Jeremiah 1,4-10. 9. Sunday after Trinity

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum

Jeremiah 1,4-10       3918

9. Sonntag nach Trinitatis  054  

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, John 11 

Olaf I Tryggvason, King of Norway and Apostle to Norway. Martyr 1000 

29. Juli 2018 

1. О Heavenly Father, who shows to us Your marvelous loving-kindness, teach us to praise You for delivering us from stumbling and death, so that we draw near to You in the light of the living.  Amen. (Starck 277) 

2. »Now the word of Yahweh approached me, saying: „Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.“ Then I said: „Behold, the Lord who is Yahweh! Alas, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a young man.“ But Yahweh said to me: „Do not say: ‘I am only a a young man’; for you will go to all to whom I send you, and you will speak all that I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares Yahweh.“ Then Yahweh put out His hand and touched my mouth. And Yahweh said to me: „Behold, I have put My words in your mouth. Behold, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pull up and to tear down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.“  

3. The Prophet Jeremiah lived 600 years before the birth of Jesus. At the time, Judah was in a state of turmoil, for they were surrounded by empires skilled in conquest and able to field many more soldiers than Judah. The Assyrian Empire to their north-northeast, the Babylonian Empire to the east-northeast and Egypt to their southwest were all seeking to extend their dominions. Judah sat at the crossroads to the trade routes between these empires and was the linchpin in exercising political, economic and military control over the entire region. It didn’t take a prophet to see that war was on the horizon; and the dilemma was: do we fight or pick a side and rely on their protection, ah, but which empire to befriend: Assyria, Babylon or Egypt? 

4. Jeremiah’s prophetic peers told the Jews not to fear, for the Lord would give them peace, prosperity and providence. These prophets were uttering how they wished things to be for they could not conceive of the Lord forsaking His people and allowing Judah to be conquered by foreign idolaters. So the Lord raised up young Jeremiah to speak His words »to pull up and to tear down, to destroy and to overthrow, but to also build and to plant.« Jeremiah chastised the false prophets of his time for giving the people false hope. The word of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah was: »You have committed a great evil, O Judah, for you have forsaken the Lord, who is the Fountain of Living Waters, and instead you have hewed out broken cisterns that cannot hold water« (Jeremiah 2,13). Jeremiah’s counsel: the Lord is angry with you; you need to repent and trust in His loving-kindness and mercy. 

5. Jeremiah’s admonition to Judah also applies to the Church in the 21. century. At the end of the 1. century, Jesus revealed to John: »I have this against you, Ephesian Christians, that you have abandoned and the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the work you did at first. If not, I will show up and remove your lamp stand from its place, unless you repent« (Revelation 2, 4-5). How many churches, how many Christians, around the world have abandoned Christ? What is their true love? What has replaced Christ in their lives? Idolatry is an easy sin to fall prey to. Whatever we trust or look to is our idol, and idolatry isn’t necessarily rejecting Jesus because idolatry is also keeping Jesus as one of several things we go to when we need help. That is what Judah did. They still worshipped the Lord, but they also worshipped the idols of the nations around them. Surrounded by powerful nations with presumably powerful gods to back them up, Judah was tempted to worship them in an effort to appease them and grant them deliverance. So they worshipped Assyria’s Asshur, Babylon’s Marduk/Bel and Egypt’s Ra, together with Yahweh, to create an insurance policy against warfare and invasion. 

6. Have you forsaken the love you once had for Jesus? Has something else, maybe even a lot of things, supplanted Jesus in your life? Who do you serve, and who do you trust? 

7. In the midst of rampant idolatry, the Lord  promised deliverance: »I will repay double for their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted My land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled My inheritance with their abominations« (Jeremiah 16,18). The »double repayment for our iniquity and sin« is not the bitter law with its judgment but the sweet gospel with its justification. To be sure, the temporal consequences of breaking the law are still in force. Fines and sentences are still handed down by earthly judges upon those who murder, steal or purger, but the Divine punishment is commuted. God the Father will not punish us for our sins because He has already punished Jesus for them. The crucified Christ is the double repayment for the sin of the world. Jesus bore the law’s judgment upon sin and sinful humanity. Jesus was forsaken and cursed in our place. His shed blood was the perfect, atoning sacrifice that has cleansed sinful, fallen humanity in full. 

8. This gospel is preached into our ears, planted in our hearts and placed in our mouths by the Word and the Sacraments. „God has given us His sure Word: a word of throwing down and rebuilding. That God ultimately wills to build and plant rather than destroy is seen most clearly in Jesus Christ. ... See God’s Son destroyed on the cross for us. See Him rebuilt on the third day for us“ (Raabe 438). We have the gospel of Christ which we know and believe is the only way to forgiveness and salvation. Christ’s death and resurrection assures us of that forgiveness and salvation. 

9. Christ Jesus is the Almighty Son of God, and His gospel has authority. We are built on the foundation of Christ’s gospel, and upon this foundation we will remain secure, forgiven and justified. Let us spread forth this great gospel and let us rejoice in the blessings that the Holy Spirit will bring our way as His holy people through the Word and Sacraments.  Amen. 

10. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, who rightly bears the praise: „Great is the Lord!“; send us the Holy Spirit with His means of grace, so that we remain glad in You and love Your salvation now in the hour of our need and yonder in Your everlasting reign.  Amen. 

To God alone be the Glory 

Soli Deo Gloria

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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 28. Revised Edition © 2012 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart. 

All quotations from the Book of Concord are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 12. Edition © 1998 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.     

ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. 

Raabe, Paul R. Concordia Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4 (October 1994), © 1994. Concordia Seminary: St. Louis. 

Starck, Johann Friedrich. Starck’s Prayer Book. Copyright © 2009 Concordia Publishing House.