Video Transcript: Pondering the Word -- Module 5

What do we do? When we're trying to bring peace into other people's lives? One of the things that as a chaplain we want to be able to do is to bring the presence of God into someone's life so that they will begin to feel the comfort of God's Emanuel presence. 

But what if there isn't that? What if we're rebuffed? What if we're told that we're, the people that we're trying to care about don't want us to help them. 

Today, I'm gonna take a look at a chapter from the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah was called to be a prophet, he was set apart already before he was born, God tells him to be a prophet. And yet, Jeremiah's life was a very difficult thing. And one example of it comes to us in Jeremiah chapter 8, and I'm gonna read the whole chapter, and then go into just a little bit of chapter 9 as well. 

It starts like this. Say to them, This is what the Lord says. When people fall down, do they not get up? When someone turns away? Do they not return? Why then have these people turned away? Why does Jerusalem always turn away they cling to deceit? They refuse to return I've listened attentively, but they do not say what is right.

None of them repent of their wickedness, saying, What have I done? Each pursues their own course, like a horse, charging into battle. Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons and the dove, the swift and the thrush, observe the time of their migration, but my people do not know the requirements of the Lord. 

How can you say, we are wise where we have the law of the Lord? When actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely. The wise we put to shame they will be dismayed and trapped. 

Since they rejected the word of the Lord, what kind of wisdom do they have? Therefore, I will give their wives to other men in their fields to new owners, from the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain. prophets and priests alike all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. Peace, peace, they say. When there is no peace? Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct? No, no, they have no shame at all. 

They do not even know how to blash. So they will fall among the fall and they will be brought down when they are punished as the Lord I will take away their harvest declares the Lord there will be no grapes on the vine, there will be no figs on the tree and their leaves will wither what I've given them will be taken from them. Why are we sitting here? gathered together let us flee to the fortified cities, and perish there. 

For the Lord our God has doomed us to perish and given to us poisoned water to drink because we have sinned against him. We hoped for peace but no good has come for a time of healing. But there's only terror. The snorting of them enemies horses is heard from Dan the name of their stallions. The whole land trembles they have come to devour the land, and everything in it the city and all who live there. 

See, I will send venomous snakes among you Vipers that cannot be charmed, and they will bite you declares the Lord you who are my comforter in sorrow My heart is faint within me. Listen to the cry of my people from a land far away. Is the Lord not in Zion? Is their king no longer there? Why have they arouse my anger with their images with their worthless foreign idols? 

The harvest is past. The summer has ended and we are not saved. Since my people are crushed, I am crushed. I mourn in horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?Then, why Is there no healing for the wound of my people? 

Oh, that my head were a spring of water in my eyes a fountain of tears. I would weep day and night for the slain of my people all that I had in the desert of lodging place for travelers so that I might leave my people and go away from them for their all adulterers, a crowd of an faithful people. 

The words of Jeremiah the prophet, which had been handed down to us over all these generations. When he was growing up, Ben was nourished and nurtured on the Word of God. By the time he was 12. He had stood before the congregation and declared that he was a follower of Jesus. He had gotten involved in the ministry of the church, he went on mission trips, he was a young man about whom I was grateful to God that he was one of those, I had the privilege of Pastoring. T

hen, when Ben turned 18, he moved out of his home, he moved in with a girlfriend, he stopped attending worship. He told his friends that he no longer needed God, he was through with God. In fact, he told the elder who went to see him one day, I'm no longer in need of fire insurance. You can keep your God and your church and I'll get along just fine without any god. 

My heart breaks when such a thing happens. It seems to me to be so much like what was going on Jeremiah's day when the people of Israel decided they no longer needed this God who was telling them what to do. They wanted to God, they could tell what to do. They wanted there to have their gods do for them all the things that they want.

And so they started looking for a way to dump the God that was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and instead found they wanted to find one they could manipulate. Like the gods or the peoples around and this was much more to their liking. And Jeremiah laments the sin of the people in the US, is there, no balm in Gilead? In the earth

So no physician there. cries out to God, what is it that's going on here, Lord? The Cry of the people has gone up, the harvest is past the summer has ended. And we are not saved. How long does it take for God to save us? You know, we've repented for a few months now. How long does it take? Oh god. People have realized their sin. But where's God? Where's God? Where's God when it hurts so badly? And Jeremiah wonders out loud. What do we do now? In our lives, do we find ourselves going off on our own directions and we went our way or no way.

I'm telling you, as a pastor of people like that I find myself mourning over them. But I'm not going to tell them they can go any way they like and that God will simply coddle them. And you are listening. Now I'm telling you that now when someone must have gone off in their own direction, and that seek to humble themselves before God, I'm going to be like Jeremiah. He was a man who no one listened to. 

But he was walking with God. Jeremiah was a man who did God's bidding and was disliked by everyone. We would have said in our day, that Jeremiah, he didn't have a great ministry. In fact, most of us would say that he was way too stubborn. Couldn't he figure out that the people didn't want the sort of God he was proclaiming? Why keep it up? I think the answer isn't how Amos once put it, the Lion has roared who can but prophesy. Jeremiah saw that to fail to prophesy was to miss out on the calling God gave to him. 

But all through church history, God's people have tried to have the church made in their image, rather than being remade in the image of God. His, God's people have not changed much over the years. And then I begin to weep over the way people on on both sides of an issue define themselves in opposition to I'm not like them. 

And I weep over that because I am convinced that we struggle not with flesh and Let's not with that person or that person or that one, but with the principalities and the powers of this evil blood. Then with Jeremiah, I cry out to God, is there no balm in Gilead to heal these people? Is there no way to have a cure for the sinful heart that refuses to call on the name of a holy God? With someone else who's not like themselves? 

You know, I mean, I weep over the way people act. And then that cry out to the Lord to seek His Holy Face and to ask him, What do I do with people who are so difficult to deal with? What do I do? And then I realized what a friend I have in Jesus, for I can take everything to Him and He will hear and he will take my anxiety and my struggles when he will give me peace in their place. Jeremiah was wondering why it was and when those who were the false teachers were saying, Peace, peace, but there was no peace. 

Why? Because in a lying pen, and what they wrote about God wasn't so. But when we realize what a friend we have in Jesus, He gives us peace, in the place of our struggles about you, do you ever think too, wouldn't it be great if we would just take everything to Jesus? There's a psalm that that reflects on some of that too. 

And the psalmist really did have something to weep about Jerusalem had been sacked and the temple had been defiled the holy of holies had been trampled by heathen feed, and God had not reached out and saved his people. Why not? Why did God not save them? Well, it was because they had abandoned God long before and he was done with them. Oh, help us God, our Savior. Jeremiah wanted the people to learn to repent and come home to God. Because people who are lost and who are weary, are searching for a place of refuge in a world. 

That's intent on destroying the place of the Lord's dwelling. Just think of this. When we get involved in struggles, and we wonder why it is that that this person looks at something one way and we look at it another way and the end there soon develops a, a wedge that's been driven between us than we've rejected the Lord's community of faith and we will soon be paying a heavy price for it. 

Say, that's when we need to understand Oh, Lord, save us from ourselves. All over the world. All over the world, God's people are finding themselves struggling too often with each other. And we're trying to shape God into our mold rather than being molded by God. We're failing to uphold the Lord's righteous cause. We've instead gone each one to his or her own way. We are people who need to repent. God, we need you so much. We need you so much. Oh, Lord. Give us your peace.