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Series: Through the Bible in Eight Great Stories #6 Prophets' Message of Hope "In Love"
Here’s where we’ve been and where we are going: The story began 5 weeks ago--we learned that God created all things for a particular purpose. Humans are a part of creation, and God, as Creator, longs to connect with this creation, particularly the part that is created in the image of the Creator. However, humans, with the freedom of choice, rebelled and longed not for relationship with the Creator, but chose instead to fulfill their own desires, to exert their own power. And there were consequences for their rebellion, and …there was God’s mercy. God longed for this connection, and finally formalized it into a covenant and a promise with a man named Abram and his wife Sarai. The promise was a simple one: “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” With the promise or covenant came land and descendents, a people will have a place and therefore an identity, and they will grow to be a multitude over many generations that others might know God through them. But always, the covenant was weakened by human sin, disobedience and rejection of the relationship God longed to establish. Eventually the people found themselves enslaved in Egypt. But God delivered so that they would again know the promise. I will be your God, and you will be my people. They re-entered the land of the promise, and soon grew and prospered. God’s Judges were raised to lead the people, to settle disputes. Priests were raised up to help the people worship and maintain their relationship with God. But soon, they longed to be like the other nations and demanded a King. God relented and told them a King would indeed make them like all the other people, who paid heavily for such leadership with taxes, the lives of their children, and land. Eventually, the king thing didn’t work out all that well. For a short time the people of God were one, a unified kingdom, but after Solomon, the kingdom’s split. Human kings were not raised by God, but either inherited the throne or captured it through revolt or assassination. The Kings led the people further and further away from God. They forgot, were not longer God’s people. God raised up prophets and gave them the authority to speak God’s word of warning to the people. But they resisted, and in the end, it spelled destruction. The northern kingdom was conquered, the people dispersed, never to be heard from again. The southern kingdom was eventually invaded, the city of Jerusalem and the Temple destroyed, and the best and brightest carried off into exile. So again the people found themselves far from home, oppressed and in captivity, and wondering how this all had come to pass. The promise is in shambles. The people are not God’s people. But God has not completely abandoned the people. Last week, listening on the radio from my bed, as many do each week, I heard Jim say God was “obsessed with the people.” Obsessed is a word with much negative baggage, but I think he’s on to something. I think more appropriately, God is in love. In love, as many creative types are, with the very thing God has created. In love, as many creators are, with the idea of what the creation might become. It is one thing for an artist to admire one’s own wet paint on canvass, clamped to the easel. It is quite another to imagine it framed and hung in a gallery, adored and looked upon by others as a magnificent thing that provides a window into the soul of the artist. It is one thing to make music in a rehearsal room, it is quite another to dream of playing for people who hear and respond in such a way that you know that they have been touched, more than that—changed by the gift of one’s music. To sense that the hearers hearts beat with the same rhythm of the artist’s heart. It is one thing to build and create marvelous designs on a drawing table or on a computer file, it is an entirely different thing to hope one day that form, that design it will become what it was imagined to be: a form and shape not only to be admired, but that it will serve some greater purpose—to fulfill the function for which the form has been shaped, bringing satisfaction and pleasure as it does so. You see, I think this is the heart of God. The artist’s heart. The creator’s heart. Longing to love the created thing in a relationship, so that the creation might become the very thing it was intended and designed to be. To be a window into God’s soul. To help others know the rhythm of God’s heart. To serve and bring satisfaction and pleasure in doing so that others might know the Creator who derives such happiness from designing satisfaction and pleasure. “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” Jeremiah was the last prophet of Judah, during the reign of the last four kings of Judah, all of whom did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord. And Jeremiah was given the most difficult task. To tell the people that their rebellion, their embracing of other gods, their self-indulgent lifestyle and their neglect of the poor, the widow, the orphan, were leading them to destruction. Of course the people didn’t believe Jeremiah. They thought he was sort of a dour and sour sort—who never had anything good to say. They rejected him--treated him as a traitor. How dare he speak out against his own government? I’m sure more than one person told Jeremiah, “if you don’t like it here, why don’t you go live somewhere else?” They beat him. They put him in prison. They locked him up in stocks. Even threw him into a cistern hoping he’d just die down there. But Jeremiah isn’t out to win a popularity poll. Jeremiah tells us that he has a fire shut up in his bones. He isn’t gleeful about telling Judah they were all headed to hell in a hand basket either. In fact, it tears him up. He laments. He weeps. He loves his country, his people, his land. But there is this fire shut up in his bones. B. Davie Napier, a professor of Old Testament has written much about Jeremiah. And he gives us a powerful image—“Jeremiah, telling of the impending fall of the city, all the while standing at ground zero.” The people did not listen. In 587 the Babylonians finally finish the job and destroy the temple, and leave the city of Zion, Jerusalem in ruins. Some 4600 of the brightest and best of the people of God were taken into exile by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. The rest fled….mostly to Egypt. An ironic twist—the people of God, delivered from Egypt in God’s greatest act of mercy, return on their own to Egypt even as they are warned by God through Jeremiah not to. But Jeremiah is more than a prophet of woe. He is also a prophet of great hope. Think about it. It takes great courage to speak frankly to those you love who will undoubtedly suffer and be destroyed by God because of their actions. And when the worst occurs, and the suffering and destruction happens, I submit that it takes even greater courage to speak a word that puts hope in the hands of that same God. In my experience, people in pain are rarely ready to hear that something good might be born out of such pain. Yet that is exactly what Jeremiah is called by God to say. Babylon is God’s instrument, and the remnant that remains in exile are asked to trust that it will all for the best. That God’s people will one day be restored, and start over again—that just as God led the their ancestors through the wilderness for 40 years, God will lead them through this wilderness as well. Jeremiah tells the people, “At that time, says the Lord, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness…” Did you hear that? “Grace in the wilderness.” As hard as those 40 years in the wilderness was for the former slaves of Egypt, that is exactly what they found out there in the wilderness. Grace. Remember? Gifts from God. Literally, their bread in the morning, their meat in the evening. But Grace that also formed them into a people. The Grace of the law. The Grace of worship. The Grace of becoming the community of the covenant. ”It will happen again,” Jeremiah tells the people. This wilderness will be a grace-filled wilderness. In truth, he is right. But then again, it’s hard to be wrong when your script writer is God the Creator of all things. The wilderness of exile will protect them during a terrible, unstable period in the Middle East for these 50 years. The wilderness of the exile will allow them to reflect upon their relationship with God, and begin to put their history into perspective. They will be so productive in exile. Worship, psalms, and a revised history will all be written down during this time in the wilderness so that the people might not forget the mistakes they made and the steadfast mercy of God through it all. The wilderness of exile is full of grace and God’s mercy. God judges, yet provides in abundant mercy for God’s people. Isn’t that what we’ve learned from the very beginning? When God banished Adam and Eve and yet make warm clothing for them. When God sent Cain away for killing his brother Abel, yet marked him so that no one else might harm him lest they answer to God. Now, the people, in exile, the city of Jerusalem destroyed—God’s fierce judgment, but accompanied by God’s lavish mercy. Fifty years later, the original 4600 Israelites have grown to become over 42,000 strong during their exile. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon is long gone. Persia has come to conquer the entire region. And a new king is enthroned, Cyrus, who, for no given reason, suddenly decides that it would be best if the people who consider themselves the people of the “God of heaven” would return to Jerusalem and rebuild a house for God in that place. And just as Jeremiah had told them, the remnant does indeed return to the cities of Judah, most notably Jerusalem. The prophets words of hope, born out of the love of God have come true. And the people resettle. They rebuild the temple. But they have new customs, born out of exile. It is important to teach and to learn what God’s holy word has to say and so Synagogues are established for this purpose with Rabbi’s to teach and lead, making sure the people do not forget. Temple worship is a special privilege, and those who live outside Jerusalem will make pilgrimages to worship in the Temple. But worship will also be developed around the Sabbath in the home, around the family table. This new focus on teaching the law, and worship within the family will allow the people of God to retain their unique and special identity even when they are not gathered together, even when they are dispersed into other lands—from this point forward, to be a part of the people does not rely on where you reside, but in how you worship, what you believe, and your identity as a people of the covenant. And those words of hope from the Prophets will take on new meanings after the restoration. These words will be studied by scholars, Pharisees and Scribes. They will be expounded upon by Rabbis and taught to the children. And it will be discussed, are the words Jeremiah spoke, these words of hope…and the words of the other prophets, Isaiah, and Zechariah, their words of hope…are these words about just the return of the exiles, or something more? This shoot from the stump of Jesse, surely this must be a king. An anointed king. This straight path making way for one who is to come, surely this must be a king who will again gather the people of God together. Not a king of revolt or succession. Not a political king. An anointed King. A chosen King. A King chosen by God as David was chosen. That’s it. The stump of Jesse. The line of David. A new king… A new king to gather the people together. A new king to unite the people of God. A new king. . .anointed. Messiah. And the words of hope gives birth to a new hope. God’s chosen one is on the way. God’s Messiah will appear. The people of God aren’t far off the mark, and yet…they cannot begin to comprehend the kingdom God has in mind. A kingdom that just might restore the relationship. A kingdom that will turn everything upside down, and at the same time, bring the created and the Creator closer than they have been since…well, since the day God rubbed some clay between his hands, and blew into it the breath of God. Next week, we’ll meet the One God sends to God’s people.
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