Pastor Dan Eddy

Jeremiah 32:1-9. 16-17, 24-25

Finding Christ in unlikely places

Part 3 – The Investment

3-27-11

I. Introduction – foolish Investments

I have a good friend of mine who recently told me that years ago he and his wife bought a 5 pound bar of silver for only a couple of hundred dollars. There is really no good use for this silver. They couldn’t wear as jewelry. They can’t use it as a tray to serve food or drink. They can’t even hang it in anywhere in their home. Just a five pound block of silver that they bought almost as a joke.

Well if you’ve been following the news lately, you know that precious metal prices have been going through the roof. In 1993 Silver hit a low of around $3.50 an ounce. On Friday it was trading at around $35 an ounce. That plain looking five pound block of silver bought for few hundred is now worth a few thousand. A silly little investment is now worth much, much more. 10 times more.

But foolish investments are the stuff of American history. At one point The Apple Corporation was a penny stock. Today it trades around $350 for one share. Microsoft, Walmart, and others were considered loser companies. While people never imagined extremely valuable companies like Eron, World Com or even the World Trade Center to today be worth zero.

Now you get the idea of what was behind our Old Testament text from Jeremiah 32. Our Lord commanded the prophet Jeremiah to make an utterly foolish investment.

II. Bringing the text to life

How foolish? It’s 588 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar – the enemy Babylonian King – was expanding his empire. Judah and tiny Benjamin were the only two remaining of the original 12 tribes of Israel. And the Babylonian forces, known in this text as the Chaldeans, had been destroying Judean fortress cities. Then Nebuchadnezzar’s troops laid siege to the capital Jerusalem. All commercial enterprises were collapsing. Epidemics and diseases were sweeping through the city. Property values were plummeting…soon to be worth nothing.

So in the midst of the chaos, the Lord commanded Jeremiah to do what? Buy a little piece of land near in the tiny town of Anathoth, located 3 miles North to Northeast of Jerusalem. That made about a much sense as purchasing farmland to grow food around that Japanese atomic power plant leaking all that radiation into the environment or building a beach house where a tsunami had just hit.

Combine that with the fact that Jeremiah was purchasing this land while sitting in jail. No, he wasn’t there for charges of embezzlement or lilaceous activity. No, Jeremiah was there because he was the Lord’s prophet.

Now just an aside. Prophets don’t just predict future activities. They are also there to proclaim God’s Word….His law and His gospel, like I’m doing right now. They don’t speak on their own but speak on behalf of God “as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit,” 2 Peter 1:21 ESV.

And what landed Jeremiah in jail was he emphatically kept foretelling of the Babylonian invasion and Judah’s defeat. He was preparing God’s Chosen People to be carted off into captivity. It was part of a larger message from God for Israel to repent of their sins and return in true faith to the Lord. The book of Jeremiah records him telling people about 100 times to repent. And he kept telling the King and the people to not resist this ongoing invasion. If they did, they would suffer and/or die. King Zedekiah, whose name means the Lord’s Righteousness, was anything but righteous. He refused to believe in God or listen to Jeremiah. He put his trust into arrogant self. So the King put God’s prophet in jail for being less than patriotic.

Jeremiah could make these predictions because the Lord knew the outcome of this battle. King Zedekiah did face his captor. His children were killed before his eyes, and his eyes were then gouged out. Zedekiah and the Israelites were given plenty of chances to repent. Those who did lived in peace. Those who didn’t were beaten, torture and/or killed.

So, when Jeremiah’s cousin came to visit him in jail, it confirmed what the Lord told him to do, which showed great faith in God. But, after the transaction was over, Jeremiah expressed in verse 17 with the little word “Ah” deep agony, sorrow and pain to the Lord as to why He had him do what seemed like an utterly foolish and worthless thing.

III. Bringing the text to our lives today

How does the purchasing of some field in a small town half way around the world about 2600 years have any bearing on your life today?

Maybe we feel like Jeremiah as we come to the Lord in sorrow and pain because the fruit of our labors here at CLC in our view are not producing much of great value. When returns are not immediate, we may say: “I’ll remain aloof, disconnected, uninvolved.”

When called upon to nurture and care for our members, at times we may say under our breath: “I can’t afford that kind of time with them.” When called upon to reach out to unbelieving neighbors and employees and friends, we write off the opportunity: “I’m not investing my energy in THEM! They’ve already made their decision not to come here.”

And so it goes--oh we might lay down a dollar here and a dollar there, just to look good, but when called to spend large amounts of blood, sweat and tears we may conveniently choose safer investments that guarantee large dividends of personal promotion and achievement.

The problem is like King Zedekiah we overvalue the things about us that we shouldn’t, and don’t value as greatly the things that we should. And as a result we, like King Zedekiah, don’t see how God as investing in our day-to-day lives. Our self-worth is backed by the things of this world, and when those investments in ourselves don’t come true, then perhaps we see ourselves as worth about as much a piece of land about to be taken over by a foreign captor.

Perhaps our prayer mirrors Jeremiah’s with its pain, sorrow, and agony…we feel we’ve gone from valuable to worthless.

IV. Tying the text to Christ.

The key to finding Christ in this text and therefore into our lives is to look at verse 8 where the Lord said to Jeremiah “Buy my field….for the right of possession and redemption is yours. Buy it for yourself.”

As Dr. Lessing of Concordia Seminary put it in a recent sermon:

Israel’s greatest prophet once made a similar outrageous investment. To name just a few risky investments: He offered living water to the Samaritan woman, healed blind Bartimaeus, gave new life to the desperate Zacchaeus, and resurrected from the dead Lazarus.

Because of His investment this prophet lost His shirt … literally. Matthew 27:35 ESV: “When they had crucified him, they divided up his garments by casting lots.” Jesus lost more than just His shirt. He lost His friends in Gethsemane. He lost the skin and muscle off His back. He lost the presence of His Father at a hill called Golgotha.

Spit and blood were caked to His cheeks. His lips were cracked and swollen. His lungs screamed with pain. Stretched nerves threatened to snap as death hung in the air.

Why would someone make such an investment and intentionally lose it all??

Because with it, Jesus Christ bought you and me…not worth investing in because of our sins. Not worth redeeming, but what He did was not wise by the world’s standards but was lovingly wise in His Heavenly Father’s eyes. God sees priceless value where others don’t.

Christ’s death on the cross gives Him the right to possess you and buy you as His own. It’s my job to be your Jeremiah and to assure you that God’s Word is real and true, and you are of priceless value to God. Repent, believe in faith, and act in love.

Jesus was captured by the enemy, imprisoned on the cross, and like the Babylonians the enemy of Satan was closing in, and God wanted His Son to purchase you from sin, death, and the power of the Devil not with 17 pieces of silver but with His holy, precious blood so we may be His own and live under Him in the kingdom of His church.

V. Application for our lives today

You see what Jeremiah didn’t see at the time, but the Lord did, was that piece of land would be worth much more than Jeremiah paid for it. Because the land the Babylonians were coming in to take over, God would one day restore to its full value and more, for future generations to inherit. You see 70 years later the Babylonians had been defeated and the Israelites would be allowed to repossess their land. Because from those people’s bloodline Jesus came as the Son of God incarnate as flesh and blood. And look at how much Christ purchase of humankind because of their sins has yielded salvation…through the Christian Church…for million upon hundreds of millions, conceivable saving billions of people for eternity.

The worthless becomes priceless at your baptism. Jesus is not a dead man who is worth of only some causal mentions in a history book. He came back from the dead in the flesh and is very much alive today in all ways. And what He gives you is worth more than all the bars of silver, gold and platinum in the world today. And what we receive in the next life is worth at least 10 times more than best day on Earth.

Receive the value of Christ as His priceless child this morning with His real body and true blood to renew in you that you are precious in His sight.

That means we are empowered by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit to invest His time, His energy, and His resources He gives you and me in the ministry of this church. We are commanded to “buy the field” and invest in the people here to strengthen faith and out there to bring people into the faith, for those who see themselves as not worth much in their eyes or world’s, or who are putting too much investment in this life.

1 Corinthians 1: 27 ESV “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”

This morning as you leave worship you are going to get this piece of Monopoly money.

Why Monopoly money? The world considers this worthless currency. But monopoly also means one. And there is only one God who loves you more than anything else. This one God want to monopolize your life so that you can not be drawn away by the fleeting value of this world to a life of everlasting death in Hell. He is your monopoly God in Christ Jesus for your own sake, for your own life, for your own everlasting security. You are valued because of Jesus Christ. He is investing in a relationship with You. What is He getting in return?

VI. Conclusion

Jeremiah did not see the day when the value of his land exceeded much more than what he paid for it. But future generations did when they returned to Israel.

And what God has invested in today will be worth much more in the future…whether or not we see it.

So let the Lord continue to invest in this small field here at Christ Lutheran, and despite what the world may perceive as worthless today may He, through the power of Holy Spirit, use us to show others the priceless value of eternity. Amen.