much too, but he also said: “If God is for us, who can be against us.”  When we have ultimate trust from those we love and the God who loves us, we have what we need to get through life, but what do we have if we lose that trust, especially our trust in the LORD?

Isn’t this what Jeremiah means when he asserts that when people ‘turn away from the LORD’ life will become like a desert, that is barren and cursed.   When we lose trust, we may try to cover up that barrenness, or we may pretend that everything is going fine, or like that young wife in Frank Campbell’s account, we might get away, take the children, and try to start over.   But it is not until we come to address to the core of the hurt, the emptiness, and the barrenness in our lives, that we will can find renewal of hope and faith.

“I the LORD test the mind and heart”, Jeremiah reminds the people (v 10).  What Jeremiah means is that God knows the heart, so that we get out of our lives what we put into it.  If life becomes empty and barren, there is a good chance we have misplaced or displaced our trust.   What we need to do is to come clean with ourselves and examine exactly what we are putting our trust in.   We need to take the barrenness as a ‘test’ revealing that we have put our ‘trust’ in the wrong things.   As one pastor rightly named it, life is, just like faith is, finally “A Token of Trust.”  The ‘test’ of life is that everything boils down to who do we, should we, and must we trust.  

Interestingly, this is where Pastor Campbell’s story finally lands.  He says that after the husband realized that the wife left town with the children, the pastor agreed to meet with him in the pastor’s study.  After discussing some of the things that had gone wrong in his life,  pastor Campbell told him that until he got his relationship with Jesus right, there wasn’t much of a chance that anything else would go right either.   Before the session was over, the man and pastor Campbell got down on their knees and the man asked Jesus to be Savior and Lord of his life.  The husband was a changed man and got back together with his wife, and they both made Jesus the lord of their lives together.   They were a changed couple because they when they got their most basic ‘trust’ in God right, they were able to rebuild trust in their marriage and in their lives.

THOSE WHO TRUST IN THE LORD (7)

So now, as we come again to the core question of today’s text, let me ask you how do you ‘trust’ in the LORD?  Is it the kind of whole hearted trust that makes a whole life worth of difference?   Jeremiah says that ‘those who trust in the LORD… shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit (Jer. 17:8 NRS).  The image Jeremiah uses is not that of just any tree.  This is a tree that thrives, even in a barren, dry, thirsty desert because the tree is planted near constant and consistent flow of the water of life.   When your trust is sure, it is secure that you will have promise of life, no matter the conditions around you.

Several years ago, there was an article in the Greensboro News And Record by assistant district attorney Susan Bray.  She wrote about recently meeting her ‘role model’.   This role model was not a movie actress, sports star, or wealthy rock star.  She was an 5’ 3’’ 86 year old lady who then lived in east Greensboro.  She was a very independent woman who had worked and lived in New York City for many years, working as a hair-stylist and makeup artist, even working for some notable people like Lucille Ball, and others on Broadway.  

When the honorable Mrs. Bray got to know this Sunday School teacher, she unfortunately had to handled her sexual abuse case.   Late one evening, after watching “Murder She Wrote”, she noticed that her lights went out.  When she got up to check the circuit breaker, the 86 year old was hit on the head with a coffee mug by a young man who had broken into her.  When she came to her senses, she heard him ordering her to disrobe and to move down the hall toward her bedroom.  She continued to resist him, rolling back and forth on the bed, even moving her bloody head side to side on the pillow to make sure to leave evidence. 

Finally, the fellow gave up his assault plans, and demanded she give him her money.   She gave him the 3 dollars she had in an envelop on the dresser, but he wanted more.  She said he would have to wait until the bank opened.  He insisted on more, so she gave him some cash she had saved for charities in her cabinet.  He hit her with the telephone, and demanded her car keys.  He said he’d bring the car back the next day.  She gave him the keys, then watched the direction he drove when he left.   She called the police and they caught the man within 6 minutes from her home.   He was arrested and was put away in prison serving a 20-year prison sentence.

They 86 year old lady took stiches in her forehead, and she lost some of her hearing, but when lawyer Bray met her, she was back to life as normal, walking 45 minutes every morning,  cleaning her house and yard, and ‘driving the older ladies in her Sunday School class to their doctor’s appointments.   She still goes to church on Sunday’s and Wednesdays, which I could attest to, because I was her pastor.   Mrs Marie Latta was one of the most remarkable, faithful, trust filled people I’ve ever known.  She was that way even when she was 95 years of age, when she broke her hip, pneumonia sit in, but she was still able to recover.   No one thought she would.  When we had to move from Greensboro, she kept up with us, and even set us a note saying that she’d seen our picture with our daughter in the Baptist Children’s Home newspaper, “Charity and Children”.  Marie was just that kind of person, always caring, always faithful, always trusting, even trusting the Lord through the best of times and the worst of times.  She was like a ‘tree planted by the rivers of water’ who ‘leaves stayed green’ even when the heat was on.

When your trust is in God, you will be able to plant deep roots that will yield a garden in the most extreme circumstances.  You will be able to stand the test and find a trust that will never let you down.   Unfortunately, God’s people had lost their trust in the LORD in Jeremiah’s day.  They had known the LORD, but somehow they had put their trust in other things that were nothing but junk and now they had lost their trust in what mattered most.  At one time the LORD was first on their heart when they got up in the morning, but now they did not know how to think about him anytime of day.   All trust had been lost and now, their lives were as barren as the desert where they lived.   Do you think anything like this could happen to us?

Some years ago a radio station invited people to call in and tell them the first thing they had said that morning when they awoke. The third caller would win a cash prize. It was funny.  One guy said, “Do I smell coffee burning?” Another one said, “Oh no, I’m late for work.” A woman confessed that her first words were, “Honey, did I remember to put the dog out last night?” and you could hear a muffled curse in the background and a man growling, “No, you didn’t.”  One morning, the station phone rang and the perky DJ said, “Good morning, this is FM 106. You’re on the air. What was the first thing you said when you rolled out of bed this morning?”  A voice with a Bronx accent replied, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The caller was reciting the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4), so prized by our Jewish friends. 

The radio host did not know how to handle it. He was looking for junk and instead encountered a jewel. There was a moment of embarrassed silence, then the announcer said, “Sorry, wrong number,” and cut to a commercial. 

How do you start your day?  Is God the first and last thought of your day?   Listen, most all of us have to deal with junk both around us and some even on the inside of us too. But ‘junk’ of life doesn’t have the power to give us what matters most in life.   We need to ask God to remove that junk from us.  We must put our trust in the only one who can give us our life back, even when we mess it up and lose our way.   He is the only one who give us a life that never ‘ceases to bear fruit’.   Amen.