“COMMITTED TO HIM”
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20)
September 20, 2015
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
“O Lord of hosts, who judges righteously, who tests the heart and the
mind, let me see Your vengeance upon them, for to You have I committed
my cause.”
Jeremiah 11:20 (ESV)
When we use the word “commitment,” especially in reference to our
commitment to the Lord, we are usually thinking of it in terms of
dedicating our time, our talents, our energy, and our resources to the
service of our God and Savior. But the prayer that the prophet
Jeremiah offers in this morning’s Old Testament Reading speaks about a
different kind of commitment altogether. The prophet says that he has
committed his cause to the Lord. In other words, he’s not talking
about all of the great things that he expects to do for the Lord; he’s
talking about the even greater things that he is counting on the Lord
to do for him. Jeremiah is keenly aware of something that we so often
seem to forget: that when it comes to the relationship between God and
His people, the people of God are always on the receiving end.
In order to really understand and appreciate Jeremiah’s prayer, we
first have to put it into some kind of context. Jeremiah, like
everyone else who dares to speak boldly for God, generated quite a bit
of opposition, as the Lord had told him that he would. That’s only to
be expected. It seems that some of the citizens of Anathoth, the
prophet’s hometown, were plotting against him in an effort to
discredit his message and thereby undermine his ministry. In response
to this, the prophet seeks out his God in prayer, counting on the Lord
to take care of him and to see that the message that he is preaching
is freely proclaimed and heard. Let’s spend these few minutes this
morning looking at how Jeremiah committed his cause to the Lord in the
hope of learning how we can follow the prophet’s example when similar
troubles come our way.
Jeremiah prays to the Lord: To You have I committed my cause.” When
he was faced with opposition and threats of persecution, Jeremiah
didn’t take matters into his own hands, but instead he relied on the
Lord to deliver him. The temptation to react on our own is always
before us when we have to deal with the kind of opposition that
Jeremiah was faced with. It’s a part of our sinful human nature to
want to get even--to even the score--to see to it that we are
vindicated and that justice is done. But that kind of attitude really
betrays a lack of trust because with that attitude we are saying that
we can’t be sure that justice really will be done, so we have to take
it upon ourselves to see to it that wrong is punished. (For some
strange reason, our insistence on seeing that justice is done doesn’t
seem to move us to reward good behavior as quickly as it moves us to
punish bad behavior.) Jeremiah didn’t get wrapped up into any of
that. He realized that his calling was to be a prophet, not a
enforcer. While it certainly was his job to expose the evil around
him, it was not within the prophet’s call to punish it. There is also
another good reason why Jeremiah didn’t try to vindicate himself:
Being a mere man and therefore a sinner, he realized that his sense of
justice would be no more perfect than that of the people who were
plotting against him.
While Jeremiah refrained from taking it upon himself to bring his
accusers to justice, he wasn’t by any means indifferent to their
injustice. On the contrary, Jeremiah longed to see that justice was
done, and he said so very clearly in his prayer. We may have some
misgivings about a prophet of God eagerly awaiting divine retribution
on his enemies, but we have to understand a couple of things here.
First of all, Jeremiah may have been a prophet, but he was still a
human being, with all of the faults and weaknesses that all of us
have. His office didn’t exempt him from the thoughts and emotions
that are typically human. Remember also that Jeremiah is angry over
the plotting of his enemies not for his own sake, but for the sake of
his prophetic office. There is a difference--and a very big one. It
doesn’t make a whole lot of difference what you personally may think
of Art Litke, but it matters a great deal that you respect your called
pastor. Jeremiah isn’t angry because his enemies are plotting against
Jeremiah; he’s angry because they are thwarting the ministry of the
Lord’s prophet and the clear proclamation of the Word of God.
And what about us? How does the experience of Jeremiah relate to the
harsh treatment that we may sometimes receive as the Lord’s witnesses?
The truth of the matter is that we have even more reason than the
prophet did to adopt the kind of attitude that he took. First of all,
like Jeremiah, we cannot even begin to vindicate ourselves--neither in
the eyes of those who oppose us nor in the face of God’s Law, which is
the perfect standard of justice. We need to understand what Jeremiah
understood--that there is nothing for us to gain by insisting on
justice for ourselves, because God is perfectly just and if He were to
deal with people according to His perfect justice, none of us could
possibly survive. That is tragedy of the damned: Rejecting the
redeeming grace of God that has been extended to them in Christ,
unbelievers insist on being judged according to their own merits,
which always fall miserably short of the perfect standard set by God’s
Law. So there is very good reason for us to let God deal with those
who wrong us in His own way and in His own time.
In terms of our vindication before God and men, we have more reason
than Jeremiah did to commit our cause to the Lord, because we live on
the other side of the cross of Calvary. What Jeremiah only hoped for,
we know for certain. For Jeremiah the Gospel of Jesus Christ was only
a promise, but for us it is a reality. Jeremiah knew that God had
promised to send a Savior for His people, but we are blessed in that
we know that Savior by name. What’s more, we know in great detail
everything that He did to vindicate us before the judgment of God so
that we have no reason to be fearful of the plots and accusations of
those through whom Satan seeks to call our salvation into question and
to sidetrack us from our God-given task of sharing the redeeming love
of Jesus with others. As the apostle Paul so aptly put it: “If God
is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).
Life can be rough for the Christian living in this world, especially
if the Christian dares to proclaim the Word of the Lord in all its
truth and purity. This world is hostile to God’s Word. It always has
been and it always will be. And the straightforward proclamation of
that Word will always be met with opposition. The question is not
whether or not we will face opposition, but rather how we will respond
to the opposition that we will surely face. The Old Testament prophet
Jeremiah provides us with an example of one committing his cause to
the Lord. The answer is not to take matters into our own hands by
trying to take revenge on those who seek to silence the Gospel.
Neither is the answer to take an attitude of indifference toward the
wrongs that we see around us. The answer is to take the matter to the
Lord Himself, knowing that He who has brought about both perfect
justice and perfect grace in the cross of His Son Jesus Christ will
justify us in the face of His judgment and will vindicate us in the
sight of all.
Amen.
May the Lord bless your hearing of His Word, using it to accomplish in
you those things for which He gave it. May you be enriched and
strengthened in faith that you may leave here today to go out into our
world armed with the whole armor of God, prepared to be able
ambassadors of your Savior Jesus Christ. He who calls you is
faithful, and He will do it. Amen.