THE MISTAKE OF THINKING YOU DON’T NEED GOD

Jeremiah 11: 1-12

Do you remember what was happening in the first half of 2001? You’ll recall one president leaving office with a tarnished and slick image, and another taking office in a controversial election with Florida being accused of “hanging chads!” You’ll remember the good news that we began the year with national surplus of funds rather than a debt, but an expensive defense system and cutting off talks with North Korea made for a tense stage that summer. Here in Daytona Beach, news of the death of Dale Earnhardt in the 500 made world wide headlines. Members of our church went to the Holy Land just before tensions escalated, precluding anyone else from feeling safe visiting Israel for several years. Tech stocks had been a gravy train for investors, but by then the bottom had dropped out. The nation was, perhaps, no more and no less a nation under God than it had been over the past several decades. But then as three elders joined me at a Presbytery meeting on 9/11/01, life was about to change. (Ironically, our next meeting this week is on 9/11!) But on that Tuesday in 2001, life changed. The morning news stories made it seem like Armageddon, or World War III, or an invasion from outer space. Cell phones started ringing all across the room where we had gathered in that isolated, retreat like setting in Lake County. For periods of time, the world grew smaller as help and messages of concern poured in from other countries, some of whom we had helped in the past. Who, we wondered, could have done such an audacious act to the huge towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.? The smoldering images will stay with us forever. But has that event brought you or our nation closer to God? Do wars and natural disasters make a difference in moving us from lives focused on other things? Listen to these prophetic words by Lutheran preacher Walter Maier, all the way back in 1942: “What is the worst disaster that can overtake our beloved land? We ought to agree that the most devastating danger comes not from without, but from within. Just as a man can recover from ghastly surface wounds, broken or even amputated limbs, while below the surface, diseases like cancer or internal injuries can [make healing more challenging], so a nation with its cities, towns, and villages can be restored to health after wide epidemics of influenza or typhus. It can also rise victoriously from the ashes of fire, the debris of flood, earthquake, tornado, and the ruin of bombs and cannon. Yet history testifies that there is one inner loss which is final; one can remove national glory forever and permanently reduce any country, however rich and powerful. That deadliest danger is unbelief, ingratitude toward God Almighty, the blasphemous ridiculing of his Word, the rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the denial of his cleansing blood, the contempt for the Gospel, and with this comes a carnival of crime, the sweeping rule of sin, and the glorification of evil. God’s truth, majestic in its plain unalterable force warns, ‘the nation and kingdom that will not serve [the Lord] shall perish, and every time an empire has collapsed: Egypt, Babylonia, Syria, Media, Persia, Greece, Rome, and above all Judah—the truth of that warning is fulfilled. The most vital necessity for America today is, therefore, to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ’s power to forgive sins and restore us to God.” Ages ago, it was God’s Word through Jeremiah that told the Southern Kingdom of Judah to put away all that distracted them and return to their roots and to their God. When they did not, God instructed Jeremiah to give a children’s sermon the point of which no one would miss: God, the great potter, could take the vessel he had made, which no longer was serving it’s intended purpose, and would make a new vessel instead that would be purposeful. Such was the message then; could it also be a message for you personally, or for our nation, or even for other nations?

Like the prodigal son who left his Father because he was tired of all the rules; like his brother who moved far away from his father emotionally because he didn’t believe in grace; like Jonah who tried to run from both the demands of and the message of salvation; like the radical religious practitioners who condemn others—wrongly taking the judgment seat of God with divine designs but human minds, the Lord watches and weighs his pleasure and displeasure. There are actually religious persons who think it pleased the Almighty to kill perceived infidels in towers in New York City, to kill doctors, nurses, or mothers in planned parenthood clinics as justification for ended pregnancies; who have set off bombs in Israeli or Palestinian villages, mistakenly calling human anger “Divine retribution.” Some live lives grief-stricken and devoid of grace; others stop believing in God and just go on calculated rampages against humanity. There will come a time in every man and woman’s life, if their souls are hate-filled, or if they are tormented about the abyss of hell or the uncertainty of forgiveness, when they will either emotionally self-destruct, or they will fall to their knees in a moment of, (in some regards, being born again) giving in to and giving up to a Lord is waiting to put control in their out of control lives. In a Pauline-like Damascus road experience, they cry Heavenward with words like this: “All right, Lord, if there is anything you can do with this rotten stinking mess I have made of my life, then do it. I am yours, and you are my Savior. Take control of my out-of-control life. I am tired of trying to run from you, fight you, and deny you. I need you now.” I’ve known good people with rational, or stubborn, or scientific minds who don’t believe there is an active, loving God who works among us in this world and to whom we will return one day. To them I say: “If you don’t believe in God, and in so doing you do not live for him or honor him with your choices, when you die, you’d better be right! Could the hope of truth and grace and love be enough to have you, my friend, to live differently the rest of your days and open some new portal to the possibility of life beyond this life? Is your choice, which doesn’t hold out the possibility of an afterlife of either darkness or light, (the most logical stance to take in a world when countless new discoveries make science and medical books be revised yearly, to continue to try life without God? Or conversely, if you do believe in God, but don’t worship, thank, or acknowledge God because the great trickster and tempter of the world has planted seeds of doubt, sarcasm, false assurance, or the fantasy of purely independent living, then running from, hiding from, or living life adjacent to God but without God is the most foolish of positions to try to defend in the end. Like the spy cameras from space such as Google Earth, God is watching and is following your every move, and, like the Hound of Heaven that He is, the Lord waits until you tire of the game of running, or the children’s game of thinking if you close your eyes to God’s presence tat God will not see you, and then God waits until you paint yourself into a corner. Only then you look heavenward, and with a sense of the futility of your actions, saying “All right Lord. I’m ready to stop running and try it your way; I’m ready to stop sitting out on Sunday mornings as others go to church, pretending that reading a paper or playing golf or going to theme parks or getting extra work done is best for me and that you really don’t mind. Now I’m ready to put you first, not only because it will be better for you, but also because it will be better for me.”

Christian writers like Bruce Wilkinson and Max Lucado have pointed out that “God has bundles of blessings he’s just waiting to pour out on those who, with pure motives, ask for them. Also, if God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it! Like a caring mother or a concerned Father, God cries out to all who are lost or wandering: ‘Come home, child!’ And like the child who does return to the arms of God finds out, home is not without its responsibilities, but they seem much lighter and can be done more joyously when you’ve experienced the agony and loneliness of the Godless life.

Years ago, with the image of a skilled potter remaking what was no longer working, God showed Jeremiah what he could do with his people whose lives had been broken by their choices lived outside of the commandments and with an inability to see the consequences of their actions. Perhaps there are parts of your emotional or personal or professional life that—like pottery—have shattered, and human ingenuity has not been able to glue them back together well. God-the great potter-can take your mess, and with great warmth and care, remold your life into one that not only pleases you, but ultimately pleases the potter. Even if your life is not in a total shambles, but there are parts of it that are, will you turn over those parts, along with the rest of your life, to a Lord Jesus who can show you how to be human and to still honor God? Today you can change your life; God waits for moments like these, not with a judge’s gavel, but with the open arms of a perfect parent. Come back to God through Jesus Christ, won’t you? You can do it now, by acknowledging what God’s heart longs to hear: “I Need Thee Every Hour, Most Precious Lord.” Amen.

Jeffrey A. Sumner September 9, 2007