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August 16th
Our bible reading is in Jeremiah 32-34.
My dad would oftentimes quote the British born American poet, Edgar A Guest. Known for his 24 line poems written in the first half of the 20th century. The one that I remember the most was “I would rather see a sermon than hear one any day.”
Basically Jesus was saying that to his disciples...”Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”
Jeremiah would do this in his day. He would preach with his words, but he would also preach faith in his God Savior with his life. In the days just before Babylon captured Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah prophesied that one day Judah and Israel would come back to their promised land. Build new homes, plant new vineyards, and repair broken down walls and live in Jerusalem again.
It seemed far fetched to most of the Judeans. They were beaten and beat down. Faith was nowhere to be found among the leadership of the nation of Judah in those days. They just couldn't believe the preacher’s hopeful words.
They saw the smoke from fires that destroyed their homes, their fields, and their cities, and their countryside. Going from beauty to ashes, from faith in the future to overwhelming pain in the present. Dark days to be sure.
And to make it even darker, Judah’s King Zedekiah judged Jeremiah a traitor and put him in the dungeon in Jerusalem. What would happen next?
God would make his preacher a living illustration of his own message. Jeremiah’s cousin came to visit him in prison. But it was more than a visit. Cousin Hanamel offered his land to Jeremiah for seventeen shekels of silver. Why the land had been confiscated by the Babylonians, and it was virtually worth nothing to Jeremiah...”unless “God was going to keep his promise” of giving that land back to the Judeans one day.
Jeremiah bought the land in front of many witnesses...”You think I'm a fool...Well, I'd rather be a fool trusting God and His promise than a man who preaches one thing and lives another.
There had to be faithful men and women of God in Jerusalem. Some must have been discouraged, especially with their spiritual leader, Jeremiah, in prison for preaching the truth. What is to become of us, they must have cried. And then someone would tell the story of Jeremiah’s faith purchase of a land God was going to keep for him no matter what.
I want to skip ahead in today ‘s text to try to answer the possible struggle with faith by the faithful in Jerusalem...“After I had given the deed of purchase to Baruch the son of Neriah, “I prayed to the Lord”, saying: “Ah, Lord God!” (A sigh of possible doubt creeping into Jeremiah’s heart)...It is “you” who have made the heavens and the earth by “your” great power and by “your” outstretched arm! “Nothing is too hard for you.”
