Beeson Podcast, Episode #173 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. >>Timothy George: Here we are with the Beeson podcast and today it’s just a bit unusual. Yes, Dr Robert Smith Jr is here with me in the studio, but we’re not going to introduce a sermon by someone else. We’re going to ask Dr Smith to tell us about one of his own sermons, a sermon with an unusual title. Dr Smith, you preached a sermon entitled “Irreconcilable Differences and Inescapable Realities” based on the prophet Jeremaiah, chapter one leading up to chapter 20. What are you doing here in this sermon? >>Smith: Dean George, I am trying to establish this proposition that God is ultimately only identified in His word, not necessarily in His actions, His movements, or His works so that Jeremiah, who did not have any action or movement or works on the part of God shown to him in chapter 20, did have his word. “I said I would not speak anymore in His name, but His word was in my heart like fire shut up in my bones and I was weary of holding it in. Indeed, I could not.” So, what I’m trying to do is say to the congregation who will preach in an age of idolatry, don’t become distracted by these, the need of people to have something that is demonstrable, something that is sensational because there’s a lot of prosperity preaching, and a lot of God does this, and God moves. What do you do when God is not moving, and God is not acting, and God is not speaking audibly except to trust what God has already said in His word because that’s when you know He is always identified in His word. That’s all we have is that inspired word and I’m to trust that even when I don’t see God moving, God acting, or God speaking. >>Timothy George: Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. >>Smith: Absolutely. >>Timothy George: So, you’re calling us here to a kind of faithful commitment to God and His word. Good times, bad times, rainy days, sunshine, we’re going to trust Him whether we see the evidence for it or not. >>Smith: Yes. And what I’m saying is that I think preachers have this particularized kind of idolatry where we are dependent on the movement of God rather than being dependent upon the word of God. >>Timothy George: You talk theological idolatry which is kind of a special temptation for pastors and preachers. >>Smith: Yes. And I think that’s one of the reasons you don’t see a great deal of church growth on the part of Jeremaiah and he’s preaching when an individual like Hananiah is talking about God is not going to keep you in Babylon for 70 years, only two years. Everybody likes a word like that, but we must speak the word of God in spite of the absence of His movement, His action, and any audible word. >>Timothy George: It’s a sermon that’s piercing, it’s applicable, it applies to every single one of us. Dr Smith, it’s a joy to work with you and to hear you preach and now we’re all going to listen to you preach this great sermon entitled “Irreconcilable Differences and Inescapable Realities.” Dr Smith on the prophet Jeremiah. >>Smith: Even now, Lord Jesus, for I ask this in your name. Amen. “Irreconcilable Differences and Inescapable Realities.” Jeremiah one, verse eight and verse 19. Jeremiah 20, verse nine. Hear these words from the word. “Do not be afraid of them for I am with you and will rescue you declares the Lord.” Verse 19. “They will fight against you but will not overcome you for I am with you and will rescue you, saith the Lord.” Jeremiah 20, verse nine. “But if say I will not mention Him or speak anymore in His name. His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in. Indeed, I cannot.” Like sandpaper, the ministry and message of Jeremiah rubbed against a society in which he preached. Many scholars will say that Jeremiah’s ministry was, at best, a heroic failure or a successful failure for he preached for 40 years during the reign of five different kings and failed to move the nation. He preached on the reign of Josiah who reigned for 31 years. He was the one who initiated a national and religious reform. But Jeremiah, after supporting it, came to realize that at the very individual root level, that people were not being transformed. He preached during the three-month reign of Jehoahaz. He preached during the 11-year reign of Jehoiakim, that infamous king who cut up the scroll, the word of God, with a pin knife and threw it in the fire. He preached during the three-month reign of Jehoiachin during which Nebuchadnezzar deported 10 thousand Jewish patriots to Babylon. He preached during the 11-year reign of the puppet king, Zedekiah. And therefore, scholars conjecture that after 40 years of preaching, that Jeremiah’s message and ministry was, at best, a heroic failure or a successful failure. It caused Jeremiah to think about his message and to measure his ministry. Hear him as he thinks about his ministry. Here was an individual who was not really called, if you will, to the ministry. He was drafted. Not like Isaiah who volunteered. God asked him, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” And Isaiah said, even without receiving a job description, “Here am I, oh Lord. Send me.” Jeremiah objected. He came kicking and screaming. I’m too young. And God said, “Before you were born, I knew you. And before you were conceived, I ordained you to be a prophet unto the nations.” And to infer that he was afraid of their faces, “Be not afraid of their faces for I am with you to deliver you.” Jeremiah was an individual who would come to understand that he preached the same word from the same God that the other prophets said that they were preaching. Jeremiah said he was representing Yahweh and preaching from the Torah. So did Hananiah and the other prophets and yet their messages were diametrically opposed. Jeremiah was put on the unapproved speakers list. In fact, he probably was the only one on the list because his message was unpopular. In 70 years, Judah, you’re born into captivity and there you will stay. Build houses, plant vineyards, marry and God will bring a remnant back. That’s very unpatriotic. And he was not allowed to preach at the annual convention of any denominational setting. Jeremiah was an individual who struggled with his own, if you will, moodiness. No one was like Jeremiah for sitting down and taking poles for portrait. He didn’t mind you taking his portrait. He wanted you to see that he was autobiographical. He wants you to understand that he was transparent. He didn’t mind you taking and putting your hand on his pulsating heartbeat. He didn’t mind you knowing his latest EKG reading and his latest echocardiogram reading because he wanted you to understand that he was just like you and just like me. He wanted you to take a sliver of his human tissue for biopsy so you could understand that he had proneness toward frustration and depression just like we have that same proneness. Hear how moody he is in chapter number nine, verse number one. Chapter number nine, verse number two. “Oh, that my head were waters, and my eyes were a fountain of tears, I‘d weep day and night for the daughter of my people.” One verse later, verse number two. “Oh, that I could find it in the desert,” so I could get the heck away from these people. A Holiday Inn would be fine. A Red Roof Inn would be fine. A Best Western Inn would be fine. In fact, a Motel 6 would be fine. But he just got finished saying, “I wish my head were waters and my eyes were a fountain of tears, I’d weep day and night for the daughter of my people.” Now, he doesn’t want to be around. He’s temperamental. He’s moody. And he sits down, and he begins to evaluate his ministry. And he raises two issues. Chapter eight, verse 20. Chapter eight, verse 22. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and my people are not saved.” After all of this preaching. Verse number 22. “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no position there?” If there is a balm and I’ve got the medicine, if there is a physician and I’m the doctor, why is it that the daughter of my people are still sick? At best, perhaps his ministry was a heroic failure or successful failure in the eyes of these scholars. But his greatest struggle was not with ascertaining and evaluating the meaning of his ministry. His greatest struggle was with the mold of the manifestation of the presence of God. Where is God? Jeremaiah was told by God, “I am with you.” Chapter one, verse eight, “I am with you to deliver you.” Chapter one, verse 19, “I am with you to deliver you.” Chapter 15, verse number 20, “I am with you to rescue you and save you.” Chapter 30, verse number 11, “I am with you to save you.” Chapter 42, verse 11. “I am with you to save you and deliver you.” And yet Jeremiah has to grapple with the absence of God in terms of the lack of activity, the lack of God’s movement, and the lack of God’s work in his life. He struggled with this. He knew that he would not have a support system from the priests and from the prophets and certainly not from the kings. But even God’s support system at times for him seemed to be very suspect and questionable. And Jeremiah had to come to a place where he would understand that God is ultimately only identical in His words. Even if there are no actions, no movements, or no works, God is ultimately only identical in and with His word. He learned that. Abraham had to come to learn that. God says, take your son, your only son, the son you love, laughter, Isaac on a mountain and sacrifice him and I’ll tell you the mountain when you come to it. Abraham did it unquestionably, at least explicitly externally. And when he came to this place where he is to offer up Isaac, it would have made it much easier for Abraham if God would have placed the ram right at the bottom of Mount Moriah. God’s action, God’s work, and God’s movement. But God didn’t and Abraham said to his servants, you stay right here while I and my son go up to the mountain and worship and then we will return. There was no ram there. It was at the top and he didn’t know if would be there. He had to trust God’s word because God is only identical with, ultimately, His word, not with His action, not with His works, and not with His movements. And when he got up to the top, even before he saw that ram, he got ready to kill Isaac because he knew, when we sneak over the Hebrews 11:17-19, which he didn’t know at time 2000 years later, that Abrham’s reason that it was necessary for Isaac to be killed. God was able to raise him from the dead because he said, “Out of Isaac shall all people be blessed.” It was God’s word. Abraham had enough sense to know that if the God of the word did not work out His word, then Abraham could use the word of God as a testimony against God because God has to keep God’s word. And sure enough, when he got ready to carry it out, the angel said, Abraham, Abraham, stop. Now that I know that you fear God more than you fear anything because you’re willing to give your own son for me. You are willing to believe in the God of the word when the word of God doesn’t even seem to be fulfilling in your life. He had to learn that message and so did Elijah. Elijah needed a fresh encounter with God. He had gone in 24 hours from the thrill of victory to the agony of defeat and he asked God to take his life. And now he stands at Mount Korab or Mount Sinai and there are manifestations. There is the earthquake, there’s the windstorm, and there is the outbreak of fire, but God is not in either. And I understand that these three metaphors represent, in some instances, three idol Gods: God of the earthquake, of the wind, and of the fire. But they also represent God because God does intervene and show himself in an earthquake. When Moses was receiving the law, the mountain quaked. When Ezekial was preaching in the Valley of the Dry Bones, the ruach blew into the nostrils of those corpses. And even Elijah had seen God send down fire from heaven and burn up those corpses on Mount Carmel. But God was not in either of those three. He was in a still small voice, His word, because God is only ultimately identical with His word when there are no actions, no movements of God, and no works from God. Luke, chapter five, verse five, Peter had to understand that. Jesus saw him and told him to launch out into the deep and let down his net for a great catch. And Peter looked at Him and said, “Master, we’ve toiled all night and we’ve caught nothing” as if to say we are men of the sea. We know when to fish, where to fish, and we know how to fish. But nevertheless, at your word we will do it again. And when he did, he and his brother, Andrew, had to signal for James and John to help because there was so many fish that the boat was beginning to sink. Peter understood that faith in God is more that just faith in God. Faith is also faith against the absence of the works of God, the actions of God, and the movements of God. You’ve got to not only believe in God, you’ve got to believe against what God does not provide in terms of a mode or manifestation and trust Him because His word said it. In other words, you and I have got to come to the place where we have in spite of faith, where we have even though faith, where we have irregardless faith. I trust God because God is only identical ultimately, only in His word and not His actions, His works, and not His movements. I think this is where we come, as preachers, ministers, dangerously close to committing theological idolatry. Theological idolatry is a special brand of idolatry that for the most part is reserved for clergy persons. We have our own brand of theological idolatry. It’s a human construction when we construct our own caricature of God, we imagine them, and then we preach them to others. And our people along side us bow down at caricatures of God instead of bowing down at the character of God that’s found in God’s word. I think J.B. Phillips was trying to tell us about this in his book, Your God Is Too Small, when he lifts up at least three, several, several metaphors or caricatures of God, those human constructions and human imaginations that we have in terms of saying this is the God that we serve. The God of the police beat who walks around with His divine billy club and enjoys inflicting pain on people, that is not the God that we serve. The God, if you will, of the box that we engage. We don’t need Him when we don’t need Him, but when we need Him and there’s an emergency, we call for Him, we push the button and a jack in the box God comes out and meets us in our emergencies as if God is our theological bellhop in an ecclesiastical red cap and a Christological Santa Claus and He exists only to make life convenient and easy for us. That is not the God that we serve or the God that sits in His lazy boy who is afflicted with dementia and advance Alzheimer’s and cannot remember the evil that we’ve done, so we get away with murder. Those are caricatures of God. We preach those kinds of things. We bow down at the altar of them and even get our people to do the same thing. What makes it so bad is we take and construct molds for which we expect God to fit in. Unless God fits in this mold and acts the way we think He ought to act and moves when we think He ought to move, and works how we think He ought to work, then there is no real presence of God because what we try to do is to reconcile two irreconcilable differences. The perceived presence of God, these caricatures of God, and the real presence of God that is found in His word. May I remind us this evening that God cannot be squeezed into any mold. He’s too big for that. Heaven is His throne, and the earth is His footstool. And as ubiquitous and omnipresent and immense as He is, if He moves anywhere in the universe, He has to bump it to himself. So, therefore I cannot construct any kind of mold for God to fit in. He will bust every single mold that we ever make. When we try to reconcile these two irreconcilable differences, basically what we’re trying to do is construct molds for God to fit in and thereby we are trying to mandate the presence of God. We’re trying to manufacture the presence of God. We’re trying to manipulate the presence of God. The big question that’s raised from the song Willima Cowper wrote, “God moves in the mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. He plants His footsteps on the sea, and He rides on every storm,” is this, can I trust Him when he doesn’t move? Can I trust Him when He doesn’t act? Can I trust Him when He doesn’t work? The truth of the matter is that you and I are very close to committing Christological idolatry and theological idolatry when we have these caricatures of God. I must be more enamored over God’s essence than I am over God’s execution, what God does to carry things out. I must be move enamored over God’s signature in the word than over God’s science in creation. I must be more enamored over God’s person than I am over God’s production. And I must be more enamored over God’s noun-ness, who He is, than over God’s verb-ness, what He does. When He decides not to do anything, He is still God. I don’t know why we think that creation made God more God. God was just as much God before there was a creational Nihil sine Deo moment. Creation didn’t add anything to God. God didn’t have to prove anything by saying let there be. God, in His trial nature, was still God. And I’ve got to come to the place where I preach a gospel to people that reminds them that God is who He is, even thought He doesn’t not necessarily act, move, or work. Brothers and sisters, this is the ministry of Jeremiah. God says to Jeremiah, come down to the potter’s house, and Jeremiah ate to eat. Verses one through six, and he sees that the potter has worked with this piece of pottery so that there’s a flaw in the piece of pottery and yet he doesn’t throw it away and God asked in verse five and six of Jeremiah 18, why is it that I can’t do with this piece of pottery what the potter has done to the piece of pottery? Why can’t I work with flawless people? It looks like there’s a chance that there might be redemption. But in chapter 19, verses 10 and 11, God says take a piece of pottery in the midst of everybody and break it so that when people ask you, why did you do that, let them know that the charge is not irrevocable. Let them know that the damage is irreparable. Let them know that the wound is incurable. It’s too late. They are going into captivity in Babylon. Chapter 19, verse 15 and 16, God says these people have a stiff neck. They’ve been looking away from me so long that they can’t turn their neck back. Chapter 20, verses one through six, Jeremiah has preached a sermon that the pastor of the temple doesn’t like. His name is Pashhur. He’s a chief officer of the temple and he decides he’s going to silence the prophetic boys by beating him up and putting him in stocks, letting him stay there all night long thinking that in the morning he’ll be softer and more mellow. But instead, he’s more tougher. He gets out and says, first of all Pashhur, your name has been changed. Your name is no longer Pashhur. Your name is Magormissabi, which means terror. You’re going to see terror among your acquaintances and among your friends in your land. You’re going to see terror in Babylon where you will see your kinfolks killed. And even you will be killed in the land where your name is Magormissabi. One would think at this time that he would receive the embrace of the divine. But instead, in verse number seven in chapter 20, Jeremiah takes and accuses God of sovereign seduction. He says, “Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived. You are stronger than I am. You overpowered me because you’re stronger than I am, and you have made me the object of derision and a laughingstock all day long.” Do you hear what he is saying? You have seduced me. That word, deceived, is the word pateh in Hebrew that you find in Exodus 22, verse 16. For when a young virgin was violated by a man, a man had to pay for her dowry and then marry her. Do you hear Jeremiah saying I have been seduced by the sovereign. I have been raped by royalty. I have been molested by majesty. [inaudible 00:24:48]. You’re stronger than I am. This is embarrassingly painful if you could see the language. You raped me, you’ve done it against my will, I didn’t want it, you’re stronger than I am and now I’m a laughingstock because of things you told me to say have not come to pass. The walls are still standing. The Jewish temple is still intact, and people are just making a joke out of me. Verse number eight, I crowd violence and destruction and all I get all day long is just insult and reproach. He comes to a place where he is depressed. He lines up with those long lines of sages and saints of the ages. People like Samual Logan Brengle of the inner life movement of the Salvation Army who said that melancholy was a constant companion of his. Martin Luther King Jr who prayed that prayer in the kitchen, “Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work in vain, but the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.” Charles Spurgeon, who had to be assisted out of his office after regurgitating and vomiting, filled with depression and anxiety, but once he got to the pulpit, it was just a different story. Just like, I’ll tell you, if you can just make it to the pulpit on Sunday morning, I don’t care what is going on, God is able to meet you there and do something with you. You talk about depressed, did Elijah and Moses take my life? He knew what depression was because of verse number nine. Here he is living between two inescapable realities after dealing with two irreconcilable differences. He says, “but if I say I will not make mention of His name anymore,” make mention in Hebrew means not even think about him, not just talk, but not think about him, “but His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I was weary of holding it in. Indeed, I could not.” Jeremiah would come to find out that it was difficult to go on, but it was impossible to give up. For the same God who would not let him go was the same God who would not let him down. Notice how verse nine opens up with “I will not.” It ends with “I cannot.” And right in the middle, “His word was in my heart” because what kept him when he lived between two inescapable realities, I can’t go on, I will not make mention of His name anymore, but I can’t give up. I cannot hold that word in because in the middle is His word that’s in my heart like fire shut up in my bones because God is ultimately only identical with His actions, with His word and not His action, not His movements, and not his works. Jeremiah says, I’m living between two inescapable realities and the word is keeping me together. What do you do when you live between, I can’t go on, but I can’t give up. What do you do with that? I want to say to you, brothers and sisters, that time will come. It did come with Paul, who lived in a straight betwixt. He says, I would like to stay here and be with you to edify you, but I’d rather go and be with Jesus because it’s far, far better. Or Jesus who said, “let this cup pass from me but not my will, but your will be done.” And there will come a time in your ministry where you live between these two inescapable realities and the word of God will have to keep you for there are no acts of God, no works of God, and no movements of God. Verse number 10, he says people are crying on every side. “Terror on every side. Let’s report him, let’s report him.” It’s true because what he had been saying had not come to pass. And we’re told in Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 20 to 22 that if a prophet prophesied something that didn’t come to pass, they line him up against a wall and they took his life. Jeremiah has preached and the walls are still intact, and the temple has not yet been destroyed. And to make it worse, the Bible says that he says in his soliloquy, his self-conversation, he says, “All my friends are waiting on me to slip, saying perhaps he will slip, and he’ll be deceived, and we’ll take our revenge on him, and we’ll prevail over him.” His friends were against him, but a gleam of light comes like a wide view through a narrow window to use the words of God to seek terror. Verse 11, “The Lord is with me.” Verse 12, “I will submit my cause to the Lord.” Verse 13, “Sing unto the Lord. Praise the Lord for He has rescued the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked.” He’s moved from sovereign seduction in verse seven to sovereign serenading in verse 13. You don’t just get there quick. You have to work your way through that, and nothing has happened. There’s not action on the part of God. There’s no movement on the part of God. There’s no work on the part of God. And yet he’s serenading before there’s any deliverance. He’s come to understand that all he has is the word of God to really trust in. Brothers and sisters, that’s really all we have. I wish I had a word that I could give you that would solve the theodicy problem in Virginia Tech. I don’t know what to say except to say this, God is present. His word is still powerful. When I think about it, I have to say, “Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the world thy hand has made. I see the stars. I hear the roaring thunder. Thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee.” Not how great your acts are. Not how great your works are. Not how great your movements are. How great thou art. We serve a great God in the midst of our disaster. I think if the sovereign one will serenade over us in Zephaniah 3:17, he rejoices over us in singing, I think we ought to serenade the sovereign one even though there are no visible acts of God’s deliverance except by His word. I wish that this chapter would end with verse number 13 but instead it goes on to cursing. He moves 13 from singing to cursing and then he says in the very end, he asks God a question, why is it that you allow me to stay in this world and to live out my days in sorrow and shame? Why wasn’t I strangled by my mother’s umbilical cord when she gave birth to me? Why wasn’t my mother’s womb a tomb? Why didn’t the person who took and said it’s a boy to my father and said it’s good news, why didn’t he suffer the same fate as Admah and Zeboiim and the cities of the plain? This is an unanswered question. In verse 13, he ends with an exclamation point. “Sing unto the Lord!” In verse 18, he ends with a question mark. Why did he let me live in shame? Jeremiah is like Jesus or Jesus takes and fulfills, if you will, the suggestion-ness of Jeremiah. Like Jeremiah, Jesus was a prophet who was rejected. Like Jeremiah, Jesus was wounded. Like Jeremiah, Jesus wept. But unlike Jeremiah, He transcended this matter of living between two inescapable realities. Do you see Him? There He is? “Father, let this cup pass from me. But not my will, let you will be done.” Look at Him on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And later on, He cries out, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” He lived between my God, why and Father, into thy. But He moves to irreconcilable differences where He takes and does something that Jeremiah could not do, for He takes He who was God in Christ, became what He was not, human, and yet remained who He was, God. He who could not have fellowship with sin, He who knew no sin became sin that we who are sinners might be made the righteousness of God. And He who was the author of life would submit himself to death. Every time He met death in His ministry, death had to die. He left death at Jairus’ house and said to the little girl to leave the tomb. I say to thee arise and death died. He left death at the cemetery in Nain and just touched the coffin top and the boy got up with a brand-new life. He met death four days after Lazarus’ funeral and all He said was, “Lazarus, come forth” and Lazarus rose from the dead. But on calvary, life submitted to death. Life gave itself to death. For life said, no one takes my life, but I lay it down, a ransom for many. And sure enough, two irreconcilable differences were battling one pride. And Friday evening Jesus died. Yes. They put Him in the tomb one Friday. And death said anything that dies stays in the grave. Oh yes. Friday death died. Saturday, Jesus was still in the tomb but Sunday morning, up from the grave He arose with all power in His hands in and “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. Because He lives, all fear is gone. Because I know He holds the future, then life is just worth living because He lives.” >>>> Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast with host, Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson podcast at our website, Beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson podcast.