Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: Sticking with It (Jeremiah 35)
Date: October 20, 2024
I grew up listening to rock and roll music from the 60s and 70s. That was what my own dad had grown up with and he was either listening to it or singing it or whistling it almost all the time. I took to it about as naturally as walking. It doesn’t hurt that it’s mostly all really good music. One of the songs out of that era I remember listening to more than most is called Cats in the Cradle by Harry Chapin. I suspect many of you have heard the song. It’s about a man who is so busy with work all the years that his son is born and growing up that he misses all the key moments and milestones in the boy’s life. Then, when things have finally slowed down for him and he’s ready to start pursuing a relationship with his son, the son is so busy doing his own life that he doesn’t have time for his dad anymore. It’s really a depressing song to be one of Chapin’s most popular.
The whole idea of the song is that the dad sets a pattern of not being committed to a relationship that should have been the most important to him. To perhaps look at that a different way, he committed himself most to the things that didn’t matter most. As a result, this pattern was picked up by the other person in this relationship—his son in this case—to his own detriment. When he finally felt like he had fulfilled these other commitments, his son wasn’t interested in making one with him any longer. He ruefully realizes at the end of the song that “my boy was just like me.”
The commitments we make matter. A lot. And we really can’t avoid making them. Even when we actively try to avoid them, we nonetheless do even to the point of committing to being non-commital. And the thing is, when we commit to something—whether we realize we have committed to it or not—that thing, whatever it is, becomes the most important thing in the world to us. We begin to see and engage with the world around us through the lens of that thing. It becomes the primary limiting agent in terms of defining the choices we make and don’t make. When we commit to good and right things, those commitments can become a pathway to a proliferation of blessings in our lives. Committing to the wrong things, or even making only partial commitments (which aren’t really commitments at all) to the right things, on the other hand, only lead to frustration and misery. We are in the middle of a conversation about how we can experience more of growing God’s kingdom together. That is an indisputably good thing. If we are going to see all of the potential good of God’s growing kingdom in our midst, though, the commitments we make are going to matter. A lot. As we continue our journey, that’s what I’d like to talk about with you this morning.
This morning finds us in the third part of our series, Together. All this month we are talking about how we can experience more of the growth of God’s kingdom in and through this body of believers together. We are talking about how we can invest more fully in God’s kingdom together. If we want to see more of God’s work unleashed in our midst, the first thing we have to do is to be prepared to embrace a path of sacrificial living. We can’t have what we want and what God wants at the same time (unless our desires happen to be fully consistent with God’s desires in which case we’re good to go). Seeing God’s plans—which will always be for our best good and the best good of the world around us—come to fruition will require our willingness to say no to the things that will keep us from being a part of it.
But sacrifice by itself isn’t going to get us there. Being willing to say no to things we want in order to say yes to the greater things God wants is good. But at some point He’s going to call us to step out beyond what we can see in order to keep following Him forward. Experiencing the full glories of God’s plans being unleashed in our midst will require us to surrender our will to His. It will require us to trust more in Him than in what we can see and accomplish on our own. This takes faith, but it is a faith that should be deeply informed by God’s character of faithfulness, and it will be rewarded well too. Surrender means saying yes even when we can’t see how.
Saying we are going to step up to the challenge of sacrificial living and surrender our lives fully to God’s call and actually following through on that, though, are two different things. We’ve spent the last two weeks talking about the first thing. Today, we are going to talk about the second. This following through is all about commitment. And in order to help us get our minds around the kind of commitment God calls us to in order to see His kingdom growing work advance, I want to take a look with you at a story from Jeremiah’s collection of prophecy. If you have a copy of the Scriptures handy, find your way with me to Jeremiah 35.
Jeremiah was a reluctant prophet. And, from what we can tell, he never really liked the gig. He complained all the time about having to give the people bad news and the weird things God asked him to do in order to deliver messages—mostly of judgment—to his contemporaries. Then, those contemporaries didn’t like the messages and treated him badly because of it. As for his collection of prophecy itself, while some of it takes the traditional form we think of when we think about books of prophecy (long, poetic passages), some of it is narrative, telling about times when Jeremiah was sent to engage with the leadership of Judah or on various other missions for God. One of these missions unfolds in chapter 35.
What we find going on here is that the people are stubbornly refusing to walk the path of righteousness and justice God is calling them to walk. The time when Babylon will come and deliver God’s judgment on the people is drawing near. He’s trying to call them to repentance so that He can forgive them and shield them from the worst of what is coming their way, but they just won’t listen. As a result, God changes His tactics a bit. He sends Jeremiah to go and visit a group of people who had taken refuge in Jerusalem because of the looming Babylonian threat out in the countryside where they had previously been living as nomads. The visit winds up being an object lesson for Jeremiah to use with the leadership of Israel. Check this out with me in Jeremiah 35.
“This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the days of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah: ‘Go to the house of the Rechabites, speak to them, and bring them to one of the chambers of the temple of the Lord to offer them a drink of wine.’’ Let’s be honest: that’s an odd request. But Jeremiah was in the habit of fielding odd requests from God, so he probably didn’t so much as bat an eye at this one. “So I took Jaazaniah son of Jeremiah, son of Habazziniah, and his brothers and all his sons—the entire house of the Rechabites—and I brought them into the temple of the Lord to a chamber occupied by the sons of Haban son of Igdaliah, a man of God, who had a chamber near the officials’ chamber, which was above the chamber of Maaseiah son of Shallum the doorkeeper. I set jars filled with wine and some cups before the sons of the house of the Rechabites and said to them, ‘Drink wine!’”
In other words, Jeremiah does just what God told him to do. That’s always a good habit to be in. As for what Jeremiah expected their response to be, we don’t know. He probably expected they were going to join him for a glass of wine. After all, that’s what God told him to invite them to share with him. Why would he expect otherwise? If that was the case, though, he was in for a surprise. Verse 6 now: “But they replied, ‘We do not drink wine, for Jonadab, son of our ancestor Rechab, commanded: “You and your descendants must never drink wine. You must not build a house or sow seed or plant a vineyard. Those things are not for you. Rather, you must live in tents your whole life, so you may live a long time on the soil where you stay as a resident alien.” We have obeyed Jonadad, son of our ancestor Rechab, in all he commanded us. So we haven’t drunk wine our whole life—we, our wives, our sons, and our daughters. We also have not built houses to live in and do not have vineyard, field, or seed. But we have lived in tents and have obeyed and done everything our ancestor Jonadab commanded us. However, when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon marched into the land, we said, “Come, let’s go into Jerusalem to get away from the Chaldean and Aramean armies.” So we have been living in Jerusalem.’”
A bit of context here. The Rechabites were not Israelites. They were Kenites. The most famous Kenite in the Bible is Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro. They were at best distant cousins to the Israelites, but ones who had long been on friendly terms with them. It made sense, then, that the Rechabites would be given shelter in Jerusalem from the marauding bands of Babylonians steadily moving into the area. This particular tribe was unique because one of their ancestors—a man named Jonadab—told his family to take up a nomadic, teetotaling lifestyle. And they did it. Faithfully. For a long time. In fact, they had been doing it ever since minus their recent move to Jerusalem to avoid getting massacred by the Babylonians.
That’s pretty impressive commitment, don’t you agree? And here’s the thing: God didn’t command any of this. The Rechabites weren’t a God-following people as we understand the idea. They didn’t have any reason to stick with this command from Jonadab long term beyond a commitment to doing what their ancestor said. He obviously occupied a really significant place in their identity both politically and spiritually, and so his initial descendants obeyed his commands. By the time subsequent generations were starting to appear, they had so associated their tribal identity with not drinking wine and not staying tied down to a single place that they just kept doing it. It was who they were. Their commitment had become their identity which only served to double and triple and quadruple down on their commitment.
As Jeremiah likely marvels at this people who were so faithful by nature, God speaks to him in order to take the abstract object lesson and pour concrete all over it. “Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ‘This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel says: Go, say to the men of Judah and the residents of Jerusalem, “Will you not accept discipline by listening to my words?—this is the Lord’s declaration. The words of Jonadab, son of Rechab, have been carried out. He commanded his descendants not to drink wine, and they have not drunk to this day because they have obeyed their ancestor’s command. But I have spoken to you time and time again, and you have not obeyed me! Time and time again I have sent you all my servants the prophets, proclaiming, ‘Turn, each one from his evil way, and correct your actions. Stop following other gods to serve them. Live in the land that I gave you and your ancestors.’ But you did not pay attention or obey me. Yes, the sons of Jonadab son of Rechab carried out their ancestors’ command he gave them, but these people have not obeyed me.”’”
Are you catching God’s drift here? God’s point is that if this random tribe was willing to make such a firm and unwavering commitment to something one of their ancestors said that had lasted now for multiple generations, why wouldn’t His own people keep the commands that He gave them when He was their God. The Rechabites’ commitment to their ancestor dwarfed the Israelites’ commitment to their God. The logic of things here falls apart. God was greater than Jonadab. Jonadab may have had reasons behind what he commanded, but the lingering good of his people wasn’t necessarily one of them. He was making a personal decision and forcing those around him to abide by it. We tend to call those kinds of people today controlling, judgmental busybodies. God’s commands for Israel, though, were for their good. They were for their permanent good. They were for the good of the people around them. They were ultimately for the good of the whole world. And He had authority Jonadab couldn’t even imagine. He really could expect that when He said to jump the people would respond by asking how high. And yet Israel kept ignoring Him and doing what they wanted in spite of His best efforts to encourage them otherwise.
Now, none of this means that the Israelites were all just a bunch of wild, out of control pagans. For most of this period of their history, they gave at least lip service to faithfulness to God. But that was precisely the problem. They only gave it lip service. They weren’t willing to actually commit to the lifestyle He invited them into. Their first and strongest commitment was to themselves and what they wanted. The problem is that we don’t know what’s best for ourselves. And the things we think are best for ourselves pretty uniformly just make us lonely and needy and miserable.
God’s vision for His people was clearly more for something more like the Rechabites were pursuing than what they were currently grasping for themselves. He wanted them committed to His kingdom more than their own. Because they wouldn’t do that, they were going to face the consequences of their selfish foolishness. Meanwhile, to the Rechabites, God promised blessing. And again, their faithfulness wasn’t primarily to Him. Their commitment wasn’t to His kingdom. But they were committed to something bigger than themselves and had proven themselves willing to keep that commitment over time. They were a people marked by faithfulness. That’s a virtue in God’s kingdom that He always honors. This doesn’t mean that faithfulness generally is what saves us. Faithfulness to Jesus as Lord is the only thing that does that. But a character of faithfulness generally can be reoriented toward the right kind of faithfulness fairly easily, so God honors it. “This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel says: ‘Because you have obeyed the command of your ancestor Jonadab and have kept all his commands and have done everything he commanded you, this is what the Lord of Armis, the God of Israel, says: Jonadab son of Rechab will never fail to have a man stand before me always.’”
Okay, but what does any of this have to do with us? God still calls us to the same kind of faithfulness. He still wants us to make and honor good commitments. He still wants us to be committed to the advancement of His kingdom more than to the advancement of our own. Sacrifice and surrender, while of great importance, are not enough on their own. The Pharisees in Jesus’s day were famous for their sacrificial lifestyles. They denied themselves all sorts of things in public pursuit of faithfulness to the Law of Moses. They surrendered themselves willingly to the Law’s demands. But their actual commitment to the God who gave that Law was trumped by their commitment to the Law itself.
Commitment matters. God honors proper and genuine commitment and He has very little patience with weak and improperly placed commitment. Consider two different messages He gave to two different churches through the apostle John in Revelation. To the Laodicean church in Revelation 3:15, Jesus said, “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth. . .As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be zealous and repent. See! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Their commitment was weak at best, and so Jesus called them to more.
On the other hand, to the Philadelphian church, in Revelation 3:8, He said, “I know your works. Look, I have placed before you an open door that no one can close because you have but little power; yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. . .Because you have kept my command to endure, I will also keep you from the hour of testing that is going to come on the whole world to test those who live on the earth. I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one takes your crown.”
When we make a commitment to God’s kingdom, He honors that commitment. God honors a life of commitment to His kingdom. But this can’t be some half-hearted thing. It can’t be a thing to which we give great and bold lip service here and now, but let fall by the wayside later on when the going gets tough and the commitment becomes inconvenient. We can’t be the rocky soil. Good Gospel seed doesn’t bear fruit there. It can’t. Ours must be a commitment that lasts. It must be a commitment rooted in our deep and abiding trust in Him that is itself deeply informed by His own character of faithfulness. It must be a commitment to advancing His kingdom and not merely our own convenience. And when we do this, God will honor our commitment. God honors a life of commitment to His kingdom.
He honors it because His kingdom will last. His kingdom is eternal. It is where all goodness and righteousness and justice and peace and mercy and love are found. It is the kingdom we were made to dwell in forever. It is a kingdom that is coming, but which is here now through the faithful and committed lives of His people doing His work in His world. It is the kingdom the world was made to be in. God honors a life of commitment to His kingdom.
Friends, let me be even more explicit with you than this. Today, in just a few moments, I am going to invite you to fill out and return your pledge cards that I gave you last week and invited you to pray over what God was leading you to sacrificially surrender in order to advance His kingdom. I am going to invite you to make a commitment. Today we make our commitment to this project together as one. We are committing to sacrificially support the construction of a new space for worship and a renovated space for making disciples of all different ages. But more than that, we are committing to invest together in the growth of God’s kingdom in our midst. We are committing to supporting in practical, tangible, material ways the work He is already doing here among us. We are committing to enable its advance and expansion. We are committing to being a Gospel presence in this community for generations to come. We are committing ourselves to a life of faithfulness that, like the Rechabites, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be talking about how it impacted their life and set them on a path of being committed to God’s kingdom in their own lives that results in its growth and strengthening where God’s Spirit takes them to serve Him. We are committing to God’s kingdom. And God honors a life of commitment to His kingdom.
As a church family, we are going to make this commitment together by bringing those pledge cards forward as one. You can see the basket right down front here. In a moment, when I pray, if you are able, I want you to bring your card down front and place it in this basket. And just as we are doing this as a church family, I want you to do it as individual families as well. This is not a commitment just one in a family makes, but something the whole family commits to together because its impact will be felt by everyone in it. So, if you are here as a family, come down as a family. Come as a family as we all as one church family commit together to investing in the growth and expansion of God’s kingdom through the growth and expansion of our building. God honors a life of commitment to His kingdom.
There’s one more thing. You may be a guest with us this morning. I am so glad you are here. You could not have picked a better morning to join us in worship. I want to make clear that I am not asking what I am asking the rest of the congregation to do of you. You just get to sit back and watch for a minute a really unique and special event in the life of any church unfold before you. You don’t have to get up and go anywhere, and we don’t want your money. Now, if God is moving in your heart to give, we’re not going to tell you no, but there are no expectations on you this morning.
Instead, my invitation to you is to simply take note of the kind of church you are worshiping with today. You are worshiping with a church that is committed—it is a commitment being made right before your eyes—to seeing God’s kingdom grow. It is a church committed to making disciples of Jesus (because that’s how God’s kingdom grows). It is a church committed to investing in the faith of the next generation. It is a church where anyone of any age and from any background can connect to grow in Christ and reach out for His Kingdom. Take all of this in and consider carefully whether this is the kind of church you want to be a part of in a more permanent and official way.
And even if you’re not there yet, take in the joy and hopeful determination of the people around you. If you aren’t at least committed to following Jesus, take stock of what you could be a part of if you were to submit your life to Him as your Lord and Savior. You can do that today as well. Either way, whether you commit to following Jesus or commit to this church, don’t let commitments to other things that aren’t eternal keep you from making the commitments that matter most. God’s kingdom matters most. And God honors a life of commitment to His kingdom. Let’s make that commitment together.