Where are we in the gospel? Jeremiah 10:1-17 but really mainly 11.
When I did my teaching degree, I went to different schools to do my practical teaching requirement. I was studying to be a studies of religion teacher. But even the Christian schools that I went to didn't have huge religious studies curricula, so I would end up being told to teach other subjects.
Sometimes that was okay: I did a bit of history, English and geography - all things I'd done okay in when I was a student at high school. But other times I was less well equipped. I had to teach two weeks of business studies: I've never come close to business studies in my life! I had to teach a class of Latin. I've never studied Latin!
So what did I do? I read the textbooks ahead of time, did my best to understand what I needed to teach, and taught it. But if students had any questions, my inexperience was obvious. And their desire to listen to me dried up - why listen to some blow-in who doesn't know what he's talking about? In the case of my Latin class: I bribed them with Mars bars.
Was the information I was teaching them wrong? I don't think so. I mean, it was straight from books. But I actually had no idea. I had no personal learning or experience to draw from, and little personal investment in those subjects.
Sometimes that's how we feel as Christians trying to share good news about Jesus with other people. We can feel like we're not a good example, or we don't know enough about it, or there's nothing anyone could learn from us.
Or sometimes we feel like we do have something important, valuable, incredible to share, but we feel like no-one listens, they don't understand or accept what we say, there's just too big a gap between my life and their life; it just doesn't seem to translate. Sometimes it feels like the world outside these church walls is so different, it believes and values such different things, that God and Jesus just aren't welcome anymore.
These worries can become obstacles that actually stop us from talking to people about Jesus. And that's a sad thing for us, because it means we're not getting to share the most important thing in our lives with others around us. And it's also a sad thing for them, because it might mean there's a gap in someone’s journey with Jesus where no-one has ever explained the gospel the way you would.
This isn't a new problem. I don't have some miracle cure to these obstacles. I just want to share a little bit of the story of God's people that we all share, and a little bit of my own story, to help us take a step or two in the right direction on this path. I'm happy to leave the miracles up to God.
My big question today is, "Where are we in the gospel we'd like to share with people?" By that I mean how much of ourselves is in the gospel we share with others.
To help make the question more specific, there are 3 questions that I would like to ask today.
- Are we coming from somewhere others can hear us?
- Are we speaking the right language for others to understand us?
- Are we sharing something we both find valuable?
These questions all come from what is possibly the world's first gospel tract, found in the book of Jeremiah chapter 10 verse 11. We've heard this read in its passage so we have some context, but let me bring us up to speed here historically. Jeremiah is a prophet of God in the last days of the southern kingdom. He speaks God's word to God's people both before and after they are exiled to Babylon because they were worshipping idols instead of the true God. And here in Jeremiah 10, in the middle of a warning to God's people about the idol worship they're being punished for, there is this fascinatingly outward pointing verse talking about what God's people are going to say to the people they meet in Babylon: “Tell them this: ‘These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.’ ”
Here is God telling his people, "Now when you arrive in exile as my punishment for worshipping foreign gods and their idols, don't forget to tell the people you're living beside - your neighbours, your enemies, the people who have taken you captive - don't forget to tell them that their gods are worthless."
Now that's not a message you would see in many gospel presentations today. Why am I preaching about the gospel from Jeremiah? This is 500 years before Jesus!
Well, for starters, it is valuable to us, because as Christians we do value the whole of the Bible as God's message to us. This whole book is the gospel. Often when we talk about the gospel, we're focused on the New Testament. Often we're focused just on Jesus. And often we're really just focused on Jesus's death and resurrection. We might even drill right down to a single verse like John 3:16, "For God so loved the world he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him will never die but have eternal life." And there's a reason we do that - because the New Testament, the Gospels, the passion, John 3:16, they encapsulate the most valuable part of the gospel message! ...to us.
But sometimes it's important to remember there was a point in the history of God's people where the most important gospel message for them to share was Jeremiah 10:11. This passage does have something to tell us about who God is and how he relates to his people, and how he calls us to relate to others. That's important for us to hear when it comes to sharing the gospel, because when we learn a little more about the context of this passage, it makes it clear how valuable different parts of the gospel message can be depending on who's around to listen, how it's spoken, and who shares it.
So let's ask our questions in the context that Jeremiah was when he wrote this passage about 2500 years ago. First question: were God's people somewhere the receivers of this message could hear it? Well, by the end of the book of Jeremiah, God had stayed true to his word, and the Babylonian army came down from the north, laid siege to Jerusalem, tore down their walls, and took the people of Judah captive, into exile to Babylon! So God's people found themselves very close to the people this message was aimed at. Now they were living with the Babylonians as their neighbours, their coworkers, in many cases their masters. Geographically, they were in a much better position to share their message.
But when the Jewish exiles eventually arrived in Babylon, how likely was it that the Babylonians were going to be able to hear a message from them calling their idols useless? At first, it was perhaps unlikely. The people who got taken were primarily priests, tradesmen, nobility, artisans - the educated, the skilled, those with something useful to share. They weren't useless. But the Jews were enslaved. They were foreigners. They were the lowest class.
However, there is something special about being a foreigner, especially a brand new one. You struggle with language, you don't know how things work. Even simple things like going shopping or eating - things you take for granted in your homeland - become strange and difficult! You need help! And that vulnerability, that helplessness, that need to ask others to help you, it makes you way more humble, and I think that in turn makes people take an interest in you; it helps build relationships. Many missionaries will say that the best relationships, the most open conversations, the time people are most open to hear what you have to say, is in the first few years of your arrival when you need lots of help. The more comfortable you get, the more self-reliant, the more at home, the less you need others, the less interested they are in you, the harder the conversations can become.
You might have found this even when joining a new community like a hobby group or a cycling group or a book club. There's a way of talking, things have specific names, you don't know people, and often someone will come alongside a new person and help them navigate these things. And friendships get built in those early times when we're humbled by inexperience. Once you've settled in, you've made your friends and you stick to them.
And the Jews had good reason to be humble: they were captives! They lost the war! But not only were the Jews in exile humbled and in a low position; they were tasked by God to work for the prosperity of their captors. In Jeremiah 29 they were told they were to show God's love and kindness even to the people who had defeated them. They were to work for everyone's mutual benefit, and to pray for everyone's mutual benefit. It was Jesus who said "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you", but centuries before God was already calling his people to do exactly that.
Could the Jews in exile share this message of Jeremiah 10:11 with their Babylonian neighbours and have them hear it? I think they could, once they were close enough to them, both geographically and relationally. And we can do the same thing. A humble posture of loving kindness towards people in our orbit lets them know that you actually care about them, and that helps them hear the message you're sharing, because you're sharing it out of love.
At Horizons Family Law Centre, my clients were asking themselves three questions when they saw me for advice about their family situation: "Do you understand? Do you care? Can you help?" It's easy for them to trust I know what I'm talking about regarding family law - I'm a family lawyer. But if I couldn't show them I cared about their family, that I listened to them about their family, it didn't matter how good my legal advice was. They just couldn't hear the advice, if they didn't think I cared, especially if it was hard to hear.
When you think about it, the more difficult we think a gospel message is to swallow, the more humble and gentle and caring we should be in sharing it. Are we prepared to be humble enough and caring enough for people to hear our gospel?
Let’s move to Question 2: were the Jews speaking the language of Babylon? Could they be understood? The answer is absolutely yes! It's not often I refer to a Bible footnote in a sermon, but I'm going to this morning. If you've got your Bible, look at the footnote for Jeremiah 10:11. In my Bible it says "The text of this verse is in Aramaic". Aramaic is the language of Babylon!
By providing this gospel message in Aramaic, God is giving the Jews a message that is obviously for the Babylonians – an ancient gospel tract. But will they understand the concepts in this message?
The Babylonians had heaps of gods. Their city would have been full of shrines dedicated to various idols. Some of their kings even demanded to be worshipped as gods. The idea that foreigners have different gods was common; and the idea that some gods are more powerful than others was well accepted: usually you could tell how powerful a god is by how many wars its followers win. Babylonians were probably thinking their gods were pretty hot stuff, because they were a huge Empire. The idea that these people who lost the war might say their God is still stronger would be a challenge to accept! But they could at least understand.
When we were in Namibia, one of my jobs was teaching advanced theological English to the new theology students at the Bible college. Most people in Namibia speak English, and most of their schooling is done in English, but none speak it as their heart language. Which means they can struggle to grasp big theological words that they will come across in their studies, like eschatology - theology about end times. Their languages do not have these words.
But what I discovered teaching that course was that not only did the students not understand the big words, they struggled to understand the concepts behind them. When I talked about cause and effect, this concept was really hard for them to grasp. One paper I read on this topic described African culture as seeing things as so interconnected, especially between the natural and the supernatural, that Africans can struggle to recognize or pick out the most important, specific or proximate causes of an effect – while we in the West do it naturally. This difference was quite subtle in regular conversation, but in academic or spiritual discussions it became really clear. And it took some work to be able to bridge that understanding gap, to make sure that we understood each other, because my culture stopped me from understanding the interconnectedness that they could easily identify.
If we have the humble and loving posture that shows we care, then that should lead us to being prepared to put in as much work as it takes to make sure we understand those we're speaking with, so they can understand us.
Our last question now: were God's people sharing something that both they and the Babylonians found valuable?
The truth is that we never have any control over how people think or what they value anyway. What we can change is what message we bring, focusing on the part of the gospel is really going to land with the people we’re talking to. And this has to include how authentic this message is to me - does my life and experience reflect what I'm saying? We can shape our gospel to fit these things, and they all add value to what we're saying, and they all link to our relationship with a person or people.
Have you noticed that Jeremiah 10:11, this gospel message, doesn't mention God at all? The Babylonians probably couldn't care less about the Jewish God. What does it talk about? The Babylonian gods! That's what they care about!
When people call Horizons looking for help, they don't care about Jesus. Will Jesus bring their kids back? Will Jesus stop the violence?
Their concern is so immediate that it's all they see. If we told them that putting their children's best interests first, sacrificing their own desires, acting with grace and mercy towards the other parent, is what Jesus wants, they would be sceptical of that message and of us. But if we explain that not only are these things in line with family law legislation, but they show the court that they're a good parent, and they work well in helping reach agreements, they will be far more likely to listen. They might not like it, but they will listen, because you're addressing a problem that is valuable to them. All these things are all part of the gospel message! Love the vulnerable, love others as yourself, love your enemy. But they are also parts of the gospel immediately relevant to them, and so immediately valuable.
Then as we help clients with their immediate problem, even if it doesn't disappear, it gets just a little further away, and now they can see a bit more outside of their immediate problem. Then eventually they get to a stage, usually well before their problem is solved, where they suddenly ask, "Why do you do this? How do you afford to give this help for free?" And so we get to explain about how there's a whole bunch of Christians out their paying for this person to get this help, because those Christians love them and care about their family, because that's what Jesus wants for them.
Don’t get me wrong: salvation is obviously relevant to everyone. That’s a message people need to hear. But is it a message that the people you’re talking to can hear? Is it something they even understand? What even is sin that we’re being saved from today? Does our society have any concept of that at all? They can, but there’s a lot of scaffolding that needs to happen for lots of people to get there. And if we share it too early or too brashly, it can sound a lot like how this Jeremiah passage sounds to our ears – preachy, self-important, judgmental. Sharing the gospel takes time investment – investment in relationships, investment in the big story of God and the small stories of each person we speak with.
The Jews were tasked by God with making a home for themselves in exile, planting gardens, putting down roots. This included making friends, and praying for the prosperity of their non-Jewish neighbours. Time investment.
As we build up relationships, as we grow closer, we become more valuable to the other person, and so does what we think, our opinions, our beliefs. You're far more likely to take a recommendation from a close friend than a random stranger. I've read whole books without knowing anything more than a close friend recommended it. And even if I didn't particularly like the book, if I like the friend enough I'll keep reading just to be able to talk about it with them, because I value them that much.
When the Jews in exile in Babylon shared this message with their captors, they weren’t sharing a message from on high, a pompous and self-important message about how their God is so great and the Babylonian gods were false gods, mere idols that do no harm but also do no good, trying to outclass the Babylonians. They came as losers, as captives, and they came that way because they stopped worshipping their great God and started worshipping the worthless idols! God wants them to share this message with Babylon because the Jews can attest to the mistake they themselves made – they turned their back on God, they trusted in idols, and those idols failed them. And now they are losers. And they are sharing this with their Babylonian captors as a warning – don’t be like us! Learn from our mistake! We can attest to how valuable this message is, because we’ve learned its lesson the hard way!
What if you were to talk about the things in your life that have been really hard, the questions that you don’t always have answers for, the problems that show you’re not a perfect little Christian but a real person who struggles and falls and fails.
I’ve had a pretty difficult relationship with my father. He left when I was 5, and gradually was less and less involved in my life, till at about 12 I just stopped seeing or hearing from him till I was about 20. I’ve seen him a handful of times since then. We’re not that close. I’ve shared that with a number of my clients, when telling them that while your kids won’t always be young, they will always be your children, and even if you’re struggling to see them or keep contact with them now, it’s far more likely your relationship with them as adults will be better if you keep trying.
I don’t like sharing that story. I find it a bit shameful. Christians should honour their father and mother. But it’s the truth. And it has really helped some clients. What I shared is actually practical and real good news, something valuable to both of us.
The big core question is: Where are you in the gospel that you share with others? Is there a gap in the life of someone near you who has never heard the gospel explained quite the way you could explain it? Because sometimes, even if your gospel message doesn’t directly mention Jesus it can still be heard; your gospel message in the right words and context can be understood; and your gospel that is valuable to you can be valuable to somebody who values you.
Find those people who can hear you, and who value your story, speak their language, and share it with them.
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