Sermon-A Message from Jeremiah

"Four Prophets Speak to Our Day:
A Message from Jeremiah"

Dr. James L. Mayfield
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

November 28, 1999

Text: Jeremiah 32 (Read 32:36–41) and Psalm 130

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. The message of Advent speaks to all people, in all situations, and yet its message is especially meaningful to those who see themselves in the midst of bad times.

It is especially relevant for those who are going through difficult times because the message of Advent is the announcement of hope. It is the proclamation that the grace of God is coming into our lives.

One of the classic stories of faith, trust and confidence in the grace of God can be found in the 32nd chapter of the Book of Jeremiah. The situation is this. Jeremiah was living in the midst of hard times. He lived during the time that Babylonia was conquering the Middle East. He had tried to warn the leaders and the people that they were headed in the wrong direction, that they were trying to play a game of power politics rather than being humbly faithful. But they were more focused on national pride than on the will of God.

Jeremiah was ignored. Realizing the people, especially the leaders, were not paying attention, he began to speak more forcefully. The result was not a change in the people or a change in policies. The result was he found himself persecuted. When the Babylonians were at the gate of Jerusalem and it was evident that Jeremiah had spoken God’s truth, and that it was only a matter of time until Jerusalem fell, Jeremiah was thrown in jail. What he was preaching was what the leaders did not want to hear and what the leaders did not want the people to hear.

It was a time of fear and sorrow for the nation. It was a difficult time for Jeremiah as he was locked in prison. It was a time of defeat.

Yet through it all, Jeremiah trusted God. Jeremiah believed. He had faith that God was at work in all of life—even in the worst of times. In the midst of it all Jeremiah did what many passages in the Bible—such as Psalm 130—call us to do.

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,

and in his word I hope;

my soul waits for the Lord

more than those who watch for the morning,

more than those who watch for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the LORD!

For the Lord there is steadfast love,

and with him is great power to redeem.

It is he who will redeem Israel

from all its iniquities.

In hope, in confidence, in faith there in his prison cell, his nation defeated and Jerusalem under siege, Jeremiah waited on the Lord. It was not the kind of waiting on the Lord that Mal Hierholzer described in a story he told me. When Mal was going to college in the 1950’s one summer he tried his hand at going door to door selling Bibles. In a very rural area he came to a house with an elderly woman sitting in a rocking chair on her front porch. Mal greeted her and began his sales pitch. She just sat there rocking and looking into the sky. While Mal was talking, she leaned forward and interrupted him. "What about that cloud? What do you think of that one?" she asked. Mal mumbled something about it being a lovely cloud and then tried to get back into his sales pitch. But the woman was not listening. "That may be the one," she said. "That may be the one Jesus is coming in."

Now, in a sense, this woman just sitting in her rocking chair examining clouds could be said to be waiting for the Lord. However that sort of waiting, just sitting in a rocking chair staring at the heavens, is not the kind of waiting Psalm 130 was talking about. Nor is it the kind of waiting Jeremiah was doing.

In Hebrew, the phrase "to wait on God" is not a passive, sitting in a rocking chair kind of waiting. In Hebrew, to wait on the Lord is to be full of tense anticipation and persistent confidence—such anticipation and confidence that even bad times cannot undermine.

Jeremiah demonstrated this kind of waiting on the Lord. When Jeremiah looked into the events of his day and into the events in his life, he looked for signs of God’s activity, God’s grace. It was this looking for the coming of the Lord that caused him to be able to see in the events and circumstances of his day that God was using Babylonia in the carrying out of God’s will. And when the Babylonians came and it was evident Judah and Jerusalem were about to be conquered, Jeremiah waited on the Lord. In confident anticipation of God’s grace he stretched toward that coming.

Jeremiah was in prison. It was not clear whether or not he would be executed. The enemy had overrun the countryside. Only Jerusalem was still resisting. In the midst of all, that a relative who had some farm land for sale visited Jeremiah in prison. According to the law and custom of the day relatives were to be offered the first opportunity to purchase such land. This is why the relative came to see Jeremiah in prison—to offer him the farm land.

Jeremiah understood what God wanted him to do. Jeremiah bought the land. This was not a wild gamble of real estate speculation—buying the land cheap so that later he could sell it and make a profit. He understood that what he was doing was fulfilling the will of God. His purchase of this land was a sermon in the language of real estate. Jeremiah was proclaiming that God was not abandoning the people. Their refusal to follow the will of God had brought them terrible consequences. But, as Jeremiah proclaimed in the passage that was read this morning, the day was coming when God would see to it that the vineyards and fields would again be productive. In prison, in the midst of his nation being conquered, Jeremiah bought land as an expression of his waiting on the Lord, his confident expectation of God’s grace.

To all people comes the message of Advent. And this message is especially relevant for those going through bad times such as when our labors seem to have been in vain and we are under siege by all sorts of Babylonians and feel we are imprisoned. This message is especially relevant to us because the message of Advent is the message of hope. We will not be abandoned by God. And this hope is not a mere wish or dream. It is confident expectation. We are to wait on the Lord, not sitting on our hands or merely rocking looking at clouds. We are to get ready. We are to prepare for the coming of the Lord. We are to put our confident expectation into action as we anticipate God’s wonderfully surprising activity in our lives and in history.

Pastoral Prayer:

God, as we prepare ourselves for the coming of Christmas, help us do more than prepare for another holiday. Help us to do even more than prepare for a holy day. Help us make use of this time so that we will be open to all the ways Christ comes into our lives.

God, in this special season of Advent, heal our spiritual blindness so that with eyes of faith we can see the ways your love comes alive in the world. Forgive us when our preconceived opinions and notions cause us to be insensitive to the working of your grace in our lives. Forgive us when our fear of losing what we have causes us to lose opportunities to fulfill the purpose you have given us. Forgive us when our greed for more things and our desires for more prestige or pleasure cause us to live in conflict with your will. Forgive us when we are more concerned about our security than about serving you.

In this season of Advent, may we not only gain more clarity about what needs to change in our living, but may we also discover that change really is possible. And may your Holy Spirit be so at work in us that we make the changes you see we need to make.

In the name of the one for whose coming we are preparing, we pray, "Our Father …"

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