In the Meantime

A sermon preached by Dr. Peter James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
September 30, 2001

Text: Jeremiah 29: 4-13

One of the hymns we have sung during this time of national concern is "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". It was written during the Civil War, the words were written by Julia Ward Howe and the second verse goes like this:

I have seen him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps.
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps.
I can read his righteous sentence in the dim and flaring lamps.
His day is marching on.
Glory, glory hallelujah.

It is a rousing song but had we been there in those days there was not so much glory as there was suffering. Sometimes we forget that there were more who lost their lives in the Civil War than in all the rest of our wars put together.

I think of the great tragedy our nation has suffered. September 11 will always have unique meaning for all of us. But there was a day in June in 1865, part of the 7-Days War, Malvern Hill. If you drive East from Varina on Highway 5 you will go by it on the way to the plantations. On that dreadful morning 6,000 brave men, Federal and Confederate, were wounded or killed. Abraham Lincoln during those terribly painful days is said to have become a man of prayer. He would be seen in the evening time sometimes late at night walking the grounds of the capitol area and then kneeling in prayer to pray: Oh God, what do I do now?

What do we do now?

Perhaps it is helpful to realize that we are living in a classic meantime. What is a meantime?

· It is a time after what has been and before what will be.
· It is a time when the security of yesterday has been set aside for the insecurity of today.
· It is a time when the former page has been turned but the next page has not even been written yet.

It is a meantime. And living through a meantime is a different way of thinking, a different way of acting, a different way of responding.

Jeremiah lived through such a time. For his time and age he lived to be an old man, past 80. Most of this was spent right around the city of Jerusalem and he had seen it all. He had seen the city and the nation draw far away from God. He had warned them. He had pled with them. Every morning for 27 years the prophet went out to speak to the city. They never heard. He saw when the Babylonians under the leadership of Nebuchadnezzar entered Palestine and one by one the outposts of defense fell. Some of the saddest words that have ever been recovered from the ancient world come from the last defensive outpost. You could see that one, it was called Lakish from the walls of Jerusalem. And from the watchtowers of the wall on that dreadful night they watched the light flicker and then they watched the light go out. They wrote the end has come. It must have seemed like that because you see they had no food, no way to get water except for the streams inside, underground streams inside the city. Surrender was ultimately inevitable and after it happened the Babylonians took the able-bodied people home to Babylon to be their slaves. One who is a noted Biblical scholar estimates that there were 250,000 people before the fall of Jerusalem and after the walls were torn down and the temple demolished and the people carried away less than 25,000 were left.

Jeremiah was not one of those who was carried off. He was too old, too weak. And perhaps he was even put in prison. At any rate God came to him and he said I want you to write a letter to my people in Babylon. He wrote it and it is preserved in Jeremiah the 29th chapter. It is an incredible recipe for living through a meantime and if you think that the Bible deserves to be in a museum piece I hope that I can present this in a way that allows you to see that this word is still as relevant today as ever it was. "This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage so that they too may have sons and daughters and increase number there. Do not decrease."

What Jeremiah hears God saying is "You, my people in Babylon, I need you to make some crucial decisions. Decisions that will alter the success and failure of your being there. Decisions that will allow me to do what I want to do for you and through you while you're there."

Some of you know that one of my favorite experiences happened some years ago when all of our sons were in college and our youngest came home Christmas Eve, Christmas afternoon. And he said, "Dad I haven't bought one present. Will you go with me shopping?" What he was saying was "Dad, I'm broke, bring your credit card."

Shirley knows that I am good for three stores and then I got to have a cup of coffee. On that night we went from store to store to store to store. You can imagine what it's like, Christmas Eve, everything picked over. He had a list, couldn't find things. We did the best we could. Finally I said, "Doug, I've got to have a break here." And right next to where we were was an ice cream store, Swensens, and we looked at all of the flavors. He ordered and then I ordered and I said "I'd like to have just a vanilla cone, please." And she said, "Well, we've had a lot of older folks in today and so we're out, we're out of vanilla." And I said, "Well what do you have?" That was the wrong question. You know they've got zillions of flavors She was not patient. I picked one and she said, "cuporcone?" I said, "pardon me?" And she said "cuporcone?" And I said "I'm sorry I did not understand you." She said "cup-or-cone, sir?" I said "I just want an ice cream cone." "Sugarorcake?" And I said, "pardon me?" "Sugar-or-cake, sir?" I said "all I want is an ice cream cone." "Sugar or cake, sir?" All the while my son is over there in stitches. I made his Christmas.

Some decisions are really just frustrating, they aren't consequential. Some decisions, some choices make all the difference and what God does in the Scripture is give choices that turn attitudes, turn lives, turns perspective. And as a matter of fact rebuild us from the inside out. It's an incredible thing God does in these passages and the first thing he said make the choice that you're going to focus near at hand. Do the next thing.

Listen to this… put yourself in their shoes. You're in a hated land. You've been a professional person, let's say, and now you're a slave. You're treated like dirt and here's what God says: "Build houses and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage that you may increase there." Do the next thing is what he's saying.

A mother carrying her infant in her arms said to me recently "I wonder what kind of world my child will grow up in. I am so afraid." So am I. But can you imagine receiving that word if you were a slave in captivity and been carried against your will into a foreign land? And what Jesus is saying is in this mean time be shortsighted not long sighted. Be shortsighted enough to where you can see that the regular and the routine is God's will for your life. Embrace the fact that what is right is hand to do has healing and beauty in it. Move ahead, take the next step but do whatever is in front of you.

What is the next step? It may be having a child. It may be entering a retirement home. It may be watching a soccer game or helping your child with homework. It may be having prayers before you go to bed. It may be deciding to be in church regularly because you know you are strengthened by the togetherness of it and by the Spirit of God sweeping over the congregation and into your heart. Do the next thing.

God continues his shortsighted instruction when he says pay attention to the city I have sent you to. Pay attention to where you are. What is it we say, bloom where you are planted? Listen as I read: "Seek the peace and prosperity of the city unto which I have carried you into exile and pray to God for it because if it prospers so also with you." I have to believe that those people had an overdose of bitterness and God is saying to them invest in your hated city. Wow.

When Richmond burned in 1865 of April bitterness abounded on all sides. Some, as they were watching the downtown business area go up in flames ironically it was the Union soldiers that put out the fire that kept the rest of the city from burning, were saying they would never fly the American flag again.

Time heals and, and which one of us would not say we need to invest ourselves, our prayers, our talents, our energies in the city that we live in. God has an ability and an infinity to help people who are dedicated to where they live and he's saying that to where, to those people far off in Babylon. See, our tendency is always to get caught up in that which we can't control.

Reminds me of the husband and the wife who'd been married 50 years and at the 50th anniversary celebration someone asked, "how'd you do it, how'd you get, how'd you get along so well through the years." He said "Aw, really very simple. We decided at the beginning of our marriage that I would take care of the major decisions and my wife would take care of the minor decisions." He said "well what are the minor decisions?" He said "well my wife is taking care of the family budget, what the children will wear, decided where we would go on vacation, decided what furniture we would have in the house." "Well what have you decided?" "Oh," he said, "I've been concerned with the national economy, the Federal Reserve and the next elections. I have worried about the big things." God has always been worried about the little things. The God who created the atom calls you, calls me to be dedicated not only to our national concerns and to pray for it but to pray for the city where unto he has called us.

But there is a large choice. "I have plans for you, says the Lord. I have plans that, to prosper you and not to harm you. To give you hope and to give you a future. And then you will call upon me and come to me and I will listen to you." The promise of hope. I have plans for you, to give you hope. Hope and a future we are nowhere without hope, nowhere without a future tense. I think that when we look at future and what God is about in our lives we are looking at, we are looking at the future that God still is unfolding for us in what is ahead. Hope, we hear God clearest when we are hopeful. When God comes to us and says I need you here or I need you there or I need you over here a person who still has a life of hope is a person who is alive and vigorous and who God can use. Hope, it is hope that allows a couple to say let's have children even though it's a fallen world. It is hope that sent Abraham on his vision to a new place of faith. It is hope that allowed Moses to confront the Pharaoh and David to face Goliath. It is hope that sends the Chicago Cubs to spring training every year. But God says I not only give you hope, but I give you my presence. If you will call upon me I will answer you if you will seek me with all of your heart.

One day our staff was watching a motivational film on creativity by a photographer of National Geographic and I heard him say "put yourself, in the place of greatest potential." And all kinds of bells went inside my head and I said "that's what God does with all of us." He tries to put us in a place of greatest potential where when he speaks to us we can hear. When he moves within us we can feel. When he has directive for us we know what he's doing. I ask you right now to choose to be in the place of greatest potential. And you say where's that? I'll tell you where it is, it's where God's people are. It's the togetherness we were talking about earlier in the service. It's the church. Hasn't it been interesting how many people have turned to the church during this dreadful time? There is such a need for the togetherness that God brings not only where two or three are gathered, but where two or three hundred or more are gathered. We hear God with clarity and we pray with earnest when we are expecting something to happen and we arrive and we say to God we're ready God, speak to us. We hear about hope and we embrace God's promises best when we are with Christian brothers and sisters and together we are walking through the meantime.

We are living in a meantime but, oh my friend, a meantime is not a wasted time. A meantime is a growth time. While those in Babylon were under such great suffering some of the great verses of the Bible were written right then. Isaiah 53: "He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed." What a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ written 600 years ahead of time. Listen to me, God has plans for your life. Do you believe that? That the great God who threw stars out into space has plans for your life? Specific plans for you, right now? Are you willing to listen? Are you willing to put yourself in the place of greatest potential?