Sermon for Lent 3

 

Jesus said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:28)

You can read all over the place where Jesus would thus bless those who hear the word of God and keep it. So he blessed the mute demon possessed man who heard the word of the Lord, believed it and was blessed to speak again. So he blessed the Canaanite woman who believed the word of the Lord and trusted the Lord to have mercy when she begged and she was blessed to have her daughter healed. Blessed was the tax-collector who believed he was a sinner and sought mercy from the Lord, unlike the well-respected Pharisee who could not believe or keep the word of the Lord that told him to repent of sins and stop bragging. Blessed was Simeon who believed the word of the Lord that his eyes would see the promised Savior – Simeon was blessed to depart in peace. Blessed are you who are hearing the word of God and will keep it: keep it in your heart and in your mind and in your daily walk with the Lord.

That’s how you are blessed. Don’t covet other stuff that you are not given. Don’t get all discouraged because you don’t have this or that and say to yourself, “God hasn’t blessed me.” I don’t have all the money I want. I don’t have the best things. I don’t have the respect from others that I deserve. I don’t have the position I was always trying to get. I don’t have the people around me to support me and help me and make me happy. Those things are blessings when you get them from the Lord. But don’t despise him for how he chooses to give out blessings. Listen to Jesus: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” That’s the blessed state you have, regardless if other things haven’t worked out like you want.

Hear the word of God and keep it. Hear the whole word of God. Keep the whole word of God. Hear both the Law and Gospel of God. Keep the Law by turning away from sins and turning toward the way of the Lord. Hear the Gospel. Keep it by trusting the Lord when He says, “You are forgiven.” And go on your way in the newness of life that is yours through the Gospel. “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1).

The incident recorded in Jeremiah’s book that we read today is an example of this, a rather bad example. The hearers of the Word of God that Jeremiah spoke did not keep it. They rejected it.

Jeremiah was commanded by God to speak a word to the people. The Lord said to Jeremiah, “Do not hold back a word. 3It may be they will listen, and every one turn from his evil way, that I may relent of the disaster that I intend to do to them because of their evil deeds” (Jeremiah 26:2-3).

The Word of God is His will, but it is his resistible will. He allows it to be so, that men and women can hear his word and if they choose, they can resist it, reject it, not keep it, but dismiss it. The will of God is perfect. We know He gets what he wants, yet in this wicked world, there are some things that work against his will. The devil works against God’s goodness, wreaking havoc in the world and in the lives of the world’s occupants. The sinful human nature within each of us wants to thwart God’s good and gracious will, and won’t listen to the word and won’t keep it. It’s only by the gracious working of the Holy Spirit that anyone can hear and keep the words that the Lord speaks.

Jeremiah was given this message to preach to the people of Judah:   “You shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD: If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law that I have set before you, and to listen to the words of my servants the prophets whom I send to you urgently, though you have not listened, then I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth’” (Jeremiah 26:4-6).

Shiloh was once, in the early history of Israel, a beautiful center of worship. People came there and received the means of grace. They sang the praises of the Lord. But some centuries before Jeremiah’s day, enemies of God’s people, probably the Philistines, destroyed it. So there were these ruins of the place, just 18 miles away from Jerusalem, where Jeremiah is preaching. It was a depressing, discouraging sight for the people to picture. They knew exactly what this warning meant. And it made them mad. They said, 9Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant’?” (verse 9).

Now they got what Jeremiah was saying mostly right. But they missed the very key part. They didn’t keep the word that said: “If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law that I have set before you, and to listen to the words of my servants the prophets whom I send to you urgently, though you have not listened, then I will make this house like Shiloh.”

All these people had ears that were working. They heard the word. But their hearts were hard and selective in what word they kept. They got mad at Jeremiah -- more to the point, they were mad at God – but they directed their anger at Jeremiah. “You shall die!” They chose to believe that Jeremiah hated them, that he wanted their ruin. They accused him of prophesying against them. Jeremiah was guilty in their judgement of saying terrible things, things that some in our day have a powerful name for -- “hate speech.”

But, no, Jeremiah wasn’t speaking this out of hatred or malice. The Lord had told him to talk this way for their own good, for their preservation. The Lord’s desire was that they would turn, turn back to him.

The world around us hears what the Lord says but will not keep it. They hear only part of the Lord’s Word. He says do this, don’t do that. And they say, “God hates us. He won’t let us do what we want; He won’t let us be who we are.” They don’t hear and keep all that the Lord says, “If you will listen to me, it will be good for you. You will have life and salvation.

You are blessed when you hear the word of God and keep it. All the word of God. Turn from evil and do good. Repent and believe God. Hear him describe how he made you, body and soul. Hear him when he tells you that you live in a world broken by sin, and that your misdeeds and your godless thoughts have broken your life further. Hear him when he says, Repent and walk in my ways. Hear him now when he tells you of the cross of Jesus where your sins of deed and thought are forgiven and removed, for Jesus’ sake. Again, this week’s Collect, let us pray:

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy, be gracious to all who have gone astray from Your ways and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of Your Word; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.