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The Ridiculous Investment
September 26, 1999
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
Jeremiah
32:1-15
We’re
going to look at a passage today from the Old Testament
book of Jeremiah, chapter 32. But before we do that, I
want to provide you with the setting for this story.
Around
the turn of the 6th century BC lived the prophet, Jeremiah.
In his day, the northern kingdom of Israel had been destroyed,
leaving only Judah, which was centered around Jerusalem.
And, even this southern kingdom was now in great danger.
Judah had the misfortune of being located on what boiled
down to a freeway that was used by superpower military
forces who were constantly vying for control of the Middle
East. Jerusalem and the surrounding country was continually
being inhabited, threatened or scrambling for its very
existence.
In
Jeremiah’s day, the Babylonians were the conquering
power. Judah was loosely under Babylonian rule, though
not comfortably so. In fact, Judah spent a whole lot of
time and energy plotting and rebelling and scheming in
an effort to shake off the imperial power.
Eventually
the Babylonians got tired of the game and in 587 BC they
attacked, quickly overtook the country, marched right to
the gates of Jerusalem and put the city under siege. Literally,
they were pounding at the front door. They had stripped
and destroyed the land and villages all around, and Jerusalem
would indeed fall after a short time.
During
all of this time, there was one loud, grating voice in
the ears of Jerusalem’s ruler, King Zedekiah. That
was the voice of Jeremiah, the prophet. Jeremiah was from
Anatoth, just an hour’s walk from Jerusalem (the
suburbs). Jeremiah was continuously speaking his prophetic
word … that Jerusalem should NOT be resisting Babylon’s
rule, should NOT be plotting with other countries, that
God had actually chosen to discipline Judah through Babylon,
and they needed to accept that. Jeremiah’s word said
that Judah had broken its covenant relationship with God.
Many had stopped worshipping, idols had reappeared and
were being worshipped…there were even hints that
human sacrifice was being tolerated in some places.
For
Jeremiah, the answer to Judah’s problems did not
lay in outrunning or maneuvering Babylon at all…but
in returning to their relationship with the One true God.
And because Jeremiah kept repeating this word, he apparently
aroused the King’s wrath, and was put under a sort
of house arrest in the King’s palace. As low as morale
probably was in Jerusalem, they didn’t need a doom
and gloom prophet to make things worse.
Jeremiah
32:1-15
When
I was in college around 1980, I made the first sizable
investment of my life. I invested, I think it was $1100,
in a 1965 Volkswagen Bug. I was so proud of that car! Great
gas mileage, easy to fix, sunroof, rebuilt engine…a
thing of beauty.
They
say, of course, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder…and
in the case of my VW, my eyes might have been a little
fuzzy. On the outside, it had a lot of dents, some rust,
and a very faded paint job. On the inside, it was pretty
ripped and torn. But boy, did it run well. At least, for
ME it ran well. It gave Anne a little more trouble. It
did have one irritating habit where, once in awhile, for
no good reason at all, the throttle would go wide open
and stick. The engine would wind up like a racecar, and
I’d have to pull over, shut it off, run to the back,
flip the trunklid and push a little lever back into place…then
off I’d go.
The
first time Anne drove it, I think I had forgotten to mention
that little feature…we had an interesting phone
conversation that day. But the hardest day was when I realized
that Anne’s mom…refused to ride in it! I’m
not sure if it was the fact that the passenger side door
didn’t quite latch all the way…or that the
floorboards were rusted out to the point that you could
see the pavement going by underneath the car! At any rate,
it was my first major investment.
Jeremiah’s
story here in chapter 32 is clearly an investment story.
And it clearly lays out an investment strategy. A strategy
that is quite different from what you’ll receive
from your Smith Barney broker, or your Charles Schwab Web
site.
Jeremiah
sits under house arrest, and is approached by his cousin.
This cousin, Hanamel, says to him, “Jerry! Have I
got a deal for you!” Already it sounds like swamp
land in Florida, or a call you receive at exactly 6 in
the evening from someone who can’t pronounce your
name. “Jerry, I’ve decided to sell my field
out in the suburbs. And you, you lucky dog, have first
rights to buy it.” (As Jeff mentioned last week in
the story of Ruth, this was the lawful practice of the
land. When someone was forced to sell land, the closest
kin would be given every opportunity to buy it, so that
the land…which was so precious in that economy…might
stay within that extended family.) “So, Jerr, I’m
coming to you (probably having already gone to closer family
members, who laughed him right out of town)…are
you interested?
What
do you say?”
Now
Jeremiah was no dummy. I’m sure he stopped and thought
about this for a second. And undoubtedly, he said to himself: “Should
I invest in this piece of property?
Let’s
see. I’m in jail. The property is just outside of
town, in the midst of a huge and powerful occupying army.
They’ve ruined the villages and crops already. I
may well be killed, or carried thousands of miles away
from here. It will be YEARS and YEARS before there could
be any kind of stability around here. Everyone around me
would think I ws absolutely insane. And, to top it all
off…I think God Himself has a hand in this terrible
situation.
“Buy
your field? I’d love to!”
This
is not the investment that Jeremiah’s broker had
in mind. He must be nuts. All he can say is “I knew
this was the word of the Lord.” Yes, but isn’t
the word of the Lord supposed to make sense? This is insanity.
But Jeremiah counts out the silver, signs and seals the
document, and puts it in a clay jar “so they will
last a long time.” (And they would...some of the
Dead Sea scrolls were found preserved in exactly this manner.)
The
next thing that Jeremiah does is exactly what you or I
would do. He panics. The whole next section of scripture
is a prayer where Jeremiah reminds God of his faithfulness
to his people…and reminds God of the terrible situation
they are in…and then, in a little small voice he
asks, “Given all of this, God…could you just
tell me…why on earth did you tell me to do such
a crazy thing?”
And
God’s answer comes back to Jeremiah, powerfully and
beautifully.
I
will surely gather (these people) from all the lands
where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath;
I will bring them back to this place and let them live
in safety. They will be my people, and I will be their
God. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I
will never stop doing good to them.
And
so Jeremiah invested in this ridiculous piece of dirt.
But in much more than a piece of property…Jeremiah
has invested in hope. God’s hope. Even though he
couldn’t see what God was doing in all this, he chose
to invest. When things looked absolutely bleakest, when
God couldn’t even be seen…Jeremiah still invested
in the hope that God was good for His word…that
He would not abandon His people.
That…was
a risky investment strategy. The University of Washington
Business School taught me that the investments with the
highest potential return…were those with the highest
risk. Jeremiah had gone the high risk route. He had everything
to lose. He was throwing good silver away. He was ruining
his own reputation. He probably wouldn’t even end
up with the land. He would be a laughingstock. But Jeremiah
was looking at the potential gain. What if? What if God
was good for his word? What if God would stay with his
people, even through bad times. What if God could be trusted
EVEN WHEN the circumstances of life were in total chaos?
What if God’s love and compassion was even then shaping
the future?
Jeremiah
had a lot of nerve. He was ridiculous enough to believe
that his hope didn’t come form the events taking
place around him, from what he could see. Because what
he saw was bad. What WE see is often bad. Young people
are shot at a church rally. Families fall apart. People
are sick. Jeremiah was ridiculous enough to realize that
his hope in God would not save him and everyone else from
all pain or disaster.
Despite
what some teach, and what we often believe, faith in God
does not save believers from pain. As far as I can see,
Christians get sick, get in car wrecks, struggle financially
and die…in just the same proportion that nonbelievers
do. But Jeremiah’s hope was even more ridiculous…he
believed that actually THROUGH disaster, his hope in God
would grow even clearer and stronger…and that God
would not leave him.
There’s
a professor over at Whitworth College in Spokane named
Jerry Sittser. It was in 1991 that he was driving his family
in a minivan in Eastern Washington one night, and a drunk
driver crossed the centerline and hit them head on. Three
generations of Jerry’s family…his mother,
his wife, and one of his children…literally died
in his arms that night. And in a book called A Grace
Disguised, he talks about the incredible pain of the
years that followed. It’s one of the most honest
books I have ever read. It’s one of the best books
on suffering I have ever read. But it’s an even more
remarkable book for talking about hope.
I
met Jerry, and heard him speak a couple summers ago. Jerry
Sittser is still choosing to invest in God. In fact, he
continues to pour his life into his relationship with God,
and into living that out as a parent…as a professor…as
a pastor. In his book, he says this:
“The
accident itself bewilders me as much today as it did
three years ago. Much good has come from it, but all
the good in the world will never make the accident itself
good…Yet the grief I feel is sweet as well as
bitter. I still have a sorrowful soul; yet I wake up
every morning joyful, eager for what the new day will
bring. Never have I felt as much pain as I have in the
last three years; yet never have I experienced as much
pleasure in simply being alive…What I once considered
mutually exclusive – sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure,
death and life – have become parts of a greater
whole. My soul has been stretched.”
He
continues to invest.
Jeremiah
invested…in God. He invested because he believed
with all his heart that there would come a day when he
would stand in that field, or someone else would, and raise
their arms up to heaven and say, “I knew it! You
loved us…you were with us the whole time!” And
he lived the present with that picture in his mind…even
when the day looked darkest.
Jeremiah
wasn’t the only person to ever make a ridiculous
investment. In fact, he learned it…from God. Over
and over again, God has chosen to invest…in people.
In you, and me. Chose to love human beings even when we
were unlovable, and showed no interest. Chose to save even
when we didn’t understand God chose to come…to
invest, and to seal it with the blood of His own Son on
a cross.
Jeremiah
isn’t the only person that God called to this new
investment strategy, either. Moses, Abraham, Jacob, Paul,
Peter. All were called to invest their lives in the depths
of His love even when it seemed ridiculous, even when it
practically killed them to do so. Called to invest in people.
Called to invest their lives in a kingdom that God wanted
to build…a
kingdom that still today, we say is here…and is
not yet. A kingdom that broke into the world in Jesus Christ…but
it’s not all here. There’s some darkness. Some
things that break our hearts…and by and large, those
same things that break the heart of God. One day, we’ll
see the King and the kingdom in full. But now, even now,
God calls us to invest…totally, fully, completely
in God, and in God’s people…no matter how
things look.
Fifteen
years ago, Anne and I were working with high school kids
in this area. I became friends with one young man named
Don… who really struggled with life...who tried
an awful lot of things, looking for something. And I invested
two years in him…ballgames, hamburgers, talks, weekend
camps. We talked about God many, many times. And finally
when he was almost to graduation, we had a critical talk.
I
think Don understood the gospel as well as any young person
I’d known. Understood the relationship with God,
understood the radical nature of following Christ, understood
that it would change his life…and he said no. Chose
not to do it. He wasn’t ready to let God in. It broke
my heart. It made me feel like God had failed, or that
I’d failed. Made me wonder at the time if I’d
made a foolish investment. But I don’t think that
any more. Someday that investment will bear fruit…because
my hope is in a God who loves Don, who has always loved
him, and who has walked through even dark times with him.
Many
of you are at key times in life where you need to make
decisions about your investments in the years to come… your
time, your passion, your life, your resources. Where are
you going to invest?
Our
culture clamors for us to throw everything we have into
things, into personal success, into titles. Jeremiah reminds
us to invest in hope.
Some
of you start back to college this week. Where are you going
to invest this year? Will it be in people? Are you willing
to prioritize sharing hope with the people of your world?
Some
of you are around mid-life, and you’re reevaluating
what the next years are going to look like. Where are you
going to invest? In loving your kids? In building your
marriage? In wrapping your arms around not only people
you like to be with…but around people you don’t
understand, or who aren’t easy to be with, or who
have never known what it means for someone to believe in
them? Will you invest in the kingdom that God is building?
Some
of you are close to or past retirement. Where are you going
to invest? I’ve never been convinced that there was
such a thing as retirement in a kingdom perspective. John
Wimber, a well-known pastor for years in California who
had to step down from his parish for health reasons said
“…I
hesitate over the word retirement. I’m not going
to quit what we’re doing right now. I got saved,
man. I was going to hell in a handbasket. I was a mean,
terrible person and Jesus took that person and saved
him. I love Jesus. I’m going to serve him all my
life.”
No
such thing as retirement in the kingdom.
God
is calling us to kingdom work, friends. Feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked, loving the unloved…even when
we don’t see all the successes. Even when we ought
to be discouraged…still God says to us, “Invest
in me. Invest in my hope. I am with you.” Are you
willing to invest?
Jeremiah
gives us his advice in very simple words: “Go on!…Buy
the field.”
Buy
the field. Amen.
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