Ministry is A Stretch!
(Jeremiah 37-45)
1. Life has a way of socking us between the eyes. I remember my teen and young adult years and the feelings of broken relationships, disappointment, uncertainty about future direction, and all the stresses of that stage of life.
2. As I aged, I found out that life had other stresses, heartaches, let-downs, and attacks that damaged my self-esteem.
3. Fortunately for me, I turned my life over to Jesus Christ at the age of 17. Some of those experiences were rough, but my faith did make a big difference.
4. Although most of us wisely try to avoid unpleasant or painful situations, we also need to try to develop the Life Skill of adjusting to things we cannot change. We might call this an ability to flex that comes by faith.
5. Once we have surrendered our lives to Jesus Christ and become serious about serving Him, we find it possible to stretch in ways we never thought we could stretch, to adapt to situations which we never thought we could adapt to, to confront issues when it is our nature to be passive, to exercise faith when fear traps us, to bloom where we are planted.
6. But it may be rough. Real rough. I have a friend who has been laid off. I graduated with him; he announced his lay-off to friends on Facebook about 3 weeks ago. Since then, he has not written anything. I am worried about his well being. He might be busy…or despondent.
7. We only know what is recorded about Jeremiah, but he is called the weeping prophet for good reason. He excelled in being faithful in the worst of circumstances, but that does not mean he did not struggle.
8. But he was part of something bigger than himself, a cause that spans the Millennia, the Kingdom of God. And, like all the citizens of the Kingdom, the King had given him a ministry. God has called all believers to a ministry of some sort.
9. Some of us serve the Lord gladly; others evade the sacrifices and commitments of service and let other people do the work. Serving God is not like doing housework or clocking in at the office. It can lead in all sorts of directions, and often requires you to do what needs to be done, whether it is in your area of preference or not.
MAIN IDEA: Serving is about what is, not what should be. It involves giving and receiving, blooming where you are planted, and seeing both the individual trees and the forest. Ministry is a stretch!
I. Foreigners Treated Jeremiah Better Than His OWN People (37-39)
The siege of Jerusalem lasted about 18 months. Many viewed Jeremiah as an obstacle, a demoralizer of their troops and less than patriotic; nothing was further from the truth; Jeremiah loved the people of Judah and wanted to see them spared disaster. Many would flee the area, thousands would die, and 10,000 would be carried off to exile.
A. Jeremiah in PRISON (37:11-16)
This prison was a basement next to the dungeon. It was a great place to contract a disease and die.
Zedekiah repeatedly calls him for prison for advice. He keeps interacting with Jeremiah and even asks Jeremiah to pray for him, asks what the Lord says about matters, but then completely ignores what God has said. He is a vacillator, a king who knows better but refused to follow the path of wisdom.
If people want to make a foolish choice, and if the wise people they know advise them against it, they keep asking until someone goes along with them. I’ve seen it dozens of times, whether it be in the realm of moral choices, child-rearing, marriage, finances, or health.
So although Jeremiah was occasionally consulted, life for him was depressing, monotonous, bleak, and boring. Was he waiting to die, or would better times come?
Does this, in some way, describe your life?
B. Jeremiah in a CISTERN (38:4-6)
Things went from bad to worse. Jeremiah would have longed to get out of prison, and now his hopes were dashed and his morale probably devastated.
C. Who helps him? Ebed-Melech, a FOREIGNER (38:7-10)
A former president of a Christian college talked about the kind of students that usually do not make trouble. Christian kids from Christian homes where the parents lived their faith consistently -- though not perfectly, gave them no trouble. Kids who were saved but raised in unsaved families did not give them trouble; almost all their problems came from kids who were raised in homes where the parents claimed to be Christians but did not consistently live out their faith.
Ebed-Melech had come to know the true God probably from a pagan background. Yet many of those who were born Jews hated Jeremiah and had no use for God’s Word.
• God loves to do that; He exalts the humble and humbles the exalted
• The Good Samaritan -- horribly hated race
• Mary Magdalene, demon-possessed and sinful
• Many of the early believers were poor and not highly regarded
I Corinthians 1:20, " Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe."
The issue is not that of intelligence, but privilege and prestige. A non-Jewish servant is the man of God, while the Jewish officials ignore God’s prophet & seek to kill him.
• Jeremiah was helped by Ebed-Melech, who was to him an angel of mercy; sometimes, God does not grant our requests as we ask them, but sends relief.
D. During the conquest, the BABYLONIANS treat Jeremiah well (39)
They had heard how Jeremiah was telling the people to cooperate with Babylon
King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was very superstitious, and honored a number of gods
But note the tragic example: the people who should have been God’s people kicked God’s servant around, and those who should have kicked him around honored him.
Application: Have you been hurt or taken advantage of by those who claim to be your brothers or sisters in Christ? Have you been treated fairly and kindly by people who do not know the Lord? Wake up and smell the coffee. Let the scales fall off our eyes. All is not well within the church, and it never has been.
We can divide mankind into many categories, including professing believers and those who do not make such professions. But another important division is between people who exemplify the best of what it means to be human and those who do not.
Serving is about what is, not what should be. It involves giving and receiving, blooming where you are planted, and seeing both the individual trees and the forest. Ministry is a stretch
II. Jeremiah Continued to PREACH in Judah (40-42)
It is remarkable that Jeremiah did not choose to retire from public life, no matter what God said. But he did not follow his feelings; instead, he followed the Lord.
A. He INTERPRETS the devastation
Gedaliah put in place, and Gedaliah asserts that this was the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy for the sin of the people. But Gedaliah is assassinated and anarchy breaks out.
• One advantage to knowing the Word of God is that it frequently helps us interpret life’s events and put them in perspective.
• When you believe God has a purpose for your life, you keep trucking along.
• When you believe you are valuable because you are in the image of God, you respect yourself more.
• When you believe that somehow all things work for the good, to them that love God, you understand that the pieces of the puzzle look meaningless until the puzzle is completed and the whole picture is revealed.
B. He offers DIRECTION for what to do now
• They ask with a hidden agenda; they accuse. Notice 42:9-16
• They did not want to follow God’s direction, but made a token request
• Tokenism is often a substitute for real change
• There is more than one way to take God’s Name in vain;
• one way we often see this is when people assert that God has led them a certain way (not, "I think" but "He showed me").
• Another is to strip people of personal responsibility. "God made certain people to be homosexual " or "God mad certain people to be violent."
1. As God’s people, we must flex with changing times and changing situations…
2. Modern parenting, for example, must be much more "hands on" than in years gone by
Serving is about what is, not what should be. It involves giving and receiving, blooming where you are planted, and seeing both the individual trees and the forest. Ministry is a stretch
III. Jeremiah MINISTERED in Egypt (43-44)
A. Dragged against his WILL
They accused him of lying, and said Baruch put him up to it (43:2-3).
Jeremiah did not want to be with them in Egypt, but he had no choice.
Jeremiah had been tortured, imprisoned, treated inhumanely, but had been vindicated: everything he predicted came to pass. But did that do any good? No. The people still would not listen!
He decided to bloom where he was planted. Plants will try to grow wherever the seeds find themselves: the cracks of our sidewalks, between buildings, or in the wild.
• A year and a half ago, we had a pig in our side yard. We fed her all sorts of things, including pumpkins people gave us after they had been used for décor.
B. He tried to DIRECT them the right way
Chapter 44 is his last message directed toward His people. He had been declaring the Word of the Lord for 46 years! Yet the people would not be swayed. If anything, he had lost ground.
IV. Jeremiah COUNSELED His Friend, One on One (45)
Chapter 45 is a flashback to ch.36, about 604BC, when the king burned Jeremiah’s scroll.
A. Baruch had fallen into SELF-PITY
He knew rough times were coming;he would be surrounded by death and destruction
He was emotionally drained because of all the stresses he had experienced
We all come into life on the conveyor belt of history; some of us are born at inopportune times, during ties of national tragedy; others are born during happier times… What is, IS!
Baruch had dreams that would not be realized
1. His family had been high up in the government
2. He was an educated man
3. He was apparently a go-getter, and would have risen to greatness is better times
B. Jeremiah tuned him into REALITY
1. Note that Jeremiah did not just have a public ministry, but a private, one on one ministry. The children of Israel were the forest, but Baruch was a tree.
2. Some of us give more attention to people outside our immediate family than we do our spouses and children! Yet those trees nearest to us are the most important. Don’t forget!
3. I think I have been used by God more "one on one" that I have in my preaching.
4. Baruch was to be find joy in the fact his life was spared
5. The reality is that, when times get tough, we have to be thankful that we escape disaster with our lives.
6. Have you learned the art of adjusting your expectations downward?
Serving is about what is, not what should be. It involves giving and receiving, blooming where you are planted, and seeing both the individual trees and the forest. Ministry is a stretch
CONCLUSION
1. Folks receiving therapy -- Pink, Beverly, Dick….good workout, tired, sore
2. God is out to stretch us…
3. Some of us refuse the therapy…and we are the ultimate losers…
4. Plug into ministry (not necessarily through our church; maybe befriending a lost neighbor/relative…something that might take some boldness)….check it out…
