Faith and encouragement
Jeremiah 32: 6-15, Heb 11:1-10
One day the Devil was showing his junior demons around his workshop. On the bench and arrayed around the walls were all kinds of implements: tools which Satan used to harm God’s people:
· There was a horrible spiky object – “this is Spite and Hatred, that’s very useful”.
· There was a rat-like thing - “this is Envy which gnaws at a person’s soul until they have no peace”.
· “These chains and fetters are Lust and Avarice. With these I load people down and prevent them from being free”.
· “In this bottle is a bitter potion – an Unforgiving Spirit. It can poison a person’s whole life”.
“But here is my most powerful weapon”: and he held up a small, sharp, insignificant thing - just like a little pebble that might get in you shoe and stop you walking properly. “This really hinders people”.
“What is it?” said the junior demons.
“It’s Discouragement,” said Satan.
Discouragement stops people from doing what God wants them to do and from being what God wants them to be. Don’t get discouraged in the Christian life. It is easy to do so when we consider our own failures, the weaknesses of the Christian church, or the world’s attitudes to Christian standards. All these things can discourage us. But discouragement is a form of unbelief – it is the opposite of faith. And conversely: faith is the antidote to discouragement.
Jeremiah and the field
The Bible is full of examples of people of faith – Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Ruth, Daniel, Esther. Many of these are named in the great “hall of fame” of people of faith in Hebrews 11.
One great man of faith is Jeremiah. He lived at a time of great wickedness. The people of Judah had turned from the true and living God. They worshipped idols – even in the Temple itself. They sacrificed their children to the god Moloch. Immorality was rife in pagan temples. The rich oppressed the poor. There were great inequalities. All the prophets had spoken out against these sins but the people would not listen. And they wouldn’t listen to Jeremiah either. He warned them of a coming destruction – that God was going to let his people be overcome by their enemies the Babylonians because they had abandoned him. If they would turn from their sins there was a chance God would spare them as he had done in the past.
Alas, they did not repent, and it all happened just as Jeremiah had predicted. The Babylonians came and invaded the land, and then Jeremiah was thrown into prison as a traitor. (He had predicted this invasion so he must have been on the enemy’s side!) Yes, Jeremiah had a lot to be sorrowful about, and his name has become a byword for gloom and doom. (“Don’t be a Jeremiah!”, people say.) But at the darkest hour – when he could have been excused for lapsing into discouragement Jeremiah showed tremendous faith. (Jer. 32)
At the very time the army of the King of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah was locked up in the courtyard of the guard, he made arrangements to buy a field from his cousin Hanamel! 17 shekels of silver were weighed out, the deeds, signed, sealed and witnessed. Then Jeremiah gave the deeds to his assistant Baruch, who was told to put them in an earthenware jar so they would keep for a long time.
You see, Jeremiah had faith that the time would come when the Babylonians would themselves be defeated and the Jews would be allowed to return to their land.
”This is what the LORD says: As I have brought all this great calamity on this people, so I will give them all the prosperity I have promised them.
Once more fields will be bought in this land of which you say, ‘It is a desolate waste, without men or animals, for it has been handed over to the Babylonians.’
Fields will be bought for silver, and deeds will be signed, sealed and witnessed in the territory of Benjamin, in the villages around Jerusalem, in the towns of Judah and in the towns of the hill country, of the western foothills and of the Negev, because I will restore their fortunes, declares the LORD.”
(Jeremiah 42-44 )
The people must have thought Jeremiah was a fool – to pay so much money for a useless bit of land which would soon be overrun by the enemy. “A fool and his money are soon parted”, they must have said.
But Jeremiah’s faith was vindicated – 70 years later, fields were indeed bought and sold in that land. Life did returns to normal. The Jews did return to their land and they even rebuilt the Temple. The future of Judah was assured.
Now we have need for the same kind of faith. We wonder what the future holds for Christianity in Wales. The way that both chapels and churches are declining. We may even wonder if it worth trying to live the Christian life. Or we may grow despondent about the state of society and the way our nation is going. Like Jeremiah we must have faith in a God who is in control of the future.
The prayer of faith
Faith is not only the antidote to despair – it is the fuel for prayer.
“Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11: 6)
Faith is the driving force behind prayer, and prayer without faith is like a car without petrol. But when we pray we have to put our faith into action.
Hudson Taylor was a great pioneer missionary in China in the c19th. When he was on his way to China, the ship in which he was sailing was becalmed in the South Seas. They were very near an island inhabited by people who had a reputation for being fierce cannibals. Inexorably the current was carrying their ship toward the island. There was every possibility they would be killed an eaten.
The Captain and crew were desperate and said to Hudson Taylor: “Please pray to God for us.”
“Yes, if you will set up your sails to catch the wind God sends”.
Now, the Captain didn’t want to be a laughing stock: he refused to set up the sails in a dead calm.
“Very well then, I will not pray”. Eventually the Captain was desperate enough to do what Hudson Taylor had said: he gave orders to raise the sails. Hudson Taylor got down on his knees in his cabin and began to pray for wind. After some considerable time there came a knock on his cabin door.
“Are you still praying for wind?”
“Yes”.
“Well, Captain says you can stop now – we’ve more wind than we can manage!”
This incident show us the kind of faith we need to have. It has to be linked to action. Prayer and action go together. We need to pray in faith and act in faith as that captain did. Let us be open to whatever God might be asking us to do.
Conclusion
“Let us not grow weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap a harvest, if we do not lose heart.” (Gal. 5: 9).
