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June  27th, 2020

6/27/2020

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Video

SERVICE FOR THE LORD’S DAY
June 28, 2020
 
WORDS OF WORSHIP                                                                Psalm 139:23-24, NLT
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 Point out anything in me that offends you,
    and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
 
GATHERING PRAYER                                                                                                     
Lord, as we come to worship celebrating the life you give us, we recognize that you know our heart, our sincerity, our fears and doubts, our shortcomings and flaws, our needs and hopes and dreams. We bring all of ourselves to you, Lord God, praying for you to dwell within us and reshape us to receive your blessings and to do your will.  Amen.
 
CONFESSION AND PARDON
Jesus quoted Isaiah saying, “8 ‘These people show honor to me with words, but their hearts are far from me. 9 Their worship of me is worthless. The things they teach are nothing but human rules.’” (Matthew 15:8; Isaiah 29:13) James’ letter encourages, “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.” (James 5:6) Let us confess our sins using David’s confession in Psalm 51.
 
1 Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love!
    Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion!
2 Wash me completely clean of my guilt; purify me from my sin!
3 Because I know my wrongdoings, my sin is always right in front of me.
4 I’ve sinned against you—you alone. I’ve committed evil in your sight.
That’s why you are justified when you render your verdict,
    completely correct when you issue your judgment.
…
7 Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean;
    wash me and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and celebration again;
    let the bones you crushed rejoice once more.
9 Hide your face from my sins; wipe away all my guilty deeds!
10 Create a clean heart for me, God; put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me!
11 Please don’t throw me out of your presence;
    please don’t take your holy spirit away from me.
12 Return the joy of your salvation to me and sustain me with a willing spirit.
…
14 Deliver me from violence, God, God of my salvation,
    so that my tongue can sing of your righteousness.
15 Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will proclaim your praise.
….
17 A broken spirit is my sacrifice, God.
    You won’t despise a heart, God, that is broken and crushed.
 
John wrote, “9 If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
 
Thanks be to God!
 
PASSING THE PEACE
May the peace of Christ be with you.
 
HYMN 
 
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION
As we come to your Word, O God, teach us and heal us. Amen.
 
SCRIPTURE LESSONS                                                                                                    
Listen to the heart concerns from this chapter of Jeremiah.
                                                                                                      Jeremiah 17:1-10, NLT
1 “The sin of Judah
    is inscribed with an iron chisel--
engraved with a diamond point on their stony hearts
    and on the corners of their altars.
2 Even their children go to worship
    at their pagan altars and Asherah poles,
beneath every green tree
    and on every high hill.
3 So I will hand over my holy mountain--
    along with all your wealth and treasures
    and your pagan shrines--
as plunder to your enemies,
    for sin runs rampant in your land.
4 The wonderful possession I have reserved for you
    will slip from your hands.
I will tell your enemies to take you
    as captives to a foreign land.
For my anger blazes like a fire
    that will burn forever.”
 
5 This is what the Lord says:
“Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans,
    who rely on human strength
    and turn their hearts away from the Lord.
6 They are like stunted shrubs in the desert,
    with no hope for the future.
They will live in the barren wilderness,
    in an uninhabited salty land.
 
7 “But blessed are those who trust in the Lord
    and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.
8 They are like trees planted along a riverbank,
    with roots that reach deep into the water.
Such trees are not bothered by the heat
    or worried by long months of drought.
Their leaves stay green,
    and they never stop producing fruit.
 
9 “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,
    and desperately wicked.
    Who really knows how bad it is?
10 But I, the Lord, search all hearts
    and examine secret motives.
I give all people their due rewards,
    according to what their actions deserve.”
 
Because their hearts turned away from God, the people suffered.
 
Sometimes suffering isn’t because of sin, instead it is simply part of life in this world. Listen to Jesus comforting his disciples the night before his crucifixion.
 
                                                                                                           John 16:17-33, NLT
16 “In a little while you won’t see me anymore. But a little while after that, you will see me again.”
 
17 Some of the disciples asked each other, “What does he mean when he says, ‘In a little while you won’t see me, but then you will see me,’ and ‘I am going to the Father’? 18 And what does he mean by ‘a little while’? We don’t understand.”
 
19 Jesus realized they wanted to ask him about it, so he said, “Are you asking yourselves what I meant? I said in a little while you won’t see me, but a little while after that you will see me again. 20 I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn over what is going to happen to me, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy. 21 It will be like a woman suffering the pains of labor. When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy because she has brought a new baby into the world. 22 So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again; then you will rejoice, and no one can rob you of that joy. 23 At that time you won’t need to ask me for anything. I tell you the truth, you will ask the Father directly, and he will grant your request because you use my name. 24 You haven’t done this before. Ask, using my name, and you will receive, and you will have abundant joy.
 
25 “I have spoken of these matters in figures of speech, but soon I will stop speaking figuratively and will tell you plainly all about the Father. 26 Then you will ask in my name. I’m not saying I will ask the Father on your behalf, 27 for the Father himself loves you dearly because you love me and believe that I came from God. 28 Yes, I came from the Father into the world, and now I will leave the world and return to the Father.”
 
29 Then his disciples said, “At last you are speaking plainly and not figuratively. 30 Now we understand that you know everything, and there’s no need to question you. From this we believe that you came from God.”
 
31 Jesus asked, “Do you finally believe? 32 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when you will be scattered, each one going his own way, leaving me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. 33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”
 
In this life we indeed have trials and sorrows. Some of these are worldwide like the pandemic or violence; some are personal as with an illness or chronic pain.
 
                                                                                                2 Corinthians 12:6-10, GW
6 If I ever wanted to brag, I wouldn’t be a fool. Instead, I would be telling the truth. But I’m going to spare you so that no one may think more of me than what he sees or hears about me, 7 especially because of the excessive number of revelations that I’ve had.
 
Therefore, to keep me from becoming conceited, I am forced to deal with a recurring problem. That problem, Satan’s messenger, torments me to keep me from being conceited. 8 I begged the Lord three times to take it away from me. 9 But he told me: “My kindness is all you need. My power is strongest when you are weak.” So I will brag even more about my weaknesses in order that Christ’s power will live in me. 10 Therefore, I accept weakness, mistreatment, hardship, persecution, and difficulties suffered for Christ. It’s clear that when I’m weak, I’m strong.
 
As humans we are weak; it is through Christ that we are made strong.
                                                                                                                                           
SERMON                                            Heart Matters
Whether I want to or not, I remember clearly August of 2003, when I got a disturbing call from my doctor, and then at a continuing education event in Peoria, I ended up in the hospital needing a stent. Because of the location, LAD, the first doctor wanted his supervisor to do the surgery, so I went to surgery twice on the 13th and 14th that month. Once we got through that week, I needed to make a lot of changes, attempt some exercise, more drastic changes to my dietary habits, and there were things I couldn’t do anymore. All of this had snuck up on me, but as I look back years later, the warning signs of clogged arteries were there.  I just hadn’t understood them.
 
We may suffer from blockages or weak valves or unstable heart rates physically and need a doctor’s care. Heart disease is a major medical concern in our world. The same can be true of our spiritual heart matters. We may have blocked or weakened spiritual connections or an erratic, unstable commitment to our faith covenant. We get sloppy about our spiritual diet or exercise and our spiritual health declines as a result.  But just as our God cares about our physical heart health, so God cares about our spiritual heart matters as well.
 
As Jeremiah delivered God’s diagnosis and prescriptions to God’s people in his own day, it related to matters of the heart spiritually speaking. Their hearts became hardened by the ways of the world around them, until God said their sins were chiseled on hearts of stone.   God’s concern over human sin goes all the way back to Genesis. Right before the flood it reads, “So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart.” [i] God reached out to the people in Jeremiah’s time, “My wayward children,” says the Lord, “come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts.” “Yes, we’re coming,” the people reply, “for you are the Lord our God.”[ii]  God promised them shepherds after his own heart, but as we said last week, the people still did not listen. They did not return their hearts to the Lord God.
“22 Have you no respect for me? [God asked]
    Why don’t you tremble in my presence?
I, the Lord, define the ocean’s sandy shoreline
    as an everlasting boundary that the waters cannot cross.
The waves may toss and roar,
    but they can never pass the boundaries I set.
23 But my people have stubborn and rebellious hearts.
    They have turned away and abandoned me.
24 They do not say from the heart,
    ‘Let us live in awe of the Lord our God,
for he gives us rain each spring and fall,
    assuring us of a harvest when the time is right.’”[iii] 
God despaired as we turned away.
 
As we read in Jeremiah 17 today,
“9 The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,
    and desperately wicked.
    Who really knows how bad it is?
10 But I, the Lord, search all hearts
    and examine secret motives.
I give all people their due rewards,
    according to what their actions deserve.”[iv]
 
Melissa Spoelstra notes that “the word heart is used over 800 times in scripture.”[v] God’s heart is revealed to us in many verses as well as God’s concern for the condition of our hearts and inner spirit.
 
Many things tug at our hearts in this world. There are stressors that endanger our physical hearts and our spiritual health as well. We endure fear and pain and worry and anxiety. Some of this relates to circumstances we have set up for ourselves and we suffer the consequences. Some has to do with the state of the world around us or situations others have put us in that we are powerless to change. Spoelstra asks a question that could come from any of us as we wrestle with a Christian response to life’s challenges. She writes, “I know Christ calls me to be kind, loving, and forgiving as He is toward me. But how can I get my heart in line with God’s truth when my feelings pull me in another direction? This leads me to bring my heart before God and ask Him to help me sort through pain and perceptions so that He can restore softness in my most vital organ.”[vi] 
 
God is the Great Physician when it comes to healing our spiritual heart, but just as a cardiologist can do me no good if I refuse to make an appointment, so God can’t heal our spiritual wounds if we don’t allow God access to work within us. As Spoelstra puts it, “We stuff our pain and continue living our lives without dealing with it and give resentment a chance to grow…[but there is] the danger of allowing our hearts to get hard and the painful shattering process [is] needed to restore them.”[vii]
 
I’m watching a drama in which several characters have some mental health concern either born with or trauma related, but the caregiver in the story stuffs his emotions and may be the most wounded character of all.  This happens not just in dramas; it is too often true in real life. We just keep pushing. We just keep going, and we don’t deal with the effects of events or memories that are just too painful to resolve. We need God to work in us with healing grace when someone else hurt us.
 
But sometimes we are the ones at fault, and we still need God’s healing and grace.
The people of Jeremiah’s day had sinned yet continually denied it. They kept insisting there was nothing wrong. They refused correction or to change their ways. They had forgotten God’s relationship with their ancestors and turned away. Their hearts were hard. But as is true with a physical heart condition such as my clogged arteries, it didn’t happen overnight. As Spoelstra suggests, “Gradually, they made secret choices to self-protect, blame others for their problems, and refuse to acknowledge their own errors.”[viii]
 
Sometimes our heart pain comes from broken relationships. Spoelstra shared personal stories of friendships gone awry. I think most of us have experienced this at some time. Maybe you are in that quandary right now. Spoelstra knows how tough it can be. “The more you risk in relationships, the more you have to lose. When you get burned a few times, it can be discouraging to keep putting yourself out there.”[ix] However, “We can’t change the hearts of others, so we need to put down our microscopes and pick up our own heart mirrors.”[x] 
 
This is a truth counselors have taught me over the years. You cannot change the other person; you can only change yourself. You cannot change the circumstance sometimes; you can only change how you respond to it. So when we are hurting in a relationship, we can go to God to help us take a serious look at ourselves and make any needed changes there. This is also true of our relationship with God.
 
When we fail to take responsibility for our own attitudes, words, or actions, we cannot heal. Spoelstra encourages us, “we can evaluate our own hearts and repent.”[xi]  She tells us to ask questions. I should have asked years before my heart condition was discovered why my arms went numb sitting in chairs with arm rests or what the effects would be of so much stress. Similarly when things aren’t right, we can ask things like, “Lord, why do I feel so sad, distracted, or empty? Why did that person’s words or actions cut me so deeply? Why do I want to stay mad at my husband or friend? What part of my heart has grown hard, and what will it take to soften it again?”[xii] 
 
As we ask such questions, we can move on to confessing our own share of responsibility. Whether it is a fight you had with a family member or friend, or dealing with tensions around the world that have festered for decades, even centuries, “If we don’t acknowledge the hurt or the hate, we can’t move on to the healing.”[xiii] Spoelstra suggests “We should be asking God to help us understand our feelings, seeking wise counsel to help us draw out our heart issues, and repenting and confessing to our loving Father the wickedness hidden in our hearts. [God] already knows what’s in them and wants us to acknowledge it so that He can renew and transform us.”[xiv]
 
Our hearts can become bitter, broken, deceived, doubt filled, dull, fearful, fickle, hardened, hateful, heavy, hypocritical, overwhelmed, pain filled, perverted, proud, restless, sad, stubborn, or troubled. All of these descriptions and more come from scripture. All of these conditions represent a heart that needs healing. But when our hearts are healthy, the Bible has just as many positive descriptions for them: clean, compassionate, faithful, fully committed to God, generous, gentle, happy, honest, humble, loving, new, peaceful, prayerful, rejoicing, repentant, responsive, right and true, sincere, thankful, understanding, virtuous, willing and able to change. Spoelstra believes that “God cares more about the condition of our hearts than almost anything else”[xv] and that God “wants to help us down the path of self-discovery that leads to healing.”[xvi]
 
In our desire to change, there is a problem when we try to accomplish this by ourselves. Think about it. I couldn’t even diagnose my own heart condition. I certainly couldn’t perform surgery on myself or prescribe the needed medicines. I could, however, cooperate by making lifestyle changes and dietary changes as needed. So, why would we think that we can self-diagnose and treat our spiritual heart conditions. We need God in the process both to guide us to the truths we don’t want to see and to work in our spirit by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. It is God who transforms us when we are willing. Paul wrote to the Romans, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”[xvii] We can cooperate with that process through a steady diet of God’s Word, worship, Christian fellowship and prayer, and by exercising our spiritual muscles with acts of kindness and generosity. Spoelstra writes, “Heart change happens internally first and then displays itself externally as we acknowledge and respond to the sin we’ve identified.”[xviii] As God works within us, the new creation will be apparent to those around us. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.” [xix] 
 
Jeremiah suggests three steps to dealing with our heart condition. We’ve alluded to them already. Spoelstra puts them in three convenient phrases: “know it, share it, own it.”[xx]  Socrates is credited with saying, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”[xxi] Such self-reflection requires honesty. Spoelstra acknowledges there are positive things she assumes or pretends about herself that are not necessarily true, but then she admits, “Being honest with ourselves is a necessary first step” to the self-evaluation process. [xxii]  This goes back to asking those tough questions and letting God point out to us where we are not in line with God’s intentions, or where we can improve.
 
To ask God to participate in such an evaluation may be as scary as an employee annual review, and yet without it we cannot grow. It may feel like an annual checkup with the doctor, but that is where we find out how we are doing.  Some of the news will be good news! Some of it will show where improvement is needed. This is for our good and not to embarrass us or shame us or reject us.
 
God desperately wanted the people of Jeremiah’s day to acknowledge their guilt and wrongdoing. God wants that of us in any era or culture. This is what God said through Jeremiah 3,
“O Israel, my faithless people,
    come home to me again,
for I am merciful.
    I will not be angry with you forever.
13 Only acknowledge your guilt.
    Admit that you rebelled against the Lord your God
and committed adultery against him
    by worshiping idols under every green tree.
Confess that you refused to listen to my voice.
    I, the Lord, have spoken!
 
14 “Return home, you wayward children,”
    says the Lord,
    “for I am your master.
I will bring you back to the land of Israel--
    one from this town and two from that family--
    from wherever you are scattered.
15 And I will give you shepherds after my own heart,
    who will guide you with knowledge and understanding.”[xxiii]
 
This leads into the second step. To share it means to admit or confess the truth we have come to know about ourselves.  Interestingly, the Hebrew word in Jeremiah 3:13 is again shama. We learned last week that shama can mean to listen attentively. Here it is translated as obey or confess. The related meaning is “cause to hear, tell, proclaim”[xxiv] The two meanings work together for me as we listen attentively to the Holy Spirit correcting us; then we must proclaim that truth of where we went wrong, before we can surrender to changing it.
 
Where do we need to make confession? First, we need to admit our sin to God, and sometimes when we have harmed or wronged another person, we need to also admit it to those affected. With regard to the first, Spoelstra continues the analogy I have been using. “Just as we must admit our symptoms to a doctor, who then can prescribe the right treatment, so we must admit our heart troubles to the Great Physician, who knows the cure.”[xxv]  As to the second, from her own experience of confessing and apologizing to a friend, Spoelstra writes, “Sharing my heart of ownership and regret [for past wrongs] brought us closer and took us down a path of reconciliation.”[xxvi]
 
In the same way, I think of the past wrongs that still plague our society around the world. People don’t understand why it is important to address the wrongs of generations that went before us. You might as well ask why detectives would try to solve a cold case, or why we hear of taking someone to trial for war crimes committed long ago. Because we do not see ourselves personally involved in the case, it doesn’t make sense to us. But on the other hand, those who were wronged will always bear that pain. You know this if someone ever hurt you and went on as if nothing had happened. But it is not only the person who was harmed who suffers. Their family and friends also suffer the ripple effect. This can be carried down through generations. If no one ever acknowledges the wrong that was done, if no one ever takes initiative to say, “I’m so sorry my ancestors did that to yours,” then the old wounds cannot heal. Instead they may fester, or someday something will trigger the old anger, and it will explode. Isn’t that what we see in our world today? Whether it goes back to breaking treaties and taking land from Native Americans, Japanese internment in the US or the concentration camps in Germany, slavery or any other form of oppression, tensions between peoples in the Middle East, if no one ever acknowledges that there was fault, how can we ever heal?
 
Spoelstra writes, “Many of us walk around ‘bleeding’ from the wounds…God wants to heal our relational strife, but we must be willing to humbly confess our part.”[xxvii]  She goes on to say, and this points to an important exception, “There are times when we have been mistreated and we truly are the innocent victims, such as in cases of abuse…Those situations require no repentance on our part but instead the healing is the work of God in our hearts through forgiveness. In all other instances of relational strife, we must be willing to admit and confess our sin.”[xxviii] 
 
The third step, once we have learned and confessed our sin, is to “take personal responsibility for our actions.”[xxix] This is what is meant to own it, to take responsibility for our wrongdoing. Don’t get caught up in the blame game. Your part in what went wrong is your own fault, no one else’s, not even the devil’s. You made a choice. Don’t try to justify it or make excuses; that allows you to perpetuate it. Just own up to it!  Spoelstra puts it simply, “No excuses, No blaming. Just say, “I thought/said/did this, and I am sorry.”[xxx] I particularly like this sentence, “Confession is the path to healing, not condemnation.”[xxxi] 
 
God knows when you have blown it, but once you admit it, God offers mercy and forgiveness. That is grace! God takes our brokenness and offers to heal us. Jesus came into the world for the purpose of forgiving us. Many Christians can quote John 3:16, but over the years I have found verse 17 far more important to remember. “God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world guilty, but to save the world through him.” Once you confess your sin, don’t hang on to the guilt. That won’t heal you or help anyone else. Once we see and admit our wrongful attitudes or behaviors, we need to accept God’s forgiveness and ask God to help us change, so we don’t do that hurtful thing anymore. It is when we expose our weakness that God can best work in and through us.
 
Spoelstra suggests, “Our tendency to hide in shame started back in the garden with the very first sin, yet God still seeks us out. [God] never forces us to follow but waits and calls to us, offering mercy and hope. We simply have to run into [God’s] outstretched arms—knowing, sharing, and owning how very much we need Him.”[xxxii]
 
Whether we suffer physically because of our own poor choices or the effects of a stressful world or an inherited condition, we need a physician’s care when our hearts are not healthy. Whether it is our own sin, or the pain of circumstances beyond our control, or harm caused by someone else, or even the tense relations we inherited from our ancestors, we need God’s care to heal our spiritual hearts. God promised through Jeremiah, “You will search for me. And when you search for me with all your heart, you will find me!”[xxxiii]  Let us then truly seek the Lord with our whole heart, and let the healing begin.
 
AFFIRMATION                Apostle’s Creed, Ecumenical Version                             p. 14
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
 
PRAYERS (prayers were spontaneous but included the following concerns)
Kosovo, Serbia, Albania, war crimes trial
Increase in COVID-19 cases in several places
Continued fight against the disease
Ongoing hard work of reform and justice issues
Those planning ahead for school this Fall or elections
Decisions on summer events to meet or not, virtual alternatives
Those financially stretched because of pandemic
 
PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power
And the glory forever. Amen.
 
CHARGE & BLESSING                                                                  Jeremiah 29:11, NLT
For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
[i] Genesis 6:6, NLT
[ii] Jeremiah 3:22, NLT
[iii] Jeremiah 5:22-24, NLT
[iv] Jeremiah 17:9-10, NLT
[v] Melissa Spoelstra, Jeremiah: Daring to Hope in an Unstable World, p. 2093 (because I used a kindle edition, p. # actually refers to location # on kindle.
[vi] P. 2100
[vii] P. 2113
[viii] P. 2136
[ix] P. 2141
[x] P. 2148
[xi] P. 2154
[xii] P. 2155
[xiii] P. 2159
[xiv] P. 2172
[xv] P. 2243
[xvi] 2263
[xvii] Romans 12:2, NLT
[xviii] Spoelstra, p. 2279
[xix] 2 Corinthians 5:17, HCSB
[xx] Spoelstra, p. 2284
[xxi] Quote found on Goodreads website, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/452128-to-know-thyself-is-the-beginning-of-wisdom#:~:text=Quote%20by%20Socrates%3A%20%E2%80%9CTo%20know,is%20the%20beginning%20of%20wisdom.%E2%80%9D
[xxii] Spoelstra, p. 2290
[xxiii] Jeremiah 3:12-15, NLT
[xxiv] Spoelstra, p. 2303
[xxv] P. 2322
[xxvi] P. 2320
[xxvii] P. 2337
[xxviii] P. 2339
[xxix] P. 2360
[xxx] P. 2371
[xxxi] P. 23774
[xxxii] P. 2432
[xxxiii] Jeremiah 29:13, NCV

Jeremiah lived 2600 years ago, but has as much to say to our world today as he did to Judah then. The Bible Study from which I am taking much of this series is 
Jeremiah: Daring to Hope in an Unstable World by Melissa Spoelstra. A Bible Study to accompany the sermons can be found at Faith Adventures.
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June 21 - Listen

6/20/2020

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SERVICE FOR THE LORD’S DAY
June 21, 2020
 
WORDS OF WORSHIP                                                           Deuteronomy 6:4, NRSV
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
 
GATHERING PRAYER                                                                                                     
Lord God, may we truly draw close to you today and worship you alone. May we worship and serve you with all our heart and soul and might. May we listen deeply and understand and obey all that you want us to hear this day.  Thank you for your Word, for still speaking your message to us. We are your people, and you alone are our God. 
 
CONFESSION AND PARDON                                                 Taken from Jeremiah 17
“5 “This is what the Lord says:
Cursed is the person who trusts humans,
    who makes flesh and blood his strength,
        and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 He will be like a bush in the wilderness.
He will not see when something good comes.
He will live in the dry places in the desert,
    in a salty land where no one can live.
7 Blessed is the person who trusts the Lord.
    The Lord will be his confidence.
8 He will be like a tree that is planted by water.
    It will send its roots down to a stream.
    It will not be afraid in the heat of summer.
        Its leaves will turn green.
    It will not be anxious during droughts.
        It will not stop producing fruit.”
Therefore, let us confess the times we have turned away from God with this classic prayer of confession.
 
Eternal God, in whom we live and move and have our being, whose face is hidden from us by our sins, and whose mercy we forget in the blindness of our hearts: cleanse us from all our offenses, and deliver us from proud thoughts and vain desires, that with reverent and humble hearts we may draw near to you, confessing our faults, confiding in your grace, and finding in you our refuge and strength; through Jesus Christ your Son.
 
Jeremiah prayed,
“14 Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed.
    Rescue me, and I will be rescued.
        You are the one I praise.”
The Lord hears our prayers, and through the grace offered by Jesus the Christ our sins are forgiven. Thanks be to God!
 
PASSING THE PEACE
May the peace of Christ be with you.
 
HYMN 
 
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION
God whose Word brings light, illumine your Word as we listen and read, that we might hear your message clearly and take it to heart.  
 
SCRIPTURE LESSONS                                                              Jeremiah 25:1-14, NLT
25:1 This message for all the people of Judah came to Jeremiah from the Lord during the fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign over Judah. This was the year when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon began his reign.
 
2 Jeremiah the prophet said to all the people in Judah and Jerusalem, 3 “For the past twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah, until now—the Lord has been giving me his messages. I have faithfully passed them on to you, but you have not listened.
 
4 “Again and again the Lord has sent you his servants, the prophets, but you have not listened or even paid attention. 5 Each time the message was this: ‘Turn from the evil road you are traveling and from the evil things you are doing. Only then will I let you live in this land that the Lord gave to you and your ancestors forever. 6 Do not provoke my anger by worshiping idols you made with your own hands. Then I will not harm you.’
 
7 “But you would not listen to me,” says the Lord. “You made me furious by worshiping idols you made with your own hands, bringing on yourselves all the disasters you now suffer. 8 And now the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Because you have not listened to me, 9 I will gather together all the armies of the north under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whom I have appointed as my deputy. I will bring them all against this land and its people and against the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy you and make you an object of horror and contempt and a ruin forever. 10 I will take away your happy singing and laughter. The joyful voices of bridegrooms and brides will no longer be heard. Your millstones will fall silent, and the lights in your homes will go out. 11 This entire land will become a desolate wasteland. Israel and her neighboring lands will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.
 
12 “Then, after the seventy years of captivity are over, I will punish the king of Babylon and his people for their sins,” says the Lord. “I will make the country of the Babylonians a wasteland forever. 13 I will bring upon them all the terrors I have promised in this book—all the penalties announced by Jeremiah against the nations. 14 Many nations and great kings will enslave the Babylonians, just as they enslaved my people. I will punish them in proportion to the suffering they cause my people.”
 
                                                                                                            Mark 4:24-25, CEB
24 He said to them, “Listen carefully! God will evaluate you with the same standard you use to evaluate others. Indeed, you will receive even more. 25 Those who have will receive more, but as for those who don’t have, even what they don’t have will be taken away from them.”
                                                                                                   Hebrews 12:25-27, NCV
25 So be careful and do not refuse to listen when God speaks. Others refused to listen to him when he warned them on earth, and they did not escape. So it will be worse for us if we refuse to listen to God who warns us from heaven. 26 When he spoke before, his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once again I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” 27 The words “once again” clearly show us that everything that was made—things that can be shaken—will be destroyed. Only the things that cannot be shaken will remain
                                                                                                            Jeremiah 33:3, GW
3 Call to me, and I will answer you. I will tell you great and mysterious things that you do not know.
 
SERMON                                                        
It’s common in our house these days for both my daughter and I to have our headphones on as we listen to music or lectures or TV shows. When we aren’t listening to the same thing, we wear the headphones, so we don’t disturb each other. Well, except for when one of us laughs out loud or exclaims “What?!” We are not quiet listeners. Given all of this you can understand that sometimes it’s hard to get each other’s attention when we have a question or want to share some news or announce that the meal is ready. Some of these conversations are with the headphone, half on and half off, and we hit the pause button on whatever we are listening to. But other times we have set everything else aside and had deep conversations or we have taken turns catching each other up on what we have been doing or studying or watching. The important thing is taking time to listen without distraction when the conversation is important to one or both of us.
 
It absolutely amazes me that God can listen to all of us at the same time and fully participate and track every single conversation, not only what we say out loud but what we whisper to God in our heads. God’s capacity for listening is unique, but the real question for today is how well we listen to God. Listening is critical to any relationship. When it comes to understanding what God wants for us or asking God to guide us, this discernment process requires listening skills.
 
I think of what Jesus said in the midst of his teachings, what the NCV translates this way, “Let those with ears use them and listen.” (Matthew 13:9) Jesus often told those around him to listen. Jeremiah also shared many times that God’s people should listen. Jeremiah 5:21 states the concern, “Hear this message, you foolish people who have no sense. They have eyes, but they don’t really see. They have ears, but they don’t really listen.” The word listen appears in Jeremiah 76 times in the translation I reviewed. Melissa Spoelstra writes, “God wants His people to open their ears and listen to Him. God’s repetition of this theme tells us He doesn’t want us to miss this point.”[i] 
 
The Hebrew word “shama… means ‘to hear with attention or interest.’ Shama occurs over one thousand times in the Old Testament.” Listening is important to God, and notice this is not letting things go in one ear and out the other. Shama is attentive, serious listening, no headphones half on, half off.  You might have heard this Hebrew word mentioned with regard to the Shema. It’s the verse with which we started worship today. It’s the command to listen in Deuteronomy 6:4, one that is to be recited often, one posted at entryways or worn. The Shema is what is written on the scroll inside the little box mounted by my office door. I learned it as, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one God:” though I like this translation better, “Listen, Israel! The Lord our God is the only true God!” (CEV) Spoelstra quotes another source as saying “‘the Shema is the central prayer in the Jewish prayerbook (Siddur) and is often the first section of Scripture that a Jewish child learns.’” [ii] What completes the Shema is what Jesus called the greatest commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:5, NKJV)
 
As well as the Judeans should have known these verses, they did not listen to God’s message through the prophet Jeremiah. God allowed the drastic consequences we call the Babylonian exile to get their attention begging them to return to God. Their failure to listen comes up several times in Jeremiah. Spoelstra notes the following:
  1. They didn’t want to listen. (Jeremiah 6:10)
  2. They refused to answer God. (7:13)
  3. They were stubborn. (7:26)
  4. They were distracted by the world. (35:15)
  5. They were disobedient. (44:25) [iii]
She goes on to suggest, “To have open ears means to listen, respond, cooperate, maintain focus, and prove with your actions that you have heard what God is saying.”[iv] 
 
When we speak to a friend, a colleague, a family member, or even the person we are doing business with over the counter or on the phone, we want them to listen to us. We want to be taken seriously without distraction. We want to be heard and understood accurately. We expect some kind of response even to email or text messages. We hope that the one hearing us will take action if we have made a request. Why would God want any less when God speaks to us? God speaks to us not demanding tribute or servitude as a feudal lord or harsh taskmaster, though God is our sovereign king. But God’s primary motivation in speaking to us is great love. It’s the love of a creator who wants to stay in relationship with his creation, his children. God speaks to us to guide us, to teach us, to protect us, and just to enjoy our company. God still looks for us to listen intently and hopes for results.
 
So, how do we listen to God?  Spoelstra suggests one way is through our curiosity and seeking answers. She writes, “God wants us to use the brain He has given us to question, discuss, and work through things we don’t understand.”[v] This may mean exploring creation and learning more about our Creator in the process. We do this through science.
 
As you expect it will definitely mean reading God’s Word, but beyond just reading, it includes bringing our questions to the text and digging for answers through study. Spoelstra suggests excellent questions she uses as she reads scripture:
  1. “What will I learn about God – who [God] is, how [God] interacts with people, what the verses say about [God’s] character?
  2. “What will I learn about myself – how I approach or not approach [God], what [God] calls me to do or not to do, how [God] expresses His love to me, what keeps me from experiencing [God] more fully?
  3. “Is there anything that God is specifically saying about my current thoughts, attitudes, or actions?”[vi]
Spoelstra is an advocate for bringing our questions with us to scripture and for asking God our honest questions in any situation. When we ask, it makes sense to expect an answer. I agree with Spoelstra when she writes, “Regarding God’s answers to our inquiries. I think the problem too often is that we fail to ask, and when we do ask, we don’t really expect an answer.”[vii]
 
Spoelstra reminds us to talk to God not just about God. I’ve done a lot of teaching on prayer over my years of ministry, even long before I became clergy. Prayer is simply to talk with God. One of the important things I wanted to emphasize is two-way communication, both talking to God and listening to God. We can start with talking to God about our day, about our family and friends, about our concerns, etc. As I said earlier communication is vital to our relationship. So Spoelstra asks, “How close is your relationship with [God]? Do you tell [God] exciting news” When the world is falling apart around you, is [God] the one you run to for help and support? Do your calendar and bank account reveal that [God] is your closest friend?”[viii]  That last question may have taken you by surprise, but it goes back to the priorities we talked about last week. 
 
Spoelstra sees the intention of that close relationship in God’s words through Jeremiah 13:11, “As a loincloth clings to a man’s waist, so I created Judah and Israel to cling to me, says the Lord. They were to be my people, my pride, my glory—an honor to my name. But they would not listen to me.” (NLT) That loincloth was a linen undergarment wrapped around the hips from waist to mid-thigh. So it represents an intimate relationship with God, a daily necessity. The word translated as cling you may know better from Genesis 2:24 often said in a wedding service, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.” (NABRE) Again, this is an intimate relationship. The word is variously translated here as joined, united, cleave, hold fast and in Jeremiah as cleaves, clings, and holds tight. The point to be driven home here, is that we are not to let go of God, but hold tight with all our might. 
 
But in Jeremiah’s day the people let go of God. They stopped listening to God’s love messages and ignored God’s warnings. They forgot their history of God’s care for their ancestors. They lost the intimacy God wanted with them.  As with the many eras and cultures that have gone before us, we always stand in danger of doing the same.
 
Let me give you a couple illustrations from my own life. I had a friend who I got together with monthly for nearly 10 years. We would meet at a restaurant, enjoy a meal and catch up on each other’s lives, work, children, etc. But somehow, a couple years ago we stopped. I was busy and didn’t catch on that she was very ill. We had a brief exchange months later, but haven’t contacted each other for over a year now. As I write this, I know I need to do something about that! I used to get together with another friend, a colleague, but when he moved away, and I stopped going to conference, that communication also ended. In terms of human friendships, there is a saying that some are for a season, but I also know I am not good at keeping up with friends.
 
What if I treated God the same way? Is this perhaps how people slip away from our relationship with God? Not intentionally, but little by little, less attention over time until the gap is so big, we don’t know how to cross it?  This is why daily communication with God is so necessary, not only to express to God what’s going on with our lives, but also to hear what God wants to tell us. Listening is the second part of our two-way communication in prayer.
 
There are so many voices in this world vying for our attention. They come at us by radio, television, email, Facebook, phone, print, and more. It can be dizzying! How do we hear God’s voice in the midst of that cacophony? Jesus promised, “My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me.” (John 10:27) We want to recognize and respond to that voice.
 
Spoelstra invites us to “consider three insights God has for us in the Book of Jeremiah related to discerning which voices we should heed.”[ix] First, “Consider the moral character of the messenger.”[x] Jeremiah 23:9-16 gives a list of the morally lacking characteristics of false prophets to avoid. The list includes adultery, evil, abuse of power, ungodly behavior, despicable acts, leading people to sin, dishonesty, encouraging others to do evil, and making up everything they say.[xi] Her point is that a person’s message and life should match, or as my grandma used to say, “Pretty is as pretty does.” Spoelstra writes, “When we are listening to the voices of politicians, preachers, or individuals on TV, we need to evaluate their lives and see if they are in line with what we know about God and [God’s] character.”[xii] Knowing God’s character from what we read in scripture will also help us identify God’s voice amid the noise of the world.
 
The second point for discernment of the voices around us is to “evaluate the message to see if it lines up with God’s Word.”[xiii]  Here is yet another reason to make it a habit to study and know God’s Word in scripture. Just as experts learn how to identify a counterfeit bill by studying genuine bills, so we can learn to distinguish between God’s message and that of a false prophet by studying the original. Spoelstra proclaims, “God’s Word is alive and active. It may deal out severe truth at times, but wouldn’t we rather hear painful truth than comforting lies?”[xiv]  Paul wrote to Timothy that people would have itchy ears and listen to what they want to hear rather than to truth.[xv] But Spoelstra insists that “God cares more about our character than our comfort.”[xvi]  Sometimes God uses uncomfortable situations to get our attention. That is how God used the Babylonian invasion in Jeremiah’s day and may be how God is using the pandemic and Black Lives Matter along with other tense situations in our world today. Uncomfortable situations challenge us to grow.
 
To measure someone’s words by biblical standards when seeking God’s authentic message, means that we need to know God’s Word well, reading and studying it for ourselves, not just accepting twisted variations. A few us of us read “Half Truths” by Adam Hamilton. He takes common sayings people accept as biblical and shows where society has mixed up the wording and the meaning.  Taking the time for our own study may seem overwhelming, but reading God’s Word a little each day, looking up some scholarly interpretation on a regular basis, joining a Bible study group or reading a well written study book is worth the effort.
 
The third point for discerning God’s message is to “ask the right questions.”[xvii]  As we read and study with active rather than passive listening, we bring appropriate questions to the task. It’s like when a scientist poses a hypothesis and then asks questions and performs various tests to see whether or not it is accurate and true. A scientist does this to better understand the things of our world, find truths and laws that can be relied on in other scenarios. Scholars come to scripture with questions and tests to better understand and reveal the truths and laws God has set for us. If we only take a surface reading in one translation from our own cultural context, we may totally misinterpret what was originally intended.
 
Spoelstra suggests bringing the following questions to our study of scripture:
  • “What is being presented?
  • Does it line up with the whole of Scriptures?
  • What is the historical and cultural context?
  • What interpretations do biblical scholars/commentaries offer?
  • What does it tell me about God’s heart and character?
  • Where does this message need specific or general application in my life?”[xviii]
These are all excellent questions. For some of the answers you read additional interpretive material knowing that not all scholars will agree. For some personal answers you search your own thoughts praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
 
In a way the process of discernment is a dialog with God. We bring our concerns, our doubts, our questions all to God who patiently listens to us knowing the sincerity of our hearts. As a child, Melissa was taught Jeremiah 33:3 by a Sunday School teacher who said 3-3-3 was God’s phone number.[xix]  I read it to you right before the sermon. Let me read it to you again. “3 Call to me, and I will answer you. I will tell you great and mysterious things that you do not know.” God is waiting for us to ask; then God will reveal answers to us.  Jeremiah asked God his questions. Spoelstra writes, “Jeremiah approaches God with confidence, rehearsing characteristics about who God is and how [God] behaves. He asks specific questions. He expresses his frustrations over things that don’t make sense to him. He admits his own faults and asks God to correct him when he is wrong.”[xx] 
 
I don’t know about you, but as I look at situations in the world and in my own surroundings, I have a lot of questions. It’s not so much that I want God to explain everything to me; I don’t need to know everything. But I do want to know the right thing to do in various circumstances. I want to say the right thing when I preach, when I teach, when I’m working with wedding couples, when I’m talking with family or friends. I want God’s advice on my spending, my health, and even simple day to day tasks. I want my life to be guided by God, so I need to have good listening habits to discern God’s answers.
 
As I write this, I pray that God will guide us, and that we will listen attentively, with regard to the ongoing concerns related to COVID-19 and all that we struggle with globally because of it. I pray we will listen to God’s Word in scripture and from modern day prophets with regard to justice issues here in the United States and around the world. I pray that where injustice exists, we will be willing to change. I pray that as the Church globally, and as a congregation locally, we will bring our questions to God and sincerely, intently listen for God’s answers, not to save an institution, but to continue God’s work in the world and enhance the relationship between God and all people. I encourage you daily, to seek God’s Word, and listen intently for God’s answer.
 
AFFIRMATION                Apostle’s Creed, Ecumenical Version                             p. 14
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
 
PRAYERS                                                                                                 1 John 5:14-15
God of power and might, we trust in you.
As you stood with your people in crisis in the past,
As you fought to bring your captives home
When they turned back to you,
As you have watched over your people for millennia,
We pray for your grace to heal the wounds of our day.
We pray for areas of tension around the world:
Tension between North and South Korea,
Tension between India and China, and
Tension within the US.
We pray for police departments as they revise policies and training.
We pray for legislation toward a better future for all.
We pray for those still being diagnosed with COVID-19,
For families who have lost loved ones to this disease,
For those still seeking a cure and those still caring for the ill.
We pray for those making decisions about reopening including our Session.
We pray for those doing all the behind the scenes work of cleaning and sanitizing
To make our world safer for us all.
Keep us mindful in the midst of uncomfortable protocols
That it is a way to show love for one another as well as caring for ourselves.
For all these concerns and other needs we name in our hearts,
We seek your healing and grace, your wisdom and strength.
 
PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
Faithful God who blesses us,
In the midst of these difficulties, we pause to remember your mercy.
We give you thanks and praise for each new day,
And the fresh start it represents in our lives.
We thank you for keeping your promise to always be with us.
We thank you for the simple joys of living,
For the things that make us smile and the things that make us laugh out loud.
We thank you for our friends, our families, our neighbors, our colleagues.
We thank you for delicious foods, for clean water, for any good night’s sleep.
Lord, may we continue to praise your name
And count our blessings every day we draw breath.
And now with your church through the centuries in every nation, let us pray:
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power
And the glory forever. Amen.
 
CHARGE & BLESSING                                                              Jeremiah 29:11, NRSV
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.
 
May you truly listen to all the Lord has to say to you this week, reading God’s Word daily as God’s message of love to you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] Melissa Spoelstra, Jeremiah: Daring to Hope in an Unstable World, p. 1481 (using a Kindle copy, page # actually refer to Kindle location #)
[ii] p. 1512
[iii] p. 1538
[iv] p. 1543
[v] p. 1572
[vi] p. 1582, 1588
[vii] p.1649
[viii] p. 1663
[ix] p. 1757
[x] p. 1760
[xi] p. 1768
[xii] p.1785
[xiii] p. 1806
[xiv] p. 1822
[xv] 2 Timothy 4:3
[xvi] Spoelstra, p. 1867
[xvii] p. 1912
[xviii] p. 1930
[xix] p. 1966
[xx] p. 1984

Jeremiah lived 2600 years ago, but has as much to say to our world today as he did to Judah then. The Bible Study from which I am taking much of this series is 
Jeremiah: Daring to Hope in an Unstable World by Melissa Spoelstra. A Bible Study to accompany the sermons can be found at Faith Adventures.

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June 14 - Idolatry

6/13/2020

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You can watch the worship video by clinking on it.  You can also expand it to full screen.  Or just listen and follow along reading the text below.

Video


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SERVICE FOR THE LORD’S DAY
June 14, 2020
 
WORDS OF WORSHIP                                                            Jeremiah 32:17-19, CEB
17 Lord God, you created heaven and earth by your great power and outstretched arm; nothing is too hard for you! 18 You act with mercy toward thousands upon thousands, but you also bring the consequences of the fathers’ sins on their children after them. Great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord of heavenly forces, 19 marvelous are your purposes, and mighty are your deeds. You are aware of all the ways of humanity, and you reward us for how we live and what we do even now.       
 
GATHERING PRAYER                                                                                                     
God of mercy and grace, we need to hear your message of truth as well as a message of hope. As we listen and worship today, show us where we need to put away the things that have gotten in the way of our relationship with you. Show us what we need to change in our response to the needs of others. Give us your strength to be honest with ourselves and with you. May we, your people, turn fully back to you, for the sake of our world. Amen.
 
CONFESSION                                                                             from Jeremiah 14, CEB
To Judah in the day of Jeremiah, “10This is what the Lord proclaims about this people:
Since they have loved to wander off and haven’t restrained themselves, I won’t accept them. Now I will recall their wrongdoing and punish their sin.” Though Judah did not turn back to God, we can learn from their mistakes. Let us confess the sins of our own era as we hear these words of prayer from Jeremiah:
 
7Even though our sins testify against us, help us, Lord, for your name’s sake.
We have turned away from you and sinned against you time and again.
8 You are the hope of Israel, [and of our world today]
    its savior in times of trouble.
Why are you like a stranger in the land, like a tourist spending only the night?
9 Why are you like one taken by surprise, like a warrior unable to act?
[Why does it feel like you are distant, Lord.
Where are the answers to COVID-19, to racism, to violence?]
Yet you are in our midst, Lord; we are called by your name. Don’t give up on us. 
20 We acknowledge our sin, Lord, the wrongdoing of our ancestors,
        because we have sinned against you.
21 For your name’s sake, don’t reject us, don’t scorn your glorious throne.
Remember your covenant with us; don’t break it.
[But Lord in your mercy, help us also to keep covenant with you!]
 
PARDON                                                                                           Romans 8:1-3, CEB
“1 So now there isn’t any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 God has done what was impossible for the Law, since it was weak because of selfishness. God condemned sin in the body by sending his own Son to deal with sin in the same body as humans, who are controlled by sin.”  When we repent, it is through the grace and mercy of Jesus that our sins are forgiven.  Thanks be to God!
 
PASSING THE PEACE
May the peace of Christ be with you.
 
HYMN 
 
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION
Lord of justice and righteousness, let us hear your Word not only with our ears, but understand its message with our minds and be determined to change our hearts and our lives according to what we hear. Amen.
 
SCRIPTURE LESSONS                                                                                                    
This is only one chapter of many that talk about the idolatry and disobedience of Judah in the time of Jeremiah. 
 
                                                                                                               Jeremiah 7, CEB
7:1 Jeremiah received the Lord’s word: 2 Stand near the gate of the Lord’s temple and proclaim there this message: Listen to the Lord’s word, all you of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. 3 This is what the Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, says: Improve your conduct and your actions, and I will dwell with you in this place. 4 Don’t trust in lies: “This is the Lord’s temple! The Lord’s temple! The Lord’s temple!” 5 No, if you truly reform your ways and your actions; if you treat each other justly; 6 if you stop taking advantage of the immigrant, orphan, or widow; if you don’t shed the blood of the innocent in this place, or go after other gods to your own ruin, 7 only then will I dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave long ago to your ancestors for all time.
 
8 And yet you trust in lies that will only hurt you. 9 Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, sacrifice to Baal and go after other gods that you don’t know, 10 and then come and stand before me in this temple that bears my name, and say, “We are safe,” only to keep on doing all these detestable things? 11 Do you regard this temple, which bears my name, as a hiding place for criminals? I can see what’s going on here, declares the Lord. 12 Just go to my sanctuary in Shiloh, where I let my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. 13 And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, because you haven’t listened when I spoke to you again and again or responded when I called you, 14 I will do to this temple that bears my name and on which you rely, the place that I gave to you and your ancestors, just as I did to Shiloh. 15 I will cast you out of my sight, just as I cast out the rest of your family, all the people of Ephraim.
 
16 As for you, don’t pray for these people, don’t cry out or plead for them, and don’t intercede with me, for I won’t listen to you. 17 Can’t you see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18 The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough to make sacrificial cakes for the queen of heaven. And to offend me all the more, they pour out drink offerings to foreign gods. 19 But am I the one they are really offending? declares the Lord. Aren’t they in fact humiliating themselves? 20 Therefore, this is what the Lord God says: I’m going to pour out my fierce anger on this place, on humans and beasts, on the trees of the field and the crops of the fertile land. It will burn and not go out.
 
21 This is what the Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, says: Add your entirely burned offerings to your sacrifices and eat them yourselves! 22 On the day I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I didn’t say a thing—I gave no instructions—about entirely burned offerings or sacrifices. 23 Rather, this is what I required of them: Obey me so that I may become your God and you may become my people. Follow the path I mark out for you so that it may go well with you. 24 But they didn’t listen or pay attention. They followed their willful and evil hearts and went backward rather than forward. 25 From the moment your ancestors left the land of Egypt to this day, I have sent you all my servants the prophets—day after day. 26 But they didn’t listen to me or pay attention; they were stubborn and did more harm than their ancestors. 27 When you tell them all this, they won’t listen to you. When you call to them, they won’t respond. 28 Therefore, say to them: This nation neither obeys the Lord its God nor accepts correction; truth has disappeared; it has vanished from their lips.
 
29 Cut off your hair and cast it away;
    grieve on the well-traveled paths.
The Lord has rejected you
    and has cast off a generation that provokes his anger.
 
30 The people of Judah have done what displeases me, declares the Lord. They have corrupted the temple that bears my name by setting up their disgusting idols. 31 They have built shrines at Topheth in the Ben-hinnom Valley to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, although I never commanded such a thing, nor did it ever cross my mind. 32 So now the time is coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer speak of Topheth or the Ben-hinnom Valley, but the Carnage Valley. They will bury in Topheth until no space is left. 33 The corpses of this people will be food for birds and wild animals, with no one to drive them off. 34 I will silence the sound of joy and delight as well as the voice of bride and bridegroom in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, for the country will be reduced to a wasteland.
 
You can see there is an issue regarding true worship and worshipping fake gods and that it brings dire consequences. Centuries later Jesus had a conversation about true worship with the woman at the well:            
                                                                                        John 4, selected verses, CEB 
“If you recognized God’s gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would be asking him and he would give you living water.”
 
11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave this well to us, and he drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”
 
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”
…
21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you and your people will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You and your people worship what you don’t know; we worship what we know because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the time is coming—and is here!—when true worshippers will worship in spirit and truth. The Father looks for those who worship him this way. 24 God is spirit, and it is necessary to worship God in spirit and truth.”
 
25 The woman said, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one who is called the Christ. When he comes, he will teach everything to us.”
 
26 Jesus said to her, “I Am—the one who speaks with you.”
                                                                                                                                           
SERMON                                      Idolatry, Our Downfall
Many of us struggle with forgetfulness. We’ve joked about going into a room and forgetting why we went there. I do the same thing with websites. I can have tabs open on my web browser and forget what why I opened them. We go from parental moments to senior moments of forgetfulness when we can’t put a name and face together or figure out where we left our keys or our glasses. Of course, for some, the memory issues are far more serious and require special care.
 
There is another kind of forgetfulness we forget to even notice. That is forgetting God, forgetting to nurture and strength our relationship with God, forgetting God’s law and failing to be obedient to it, forgetting to worship God above all else. If I asked you about God’s Law, many would begin with the Ten Commandments. That’s the part of the Torah we know best. These commandments begin with God, putting God above all else in our relationships, and worshipping God faithfully.  Listen to the first four commandments from God’s Word:
 
“3 “Never have any other god.
4 Never make your own carved idols or statues that represent any creature in the sky, on the earth, or in the water.
5 Never worship them or serve them, because I, the Lord your God, am a God who does not tolerate rivals. I punish children for their parents’ sins to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. 6 But I show mercy to thousands of generations of those who love me and obey my commandments.
 
7 “Never use the name of the Lord your God carelessly. The Lord will make sure that anyone who carelessly uses his name will be punished.
 
8 “Remember the day of rest by observing it as a holy day. 9 You have six days to do all your work. 10 The seventh day is the day of rest—a holy day dedicated to the Lord your God. You, your sons, your daughters, your male and female slaves, your cattle, and the foreigners living in your city must never do any work on that day. 11 In six days the Lord made heaven, earth, and the sea, along with everything in them. He didn’t work on the seventh day. That’s why the Lord blessed the day he stopped his work and set this day apart as holy.
 
These commandments repeated through the generations are pretty clear that only God is God, and only God is to be worshipped. They are also clear that there will be consequences if God’s people put anything else in God’s place. But they did, and so do we.
 
As Melissa Spoelstra opens her chapter on idolatry in Jeremiah’s day, she shares a contrast in verses from Jeremiah 10 and something on the reality of Judah’s sin.
 
Jeremiah 10:15-16 states, “15 Idols are worthless; they are ridiculous lies!
    On the day of reckoning they will all be destroyed.
16 But the God of Israel is no idol!
    He is the Creator of everything that exists,
including Israel, his own special possession.
    The Lord of Heaven’s Armies is his name!” (NLT)
 
The historical fact is this: “King Jehoiakim reigned eleven years in Judah and sponsored idolatry. He strongly opposed Jeremiah’s message and ministry.”[i]
 
The king knew the Law and chose to ignore it. He knew God and chose to ignore God. King Jehoiakim’s father is the one who led many reforms and restored worship in Judah, yet the son went another direction. It happened often in their history. It happens in ours.
 
Maybe you know parents who have a sincere relationship with God, yet their children make other choices. Some of those choices are obviously bad: drugs or alcohol, violence, crime. The parents are heartbroken that their children have put these things ahead of what they were taught, ahead of loving God. We can understand that God is equally heartbroken when any of his children make such choices.
 
But other choices look just fine: work, family, a nice lifestyle, even church or community service.  What could be wrong with any of these? Unless, of course, they leave God out of the picture, or put God on a back burner. What if work or a nice house or even church become our god instead of God himself? OUCH!
 
Our Judeo-Christian heritage is all about remembering. We are called to remember the stories of God and God’s people in scripture. Many New Testament passages remember verses and stories from the Old Testament. Every year Jews celebrate Passover to remember God delivering them from slavery in Egypt. On Shavu’ot they remember God’s gift of the Law.  At the same times, during Holy Week Christians remember Christ giving his body and shedding his blood to forgive our sin; on Easter we remember His resurrection, at Pentecost we remember the gift of the Holy Spirit. Spoelstra says there are multiple references in Jeremiah to remembering or forgetting, and she suggests “God knows our tendency to forget and calls us to intentionally set patterns in our lives to help us remember Him against the backdrop of counterfeit gods screaming for our attention.” [ii]
 
God wants us to remember the covenant God made with us, that we are called to live as God’s people. But the things of this world demand our attention and pull us away from God. It can be as seductive as advertising telling us what the good life looks like and which products will get us there.  It can be as subtle as the to do list we never complete. Spoelstra calls us out for this, “If we call ourselves Christ-followers, then we should agree that our relationship with God should be the number one thing in our lives. Yet many times we forget what is most important because of the lure of things of this world.” [iii] We might blame the many things available in the world that pull our attention away from God, but it was just as bad in Bible times. She reminds us, “Even without television, magazines, the Internet, and other modern media, the people of [Judah] were so focused on the things of this earth that they forgot their God.”[iv]
 
In Jeremiah’s day, as in the time of Moses, the word idol referred to something created by a craftsman, some sort of statue made of wood or stone, ceramics or metal and worshipped as a god. It may have represented something in the natural world or a supernatural being like Baal or Astarte among the Canaanites. In our day, the word idol can refer to a blood and flesh human being. Think of the program “American Idol.” The South Korean musicians I enjoy are also called idols. But while we may consider it harmless to refer to celebrities of the music industry this way, it still bothers me. I know there are many things, including entertainers, who are given god-like status to their detriment and ours. Only God is GOD!
 
Spoelstra states the danger when she urges, “Do whatever it takes to remember the covenant you made the day you asked Christ to take first place in your life. If we aren’t intentional, counterfeits will replace God’s best for us, and…they never really satisfy.” [v]
 
Spoelstra shares a story I have also heard about losing the real thing to cling to a fake. The gist of the story is this: A little girl saved up for a whole year to buy a plastic pearl necklace. She loved her pearls and wore them every day. She didn’t care that they were plastic. They were pretty, and they were hers. But one day her daddy asked her, “Do you love me?” Well, of course she did and said so.  But then her daddy asked her to give him her pearls.  That she couldn’t do. She offered her baby doll instead.  Another day her daddy asked her again, “Do you love me? Will you give me your pearls?” Yes, she loved him, but she offered him another toy instead of her pearls. After this happened a few times, she got worried about why her daddy wanted her pearls, then one day she tearfully brought them forward and put them in her daddy’s hands. “Here, Daddy. This is for you.” With one hand her daddy took her fake pearls, and with the other hand he pulled a velvet box out of his pocket, one that contained the strand of real pearls he had purchased some time ago especially for her. Sometimes we cling to the fake things we buy or create for ourselves, and we miss out on the real relationship and love God offers us. God still loves us, but it makes God sad when we choose something else to have first place in our hearts.
 
There is another example of this in Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 2, God asks, “What wrong did your ancestors find in me that made them wander so far? They pursued what was worthless and became worthless.”[vi] Then God accuses, “I brought you into a land of plenty, to enjoy its gifts and goodness, but you ruined my land; you disgraced my heritage.”[vii] And later, “For my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me—the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!.”[viii]
 
Listen to this explanation of the cisterns from the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible,
“Cisterns in ancient agricultural society were dug for at least two reasons: to store grain and food, and to store rainwater. Stored rainwater was used especially during the dry season (approximately May through September). Cisterns were dug in natural rock, or the ancient Israelites at times took advantage of natural cave formations to turn them into cisterns. In many cases cisterns had to be lined with plaster to be waterproof. … Cisterns could suffer cracks in the lining; therefore, water would seep out and a precious source of life was lost. Jeremiah uses the cisterns here as a metaphor to explain how Israel has abandoned Yahweh, the source of all life, and has substituted him with other gods — i.e., cracked cisterns that cannot hold water.”[ix]
 
Now contrast these cracked cisterns that leak the collected rainwater with the living water Jesus offered the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. If you drink the water from the well or the cistern or the tap water in your kitchen, you will be thirsty again and back for more of the same. It is necessary in this human life, but it is not eternal. It cannot satisfy completely. There are many things that can temporarily quench our needs. Spoelstra writes, “We put our trust in people, jobs, status, money, and any number of things that may seem safer to trust than God. We dig in our heels with empty systems that aren’t really secure and make our own feeble attempts at feeling safe and loved. It’s all just a cracked cistern.”[x]  However, Jesus offers us living water. With this image of fresh flowing spring water, Jesus is offering His own Holy Spirit that Jesus would pour out on all come Pentecost.[xi]
 
The cracked cisterns in our lives, the idols we are tempted to worship, are “anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.”[xii]  This is Timothy Keller’s definition of an idol in his book Counterfeit Gods.  As stated before, these can be “an inherently bad object, practice, or habit” or it may be “a good person, thing, or practice that we elevate above God.”[xiii]  The first we need to cut out of our lives completely. The second we need to put back in proper perspective. In both cases we can surrender these things to God.
 
One physical practice toward prayerfully giving up something that as taken over our lives is to write them out on a piece of paper, then give up that paper. You can toss it in the trash or burn it in a campfire. We have sometimes written down what we need to surrender or be forgiven on notes we nail to the cross in the chapel on Ash Wednesday. Various retreats effectively use a similar exercise. Those same retreats often begin with a talk that helps attendees identify the things that have taken over God’s place in their lives. If we ask ourselves how we spend our time, our money, and our energy we can make an honest evaluation of our priorities, not just what we think or say they are, but what we actually invest our lives into. As we look at the answers to those questions, we can see what may have taken first place in place of God. That’s the idol we need to surrender.
 
Spoelstra identifies it, “Something crosses the line into idolatry based on its elevation in our heart and mind…the danger comes when these things become ultimate or deified.”[xiv] Keller wrote, “We know a good thing has become a counterfeit god when its demands on you exceed proper boundaries.”[xv]  Work becomes an idol when it threatens your health or relationships, or if getting ahead tempts you to break a rule or commit a crime. Love has become an idol, according to Keller, if you allow your lover to abuse or exploit you, if you choose to ignore the disease that a dysfunctional relationship has become.[xvi] 
 
In Jeremiah, chapters 7, which was our lesson for today, through chapter 10, which we quoted briefly earlier, are known as the Temple address. Like Jesus’ sermon on the mount, it is a collection of Jeremiah’s proclamations. These were likely given standing at the gate to the Temple. The Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible notes, “Standing at the temple gate guaranteed a large audience for Jeremiah’s proclamation. Gate areas in the ancient Near Eastern world were places where much human activity and traffic took place”[xvii] At this place in the inner court, Jeremiah’s message from God would be heard by many who came there to worship. Note also that worship can mean both serving and bowing down. If we worship an idol we may be bowing down in reverence to it or serving its purposes, but we are called to reverence and serve none but God.  In Jeremiah’s day, the Temple itself had become a sort of idol. People were chanting “The Lord’s Temple is here!”[xviii] as if that protected them from the coming Babylonian invasion. Eventually the Babylonians destroyed the Temple. Returning to God was the only thing that could have protected them, not the Temple, but they did not choose God.
 
Another sin of God’s people was that they failed to protect the most vulnerable whom God had told them repeatedly in the Law and the Prophets to protect – the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow. We still have a long way to go in this regard. King Jehoiakim was also guilty of murdering the innocent, a prophet named Uriah. [xix]  We struggle with this as well. In verse 9 Jeremiah accuses the people of theft, murder, adultery, lying, and worshipping Baal, pretty much breaking at least half of the Ten Commandments. He says in verse 10 that the Temple has become a den of thieves. This is what Jesus quotes when he clears out the Temple after his triumphal entry to Jerusalem. The Chapter continues with many details of how God’s people have turned to worshipping the counterfeit gods of their neighbors rather than keeping the Temple as God’s sacred place and worshipping God only.
 
There would be consequences for turning away from God to these counterfeits, just as there are consequences for us. In Jeremiah’s day God did not stop the Babylonians from overtaking Judah, carrying away not only the sacred objects and destroying Temple, but carrying away many Judean’s themselves and destroying their land. Others escaped to Egypt, the land of slavery where they had vowed never to return. Spoelstra points out what we may have missed, “God was willing to stop these consequences if they would stop their idolatrous ways.”[xx]  Will we learn that valuable lesson? She continues, “Just as our idolatry takes a different form today, the consequences of our idolatry also take shape differently in our culture.”[xxi] 
 
How do we turn things around? Spoelstra suggests we look in the mirror. As any good counselor or life coach will tell you, the only person you can change is rourself. But as we do, “As we take steps of obedience toward God and realize the ramifications of our personal idolatry, it causes a ripple effect to those in our spheres of influence.”[xxii] We can each take an honest look at our own life, then put God and God’s will first in every area of our lives. Sometimes we think the things in our lives that have taken God’s place aren’t that serious, so we don’t bother to change. Looking at her own life, Melissa Spoelstra writes, “my personal idolatry, the apathy in my spirit, the missed opportunities, and the ultimate consequences on my relationships do affect me.”[xxiii]
Yes, Jesus has already died on the cross and forgiven us. That doesn’t excuse us to continue in attitudes and behaviors that are against God’s best intentions for us. She states, “We justify our bad habits, our consumer attitudes, our selfishness, and our idols just as the people of [Judah] did.”[xxiv] 
 
So, what does Jeremiah warn us not to do? As noted earlier, our greed must not allow us to ignore the needs of the immigrant, orphan, or widow, the marginalized and vulnerable of our society. Spoelstra easily puts it in 21st century terms that fit most white citizens in the United States, “We live in a First-World bubble of privilege and excess.”[xxv]  She confesses seeing the difference between what her family takes for granted like ice cream or cell phones as compared to children she met on a mission trip to Guatemala who eat maybe one bowl of rice in a day and have worms in their feet, because they have no shoes. It’s a tough wake up call. So are many statistics around the world that show us the needs in terms of clean water, nutrition, medicines, safety, employment, housing, education, and so much more we take for granted. Spoelstra admits, “We can’t ‘fix it’” but she is convinced God doesn’t want us to ignore the needs, that we can do something![xxvi] She quotes Proverbs 21:13, “Those who close their ears to the cries of the poor will themselves call out but receive no answer.”  It reminds me of Jesus saying, “Not everybody who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will get into the kingdom of heaven. Only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter.”[xxvii] 
 
Jeremiah talked about the greed that kept people from caring for the vulnerable in his day. In Jeremiah 6:13-14 we read:
 
“13 Everyone, great and small, tries to make money dishonestly; even prophets and priests cheat the people. 14 They act as if my people's wounds were only scratches. ‘All is well,’ they say, when all is not well.”
 
And in Jeremiah 8:10-11, this is repeated with the consequences that what they own now will be given away, because they have neglected these wounds among their people.
 
What does that say to us? There is a reason that #MeToo and Black Lives Matter and other movements have had to take drastic measures to grab our attention and hopefully lead not only to legislation and policy changes, but to change our attitudes and behaviors. We too often think “it’s not my problem, so how important can it be? It’s only a superficial wound.” We have ignored the deep wounds that generations have caused in terms of race, gender, nationality, economic status, sexual orientation, and more. By not correcting the mistakes of our ancestors, we have perpetuated them; we have let the wounds fester. God will not sit still if we continue to ignore his commandments to love and respect all of God’s children.
 
While Jeremiah talks about our failure to care for others, especially the vulnerable, he also condemns our greed. About Jeremiah’s day, Spoelstra writes, “Everyone was consumed with the need for stuff. Those who had a lot wanted more. Those who had little wanted more.”[xxviii]  It’s classic “keeping up with the Jones,” and we are just as guilty yet today. Advertising, home shopping networks, online stores all encourage us to buy, buy, buy! I’m as guilty as anyone else. It’s a miracle I put any of my stimulus check in savings, but that was to replace the savings I had already spent on other things. I want nice things. I want convenient things. Who doesn’t? But it gets out of control. Spoelstra reminds us, “It’s not about the things themselves, …it’s about the place they take in our hearts. God wants to give us good gifts but not to have those gifts take priority over Him.” [xxix]
 
Our own desire to have more is another wound we ignore, this time in ourselves. “When we settle for stuff to fulfill us, it’s like putting a bandage over a bloody, gaping wound. It’s a superficial treatment. Sin is the mortal wound that separates us from [God]. We need Christ, not more stuff.”[xxx]  This is Spoelstra’s take on consumerism taken to greedy extremes. Instead, God expects good stewardship of all gifts, all the resources God makes available to us.
 
Jeremiah criticized the people of his day for borrowing the wrong things from the cultures around them. He delivered this message from God, “Don’t follow the ways of the nations.”[xxxi]  It included astrology and making idols. But such things were foolish. They did not make the heavens and the earth. They do not control the rains or storms.  “They are a delusion, a charade; at the appointed time they will vanish!”[xxxii]
Only God is the Creator, the Almighty, the Ultimate and Eternal God.
 
Those in Jeremiah’s day were looking to outside influences worshipped by neighboring cultures to save them from desperate circumstances without recognizing they had gotten themselves into these consequential situations. Others in the Bible tried to manage their own agendas rather than waiting on God’s plan and timing. Sarah sought a child by having Abraham sleep with Hagar. Rebecca coached Jacob to trick Isaac and receive the blessing intended for Esau. They tried to fulfill God’s promises by their own means.
 
Whether it is putting our trust in society or our own schemes, trusting these idols is like Jeremiah’s phrase, “putting a scarecrow in a cucumber or melon patch.” [xxxiii]  As Spoelstra learned from her grandfather, melons and cucumbers grow on vines along the ground with plenty of leafy cover. You don’t really see much of the fruit from above, but you have to feel under the leaves to find them. The scarecrow is useless, because God already hid the fruit from the crows.  In the same way, many of our worldly schemes are useless, because God already has a plan to accomplish his purpose. Sometimes our ideas get in his way. Instead we need to listen to God and wait on God’s purpose. We are to cooperate with it, but not to supplant it.
 
That leaves us with the question of how we listen for God’s will, but that is next week’s lesson. In the meantime, this week, I urge you to take an honest look at your own lives, the only ones you have the power to change. Where has greed or convenience caused you to consume more than you need? Where has your lifestyle put others or creation at risk? Who do you intentionally or unintentionally judge others and consider them less worthy? What do you trust more than God or prioritize above God? Once you have identified these difficult answers, what will you do about it? Choosing to ignore our sin and idolatry will have consequences, but choosing to change will have a healthy and positive ripple effect not only for ourselves but in the world around us. Put your trust in God, and put God first in your life!
 
AFFIRMATION                Apostle’s Creed, Ecumenical Version                             p. 14
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
 
PRAYER OF LAMENT                   (adapted from Book of Common Worship,PCUSA)
Gracious God, by day and night we pour out our prayer to you.
We are crying out for justice, yearning for what is right, longing for your peace.
Come quickly to help us, O God; save those who call upon your name.
 
We hear of hateful violence and senseless killing,
And your people cry “How long?” 
We feel the suffering, sorrow, and shame of the oppressed
And your people cry “How long?” 
We fear that justice will again be delayed or denied
And your people cry “How long?”
We recognize patterns of privilege and systems of discrimination
And your people cry “How long?”
We see your creation destroyed by carelessness and greed
And your people cry “How long?”  
We weep for the victims of COVID-19,
We grieve in the aftermath of rioting and police brutality,
We pray for an end to racial profiling and discrimination,
And your people cry “How long?”
We long for a day when all people will be treated
With the respect and dignity deserved by all of God’s children
No matter their race or gender, status or creed, nationality or background.
And your people cry “How long?”


Gracious God, keep us working and praying for the day
when your justice will roll down like waters,
and your righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Replenish our strength and stir up our hope
as we look for signs of your coming reign.
And fill us with the peace that passes understanding--
the deep peace of Jesus Christ our Savior,
in whose holy name we pray. Amen.
                                                                       
PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING                          (also from Book of Common Worship)
Eternal God, creator of the world and giver of all good,
we thank you for the earth, our home, and for the gift of life.
We praise you for your love in Jesus Christ, who came to heal this broken world,
who died rejected on the cross, and rose triumphant from the dead.
Because he lives, we live to praise you, our God forever.
Gracious God, who called us from death to life, we give ourselves to you;
and with the church through all ages 
we thank you for your saving love in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power
And the glory forever. Amen.
 
CHARGE & BLESSING                                                                  Jeremiah 29:11, GW
“I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. They are plans for peace and not disaster, plans to give you a future filled with hope.”
 
Go in peace to serve the Lord our God
 and work for his justice and righteousness in this world.         

​--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                      

[i] Melissa Spoelstra, Jeremiah: Daring to Hope in an Unstable World, p. 769
[ii] p. 781
[iii] p. 846
[iv] p. 847
[v] p. 894
[vi] Jeremiah 2:5, CEB
[vii] Jeremiah 2:7, CEB
[viii] Jeremiah 2:13, CEB
[ix] From Bible Gateway Plus Study Bibles found at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%202%3A13&version=NLT
[x] Spoelstra, p. 944
[xi] Orthodox Study Bible notes, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+4%3A14&version=NLT
[xii] Spoelstra quotes Timothy Keller from Counterfeit Gods, on her p. 952
[xiii] Spoelstra, p. 952
[xiv] p. 989
[xv] Quoted by Spoelstra, p. 989
[xvi] ibid
[xvii] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+7&version=NLT
[xviii] Jeremiah 7:4, CEB
[xix] Refers to Jeremiah 26:20-23
[xx] Spoelstra, p.1064
[xxi] p. 1084
[xxii] p. 1092
[xxiii] p. 1168
[xxiv] p. 1177
[xxv] p. 1230
[xxvi] ibid
[xxvii] Matthew 7:21, CEB
[xxviii] Spoelstra, p, 1279
[xxix] p. 1279
[xxx] p. 1287
[xxxi] Jeremiah 10:2a, CEB
[xxxii] Jeremiah 10:15, CEB
[xxxiii] Jeremiah 10:5
​
Jeremiah lived 2600 years ago, but has as much to say to our world today as he did to Judah then. The Bible Study from which I am taking much of this series is 
Jeremiah: Daring to Hope in an Unstable World by Melissa Spoelstra. A Bible Study to accompany the sermons can be found at Faith Adventures.
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June 7 - Surrender

6/6/2020

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You can watch the worship video by clinking on it.  You can also expand it to full screen.  Or just listen and follow along reading the text below.

Video

SERVICE FOR THE LORD’S DAY
June 7, 2020
 
WORDS OF WORSHIP                    The Beatitudes                    Matthew 5:3-12, NET
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things about you falsely on account of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because your reward is great in heaven, for they persecuted the prophets before you in the same way. 
 
GATHERING PRAYER                                                                                                     
God of mercy and grace, we gather to worship and seek your wisdom in a time when our world is desperately in need of you. We can’t fully understand the violence that has erupted in cities around our nation. We are still straining to cope with pandemic. The world’s patience has worn thin, as people who are called to help one another have instead brought harm. We want to say, as our spiritual ancestors did, “How long, O Lord, how long?” 
 
As we read again the Words Jesus spoke, we wonder, how long must those who have been persecuted wait for justice?  Where are the peacemakers? Who will show mercy? When will we live in righteousness? How long must we mourn? Today, Lord God, as we begin to learn about the life and message of your weeping prophet Jeremiah, as we also weep for your people, for our world, help us begin to find answers, to find hope, to find peace.  Amen.
 
CONFESSION AND PARDON                                               Jeremiah 3:12-13,15 GW
God commanded Jeremiah to call the people to confession and repentance with these words, “‘Come back, unfaithful Israel.
    It is the Lord speaking.
        I will no longer frown on you
            because I’m merciful,’ declares the Lord.
        ‘I will no longer be angry with you.
13 Admit that you’ve done wrong!
    You have rebelled against the Lord your God.
    You have given yourself to strangers under every large tree.
    You have not obeyed me,’ declares the Lord.’”
Let us also make our confession to God with repentant hearts.
 
We confess, O God, that we have also given ourselves to the ways and teachings of the world, rather than remain faithful to Your teachings in Your Word. We are guilty of turning a blind eye to injustice, of silence when we should have spoken up for what is right. We are guilty of cowering in fear rather than reaching out to protect. We are guilty of assuming everything is okay, if things are going well for us, without a thought to what others are suffering. We are guilty of stereotyping and of speaking in generalities rather than taking a genuine look at individuals. We are guilty of assuming the best of some and the worst of others without acknowledging that everyone is capable of doing right, and everyone also does wrong at times. We are guilty of sometimes taking the easy path when it isn’t the right choice. Lord, help us see where we go wrong, individually and corporately. Help us not only admit our sin, but Lord, help us be willing to change. The world will not change around us, if we do not change ourselves. 
 
God promised Jeremiah, “15 I will give you shepherds after my own heart. They will be shepherds who feed you with knowledge and insight.” The One God sent was God’s own Son, Jesus, who became our Good Shepherd. But Jesus also willingly become the sacrificial Passover lamb, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. It is through that gift of Jesus that we are saved, and our sins forgiven.
 
Thanks be to God!
 
PASSING THE PEACE
May the peace of Christ be with you.
 
HYMN 
 
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION                                                     Jeremiah 15:16, NET
Jeremiah once said, “As your words came to me, I drank them in,
and they filled my heart with joy and happiness
because I belong to you, O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies.”
Mighty God, may we too drink in your words and devour them
That we might find in them the nourishment we need to live. Amen.
 
SCRIPTURE LESSONS
 Jeremiah 1, GW
1 These are the words of Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah. He was one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. 2 The Lord spoke his word to Jeremiah when King Josiah, son of Amon, was in his thirteenth year as king of Judah. 3 The Lord also spoke when Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, was king of Judah and during the 11 years that Zedekiah, another son of Josiah, was king of Judah. The Lord continued to speak to Jeremiah until the people of Jerusalem were taken away into captivity in the fifth month of the year.
 
4 The Lord spoke his word to me,
 
5 “Before I formed you in the womb,
    I knew you.
Before you were born,
    I set you apart for my holy purpose.
    I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”
 
6 I, Jeremiah, said, “Almighty Lord, I do not know how to speak. I am only a boy!”
 
7 But the Lord said to me, “Don’t say that you are only a boy. You will go wherever I send you. You will say whatever I command you to say. 8 Don’t be afraid of people. I am with you, and I will rescue you,” declares the Lord.
 
9 Then the Lord stretched out his hand and touched my mouth. The Lord said to me,
 
“Now I have put my words in your mouth.
10 Today I have put you in charge of nations and kingdoms.
    You will uproot and tear down.
    You will destroy and overthrow.
    You will build and plant.”
 
11 Again the Lord spoke his word to me and asked, “Jeremiah, what do you see?”
 
I answered, “I see a branch of an almond tree.”
 
12 Then the Lord said to me, “Right. I am watching to make sure that my words come true.”
 
13 Again the Lord spoke his word to me and asked, “What do you see?”
 
I answered, “I see a boiling pot, and its top is tilted away from the north.”
 
14 Then the Lord said to me,
 
“Disaster will be poured out from the north
    on all those who live in the land.
15 I am going to call every family and kingdom from the north,”
    declares the Lord.
        “They will come, and they will set up their thrones
            at the entrance of Jerusalem’s gates.
        They will attack all the walls around the city
            and all the cities of Judah.
16 I will pass sentence on my people because of all their wickedness.
    They abandoned me,
        burned incense to other gods,
            and worshiped what their hands have made.
17 Brace yourself, Jeremiah!
    Stand up, and say to them whatever I tell you to say.
    Don’t be terrified in their presence,
        or I will make you even more terrified in their presence.
18 Today I have made you like a fortified city,
    an iron pillar, and a bronze wall.
        You will be able to stand up to the whole land.
        You will be able to stand up to Judah’s kings,
            its officials, its priests, and all the common people.
19         They will fight you, but they will not defeat you.
            I am with you, and I will rescue you,” declares the Lord
                                                                       
2 Peter 1:19-21, NET
We possess the prophetic word as an altogether reliable thing. You do well if you pay attention to this as you would to a light shining in a murky place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you do well if you recognize this: No prophecy of scripture ever comes about by the prophet’s own imagination, 21 for no prophecy was ever borne of human impulse; rather, men carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
 
Matthew 5:17-19, NLT
17 “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose. 18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God’s law will disappear until its purpose is achieved. 19 So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But anyone who obeys God’s laws and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
 
SERMON                                                        
Today we begin a deeper look into messages from the prophet Jeremiah. To be honest, I had intended to preach on Elijah’s story this summer, but God kept pointing me to Jeremiah instead, and Elijah stories kept sneaking into other sermons. As I read through the first round of study for Jeremiah this week, in light of events that have taken over the news on every level, I understood why God said Jeremiah. While the issues are not exactly the same, the level of turmoil certainly is.
 
I’ve had this opening thought in my head all week. We are a nation at war. The world has been fighting COVID-19, but other issues pushed to the forefront in recent days as well. We are not fighting terrorists from elsewhere; we are fighting ourselves, and we need to fight the attitudes and assumptions we harbor within us. None of this will be easy. We need the strength and hope found in our faith to face the hard work ahead of us.
 
When Melissa Spoelstra wrote this Bible study in 2014, she said, “When we look around at today’s world, hope usually isn’t the first word that comes to mind. In many ways we live in an age of uncertainty. If we allow our thoughts to linger on things such as the national debt, the pesticide-covered food supply, the condition of the environment, the increase in violence toward even our most innocent, and the looming moral bankruptcy of our culture, we can get pretty discouraged.”[i]  I read this and thought sadly, not much has changed. Let me give you a glimpse of where she is headed with this study. “Living in such an unstable world, we tend to have a propensity to worry. Other choices of fear, doubt, and bitterness call us to select their posture when life gets overwhelming. Yet God offers us another choice. Through Him we can dare to hope – not in the government, our family, a job, or even the church. God calls us to surrender our wills to His and rest our hope in Him alone.” Again, as I read her words, I knew she is right.
 
This is what we continually need to do. Jeremiah lived in a time devoid of hope and yet, he found hope in God’s messages and promises. We do that, however, not claiming to determine the agenda but surrendering our own will and privilege to seek and do the will of God as found in God’s Word.  In that process, Spoelstra confesses how easy it was to forget that message even while writing this study. It’s not hard to picture her illustration of losing focus at a stop light trying to gather up what had spilled from her purse. Bumping the car ahead of her was a needed wake up call. She reflected then, “I need to pay attention to really important things (like keeping my foot on the brake) instead of letting a small distraction (like my purse contents) put me in danger of hurting myself and others.”[ii] We do get distracted my minor details of daily life and lose sight sometimes of the big picture of God’s plans and intentions. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t deal with daily needs, but that we should keep them in perspective. Wake up calls came in Jeremiah’s day and continue to come in ours. We have a choice about what we will do with them.
 
So, what were the major issues of Jeremiah’s day? Spoelstra writes, “This prophet also found himself in a nation known for materialism, economic crisis, political globalization, and religious plurality.” [iii] The Cultural Backgrounds Bible notes, “Jeremiah was born into a world of violent changes and intense power struggles.”[iv]
 
Power was shifting from Assyria (who had conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE) to Babylon (a threat to the southern kingdom of Judah where Jeremiah lived). In the short period between the two, Judah had some independence. Under young King Josiah, the Temple was cleaned, and the scrolls of Torah found. This led to major reforms in the life and faith practices of that nation. However, Babylon began to fill the power vacuum left by Assyria on the international scene surrounding Judah.
 
Jeremiah’s “ministry lasted some forty-plus years, as he proclaimed unpopular truths during the reigns of Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. The first group of Jewish exiles was taken to Babylon in 597 BCE. Then in 586 BCE the Southern Kingdom came to an end when Babylon conquered Judah and carried many more Jews into captivity. Jeremiah remained behind in Judah but was later taken to Egypt against his will, where he continued his prophetic ministry and probably spent the remainder of his life (Jeremiah 43-44).”[v]
 
The book of Jeremiah and Lamentations (attributed to Jeremiah) “show how God looks at a culture which knew Him and deliberately turned away.”[vi]  I have to ask, are we as a society any different? Spoelstra states that through Jeremiah God “continually asks [his people] to place their hope in Him instead of political alliances, material possessions, and people.”[vii] I suspect God wants us to hear the same message today. She goes on say, “if we are willing to delve beneath the surface of God’s warnings to His heart of love behind, we find the underlying message: that hope-filled living is possible even in an unstable world.” [viii]  This is what I hope we will gain from this study, a godly perspective on how to live as God’s people in an unstable world.
 
Spoelstra was not kidding when she wrote, “Finding God’s hope filled plan for us will require an openness to change. That’s why we begin with surrender.”[ix]  She honestly notes that “Jeremiah’s message was not a popular one. Unfortunately, the people of Judah did not see the hope in God’s plans for them, and they did not heed Jeremiah’s warnings. Their failure to make life changes in light of God’s call to hope in Him led to exile.”[x] My prayer matches hers, ‘that we will not be like them.”
 
Jeremiah spoke to God’s people 2600 years ago, yet his words are still relevant. He wasn’t that different from us. He got discouraged and depressed when he looked at the conditions around him, not just the outside concerns, but the people’s lack of concern for matters of justice and their lack of obedience to God’s will. In spite of Josiah’s reforms, they again became indifferent and uncommitted to God.
 
Jeremiah wasn’t perfect either. When God called him into a prophetic ministry to be God’s spokesman, Jeremiah made excuses as have so many others, Moses or Jonah for example. Jeremiah’s excuse was his youth. Behind that were his own fears. However, “7 The Lord responded, ‘Don’t say, ‘I’m only a child.’ Where I send you, you must go; what I tell you, you must say. 8 Don’t be afraid of them, because I’m with you to rescue you,’ declares the Lord.” [xi]  
 
Some of us have been wrestling with speaking out against what is wrong in our world. We don’t want to offend anyone. We don’t want anyone to retaliate against us. We aren’t sure we see the whole picture. We might misunderstand or be misunderstood. We might not have the right words.  We aren’t sure anyone will listen to us or that we have the relationship base upon which to take our stand. But our excuses don’t really excuse us from our hesitancy, if God is the one urging us to speak. However, I must admit there can still be consequences in terms of human reactions.  There were for Jeremiah as well. Still when it is God calling us to speak, I trust that God will give us the words, as God did for Jeremiah.
 
Surrender means giving up our excuses. Surrender means a willingness to change. As I think about the justice issues we are facing again right now or others we still wrestle with from past protests and others we still need to address, I see the truth of this statement, “The changing of a culture starts with the individuals who are living within it.” I’ve heard echoes of this statement in many ways recently, but it also takes me back to the classic quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Apparently Ghandi didn’t actually say this though it is usually attributed to him. However, it is still good advice whoever originated it. On Joseph Ranseth’s website he suggests becoming the change will cause us to do three things.
  1. “It stops us from judging others;
  2. It replaces complaining about others with reflection on self;
  3. It stirs us into taking action within the only thing in the world over which we have any control: ourselves.”[xii]
I see these as three significant points in response to the violence and fear and injustice and disarray of our world today. One more point on surrender. It isn’t a one and done kind of thing. Surrender, in a sense of our surrender to God’s will, is a daily discipline, sometimes several times a day!
 
Spoelstra is clear that as God called Jeremiah, so Jesus also calls us to “go when and where He sends, speak His words, and prepare for action without fear.”[xiii] The question isn’t our excuses or fears. I like how she puts this, “God knows His callings can be scary. He doesn’t give us marching orders and a slap on the back and then fling us out to figure things out on our own.”[xiv] God has promised multiple times in the Bible to be with us. The real question we need to ask is whether it is God who is calling and have we heard God accurately.  This is an issue of discernment.
 
Jeremiah heard God’s message and spoke it obediently. But that doesn’t mean he never had questions or doubts. We need to learn from Jeremiah who “talked with God from a very honest place. When he was confused, he asked questions. When he didn’t understand, he rehearsed the character of God.”[xv]  Think about that. Honesty with ourselves and with God is absolutely necessary though sometimes we have to work at discovering our own truth. When truth is unfavorable our minds work hard to hide it even from ourselves. When we are confused about God’s truth and message, there is nothing wrong with asking questions. My favorite discernment prayer as some of you know is this, “God, make it so clear I can’t miss it!” I often encourage people to pray for discernment or for clarity. Abraham asked God questions. Elijah did. Jeremiah did. It’s okay for us to do so. What does it mean to rehearse the character of God? Think about how you understand God’s character from what you know of the Bible and what you have experienced of God in your own life. As you are trying to discern God’s will, one thing you can do is ask if this is something God would want, something God would ask; is it in line with God’s character?
 
Spoelstra highlights another aspect of discernment I find helpful. She shares from her own experience, “When I finish making excuses and arguing with Him and finally surrender to His voice, I have a peace in my soul that literally feels like a weight has been lifted. I smile when I should frown. He holds me together when I should be falling apart.”[xvi]  Peace that comes not from the circumstances but in spite of the circumstances can come when we are sincerely doing our best to be obedient and surrender to God’s will.
 
Confirmation of God’s will can come directly as when Gideon laid out a fleece asking God to make it wet when the ground was dry or dry when the ground was wet.[xvii]  Confirmation can also come through words of scripture, a song, something said by a friend or even in a sermon. Sometimes it comes through circumstances. Spoelsta says it is for her “always too clear to be a coincidence.”[xviii] We want discernment regarding God’s will before we submit to it in humble obedience. One of the promises Jesus made regarding the Holy Spirit it that it would guide us into all truth.[xix] Let’s be sure we lean into that promise and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us in all we say and do.
 
Jeremiah’s message was not what the people wanted to hear, because what was coming was the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. No one wanted to accept that reality. As Spoelstra puts it, “Babylon was nipping at Judah’s heels, demanding tribute, taking their best people (like Daniel), and threatening total destruction. Jeremiah’s suggestion to fully give in didn’t sit well with a government that was trying to rally its fighting men and boost morale.”[xx]
 
There are messages we don’t want to hear or admit. There are messages to which we have mixed reactions. In terms of the local congregation, we don’t want to hear that we have a leadership gap, that our resources are stretched thin, that we have decisions we need to make, that the future will require more change. It’s been tough, and we are tired.
 
With regard to COVID-19, most didn’t want to hear we have to stay inside quarantined during the pandemic. We didn’t want to give up going to work, going out to eat, hanging out with friends, spending time with family. Others were worried about going to work in the midst of the risks. Some of us are unsure about going out in public now. 
 
In response to the killings that have sparked public protest, many don’t want to hear that some police officers harm rather than protect, that reform is needed in many police departments and other agencies. Others have waited a long time for the rest of us to admit that need. We don’t want to hear that we are privileged. We don’t want to hear that we are racist. We don’t always want to do the hard work of learning where the injustice still exists and then doing something to change it. That means making an honest assessment of and doing the tough work to change internal attitudes and assumptions we have grown up with subconsciously. It also means taking a hard look at the systems of society that were established and maintained on similar assumptions and reforming them as needed.
 
Like the people of Jeremiah’s day, we don’t want to hear any bad news, but it is necessary to hear truth, if we are going to make intelligent decisions and move forward.
 
Here is how Spoelstra words it, “the message of surrender is not as popular as the message of victory. We want God to fix our circumstances and tell us everything is going to work out.”[xxi] We continually tell each other it’s going to be fine. But things will not always be okay. Bad things will happen. People will make mistakes and bad choices. We know this even if we don’t want to hear it. But here’s the really tough part for many of us, “While sometimes God chooses to intervene …other times He calls us to surrender. Ultimately, He gives us victory through that surrender. He teaches us things, develops our character, and draws us close to Him through our struggles.”[xxii]
 
In the midst of the chaos in our world right now, we have opportunities to come to God, to learn, and to become better people. God did not cause the circumstances we find ourselves in, but sometimes God allows it, as he did both the Assyrian and Babylonian takeovers. God can use the tough times to teach us lessons so easy to ignore when everything seems to be going well. Spoelstra’s take on the Babylonian exile is classic, “God allowed the people of Judah to face destruction and captivity in order to help them see their ‘barrenness’ and how far they had drifted from Him.” [xxiii]
 
Spoelstra warns us honestly that “Delivering and obeying God’s message of surrender takes faith and obedience. And once we’ve taken that step, it is often tested by fire.” [xxiv]  Jeremiah’s life also demonstrated the risk that comes with obedience and faithfulness to God’s message. In one case Jeremiah was jailed in a cistern. This was a pit in the rocky ground, covered with plaster, used to collect rainwater. In drought it would be dry or in some seasons just muddy. If you read Jeremiah 38, his punishment for speaking an unpopular truth was to be lowered by rope into a muddy cistern.
 
You know the Apostle Paul was often on the run, spent years in jail, and was eventually killed for speaking God’s Word. From my United Methodist history, I know sometimes John Wesley was run out of town after being tarred and feathered if his sermon was unpopular. You can think of other examples from our lifetime. Martin Luther King Jr. comes to mind.  Jesus knew our call was not to an easy path, yet he said to his followers then and to us today, ““Those who want to come with me must say no to the things they want, pick up their crosses every day, and follow me.”[xxv]  But Spoelstra also notes, “Jeremiah learned that surrendering to God brings peace and purpose even in the midst of terrifying circumstance.”[xxvi]
 
God may call us to risk taking an unpopular stand, yet God does not abandon us in the midst of that. Not everyone will have the same call. For some it will be to speak out in public. For some it will be finding the courage to disagree with a friend or family member and explain to them why you think differently than they do. For some it will be to participate in a peaceful protest. For others it will be finding creative expressions of what we believe is right. For some it will be working publicly on justice issues. For others it will be seeking to change systems toward justice working behind the scenes. For some it will be reading or listening more with a willingness to change our own opinions, words, and behaviors. For others it will mean becoming better informed on issues and realities before we vote in the Fall.  Whether or not we answer God’s call is a choice we each must make.
 
Let me end today with these words from Jeremiah about such a choice. This is Jeremiah 17:5-8, NLT.
 
5 This is what the Lord says:
“Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans,
    who rely on human strength,
    and turn their hearts away from the Lord.
6 They are like stunted shrubs in the desert,
    with no hope for the future.
They will live in the barren wilderness,
    in an uninhabited salty land.
 
7 “But blessed are those who trust in the Lord
    and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.
8 They are like trees planted along a riverbank,
    with roots that reach deep into the water.
Such trees are not bothered by the heat
    or worried by long months of drought.
Their leaves stay green,
    and they never stop producing fruit.
 
May we become such trees in the wilderness, stable, nourished, vibrant, and productive[xxvii]drawing deep from the living water of Jesus Christ, refreshed by the breeze of the Holy Spirit, as we seek to know and serve the Lord, our God.
 
AFFIRMATION                Apostle’s Creed, Ecumenical Version                             p. 14
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
 
PRAYERS
Loving God, we come before you
trusting in your steadfast love that endures forever,
and in your peace that is beyond our understanding.
We need both.
We live in a nation and a world torn apart
Struggling to battle disease, but also human prejudice.
 
We mourn with the family and friends
Of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor
And countless others whose names we do not know.
We pray for those tasked with reforming policy,
So that officers can do their job appropriately and safely
For themselves and for all they are charged to protect.
We pray for justice in court systems,
So that those who have caused harm will be corrected,
And those who are innocent will not suffer more.
 
We remember Tiananmen Square
And we pray for fresh justice between Hong Kong and China.
 
We pray for cooperation around the world as we continue
To fight the battle against COVID-19.
We continue to pray for those in health care professions,
And now for those going back to work in other industries.
We pray for the many whose jobs and businesses are gone,
That they will find new ways to work and meet their needs.
We pray for those who are sick and those who may yet become infected.
We pray for the families of those who have died.
 
We pray for those who are dealing with other ordinary stuff of life,
For those who have recently moved.
We pray for those facing medical tests and procedures.
 
We pray, Lord, for the courage to assess our own attitudes accurately,
To change where we need to change,
To learn what we need to learn,
And to speak out where we are called to do so.
 
PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
We give thanks to you, O God, today and every day,
For the many blessings we too often take for granted.
If there is food not only on our table,
But in our refrigerator and cupboard, we give you thanks.
If we slept in a comfortable bed last night,
And our neighborhood was safe, we give you thanks.
If we had a choice of clothes to wear when we got up this morning,
And a warm shower or bath was available, we give you thanks.
If we have access to transportation, to medical assistance,
To basic services, we give you thanks.
If we have use of phones or television or internet or mail, we give you thanks.
If we were able to hear or read this worship service today, we give you thanks.
 
As your grateful people, we come before you
And remember the prayer our Lord taught us.
`
THE LORD'S PRAYER
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power
And the glory forever. Amen.
 
CHARGE & BLESSING                                                                                                    
 
I want to end our worship each week with the familiar words of hope from Jeremiah 29:11. This week I am reading them from the Common English Bible.
 
I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope.
 
May the God of Hope be with you, sustain you, and empower you with the teachings of Jesus the Christ, and the guiding power of the Holy Spirit as you face the week ahead.


[i] Melissa Spoelstra, Jeremiah: Daring to Hope in an Unstable World, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2014, p. 57 (Since I am using a kindle version, p. for this book will refer to location # not actually page # in the book, because I don’t have hard copy to check that.)

[ii] p. 76
[iii] p. 80
 [iv] NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, Jeremiah Historical Background Notes, found online at biblegateway.com.
[v] Spoelstra online at https://www.abingdonpress.com/jeremiah with Digging Deeper notes for Week 1
[vi] Spoelstra, p. 85 quoting Francis Shaeffer
[vii] p. 87
[viii] p. 89
[ix] p. 132
[x] ibid
[xi] Jeremiah 1:7-8, CEB
[xii] https://josephranseth.com/gandhi-didnt-say-be-the-change-you-want-to-see-in-the-world/
[xiii] Spolestra, p. 229
[xiv] p. 243
[xv] p. 395
[xvi] p. 406
[xvii] See Gideon’s story in Judges 6
[xviii] Spolestra p. 472
[xix] John 16:13
[xx] Spolestra p. 288
[xxi] p. 296
[xxii] p. 297
[xxiii] p. 694
[xxiv] p. 234
[xxv] Luke 9:23, GW
[xxvi] Spolestra p.368
[xxvii] p. 706
​

Jeremiah lived 2600 years ago, but has as much to say to our world today as he did to Judah then. The Bible Study from which I am taking much of this series is 
Jeremiah: Daring to Hope in an Unstable World by Melissa Spoelstra. A Bible Study to accompany the sermons can be found at Faith Adventures.
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