2 Legit 2 Quit...

Jeremiah 12:1-5...

Sermon #12

DRIVING THEME:

God is still present and active in human affairs and intervenes in our behalf.

PROPOSITION:

God's call to individuals begins with a promise to be faithful and continues with the assurance to be with us to encourage and empower.

ANTITHESIS:

M.C. Hammer made famous the album, Too Legit To Quit, released in 1991. Hippies and Bippies, Gen-Xers and gangsters, college students and high school dropouts, homeless and homeowner joined Hammer in the refrain that challenged individuals and groups to discover in their own psyche, something worth living for. Jeremiah should have listened to Hammer.

Jeremiah's problem is our problem today. We feel like giving up. We were the ones, who said, "Send me, Lord. I'll go." We also said, "I know the Lord will make a way out of no way." Even the blood-washed, born-again, blessed believers sometimes feel like giving up. When God called Jeremiah God had six points of legitimization: 1) I knew you before you came from your mother's womb, 2) I appointed you, 3) I consecrated you, 4) I am with you, 5) I have put my word in your mouth, and 6) I have set you before the nations. Jeremiah, in spite of this auspicious ordination diploma, gets weary of witnessing, is frustrated because no one is repenting, let alone listening.

Jeremiah is ceaseless in his complaining (12:1-4). Finally, God responds with a rhetorical question, "If you have raced with foot-runners and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you fall down, how will you fare in the thickets of the Jordan?" (12:5). God says to us today, that if the foot-runners with their insults, misunderstandings, intrusions, and letdowns wear you out, how will you compete with horses? We live in a statistically driven society in which numbers count for much. When results cannot be placed on computers and calculators, we quit. When healing doesn't come, we quit. When God doesn't answer prayer, we quit.

THESIS:

God has designed it so that we are surrounded with those who refused to quit when the going got rough.

Look at Job out on his ash heap, asking questions and getting no answers because God is silent. "Oh, that I knew where I might him!" (Job 23:3, RSV).

Look at Elijah underneath his juniper tree, wishing that he could die, and God was silent. "It's too much, Lord … Take away my life; I might as well be dead!" (1 Kings 19:4, GNB).

Look at Jesus out on Calvary, with undeserved punishment, unrelenting pain, and God was silent. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46, RSV).

Jeremiah was eventually encouraged, mustered as much energy as was humanly possible, and continued on his prophetic crusade. Jeremiah found out that he was too legit to quit.

RELEVANT QUESTION:

Is there a word from the Lord for those who are on the brink of quitting? Is there a place of refuge for the weary soul?

SYNTHESIS:

As a soldier in the army of the Lord, you cannot afford to quit now. You are LEGIT.

God legitimizes our calling to service because God is reliable and will stand by and look after faithful covenant partners.

The God who makes promises will keep them and will intervene in powerful ways when the promise runs amok (11:20; Psalm 73:1).

Faithfulness to God is its own reward. The one who is faithful cannot expect that others will see and be changed.

We serve a God of creation (verse 4). The God who takes care of the sparrow and the blade of grass will certainly take of us. God makes our claim for attention legitimate by sending God's Son to this material world.

The God who called is the God who sends; the God who sends is the God who empowers; the God who empowers is the God who sustains, and the God who sustains is the God who is coming again.

We are legitimate cathedral builders. We cannot say who built Chartres or Salisbury or Amiens or Durham, and no one builder ever saw his masterpiece completed, for the work of a cathedral is the work of many lives and many lifetimes. The justice of God is not that we are allowed to complete what we have begun, but the grace of God is that we are allowed to participate in what God has begun.
If we consider that God has surrounded us with God's abiding presence and promises, we would not quit. Our claim to God's faithfulness is made legitimate by who God is.