A Shrub in the Wilderness

[00:00:00] And peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:11] So really, the readings just keep pointing us in the same direction, so to speak. A couple weeks ago, remember me going like this and like this, talking about which way we're facing. There are two options. [00:00:26] Toward God and His Word, or away from it, toward other things. Remember, we were doing this, my neck was hurting coming back. [00:00:36] It's like we're inclined in this direction toward ourselves and toward earthly things until Christ frees us to look to him and to trust in Him. [00:00:50] But those are the two directions that we can be facing. And then we see it here in our reading from Jeremiah, which one? Second, we've got these two options. Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord as he turns away. So which way is the heart facing? [00:01:23] From which direction is it receiving? [00:01:29] He will be like a bush in the wastelands. He will not see prosperity when it comes to see. [00:01:38] In biblical language, to see means to have as well. Like, if you see it, you have it. [00:01:44] Kind of like if you. [00:01:51] If something's going to happen in the future, like, let's say, I don't know, your family is going to have some kind of fortunate thing happen where you have great success and whatever. If you don't live to see the day, then you're not going to have that right. But if you live to see it, then you're going to have it. That's a really bad example. But, oh, well, you see. So seeing is having in scripture. All right, so he will be like a bush in the wastelands. He will not see prosperity when it comes. [00:02:29] He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. [00:02:36] But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes. Its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. [00:02:59] All of this hinges on on which way someone is facing toward God and his Word, whose trust is in the Lord or toward man and the flesh. [00:03:18] Another way to put this is like, rather than looking like this way or this way, you could say this way or this way. So set your mind on things above, not on things on earth or seek treasure in heaven where moth and rust don't destroy. And such, rather than on earth where moth and rust destroy. [00:03:39] This stuff is Passing away, it's untrustworthy. [00:03:45] But the inheritance kept in heaven for you. Christ and his riches, the word of God which endures forever. That stuff's not going away. [00:03:57] So toward what are we facing now? Here's the tricky part. [00:04:07] The bush in the desert. The one who's the bush in the desert isn't thinking, I'm a bush in the desert, and I wish I were a tree planted by water. [00:04:19] That's the key. It's tricky. [00:04:22] The devil doesn't want us to think that we're doing badly when we're looking away from Christ, when we're looking away from the Lord. [00:04:32] Instead, our sinful nature, our being inclined toward ourselves, kind of pushes out the possibility of faith and the gifts that come through Christ so that we don't think we even need them. The temptation is to think doing just fine. Or to think, I'm not doing just fine, but I know how I can get there. [00:04:58] Or to think, I'm not doing fine and there's no way to do fine. That would be despair. [00:05:05] So we could be proud of the way things are oriented toward earth, oriented toward man and the flesh. [00:05:15] Or we could despair over how we're not living up to our own expectations or the expectations of others of how things should be. [00:05:33] We need somebody to show us, look, things seem great now, but really, you're a shrub in the wilderness. [00:05:43] We need to be shown that. [00:05:47] And that's what Jesus does in our Gospel reading. [00:05:53] He says, look, you might be rich now and full now and laughing now. [00:06:01] All people might speak well of you. [00:06:06] That's not a good sign. [00:06:13] Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. [00:06:22] Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets. [00:06:36] Now Jesus is saying that things are backwards from the way they appear. [00:06:43] So if in an earthly temporal sense, like now, I'm having all my desires fulfilled, and in an earthly sense, people speak well of me, that's a problem instead. [00:07:03] Blessed are those who are poor. Yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. [00:07:28] Rejoice in that day. Leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For so their Fathers did to the prophets. [00:07:39] Jesus is shaking us out of our normal way of thinking, telling us, look, it's going to be opposite. [00:07:47] Now this is the way it is. We've got a cross here which is a symbol of, I mean it's an instrument of torture that Jesus endured for our sake. [00:08:02] We see Jesus on the cross and it's the most beautiful thing. [00:08:07] Looking at it from a certain perspective, looking at it from the perspective of somebody who's empty, who needs forgiveness and life, who needs a sacrifice, needs to be made right with God. [00:08:23] And it's beautiful because Jesus is providing all of that. Then you see his self sacrifice and his humbling himself and giving himself up to death as beautiful. Yeah, right now it's death and weakness, dishonor, all of that on the cross. That's what it is for Christ in experience. [00:08:50] Right? [00:08:52] Blessed are you who are poor now, who are hungry now, who weep now you shall be satisfied, have the kingdom of God, you shall laugh. [00:09:07] Blessed are you. [00:09:10] Blessed is Christ who gave himself up for us in obedience to the Father. Looking to the Father and not earthly things, looking to please his Father and not men. He could have made them happy in a way that would have made him escape the cross. [00:09:34] He could have escaped the cross if he wanted to. [00:09:38] That would have given immediate escape from pain and suffering, from difficulty, from lack, dishonor. [00:09:50] But he didn't. He held on to God's word. He looked resolutely to God and His Word and his will and gave up everything and in so doing gained everything and in the case of Christ, you know, gained everything that he already had. [00:10:19] In our experience, this being oriented toward God or, or other things, it's sneaky. It's hard to discern. It's impossible to discern apart from the Holy Spirit. [00:10:37] So here's one way that this happens. Let's say you're thinking about ultimate things. Am I saved? [00:10:44] Is the kingdom of God mine? [00:10:47] Am I going to be okay in the judgment? [00:10:52] How do you figure that out? How do you go about thinking about it? [00:10:56] To what do you turn for confidence? [00:11:01] It could be tempting to think, well, I think I'm doing pretty well. Or like at least I'm not doing terribly. I do my best thing is, can't stand up with that. That is not going to last in the judgment. Doing okay is not going to get us there. [00:11:29] We need God's word to come and smash those foolish hopes and thoughts. We need the law to come down and say, look, I might in an optimistic moment think like, well, I mostly Do. Okay, but if I look at the law, if I look at a couple of commandments, maybe just the first one. You shall have no other gods. [00:11:56] What does that mean? Fear, Loving and trusting God above all things. Well, got no hope there. [00:12:03] On my own strength, my own track record, probability in the future, got zero chance. [00:12:13] But it takes recognizing that to recognize. Like, wait a second. For a second there, I was thinking, maybe I'm doing okay. Or at least I was hoping that I'm doing enough. [00:12:23] And in that moment, I was a shrub in the wilderness. I was out there saying, yeah, take that heat. You know, I've got this as this foolish shrub. [00:12:39] You know, the difference between that shrub and the tree is just looking to Christ and trusting, not in ourselves, looking to someone else to be our righteousness, our honor, our wealth, all of those things. [00:13:00] The struggle. It really happens. It happens in big. In big ways. Like maybe something major happens or a health concern, or you lose a loved one or, you know, there are crises where this plays out. It's like, what is my confidence and my strength? I've lost this thing that was a big part of me, and now I'm forced to look somewhere and look to Christ. [00:13:27] It happens in tiny ways, too. [00:13:30] Like here I am up here in front of all of you, and I realize, wait a second. [00:13:36] I messed up the bulletin as I was making it. I didn't look and check is the first reading correct? And it was wrong. [00:13:47] And so here I find out in front of all of you. And what are you going to think? [00:13:53] Are you going to think I'm sloppy or that I don't pay attention to things, or I'm just. I don't care enough to spend the time to. [00:14:04] We could keep going with that, but it sounds really silly, but can you think of similar situations that you've been in where you've felt on the spot or. Or like you might receive dishonor for something like that? People might not think well of you. [00:14:29] And does it affect you? [00:14:31] Do you ever. If you're shown that you were wrong in a small thing, do you get defensive? [00:14:37] You try and defend it and show how, like, why you did it and explain it and feel. I mean, when your reputation's at stake, that's the temptation. [00:14:51] But if I turn to my own reputation and I try and defend it or blame it on somebody else, could do that. This genuinely wasn't Debbie's fault. It was my fault. Let's make that clear. But that's another move we make. Blame it on somebody else. What do you do when the law hits you, when you're shown that you were wrong in Christ, we can just ask for forgiveness and look to him. Not depend on our own reputation or our own strength, but just look to him. Does it mean I don't care that I messed up the bulletin? No, you know, I want to get the bulletin right. And so I might say, like, oh, I need to. Maybe I even need to put a system in place to make sure that I really check the. The readings, like, whatever it is, and apply this to your own situation. [00:15:49] We can learn from the law to improve. [00:15:53] That's important. Want to not make mistakes and such. [00:15:58] But what do you do when the law comes with its accusation? [00:16:09] How do you move forward? [00:16:12] One way to move forward is to fortify yourself in your mind to say, well, 97% of the time, I get the bulletin right. [00:16:25] Which would be to say, like, well, most of the time, I do pretty well. I think that's a dangerous place to look, get your track record, or that you're doing pretty well. It doesn't hold up in the end because we're just fooling ourselves. [00:16:43] Like, I really might, you know, get the first reading correct in the bulletin 97% of the time. But that's just one little thing. [00:16:53] If we wanted to take my life under a microscope, first of all, there's no need to get a microscope out, okay? Like, just take the law and examine your life. It won't be hard to find things that are wrong if you're being honest. [00:17:14] And that's really what we should do when we're tempted by the devil to look at our. Or by our own sinful nature, to look at our life and to try and make it into a good picture that'll sort of stand up. [00:17:29] You just got to receive the law and let it smash that rosy picture. [00:17:40] Let it smash the defenses that you've put up. [00:17:45] Because what it's doing, the purpose of the law, in exposing sin, in exposing us for what we really are, in saying, look, you're a shrub. [00:17:56] What the law does for us is help us to look to what really is not fading away. [00:18:06] Look to the Word that endures forever, to look to Christ, who is that tree who trusts in the Lord with his whole heart, whose way is blameless, smashes our idols. What we might look to otherwise helps us to look to God, to look to him alone for our confidence. [00:18:34] Now, does the Bulletin really matter? Does that experience really matter? And how I deal with it? Does your daily experience as you. As you deal with those. Let's say spiritual crises, big and small. Do the small ones matter? [00:18:55] They all spring up from roots. What's the root of it all? [00:19:01] Faith. [00:19:04] And so, yes, in the struggle, whether it's over small things or big things, and every one of those is an opportunity to look to Christ or something else. [00:19:15] And looking to Christ, he builds us up. The thing is, in being smashed or knocked down in our own confidence in ourselves or whatnot, it helps us to say, not I, but Christ who lives in me, so that it becomes a habit, so that it becomes a way of life. You see Paul doing that in 1 Corinthians 15. In the reading, he's saying, look, we preached Christ to you. [00:19:53] And then he says, I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. [00:20:02] He's not like, well, I didn't know any better. [00:20:06] He just says, I'm lousy. I persecuted the church of God. How can he take that and live with himself? Well, because he doesn't have to live with himself. He's died. [00:20:17] He lives in Christ. [00:20:19] He's trusting in Christ for his righteousness, his confidence, his standing before God. [00:20:26] On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them. Careful, Paul. Don't trust in yourself. Well, there he is. You see it? He says, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is in me. You see, he's careful, not. He recognizes that even in. [00:20:45] He's like, that could be boasting. And so he actually, you know, for the sake of his hearers, shows like, oh, but whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, I had a professor in college who would do this. He was a theology professor. And if you told him, like, thank you so much for your sermon or thank you so much for this, you know, what you taught us in class today, he would go, but then he'd at the same time be going like this to show like, yeah, my sinful nature wants to hear. Like, wants to receive honor from you and praise. And it makes me feel really good. But by faith, I've got to stop. I've got to not trust in what you're saying about me right now and just look to Christ. It's exactly what Paul is doing here. [00:21:43] As we diminish, as we are diminished in our own opinion of ourselves, as the law exposes us for what we truly are, we recognize that apart from Christ, we're a shrub. [00:21:57] Then Christ increases, then looking to Christ, it's all about him. And he's the tree that we see. There rooted. It's got rooms, roots in the stream that doesn't mind the heat a bit. [00:22:14] It's Christ that we're looking to. But then we're caught up in Christ, united to him by faith. [00:22:25] So that in Christ we pass through the heat, through the fire, unscathed. We don't need to put up defenses for ourselves, for our little shrub. [00:22:36] Because Christ is our sure defense. That nothing can wither or stand against Christ is everything for us. [00:22:47] Thanks be to God. In Jesus name, amen.