Tanilba Bay Baptist Church
Worship
  • Old Church Choir
  • This Is Amazing Grace
  • Rock of Ages

      • Jeremiah 7:1–15ANGLNIV2011

  • Safe roads

    How safe are you when you drive on the road?
    It’s been quite topical lately. Some people might have even started calling Lemon Tree Passage road Pot Hole Road.
    But let’s wind back a bit. You see, we know that some roads are better than others.
    When you are on a bad road, you drive to the conditions. When I went up to Papua New Guniea, I never personally drove on the roads, but I noticed you had to drive quite differently up there due to the roads.
    Our roads here are better. But here’s the thing. It is easy to get lulled into a false sense of security.
    This is exactly what happened after all the rains from about a month ago.
    You see, while we might complain about the condition of Lemon Tree Passage Road even at the best of times, but generally, we drive down that road feeling pretty safe. Many of us are in big cars that make us feel even more safe. We knew that even if we hit one of the smaller pot holes, it doesn’t really matter - because our safe car will protect us.
    But the rains hit, suddenly, the little pot holes became big pot holes.
    We didn’t realise the danger it posed. People drove in their safe big cars.
    Until… bang. You hit the pot hole. That hurt. You hear the sound that you know means... you’ve busted a tyre.
    You thought you were safe, but you were trusting in your big car.
    The community Facebook page has been littered with stories of people busting tyres on those pot holes.
    Now, we might all like to have a little rant about council and the response in fixing them - I’ll let you do that in your own time - but it’s an interesting analogy of how when we think we’re safe, we don’t act in the way we should.
    You see, something similar happens on a spiritual level. We face spiritual dangers all the time, and yet we can become blase about them - why? Well, we’ve got God to protect us.
    We go headlong into danger thinking everything will be fine.
    Now, on one level you might pull me up here and say - but we are, aren’t we? After all, we do have promises about God looking after us, don’t we?
    Well… sort of.
    You see, we are given assurance that if we belong to God, he will never leave us - that nothing can separate us from the love of God. But… there are consequences to our actions when we stray from the way God wants - and if we’re not careful, we can end up in a world of hurt.
    You see, as we come to our passage in Jeremiah today, we’re going to see how God’s people thought they were safe because of their identify with God - but Jeremiah is about to give them a wake up call.

    Context

    So let me take you into the time of Jeremiah and see what’s going on.
    Well, so far we’ve seen Jeremiah’s call, which we were able to date to the year 627 BC. Last week we then saw what was presumably some of his early preaching in the second chapter.
    Immediately following that passage from last week, was a call to repentance.
    Chapter 4 through to chapter 6 then puts the hearer in a world of hurt, as judgement and punishment is pronounced on these people.
    Now, in the midst of all of this judgement, we find the people asking - why has the Lord done all of this?
    Now remember, we might look at them asking this question and from our comfortable vantage point we might think it all seems pretty obvious - because they deserve it. But you need to remember, they are of the understanding that they are in their nice solid car which is going to keep them safe.
    The answer to the question of why is interspersed throughout these chapters, but it brings us to where we are today - a new sermon that’s going to help them understand things better.
    Now, it worth while understanding what it is we’re reasding when we read through this book.
    This book is perhaps best described as an anthology of Jeremiah’s preaching.
    As you read throughh the whole thing, it becomes clear that the order it’s written is not strictly chronological, and sometimes some parts are added for thematic reasons, that is to say, to complete one theme before we move on to the next.
    There is good reason to think that the passage we’re about to explore in chapter 7 was in fact the contents of the sermon that is described in chapter 26. If this is the case, we can actually date when these words were spoken to about 609 or 608 BC. In other words, roughly 18 years after the Jeremiah’s initial call.
    We’re now in the early years of the reign of King Jehoiakim reign.
    Under King Josiah, things were a little more friendly towards prophets like Jeremiah. That starts to change when Jehoiakim takes charge. In Jeremiah 26, the message he is about to give is going to end in his arrest.
    So, this time, we’re actually told where Jeremiah was told to stand as he delivers his message. He’s to stand in the gates of the temple.
    You see, this message is going to be deliberately targetted at those who come to the temple - or to be more specific, to those who think they’re going to find their safety in religiousity.

    A Command and a Warning

    Now the message is going to contain a command and a warning, and he’s going to give us this two aspects of the message straight up.
    Verse 3 is the command which is: “reform your ways and your actions”
    Verse 4 is the warning: Don’t be decieved with a false sense of security.
    So let’s unpack these two aspects.

    Reform your ways

    Firstly, the call to reform your ways.
    Have you ever noticed that there is constant need for reformation. I mean, all throughout the bible times… all throughout church history, and even in our own times. God pulls us into line, only for us to go off track the first chance we get.
    Us humans are a bit like trying to take a toddler on a walk. You know, you can get them walking in the right direction for a while, but they will inevitably get sidetracked by some distraction, or they’ll start dragging their feet, or they’ll simply just be a pain. You bring them back into line. They’ll stay in line for a moment, only to get distracted after a few more steps.
    Reform your ways. Get back in line with the direction God has placed you.
    What does that mean in practice?
    Well, Jeremiah spells it out for us in verses 5 to 7.
    First of all, deal with each other justly.
    I find it interesting that the first thing that is noted with regards to what needs reforming, is the way they deal with each other. Sometimes, when we get all pious, we can start to forget about treating each other well. It’s kind of ironic, because if our devotion to God actually took us to a real focus on God, then we should be loving one another.
    Now of course, it’s very easy to think that we’re acting justly towards others, because obviously from our persepctive, any meanness that we show to others is because they deserve it. In fact, we might even call it tough love. Or we might downplay the significance of what where doing. You know, we rip off that person, but it wasn’t really that big a deal. After all, they can afford it, and besides, everyone does it anyway.
    But God is saying - no, I don’t want you to spin this to try and make yourself look better… He wants you to do what is right by the other person. Don’t extort them. Don’t lie to them. Don’t mislead them in a way that you’re going to advantage from.
    Jeremiah goes on in verse 6 - don’t oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.
    Who are these people? Jeremiah is listing the vulnerable people in his community.
    Now, some people are very obvious in the way they oppress vulnerable people. They don’t even really pretend to do otherwise. They’ve got power over other people, and so they exploit it. It’s happened right throughout history, and it happens today.
    But sometimes it happens in more subtle ways, and we can all be guilty of this.
    I’m talking about when a vulnerale community is being mistreated, and yet we look away, because if we were to do something about it, well… it might have a detrimental effect on me.
    Can I suggest that one example is the mistreatment of Aboriginal women and children affected by family and domestic violence. It’s been reported that they are 32 times more likely to be hospitalized due to family violence, and 11 times more likely to die from violent assault than non-indigenous women.
    We can look away and say - it’s not my problem. But when we see that the root cause of the crisis is tangled in colonial history, intergenerational trauma, racism and institutional failure, we can see that they were given a raw deal.
    What if we didn’t stay silent on the issue? What if we said - more needs to be done? There’s no easy solution, and it certainly isn’t going to be a quick fix, but maybe our silence is part of the problem.
    Maybe we’re not oppressing the vulnerable, but maybe our silence is enabling it.
    God wants reform. He doesn’t want you to just sing better songs in church, or be the best at saying prayers in public, he wants you to love other people like he loves them.
    And as Jeremiah told the people in his day, it comes with a promise - you will live in the land God gave to their ancestors for ever and ever.
    We get the same promise - live the way God intends, and we will live with him forever.
    This is not a works based salvation - rather, when we truly turn to him, this change will naturally occur.

    Don’t be decieved

    Okay, so firstly we had the command to reform our ways, secondly, we get the warning to not be decieved into thinking your safe.
    The people in the time of Jeremiah thought they were safe, because they had the temple.
    This was the temple Solomon had built. It was the place that God dwelt. And guess what? These people got access to it.
    Not everyone had full access to it. Gentiles could only go so far. But for Jews, they had special access.
    In verse 4, he repeats their claim to the temple three times for dramatic effect. This is the temple of the Lord. This is the temple of the Lord. This is the temple of the Lord!
    Maybe we might say: I’ve been baptised. I’ve been baptised. I’ve been baptised.
    Or maybe some of you might be able to say: I do a quiet time with God every day. A quiet time every day. A quiet time every day.
    If you can say those things - well done, that’s really good.
    But verse 8 might sting a little - “But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless”.
    Perhaps this is what James, the brother of Jesus was thinking when 650 years later he wrote “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead”.
    You can say all the right words. You can partake in all the religious stuff we do, like baptism and communion. But if you’re not being transformed in your inner being as evidenced by the way you act towards others, then maybe your baptism was just a dunking in the water, and communion is just about a tiny sip of juice and a miniscule piece of bread - not even enough to quench your thirst or hunger.
    Don’t be decieved. Baptisms, communion, quiet times, church attendance… these are all good things and to be encouraged, but those things in and of themselves are not what’s going to keep you safe.
    What’s going to keep you safe is staying close to God and doing what he wants you to do.
    In Jeremiah 7, you can look at verse 9 and you see a list of some pretty bad sins. Perhaps you might read that and think, well, okay, I’m not that bad. I don’t steal, murder, commit adultery or perjury, and I certainly don’t burn incence to other gods, so I’m good.
    But actually, when we’re honest, we can realise that our confidence in our own righteousness is another way in which we’re trusting in deceptive words.
    In verse 10, the people say “we are safe”, but in verse 11, the Lord says the house in which they trusted, has become a den of robbers.
    It’s the exact same language that Jesus picks up on when he comes into the temple courts and sees the terrible ways in which they are conducting themselves.
    Don’t trust in the practices. Rather, draw close to God and follow the leading he gives you.

    Remember Shiloh

    In verse 12, he changes tack. Remember Shiloh? He asks.
    They would well know the story of Shiloh. It was only a short distance north of them. During the early few centuries after Israel entered the Promised Land, this was the spiritual home… this was were the tabernacle (an early form of the temple) had been.
    But it was now part of Assyria’s rule. It had been wiped away. The prophets had made it clear why this was the case. The people had stopped following the one true God. They had acted wickedly.
    He’s saying to the people in Jerusalem during the time of Jeremiah, don’t think that something similar won’t happen to you. Indeed, we know from hindsight that the very same thing does happen. A forgeign power will come and destroy them. And it won’t be because God was powerless to stop it. It will be because God wills it to happen.

    Application

    So for us, we need to remember, you’re not safe because you’ve been bapitsed. You’re not safe because you come to church every week (or should I say, most weeks). You’re not safe because you have a good reputation. You’re not safe because you’re theology is really good.
    You’re safety is in walking in line with God. It is in turning to God and saying, I want what you want.
    You’re not going to be able to do it perfectly. You’re going to be in constant need of reforming. That’s okay, as long as you keep turning to God.
    You’re not safe because you do it all correctly, you’re safe because you’re always turning to God for direction.
    David was a great example of this. David sinned in one of the worst ways we can imagine. He committed adultery. Got someone else’s wife pregnant. Then ensured the death of her husband. This was not walking in line with God.
    But he repented. And by repent, I don’t just mean the type of apology you see a politician give when they realise they’ve been caught doing the wrong thing. I mean, the apology David gave was a heartfelt turning back to God, and more than that, allowing God to transform his mind and thinking.
    David was safe because even after sinning, he turned and walked with God.
    This is the reforming we need.
    A reforming that says, even when I mess up, I’m going to keep turning back to God and going his way.
    This is when we’ll be safe.

    Conclusion

    I started by talking about the pot holes on Lemon Tree Passage Road. This last week, the worst of the holes have been filled in. It might still be a little rough in places, but you’re not likely to bust a tyre.
    But don’t be lulled into a false sense of safety. Dangers always lurk and we need to be watchful of them.
    Don’t trust the big car you have. In that example, you trust in doing the right thing.
    Likewise, we don’t trust our spiritual care to some religious practices, rather we trust it to living the way God wants us to.
    Let me pray...
Tanilba Bay Baptist Church
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