Sermon Tone Analysis
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The Lord has saved his people
Have you ever waited a long time for something to happen?
Did you ever order something and then wait a long time for it to come?
It seems in our culture we are an impatient people.
We want instant this and instant that.
Putting something in the microwave for a minute seems like an eternity.
This passage from Jeremiah is about the people of Israel and Judah waiting.
They are waiting for God to rescue them from their exile from their nation.
Chapters 30 and 31 are all about this waiting and God promising to restore them.
Israel, the northern tribes were conquered by the Assyrians.
Judah was conquered by the Babylonians.
They had been without hope that they would ever be able to return home.
They had been in captivity for 50-70 years.
Nearly an entire generation died in captivity.
It would have been easy to just give up, to think that God has totally forgotten about them.
I think that the Church some times gets like that.
About 1,989 years ago Jesus told his disciples that he would return.
We’ve been waiting an awfully long time and we are still waiting.
I believe that the Jews felt that they had been forgotten about.
But, God is a keeper of His promises.
God has been having Jeremiah write these words.
Here in our text it opens with:
Jeremiah 31:7 (CEB)
7 The Lord proclaims
It is important to take note of that.
This is God speaking.
The Israelites constantly got into trouble with God because they didn’t listen to God and follow His Law.
Is the American Church much different than what Israel was like as it was being hauled off into exile?
We lament the loss of influence that the Church has in the culture today.
There are a lot of reasons for why the Church has lost that influence.
One reason and it is the largest reason is the reason that Israel was punished by God.
That reason is sin.
Israel and Judah had gone off doing their own thing.
That split up Israel into Israel and Judah was the beginning of the end.
Never again did they have the influence and power in the world.
Sin is the reason for the loss of influence of the church in general.
Rather than looking to God a large percentage of the Church in the US has looked to the world.
The 7 historic Mainline Christian denominations have all wandered away from the historic Christian faith.
They have all rejected the Bible as the source of truth for our faith.
The Methodist Church is in the verge of unraveling within the next year when the conservatives say enough is enough and they split from the liberal branch.
When you look at the Bible, from beginning to the end it is God’s story of His action to redeem His creation.
From the very first day that sin existed in God’s creation He has been active in redeeming humanity.
God says in this passage:
Jeremiah 31:7 (CEB)
Sing joyfully for the people of Jacob; shout for the leading nation.
Raise your voices with praise and call out
Who was Jacob besides the son of Isaac?
Jacob was the father of the 12 sons who became the 12 tribes of Israel.
God says to sing joyfully for the people of Jacob.
God says to shout for the leading nation.
God is talking about the nation of Israel.
Israel was God’s special chosen people.
I grew up in the church when people use to shout in church.
They didn’t shout because they didn’t like what the preacher was saying.
They shouted because they were excited about what God was doing.
I remember a camp meeting that I went to with my grandmother’s sister.
Aunt Velma had a cottage at the campground.
Every evening there was a service in the tabernacle.
There was always lots of shouting happening.
I remember people running the aisles in that old tabernacle.
I remember ladies with their hankies out waving them.
We sat on benches that had no backs on them.
I remember one guy who got so excited and blessed that he started from the back of the tabernacle running those benches.
He ran from one to the next to the next all the way to the front.
He shouted praise to God as he ran.
Why do I encourage you all to share how you’ve served God this past week and how God has blessed you?
God has blessed us with incredible blessings.
Shouldn’t we be able to Sing Joyfully and Shout in praise because of how God has blessed us?
He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing that comes from heaven.
That tells me that God has not left anything out.
He hasn’t held back.
He has blessed us beyond imagination.
To be blessed in Christ is:
to be envied, congratulated, and imitated.
That definition begs the question “are we envied, congratulated, and imitated” by the world?
I feel that sadly we the Church tend to envy, congratulate and imitate the world.
We have something that non-Christians do not have.
They cannot understanding the blessings that we have.
I want to encourage you to live like you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in heaven because in fact you have!
God moves to the crux of this passage when he says:
Common English Bible (Chapter 31)
The LORD has saved his people
Other translations use wording of a future tense, more of a request that God will save his people.
I appreciate the translation in the version I read from because it points to what God has done.
I feel that it ties in well with the passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that was read to us earlier.
Paul wrote in that great letter these words
This is all about what God has done for us.
This passage is one of my favorite passages of Scripture.
Paul in his unique way captures the full breadth of salvation.
Salvation is not something that we receive and hoard up for ourselves.
It is meant to be given away, to be shared with others.
The Lord has saved his people is the the phrase that God is calling the people to raise their voices in praise, to shout out that the Lord has saved his people.
Notice in the Scripture who his people are.
Look at the ones that are included.
God said those included will be “the blind, the disabled, expectant mothers, and those in labor.”
That points to the fact that no one was left out.
The call for the Jews to return to Israel and to God was for every one.
That thought reminded me of something that Jesus said:
Everyone is invited to come into a relationship with God through belief, through faith in Jesus.
From the Gospel reading this morning we heard these words:
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