Personal aspirations of getting somewhere in this life

‘In the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
“Take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah and all the other nations from the time I began speaking to you in the reign of Josiah till now. Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I plan to inflict on them, each of them will turn from his wicked way; then I will forgive their wickedness and their sin.”
So Jeremiah called Baruch, son of Neriah, and while Jeremiah dictated all the words the LORD had spoken to him, Baruch wrote them on the scroll.
Then Jeremiah told Baruch,
“I am restricted; I cannot go to the LORD’s temple. So you go to the house of the LORD on a day of fasting and read to the people from the scroll the words of the LORD that you wrote as I dictated. Read them to all the people of Judah who come in from their towns. Perhaps they will bring their petition before the LORD, and each will turn from his wicked ways, for the anger and wrath pronounced against this people by the LORD are great.”
Baruch, son of Neriah, did everything Jeremiah the prophet told him to do.

(Onto verse 16) So Baruch read it to them. When they heard all these words, they looked at each other in fear and said to Baruch, “We must report all these words to the king.”
Then they asked Baruch, “Tell us, how did you come to write all this? Did Jeremiah dictate it?”
“Yes,” Baruch replied, “he dictated all these words to me, and I wrote them in ink on the scroll.”
Then the officials said to Baruch, “You and Jeremiah, go and hide. Don’t let anyone know where you are.” ‘

(Onto verse 22) It was the ninth month, and the king was sitting in the winter apartment, with a fire burning in the brazier in front of him.
Whenever Jehudi had read three or four columns of the scroll, the king cut them off with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the brazier, until the entire scroll was burned in the fire. The king and all his attendants who heard all these words showed no fear, nor did they tear their clothes.’

Jeremiah 36:1-8 & 16-19 & 22-24

Now, after hearing that Bible reading, we don’t want a sort of academic look at some historic figure and just learn some dusty dates and things like that.
But we do want to look at Baruch.
And I expect you gathered from that reading that he was a scribe to the great prophet Jeremiah.
And oh, what a privileged position.
I mean, can you imagine it? Here was Jeremiah in this terrible situation in this nation, all this going on, nation fighting against nation.
And Jeremiah was receiving words directly from God, the living God.
And there was Baruch, the scribe, and he would have been writing everything down that Jeremiah said.
And, well, Baruch would have been a known person. He would have been in a privileged position.
I expect that if he went down the street, people would acknowledge him.
And he was not the only person in his family who was well known.
His grandfather had been governor of Jerusalem, and his brother was about to be a high-ranking official in Zedekiah’s court, who was the next king.
I expect there were quite a lot of high expectations within the family of Baruch, actually getting somewhere.
This reminded me of a story when my parents lived in a very small village. It didn’t have many roads at all, but three roads within that village were named after one family name, each with a different first name.
And believe it or not, they were putting in for a 4th road in the village to be called after their surname.
And I just wonder whether the Baruch’s family was a bit like that.
Now you may be thinking, how on earth did he get that from this reading?
Later in Jeremiah, it does give more clues, which we’ll come to in a minute or two.
So, I imagine Baruch had some personal aspirations of his own.
And I expect he wanted to get to the king’s court and be amongst people of influence. And perhaps Baruch thought that his life was destined for greatness.
I mean, you can say that he is great now.
He was a scribe of the great prophet Jeremiah.
But I don’t think Baruch was thinking like that.
He wanted to be recognised in the areas of world power and not just be known.
Baruch was doing God’s will, being the scribe.
Yet he had his heart on his ambition. And a quote from the Amplified Bible from 1 John 2 says, “Do not love or cherish the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. But he who does the will of God and carries out his purposes in his life abides for ever.”
It’s important to look at names in the Bible and what they mean.
And Baruch’s name means blessed. But I don’t think he appreciated that.
How do I know? Well, in Jeremiah 45, and I’m reading from the Easy English Bible. I don’t normally use that, but I just thought it was interesting the way they translated this. And it’s Jeremiah speaking to Baruch, “Baruch: You said, ‘I have terrible trouble! I have a lot of pain, and the Lord has also made me very sad. I am so upset that I have become very weak. I cannot rest at all.’ But the Lord says this to you, Baruch: ‘I will soon knock down the things that I have built. I will pull out of the ground the things that I have planted. I will do that everywhere in the land. If you want to become famous and important, do not hope for that to happen. I will send great trouble to all the people on the earth. But I promise that I will keep your life safe, wherever you go.’ That is what the Lord says.”
In Hebrew, it says, “Should you then seek great things for yourself, seek them not.”
It means to search out specifically in worship or prayer.
So, he must have been praying about wanting a better position, about wanting great things for himself.
Now, the Lord was reluctantly going to send in the Babylonians. And people would be killed, and there would be upset.
But here, Baruch is thinking about his own ambitions. Very strange.
And actually, King Nebuchadnezzar was just about to come and jeopardise his whole plans for promotion.
Baruch should not have been pining for his success. He should be content with his own life being preserved.
Let’s be careful what we pray for.
So, returning to Jeremiah 45. Baruch has been whining. I’m not a happy man. I have pain, and now the Lord has made me sad, too. I’m so sad that it has made me feel very tired, and there is no rest for me.
I mean, what a thing to say, it’s most bizarre.
And I had this picture of someone I know who was a Sergeant Major, and all the blokes have gone out on a long run, in full kit.
And then, can you imagine one of the soldiers saying to the Sergeant Major, “I’m not a happy man. I have pain. You have made me sad, too. I’m so sad. My life has made me feel very tired, and I’ve got no rest at all.” And I’ll just add this in the end. “And by now, I should be a general.”
I wonder what the answer would have been to that soldier!
In the army, that soldier had a job to do.
Well, as Christians, we’ve got a job to do as well.
Baruch was in the right place, serving God, yet he wanted greatness. And he didn’t want troubles. Yes, it was a difficult situation. The king wanted Jeremiah dead, as well as Baruch, and so he had to hide.
And troubles can happen to us.
You know, whenever we put our heads above the parapet, we can be shot at, can’t we, as Christians?
So do we stay with our heads below the parapet, or do we want to put our heads above it and get shot at and do the right thing?
John 15:20, Jesus is saying, “Remember what I told you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.”
Now, Jesus did not say, ‘Come to me and have an easy life.’
And you might think, hang on a minute, it says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I’ll give you rest.” But the very next thing he says is, “Take my yoke upon you”, which is an item of work.
We’re expected to do a job. Jesus continues, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
I think there’s a tremendous trend in society now for there to be no pain, for a very easy life, a carefree life.
I know someone who works at school as a TA, and one of her jobs is first aid. And she’ll get loads of children coming in, ‘Oh, I’ve hurt my finger. Someone squeezed it.’
There’s absolutely nothing wrong. There are just so many complaints that come in, and you think, well, that is actually society now that no one wants any pain; they just want such an easy time.
So do we expect an easy life as a Christian?
How easy is it for us to say, ‘It’s not fair! That’s just not fair!’
And I think one good way of counteracting that is to look at some of these people’s lives in the Bible.
Now just think of Joseph and Mary, Mary especially.
She was, as a young girl, told that she was going to have a baby, Jesus, the Son of God, outside of marriage in a society that absolutely would condemn that situation. They would hate the situation of a young girl having a baby.
But that was God’s plan.
And Mary had to live with that, and she accepted it.
And there would be mutterings, wouldn’t there, and pointing her fingers about her, getting pregnant… They would have thought something’s happened there!
And then when she was fully pregnant, she had to ride on that donkey to Bethlehem. Why did the Romans suddenly want the census done at the point that Mary was about to give birth?
You know, this is just not fair.
They get to Bethlehem, and all the bed and breakfasts and hotels are full up.
Why? It’s not fair. It’s just not going our way at all.
Then, sometime later, they would have to rent a house because the Magi visited them, not in the stable, but in a house. That’s more upset.
And then they had to flee to Egypt because all the babies under two were going to be killed. Yeah, it’s just not fair. It was this crazy situation.
And there was Mary, and she was in the centre of God’s will.
And we tend to sort of think God’s will is going to be easy, carefree, but if we read the Bible, it certainly isn’t.
So, how do we react to people when we are in a difficult situation?
It can be people coming at us, attacking us.
So we put our heads up above the parapet; it’s the other people that are going to respond to us, but how do we respond back?
One of the first things you might think of is in Matthew 5:39, where Jesus says, “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slapped you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
I don’t know whether you live by that rule or not. But that made me think of Harrison Ford’s film, The Witness. I don’t know how many people have seen that. You’ll have to excuse my humour, but I just think it was hilarious when… Well, Harrison Ford is a city cop, and he finds there’s corruption within the police force, and he goes to the Amish community, and he lives as one of them. And the Amish take this verse as being, you know, very true, very strict, face value, mustn’t respond back. And if they go into town, they can quite often get abuse from the locals or just people visiting the town. And they could be spat at, or they could be punched. And then they would expect no one to respond because that’s how the Amish do it. They don’t respond.
So this happened, and Harrison Ford was in his horse and cart. This Amish chap gets abused. I can’t remember whether he got spat at or punched, I can’t remember. But Harrison Ford gets out of his car, and he goes up to this guy, and he goes, wham, he just decks him. And everyone’s thinking, whoa, the Amish aren’t like this. They should not react like that. What’s going on here?
That’s what made me think about that verse. And I’m not saying that is correct.
But that’s how some people would view that verse, that you do not respond at all.
Is that correct? Well, if we look at Jesus later in his life, he did get hit. How did he respond during his trial? John 18:22, “When Jesus had said these things, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand, saying, ‘Is that how you answer the high priest?’
So did he turn the other cheek? What did he do?
No, he didn’t. Jesus answered him, “If what I said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong. But if what I said is right, why do you strike me?”
So he was responding. He was correcting them.
Now, we know that Jesus was led like a lamb to the slaughter, because that was God’s will for him to be led to the sacrifice.
But he wasn’t a doormat.
So if we use these verses wrongly, Christians can become wimps.
And that verse can be a justification for a lack of action.
If we just go by that verse on face value, we miss the point. The point is that we mustn’t retaliate. We must not get back on them. It’s not going to be an act of revenge.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t respond. In Romans 12:19, it says, “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath. For it is written, it is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord.”
Now, one way we can combat this evil coming at us is answered in Romans 12:20, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
But obviously, that does not always work in every situation.
As Christians, we need to stand up for what we believe in.
Doing nothing is not an option.
The things that we need to oppose are evil, bad actions, and false teachings.
We must not do nothing. We must not be a blob on the floor and let everything ride over us.
Or that’s what we’re supposed to, isn’t it? Let everything ride over us. No, we’re supposed to stand up for things that we believe in.
We’re to put on the armour of God and fight evil, not for personal gain, but for the glory of God.
We are to correct and rebuke evil with his word.
We are to love our enemies and pray for them.
We are Christians and not wimps. We are not doormats.
We’re not passive.
Bear that in mind about turning the other cheek.
If that’s used wrongly, it can make us do nothing.
So, as Christians, we need to stand up for what we believe in.