Sermon for Pentecost 13
Jeremiah 23:23-29 + Luke 12:49-53 + Hebrews 12:1-13
“Peace! Love! Tranquility!, declares the LORD. God loves you just the way you are. Don’t worry about punishment or judgment. The LORD would never punish his people. There will be no judgment day, no day of destruction. Just peace and prosperity. Don’t worry about those dusty old commandments Moses wrote so long ago. They aren’t relevant in today’s society. Don’t worry! Be happy! That’s God’s message to you. I’m sure of it. How do I know? I had a dream!”
OK, just to be sure. You all understand, right?, that what I just said to you was a lie. Not my lie, but the lie of the false prophets back in the days of Jeremiah, some 600 years before Christ. One after another of these false prophets proclaimed to the people of Jerusalem, “Peace! Love! Tranquility! God will not punish this city! You’re not such bad sinners after all, not as bad as the rest of the nations on earth!” The false prophets told people about the God they wanted to believe in. They still used the name Yahweh, the LORD, “He Who Is,” the name God had revealed for himself to Moses. They still talked about the Scriptures that Moses wrote. But the parts they didn’t like – they threw out. I mean, Moses had written those things some 900 years before the days of Jeremiah. They threw out the parts they didn’t like and made up messages from God, messages that supposedly came to them in their dreams, in the shrine of their hearts. Their message was peace! Love! Tranquility! And they had the people of Jerusalem eating out of the palm of their hands.
Then along comes this Jeremiah, hugely unpopular in Jerusalem, because he kept telling them about a God they didn’t want to hear about, a God they didn’t like very much, a God who wasn’t satisfied with their good works, who demanded holiness and threatened punishment on those who disobeyed him, who had specifically threatened to send his people away into exile in a foreign land as punishment for their rebellion against him. Jeremiah spoke of Yahweh, too – not the Yahweh of his dreams but the Yahweh who had revealed himself in his Word.
The false prophets had deluded themselves into thinking that the God revealed in Scripture was stuck in the past, trapped on the pages that told his story. They thought they could say whatever they wanted about God, teach whatever came to their minds, because the God of their dreams was much more real to them than the God of a book. How could the God of a book even know what they were saying?
But Jeremiah had a real message for these dreamers from the God of the book. “Am I only a God nearby,” declares the Lord, “and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord.
Somehow, these false prophets had gotten the idea that God only sees the earth like through the zoom function on a camera, that he could only see that close-up image on the screen in front of him. They forgot that God can also look up from that zoomed-in image and see things from far away – see everything that’s going on, everywhere, all the time, as we heard today in Psalm 139, Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
God knows when people misrepresent him. “I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name. They say, ‘I had a dream! I had a dream!’ How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds? They think the dreams they tell one another will make my people forget my name, just as their fathers forgot my name through Baal worship.”
Isn’t it amazing how history repeats itself? Or rather, how sin replicates itself throughout the ages. It’s the same thing going on today, people trying to redefine God, not based on what’s written on the pages of Scripture, but based on how they think he should be, how they dream him up to be. And because people want to not feel so guilty about the sinful cravings of their hearts, because people want to have their sinful lifestyles tolerated and even justified, they make up a God of tolerance, who doesn’t threaten, who doesn’t punish, who isn’t so strict or harsh or demanding. He’s a God of love – love as you define it, love as you think love should be. If something written in the Bible clashes with your opinion of right and wrong or with your idea of God, then just write it off as old and irrelevant. And if you have a dream about God or receive a special, personalized message from him, all the better! Now you have even more reason not to listen to what’s written in the Book. Who needs Scripture when you have the Spirit of God whispering in your ear?
People want to hear that God is a God of peace. No one wants to hear what Jesus said in today’s Gospel, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” That’s not the God we want to believe in, by nature. The God we want to believe in will let us choose right from wrong and will not punish. The God we want to believe in will appear to us in our own personal dreams, not in the pages of a book, or in water or in bread or wine.
The god of man’s dreams is a false god, and those who worship him will die an eternal death, because peace is not God’s prescription for this world, but division and punishment and a day of judgment that no one will escape. No sin will go unpunished. No one who tells lies about God will escape condemnation, and no one who believes the lies about God will be saved.
What’s the answer? What’s the solution? Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord. “Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”
For as much as people don’t want to hear about sin, when God’s Word comes in and says, “You have sinned and you will surely die for it!,” that Word is like a fire. It burns down through joints and marrow, right down into your soul. And like a hammer, it shatters your delusions of being good enough for a holy God. It shatters your pride and leaves you with nothing – cold, naked and alone. Such is God’s Word. Such is God’s law.
It’s the first word you need to hear. It’s a word you can’t skip over. But when God’s Word is preached rightly and people hear the Word of the law, hear about the judgment that is coming, then the hammer of God’s Word brings about repentance. And with repentance, comes another word – the Word of the Gospel.
The Word of Gospel is also God’s Word – that in Christ Jesus there is forgiveness of sins and safety from judgment and righteousness for the unrighteous. The law burns like a fire to destroy, but the gospel burns like a fire to cauterize the wounds and to give heat and light and healing. In Christ, there is peace and love and tranquility. On the cross of Christ there was punishment for your sins. In the waters of baptism you were clothed with Christ and, as far as God is concerned, in those waters you died the death that God’s law demanded you die. In Christ, there is the promise – the word of God – that God is your loving Father in heaven who has no more punishment to dish out on those who believe in his Son as their Savior from sin. “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved!”, declares the Lord God.
To be true to God’s Word you can’t skip ahead to the saving part. You have to stop first at the condemnation part. You can’t skip ahead to the forgiveness of sins without confronting the reality of your sin. You can’t skip ahead to a Father’s love until you know first the God who is a consuming fire and how dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. You can’t skip that hard teaching, because if you do, you skip over Christ. Right there between God’s holy wrath and God’s fatherly love is Christ – right there between law and gospel is Christ. Right there between heaven and earth, between condemnation and salvation – is Christ. Christ is God’s Word to the world.
The Word of God is what it is. You can’t chop it up in little pieces and keep the ones you want and throw away the ones you don’t, as little as you can chop God up into pieces. He is who he is – Yahweh – the LORD.
There are foolish, foolish people in the world who believe that that they have to tinker with God’s Word in order to make it palatable to people, in order to make it effective, in order to attract people to God. There are foolish people out there who believe that God’s Word needs to be marketed like a product, and that God’s Church is like a store that needs branding and advertising and promotion. You have to make the message sound relevant, you have to make the Word sound appealing. You have to address the needs people feel they have, and give them what they want to hear in the way they want to hear it. Only then will the fire of God’s Word be unleashed.
Nonsense. That’s utter nonsense. It’s worse than that – it’s human beings dreaming up lies about God. The Word of God that you hear, the Truth about God that is recorded on the pages of the Bible – that’s the fire. That’s the hammer. And it’s a fire that spreads all by itself. It’s a hammer that wields itself and always does what God wants it to do.
Hear God’s Word to you today, and believe it. Children in the Sunday School that started up again today, learn God’s Word that your teachers teach to you. Memorize the portions of God’s Word that are assigned to you. All of you – grow in God’s Word, that it may be an ever-present fire in your heart and a hammer that both shatters your pride and builds up your faith in Christ. “Let the one who has my Word speak it faithfully,” God says. “Let him who has my Word tell of my name correctly and not waver and not be ashamed of my name. Let him who has my Word preach it and teach it and glory in it, no matter who likes it or dislikes it. My name is holy. My name is fear. My name is compassion. My name is faithfulness. My Word is holiness and punishment. My Word is repentance. My Word is a sacrifice made on the cross to atone for guilt. My Word is resurrection from the dead. My Word is forgiveness. My Word is Christ.”
People of God, by the grace of God, you bear God’s name. You have God’s Word. You have Christ. Don’t be afraid to speak about him. Unleash the fire of God’s Word! Amen.
