From the heart
I have to begin this sermon with an apology. I think I started with an apology last month as well. Well, perhaps that's healthy. The Bible says that we are to confess our sins to each other.
Well, my apology is this: I had a fantastic holiday last week. It was a really great holiday. I went to Hokkaido and saw the Sapporo snow festival. I was staying with a friend of mine from Bible college. I had a great time off.
And then I came home. And Thursday was busy and stressful. I guess you can probably work out why. And then suddenly it was Friday night, and I thought ``Oh no! I have to preach at the English service on Sunday! What am I going to say? I guess I will open up the Bible and just make a sermon from it.''
So I looked at the passage I had set for today. Let's read it together.
(Jer 7:1-11)
Last time we looked at the person of Jeremiah. He had to overcome his family's hopes and his own insecurities to become a prophet of God. And this time we're going to look at his message.
And his message is that, if you stand before God, you cannot just say the right things. You are not secure just because you come to church each week. Following God is not an automatic thing. If you want to follow God, you cannot just use your mouth. You have to use your whole heart.
And so when I read that I thought... ``I suck. I really suck.'' Because I realised that I was actually trying to do exactly the same thing that these Israelites were doing. I thought that just because I turned up at church with some words, it would be OK. It would work and God would bless it. But I was wrong.
When I was visiting my friend in Hokkaido, he asked me some hard questions about my spiritual walk. And I said that I found it hard to measure my spiritual walk. I found it very difficult to know if I was truly walking with God or if I was missing something. So he reminded me of a verse in Deuteronomy 28. In Deuteronomy 28, God gives his people a choice. Either they follow Him, and He will bless them. Or they choose not to follow Him, and things will go badly for them.
But it says something very interesting. In Deuteronomy 28, it says ``Because you didn't serve GOD, your God, out of the joy and goodness of your heart, you'll have to serve your enemies whom GOD will send against you.'' If you want to follow God, you need to do so with joy and with your whole heart.
Sometimes we feel we can get by in our Christian lives just by following the rules. By following what is expected of us. And if we think that Christianity is a religion, then we will just play by the rules. But here in Jeremiah and also in Deuteronomy, God is saying something else. He says, no, you can't just play by the rules. Actually you have to enjoy this as well. You have to want to do it. You have to find joy in it. He says that if you think that following God is a religion, you have missed the point. It was never meant to be a religion. It was supposed to be a love affair.
When God summed up the whole Law for his people, he said that they should love God will all their heart, all their soul and all their strength. You can't do this just by following rules. You can't do this just by turning up to church on Sunday. This has to be the direction of your whole life.
This is hard. I wanted to start with an apology because I find this hard as well. This week my friend reminded me that I had missed the point. I was trying just to turn up and try to follow the rules. But the real question is, am I loving God with all my heart, all my soul and all my strength?
One of the greatest theologians the world has ever seen was a man called Karl Barth. He wrote hundreds of books. One of his biggest works was called the Church Dogmatics. If you buy the Church Dogmatics from many bookshops, you get a free bookshelf. Because you will need a new bookshelf to put the Church Dogmatics on! My tutor at college tried many times to get me to read Karl Barth and every time I couldn't take it. It was just too difficult.
But in the middle of the Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth writes that ``all religion is unbelief.'' Of course, many people had said that before. And they all expected him to say ``But the Christian religion is true belief!'' But no, Barth says something amazing. He says that all religion is unbelief, even the Christian religion. Because he knew that when you put your trust in religion, then you take your eyes off God. This is not meant to be religion. It is meant to be a love affair.
The Israelites loved God with their words but not with their hearts. In theology it is easy to love God with your mind but not with your heart. Karl Barth knew that this was not enough. He knew that all of this difficult theology was useless if you did not love God with your heart. We have an expression in English: ``lip service''. It comes from a verse in Isaiah 29, where God says ``These people come near to me with their mouth and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.'' Being a Christian is not about how often you come to church. It's not about how nice you are to people. It's not about how loudly you sing the songs. It's not about even about church. Because it's not about religion. It's about a love affair between you and God. If that love affair is alive then everything else will come out of that. But Jeremiah here is reminding the people that just the words of religion are not enough. Just the actions and the ceremonies are useless if that love affair is not there. God does not just want you to turn up on a Sunday. It's not very popular to say this but He wants all of you. The whole of your life devoted to Him.
And why? Why God demand so much from His followers? It's because that is how He loved us. He wants us to be completely devoted to Him because He is completely devoted to us.
At the end of his life, someone asked Karl Barth to sum up his whole ideas about theology. This is a man who has written a whole library of books about God. And they asked him to sum up all of his thought in one sentence. And the story goes that Barth thought for a minute, and then he began to sing. ``Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.'' Every religion is useless unless you know the love of God in your heart.
The Israelites thought that they were secure because they had their religion. They were in the Temple in Jerusalem. So whatever they did there was right, yes? This was the place that King Solomon built for God to live in. The place where the God of Israel lives. God would never leave His temple, right? Well, God says, maybe I will. You can't trust in a place. You can't trust in your words. You can't trust in your religion. You have to trust in God, and you have to love God.
But how does God want to be loved? How do we show this love? This is very interesting. Because I think if you love somebody you care about the things that they care about. If something is very important to them, then it becomes important to you as well. That's how you show that you are taking them seriously. So what does God want people to take seriously in this case?
If you were here when we looked at Amos, the answer should not be a surprise. God tells his people to ``deal with each other justly''. To stop oppressing foreigners, the fatherless and the widows. To stop shedding innocent blood, which refers to condemning innocent people to death. We show our love for God in how we treat those He has made. We show our love for God in how we treat those who cannot help themselves.
When I have been trying to understand Japan, I found one thing very helpful. It was something that my language teacher told me. He said that after the Second World War, Japan was forced into a lot of change. And they took up a lot of Western ideas and the country very quickly looked like a Western country. So people talked about ``democracy'' and ``equality'' and ``human rights''. But in the West we have a long, long history of how these ideas came about. Now my language teacher is an old Japanese man. He is from a samurai family. And he said something very interesting. He said that Japan after the war copied a lot of Western forms, but the thinking about these things did not change. The form is Western - but it is like a hollow apple. It looks good on the outside. But it is empty.
And this is what is happening here in Israel. When Isaiah was prophesying, Israel was in a very bad way. The last king, Josiah, did a lot of good work in bringing people back to God. Israel was completely surrounded by big political powers. It was weak and vulnerable and people were looking to God to protect them. So Josiah started services in the temple again, and he got rid of all of the idols and people began to worship God again. But after he died, people very quickly went back to their old ways of doing things. Because Josiah had only changed the form. He changed the ceremonies. He changed the religion. But he had not changed the way people think.
Josiah got rid of all the shrines and the idols in Israel. But that doesn't change people. I know a lot of missionaries who will not baptise a new Japanese Christian until they have got rid of their butsudan. And this is a big thing for new Christians. But actually it's not enough. Because it doesn't change them. They may not have a butsudan in their homes but they still have a butsudan in their hearts.
This was the problem in Israel. They still had not understood how to love God. Their hearts did not change. They still had their idols in their hearts. That's why they said ``This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!'' It sounds like a chant, doesn't it? They were looking to the temple as a magical protection. People were coming to God, but they were still treating Him like an idol. But that is not how God works. He does not want a religion. Christianity is a terrible religion. But it's an amazing love affair. And if you have ever fallen in love, then you will know that that is the only way that your heart will really change.
In another prophet, Ezekiel, God says ``I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.'' That's what we need. And I was reminded this week, that's what I need. I need God to give me that joy that comes from a love affair with Him. I need Him to teach me how to care about the things that He cares about. I need Him to change my heart.
That is my prayer for myself, and it is my prayer for each of you as well.