Ready or not? Written in Love

 December 21 2025

Jeremiah 31:31-34

         I have to make a confession that might surprise some people, which is this: I don’t really like having a live Christmas tree. What you have to know, when I say this, is that Jennifer and I have had close to forty live Christmas trees decorate our home over the years. Even so, I don’t really like having to go out on a snowy day to the tree farm and pick out a tree which you hope will not be too big but will be anyways. Then when you bring it home and get it in the tree stand and find that it is impossible for this tree to stand upright. Of course, you will have to turn the tree just so in order to hide the gaping hole that you swore was not there when it was cut down. After that you get the ladder out to place the star up top and watch as the star droops to one side because as the branches are too weak to hold the star up. And on it goes, the fun with light strands and the placing of ornaments and of course, the daily watering. So, you are right to ask, just why do we keep on getting a live tree? The answer is that this whole messing around with a live tree is an important part of our family’s Christmas story.  You see, for our family, the placing of a live Christmas tree in our house, has now become a part of the story that we have come to treasure despite the hassle and the mess. Our family loves to tell and retell the stories about the many different farms we have gotten trees at, even cutting one down on the way back from bringing Sarah home from college. We have had trees that came loaded with poison ivy, and trees that were so crooked at the base the only way to steady them was to wire them to a screw in the window molding. One time when the Christmas tree fell over, a special ornament was broken so we had to get a rush order on a new one to get it here before the arrival of Christmas. So, yes, these live Christmas trees are simply an indispensable part of our family’s Christmas story.

         You see, a person’s whole Christmas experience is often captured by the Christmas story they hold dear. So, yes, even if the Christmas tree is a real mess, it nonetheless remains a vital part of the story of our family tells about Christmas.This is why that even though I may not always like having a real tree, I can still admit that the Christmas story we tell would simply not be the same without having one.

What we also all know so well, is that these Christmas stories that we love, are our stories, and no one else’s. So if you want to know us and the stories we treasure then there is no better way than to take the time to listen to the stories that we share, and this is never more true then when is comes to our Christmas story.  Now what is also interesting about so many of the stories that make up our Christmas story, is that very few, if any, ever get written down yet they are hardly forgotten. No, the truth is that these stories are written down just not with ink. No,  stories like our Christmas story, we might say, are written in love on the tablets of our hearts, the very treasury of all we hold dear.

         You see, the very reason why we treasure the stories that tell of our life together is because of the love we have for each other. Only love is able to bind us together and unite us in the stories we tell, and this is the reason why we can say that love is the very ink that writes these stories upon our hearts. Perhaps this idea will help us make sense of our scripture for today. There we hear God tell Jeremiah about this new covenant that he is going to make with his people. God reveals that this new covenant will be not be written on stone tablets like the covenant sealed at Sinai. No, this new covenant will instead be written, strangely enough, upon the  hearts of God’s people. We are left wondering just what might God be writing there upon our hearts? I believe that the answer is found in yet other profound claim by God in this scripture where he tells us that in the coming days all people will know God from the person held in the lowest esteem to the those due the greatest honor. The way we will know God will be just as we know each other,  through listening to the story God is speaking. Now, it makes sense, doesn’t it, that these stories God tells to us are going to be held by us to as something to be treasured because they tell us of God’s great love for us. So there upon our hearts we will write the story that God is telling because we will want to speak of of his love forever. Our scripture tells us that the story that we have heard from God, the story that we treasure, the story of his love for us which causes us to love God in return, this story is called a covenant. A covenant, quite simply, is the name for this relationship of love that we have with God. This means that the story written on our hearts in love is not just a story of knowing God, but rather this story that we treasure is the story of knowing who we are, God and us, united together forever. 

As we wait for the coming king, God speaks to us about our life together, a life marked by hope for we now have a certain future which God gives to us through his power. All God asks of us is to trust him. We must trust God that he is indeed able to bring life out of this dead end way of being that we have found ourselves in. This is how our story, the story of God and us united together, has its beginning. Well, as God continues with his story we discover that he desires that we experience a life of peace and rest. Yet God also wants us to know that such a life cannot be found by living apart from the rest of the world. No, God insists that we get busy doing everything we can to make the lives of our neighbors experience the same peace we are searching for, for when our neighbors live in peace then we too will find peace and rest. So now we find that this story we have with God has become intertwined with the stories of our neighbor as we take their longings and and we weave them into our story with God. The story God speaks to us, though, is far from over for he adds that we must catch hold of the joy in his heart. We are to become aware of how our God blesses our lives, even in the worst of circumstances. These blessings turn us toward God in gratitude and thankfulness. By faith we witness the joy of the God whose goodness radiates over us and in the flame of his joy we rejoice. So, yes, through us listening to all God has spoken to us have indeed come to know God. And not only that, but we also have stories of our experiences living with God, trusting him as we have gone along. These stories that we treasure in our hearts are stories that we can say are indeed, written there in love. This love is what writes the story of our relationship with God, a new covenant which binds us together forever. .

Now this sounds all well and good, doesn’t it? Yet as we are all so well aware, the world we live in is a world filled with many stories. These other stories we listen to can create fear and doubt to creep in, making us wonder about our future, destroying our hope. The peace we pursue is difficult in a world where it seems that everybody has an axe to grind. And joy, this is perhaps the most difficult of all because the world demands so much of our attention, we forget to be grateful for all that we do have been given by God. So to be honest, this love between us and God can become strained, as we begin to listen to every story except for the one story that really matters, the story God is speaking to us. So it is good that our God knows us so very well, because when our love stops writing our story, this is when God tells us again of our Christmas story, the Christmas story which speaks of God’s great love for each one of us. This Christmas story tells of how our God gave us a gift, a gift which forever speaks of God’s great love for all of us. When we hear this Christmas story we remember once again, that when our love grows weak and cold, God’s love is strong enough and certain enough to hold our relationship with him together, forever.

So, let us once again hear the Christmas story, the story of the long awaited king, God’s anointed one, the Christ, the one whose candle we are now ready to light. But first though, let us hear these familiar words of the Christmas story. Here is the story which tells of how God so loved all of us, that he gave us all the most precious gift, the gift of his own dear Son. God did this all so that we might know of a love that refuses to let us go. So, listen once again to the first few verses of the second chapter of Luke, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governed of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. Joseph went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judaea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth, and Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and she laid him in the manger, because they found no other room available.”  

         This story about the birth of Jesus never gets old, does it? We have heard it so often we probably could recite it by heart if asked to do so. Yet, what is not recorded for us in this story is what Mary and Joseph kept within their hearts. You see, the reason why Mary and Joseph were part of the Christmas story is that they had first listened to the story God was speaking to them. As we hear in the first chapter of Luke, Mary heard of how God was going to bring forth the long awaited king who was going to bring righteousness and justice to the world, and Mary wanted to be part of this story. Mary became part of this story by simply saying “Yes”, to God when God called her to become part of his Christmas story. Joseph also listened to the story God spoke to him, and Joseph also said, ‘Yes” to God, and so he too played a role in the Christmas story. You see, the story of the giving of Jesus to the world is a story which required that Mary and Joseph respond to God with love. 

Now most people who have heard the Christmas story may never have realized that they too, just like Mary and Joseph, have a role in the Christmas story. You see, the Christmas story tells of how Jesus is sent to us to be for us the, “Yes”, to all of God’s promises just as Paul tells us at the beginning of the first chapter of Second Corinthians. When God, so very long ago promised that a king would be born from the dead legacy of King David, God gave Jesus to be the, “Yes”, to this promise. Likewise, when God promised to give people a hope and a future,  God gave us Jesus to be the, “Yes”, to this promise. The peace God promises us that we are to make with our neighbors finds its, “Yes”, in God’s gift of Jesus. And yes, God promises to fill us to overflowing with joy and this promise as well, finds its,”Yes”, in God’s gift of Jesus. Then at last we discover that what binds all of these promises together is the promise of God’s love to us, the promise that we at last might know God, and have a relationship of love with him, God and us united forever together, a promise fulfilled by the, “Yes”, of God’s gift called Jesus.

         So Jesus, the, “Yes”, to all of God’s promises, is given to us at Christmas. All God asks of us is this: “Will you say,”Yes”, to Jesus? God wonders, will we be like Mary and Joseph who first listened to the story God spoke to them and then said, “Yes”, to God’s invitation to be part of this great story that began at Christmas. You see, the story of Christmas continues even today because all people are invited by God to enter into this story about a new king named Jesus given to us by God so that justice and righteousness might reign upon the earth. This king is given by God as a gift which expresses his deep love for every person. And all God desires is that we respond to his love by simply saying “Yes”, in love, to the one who is God’s, “Yes”, to us, this Jesus given to us at Christmas. Like all Christmas stories, our saying, “Yes”, to God may make our life a mess. Luke records that the world didn’t even have a place for Mary and Joseph on the night they needed one the most. But what Mary and Joseph did have is a place in the story God is telling, this story begun at Christmas. Just like God had a role for Mary and Joseph to play in this story he is telling, he also has role for each one of us. God invites all of us to be part of this story that began so long ago at Christmas. So today is a good day to become part of the Christmas story. Let us, right now, discover that our hope is indeed found in Jesus; that our rest and peace has been born in Jesus; and our abundant joy is  caught from the joy radiating from the very face of Jesus. 

(Lighting of the Christ Candle) As we light the Christ candle, we witness that Christ, our king, has been born. So now is the time for all of us to know Jesus as being for us the very, “Yes”, to all of what God has promised to us. 

Here we normally conclude the lighting of the Advent candle with a prayer. Today, though, we are going to do something a little different. We are going to take a moment for all of us to have a time of quiet prayer. This is simply a time for us to respond to the Christmas gift of Jesus. During this time, I am going to play the beloved Christmas carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. Instead of singing along, try instead to listen to the story it tells.  At the ending of the third stanza, we hear, “where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.” So, perhaps instead of singing this line we should be those meek souls who invite Jesus into our life, saying, “Yes”, to the one who is the one who is the, “Yes”, to all of God’s promises. Let us today enter into the story God is speaking, the one he began at Christmas so long ago.

Ready or Not? Catching Joy

 December 14 2025

Jeremiah 31:10-14

         It sometimes surprises people when I tell them that I got my start in ministry by doing youth ministry. One thing I could always count on is that when it came time to get serious and have a quiet time of prayer or communion, inevitably someone would break the silence, usually by passing gas or burping. Upon hearing such noises, there would begin this internal struggle as each kid tried really hard to be on their best behavior all the while desperately wanting to burst out laughing.The race was on to see just who will be the first to start snickering under their breath, which sets the whole room laughing. You see, all it takes is to have just one kid begin to lose their composure, and get the giggles and suddenly the room is filled with great silliness.

         What this memory from my days reminds me of is this truth that joy is something that is caught. Joy happens when the snickering of one person sets off this chain reaction of laughter and giggles in the whole group. Perhaps this what makes joy different from happiness, for while joy is caught, happiness is often bought. Our country was founded on the ideal that we desire the right to pursue whatever makes us happy. So for those of us who call themselves the people of God, this ideal should leave us conflicted, for as we learned last week, what we are called to pursue is peace. We are to  be busy working on restoring the relationships around us, helping our neighbors to have a life free of those deep, nagging longings. We are to talk to God about any needs, or struggles that our neighbors are going through. As we pray to God we also must remember that God may even use us to help restore our neighbor to a life of contentment and ease. You see, seeking the rest and peace of our neighbor is the outcome God expects of people living righteous lives.We are to follow the lead of God who rested after creating the world. God was pleased and delighted with all of his labors, saying that thy were indeed, “Very good”. God tells his people in exile that as they wait for the coming king that they were to spend their time working at restoring their relationships so that they too could be people who rested from their labors, looking out upon their world and stating that it was indeed, “Very good”.

         So if we are all gung-ho about pursuing peace as God desires we do as we wait, then what happens to the happiness that the rest of the world believes we should be pursuing? Well, here we must remember that where happiness is often bought, joy, on the other hand is caught. You see, the joy of our God is the flame which sets our souls ablaze with joy. Consider the candles we have lit every week. The candle of hope is lit to witness that the hope we long for has been found through our faith in God and his plans to restore our relationship with us. Then we lit the candle of peace to make the claim that we are going to pursue peace with our neighbors. If God seeks to restore his relationship with us after the way we have treated him then if he desires that we get busy restoring the relationships in our life, how can we refuse to do so? 

Now when we trust God and place our faith in his plans, can you imagine the smile on the face of our God? And when we are working hard to get to know our neighbors and we talk to God about them instead of just making life all about us, can you see the glow on our heavenly Father’s face, as his children are contented and at peace? Of course God bubbles over with joy when his people at last begin to grasp his beautiful vision for all humanity. So when we look into the face of our Heavenly Father and see his joy, how can we not rejoice? We are to experience and know for ourselves the truth declared in Zephaniah, the third chapter, the seventeenth verse, “The Lord your God rejoices over you with gladness, he settles your soul by his love, he exults over you with loud singing…”. This is how God desires to be known by all of his children. The question that we must ask ourselves is, is this how we know God? The laughing, singing, God who overflows with love for all of us?

         In our scripture for today, there is an unusual Hebrew word found in the second half of the tenth verse. There we read, “I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, I will give them gladness in exchange for their sorrow.” In the phrase, “I will turn their mourning into joy”, the word normally translated as being joy is a Hebrew word which actually means something deeper than the emotion of joy. What is being expressed in this word is the feeling to go from a situation of death and loss and being transported to a time where God is extravagantly blessing his righteous people. This is a joy where our grief is quickly forgotten replaced with an overwhelming sense of the Lord’s goodness.This is what Jeremiah is writing about when he states that the people of God, “…shall come and sing aloud on the hills of Zion. They shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord…”. You see, what brings us to this experience of being overwhelmed by the greatness and goodness of God is for us to simply pause to consider how gracious and good our God is to all of us.

         In this season of Advent we are in a season of waiting, a season to remember that the world was once waiting for the promise of God to at last happen. God promised that a new king was coming to bring about justice and righteousness all over the earth. God gave such a promise to his people even though he was sending them into exile, to live as captives of Babylon. In this strange land surrounded by people with different customs and lifestyles, the people of God were called to find hope and pursue peace. Yet, the question on their minds was just how could they be expected to endure such a terrible loss, the death to the life that they once knew? Everywhere they looked they were reminded of the high cost of their sin. Here the people were to remember what God had told them. God promised to take their sorrow and replace it with an experience of being extravagantly blessed by God right here in Babylon. So instead of looking at our circumstances, we are to instead called to gaze upon the goodness of our God. When we begin to focus on what God has blessed us with instead of focusing on what the world has taken from us, this is when we are on our way to catching joy. You see, when we count our blessings instead of counting the days, we will soon behold the one who gives us all of those blessings, and we will see that our God is radiant with goodness. When we bask in this radiance of our God how can we not become radiant people ourselves, joyful in the presence of our joy-filled God?

         During this Advent season when we wait the coming of the Branch, the new king out of the dead stump of King David’s legacy, we must let our joy be the indicator of where our focus lies. If we begin to let the world with all of its wrongs, with all of its sorrow and turmoil, become what we fixate on then it should come as no surprise that we will find the fire of our joy growing cold. So when we realize that our joy is being replaced by ba-humbug grumpiness, then we need to once again draw our attention to the goodness of God. Instead of counting all of our grievances, let us instead count our blessings. Our focus needs to be on what we have been given instead of just what it is we feel we need in our life. As we read today, we should be radiant over all of the goodness God has given to us. And then as we are overwhelmed by the ways God has blessed us we are to realize that God has done so all because he rejoices over us. The face of our Father lights up anytime we take time to meet with him. And there, before the fire the joy of our God, the flame of our joy is set ablaze. So, yes, rejoice and again, I say rejoice! Amen!   

         

Ready, or Not?: Pursuing Peace

 December 7 2025

Jeremiah 29:7-9

         Everybody knows that the weeks before Christmas are the time when people are in pursuit of the perfect gift for all of their special someone’s. Now, this pursuit of the perfect gift seems to be much more difficult for us men than it does for the women in our lives. Perhaps the reason is simply that men just normally do not have a clue so why expect that we will pick up on the clues as to what might make the perfect gift for someone. You see, in order to to be in pursuit of that perfect gift requires that we pay attention to the people in our life so that we might notice just what might make the perfect gift. One of my favorite memories is when the J.C. Penny catalogue would arrive. All of us kids wanted to look at all of the new toys and games which we would soon convince ourselves we just could not live without. How we felt about this perfect gift didn’t really matter though, because the hardest part was to convince someone else that this is the perfect gift that we just could not live without. So, we would make our list and check it twice, and we would anticipate one day holding that perfect gift in our hands. 

         Now, it just makes sense that the perfect gift that we want is something that we can actually hold, and touch, and play with. I mean, no one really wants the present that my mother-in-law would say she wanted, just love, joy and peace; this is what she considered the perfect gift for Christmas. I mean, you just will not find such a gift in the J.C. Penny catalogue. Our scripture for today, though, is of much more help because it does imply that if we are in pursuit of peace, then there is a way for us to obtain this most perfect of gifts. This season in which we are in, the one where we are in pursuit of the perfect gift for that special someone, is called Advent.  Advent simply means, “that which is coming.”, as when God declares that the days are coming when he will raise up a righteous king to bring justice and righteousness. In the season of Advent we remember the time when the world waited for the most perfect gift to be given to us. We remember when the people of God had reached the lowest point in their relationship with God, when they had spurned his love, and refused to know him, then God had no choice but to deliver his people over to the Babylonian army. God allowed his people to be carried off, to a strange land, a thousand miles from their home. There they were to live as strangers and slaves for seventy-years. What God was doing was allowing his people to experience serving the people of the world so that he could then offer them a choice. They could now decide if they would rather serve as slaves to the world and its pursuits or whether they would rather serve God and worship him alone. As we found out last week, to serve God is to accept the plans that God has for all people, plans that he gives to us in order that we might know a living hope, a known future. God offers us his plans in order to give us peace, what the Jewish people know as shalom, the restoring of life to its original goodness. God desires to restore our relationship with him even though we often have spurned his love, and have resisted his grace. Yet God is a God of great love and this is why God pursues us for we are what God considers the perfect gift.

         So, when we know of God’s amazing love for us, we trust that he is a God who is able to bring life out of death, the God who can make something exist where nothing once was. This is the true substance of our hope, a future where life has defeated death, where there is something instead of the dreaded nothingness that drives our fear. We are given a glimpse of this future in the new king God is raising up from the dead end of Davids descendants. This king who brings forth justice and righteousness and those who follow him, these are God’s glorious future. So in order for us to be ready for this coming king, we must be people of faith, people who believe that our God can indeed bring forth life, who can make there be a future where one previously had not existed. God promises us that he does hear us and all God asks from us is that we desire him. We are to give God all of our hearts for we now know that he alone is the treasure we are willing to give everything for, the perfect gift that we pursue.

         So when we find our hope in the promises of God, then God calls us to be people who pursue peace. We are to seek after the creation of shalom, just as God had said his plans would create shalomfor us. In our scripture, we hear God tell his people that during their waiting, they were to keep themselves busy seeking the peace of the city where they find themselves. They were to pray to God on behalf of the people that they lived with in the city of Babylon. Only as peace, what is known as being shalom, is found in this city would the people of God then experience peace.The short version is this: if you want peace in your life, seek peace for your neighbor. Now, if such ideas cause us to have some serious hesitation, imagine how these orders from God went over for those exiled to Babylon. We really need to walk a mile in the shoes of the people of Israel at this time. Imagine witnessing the Babylonian army tearing across your country with their fast horses and chariots destroying everything as they go. Then this army arrives at Jerusalem, and they surround the city and lay siege to it, so that the people of Jerusalem are slowly starved into submission. Then as death and disease ravage the people of Jerusalem, defeat is announced and the city gates are at last opened. The vast horde of Babylonian warriors rush in, destroying everything as they tear through Jerusalem. The beautiful Temple is vandalized, the enemy burns its structure and the gold fixtures are loaded up and hauled back to Babylon. Then they enslave those healthy enough to make the long journey back to Babylon. The pain and anger and the hurt of their loss is captured in a song, Psalm 137, where the song writer ponders aloud how they will be able to sing a song to God while living in a foreign land. The songwriter shouts that blessed will be the one who repays Babylon for the evil they have done. And then he goes farther and desires that one day the Babylonians witness the same horrors that the people of Jerusalem simply can not forget.

         What the Psalmist writes about in the 137^th Psalm seems fairly relatable, doesn’t it? I mean, most people who face the same situation as the people of Jerusalem had gone through would state that revenge is not only acceptable but it may even feel necessary in order to even the score. We need to understand their need for justice so that we too can be confounded by what God calls his people to do while they waited in captivity in Babylon. This expectation God desires is found in the Hebrew word for peace, this “shalom’. Shalom, is a much deeper concept than what we normally consider to be peace. You see, shalom is the restoration of a situation to its original goodness. Shalom is founded on the belief that in the beginning everything was just as it should be, nothing, including our relationships, were out of order. So when God calls his people, the very people who had witnessed atrocities at the hand of the Babylonian army, to seek to restore their relationships with the very people who had captured and enslaved them, well, it becomes obvious God is asking for something quite impossible. Almost immediately when we hear this big ask that God gives to his people, we begin to wonder just why God would ask his people to do something so difficult. And then we may recall that, as we heard last week, God tells us that he has plans for us, plans for peace, for the restoration of the relationship God has with each of us, and not for evil. You see, the people of Israel, who are just like us, walked away from God; God never walked away from them. They were the ones who had destroyed all that God had put in place so that his people might live in peace. In doing so they had damaged the very reputation of God, bringing shame upon the very name and character of God. So God had every right to seek revenge upon his people for their damage and destruction of all of who God is and what he is creating. God could have just let the Babylonians have his people and then walked away. Yet, God did nothing of the sort. No, God called out to his people and told them that he has a plan that will restore the relationship he has with them, a plan to give them a hope and a future, with God, not apart from him.

         So when God calls his people to restore their relationship they had with the Babylonian people, all he was doing was merely asking his people to follow his lead. God told his people that if they trusted in his plan, then they would be able to call on him, and pray to him for he would indeed hear their cries. Yet this promise was not just for them alone for God states that his people were to pray even for the people they lived with there in captivity. Once again, we must pause and consider just what is involved in order to pray for these strange neighbors who are so very different in their customs and beliefs. You see such a situation is much like figuring out just what might be the perfect gift for someone. In order to pray to God for someone you have to have some clue about who they are, what their needs are and just what they are longing for. You see, when God told his people to be those who sought to restore their relationship with these strangers they lived with, praying to God for them, he was implying that his people had to be actively looking for ways to care for their neighbors life. So, think about it; they had to go from thinking of ways that they could seek revenge and instead they were to be looking for ways to do good for their neighbors. God then, take this exercise one step further because after the needs of these neighbors had been lifted up to God, then God tells his people they must be willing to be given by God to be the answer to the longings of their neighbors. We can understand that what God is asking in this situation is unbelievably difficult. We are right to wonder just why God would demand so much out of his people who have found themselves far from home living among strangers who they want consider their enemies in the worst kind of way. Yet, the word of God stands. God’s plan seems to founded on an awkward wisdom that rubs against the grain of common sense. Yet, perhaps God is on to something when he tells his people that they must take upon themselves the task of restoring the relationship with those who had taken them captive. I believe the reason why God is so insistent that this is the way his people should deal with their new neighbors is that through the seeking of peace with their neighbors, the people of God will find the peace that they are pursuing. They longed to live in that original goodness first experienced by human beings, as we find in the first chapter of Genesis, the goodness simply described as being, rest. Originally, we were people who were content, satisfied, knowing that every longing is met by our loving God. God’s goal is to have all people return to this state of rest, this state of utter contentment, where no longings or strivings exist. What God understands is that unless everyone is at rest than no one can really be said to be at rest. We probably see this best in the places we work, where the turmoil someone is dealing with at home is brought with them to their place at work and it quite naturally affects how they are able to do what is expected of them. And of course when this person is troubled at work then their co-workers are also affected. There is simply is no way for us to live in our own little bubble hoping to plug our ears and put our blinders on so that we can remain calm while ignoring the turmoil going on outside of our little shell. This, as God tells his people quite often, is a false peace. This is why that right after God tells his people to get busy working on making their new world a peaceful one, God also tells them to stop listening to the prophets and the fortune tellers for answers. No, they would not be going home anytime soon, there would be no rush to get back to their little safe spot to hole up so that they can pretend that peace is found by forgetting the rest of the people around you. To do so would be to miss the very reason for the people of God to even exist in the first place. We must remember that we are in waiting, people who know that days are coming when a righteous branch will suddenly appear out of the dead stump of David’s legacy. This king is going to be the king who at last will bring justice and righteousness to the whole earth, not just some small part of it. What justice and righteousness looks like is every person seeking to bring into the life of their neighbor a measure of peace, a bit of that original rest for which they were created. 

         So in this time of waiting for our righteous king to arrive, God is telling his people to prepare themselves to live in that new age which he is going to bring forth through the rule of our new king. If our king is going to bring forth justice and righteousness then we must get busy today, working at bringing forth justice and righteousness right now. God is telling his people that they are to begin to be the very people the king can count on to follow his lead. In doing so, God promises that we will discover something quite incredible about our life for there will be a real sense of rest and contentment that is now very present in us. This is the strange truth that God lays out for us, that the only way we can have peace in our life is by first by seeking the peace of the lives of our neighbors.

         Now what history has shown to us is that not many of those who went into exile actually followed this command of God to seek first the peace of their Gentile neighbors in order that they might have a measure of peace in their own life. We know this because when that king arrived he discovered that the people of God wanted nothing to do with being the peacemakers God wanted them to be. This king found that the very people that he had been sent to save wanted nothing to do with him, simply because he refused to seek revenge on their enemies. This king followed the rule that peace can only be found in our life when we are willing to seek the peace of our neighbors. When this promised king came to Jerusalem to create peace on earth, as we hear in the nineteenth chapter of Luke, he wept over this city because the people who lived there refused to seek the ways of peace and so his true identity was hidden from their eyes. So their tragedy was not only that they would never experience the rest that God desires all people to know, but they also missed the arrival of the king promised to them hundreds of years before, the king who came to bring justice and righteousness to the world. So in our time of waiting once again for the arrival of our king, I wonder, will we be able to see this king who is the righteous branch given to us by God or will he be hidden from our eyes because we have refused to seek the peace of the people around us? We have time to avoid this tragedy, so let us begin today. Let us listen in love to those around us, and lift their longings up to God, so that they might experience a measure of the rest and contentment God created them to know. And then let us rest, and there behold our king. Amen!

                 

         

Ready or Not?: Finding Hope

 November 30 2025

Jeremiah 23:5-6, 29:10-14

         Today marks the beginning of the season which the church calls Advent. The church, over time, created a church calendar marked by various seasons to help us to enter into the story of Jesus so that we might become part of his story. We may have heard the story of Jesus quite often, I imagine, yet I wonder, how many can say that they are actually a part of this story that is known so well? So where we begin is right here at the first Sunday in Advent. This Sunday marks the first day of the new church year. Now, you might remember that last Sunday was Christ the King Sunday. This is when the church recognizes that the end of time will be when Christ is acknowledged by all that he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This is the glorious ending to the story of Jesus of which we want to be a part of. Today, then, we marks where all people enter into that story, here in a season called Advent. This strange word, “Advent”, simply means, “arrival” or, “coming”. We hear this same idea in the beginning of our first scripture for today, from the twenty-third chapter of Jeremiah where God tells us, “Behold, the days are coming…” So the four weeks of Advent represent the time when the world, and especially God’s people were waiting for those days to come, for the time to be the right time for the fulfillment of the promises of God.

         Well, what God promised his people is that in the days to come he was going to raise up for King David what is called, a righteous Branch. This one who is considered to be like a righteous branch is a coming king who will deal judge and rule with wisdom. This king is one who shall at last bring forth justice and righteousness. Now there is a lot to unpack in this short, little announcement. We can start by understanding that this statement is given as a response to what God has just said about the kings that previously ruled over the people of Israel. God’s expectation for the kings of Judah is that they would be like a shepherd who watched over the flock of God’s people. So at the beginning of the twenty-third chapter of Jeremiah, God issues his warning, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! God continues by exposing the evil actions of the king, “You have scattered my flock and driven them away. You have not tended to them.” What is clear and obvious is that the kings who were supposed to watch over the people of God were absolutely horrible at their job. Instead of gathering the flock, as a shepherd should do, they instead scattered them all over the country side. Instead of leading the sheep to green pastures and still waters, these guys drive the flock away, out to the ends of the earth. Instead of keeping a watchful eye over the flock, keeping them safe from wolves and lions, they are chasing after other pursuits. 

         So God has made a great case for sending these, so called, “shepherds”, packing. They would be sent to live far away, in Babylon, never to see Jerusalem ever again. There was only one little problem with this dire situation. God had made a promise to his servant David. We hear of this covenant God made with David in Second Samuel, the seventh chapter where God tells David that he was going to build David a house, an everlasting legacy, so that the kingdom of the throne of David will be established forever. So, we fast-forward to the days of Jeremiah, and we witness the descendants of David being shipped off to Babylon, and all of God’s people wonder, just what has happened to the claim that the house of David was going to be established forever? The image that was used to describe the lineage of David after this tragedy was that of a stump, a sad reminder of a once glorious tree that has been cut down, end of story. The great days of the reign of King David have come to a sad end for God simply had no choice but to put an end to those evil and wicked shepherds. 

         To this rather bleak outcome to David’s legacy, God speaks a word, telling Jeremiah, “I will raise up for David a righteous branch.” God is saying that out of that rather dead end, out of that stump, the remains of the great tree that was the house of King David, God was going to do what only God can do, he was going to make life shoot forth from the most dead of outcomes. What God expects from those who hear these outrageous words, is faith, the faith that can believe that God can bring forth something out of nothing. This is the very faith that Abraham demonstrated to God, as Paul writes at the end of the fourth chapter of the book of Romans. Paul says, that the Abraham believed that our God is a God “…who gives life to the dead and calls into existence that which does not exist.” So God calls us to believe that even though the line of David had been cut off, so that it no longer existed, even so, our God is able to cause a king to come forth to fulfill the promise he made to King David. You see, it is obvious that the only way that a living branch could come out of the nothingness of that old, dead stump of David’s legacy is for God and God alone to cause it to happen. You see, Jeremiah also believed like Abraham because he knew of the story of creation, as we find in the fourth chapter of Jeremiah. There Jeremiah remembered the words found in Genesis, how there was once an emptiness that was without form or void, utter nothingness. Yet, as Jeremiah recalls, out of that nothingness, God brought forth the order and wonder of creation, something where nothing once was. This is the faith God calls his people to hold on to as they watch as the last of the line of David is placed in chains and hauled off to Babylon.

         So when we hear of this good news that God is going to do by raising up for David a righteous branch, we must remember that such a prophecy must be received in faith, the faith that God alone can make something exist where nothing once was. God was going to raise up a king to reign in righteousness in a new way as only God can do. This is important for us to remember when we hear the scripture found in the twenty-ninth chapter of Jeremiah. It seems that this is one of the most oft quoted verses from the Bible. Yet, I wonder if people really understand what God is telling Jeremiah in this verse. The first thing that has to be taken into consideration when we hear about God’s plan to give us a hope and a future, is that this was spoken to people who have been forcibly removed from their homeland and made to march a thousand miles to a place called Babylon. God told his people that only after they had lived there for seventy years, only then God tells them, will he come and visit them. So the expectation of God to those he has promised to visit is that they will have realized how very hopeless their situation is. The question that lingers in the air when we read this is, is had the people of Israel remembered the promise of God? Did they keep the memory of home alive in their hearts or had they given up and decided that Babylon was their final destination? You see, God made a promise to his people that he would indeed visit them, so what God was searching for after his people had lived for seventy years in captivity was faith. Had his people kept the faith, this is what God hoped he would find. God desired to find the same faith as he found in his servant Abraham, the forefather of all of God’s people. The people of God were in desperate need of faith for their experience was much like the experience of the kings who used to rule over them.You see, the people of God had also experienced a death of their own. The life they once knew had died when they were torn and uprooted from the land God had promised to them. Now God’s promise to them had become broken, not because of any unfaithfulness on the part of God but rather because of the continued unfaithfulness of God’s people. So the people of God witnessed the death of the life they once knew all because they refused to return and come back to the God whose love for them had never wavered.

         Well, the people of God then, were told by God that they had to be expelled from their home for seventy years. We are right, I believe, to wonder why God decided on seventy years as the right length of time for them to remain in Babylon. Perhaps this was the length of time required for his people to come to the end of themselves, to realize that there was absolutely nothing they could do to change their current situation. Only when God’s people knew the depths of their hopeless situation would they be at last to consider the hope that God had to offer to them. Clearly, these people who found themselves in Babylon, now being forced to work at the rule of strangers, surely such a situation had to make them forget any thoughts about the future, for what future did they have there in exile? 

         So when we read of God having a plan that would give his people a future and a hope, perhaps this meant something quite different for those who first heard it said than it does for us. What God calls his people to accept is his plans, to trust once again in his guidance. When we stop for a moment and consider what God is saying here it should perhaps shake us a bit. I say this because everyone is someone who makes a lot of plans. I mean consider just how much planning is required each year just to pull off yet another Christmas. Over time, we hope that we get good at all of this planning, and we even might have a little pride at how we are able to schedule everything so that our life runs like a well oiled machine. And this machine runs along pretty well right up until God comes along and throws a monkey wrench into the works. God insists that it is his plans, and not our plans, that will open up the future so that we might have hope. Now, when God brings up the future in his declaration of his plans, we have to admit that this is where all of our planning gets all messed up. I mean listen to what James tells us at the end of the fourth chapter of his letter. James writes, “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make some real money- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? You are nothing but a mist that appears for a time then disappears.” What James writes here is a truth that all of us know deep within us, this uncertainty of our lives. This is the underlying reason for all of our anxiety and worry, this lack of knowing what the future holds, for any of us. So when God tells us that he alone has a plan to give us a hope and a future we are right to be intrigued. 

         So here we come to the very beginning of our Advent journey. In order to be ready for Advent, we must begin by making a choice. The choice is this: Will we choose to continue to place our faith in the plans we make, plans that can be upset by so many situations? Or will we choose, instead, the plans God makes for us, those plans that will give us a hope and a future? As the author, Henry Blackaby, often wrote, “You can’t go with God and stay where you are at!” When God offers us his plans we must make a choice, a choice to choose the wisdom of God over our own, a choice to scuttle our own plans because we have found something far better in the word of God. The choice to follow the plans of God requires faith, the same faith of Abraham, the one who believed that God can indeed bring life out of death, that God alone can bring forth something where nothing used to be. You see, there is a direct connection between what we hope for and what we believe in. Faith, as we hear at the beginning of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, makes what we hope for a reality, convincing us of what we cannot see. The plans God has will give us hope, yet this hope only becomes real to us through our faith. Only as we believe in God will we become convinced of our unseen hope.   

         So when God asks us to choose his plans over our own, he desires we choose his plan because his plans offer us a glimpse of what lies in our future. You see if what we hope for becomes certain through the faith we have in God, then at last we can glimpse the future God has in store for us. If we know that our faith is founded on the ability of God bring life where there is death and that God alone can make something exist where nothing used to be, then we have a certain hope for the future. By faith we can be certain that our future is one where life has defeated death, a future where there is indeed something instead of that dreaded nothingness that causes us to fear. Now there is also one more piece to the puzzle we call our future. We also know that our future will be one that will be ruled over by the branch, a new living shoot that will rise old dead stump that was the legacy of King David. It is this new king who will lead us into a future, a future where God causes life to spring forth from death, a future where God will make something exist where nothing once was; this is our hope. This is the future where those who follow the rule of God’s new king will all live in righteousness.

         The question that remains, then, is just how we can muster up this kind of faith, this outrageous belief that God seems to expect from us? The answer is found in God’s description of the plans he has for us because he tells us that his plans are for our peace, our shalom. The Hebrew understanding of peace, what they call, shalom, is a restoring of our situation to its original goodness. You see, God is saying that even after people reject him and refuse to listen to him, God nonetheless shows up with an offer of, “Let’s begin again”. Such love that forgives our failures and offers us a future seems to demand from us to a response of faith. We sense that this is what God expects because he says when our faith in him is at last restored, then this is when we will call out to God, when we will fall on our knees and pour out our hearts to God. It is in this moment that we will discover that we do indeed have the certainty in the God who hears us. Sadly though, God also knows that if our hearts become divided, if we are no longer loyal to God alone, then our hope is in jeopardy.. As the prophet Habakkuk wrote in the second chapter, “The righteous shall live by faith but God declares, that if they shrink back he has no pleasure in such a person” When we hear of how God offers to us plans, plans for the restoration of our relationship with him, plans which will give to us a future that we hope for, then God is right to wonder just why such a promise is not received by us as being a treasure which we would give everything to obtain. 

         Here at the beginning of a new church year, at the beginning of our waiting for the day to arrive when the branch shall at last be raised up by God, we are called to consider just what are we hoping for? Just what is the future that you long for? And just who is it that will give to you what you this future that you hope for? I mean, just who is it that is going to deliver you to that future you are looking forward to? If you can say that it is God, that you have chosen his plans to give you your hope and your future, then are you certain that God alone is the one who can bring the dead to life, that God alone can make something exist where there was once nothing? If this is not our faith then let us use this Advent to come back to God with a heart undivided in our faith in God, for our  hope and our future depend upon it. Amen!

          

People In The Know: Knowing How to Reign

 November 23 2025

Jeremiah 22:11-16

         Well, with Thanksgiving just around the corner, we must remember to once again be on our best behavior. You know, keep your elbows off the table, you can rest later. Take your time, and savor your food, the fire will wait. And don’t use your long sleeves to wipe the gravy off of your chin, that’s what your napkin is for. And the big one, the one every family knows that no one can go there, is that Thanksgiving is no place for talking about politics or religion. All that leads to is indigestion, right? Well, in our defense, as people who are in the know about God, it should come as no surprise that wherever we are gathered that politics or religions is going to come up. I mean, there it is, in the sixth verse of the first chapter of the book of Revelation, we are told that Jesus Christ, the one who loves us and has set us free from our sins by his blood, he has made us kings and priests to God our Father. So, think about it, if gathered around your table on Thanksgiving are people in the know about God then if what we read is true, then everyone sitting there munching on turkey is known by God as a king and a priest. So, it just makes sense that with a group of kings and priest there is going to be something said about politics or religion, doesn’t it? 

         Now if your skeptical about thinking of ourselves being known actual kings and priests in the eyes of God, we don’t have to look any farther than the end of the fifth chapter of Romans, where Paul writes that those who have received grace from God do indeed, reign in life, grace reigning through righteousness. So, we should be curious to know just what does it mean to reign in life because we know about the grace of God?

         Well our scripture for today, once again, has at its core this same question asked so many times throughout this book of Jeremiah, which is this, “Do you know God? The people Jeremiah spoke to thought of themselves as being people in the know about God, you know, yet Jeremiah was having some serious doubts. I mean, Jeremiah knew the people in his day were living their lives apart from God, trying to go it alone, without the love of God, without the help of God and without the provision of God. This was a sure sign that the people supposed to be in the know about God, quite tragically, did not even have a desire to know about God. So the people who were to be in the know about God became quite uncertain about God, which led to a life of fear because they no longer knew where God is present, they certainly didn’t know what is God up to nor did they have a clue about where God was leading them.

         This state of uncertainty that God’s people lived in left them horribly in the dark about God. Yet all was not lost for God told them from the beginning, that every morning was the beginning of a brand new day to become people in the know about God. Every morning, God asks his people, “Do you hear me? God speaks to us that he is a God who is one, the God whose single and sole focus is his love and devotion toward us. The response God expects is for us to hear and experience from those who hear him is a love that is single in its devotion, a love solely focused back to him. God calls for our hearts to be led by love, for our souls to judge all as being worthy of life, and for us to use our resources to give life to all who need life.  

         The result of this right response to the certain, loyal love of God is that wherever the people in the know about God live and work, there will be seen people who love each other with passion and determination. There will be seen throughout the land, a justice where all people judge each other as being worthy of life. And there will be witnessed, a oneness with those who are in need of charity. You see, what Jeremiah proclaimed is exactly what matters most to God and therefore this is what what should matter most to us. You see, those who say that they know God are called to everyday, attend his school of hands on learning so that not only that we might come to know God better but also, so that through our service to someone else, they too might come to know God as well. 

         When we yield to this call of God to spend our days making him known to others just as he is known to us, then something quite interesting happens-we then come to know ourselves as God knows us. You see, we may believe that we are merely a servant of God who goes where love leads them. Yet, the truth is that when we come to God as servants we end up knowing ourselves as being the firstborn children of God. Now it is important that we know ourselves as God knows us otherwise the world we live in will end up defining just who we are. Jeremiah understood that the people who were to be in the know about God now refused to know God so now they had forgotten how God knows them. The truth is that they too, like Israel before them, were known by God as his firstborn child. Their ancestor Jacob was angered by the norms and expectations that he found as the second born child. The firstborn child like his brother Esau, were automatically given the birthright and their father’s blessing. So Jacob used deceit and cunning to take these away from his brother so that he might have what his culture said could never be his. Yet because of what Jacob did, he became estranged from his brother Esau for over twenty years. So when the time came to meet with Esau, Jacob was rightfully afraid. So he spent the night before their reunion, wrestling with God, refusing to let go of heavens hope without a blessing. Well, God gave Jacob two blessings. The first is that God gave Jacob a new name that referred to his new status conferred upon him by God, so that now instead of being Jacob the cheat and deceiver, he was to be known as being the Prince, a title given to the first born of the king himself. This is how God knew Jacob. The second blessing is that God popped Israels hip out of its socket, permanently wounding him. Now, Israel could no longer rely upon his own cunning nor his own strength but instead Israel had to lead with a limp. Israel had to learn to be led by love, judging his brother Esau as being worthy of life and therefore worthy to receive the fullness of blessing from his brother. 

         In todays scripture, we once again hear about what it means to know God, only this time the one who is supposed to know God is the king of Judah, a man named Shallum, the son of King Josiah. Jeremiah relays to his king the terrible news that he was going to be led away into exile and sadly, he was to never return. Yet Shallum was the cause of his own sorrow for he had built his palace, his very life, upon a foundation of unrighteousness and injustice. Those who worked for the king were forced to do so without getting paid their wages. You see, Shallum, had this warped idea about what it meant for him to be the king, that the office was more about lording over people instead of using his power to lift others up. Yet, this should not have happened because the duties of the king are outlined in the book of Deuteronomy. There in the seventeenth chapter we discover that God anticipated that his people would desire to have a king rule over them to be like all of the rest of the nations. God, surprisingly, does not oppose such a move but rather he insists on a few simple rules, First, the king must be one of the people of Israel. Second, God had forbidden that the king be obsessed with being a king  with many horses nor were they to be a king of many wives and much gold and silver. The king instead was to use their time to writing a copy of the first five books of Scripture, which is called the Torah, in the Hebrew language. The priests were to oversee this project to make sure the king does his homework. When he completed this assignment, then he was to keep this copy with him at all time, reading it over and over so that he might come to fear the Lord and be willing to keep all of the laws and commandments, doing what is instructed in these sacred writings. The point of being thoroughly skilled in scripture was twofold. The first was that all those scripture verses would remind the king that he should not become arrogant, believing that he was supposedly superior than the people he had been chosen from. So right from the beginning, God expected that the kings of Israel would be humble, for only in this way could they continue to receive the grace of God, his gift of loyal love. You see, God expected that the king rule the people of Israel by providing them with a living example of the right way of living with God. The name the people of Israel had for these scriptures, Torah, while often translated as being, “the law”, is actually better thought of as meaning, “the pathway for life”. The king was to be the one who publicly displayed a life that did not veer off the path set out by the commandments found in the scriptures. God understood that very much like in our day, the king had great power to influence others.

         So even though the job description for being a king is pretty straight forward, it is painfully obvious that that by the time of Jeremiah the kings who ruled the people of Israel had other ideas. They took their cue not from scripture but instead they looked at the neighboring kings who lived the high life in their beautiful, palaces all decked out in crimson and gold. The kings of Israel had come to believe that being a king meant seeing how far one would go to outdo their neighboring kings in being obscenely extravagant. So the people began to follow this path walked by their king, They too began pursue extravagant living, chasing their desires and feeding their passions. These desires and passions were satisfied by false gods found to be far more worthy to serve than the God they were suppose to be in the know about. The kings who quit looking to God forgot just how great and far reaching their influence was over those they were supposed to rule. 

         Jeremiah, of course is horribly appalled that the king believed that his rule was about keeping up appearances instead of actually leading his people to know God. Jeremiah calls the evil king, Shallum to remember his father yet I wonder if Jeremiah is here speaking is about King David. Now it does make sense that Jeremiah is calling us to remember King David because he was called a king after God’s heart, as we hear in the thirteenth chapter of First Samuel. I have always thought that this is an interesting way to speak of David especially if you study his life and look at what he did as king. I mean, he did have an affair with the neighbor lady, and after finding out that she was pregnant, he hatched a plan to murder her husband. So, yes, there was a lot of evil evident in the life of King David. Yet, there was more to David than his wrongdoings. We read of how David rescues a young man, unable to walk because his feet had been broken as a child, in the ninth chapter of second Samuel,.  Now, besides, this infirmity, what we must also know about this young man is that he was the son of David’s best friend, Jonathon. Oh, one more thing, Jonathon was the son of king Saul who ruled before David, David’s sworn enemy. So, David had much he could have used to make an excuse to not even care about this young man. Why would he want to care for someone so broken that he is going to require a lot of care and attention? Why worry over one of the last remaining family members of your sworn enemy, that evil king who had tried to kill David numerous times? Yet David refused to listen to the nay-sayers. Instead David did something rather remarkable, he welcomed this grandson of his enemy to his table. David not only gave this young man a life time estate at his home but all that had once been the former kings estate, what would normally be the spoils of war, was instead given to this young man in an overwhelming gesture of love and kindness.

         When we read of King David’s welcoming of this young man to his table, then we can understand why David was considered to be a king after God’s own heart. David did judge the cause of the poor and the needy, the poor and needy grandson of his arch enemy, and he found this young man worthy of life, instead of seeking revenge as the world does so often. So, King David was a living example of what it means to receive the grace of God, the gift of his faithful, loyal love and then allowing that love to cause him to reign through righteousness. David came to know God, to know him as being a God of faithful, loyal, love through his failures.  So when God called David to allow his heart to be led by that same love, David responded by letting the love of God guide his actions. When God called David to love him with all of his soul, David judged that this young man was indeed worthy of life. Then David demonstrated his love for God by using all that God had given to him to give this young man a home for the rest of his life. So King David was a living example of one who not only was in the know about God, but David took what he knew about God’s grace, his gift of his unfailing love and David allowed that love to empower him to reign through righteousness. You see, through the example of David those who were influenced by him were to also allow the grace of God to empower them to reign through righteousness. Is it becoming clear as to what God expects when he claims that we are to be known as his kings and priests? We, like King David, are to take what we know about God, that he is a God who freely has given us the gift of his steadfast love and allow that love to be the power that moves us to reign through righteousness. This is when we are known to God as being his kings and queens. Then, when through us reigning in righteousness, someone else experiences the steadfast love of God and they come to know God, this is when we are known to God as priests. You see, a priest is simply someone who helps someone else connect with God so that too can say that they know God, just like we do. So, being kings and queens to God, and being known as being his priests, this is what God expects from those people who say that they are in the know about him. Those who are in the know about God are to be those who not just know about God and his grace, this gift of unfailing love but we must allow what we know to influence others so that they too become people who can say that they too are in the know about God. Jeremiah understood that the people who were supposed to be in the know in his day, no longer even cared to know God, they spurned his free gift of love, no longer desiring to know the glory that comes when we reign through righteousness. Praise be to God that we know the God who sent to us our king named Jesus, the one who reigns in love, the costly gift of the love found at the cross. This grace is to result in us a life that reigns in righteousness. So, knowing this, if this does not describe our life, I wonder, can we honestly say, that we know Jesus? No, it is only when we are known to him as being kings and queens, priests to God, only then can we say that we are indeed, “people in the know”, about the God who loves us! Amen! 

People in the Know: Knowing Our Father

 November 16 2025

Jeremiah 17:1-14

         A couple of weeks ago, I got to visit with all of my siblings via a Zoom call. Now, most of the time was spent catching up with what everyone is up to at the moment, as expected, but we also had to remember the good, old days. Somehow the conversation became all about how our seven member family all squeezed into a Ford Granada. It was a stretch to call the car a six passenger vehicle, let alone being able to fit seven people. Yet there we were, every Sunday, my older brother, George was up front with my Mom and Dad, and I was in the middle of the back seat, a sister on either side and my younger brother, Jeff, straddling the hump, leaning back on my knees. So, in effect, I got to be my little bothers seat belt, holding on to him for dear life, hoping there would be no sudden stops on the way to church. Needless to say, I was envious of my older brother because it just seemed like he got to be in first class, while the rest of us were crammed into the back. It just always seemed that being born first came with a lot of perks that the rest of us second-class siblings never got to experience. Well, at least we can laugh about all of it now!

         Well, this having sour grapes about where we ended up on our birth order, this is more than a laughing matter for a lot of people, especially those we find in the Bible. So it should come as no surprise that these hurt feelings that occur through circumstances beyond our control, are what keep our hearts from being directed by love as God expects. This is what we are going to look at in this next segment in this series of messages entitled, “People in the Know”. This title describes how the prophet Jeremiah hoped the people of Israel would be, those who knew God intimately, much like a husband and wife know each other. Yet instead of finding people who were up close and personal with God, what Jeremiah found is people who had no clue who God is, where God is working nor did they even know where God is headed. Instead of living life through the abundance of God’s blessings, they, decided to live their life without any certainty, spurning the ever steady heartbeat of God’s love for us. So they no longer could call on God and expect him to show up. They no longer could depend on God to provide all that they needed, either. So, instead of faith their life was filled with fear, fear which lead them to be puffed up with pride. 

Such fear and pride ruined how the people of God worshiped God in the Temple. They offered sacrifices as a means to please the God they had no certainty about. So they developed a wrong way of thinking about God that led them to believe they could manipulate God into going along with any scheme they might concoct. Yet all was not lost for God reminded his people of how he continued to speak to them, every morning, calling his people to listen and to do what mattered most. Then his people could go out and live the day being led by a heart that loved, a soul that judged everyone as being worthy of life and the strength, or resources to share their life with others. Yet, as we hear today, there is trouble brewing deep within our hearts, something which threatens to take over our inner guidance system. Instead of a heart directed by the same faithful, loyal love God first loved us with, our hearts are found to be, as Jeremiah tells us in the ninth verse of this seventeenth chapter that we read today, to be, “…deceitful above all things.” So if we really do want to be people who know what matters most to God then we must figure out just what is Jeremiah telling us when he insists that inwardly we are very broken people.

What provides us a clue to understanding what Jeremiah might be saying to us when he tells us that our hearts are deceitful above all else, is discovering that in the Hebrew language, the word for, “deceit”, is the word, “acov”, which we know as being the same as the name, ‘Jacob”. This word comes from the act of grabbing someone from behind by their ankle in order to trip them up. It’s the same sentiment as telling someone that they’re, “going down”, or saying that someone else can take the fall for something you have done. The point is to take the honor away from someone in order to level the playing field before the watching eyes of those who matter.

 Jacob was one who wanted to trip up his older brother Esau’s to get his hands on his first-born privileges right from their birth. We are told of this birth in the twenty-fifth chapter of Genesis. There we find that Rebekah, wife of Issac, is pregnant with twins, who struggled inside of her. So she inquires of God as to what this internal trouble was all about. God tells Rebekah that inside of her were two nations, one stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger. Now this had to be rather shocking because God was saying something that was unheard of, that the older child would end up serving the youngest child, a total upsetting of what one would expect. You see, the oldest male child was given special privileges because they would be expected to be in the know about the ways of their Father. The Father would put his blessing upon his first-born son as a sign that this son was the one who would keep safe the ways of his Father that had been entrusted to them.

When Jacob was born they said that his hand, even then, was grasping the heel of his brother, Esau. Jacob was always scheming always trying to figure out his brother’s weaknesses. One day he waited until his brother was hungry and tired, and then Jacob got Esau to trade him his birthrights for a bowl of stew. You see, Jacob knew that Esau did not treasure the privileges associated with his birth. Later on, Jacob, with the help of his mother, tricked his own father, Issac into giving him the sacred blessing instead of giving it to Esau. When Esau found out about Jacob cheating him out of his rightful honor, he was angry. Now Esau would have to serve Jacob, just as had been prophesied. Esau was having none of this, so he plotted to kill his brother, and Jacob had to leave the very home that had been given to him.

When Jeremiah told the people of God, that their hearts were entirely deceitful, they knew that the word Jeremiah used was to cause them to consider these stories about Jacob. While in name they were the people of Israel, they were, nonetheless, people who were like Jacob in their hearts. You see, Jacob, the cheat whose very name means deceit, had an encounter with God which changed his life, an experience so powerful that he went from being Jacob, the deceiver, to being Israel, the prince of God. So when Jeremiah says that God’s people have hearts that follow after their ancestor Jacob, he appears to be insinuating that what they are in desperate need of is an encounter with God to transform them just as he had done with Jacob. 

We find the story of Jacobs life changing encounter with God, in the thirty-second chapter of Genesis. Over twenty years have passed since Jacob cheated Esau out of his rightful blessing by their father, Isaac. Jacob is now married, to two wives, and he has grown quite prosperous. Yet he knows that he must at last confront the brother who swore to kill him. So Jacob sends word to his brother Esau that he wants to meet with him. Jacob gets word back to him, that Esau is headed his direction leading a four-hundred man army. So, Jacob is rightfully afraid, not just for himself but for his family as well. So he begins to pray, as one would expect, and he asks God for deliverance from what he believes will be a certain attack. Well, as nightfall comes, Jacob moved his family to a safe place and he finds himself alone. There in the dark he was approached by one he thought was a man. Jacob and this man began to wrestle, and they kept at it until the sun began to rise.  The man told Jacob to let him go but Jacob told him that he would not let him go until he blessed Jacob. Here we must pause for a moment to grasp what is happening here. Jacob has realized that this one he is wrestling with is connected in some way to God. What Jacob desires is to be certain that God will indeed fight for him when the time comes. Jacob believes that if he can win over this God sent warrior then God will be obliged to side with him. So Jacob believes he has prevailed and he now deserves to receive a blessing from God, just as he received a blessing from his father Isaac. So what Jacob desires is that God look on him as a first-born son who stands to receive a blessing, a seal of approval from God. Well, what brought this fight between Jacob and this heavenly warrior to an end is that the heavenly warrior touched the hip socket of Jacob, so that the hip of Jacob was put out of joint. So it appears that the only blessing Jacob received from God was that he was given a permanent limp, a permanent reminder of his wrestling match with God. Yet there was one positive outcome of this blessing. God changed Jacob’s name forever. Now instead of being known as Jacob, the cheat, he became, Israel, prince of God. You see, I believe that God understood Jacob’s longing to have the privileges that came so easily to the first-born as their culture demanded. Jacob’s solution was to cheat and deceive his way to the top even if it meant that he would be estranged from his own brother for over twenty years. God had a better answer for Jacob and his family. God would state that Jacob was now to be known as his first-born son. The mark this God’s blessing was that Jacob, now Israel, must lead with a limp, demonstrating the worthiness of being made weak by God. You see, now because of the blessing of God, Jacob now Israel, would limb out to meet his brother, unable to lead a battle charge. No, now Jacob, become Israel, would instead go forth and kneel before his brother Esau, not once but seven times, an action which spoke of the fullness of blessing Jacob offered up to his brother. Esau was so moved that he rushed toward his brother and embraced him, and they wept together as they had been apart far too long.

You see, the lesson of Jacob, the deceiver and cheat, is that the life we are born into does not have to define us. God’s deliberate choice of Jacob and his family was done as a way of showing his understanding that the norms and ways of the culture we live in are often unjust and cruel.People are right to desire something more than what their society offers them. Yet, the way out of the brokenness that we live in is not by cheating and conniving those who have been given more honor than the rest. You see, no one really is made greater by tripping someone up so that they are made less. Such actions only led Jacobs brother to hate him and want him dead. While God understands the desire for there to be equality for everyone, he alone is able to accomplish this without causing harm to the relationships we find ourselves in. You see, when we wake every morning, and we hear God call us to come and love on the world with him, asking us to have hearts attuned to love, souls willing to judge all we meet worthy of life and strength or resources always ready to be offered to those in need of life, we are to know that we do this work not as a servant of God but rather as a child of God. More to the point, as a first-born child as God, as strange as that might be. You see, in the fourth chapter of Exodus, when God calls Moses to rescue his people from Egypt, Moses is instructed to tell Pharaoh that he was to release God’s first-born son from slavery. So, even though the nation of Exodus considered these people nothing more than property which they could use and abuse, God knew them all as being his first-born child. Their struggle after God released them from slavery was for them to trust more in God’s definition of who they were instead of continuing to believe that all they were was second class goods.

You see, the curse of the world is the conventions every culture puts in place to create a sense of order, and more than that, a sense of honor to enforce that order. It is a curse to always be concerned about doing something that brings a sense of shame into your life, to always be wondering just where do we stand in the eyes of, you know, “those people”. It’s a curse to never be satisfied, to be continually striving to be more because the world you were born into has never acknowledged your true worth. This is a curse that Jacob felt in his heart just as it is the curse so many people still feel in their hearts as well. This is the curse which causes a heart to never consider to be guided by love for the only desire found in a heart infected by this curse is a desire to connive, and manipulate and deceive in order to even the score.

The good news is that God understands. God’s answer to those living under this curse of believing we are somehow second-rate is to let us be born into his world, to be born as God’s first-born child. It seems so outrageous to our ears to even say such a claim out loud, yet this is what God first proclaimed over Jacob, and then four-hundred years later to the descendants of Jacob. When we now state that we are in Jesus, his desire as found at the end of the seventeenth chapter of John, is that the glory the Father gives to Jesus will be given to all the Father welcomes home. As Jesus was loved by our Heavenly Father, before the foundation of the world, rest assured, so were we. This is what we are to know when we are people in the know about God. We are to know that our God knows us as his first-born child. Yet, as Jeremiah reminds us in this seventeenth chapter, the blessing of this declaration of God is ours only if we are willing to trust that what God states about us is the truth.. Like those ancient slaves down in Egypt, it is difficult to know ourselves as being anything than what the world has always considered us to be. What keeps us in the know about who we are in the eyes of God is for us to remember that the reason why God blesses us by calling us his first-born child, is so that we ultimately bear fruit. You see, when we trust in God and believe that in the eyes of God we are indeed to be first-born children, then we will know that such an honor comes not only with privileges but also responsibilities. As Jesus, the very Son of God, tells us in the fifth chapter of John tells us, “Whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son and shows his Son all that he himself is doing.” You see, every morning when God calls us to hear his voice, we should know that our Father is inviting us, his first-born child to come with him as he goes out to work. As we are led by love we are learning how are Father loves on everybody as difficult as that might seem. As we are called to judge everyone as being worthy of life, we can know ourselves as working along side of our Father as he brings life to the world.  As we use our resources to offer life to those who need life, we rejoice with our Father as life proves once again victorious over death. Thus we find that the heart once so devious, so like Jacob, has now become a heart that knows that it is the heart of an honored child in the eyes of God. Praise God for the healing which comes through knowing him and knowing just who we are to the God who has always loved us. Amen!