A man who spoke truth to power

²² It was the ninth month and the king was sitting in the winter apartment, with a fire burning in the brazier in front of him. ²³ Whenever Jehudi had read three or four columns of the scroll, the king cut them off with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the brazier, until the entire scroll was burned in the fire. ²⁴ The king and all his attendants who heard all these words showed no fear, nor did they tear their clothes. ²⁵ Even though Elnathan, Delaiah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them…

²⁷ After the king burned the scroll containing the words that Baruch had written at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ²⁸ “Take another scroll and write on it all the words that were on the first scroll, which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned up…” And many similar words were added to them.

Jeremiah 36:22-32

Have you ever wondered how the Bible, as we know it today, came to be? “Well, God inspired it”, you might say, and so indeed he did. But how exactly?

I wouldn’t blame you if it’s something you have never really thought about. After all, many of us were given Bibles either as children or at the time of our conversion. We were told, in effect, “This is the Bible, the word of God – read it, believe it, obey it, enjoy it”: and that’s what we’ve tried to do. For all we knew, it descended directly from heaven, nicely printed and bound, and, as they say, ready to go… “The Holy Bible”. We held God’s word in our hands and have tried to do as we were advised.

But of course it happened nothing like that. Our excuse (not that we need one) is that this is really a matter for experts, for people who know about ancient history and the languages of the Bible, Hebrew and Greek.

But to delve a little into these questions can enrich and deepen our faith, helping us to see that while the Bible is indeed divinely inspired, it is also humanly written. Jeremiah 36 gives us a fascinating glimpse into the process by which one particular part of the Old Testament came to be. (It even has a grimly comical element to it.)

So… why not read the whole chapter right through, then we’ll summarise the main events, and next time we’ll draw from it some lessons which can still benefit us today…

It’s roughly 600 years before Christ, and the little kingdom of Judah – all that’s left of “the people of Israel”, long fallen from their glory days under David and Solomon 400 years earlier – is in serious trouble. They are ruled by a grossly ungodly king, Jehoiakim; the mighty Babylonians have defeated the Egyptians to become the new super-power; and they and their ferocious king, Nebuchadnezzar, are outside the walls of Jerusalem and threatening to destroy God’s holy city.

Jeremiah, God’s stern and uncompromising prophet, is in a difficult position - for God has told him that this is exactly what will happen as a judgment on their falling away from him. Not what you would call a popular message! Not a message King Jehoiakim would be keen to hear!

But Jeremiah has no choice: to use a modern expression, his job is to “speak truth to power”, whatever the consequences might be. (Imagine if a politician in Ukraine today were to advocate total surrender to Russia.)

But Jeremiah has a problem: he has been banned from the temple, his main preaching-place. So how can he get his message across? Answer: God tells him to write his prophecies out on a scroll so that his friend and supporter Baruch can read them in his place. This becomes known to some of the leading men of Jerusalem who, to their credit, take it seriously and decide that the king must be made aware of Jeremiah’s message.

And so we come to the heart of chapter 36…

The  king agrees to listen to the scroll, and a man called Jehudi is given the job of reading it to him. It’s winter time, and King Jehoiakim is sitting in his apartment with fires burning. Every time a section of the scroll is read – well, what better way of keeping the heat nice and cosy than to slice that bit off and toss it into the flames? Suits me, says Jehoiakim. He is completely cynical, as if to say “Why should I bother myself with this crazy fanatic Jeremiah? The word of God, indeed. Pah!”

So what’s to do? Should Jeremiah shrug his shoulders and say “Oh well, at least we did the best we could”. That perhaps would be understandable. But that isn’t the kind of man Jeremiah is. No: he moves to Plan B: he just repeats the whole process, with Baruch again acting as scribe. And this time he adds still more words that God has given him (verse 32), as if to say, “You’re getting it all again - but this time with interest”.

I hope that’s a reasonable summary of this chapter.

Of course, we have no way of knowing how much of what we now call “The Book of the prophet Jeremiah” in our complete Bibles was included in these scrolls (such scrolls weren’t that long, and the final book runs to 52 quite long chapters). But it confirms the idea that the Old Testament prophets were likely to have scribes who remembered and wrote down their messages (Paul, of course, in the New Testament, also had a scribe who pops his head up out of nowhere in Romans 16 - though we don’t know how often he may have used him: I trust you’ve noticed Tertius?). All sorts of other intriguing questions arise. In days before electronic recording, how were the gospel stories remembered? What about a book like Jonah? It’s far more about him than by him, so who wrote it down?

Perhaps we will never know. But the point is worth noticing: suddenly we find ourselves dealing with real, live men and women, not just distant, ancient names which have become revered as “holy” (or the opposite).

But space has run out! Please join me next time as we delve a little deeper…

Thank you, Father, for your servant Jeremiah, who had the courage and faith to speak truth to power, whatever the cost. Thank you for people in our modern world who do the same, whether in terms of religion or politics. Please give me also that same courage and faith. Amen.

Need prayer be hard work?

Jesus said, When you pray, do not keep babbling like pagans… Matthew 6:7

Then [the prophets of Baal] called on the name of Baal from morning till noon… so they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears until their blood flowed. I Kings 18:24-29

How should we, as Christians, pray?

That is, of course, an impossible question: prayer is infinitely varied. We might offer prayers that have been written in advance, or simply pray spontaneously from the heart. We might offer long, detailed prayers, or just a few short words.

We might sing prayers in the form of songs or hymns or even use a tongue which is strange to us. We might pack our prayers with requests, or simply sing a song of praise to God. We might give vent to our frustrations and disappointments on God. The possibilities are endless.

But one thing we mustn’t do: we mustn’t “babble like pagans”, as Jesus puts it here. The word he used literally refers to “idle repetition” or “empty words” - perhaps we find an extreme example in the dramatic confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18: “so they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears until their blood flowed”. Sounds like hard work!

What matters is that our prayers are meaningful, from the heart, and offered with true humility and childlike faith. That sounds easy enough. But I think there is a danger, a risk that we subconsciously pile conditions on ourselves – we get into the way of thinking that our prayers may not be fully acceptable to God because somehow we “didn’t get it right”. Do you know that feeling?

The devil loves to tempt us to discouragement – “Of course that prayer hasn’t been answered! It was such a feeble effort on my part! Did I say ‘Amen’? Was I praying on auto-drive, not really thinking or feeling what I was saying? That person I heard was sick, did I really make an effort to feel what he is experiencing? Did I neglect to add the key words ‘I ask these things in Jesus’ name’ at the end (as if I might ask them in any other name!)”?

It embarrasses me to remember times in my Christian life when I virtually prayed with my eye on my watch: “I managed 25 minutes yesterday – I need to keep going  for at least another ten minutes…” We were encouraged to think of ourselves as “prayer warriors” (my wife has been heard to refer to “rottweilers of prayer”) which certainly means taking prayer very seriously, but isn’t exactly restful.

In a word, there’s a danger that we forget that God is our loving heavenly Father and treat him as if he is a rather demanding head-teacher.

Part of the problem is the sheer routine of life. Life is so ordinary that, let’s be honest, unusual, special things rarely happen. And if you’ve already prayed for a particular topic a hundred – perhaps even a thousand – times, it’s hard to maintain any kind of enthusiasm.

But what matters is that God looks down from heaven with a loving, fatherly eye and says, “My dear child, relax, that’s not what matters! I see you struggling to pray, and my heart goes out to you! I see the frustration and the dryness and I do not forget what I have seen. Your prayers may be feeble, but they are important to me! Yes, your little prayers are important to the God of all creation…”

So, yes, there are certainly times when prayer should be a sustained discipline: times too, perhaps, when we need to combine it with fasting. But the point is that in our daily lives, in the ordinary humdrum routine of things, it can also be a refreshing thing. We can rest in the presence of God, using few or many words. He knows even our grunts and groans, our pathetic “O Lord’s!” (Do we take seriously Romans 8:26?) He even hears our pleas “Lord, I’m so tired! I’m just struggling to cope. Help me!”

I joked about the prophets of Baal: their hours-long prayers, their dancing, their gyrations, even their self-mutilation. It sounds like hard work! Yes, indeed. And of course that is an extreme example. But we Christians need to be careful. Prayer can and will sometimes be hard work; but it can also serve as a peaceful, joyful thing.

Jesus saw at one point that his disciples had got into a pretty frazzled state, what with John the Baptist being beheaded, the crowds flocking round, and endless demands being made on Jesus, so he gave them an invitation: “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” (Mark 6:31).

Our “quiet places” may be only for a few minutes, with our eyes closed and in a noisy place: but let’s take full advantage of them.

Dear Father in heaven, help me to grasp that I don’t need to prove myself to you; you know me through and through, you have forgiven my sins, and you love me with an undying love. Please teach me how to rest in you day by day. Amen.

God's all-seeing eye

The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good. Proverbs 15:3

I used to visit a home where, the first thing you saw when you went in the front door, was a plaque on the wall: “Christ is the head of this house: the unseen guest at every meal; the silent listener to every conversation” - as if Jesus was some kind of ghostly presence, lurking in shadowy places, quite unlike the Jesus we meet in the Gospels.

I was only a child at the time, but I used find this – well, it would be too much to say spooky, but certainly slightly unsettling. When, later, I read George Orwell’s novel Nineteen eighty-four, with its frightening slogan “Big Brother is watching you”, I couldn’t help but be reminded… And the same thing applied when I first read Proverbs 15:3 and other similar Bible verses.

God’s “all-knowingness”, known technically as his “omniscience”, has been part of the church’s faith since the beginning. A simple question arises: Are verses like Proverbs 15:3 good news or bad? to be welcomed or frightened by?

Well, a lot depends, of course, on where (as they say) “you’re at” in your life.

If I’m living a life of conscious, knowing disobedience to God, then certainly there’s a lot to be troubled by. “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”, we read in Hebrews10:31, reminding us that God is far from being a kind of all-indulgent grand-father-in-the-sky. He is burningly holy, perfect in every respect, and ultimately our judge. Our verse makes clear that he ”keeps watch on the wicked” as well as on the good.

So it sounds as if Proverbs 15:3 is really not good news at all, not, that is, for the wicked. And yet can we not see even that in another way: may those words not also be a generous warning? The Bible tells us that “God is not willing that anyone should perish, but that everyone should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). He wants us to become sensitive to the reality of our sin, so that we have opportunity to turn around and make a fresh start – what Jesus called “being born again”, in fact. And if passages like Proverbs 15:3 shake us out of our carelessness and sin, shouldn’t we be thankful for them?

God loves sinners. How easily we forget that greatest of all truths! I remember the first time somebody pointed out to me (I had somehow simply never noticed it before) that while Jesus could, and did, display quite ferocious anger, it was always with those who he felt were misleading the people, the religious leaders, and never (literally never, according to all four Gospels) with the “ordinary people” themselves.

Think of Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well. He saw right through her; he knew her life was one dominated by sin. Surely a fierce blast of condemnation would have been appropriate? But no: he treated her with patience and compassion.

And what about those large crowds that flocked to hear him? They will have had their quota of liars and thieves, of cheats and adulterers, won’t they? Yet what do we read about Jesus’ feelings for them? Here is one of the most beautiful verses in the New Testament: “When he saw  the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Mathew 9:36). Sinners, yes, like all of us; but loved by Jesus.

So even for the worst of sinners Proverbs 15:3 can be seen as good news: God loves us enough to sound a serious warning: the question is, Am I wise and humble enough to change?

We should add too that many of those who were out of step with God were like that largely because they had never been taught. They weren’t, as I put it earlier, “living a life of conscious, knowing disobedience to God”, they were simply ignorant, “like sheep without a shepherd”: they were lost souls. How things stand with the untold millions who are like that today we can only guess. But we know that God is not only a holy, judging God, but also a merciful God. (The tricky passage Romans 2:12-16 throws some light on this.)

I’ve focussed on the fact that God “keeps watch on the wicked”, possibly bad news, possibly good, depending on how we respond.

But of course the other part of Proverbs 15:3 is nothing but good news: he also “keeps watch on the good”. Those who are in a relationship of love, faith and obedience with God can be assured that his eyes are on them every moment of day or night, whatever their circumstances may be. It may not always feel like that, especially at times of sickness, sorrow and other forms of suffering. But that is where we have to muster our childlike faith and commit ourselves into the hands of our loving heavenly Father.

In our worst times we may be inclined to doubt, even to be bitter: “If God sees what I’m going through, then why doesn’t he do something?” To which, of course, there is no simple answer: we simply don’t know the mind and purposes of God. But we cling on, fortified by the solid faith of someone like Paul (who knew a lot about suffering): “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

Yes, those can sound like easy, shallow words. At times like that, may God help us to see with new clarity the reality of Jesus’ horrifying death on the cross – and the glory of his rising again.

Remember, Christian… “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived – the things that God has prepared for those who love him – these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Lord, thank you for the assurance that even in the worst times of my life, your loving, fatherly eye is upon me, and give me faith to believe that you have in store for me wonders beyond imagining. Amen.

Good out of bad

Before I was afflicted I went astray… but it was good that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. Psalm 119:68-71

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children… Hebrews 12:7.

O the joy of being laid low!

Those are the words I would like to have started this message with. But alas, they would have been the words of a hypocrite. Why? – because I have recently been laid low, and I’m afraid it’s been anything but a joyful experience, however much I aim to trust in God.

I’ve had a couple of quite nasty falls, followed by an unpleasant couple of nights in hospital. Now my back is extremely painful and I can barely move. Further doctor’s visits are ahead. O poor little me!

This is where a lifetime of reading the Bible, even when you may not experience a particular blessing at the time, makes a difference. As I tried to adjust to my new situation, a couple of scripture verses emerged from the mists of memory, linked to the idea of “affliction”.

In Psalm 119:68 the psalmist tells us that “before I was afflicted I went astray”; then in verse 71 he follows that up in positive mode with “it was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes”. All right, that’s not exactly being joyful, but he is certainly seeing things in a new light, the light of faith and trust in God. That challenged me.

When the psalmist talks about “learning God’s statutes” I don’t think he means taking a refresher course in the ten commandments or some other part of Old Testament law; it’s more like an umbrella term for “the way God does things”. Whatever, that was the way it seemed to apply to me. So, what are some of the things I have been learning during this decidedly unwelcome experience?

 

First, the wonderful nature of the church.

 

Of course, the Christian church is anything but perfect, and the local churches to which we belong often seem, well, ordinary at best. But never mind! I have been almost overwhelmed by the avalanche of support and kindness, both starkly practical (hey, where did those grab-rails in the bathroom appear from, or that walking-aid?) and more strictly “spiritual”. Assurances of prayer and offers of help, plus little gifts and messages from near and far, from friends new and old, have made me aware of how adrift we would all be without the people of God. The person who says “I believe in Jesus, but I don’t need the church” is in fact tragically out of step with Jesus. Did he found the church for fun? for us just to stand outside it and criticise?

 

Second, a deeper understanding of marriage.

 

Nina and I have been married for over forty years – not perfect years, of course; but we are learning in a new way the deep meaning of those serious, serious words in the marriage service, “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health”. (Nina has always been, quite simply, wonderful beyond words, and at no time has she proved that more than over the last couple of weeks.)

 

I am aware that there will be some reading this who have lost, or never had, a husband or wife to share your troubles with, for reading this can only cause pain, and I regret that. But I cannot help but testify to the rich, practical wisdom contained in the Christian ideal of marriage. I can only encourage us, whatever our “situation in life” may be, to unashamedly uphold that principle in a world that is tragically scrabbling around to invent some new kind of sexual morality: where marriage itself seems little more than a joke, and “till death parts us” simply laughable. Can they not see that only new and more complex ways of being miserable are being concocted?

 

Third, a strong sense of the providence of God in what has happened.

 

For those who trust in God there is no such thing as mere “coincidence”. And so it has seemed to us this last couple of weeks.

 

Shortly before our “affliction” began our son Mark arrived home unexpectedly from a teaching adventure in Japan. Temporarily homeless, we gladly took him in, of course – not having the remotest idea of how helpful, both practically and psychologically, his presence with us would prove. What would we have done without him! (Not yet being a believer, I suspect that he would find the idea of being a “godsend” to his parents a bit hard to take – but, well, I’m afraid that’s just tough, Mark!)

 

There’s far more I could say, but space is running out, so let me just add two little comments that seem relevant.

 

First, while so much of the love we have received has come from Christians, it’s only right too to recognise the help we have received from those who are not, as far as we are aware, believers. I mention this to help safeguard us from the arrogance of imagining that we Christians have a monopoly on goodness. Don’t our non-Christian neighbours and  friends sometimes put us to shame? (Never forget who invented the character of the good Samaritan…!)

 

Second, in the last few days I have found myself thinking more than ever about the stark reality of pain, not least sheer physical pain, and how protected from it many of us have been throughout our lives. How shallowly I have read, say, missionary reports of Christians (and others) subjected to infinitely greater and crueller afflictions than I can even imagine. For them it is a normal reality of everyday life – and often with no end in sight in this earthly life. O Lord, forgive my wimpish self-pity!

 

During these recent days Nina and I seem to have received almost daily news of new troubles afflicting many, such as people falling sick, sometimes just small children, thus putting serious strain on whole families. Lord, help me to be truly grateful for the easy ride I have had over my 78 years!

 

Lord God, you invite us to call you Father, who only allows troubles in our lives in order to test and strengthen us. Please forgive my tendency to self-pity; please help me to stand the test. And please give me Jesus’ heart of compassion for the many millions of men and women and boys and girls whose troubles are so much greater than my own. Amen.