Text: Jeremiah 15:15-21 (Matt. 16:21-26, Rom. 12:1-8)                                   W 15^th Sunday after Pentecost

No Compromise

            In the name of him who bids us, “Take up your cross and follow me”, dear friends in Christ:  forgiveness of sin and salvation unto eternal life are God’s free gift to us in his Son, Jesus who suffered and died for us.  We know that.  It’s the chief article of our Christian faith.  And because of that, we know with certainty that there is no price we can pay and nothing we can do to contribute in any way toward attaining those blessings. They are gifts we have received by God’s grace through faith alone.  And we know that even the faith by which we apprehend these priceless gifts is a free gift of God. Everything that pertains to our salvation is free: it’s all one magnificent divine give-away.

And yet … and yet as we heard so clearly in today’s three readings from Scripture (as well as in the words of that last hymn) the cost of discipleship, the cost of keeping, confessing, and continuing to grow in the faith through which we are freely saved is extremely high.  And though it may sound contradictory; it really only makes sense. As we follow in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus who lovingly and patiently bore our burdens of guilt to the cross and grave, we know that we too are called to die – to die to self and to all our selfish desires – and to suffer all, even death, rather than depart from the one true faith.  And even more, we are called by him to love others as he loved us so that while we live, we offer ourselves as living sacrifices, giving ourselves in service to each other, and gladly paying these high costs of discipleship not in order to be saved, but because we have been saved for that purpose.  All of this is included in what Jesus means when he says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me”.

And though he lived nearly six hundred years before time of Jesus’ earthly ministry, there’s probably no one who knew the high cost of faithful discipleship better than did the prophet Jeremiah.  The Lord laid on his shoulders a heavy cross indeed.  You see, Jeremiah lived in the years right before the destruction of the nation of Judah, which took place in 586 BC.  His mission was to call a spiritually rebellious, stubborn, and complacent people to repentance.  He was to warn them of the horrific judgment that the Lord had decreed would soon come upon them.  And that, you may think, was the same message of all the prophets of God; but in Jeremiah’s case it was a little different.  You see, most of the prophets before him could offer some hope for the nation.  Their messages repeated the refrain, “Let’s return to the Lord, for if we do, he will surely not follow through with his threats to destroy us.”  But poor Jeremiah couldn’t even offer that hope. The Lord told him that the problem was long passed fixing with threats not made good because the people repented in their typically half-hearted and short-term way.  They had become like children whose parents keep warning with louder and louder threats of spankings, but who never actually do anything. After a while, the kids stop listening. At that point, there’s only one way to capture their attention again.

That’s what the Lord told Jeremiah:  that time had come, the axe was going to fall – and it was going to fall hard.  In fact, the situation was so bad that the Lord told Jeremiah that even if Moses or Samuel, who were important Old Testament figures who successfully averted the Lord’s wrath through their prayers, were now to intercede on Judah’s behalf and ask for mercy on the nation, he would ignore them.  So going into it, Jeremiah already knew that on least a grand scale, his mission was going to fail.  The nation was already lost.  The best he could hope to do was save a few people out of it.

            Before we go on, we should ask, “What brought the nation of Judah to this spiritual low point?  How did things get so bad?”  The answer, in one word, is compromise.  That may seem strange because normally we think of compromise as a good thing. It’s a skill to be desired.  It’s an asset for lawyers, for business people, for married couples, for just about anyone in any walk of life.  The old “give and take” is what makes it possible to get along.  In fact, the ability to compromise is what makes politicians great.  But sometimes it’s not a good thing.  In the field of medicine for example, it’s terrible. There’s no such thing as a tolerable amount of cancer or HIV infection.  There’s no middle ground with such things.  And another area in which compromise has absolutely no place – where it is in fact disastrous – is the field of theology and religion.

When the people of Israel took possession of the Promised Land back in the days of Joshua, the Lord gave them just one instruction concerning the idolatrous people who were already living in the land.  He told his people, Israel, to destroy them all.  He said that Israel was to be his instrument – his weapon – for carrying out his judgments on the wicked inhabitants of the land.  They were to show no mercy, driving out or killing every last one of them, and completely wiping out any sign of their idolatrous ways.  The idols, the temples, the sacred groves, the articles of worship they used … everything related to their false gods and their religion was to be erased.

            The Lord had a good reason for this heavy-handed standing order:  he didn’t’ want any of it contaminating the faith of his people.  He knew that if even a handful of the Canaanites remained in the land, it would only be a matter of time before some of his people would start mixing the true faith with their idolatry.  Oh, it would start on a small scale, imperceptibly at first; just little concessions here and there.  A Canaanite might invite his Israelite neighbors over for a dinner party on the occasion of one of his pagan holidays, and there they’d find a few customs that they found charming and wanted to imitate; or a young woman might “simply fall in love with” a piece of jewelry depicting a goddess of some kind.  She’d wear it just because she liked the way it looked, not for any religious reasons, of course.  But you see, the lines would start to blur; over time they’d become even less clear.  Inevitably such casual mixing would lead to intermarriage.  At that point the ship is sunk because to please spouses and keep peace in the family, compromises have to be made.  It’s, “Okay dear, here’s what we’ll do:  on Sabbath days we’ll rest and thank and praise the Lord, and on Fridays we’ll sacrifice pigs to Baal.”  And of course, the poor kids of such unions grow up thinking this is normal, that “We are a very spiritual family because our practice allows for all faiths to be treated with equal respect.”  That, or the parents say, “When you get older, you’ll have to pick which faith you want to follow”; but at that point the only lesson the kids have learned is that religion doesn’t matter that much to their parents.  “And if it doesn’t matter to them, why should I bother with it at all?”

            This is why the Lord told his people to exterminate the Canaanites and their wicked ways.  He wanted them to keep the faith pure.  But unfortunately, they didn’t listen to him.  When they occupied the Promised Land they won lots of battles and killed or drove out a lot of the enemy; but when the job was about two-thirds done they said, “That’s enough.  We’re tired of all this fighting.  And we have plenty of space to live in now.  We don’t need to trouble ourselves to get rid of the rest of them.” So they settled in, got comfortable, and almost immediately the mixing the Lord had warned them about began.

            Now, try to imagine the effect of all that mixing and all those compromises piling up generation after generation, and you’ll understand what was the spiritual state of the people to whom Jeremiah was directed to speak God’s Word.  Theirs was a cafeteria style faith:  a little of this pagan religion, a little of that one, and over it all a thin gravy of the true faith – enough of it for them to convince themselves that they really were being faithful to the One True God of Israel.  It was a theological potpourri that smelled sweet to the people who breathed it; but to the God of heaven, it stank like hell.  And so he sent Jeremiah to tell them that his patience had come to an end.

            Now, you can well imagine how such a message would have been received by people steeped in the views commonly held in the day. Jeremiah’s words sounded angry and judgmental.  His views were too narrow.  At first they thought he was some kind of joke.  They just laughed at him.  But when he kept it up, they became irritated with him.  “Who do you think you are?  Who are you to tell us that you alone have the truth?  You’re intolerant!  You’re hateful!  You’re just plain mean!  Our God loves us.  We are his chosen people.  How dare you say he’s going to destroy us!”  They began to persecute the prophet, even to the point of violence; and as the Lord kept telling him to preach the same message, they persecuted him even more.  And this whole thing went on for several years.

            This is what brought Jeremiah to the outburst we heard at the beginning of today’s Old Testament lesson.  They are the words of a man trying to be faithful to his calling, but completely frustrated by the seeming futility of his ministry.  He complains about how he is being beat up for doing the very work the Lord gave him to do.  “It’s not right”, he says to the Lord, “You’re letting this go on because you are patient with them and want to give a few of them more time to repent. That’s all well and good; but it’s killing me!  Don’t you care about me too?  I’m the one being faithful here.  I’m the one who loves your Word.  I’ve been standing up for your truth.  And for it I’ve been driven out, made miserable and lonely; I’m a laughingstock, and the pain of my wounds never ends.  When are you going to show some of your great compassion to me?  Or have you abandoned me too?  Is your love for me nothing more than a mirage in the desert – something that looks cool and refreshing from a distance but perversely vanishes as soon as you come close enough to drink?”

            As one called to proclaim God’s truth to people who sometimes don’t want to hear what he has to say, I can sympathize with Jeremiah’s complaint.  I’m sure you can too, for you also are called to live and proclaim God’s truth in a world inherently hostile to it.  But as much as we might be able to sympathize with the way Jeremiah feels, we have to recognize that such feelings well up from our sinful, selfish natures.  I mean, “Lord, avenge me on my persecutors. Don’t you care for me?” is a far cry from, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  The former shows no understanding of what it means to die to self and carry the cross in love.  It disregards how all heaven rejoices over even one sinner who repents. And it shows an utter lack of trust in the God who saves – the God who works in all things for the good of those who love him.  Jeremiah was faithfully proclaiming God’s Word, and in this he was right; but his sinful, unbelieving heart betrayed him.  This cry from his heart, this accusation against God complaining about his lack of concern for him proved it.

            And so we hear the Lord call Jeremiah to repent of the feelings of anger, frustration, and hopelessness he’s having because he’s been made suffer under the cross he’s been assigned.  And the Lord promises to forgive and restore him when he does repent. He further tells him that if “you are to go on being my spokesman, you’re going to have to stop this worthless blubbering and speak only the precious Words I give you.”  And then he says this to Jeremiah: “Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them.  I will make you a fortified wall of bronze to these people.  They will fight against you, but will not overcome you, for I am with you to rescue and save you.” 

            What does that mean?  It means there can be no compromise.  The temptation of one called to speak God’s Word – especially when that Word is unpopular and may result in persecution – is to soft peddle it, to tone it down, to allow for a certain amount of leeway.  The Lord told Jeremiah not to do that.  You see, it was precisely Jeremiah’s unwillingness to compromise on God’s truth that made him a target of those who had already compromised the faith.  And now the Lord tells him, “You must not change the message I give you in order to save your skin.  Yes, there’re going to attack you on account of it.  You’re going to suffer.  And I won’t take you out of the fire; but I will do this:  I’ll give you the strength to endure it.  Continue to trust in me and I will see you through.  I will save you as I promised.”  And that is an important promise to us as well:  when the Lord assigns you a cross to bear, he also provides the means for you to carry it.

            But now I want to make a couple quick applications of this text.  The first is this:  we all have to recognize that we are to some degree already the products of a certain amount of compromise.  Unless you can say that your understanding of the faith is perfect in every detail and that you’re living your life 100 percent in accordance with God’s Word, you know this must be true.  We’ve all compromised our beliefs with the culture, with ideas and philosophies foreign to God’s Word, and so on.  And the thing is, a person who lives with compromised beliefs is the last one who’s going to see it.  He thinks it’s normal. That’s what the people to whom Jeremiah preached thought.  They had their compromised way of thinking, and when Jeremiah said something different, they decided he must be wrong.

So what I’m saying is this:  A faithful pastor, me or anyone else, is not trying to win a popularity contest if he’s doing his job and saying things that offend, that upset, and that are meant shake you out of your spiritual complacency.  If you are always happy with everything I say, if I’m not willing to take the heat for speaking God’s truth, then I’m not doing my job.  We need to understand that God’s Word is the water of life for the soul and that ideas and beliefs that conflict with it are pure poison.  We cannot compromise.  And when I see a problem, I have to speak up.  People who tell me, “Oh, pastor, you’re making a big deal out of nothing” when I try to correct a point of mistaken doctrine or apply God’s Word to their lives are really telling me that a little poison won’t hurt them.  It’s funny, because if a government guy in a lab coat came along and told them that their water was contaminated with dangerous levels of lead, they’d stop drinking it.  But then suppose their neighbor, who knows very little about chemistry, comes along and says, “Oh, those government lab technicians, what do they know?  I don’t see any lead in this water, and I certainly can’t taste it.  I’ve been drinking this water for forty years, and it hasn’t harmed me none.”  If that were to happen, I’d be willing to bet the person would still side with the guy in the lab coat and not drink the water.  Why?  Because they concede that he knows more about it and has the tools to do the testing. So likewise, if as your pastor, the one called to be the resident expert on God’s Word – if I say that something is spiritually harmful, maybe it would be good to at least hear me out rather than simply assume that I’m full of beans.  Not that I know everything or that I can’t make mistakes; but if I can show you from God’s Word, then you should understand that it’s not me that you’re disagreeing with, but the Lord.

The second application is for all of us, and it’s this:  As Christians believing in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we are all under enormous pressure to compromise our beliefs.  To counter this, we need to understand that the battle for the Promised Land is going on – but it doesn’t take place out there.  We’re not to go around killing off our pagan Canaanite neighbors.  Instead, we are to kill off the pagan Canaanites that dwell within us: the errors, the sins, and the lack of trust within our own hearts.  This is where the battles are fought.  And here we must show no mercy to what is wicked and unbelieving.  There can be no compromise.  We don’t want to give up like Israel did when the war was only part won.  We must maintain the offense because the moment we stop, we start losing ground again.  And yes, it’s a fight that’s hard.  It hurts.  And it will surely put us into conflict with the world; but it is all part of the cross we bear as followers of Jesus.  With this cross he gives also his promise to strengthen us and see us through to the final victory.  When he carried the cross for us, he made no compromise.  He gave himself wholly and completely for our salvation.  May we who have received that salvation be faithful and bold and make no compromises as we take up our crosses and follow him.  In his holy name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!