The problem is...

Shomair Yisrael Congregation

 To see the video of this talk: 

https://www.youtube.com/live/dF5zvywRr3M?si=oAeBsNf52E7XrMbV&t=5474

Shabbat shalom to each of you both here in the congregation and online watching this morning. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to visit Knoxville and to spend time with you in worship and in the Word, so thank you to Rabbi Michael and his wife Jan both for hosting me for Shabbat dinner and in hospitality overnight, and for the invitation to be here; so, let’s get right into it.

This week’s parasha is Va’etchanan and I remember this sedra for several reasons, most notably my own failure and lying when I was in my early teenage years back in the 1960s. I was a ba’al k’riah, having successfully earned that in my Bar Mitzvah in 1964 and then helping with that ministry at our Orthodox shul in Kansas City for a couple of years. But as a young teenager, I had other considerations that captured my attention, especially in the fever heat of summer, and when it was my time to read, I was ill-prepared. After the Cohen’s reading with which I was successful, I pretended to have a sudden case of laryngitis and could not continue in any further public reading. What a scam! What a terrible action of pretention! And to this day, I feel badly about my lying. So, when I checked the calendar for this Shabbat and saw it was this parasha, I again felt that guilt and shame. Not a good place from which to start, but maybe what I share today will help us deal in a godly way with such feelings down the road.

As we ponder other calendar events, it’s a good time to think of that circle of life reality. For many of you, starting school is now in full swing. The summer ended (long before 21 September at the equinox) and fall began with kids going back to school and your rhythm of life got a new drum beat. For others of you, wearing an orange shirt and cheering the Volunteers on a Saturday afternoon adds to your rhythm and to your hopes and sometimes disappointments each weekend. Today in Knoxville you could be at the East Tennessee History Centre celebrating History Hootenanny or you could be at the Greater Smoky Mountain Council of the Boy Scouts learning NRA Basics of Shotgun Shooting. Events that matter make it onto our calendars including dentist appointments and anniversaries and so much more. I’m originally from Kansas City, so Chiefs football is part of my routine.

You might know that we Jews emphasize calendars with regularity. It’s part of our rhythm of life in religion. For instance, last Monday was Tisha B’av, the worst day ever in the Jewish memory and annual cycle. That’s the day we recall the destruction of both temples in Jerusalem, first the ruin of Solomon’s by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and then the rebuilt one of Herod, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. Tisha B’av marks the end of the three weeks, this sad and mournful period each summer in which we are to ponder the dark eras of our Jewish history. Did you do that? Does the memory of the destroyed Temple teach us?

Then today, this weekend is supposed to bring a change for our people. Today is Shabbat Nachamu, and Va’etchanan is always the parasha for such. Why? Nachamu means comfort, and after the pondering of our losses in the week just past, it’s good to be comforted by the Lord. So, we read the Haftorah portions the next 6 weeks in anticipation of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish civil new year, we read comforting words from the prophet Isaiah. This week chapter 40, then next week we read Chapters 49 and 50, then 55, 51.12-52.12, 54, 60, 61 and 62. OK, this might sound somewhat selective, right? Let me reorder those readings. Chapters 40, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 60, 61,62. Did you hear that? One significant chapter is missing; we will get to that later in this talk. 

Now when we think about comfort in the losses of both temples and the sadnesses of our lives over history, and the need for comfort, there seems to be something missing for many of our people. You might know that 315 days ago some madmen flew, and others drove into the Land of Israel, across our Southern border, attacked and mauled, murdered and ruined the lives of over 1,200 Jews. 7 October was a day that most commentators continue to highlight as the ‘worst day for Jews worldwide since the Holocaust.’  There have been other very bad days for Jewish people since 1945, but nothing on such a grand stage as what Hamas did to our people that final day of Sukkot last year. 

OK, you think, it’s hard to come to terms with October 7. It’s hard to come to terms with antisemitism which globally is on the rise in a very clear and present dangerous way. Nazi marches taking place in Nashville, swastikas adorning Jewish cemeteries and brazen verbal and physical attacks of our people on university campuses will probably increase as college classes reopen soon. Nowhere seems to be safe; what are we to make of all this, and where, honestly, where is our Nachamu, our comfort?

For that I want us to consider the words of the Torah this morning. Those 122 verses I pretended not to be able to read that memorable day in 1966 are still in our books today. What is included may well hold the answer to my questions this morning. I believe the answer is in that text. 

Hear these words from Deuteronomy chapter 5, the repetition of the 10 words, the commandments. Yes, it includes thou shalt nots with which even most unbelievers are familiar. No stealing, no adultery, no murder. Got it. Is that how we gain comfort today? No, most folks miss it that the First commandment is not a prevention or one of those “Keep the Sabbath” or “Honor your parents” mandates. Nope, Commandment #1 is a call to faith. Listen, here it is.

1.   “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”

That’s it. I am the Lord. I’m your God. I brought you out in the Exodus. The first of the 10 words, the Aseret hadivrot is not a command at all. It’s a recognition. It’s a statement of identity and relationship. It’s not the 2^nd which is ‘don’t have any idols or make any such… no other gods.’ No, the First of the 10 words is a proclamation and demands my response. 

No wonder the rabbis zoom in on this one in their summations of the 613. You know that the rabbis have counted 613 commandments they find in the Torah. No more than 90 of those can be fulfilled in our days, but still they counted 613. And like you and I, they want to get that down to a more manageable size, the Readers Digest version, if you will. So, they narrowed it down to the 13 of Maimonides. Or the 10 of the 2 tablets. But how about the 3 of Micah 6: what is good? Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. OK, that works, all the Torah is summed up in those three. How about 2? You will know the 2 that Yeshua used to summarize the 613. Love the Lord your God with everything you have and love your neighbour as yourself. Great. Can you get it down to 1? The rabbis agree that Habakkuk 2.4 is the great summary. The apostle Paul agreed with them. What does the prophet say there? And what Paul quotes at least two times? The “Just shall live by his faith.”^[1]

Of note, and not without surprise, the rabbis and Paul have different translations of that word ‘faith.’ 

וְצַדִּ֖יק בֶּאֱמוּנָת֥וֹ יִחְיֶֽה׃

Emunato. His faith. The rabbis translate that to his ‘faithfulness.’ Do you hear the nuance of difference there? One, faith has to do with our confidence in the Lord of life and our beliefs towards him. The other, faithfulness, has to do with our activities, our enterprise, our works, our duties, our mitzvot. 

The apostle Paul makes clear that it was Abraham’s faith that gave him right standing with the Lord. And that we stand only by our faith. He even said, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.” The reality is that we all fall short of God’s standards and our hope is not in our faithfulness. Our hope is in the One who initiated our relationship, our covenant, our being members of his family, the Lord himself. No wonder, the First ‘commandment’ is “I am.” 

I love the 12 steps of AA and all the other 12 step programs out there. The first of those 12 recognizes our inability to change our stripes and admits that. Publicly. Or at least to ourselves. We admit that we are powerless to change, and that our lives are unmanageable. The 2^nd step is a recognition of the Power beyond us who can make that change, and the 3^rd of the opening waltz is a surrender, a turning our lives and “our will over to the care of God.” That three-step formula is how this works. It’s how AA or SA or NA or all those programs work. It’s how I work! It’s how true religion works. 

That’s what Paul came to understand. He had plenty of credentials, even as Rabbi Michael and I have from our youth as ordinary Jews, but like Paul, we came to realize our unmanageability, our recognition of the Lord Yeshua, and our surrender in faith to his lordship.  That’s the First Commandment. 

But now, in case you wonder about the Shema, which is also in today’s parasha, and confused about the word ‘echad’ there in chapter 6, verse 4 of Devarim, let me give you my additional understanding of that, and it’s the exact same as the Aseret hadivrot. 

In chapter 6 of Deuteronomy, we read this from verse 1. 

Deut. 6:1   “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, ² so that you and your son and your grandson might ^afear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, ^ball the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. ³ “O Israel, you should listen and ¹be careful to do it, that ^ait may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Get it? God is saying, do you want good stuff to happen? Keep the mitzvot. OK. But don’t miss who is involved. Verse 1, the Lord your God told you. Verse 2, fear the Lord your God. Verse 3, the Lord, God of your fathers who promised. 

And just to make it very clear, verse 4 say, HEAR. Listen! Shema Yisrael! The Lord is our God. That’s the one I’m talking about. HIM. No other gods. No other philosophies or philosophers. I’m talking about THAT ONE. 

The passage continues, love him (verse 5), don’t forget him (verse 12), fear him (verse 13). Friends at Shomair Yisrael, today I’m telling you that our hope is not in our fulfillment of Torah’s 613 or even today’s 83. Our hope is not in our faithfulness. Our hope is in the Living God who calls us to remember him, to fear him, to love and honour him, and to share his love with one another. 

If you know yourself, and your own failures, whether in lying about what physical condition you have like I did that Shabbat morning 58 years ago or pretending to be some kind of holy Joe when deep down inside your sins are well known to you, if you know you, you will not stand on your faithfulness. You will admit your powerlessness to change. Your admission will include a recognition of THAT ONE, the Lord your God, and his capacity to make us his. And in one fell swoop, we will surrender and find eternal life. 

So, why am I speaking about all this today? It’s Shabbat Nachamu and we need real comfort, not only since 7 October, but throughout our days. And if we miss the First Step or the First commandment, we are destined to continue to miss the comfort that is sure to come.

I believe that we as a people suffered in the Holocaust due to our living godlessly in the 1930s in Europe. If you read the same Bible cover to cover that our people have read since Moses, you will hear Isaiah and Jeremiah, Joel and Hosea call us out. You will hear them decry our errors and our unwillingness to change. Moses predicted our falling away and every prophet in the Book did the same. 

And what will God do to her erring people? He will judge us. Why? To get us back on track. He built the system of righteousness, and he longs for us to live there. And if we don’t, he has no other recourse but to call other nations in to bring us to judgment so that we turn to him. 

The two temples were destroyed for our own sins. Solomon’s temple destroyed due to three things: idolatry, adultery and murder. The 2^nd Temple was destroyed due to ‘hatred without a cause.’ 

Modern Israel was formed in 1948, but even without a specific land mass, we were judged as a nation throughout our existence. Messianic Jewish leader Art Katz died 17 years ago and was a prophetic voice in our days. In his book “The Holocaust: where was God?” Art said that if God did not judge the Jews in Europe in the 1930s, that he “would have to apologize to the Jews of Jeremiah’s days.” 

Every one of our losses was due to our failures. Yes, other nations were involved, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the German republic, etc, and they were recompensed with punishment for their actions against our people. Still, don’t miss this, when we are met with a major catastrophe (that’s the translation of the word ‘shoah’ by the way), we must look up. We must search for God. Our hope is not in a treaty with our enemies. Our hope is not in the UN or the next election. Our hope as Jews is in the living God and anything less than that, is…well, less than that. It’s not hope at all. 

How do we experience that hope? By acknowledging our failures, our sins, our disregard of God and his plans, by admitting this triad: we cannot, he can, I surrender. 

And one more particular thing. Remember I mentioned the haftorahs and their apparent missing component this season? We tallied the readings as Isaiah 40, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54 and 60. What’s missing? Chapter 53! The very hope of the Jewish people is the Comforter of Israel. And he is depicted, announced, and showcased most clearly in the entire Tanach in the words of Isaiah chapter 53. 

“He grew up before Him like a tender shoot. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face. He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. He was pierced through for our transgressions, 

He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.

Friends here and online, if you are listening, really listening to my talk this morning, then you are hearing that God loves you enough to send troubles your way, so that you turn to him to repair your life, admit your failings and turn to the Only One who can save you. That’s Yeshua, the man of sorrows and well acquainted with grief. The punishment for our shalom fell on him and with his stripes we are healed. Healed of our misdoings and brought near through his sacrificial blood shed nearly 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem. 

Let his plan find its way into your life. 

Turn to him and be saved.

Rabbi Mike, shalom to you and your wife, to your family and your family here at Shomair Yisrael. And to each of you, thanks for listening and being God’s people here today and throughout your days. Shabbat shalom.

 

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^[1] Rom. 1:17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”

 

Gal. 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

 

Gal. 3:11 Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, “THE RIGHTEOUS MAN SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”

 

Heb. 10:38   But MY RIGHTEOUS ONE SHALL LIVE BY FAITH,

                  AND IF HE SHRINKS BACK, MY SOUL HAS NO PLEASURE IN HIM.

A benefits inventory with instruments!

A sermon given at Windwood Presbyterian Church

Houston, Texas

Sunday 4 August 2024

 

Shalom! For 25 years I’ve been privileged to spend time about every three years with the folks here at Windwood Church ever since Kevin Rudolph and I began a relationship first in email and then in person, sometimes at church or at GleannLoch or at the restaurants, even at his and Robyn’s home. It is a privilege and I don’t take that lightly. Now that Tres is the senior pastor and we have begun our relationship in email and this morning over breakfast, we continue that tradition. 

As I pondered the sermon’s assigned Bible reading this morning, Psalm 103, it made sense to make a list of our shared history and then to smile in gratitude. I trust, as I share this morning from this 3000-year-old text, that you will have a gratitude list as well, and that you will be singing from it long after the parking lot empties and long after the Olympics or the Astros finish this season. 

There are varied reactions to hearing Bible readings, aren’t there? For instance, I wonder if familiarity bred contempt for you this morning. The words of the Psalms are often known to some of us who hear them with regularity. As a result, we could be unsettled or listening for a ‘new thing’ instead. Then again, the hearing of the ancient text could be like finding an old sweater that you haven’t worn in a while and you really like wearing. It fits; it’s the right colour. It’s you, after all. Some Bible verses seem to do that for me, and maybe for you as well. Is Psalm 103 one of those?

No matter how you took the actual reading of the psalm, let’s unpack it as I think King David intended, as an inventory and job description and see how this works in our lives in 2024 and beyond. Is that fair enough?

The inventory of benefits are listed right off the bat. Five things are itemized, and each is in itself expandable. For each one, I imagine a flurry of trumpets and drums with crashing cymbals. It’s at least 8 bars if not 32 bars of triumphant exaltation. Did you miss the sound of the orchestra when we read the passage? Let’s try it again.

God pardons all our iniquities. Cue the trumpet. Roll the drums. Forgiveness for every one of my sins. And yours. And King David’s sins. Pardon. Release. Empty the jail. Unchain the prisoner. Trumpets. Violins. French horns. Cymbals. PARDON! ALL! There’s nothing left to pay. 

Pondering that orchestral sound as the philharmonic raises the volume triumphs over every remembrance of my iniquities. My sins. My bad attitudes. My sloth. My entitled whining and declarations of life being unfair. All my bad actions. My murdering tongue, my lies, my lusts, my demands. All my iniquities. Summed up, rolled into a list, delivered by Special Delivery to the Scorekeeper, and in one fell swoop, one heartbeat, there is not a single penalty listed. No errors. No mistakes. No sins. The anticipated judgment against me is gone. Pardon is declared. Are your hands lifted high to the heavens yet? My gratitude list begins like King David’s with the erasure of my sins. 

Remember, David would well have had a significant list of sins about which he was aware. We know of a couple of major ones of his, but he would have known much more. Even as each of you knows your own sin more than your neighbour or the fellow in the pew near you. And yet--which by the way is one of my favourite phrases when I ponder God and how he treats humanity, even my humanity--And yet, in spite of our many sins against him and others, he pardons all our iniquities. What an awesome God we have, amen?

The second benefit in our inventory list this morning is the healing of all our diseases. And your first thought is probably like mine… excuse me, David, you lost a child to disease. You are aware of sicknesses in Jerusalem, among your fighting men, and in your own family. How can you possibly declare healings like that? 

Obviously, the psalmist is echoing his own thoughts in a psalm you didn’t study this summer, as we read

“When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah.” (Psalm 32.3-4)

 

The linkage of healing and unforgiveness is clear and certainly later biblical authors pick that up. For instance, when Yeshua encounters a paralytic man, recorded for us in Mark chapter 2, we read

“But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” — He said to the paralytic,  “I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home.” (2.10-11)

Please hear me well. I’m not saying that all sicknesses are directly caused by or even related to sins. The psalmist could be accused of that for instance in Psalm 107 we read

Fools, because of their rebellious way, and because of their iniquities, were afflicted. (Psa. 107.17)

 

But not all sickness is a result of sins individuals made happen. COVID levelled the planet in so many ways, and I’m not sure that every person who contracted it four years ago, or even in this summer’s season, is because of his or her iniquity. If that were so we should have insisted on soul washing instead of hand washing. No, the psalmist in 103 is saying that with the pardon of all our sins, our lives are now characterised by a healing of all apparent misfortune. 

Think of Nick Vujicic who has tetra-amelia syndrome, a disorder characterised by the absence of arms and legs. He has understood his plight his entire life, certainly since becoming a Christian, and has often said he would not trade his spiritual life for arms and legs. 

Think of Joni Eareckson Tada who serves as CEO of Joni and Friends, which provides for thousands of special-needs families around the world. She began Joni and Friends after a 1967 diving accident left her a quadriplegic. 

Both Nick and Joni and countless others who are not yet healed in body would shout along with the psalmist that God has healed all their diseases. If they can do so, and King David can do so, surely we can do the same. 

Third, he redeems your life from the pit. Now we are hearing some biblical parallelism, that is, repetition for amplification. I love this poetic device of the Bible. The pit is a symbol of the lowest point in our lives. Some call it rock-bottom. That’s the empty place, the Solomonic “time to mourn.” That could be by example when your wife left you, or your boss gave you a pink slip, when the government sent you a tax bill beyond your house’s value, and your insurance on that house did not include flood insurance. Your world caved in, and there was apparently no hope. God uses the term here ‘redeem’ which must include rescue and deliverance. It reminds me of the 400-year wait for the Jewish people in Egypt before God finally sent Moses to rescue us from slavery. It’s the 70 years of captivity in Babylon when all hope was lost. Everything could be titled, “the pit.” And yet, there’s that phrase again, and yet, God redeems us from that pit. He takes all the ingredients labelled ‘trouble’ in your pantry, and although the devil would like to keep you permanently fixed in that and those situations, God reaches his hands in and lets you escape. Redemption from the pit is awesome. 

Do you use loyalty points at the gas station or the grocery store, at the hotel chain or airline? Those accrue for a significant time, and then one day you turn them in, at the redemption centre and receive a reward. That redemption, that buy back, that didn’t really cost you much. But biblically the redemption of a slave costs much more. God sent his only son to the world to redeem us from an eternal pit, and I’m so grateful. Are you singing along with David yet?

Inventory of Benefits item four is crowning. Some weeks ago you read Psalm 100 and I hear echoes of it in today’s psalm. Crowns are symbols of God’s royalty and God crowning us is letting him identify us as his children. The Scripture says,

“For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” (2 Peter 1.4)

God lets us be partakers of his royalty, by crowning us. You may call me Prince Bob. And you may call each other by that appellation as well! We are children of the king and at the end of days we will lay those crowns at his feet. All glory is HIS, amen?

Finally the 5^th benefit we receive, and which David records is satisfaction. We read, “Who satisfies your years with good things.” 

Although I appreciate the addition of the word ‘things’ in our text, the word in the psalm is simply ‘good.’ God satisfies us with good. I like that. Remember the Garden of Eden and the offer Satan as the serpent gave Eve? He told her that if she ate from the tree which was forbidden that she would know good and evil. Listen God is good; she already knew God; she already knew good. All Satan really offered her was evil. Don’t you wish she would have pondered that one a bit longer?

A word about satisfaction. And the difference between it and contentment. There are shades of meanings I want to highlight. Contentment according to the apostle is great gain. (1 Tim. 6.6) Accept your lot with or without much funding. With or without great banquets. But satisfaction, that’s another matter. The psalmist again informs us, “As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness; I will be satisfied in Your likeness when I awake.” (Psalm 17.15)

When I wake up, when He returns, in that moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall wake up and are in his likeness. John said, “when he appears, we shall be like him.” (1 John 3.3) That day will be glorious. We will be like him. And my satisfaction will be complete. When I wake up, looking like Jesus, what a day of rejoicing that will be, amen?

There is much more to highlight from the text, for instance, verse 7 tells me that God showed his acts to the Jewish people, which is fantastic. He brought justice on the Egyptians. He brought relief to the Jewish people. He created the heavens and the earth. He allowed Elijah to perform miracles. And the Jewish people were aware of those acts. But don’t miss it; the difference here is that God made known his ways to Moses. It’s one thing to watch a performance; it’s quite another to see the purposes and to know the meaning of those actions. Moses saw the plans; he knew the purposes. He knew God’s ways. He had a relationship with the Almighty. That’s God’s plan for each of us. 

Verse 8 is an echo of Exodus, which is repeated so many times in the Older Testament. Jonah said it with disdain for God. Here David repeats the ancient declaration of who God is. Slow to anger. Abundant in rachamim and chesed. Mercies and covenant love. What is God like? Ask the Jewish people and they will repeat what God did. That’s good. But ask Moses or David or me and you will hear rachamim and chesed. Ask Dane Ortlund and you will hear “gentle and lowly.” 

Rachamim is a plural word, and means ‘mercies.’ Remember, they are new every morning. It’s translated in the old KJV as ‘bowels of mercy” because the feeling comes from the guts, not from the mind. 

Chesed is the mercy or the covenant love of God. Mercy is not getting what we deserve; Grace is getting what we don’t deserve. Mercy keeps us from hell; grace gives us heaven. 

The merisms of verses 11 and 12 demonstrate the far-reaching nature of God’s love. High as heaven and earth, as far as east from west…even in verse 17, from eternity to eternity, chesed is far and wide, and there is no limit to his grace and love, amen?

 

Earlier I mentioned this is an inventory as well as a job description. Listen to this from verses 20-22

“Bless the LORD, you His angels, Mighty in strength, who perform His word, obeying the voice of His word!

Bless the LORD, all you His hosts, you who serve Him, doing His will.

Bless the LORD, all you works of His, in all places of His dominion; 

Bless the LORD, O my soul!”

The job description? Calling on heavenly beings…God is telling us that we are to call on heavenly beings to join us in that praise to the Lord. Perhaps you are confused about the word, “Bless.” That is, saying we are to bless God. Aren’t we usually asking God to bless things? That’s certainly true. But in this case, asking angels to bless God, has to do with the word ‘bless’ which carries the meaning of the word ‘knee.’ That is, the bending of the knee is the posture of blessing.  Basically we are calling the angels to be humble and to lift up the name of the Lord. 

Finally, we are to tell our own soul to bless God. We are not schizophrenic; rather our spirit man is commanding our flesh to bow to the living God and to acknowledge his lordship over us. In light of all he has done and all he will do, and in light of his nature and his character, what manner of person ought we to be? What should be our verbiage? 

We have a ministry, to call on angels and all y’all to bless God. Let us live to his praise; let us live calling on our neighbours and friends and relatives… bless the Lord oh my soul, oh my friends, oh Windwood!

Pick up your trumpet and tambourine… the choir is singing; let’s join King David and everyone—amen?

A time to mourn: Thoughts on the Three Weeks in Judaism

You may know the rhythm of the Jewish calendar is useful in bringing to memory both what God has done and what he wants from us as his people. For instance, we note Shabbat is a weekly reminder first of Creation and God resting and therefore what does God want from us? That we should rest. OK, that’s fairly straightforward. What about Shabbat being also a reminder of Passover and the deliverance from slavery in Egypt? Again, we learn of God’s capacity to remember us and our gratitude in that he does! We are a delivered, ransomed people for God’s pleasure.

 

I could litanize all the 7 annual mo’edim, but that’s not what I want to highlight this morning. Rather, as you might also know, the 9^th day of the month of Av, Tisha B’Av will take place in about 10 days, on the 13^th of August. It will have been 3 weeks since the 17^th of Tammuz, the day which begins this special countdown. Maybe you are well aware of all this, but if you are not, these three weeks in which we find ourselves just now, are the saddest days in our calendar. And honestly, who wants to dwell on the subject of our sadness? Even so, that’s a key lesson for anyone who wants to succeed in the life God has given us.

Maybe you have been watching the Olympics on NBC or Peacock and are exhausted from cheering Simone who is from here in Houston or the swimmers or soccer players, the never-ending panorama of featured sportspeople, their backstories, and the tiniest of margins that separate gold from bronze or no medals at all. When I think about sadness, it could be pictured in a 25-year-old who has trained for 15 years, day after day after day, even giving up schooling to pursue his one goal in life, then in 30 seconds on a balance beam or with a bow and arrow or collapsing just shy of a medal to see those dreams end in misery. For each of them, this Olympics could herald a period of sadness such as they have never experienced. Both the mental fatigue and lack of future weigh into the sadness for each athlete, even the winners, but especially those who do not win.

I’m reminded of Solomon’s phrase, there is “a time to mourn.”

Five years ago today you read about a local tragedy in Texas. Yes, August 3 in El Paso, at a Walmart, 23 people were killed in a gunman’s attack. This tragedy fueled by racism that — with nearly 50 federal hate crime charges — became one of the country’s largest hate crime cases. And today, five years later, the city of El Paso is unveiling a monument, a memorial, to remind people both what happened and hopefully to prevent such from reoccurring. Another time to mourn.

However, I’m talking about much more than an unrealized athletic dream or a tragic Walmart episode. For the Jewish people, our memories during these three weeks are related to national pains and unrelenting evil over a period of hundreds of years. Sometimes these were perpetrated against us by ruthless overlords and sometimes, dare we say it, caused by our own devices. It is with that consideration that I want to speak to us today. And I’m speaking both to you and to me. Remember, I’m not an outsider any more than Jeremiah the prophet was an outsider when he preached to Judah and Jerusalem in his days around 600 BCE. 

The three weeks began 11 days ago on 17 Tammuz. That’s the day we note, that according to the rabbis, we Jews made and worshipped a Golden Calf. Moses had gone to the mountain nearly 6 weeks previously and the people of Israel considered his not returning as an indicator of his never-going-to-return. After all, in our days, how many search and rescue missions give up on 80-year-olds who have been gone even a couple of weeks? This had gone on for nearly 40 days already, and there was no sign of Moses’ return. 

We read the following in Exodus chapter 32.

“Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” ² Aaron said to them, “Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” ³ Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” ⁵ Now when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.” ⁶ So the next day they rose early and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” (Ex. 32.1-6)

What was for them a feast and a day of eat/drink/and be merry would become for the Jewish people a day of mourning and sadness. This is the 17^th of Tammuz. And that day is now etched in our calendar as the beginning of the three weeks of sadness and weeping.  Truly these three weeks are a time to mourn.

As a result, during this season we read the Haftorah from the prophet Jeremiah for three straight weeks. Who is he? He is the son of a priest named Hilkiah, who lived in Anatot just northeast of Jerusalem about 3 miles, in the land of Benjamin. In the OED, the word jeremiad is a noun that means a long, mournful complaint or lamentation. Other synonyms include diatribe, screed, anger, berating, censure, condemnation, denunciation, dispute, fulmination, harangue, invective, lecture, malediction, philippic, ranting, revilement, sermon, tongue-lashing, vituperation.

I must say that none of those is inviting. They all sound like activities of a meanspirited high school vice principal or the noise associated with parental abuse of children. Let me say, therefore, that none of these is fully descriptive of the prophecies of Jeremiah. You might know that in some circles, he is labelled the “Weeping Prophet” and perhaps that more characterises the man whom we read in this season. By the way, his prophecy is the longest in the Bible and has more hope than you might initially observe and certainly than the OED gives in his name’s attribution.

The haftorahs include chapter 1 of Jeremiah and there we hear famous verses of God replying to the young prophet, “Do not say, ‘I am a youth,’ because everywhere I send you, you shall go, and all that I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.” (1.7-8)

The phrase ‘do not fear’ which God speaks here is one of 365 repeats of that phrase in the Bible. One for each day of your year, I suppose, if that helps you. And each time, please, hear it as it is written, not as a command, “Thou shalt not fear” but rather as a parent inviting her child to cling to her. For “I am with you.” Lean into the loving arms of your Father in heaven. Chill. Relax. Trust me, God is saying. 

Then God speaks and tells Jeremiah that not only is he going to be present during the impending judgment on the Jewish people, but so is his word. Listen to this in chapter 1 verse 12, “for I am watching over my word to perform it.” 

In other words, God and his word are active and alive and God will both speak and accomplish what he promises. So what is to bring us sadness after all? If God is with us, won’t everything be just peachy keen and pleasant and wonderful? Isn’t that what we hear so often from pulpits either across town from here or promises made by preachers of “Things will get better.”? Isn’t next year going to be the best year ever? Isn’t your wallet going to be fatter, your children taller, your life more abundant? Isn’t that what they promise us?

For Jeremiah, that promise was more than 70 years away. By the time Judah was captured and sent to Babylon in 586 BCE, they had already tried to escape judgment by making alliances with Assyria and with Egypt. They had tried to hide or to pretend that judgment was not going to happen to them. Some carried on with the eat/drink/be merry escape plans of our forebears. No, the answer was first to accept the reality; God is going to judge us. 

In Jeremiah chapter two, the prophet uses more imagery than an ambrosia salad to help Israel see her sins and the resultant problems. These 10 images are as follows: an unfaithful wife, broken cisterns, a lost slave, a mule-like stubborn animal, a corrupt vine, a defiled body, an animal in heat, a captured criminal, children who refuse discipline, and an unbroken prisoner of war.

Truth be told, Jewish people… you are in trouble!

THEN, what are God’s answers to those realities? If God is notifying us of impending doom, he must have a plan of escape. Paul the apostle would speak of that to the riotous living Corinthians centuries later. (1 Cor. 10.13)

What is God’s plan of escape? It’s a simple and continuous notification, a video loop from heaven that makes so many cringe. It’s the first, second and third steps of every AA program. We cannot fix ourselves. We have blown it. We have made our lives a mess. If we allow it, God can and will if we let him. We have to bow the knee; we have to admit our inability to self-repair and to cry out in humility to the one, the only One who can repair our mess. But here’s the rub. It’s not only a cry for help. Do you remember Abraham’s grandson Esau who recognized his loss when Jacob his twin brother tricked him of his birthright and blessing? Esau sought to get it back, even with tears. But that’s not what I’m saying here. 

Listen, it’s a nuance of meaning and I don’t want you to miss it. Crying out for help is not saying, “I’m sorry… please give me what I lost.” It’s crying out for mercy, knowing we DO NOT DESERVE anything but judgment. It’s saying, “I cannot; you can; I surrender.” This is a time to mourn.

And go further, biblically, what does God want to hear? I was wrong. I have sinned. I did what you told me not to do. I have not done what you told me to make happen. This judgment is just. Esau would have cried, “That’s not fair!” But God is seeking for the admission of fairness or justice from the judged people of Judah in Jeremiah’s day. Yes, weep. Yes, cry out. But not a cry of “it’s not fair.” Not a cry of “I still deserve.” A cry of “I was wrong. I sinned. We have sinned. God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.” That’s the key to mourning. This is how a time to mourn has its work in you.

Repair the broken cistern. 

Speak up for the widow and orphan.

Take in those without families.

Care for the other.

Back to Jeremiah 2, listen to the 10 images. I like what Peter Craigie says of the first, the unfaithful wife image. 

“love and marriage are more than metaphors in v 2. The essence of the Sinai covenant had been a relationship of love between God and Israel, but that relationship had implications for both religion and politics. With respect to religion, a nation that loved God could not practice love for other gods, for example, the fertility cults whose worship was permeated with sexual activity. And with respect to politics, a nation bound in contract to the Lord could not also join itself by treaty to other nations as its lord and master. The divine memory was of pure love, before the religious and political perversions of love had arisen in later times to spoil the continuing relationship.” Now a quick look at the other nine images.

Image 2: Broken cisterns. The well looks deep. The well is where it belongs, but seriously, it’s broken. Look closely. Little fissures in the well cause lousy containers. You will be diluted. You have been compromised. Repair the breach!

Image 3: The lost slave. You aren’t supposed to be the slaves; you are redeemed. But you are choosing political slavery with foreign rulers. That’s D-U-M dumb. Not the role I have for you and for me. For us.

Image 4: Stubborn animal. It’s because you are settling in the wrong place and refusing to go on. I want you to walk with me, but you are refusing. The flip side of stubbornness is faithfulness, but this is being fixed in doing wrong. That’s not going to help you at all, Israel.

Image 5: Corrupt vine. Empty. Looks good on the outside, but produces nothing! It’s all for show. God help us who demonstrate so much of religion to those near us or who walk by us. Outer religion without the quiet love of God on our insides—what a waste! 

Image 6: A defiled body. The red-light districts in New York or Amsterdam, even here on Bissonnet. Easy to track and find prostitution, a common biblical thread for wrong behaviour. It goes around and it comes around, it will bite you if you engage. It’s not only an act; it’s a joining with the other team which for Judah will eventuate in idolatry.

Image 7: An animal in heat. You are unable to stay away from the affections and lures of the enemy. The idols you worship will fail you, but you are stuck.

Image 8: A captured criminal. This criminal alleges his innocence, insisting on it, even though he’s caught red-handed.

Image 9: The refusal of discipline. Admit it… we are broken. We are needy. We do not deserve God’s forgetfulness. We deserve his judgment. Are you listening?

Image 10: The unbroken prisoner of war. We are on the wrong side of the battle. marching in an attempt to gain international recognition and security, but in the end, we are walking contrary to the plans of God.

Friends at CBM… today… if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Admit your errors. Ask God for forgiveness. Admit your sins. Fall on his mercy. You have turned your ears from the cries of the poor. You have practised racism. You have sinned against God in thought, word, and deed, in what you have done, and what you have failed to do. Is that right? Are you listening?

Then keep listening. God is full of compassion and mercy. He wants to welcome you into his arms. He wants to give you life, today, and forever. And how do I know that? 

Because of a book? Yes, but not only the book, but the true hero of the book, the main protagonist himself, God in the living person of his son Yeshua. If anyone lived in an era of self-justifying, self-commending, self-centeredness, it was Yeshua. Under Roman occupation, Jewish people looked for help, from religion, or foreign treaties, or hiding away from it, but all the while, what is God saying through all this? There are 10 images today that are listed. That list is not exhaustive. So live in truth. Live in harmony with the Almighty. Live righteous lives. When you are wrong, quickly admit wrong. When God brings things to the light in your life which are out-of-bounds, agree with God. Don’t turn your face from or your back towards him. Agree with the Almighty. One, that’s smart. Two, that’s his advice. Three--- it works!

What will you do with this information today?

The message for ancient pre-exilic Judah is the same as it is for us in 21^st century Houston. Politicians won’t save us. Our 401-K won’t sustain us. Your Texans football team may do well in 2024, but that won’t be eternal. Where is your real sustaining, long-lasting, ongoing hope?

God is calling each of us to know him and to walk with him, today and throughout our days. Have you received Yeshua as your messiah and Lord? Have you renounced your sin, your idolatry, your forsaking God and given him First Place in your life? If not, please, do so now, just now, as we pray together. Use your own words, if you want, but yield, surrender, to the Lord of life. 

If you get this time to mourn right, you will experience eternal life in a deep and real way. Repent and find God’s mercy. We are our own worst enemy, but God in his mercy wants to make us his, and members together of his eternal congregation. 

 I’m eternally grateful for all his benefits towards me and my family. Let’s live in gratitude this Shabbat, through the 3 weeks, and until Yeshua returns to make all things right in his kingdom. Amen?

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A couple of quotes from the commentary by Peter Craigie and Page Kelley, Word Biblical Commentary. Book of Jeremiah.  1991. 

To see and hear a lesson I gave two years ago on Jeremiah chapter 2, https://youtu.be/I3AGsCBn83A