Born to Win Podcast - with Ronald L. Dart

I am sitting here reading a document that is 2,600 years old. It reads like the memoirs of man who had an ongoing dialogue with God. Chances are, you have a copy of this same document right there in your home—it is the Book of Jeremiah in your Bible. God first spoke to Jeremiah when he was just a boy, and he sent him down to the gate of the city to speak to the people who came there to conduct business. The Gate of the city was something like our county courthouse is today. You made your contracts there, transferred property, held trials, and carried out all the legal business of the community. And it was there that Jeremiah had to go and speak In the name of Yehovah. (By the way, I am not a Jehovah’s Witness. Jehovah is an English rendering of the name of God—Yahweh, in Hebrew, or something close to that.) It was a very rocky course for Jeremiah, and as he grew in influence, his enemies list grew proportionately. The prophecies were spoken to the men of that generation, but they were written down to quote the Apostle Paul. And in fact, some of Jeremiah’s prophecies seem to be singularly directed at the last days of man on earth. For example, we’ll find an enduring sign between God and his people in Jeremiah, chapter 17.

Sometimes I understand why people don’t like to read the Old Testament prophets. They have an internal image of God as a kind of Grandfather in the sky. It is very comforting to them. And then they read a prophet like Jeremiah, and they come up against a God who is rather unlike the God they imagine. But it occurs to me that believing in the God of your imagination could be risky business. The God of the Bible does not make impossible demands, but he does make demands. The God of the Bible is gentle, comforting, kind, protective—but he isn’t that way to everyone, all the time. Let me put it to you this way. God has created the best of all possible worlds. He has placed man in this world and given man the liberty to do what he chooses to do. The problem is that some men choose to do evil to other men, and that is the simple answer to a very difficult question about God’s world. Bad things happen to good people because bad men make bad choices. So where does God enter the picture?

It is a small national conceit that Freedom is an American idea. Nor does Freedom owe its origins to the Greeks, either. Freedom is a singular Christian idea. I can say because the roots of Christianity reach far back into the lives of the patriarchs of the Bible. And the idea of freedom, that lies deep in the desires of every man, was the will of God for mankind. The Declaration of Independence, the founding document of these United States, acknowledged that the idea of Freedom originated with the Creator. What may dawn on us as we think our way through this is that freedom creates democracy. It is not the other way around. But can you have freedom without democracy? That's what I need to explain next...

As I read through Jeremiah, I sometimes get the feeling that I’m reading his memoirs. Yes, there are things that he has said, speeches he has spoken. Yes, there are the things that God has directed him to tell the people of Jerusalem. But he’s writing it up (after the fact, I think) for the generations that are to come. I can see the prophet Jeremiah, sitting, alone in his room, perhaps kneeling, and praying. Day after day, he has been going down to the gate of the city. (In our world today, it’s like going down to the courthouse steps.) There he has gone to speak to all the notables and officials who have come to do business—official and unofficial. Time after time, he has told these people what the Lord says…but no one can tell any difference. And as he considers praying for the people one more time, God speaks to him with a different idea. Then said the Lord to me, Pray not for this people for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and an oblation, I will not accept them: but I will consume them by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence.

Would you like to be prophet? The prophets of old had to do some really strange things from time to time. It wasn’t enough for them to just speak the words, sometimes they had to act things out. Ezekiel had a strange job when he had to lie on his side with his face against a model city of Jerusalem one day for every year of Israel’s iniquity (and then lie on the other side for Judah). It was a sign of what was to come. Finally, Ezekiel lost his wife. She died as a sign of what was to come. Do you still think you would like to be a prophet? Because there’s no telling what God may require you to do if you were. So why did the prophets do those things? Well, part of it was to drive home the point. To give a visual image so people might be more responsive and might remember it longer. We tend to remember something more if we can visualize it. And these were not a literate people. Many could not read, and so the visual image became all the more important to them. As I read through Jeremiah, I have the growing conviction that we are actually reading here is a series of short summaries of the sermons he preached at the city gates. He had already spoken it to his generation, but it needed to be written down for generations to come. The first episode we find in Jeremiah 13 is based on the image of an ornamental linen sash and the point that God would make with it.

Can God feel disappointment? I know, many believe in the impassibility of God. They believe that God is, by definition of the word, impassable—incapable of suffering or of experiencing pain. You can read the prophets for yourselves, and come to your own conclusions about this. But the story runs something like this: God had, among all the men down here, a friend. He made a deal with that friend that included certain promises and obligations. Those promises were fulfilled when he delivered Israel out of Egypt, put them in a land that flowed with milk and honey, and made them rich and powerful. They were supposed to stand as a beacon to the world around them of a better way of life. They were supposed to be a blessing to the nations around them, not only by good works, but by suppressing evil and offering help—a real gem in the world, an example of God’s generosity and kindness. At the height of their wealth and power, the hegemony of Israel in the ancient world really was a blessing. And at the height of their wealth and power, they began to forget God. But this didn’t play out as you might think it did. I think some people think that, although the worship of God continued at the temple, there were just shrines erected to other gods here and there around the country. Some people worshiped God, and some worshiped Baal, or Moloch, or Dagon. It was worse than that. They brought the worship of other Gods right into the temple of God. (Go back and look in 2 Kings 23 to see just how bad it became.) Now, we can imagine a God who is aloof from all this—who, although he punishes for it, is not himself disappointed with it. But that postulates a God very unlike the God who spoke to the prophets. It postulates an impersonal God who cannot be touched. So if you could ask God how he feels about this sort of thing, how do you think he would answer? We don’t have to guess. We know how he felt by the answer he gave one of his prophets in Jeremiah, chapter 11.

Is it really possible for a man to know God? Can a man understand God, or is it just really too high for us? To be sure, there are things about God that are a little tough for us. How can the finite comprehend the infinite? How can you grapple with a God who can just say the word and, out of nothing, create a universe that is 15 Billion light years in every direction? Men have hung a lot of labels on God that really don’t help very much. They say that God is omnipresent. That is, he is in every tree, every blade of Grass. There is no place where God is not, they tell us. They say he is omnipotent. That there is nothing too great for God. He is powerful beyond anything we can grasp. The say he is omniscient, that is that he knows everything there is to know and maybe some things that aren’t there to know. But there is something that tends to get lost in all of these : while God is infinite, he is also personal. That while God is or can be wherever he wishes to be, there is a place where God is. And it is the idea of a personal God that has gotten lost in some modern theology. Francis Schaeffer calls him there And God said something very important to Jeremiah about this subject— something that gives us a lot of hope and encouragement. I don’t where I would personally be without this short passage and what it tells me. We’ll find in Jeremiah, chapter nine.

In the normal course of things, if a man falls down, he gets back up. If he runs down a wrong track, he will normally retrace his steps and try to find a better way. So what is it that causes men to behave abnormally—to charge on straight ahead in the face of disaster, to be unwilling, having fallen, to get up again? Through Jeremiah, God spoke to Israel and asked the same question. Say to them, Lord […] Why, indeed? What is the mechanism that locks people into a way that leads them to certain disaster? Well, concluding verse five, God gives an answer: Of course, said I, slapping my forehead. They have lied to themselves about where they are. I have listened attentively, but they do not say what is right. None of them repent of their wickedness, saying, Each pursues their own course like a horse charging into battle. Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the Lord. How can you say, Lord when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely? What is especially important to know about this passage is that it isn’t good enough to merely be religious. This isn’t talking to an irreligious people. They had the law of God and considered themselves wise in it. And the term is not a reference to copyists. This is a term applied to the Jewish sages—their wise men who interpret the law. If you want to understand what Jeremiah is talking about, perhaps the best place to go is an encounter Jesus had with another generation of these sages. We’ll find it in Matthew, chapter 15.

I used to think that the movement was a good thing for young people. And it does have merit in helping kids stop and think about the moral issues they face every day. But really, isn’t the wrong question? After all, we live in a different world and the best we can do is subjectively guess what Jesus might do living in our culture. A better question might be, we We know what he said—we don’t have to speculate. Our only problem is whether we are ready to do what he said. If we can just do what Jesus said we should do, we will be a long way down the road on living right. But has merit for kids if, for no other reason, it tells them that what they do makes a difference. I know, you think that should be obvious, but there is a healthy slice of Christianity that doesn’t seem to think so. That is, if the way they live their lives is any indication. You tell me. Are there or are there not, people who claim to be Christian—even go to church regularly—who don’t live the life? You know there are. Now, anyone should know that outward form of religion is not good enough, but you can’t tell it by the way people live. The form of our religion is important for what it teaches—it gives us shape; it gives us continuity—but it is not enough if the teachings aren’t carried into life. It is a persistent stupidity on the part of men that they rely on place and form for their religion, and forget that the faith of God is about the way we live our lives. I say , because it is one of the recurring and enduring themes of the Old Testament prophets. One day, the word of the Lord came to young man named Jeremiah and he told him to go up to the temple, stand in the gate where the elders would have been gathered, and give them a message. We’ll find it in Jeremiah, chapter 7.

One thing to watch as we approach the end of history is the city of Jerusalem. Notice that I said the end of history, not the end of the world. When I was a kid I used to hear people talk about the end of the world, and I did not like the sound of that one little bit. The expression entered our language from a mistake in the King James version of the Bible. In Matthew 24, Jesus’ disciples ask him about the sign of his coming and of the . The mistake is the word . The Greek says that Jesus’ disciples asked him about the age. The return of Christ does not bring the end of the world unless you mean the world as we know it. It mark the end of the age of the kingdoms of this world and the beginning of the age of the Kingdom of God. Also in that chapter is something Jesus told his disciples to watch for—and it is of singular interest: When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains: Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. Here we have a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and a warning to flee the city. That brings us back again to Jeremiah—this time, chapter 6.

There is a very disturbing theme that runs through the Old Testament prophets. It speaks of a complete loss of leadership in a nation. I may groan a lot over the moral decay that afflicts our countries, but I don’t believe we have fallen as far into the abyss as Old Israel had fallen. It would be a mistake to pat ourselves on the back, though, because we are headed pell-mell in the same direction. Jeremiah, chapter 5, begins with this theme: Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in its broad places, if you can find a man, if there is any that executes justice, that seeks the truth; and I will pardon it. And though they say, The Lord lives; surely they swear falsely. Just find me one man, says God, one man who wants to do the right thing. All we needed was one man. Perhaps not among the grassroots of society, but particularly among those who are influential—the leaders, the elders. They come into court, raise their right hand, and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…and then they lie through their teeth. Make no mistake about it, there are people who believe that their holding power is so important, that anything they do is justified to hold on to it. They are the people. They have the right policies. They know what is best for all the rest of us. And they will lie, cheat, and steal to stay in power so they can do good. Day after day, we are shown over and over again the truth of the old saying:

One of the truly pivotal events of the New Testament church was a conference that took place some 18 years or so after the church began on the Day of Pentecost. It is often referred to as the , and it seems odd in a way that it took this long for it to occur. By most accounts, the year was ad 49. What was at stake (and it is astonishing to say it) was whether the gospel could continue to go to the gentiles. Think about it. Jesus had said to , and yet, for some reason, some people in the church didn't think that should happen. Paul defined the issue in his letter to the church in Galatia. He said that, some 14 years after his conversion, he went up to this conference, along with Barnabas and Titus. All this had to be done because some Strong words, these, and Paul went on to say, that the truth of the gospel might continue with you. And that defines the issue: whether or not the gospel was intended for Gentiles at all. It seems incredible to us today to imagine that anyone could think that way, but indeed some did. The events that led up to this day started, actually, in the second chapter of Acts…

If you will return, O Israel, says the Lord, return unto me: and if you will put away your abominations out of my sight, then shall you not be moved. If God had a message for this country today, I think this is what he might say. There are a lot of good people in this country who are trying to live a godly life, but they are losing the battle. We just don’t recognize the determination of the anti-God forces in our society. There is a war going on for the minds and spirit of our children, and we are losing battle after battle. The kids may recognize that better than the rest of us do. They are taking steps on their own to maintain prayer and an awareness of God in their lives, and they are sometimes doing so right on the grounds of the very schools that don’t allow prayer. The social structure of Israel was starting to break down. The nation, so dedicated to God in the beginning, was drifting away. There was a direction for their return. It was to , to borrow Francis Shaeffer’s phrase. It was a return to a personal God who cares what we do and don’t do. And the situation was not hopeless. If they would return and get rid of all the idolatrous symbols they had gathered, all would be well. This is what King Josiah was all about—rooting out idolatrous worship, even from the Temple of God—finding the way back to God. And the way back to God is never long, but it is quite specific.

There is an odd thing about the beginning of Jeremiah’s ministry. Not only was he very young (he describes himself as ) when he was called by God, but the King he served was very young, as well. King Josiah came to the throne at age 8, and Jeremiah began to prophesy when Josiah was 21. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left. It’s talking, at this point, about his overall reign—and overall it was it good one. Josiah had a long reign even though he died young, at age 39. But when he was 26 years old, he embarked on a major restoration of the Temple. Jeremiah’s ministry had started 5 years earlier, and may conceivably have had some influence on Josiah. He told his men to do an accounting of the money brought to the temple and turn it over the contractors who were doing the refurbishing of the building. While they were doing the work, they made an astonishing discovery. And this discovery caused Josiah see the depths to which the state of religious affairs in Judah had sunk. We’ll find this in 2 Kings, chapter 22.

In all the many years of human civilization, basic human nature hasn’t changed at all. Technology has changed the way we live, but the basics remain the same—and they are remarkably the same across all cultures and all people. Also, down through all the ages of time, God has not changed. So, we human beings go through the same stuff over and over again, never seeming to learn the lessons. This is why history repeats itself. It is why prophecies are fulfilled more than once. It isn’t that God hasn’t told us. He has sent prophet after prophet, but people don’t listen to prophets. We would like to think that we would listen. But would we? I think one of the reasons people miss the point on prophecy is because they are trying to determine what will happen and when. The prophets are mostly concerned with what is happening and why. There is a genre of literature called which concerns itself with what the future holds. The difference between apocalyptic literature and prophecy is that prophecy is loaded with moral teaching, which is almost entirely absent from apocalyptic literature. In my experience, most people are really interested in apocalyptic and give short shrift to prophecy. Perhaps because the powerful morality of the prophets makes them uncomfortable. It may be that the necessary moral tone of the prophets is why God picks them very young and brings them up the way he wants them. To Jeremiah, God said this: Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.

If God were going to send us a prophet today, what sort of man would he be? Would he be, perhaps, a rough-hewn, mountain-man type like Elijah—dressed in leather and rising into town on a Harley? Or would he be a smooth, educated orator like Isaiah? Or maybe he would be a man like Jeremiah who gives his name to the , which is defined as Well, if God has sent a prophet today, he is awfully well disguised. And, of course, it is also possible that if we ask God, that God might say, After all, the Old Testament prophets spoke to their own generation about what was going on right then, but then they wrote the prophecies down. Why’d they do that? Well, they wrote them down because history repeats itself and, consequently, so does prophecy, History repeats itself because man doesn’t change and because God doesn’t change. One of the prophets—Isaiah—told us how it works. says the Lord. says Jacob’s King.

I honestly don’t know what the founders of this nation believed about God. But I do have their words to go by. They signed their names—and pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor—to a document that began this way: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. We have been given and guaranteed certain things by a creator. As King David wrote, we are . The human body is a great starting point for coming to understand this creator (it is closest to us, after all). What can we learn about God just by taking a closer inspection of things like our sense of sight? Beyond this, what does God reveal to us through a common tree or a starry, night sky?