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Text: Jeremiah
28:5-9 6th Sunday after Pentecost Don’t Sugarcoat It In the name
of him who came to bring the Sword of the Spirit upon the earth, dear brothers
and sisters in Christ: We have
recorded in the Holy Scriptures two letters that the Apostle Paul wrote to
Timothy, his former student, who was then a fledgling pastor serving a rather
difficult congregation of Christ’s Church on the island of Crete. As Paul was wrapping up his second letter,
after having instructed Timothy in a number of important doctrines and
practical applications, he gave his young protégé this wise counsel: “Proclaim the Word [of
God]; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and
encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put
up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather
around them a great number of teachers who will say what their itching ears
want to hear. They will turn their ears
away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” “Proclaim the Word of God”: it remains the best advice anyone can give
to a pastor or teacher in the Church of Jesus Christ. If you intend to speak on behalf of the Lord, you best make sure
that what you say is really something the Lord has said – and, of course, it
wouldn’t hurt at all to make sure you understand what he meant by it. This is especially true today because we
have only to look around and see that the time Paul spoke of, when people would
reject sound doctrine and gather around teachers who will say the things they
want to hear—that time is already upon us. It’s especially evident in this
country where people tend to have a very consumer attitude toward
religion. Marketers have done a good
job of impressing upon us the notion that we should expect to have it our way,
no matter what it is; and so it’s no surprise that this same “the customer is
always right” approach has spilled over into the church. Americans want their theology like they want
their fast food: quick, easy,
relatively cheap, not too nutritious, heavy on fat and flavor, and with lots of
choices. For most people, my
personal preferences are more important than God’s revealed truth when it
comes to choosing a place of worship.
The result is the exponential proliferation of diverging churches,
creeds, and cults that we see today.
And while some of these churches are veering off into weird new
doctrines no one has ever heard of, others are strange beasts that are created
by mixing, matching, and borrowing doctrines from many different sources. It’s as if people think they can develop
their own brand of Christianity kind of like the Hindus build their idols: “Hey this god is pretty good, but you know
what she needs? About a dozen more
arms! Let’s just tack them on
there!” Unfortunately, that kind of
“Christianity”, as attractive as it might be for marketing purposes, ends up
being as weak, powerless, and false as a Hindu idol because it was created by
people rather than revealed by God. And so we want
to be on guard against this tendency that we all have to allow personal
preferences to speak to our hearts louder than God’s own Word because that’s
how a great deal of false doctrine creeps into the church. And though this sort of false doctrine can take
a lot of different forms, today I’d like to focus on one specific kind of
it: and that is the predilection we
have to weaken the Lord’s clear message to us by softening, or toning down his
fearful wrath and his judgments against sin; or to say it another way, to
sugarcoat the problem of our disobedience and rebellion against God. We see this
error already playing a major part of the very first sin. When our mother Eve told the serpent that
the Lord had commanded them not to eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of
the garden because if they did they would die, the devil responded, “Die? Who told you that? Ridiculous! You’re not
going to die if you eat it!” Instead he
described all the advantages there were to violating God’s command. No penalties, just rewards were to be
expected. Now that’s
sugarcoating it. But, as we all know,
the Lord meant exactly what he said when he told them that death would come by
their disobedience – and as it turned out, that death was much worse than they
could have imagined. The state of
death, they discovered, is not just an oblivious, peaceful sleep; no, it’s a
lifetime of pain, and hardship, and suffering, and sorrow, and disease and all
the other results of the curse that we see and endure in this world – and an
eternity of it amplified many times worse in the world to come. And so,
having been deceived by Satan’s sugarcoating and having been burnt like that,
you’d think we’d learn to see through such obvious lies – but what’s amazing is
how we continue to fall for it.
Sugarcoating remains a big part of virtually every temptation we
experience. We always want to minimize
the consequences of sin. “It’ll be
okay. Nothing will go wrong. No one will ever find out; and if they do,
so what? It won’t be that big a
deal.” Yeah? Tell that to the four thousand unwanted babies who die every day
in this country at the hands of doctors who have taken an oath to never harm
anyone but to do their best to preserve life.
Tell it to the mothers of those dead babies who thought it would be so
easy, but who are haunted by the crying they hear in their heads and who are
driven to the brink of despair by the aching emptiness in their arms. Tell it to children who don’t have two parents
at home because one of them thought no one would find out if they strayed. Tell it to the many young adults whose
doctors have told them they’ve contracted AIDS, or some other incurable
venereal disease. Tell it to the people whose minds and bodies have been
destroyed by illicit drugs. Tell it to
those who mourn at the grave of a loved one.
I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea. There is no such thing as a sin without serious consequences. But Satan keeps telling us: “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay”, and we keep
falling for it. And as bad as it is when he does
it, in many ways it’s far worse when he gets the Church of Christ to do it for
him. It happens very blatantly when a
pastor or teacher takes a clear command of God and overturns it by saying,
“this command is just wrong, or it’s out of date, or it’s based on
superstition, or it’s just an archaic view of morality, or whatever, and
therefore you do not have to pay attention to it”. That’s one way it happens; but far more common is what’s called
“gospel reductionism” (there’s a five dollar theological term for you). This is the mistaken view that says, because
God is love and the main purpose of the Bible is to show us God’s love in
Christ Jesus, anything in it that seems contrary to what’s kind and loving and
forgiving and accepting can be thrown out.
Love cancels out God’s revealed truth.
The message of the church becomes, “God is gracious and loving! Jesus loves everybody! And therefore, as long as you think what
you’re doing is loving, or if it just feels right to you, go ahead and do it,
and don’t ever feel guilty about it even if it violates the clear word of God.” That’s sort of the backdrop of
what’s going on in today’s Old Testament reading. The action takes place around the year 595 BC during the ministry
of Jeremiah the prophet. You might
think of him as the conservative hardliner.
He takes the commands of God very seriously. Unfortunately, he is pretty much a lone voice. The theological state of the nation of Judah
then was not unlike the state of the Christian Church today. It was a hodgepodge of beliefs: a mixture of the Word of God in the form of
the Laws of Moses, many of which were being misapplied, with a heavy helping of
some of the idolatrous beliefs of the surrounding nations. In an effort to be open minded and
inclusive, and not wishing to offend anyone, the people had gone so far as to
actually set up the idols of various false gods right in the temple of the
Lord. And they would worship these
idols right along side of the Lord, as if he were just another character in the
pantheon of gods … his word just another equally valid expression of some
higher divine truth. So also, his laws
didn’t really matter very much. There
were lots of views of morality in the world, and the one God gave Moses seemed
to be way too restrictive. So it was
seen as okay to bend or break the rules – and they did a lot of it. But that was okay because, after all, “We
are God’s chosen ones. The Lord loves
us. He chose us to be his special
people, so we can do no wrong.” But that isn’t the way the Lord
saw it. Yes, he had chosen them. Yes, he loved them. Yes, he had given them many wonderful
promises in his word. But as you might
expect, the Lord didn’t care for all this competition for their hearts. Nor did he care for the way they causally
disregarded his word. He had formed a
special relationship with them. He had
brought them out of darkness and freed them from their enemies to walk in his
ways. They were to be the showcase of
his light and love in the world. But
they were doing their level best to blend in and be what all the sinful and
spiritually unenlightened Gentile nations around them were. And so the Lord’s response was to
tell them that their behavior was unacceptable. He would not allow them go on like this. And as unloving as it might sound, it was in
fact his love for them that caused him to want them to change. He didn’t want them to remain the slaves of
sin. And either they would change: repent of their sins, throw out the idols,
and return to him; or there would be punishment. He sent Jeremiah to deliver the news. When they wouldn’t listen to him, the Lord made good on his
threat. He sent the powerful armies of
the nation of Babylon against them.
There was no contest: the Jews lost.
As a result, they had to pay a heavy annual tribute to Babylon, and just
to be sure they kept paying, a few thousand hostages were taken away. Many of them were members of the royal
family of David’s line (you may remember that Daniel was one of them). The Babylonians also took away a lot of the
sacred articles used in the Temple of the Lord for worship and sacrifice. It was the Lord’s way of saying, “Since you
won’t listen to my word, I’m taking away from you the means by which you
receive my grace and forgiveness.”
(That’s worth remembering.) All in all, it was a pretty hard
slap. But apparently it was not hard
enough. After a lot of weeping and
remorse, things went right back to what they were before. Jeremiah warned the people again, and still
they refused to listen. So, like a
parent whose child continues to violate the same rule over and over again, the
Lord spanked them harder. He sent the
Babylonians back again. This time they
took captive some fifty thousand people, resettled them in Babylon in penal
colonies, and they put them to hard work.
It was a terrible and humiliating blow to the nation of Judah. And again, there was a lot of weeping and
remorse; but unfortunately, still no change in attitude or behavior. If anything, things got worse. The people who remained took it as proof of
God’s love for them that they weren’t taken captive like the
others had been. In a sense that was
true: God loved them and was giving
them yet another opportunity to repent and return to him. But they mistook God’s patient forbearance
for approval of their behavior. And
unfortunately, there was no shortage of misguided theologians who were happy to
tell them what they wanted to hear.
Priests and prophets were saying, “See, we were spared this
calamity. God loves us and accepts us
just the way we are”, and the people ate it up – and so they saw no need to
repent. So the Lord sent Jeremiah again
with his final word on the matter. He
said (and this is a bit of a paraphrase), “I’ve reached the end of my patience. It’s time to drop the hammer. If things don’t change, I’ll wipe you all
out and start over again from scratch.”
Needless to say, the message wasn’t received very well. It is in this context that Hananiah, a very popular prophet whose
name meant “God is Gracious”, stood up in the temple to denounce Jeremiah. “Jeremiah, we are absolutely sick and tired
of your depressing, dire prophesies.
How unloving you are. How
uncompassionate to all these people who have had family and friends taken away
as captives. You don’t care about
them. You never have anything nice to
say. Why don’t you just shut up? Listen everybody, here’s the gospel
truth. We serve a God who loves
us. We are his chosen ones. He’d never do anything to hurt us. I prophesy that within two years all the
captives will come home safely, and that the sacred articles of the temple will
be returned. Everything is going to be
okay.” It was exactly what everyone
wanted to hear. We heard Jeremiah’s response to
this in the first reading. He said,
“Amen – so let it be! Would to God that
he’d fulfill your words.
Just the same, everybody hear me now:
all this time the prophets have been warning you about the judgments
that would fall if you did not repent and return wholly to the Lord. You’ve seen these warnings ignored and
fulfilled one right after the other.
It’s what I’m telling you now.
And as far as Hananiah’s prophecy is concerned, well, you’ll know that
he was sent from God if it comes true.”
And a little later, Jeremiah added this private word for Hananiah: “Oh, as far as shutting up goes, the Lord
told me to tell you he’s going to shut you up for good. You are going to be dead in less than a year.” I’m sure that Hananiah was deeply
offended by the “unloving” remark.
Nevertheless, in seven months he was stone cold dead. And after two years … well, after more than five
years, his very hopeful prophecy remained unfulfilled. But the people didn’t care. They still preferred his obviously soft and
sugarcoated lie to Jeremiah’s hard, bitter truth. They continued to listen to those who said the things that were
more appealing to them. A few years
later, after many more attempts to urge them to listen, the Lord fulfilled what
Jeremiah had foretold. He brought the
sword of judgment against the nation of Judah and wiped it off the map. There’s just no way to sugarcoat that. And it’s there in Scripture as a warning to us, so that we’ll be on guard to avoid falling into the same trap. The Lord Jesus continues to wield the sword of judgment today. We hear him say so in today’s Gospel reading: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword”. And a sword is for killing people; let’s not sugarcoat it. The sword is the Law of God, and it’s for killing the old sinful flesh that clings to each of us. That person has to die, just like Paul says, “the body of sin must be done away with, so that we should be no longer the slaves to sin”. We need daily to be reconvicted of our sin, recognize what a shameful offense it is to the Lord, and to be terrified of his wrath. That’s what leads to repentance and saving faith in Jesus. Only when we know God’s judgment can we be crucified with Christ who died for us; and only then can we rise with him to live to God and walk in his righteousness. That’s the sweet Gospel, and the only way to get there is by coming to it through the bitter truth. You see, the danger of sugarcoating God’s word by softening the Law is that you end up losing the Gospel. A God who is not filled with righteous anger over sin has a Son who does not need to die for it. A God who does not damn sinners to hell certainly does not need to curse his Son on the cross to make atonement. So you see, sugarcoating the Law empties the cross of its power and poisons the plan of Salvation, changing the sweet Gospel into nothing more than syrupy sweetness. It might taste good – but like cotton candy, you cannot live on it. And all of this means taking an unpopular stand in today’s world. The truth hurts and people prefer not to hear it. They’d rather have the sugarcoating. But if you’re going with the flow, you can be sure that you are not going with Jesus. Hananiah certainly discovered that; only it was too late for him. Lost also were everyone who listened to him. Jeremiah, on the other hand, took the hard and unpopular stand upon the whole Word of God. He remained a true prophet, and has since received a prophet’s reward. May God give us the grace to stand strong, steadfast, and faithful like him, so that with him we may receive the reward of everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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