Make Sure Faith is Well-Placed

Thanks, Chip. You're taller than me. I'm going to move that down. Thanks for having me again. It's good to be here with you all this evening. If you have a Bible, turn to Jeremiah, chapter nine. Contrary to reports, I'm not going to preach through the whole book tonight, so you can relax about that a little bit. But I do want to talk to you for just a few minutes this evening about making sure that your faith is well placed. And what I mean by that is not just not just as individuals, but also as a church, as Jefferson Park Baptist Church, especially as you look into the future and look toward the next steps that the Lord has for you as a church body. So Jeremiah, chapter nine, and I'm going to begin reading in verse twenty three. This is what the Lord says, Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, or the strong man boast of his strength, or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth. For in these I delight, declares the Lord. The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh. Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and all who live in the desert in distant places. For all these nations are really uncircumcised, and even the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart. This these few verses here really come at the at the end of a lament about the nation of Israel. Jeremiah prophesied to the nation of Judah during the reigns of five different kings that ruled over that nation. It was really a. a pretty tumultuous time in the life of the nation. You had several different powers that were surrounding Judah and threatening to really wipe it off the face of the earth, carry it off into exile or even worse. You had Babylon to one side with armies that were sweeping across all the different lands that challenged Babylon and even some that weren't challenging Babylon. They just would fling their armies against these nations and wipe them out. On the other hand, On the other side of Judah, you also had Assyria, which had become in itself a force to be reckoned with. And these two nations were sort of crushing Judah between like a hammer and an anvil. It was a dangerous time. And yet here in Jeremiah, especially chapter seven, eight and nine, God says that in the midst of all of this danger, he's about to desert his people and leave them alone to fend for themselves against these nations. But why was that? Why was it that God was about to desert his nation? Well, the reason was because Israel, Judah had sinned against God and they had begun to take as their faith, they had begun to put their trust not in God himself and not in God's goodness and character, but rather on the trappings of religion, on the various privileges that God had given them. So, for example, if you look at If you flip the page back, for example, to chapter seven, you might just keep your finger in chapter nine, but flip back to chapter seven. And you see there beginning in verse one, this is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, stand at the gate of the Lord's house and there proclaim this message. Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says. Reform your ways and your actions and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and don't shed innocent blood in this place, and if you don't follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place. In the land, I gave your forefathers forever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. See, the people have begun to rely falsely on on these privileges that God had given them. And so instead of having hearts that were turned toward the Lord in a right sort of way, they were looking at their temple and they were looking at all their privileges. And Jeremiah makes them out, especially there in verse four, really to be just be stark raving lunatics. I mean, he has them kind of walking into the temple and forgetting everything and going, this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, and relying on that as if simply because their name is Judah and as if simply because they are walking into this temple with its bricks and stones rising up on either side of them, that they're therefore safe. And what Jeremiah does through chapters seven, eight and nine is is lament for them the fact that God is about to desert them and lead them into ruin and devastation because their trust was placed in something that was false. It was placed in their privileges and in their in the trappings of their religion rather than in the real thing. So that goes on for chapter seven, eight and nine, and then at the end of chapter nine, you get these four verses beginning in verse twenty three there of chapter nine that are really a summary of what's gone before. It's it's it's the nugget. It's the final sort of exclamation point at the end of this lament and this calling of Israel back to faith. So what Jeremiah does there, especially or first of all, in verse 23, is that he tells the people what they are not supposed to rely on. You see that in verse 23, let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches. He tells them these are the things that you as Israelites are not to be relying on wisdom and strength and riches. Now, people put confidence in all kinds of things, don't they? And churches put confidence in all kinds of things. But these pretty much cover the bases, I think. And as individuals, you are faced pretty much daily with choices about where you're going to put your confidence, where you're going to lean and rely for your sense of spiritual well-being. For some people that's confidence in their own wisdom. They have a sense that whether it's the Christian faith or just life in general, they basically have it all figured out. And so their confidence and their reliance subtly shifts from being on Jesus himself to being on their own understanding of the faith. I wonder if you see that in your own life sometimes, that you begin to understand something theologically Or you begin to understand something of the glory of the Bible's storyline. And before you know it, you're just you're captivated by stories about King Jesus. But you have no real heart to obey King Jesus himself. It's a devastating danger. And yet Christians fall into it all the time. The same the same goes for strength. People have a tendency to rely on their health, to rely on their ability to get things done. in this world, their ability to be persuasive or to convince people to do something, their skills in leadership. Whatever it is, people tend to rely on those things and their sense of well-being, therefore their confidence begins to shift from Jesus to those skills and to those physical or mental or emotional abilities that they have. Riches, another thing that people take confidence in all the time. You have material wealth of some kind. And so your confidence and your sense of well-being begins to subtly shift from Jesus to those things. You know what those are when you begin to do that? When your confidence and your reliance begins to shift from Jesus to something else? Those are idols. They're just as much idols as if you were to take a piece of wood and carve it into a little eagle and set it on your mantle and bow down to it. And the Lord says that he'll wipe out all of the idols. He's going to make them all bow. He's going to make them all fall before him. And that includes the idols that we bow down to, not graven carved images, but things like wisdom and strength and riches. The real kicker of this, though, I think just just in terms of talking to you as as Jefferson Park Baptist Church is that it's very easy for even churches to fall into these various sins of idolatry. and begin to rely on things other than the gospel and on the word of God in order to make their church successful. You know, if you were to, for example, you know, have a if you were to sort of start over from scratch, I know you're not going to do this because you you have some things in place as far as as far as I can tell, being with you three or four times that are just just wonderful and faithful and fantastic. But if you were to start over from scratch and start looking at all of the different things that are out there in the mailboxes and in the email inboxes about how to grow a church, you would find all kinds of idols and all kinds of things that are told to you to shift your reliance from the word of God and from Jesus's gospel itself onto these other things. You would find some who say that the way you do that is through corporate practices, for instance. You would find others who say that the way you make your church successful is to shift your focus from a crucified savior to changing the society and changing the world. You would find other people who would say the way to make your church successful is to contextualize your church to one very small and narrow subculture of America. Make yourself the church of latte drinkers in Charlottesville, and that's the way you grow your church. But we saw this morning, right, that that even that sort of thing is idolatrous, because what the gospel is about, actually, as we saw, is knocking down those walls and creating unity among people when they have nothing in common except the fact that they love Jesus. So you as a church should take care that your faith, Both as individuals and as a church for God to prosper, this church is well placed. Make sure that it's in the right place, not on various idols of wisdom and strength and riches and the various gimmicks and programs and this and that that the world offers you in order to grow the church, but make sure your confidence. for God to prosper this church is in the right place. Now, I want to give you just three different things, just as another brother in Christ from another church. And I just I just kind of want to take these things and and push them again into the foundation that you all already have built. Honestly, I see these things in your church and therefore I rejoice with you to see them and to point them out again. So in a way, I'm just pointing at your foundation and going, oh, look at that. That's a good block right there. I like that one. But, you know, as you move forward, I want to remind you that these are the things that are going to make your church something that is faithful to God. And therefore, that it's going to put your faith on the right footing, your faith in God's prospering of your church on the right footing. So three things. Number one, the centrality of the preached word. The centrality of the preached word. The most important thing that happens in the life of your church is when someone stands in that pulpit on Sunday morning or Sunday evening and preaches the word of God to you. God gives life to His people through His preached Word. You see it all over the Bible. When God wants to create something, when He wants to give life to something, how does He do it? Does He do it through some program? Does He do it through even the work of His hands? No, He does it through His Word. So in Genesis 1, how does God create the world? He speaks. When God gives life to Adam after He's formed him out of the dust of the ground, how does He give life to Adam? He breathes into him. When Ezekiel is standing in Ezekiel chapter 37 in this vision, when he's standing before this valley of dry, desiccated bones, what does the Lord tell him to do? Preach to them, prophesy to them. And Ezekiel begins to preach and speak the word of God to these bones. And there's this rattling, moving racket that happens in the valley. And all of a sudden they stand up and the sinews come together and the tendons wrap around the bones and the flesh comes on and you have life, a living, breathing, standing, fighting army. Not because Jeremiah gets down there and sticks them all together with the latest six step plan that he got in his email box, but because he preaches the Word of God to those dry, desiccated bones and they come to life. The preached Word of God is the most important thing that happens in the life of your church. And so it is incumbent on you to make sure that the preached Word of God remains at the center of your life together as a church. Second, the second thing is the centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ in your church, the centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ in your church. Look at verse 24 of chapter nine of Jeremiah. He tells him, you know, don't don't boast about all these these things, but let him who boasts boast about this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth. For in these I delight, declares the Lord. What he's talking about there is the revelation of his own character, which, as we talked about this morning, Jesus did perfectly. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a revelation of God's character. It's a revelation of our character, too, and how that stacks up against God and a revelation of our problem, therefore, and how God has acted in Christ to save us from that problem. But a biblical understanding of what the gospel is and keeping that gospel of salvation and forgiveness of sins through the death and resurrection of Christ, keeping that at the center of your church is what's going to grow it. The people who come through that door back there on a Sunday morning need to know who they are before God. They need to know the problem that they have before God, and they need to know the solution that God has for them for that problem of sin. And they need to know how how that solution can be made good news for them. Their trust and reliance and faith in Jesus. Churches are tempted all the time to talk about things other than the gospel of Jesus Christ. They make the center of their life, they make their message something other than that. They even sometimes tinker with the gospel itself in order to sort of gild it, you know, with honor, whatever they're talking about. They say, this is the gospel. Well, no, the Bible is very clear about what the gospel is, the salvation of sinners, the forgiveness of sinners through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, faith and repentance in him. And that's the message that Jesus has given us as Christians, the message that Jesus has given you as Jefferson Park Baptist Church. And that message needs to remain at the center of your life together as a church. The third thing that that I see in your church in various different ways and that I. I hope you you I hope as you move forward, you continue to make this a part of your not just a part, but a central part of your life together is is a commitment to personal discipleship. A lot of times people will think of the church as just a sort of spigot of grace, you know, that sort of sits here. And every Sunday morning, everyone comes by one at a time and gets their little drink out of the spigot of grace. And then they go off and go home. And that's kind of it. And we come to it again next Sunday morning. Shake hands. Here we are. All at the same spigot of grace. And then we go about our lives together. That's not the way church is supposed to work. The way church is supposed to work is, as Paul says really all over his letters, you're supposed to be discipling one another and making followers of Jesus out of one another, living life with one another, weeping with one another when you weep, rejoicing with one another when someone in your church rejoices, living life together. and watching the way the Lord knits you together as a community and makes you a church, an assembly, a group of people who have your conviction of faith in Jesus and are living your lives together. That happens in all kinds of ways. I hear people in your church talking all the time about having You know, this this hour or that hour for coffee or breakfast with so-and-so or, you know, member so-and-so came to my house and we talked about this or that for a couple of hours. I just you know, I hope that, you know, months and years from now, if I if I hear things about Jefferson Park, it's that, yeah, there is a network of discipling relationships happening all over the city of Charlottesville. At any given lunch hour or any given breakfast hour in the city of Charlottesville, there are 15 couples meeting in restaurants all over Charlottesville or in coffee shops at UVA or whatever it is. But just a network of this electric energy in the city of Charlottesville as you guys, as a church, disciple one another and make one another better and more faithful followers of Jesus. So those three things, expositional preaching, biblical understanding of the gospel and a commitment to discipleship. If your confidence is placed in the wrong things as individuals or in the church, time eventually strips that away. If your foot's on sand, Time eventually washes the sand out. It's just the nature of the way the Lord works. Sometimes judgment is swift. Sometimes his judgment is more gradual than that, and it's just an eroding of the false confidence until that which is sitting on the false confidence falls. I pray that the Lord will help you to keep your faith and your confidence placed in the right things, not on wisdom and strength and riches, and not on the other gimmicks and things that the world gives you, but in the right place, on the preached word of God. on the gospel of Jesus Christ and on the discipleship of one another in the faith. Let me say just a couple more things to round this out, because I want to I want to show you what's going on then in verses 25 and 26 of this this passage, because it's kind of the there's this. There's this dramatic moment where Judah realizes the trouble that she's found herself in because her confidence is misplaced. And what she learns here, what Judah learns is that because she's had her faith misplaced and placed on the wrong things, she finds herself as worse really than worthless, but rather dead and completely cast aside. Look at verse 25. The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh. Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and all who live in the desert in distant places. For all these nations are really uncircumcised. Now, do you see what happens there? Because in verse twenty five, the Lord is going to he's going to give this warning to the nations around around Israel, around Judah. He says, I'm coming to judge you because you are circumcised only in the flesh. Circumcision being the sign of the covenant that Israel took so seriously. And the Lord says, says, listen, I'm going to I'm going to wipe out all of these other nations because their faith has been misplaced. And then he begins to tick them off. the nations that he's going to judge all around Israel and Judah. So look at verse 26. You've got Egypt, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and then right in the middle of all of them, the sort of list of the condemned is Judah herself. You know, it's almost like It's almost like Dickens is a Christmas carol. You know the story when the Ghost of Christmas Past comes and he points his bony finger across the graveyard to a tombstone and Scrooge goes over to the tombstone and he looks down and it's his own name on the tombstone. Well, that's what that's what happens to Judah here, because when God announces that he's about to judge all the nations around, Judah's applauding. Yeah, go get them. Go get them. They're uncircumcised Philistines. Go get them. You know, and then the Lord shows them the tombstone and there's Judah's own name on the grave. You see, your faith was misplaced and it led to nothing at all but death. So I've given you an encouragement, really, from 23 and 24 to make sure that your faith is well placed. But the flip side of that that comes in verses 25 and 26 is to warn you that the opposite of that, to put your faith in something that is wrong, is to make yourself worse than worthless and dead. It is to write your own obituary. It's to carve your own name in your own tombstone. Keep your faith well placed. Or you'll find yourself in the same position that Judah found herself. Without life. Chip just read to you from Mark chapter 11 of the story of the fig tree when Jesus curses the fig tree. You know, the point of the story of the fig tree, you know why Jesus does that? Because when you read that just kind of for the first or second time and you know, you're trying to figure it out. The first inclination is kind of to feel sorry for the fig tree. Right. I mean, Jesus being a meanie, he walks up to this thing and there's no figs and he gets angry and curses it. You know, I mean, they're toys all over my house that would have been a long time ago if my kids had the power to curse them if they didn't do what they wanted to do. I mean, it's it's an amazing little story, but but you begin to see the point of it when you realize that the story of the fig tree and Mark, at least as Mark tells it, is it brackets the story of the cleansing of the temple. Right. So what's going on there is that Jesus goes into the temple and essentially what he says to them is, look, look at all of this, this bleating of the sheep and this, you know, all these noises of the sacrifices. It looks like there's life here in this temple. There's hundreds of thousands of people at the Passover running through this temple and doing their business. It looks like there's life. And yet there's no life here in any real sense. And the fig tree is a picture of that. You see, what happens with a fig tree is that the fig tree puts out leaves at a certain time of the year. And when the leaves come out, what you expect is to is to have these little immature figs that look a little bit like almonds. And you can walk up to the tree and pick them and eat them. But this fig tree was putting out its leaves in a season when when everybody knew there weren't going to be any figs out. So the point is that the tree was falsely advertising. There's life here. There's fruit here. Come eat my fruit. It was false advertising. And so it becomes a picture of the false advertising of the Israelites worship. Brothers and sisters, make sure that you at Jefferson Park Baptist put a complete moratorium on false advertising of spiritual life. You don't want that. You want real spiritual life coursing through the veins of this church, through the preached word of God, through an understanding of the gospel, through discipling one another in the faith. You don't want just a bunch of stuff on the outside of your church's life saying, hey, we have life here, we have life here, we have life here. And then on the inside, there's nothing. See, that's what that's what Israel was like. They had the temple, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. But you scratch just a little bit and what you find is there's nothing here. Don't let your church become like that. Pray that God would pour out his favor on you such that there would be real spiritual life coursing through the veins of this church. And in that real spiritual life is what the community of Charlottesville would see and be drawn to. That's what you want. Will you pray with me? God, I thank you, Father, for your kindness to this this church and we thank you for the way you have called these people together and you have created a covenant between them. We thank you for the way you have made a church of them and for the way you've been so kind to them in so many different ways. Father, we thank you most of all for the grace that you've shown each of us in Jesus Christ. We thank you that. In spite of our sin and our rebellion against you, Because of Jesus, we now stand before you righteous and justified and seated in the heavenly realms with Jesus. Oh, Lord, thank you for that grace that you've shown to us. Father, we pray for Jefferson Park as they as they move forward into these these next few months and years of the plan that you have laid out for them. Father, I pray that their faith as individuals and as a church would not subtly shift toward those things which which are unworthy of their reliance and their trust, but that they would remain rock solid, confident in you, Lord Jesus, and in your word and in your gospel. Father, would you found this church and would you build this church? Would you even grow this church on the basis of your word and your gospel? And we pray all of that in Jesus name into his glory. Amen.