1.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from
God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The message from God’s Word today is taken
from Jeremiah 23:16-29. It’s entitled, “Living
in the Truth of God’s Word,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Have you ever had the feeling that
you are living a lie? If so, you know it’s no way to live. As the old adage
puts it, every time you tell a lie you have to tell still more “cover up”
lies. Sooner or later it all gets out of control. We also get tired of it. The Lord, who desires truth in the inward
parts, has long since grown tired of it. God wants us to live in his truth. You
can’t live a lie. Besides, the Lord has given us a tremendous truth in which to
live. You can’t live a lie. Yet we try. We
should pay attention here not only to the lies we ourselves tell but also to
the lies we get swept up in.
3.
Hans Christian Andersen wrote a
celebrated story called “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” In it, two tailors
make an emperor a set of clothes that can be seen by no one who is incompetent
or stupid. The emperor is surprised that he can’t see the clothes himself, but
of course he won’t admit it for fear of being thought stupid. No one else can
see the clothes, either, for the tailors are nothing but swindlers. They
haven’t made a thing. There really are no new clothes, but no one wants to say
anything. Everyone gets swept up in this lie, and so they tell their own lies
about seeing the clothes. Finally, it takes a child to point out that the
emperor has no clothes.
4.
Have you ever been in a situation
like that? The kingdom of Judah was in such a fix. Young King Josiah had
cleaned the idolatry out of the temple. It came as a surprise to the people
when he died in battle against the Egyptians. Then the Egyptians deposed one of
Josiah’s sons from being king and put another son of Josiah on the throne.
Judah proved vulnerable. At this time, people started thinking about that
temple Josiah had cleaned out. They were taking far too much comfort in it.
They thought that the presence of this temple would save them. This was a great
lie, yet many people got swept up in it. False prophets happily confirmed the
fiction. Still, it remained just that: a fiction. In the text, the Lord was
assuring his people that he had not sent the various prophets of false comfort.
He had sent Jeremiah. In effect, the role in which God had cast Jeremiah was in
some ways like that of the child who said the emperor had no clothes.
All the lies to the side, the temple itself would not and could not save
Jerusalem.
5.
To this day, people get swept up in
lies. One way is through diversion. Observers from the 17th century
philosopher Blaise Pascal to the 20th century filmmaker Woody
Allen have noted how responsibilities and duties get crammed into human
lives. You might think these heavy burdens would make people unhappy. However,
we find them a source of happiness, or at least of diversion. Woody Allen had
one of his film characters say that people are “constantly creating these
real neurotic problems for themselves ’cause it keeps them from dealing with
the more unsolvable, terrifying problems of the universe.” With enough
diversion, we might not even have to think about God.1 Quoted in Thomas V. Morris, Making Sense of It All: Pascal
and the Meaning of Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 32.
6.
A related lie in which many get
swept up today is the postmodern claim that no one can know absolute truth
about anything, certainly not about God. This kind of thinking appeals to
sinners, for it enables us to dilute God’s law. If my conscience bothers me, so
what? If I can’t know the truth about God, then I can easily conclude that my
bad feelings result from running behind on my quota of self-esteem any given
day. Flirting with this lie can turn into blatant idolatry, a way for us to try
to be God and to fashion the world the way we would like it to be.
7.
The truth catches up to us, in any
case. You can’t live a lie. In fact, lies kill. Jesus warned that from the
beginning the devil has been both a “liar” and a “murderer.” This
combination of terms is no accident. We all know that in everyday affairs it
makes a huge difference—a life-and-death difference—whether or not the gun is
really loaded, whether or not the brakes really work, whether or not you really
have an infection. The Lord was giving his people a dose of reality therapy
through Jeremiah. It came not only in the things God gave his prophet to say
but also through the things he had Jeremiah do. Jeremiah ruined a linen belt
to show the ruin coming upon Judah. He smashed a clay jar to show the
way God would smash the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. The prophet wore a yoke
around the city to show Judah under the control of Babylon. All of these
efforts seemed to go to no avail. People preferred to believe the lies. Lies kill. In their lying, people can even
try to kill one who tells the truth. So, Jeremiah was placed on trial for his
very life. And so at length Jesus was tried, condemned, and crucified. Yet the
truth catches up to everyone eventually. We cannot live a lie.
8.
In his autobiography, Booker T.
Washington related a story about a teacher who went from village to village
after the Civil War. Someone asked him whether he taught that the earth was
round or flat. He said he could do either one, depending on the preference of
the people in the town where he was.2 What a shame! The shame is that you
cannot live a lie. Sooner or later the truth about the roundness of the earth
would catch up to people. Still more, though, this man was missing an
opportunity to teach the truth. For there is a great truth in which we can
live. So it is for the shape of the earth, and it is even more so for our shape
before God.2 Concordia Pulpit Resources 14
(Pentecost 15–Last Sunday in Church Year, 2004): 6.
9.
For the Lord gives us a tremendous
truth in which to live. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,”
said Christ (John 14:6). By him we have full access to the Father. Christ came
not only to tell us true things, but even more to bring the most important
truth of all into the world. He embodies that truth. Jesus didn’t merely talk about going to the
cross. He went. In him “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins”
(Colossians 1:14). In Christ, God has redeemed you, called you by name. “In
Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses
against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19). This means you! And “if while we
were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now
that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also
rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received
reconciliation” (Romans 5:10–11). Yes, we rejoice. We take the truth of
this great good news on our own lips and speak it.
10.
Because of Christ, our lying can
cease. We can quit trying to defend ourselves against the truth and face it
because we know that ultimately the truth is on our side. The Lord wants us to
believe the truth he has given, the truth of a Savior who loved us and gave
himself for us and of a risen Lord who lives and rules over all. He tells us,
as truly as he rose from the dead, that our sins which were once as scarlet are
now as white as snow. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we believe this
tremendous truth. God has given us this truth and the faith to live in it.
11.
Similarly, God gave to Jeremiah.
When he called Jeremiah to be a prophet, he said he had chosen Jeremiah before
forming him in the womb. He put his words in Jeremiah’s mouth. Jeremiah was
to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, including himself.
Jeremiah’s call as a prophet was as much a gift from God as his own salvation
was a gift from God. Living in the truth
also comes as God’s gift to us. He gives it in his Word. “If you abide in my
word, you are truly my disciples,” Jesus said, “and you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32). Notice that last word. It is “free”—not
“easy.”
12.
As Jeremiah learned from experience,
in this sinful world living in the truth can put you in some pretty difficult
and conflicted situations. Much more than we can perhaps imagine, Jeremiah
stood alone against the crowd. He said things that were enormously unpopular.
He even got folks to hate him. At times he complained to the Lord. Yet this
prophet could never refrain from speaking God’s Word. He said: “If I say, ‘I
will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as
it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:9). The powerful Word had to come out. Jeremiah
likened it to a fire and a hammer, which can be destructive but can also be
quite constructive. Living in the Lord’s truth is the only way to live, for
only it offers the mercy and power of God to the human heart.
13.
You can’t live a lie. In fact, it’s
pathetic to see people trying to eke out an existence trying to be tentative
about everything because they have been burned by so many lies. That reminds me
of an 18th century explorer who arrived at the Mississippi River in winter.
The river was frozen well enough at water’s edge, all right, but how solid was
the ice in the middle? The explorer started across. Pretty soon he got down on
his hands and knees, moving very slowly and distributing his weight just in
case the ice turned thin. It looked like it was going to take him a couple of
hours to cross the river this way. By the halfway point his hands and knees
began to bleed. Then he heard a sound. Looking up, he saw a man who was driving
a four-horse wagon full of coal, roaring right across the river. The driver had
been that way before. He knew the ice was thick enough to hold him and his
load. Red-faced with embarrassment, the explorer stood up and walked across the
rest of the way. From Guido Merkens, Breakthrough
for You: Practice Spiritual Principals [sic] to Lift You to a New Level of
Living (N.p., 2001), 172–73.
14.
Stand up.
Stand on God’s truth in Christ.
It’s much more solid than you may have thought. Live in God’s truth in Christ.
It’s far more forgiving than you might have dreamed. Lift up your head. Your
redemption is drawing near. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all
understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life
everlasting. Amen.
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