Sermon for Trinity 14, September 13, 2020
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in abundance, from the Almighty,
Everlasting God. Amen.
Jeremiah 17:13-14 13You are the hope of Israel,
Lord. All who forsake you will be put to
shame. Those who turn away from you will
be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of
living water. 14Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed. Save me, and I will be saved, for you are the
one I praise. (EHV)
Jesus is our hope.
Dear brothers and
sisters of Christ,
Listening to the news, one might get the idea that there
is no hope for the human race. Just
about all you hear is trouble, pain, sorrow, and disaster. Just this year, alone, we hear reports of
terrible storms tearing up crops and communities, Covid-19 causing many
thousands of deaths, race-riots and unrest in the streets, and lately,
devastating fires consuming entire communities out west.
Yet, this
isn’t the case just in 2020. As long as
I can remember, earth-worshipping preachers have warned that we need to save
the world. They say glaciers are melting
too fast, rain forests are disappearing, oceans are polluted and barren, that
the human population is growing too large for the planet to support, and who
knows when a rogue meteor will wipe us out.
And, if it isn’t earth-worshipping pagans spreading a message of
disaster, other activists preach that economic inequality will cause the masses
to revolt. The fear mongers of the world
then stir up the crowds to cause the very destruction they prophesy, and
because they have no trust in the God who created the world and everything in
it, they proclaim a message of hopelessness.
Now, faithful
Jeremiah also foretold a lot of bad news for the nation of Judah, expressly
warning against their idolatry, but with the doom he foretold came the hope
that the people would turn from their wickedness and listen to God’s promises
of forgiveness and salvation. Our sermon
text is taken from the middle of one of the dire warnings that the Lord gave
Jeremiah to preach to the people, but in Jeremiah’s confident message we learn
that Jesus is our hope.
Jeremiah
put all confidence in the Lord. This
first short sentence summarizes all the teachings of the Bible: “You
are the hope of Israel, Lord. All who
forsake you will be put to shame.”
Dear
friends, whoever turns away from following Christ Jesus will be lost for
eternity. The prophet tells us they will
be ashamed. We remember that such was
the case with Adam and Eve. Immediately
after abandoning the LORD for Satan’s lies, they felt great shame. Sinners have tried to hide their shame ever
since, but like Adam and Eve, we all have to answer to our Creator and
Judge. Whether it be at the point of our
physical death, or at the final judgment, every person who ever lives will have
to answer for their life. So, what will our answer be?
Jeremiah’s
proud fellow Israelites arrogantly rejected the one true God to worship their
neighbors’ idols. The pagan worship of
Jeremiah’s time imagined that following their rituals would ensure material
blessings, rich harvests, safety, and a good life. In addition, the worship rituals of those
pagan religions were quite sensual: temple prostitution, ritual orgies and drunkenness
in Canaanite worship were powerfully attractive to the sinful nature, and the
Israelites abandoned God to play with those idols of pleasure and illusive
material security. But, after numerous warnings given through Jeremiah and
other faithful prophets, the hand of the Lord was moving against them.
In a
similar way, when Jesus walked on earth as true Man, the Jews were putting
their hope for salvation in obedience of law.
They weren’t looking to follow a Savior, because they were confident in their
own works. Law-based religions that hope
to appease one god or another still abound.
Some claim to follow God’s laws of the Bible, and many others follow the
imaginations of men.
We see
many of the same attractions in our world.
The old man in us wants to believe he can control God, so law religions
have a powerful draw. Likewise, many around
us live by the mantra, “If it feels good do it,” so the sensual delights of
modern life are powerfully attractive, and even faithful Christians can find themselves
tempted. Plus, we all desire to be well
fed and comfortable, so the religion of success can be powerfully attractive in
a world of trouble. Yet, any religion based
on what we do can only leave one without hope, because all idols are powerless,
and we always fall short of perfect, so our consciences rightly accuse us in
our failure.
King David wrote, “The LORD looks down
from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who
seek God. All have turned aside, they
have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Psalm
14:2-3) God commanded His people, “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2) Therefore, anyone
who wants to stand on his own works in the religions of law, and the philosophies
of the world, will in the end be put to
shame, separated from God forever in the pit of hell.
Human self-centeredness wants to find its own way to
glory, but there is only one way. Jesus
said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
me.” (John 14:6) Jeremiah was in full
agreement with his Lord, " Those who turn away from you will be
written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living
water." Being written in
the earth means not having one’s name in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
So, what does all this mean for us? It means that trusting in anything other than
the Lord for life and salvation leaves one condemned. Through the prophet, Isaiah, God warned, "I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my
praise to idols.” (Isaiah 42:8)
There is only one true God—He who created the world and everything in it—the
perfect, holy Almighty whom no one can judge.
Any manmade god or religion falls immediately before God’s just decision. Abandoning the teachings of the Bible to
follow any other god, religion, or philosophy leads only to eternal death. So, what will our answer be? Jesus
is our hope.
In this text, the Lord reminds us that those who entrust
themselves to His rich care will enjoy an entirely different end than the
unbeliever or the self-righteous. Centuries
later, Jesus said, "Blessed are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3) The poor in spirit
are all those who hear God’s law and realize that they have failed to obey
Him. The poor in spirit know and confess
that their own works fall far short of what is needed to stand before the
Almighty Judge of the world. Yet,
trusting in the Lord for righteousness and salvation, they receive His glory.
This was Jeremiah’s confidence. He understood that he needed a Savior. Jeremiah didn’t have to hope that he had
perfectly obeyed God, because he believed God’s promise to rescue him from sin
and death. He had true, certain hope of
salvation and eternal life. That’s the
message of this text for all of us. We
have One Lord who has saved us from condemnation, the One Jeremiah called, “the hope
of
Jesus lived the perfect righteousness that we could
not achieve. As our creeds so explicitly
state, Jesus is God’s one and only begotten Son from eternity. He is both true God and true
The final verse of our sermon text is both a prayer
and a statement of faith. Jeremiah prayed,
“Heal me, Lord, and I will be
healed. Save me, and I will be saved,
for you are the one I praise.” With these words, the
prophet confesses his inability to make himself right with God while at the
same time declaring his confidence in God to provide the Savior and his
confidence in that promised Savior to carry out the perfect obedience needed
for our justification.
Jesus’
perfect obedience included taking our place of punishment and death. Because Jesus is true God, the people that
wanted Him dead had no power over Him.
The Jewish leadership tried for three years to silence Jesus and do away
with Him, but they couldn’t touch Him.
The Romans didn’t worry about this Jewish teacher because He wasn’t
leading any kind of revolt, but rather, He preached peace. So, it was only by His own will that Jesus
was led out to die on the cross on
There is
a lot of hopelessness today, but not for those who trust in Christ as their
Savior. We know that in this troubled world,
Christians will not avoid all the heartache and pains, but we also know that we
are blessed to live with our Savior forever, because after three days in the
grave, Jesus took up His life again proving that we also will rise again, just
as He promises.
So, dear
Christian friends, what will our answer be when we stand before our Judge? For you and me, this message gives great joy: Jesus is our hope. By the power of the Holy Spirit working in
us, we have salvation and eternal life through faith in Christ. Because Jesus has come, just as foretold, and
because He lived and died for us just as His Father in heaven promised He
would, all of our sins have been removed from us as far as east is from west,
and knowing that God remains in control and is working all things for our good,
we can face any problems this world gives us, for we trust God’s promise that nothing
will ever again be held against a sinner who clings to the Lord.
Jesus
told a woman at a well outside Samaria that she should ask Him for living water
and she would never again be thirsty.
This living water is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus. The living water of Jesus’ Word teaches us to
know Him as Lord and Savior, to trust Him for full forgiveness, and to turn to
Him in any trouble for help and healing.
Jesus is the source of this water of life. There is no other. Drinking deep of Jesus’ living water through
Word and Sacrament gives us confidence, strength, eternal life, and the promise
of heaven where we will share in His glory, for Jesus is our hope. Amen.
The peace
of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ
Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment