C, Epiphany 6 - Jeremiah 17:9-10 "Death & Life Questions"

Jeremiah 17:9-10

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a person according to one’s conduct, according to what our deeds deserve.”

Sermon

What do your deeds deserve? What reward does your conduct merit? These questions are crucially important. So much so, they are life and death questions. They are not questions of intellectual intrigue or philosophy, to be treated lightly, or to be ignored. Nor are they questions concerning how many good works one has done. Or questions which can be emotionally employed to make us feel good, or manipulated in such a way to stand over others. No! These questions are asked of you, they are asked of all of us, here and now before God by God. What do your deeds deserve? What reward does your conduct merit?

Are you confident enough to stake your life on your answer? What about the life of your family …the life of this congregation …the life of our church and country? How about confidently staking humanity’s hope on your answer? These questions can only be asked of ourselves, we cannot ask them of anyone else, or answer them for anyone else either. They must be asked in our hidden hearts; hidden but unhidden from God. What do your answers tell you about yourself; what do they tell God?

As much as we think we hide our true answers from each other and God, the answers are still exposed in our attitudes to each other. In the way we treat our neighbour. In the way we teach our children. In the way we listen to teaching. In our attitude and conduct towards authority and correction. Also in the way we seek to serve. What do your deeds deserve? What reward does your conduct merit?

The Lord says to you and me through the word written in Jeremiah chapter seventeen, verses nine and ten, that, the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a person according to one’s conduct, according to what our deeds deserve.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10)

Who understands your heart? Who understands my heart? Who can understand the heart and mind? The Lord understands; our Heavenly Father knows you better than you know yourself! So what do you think God will give you for your deeds? How will God, who sees everything, reward your conduct?

These are serious questions in these times where most things are treated trivially, especially God, his word, and the work his church is called to do. We all know how the Aussie thought process goes… No worries mate. If God is a God of love he won’t hurt me, I’ll be right!

But the word of God speaks quite differently! In Paul’s letter to the Romans God makes it quite clear using the image of an olive tree… Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. (Romans 11:20b-22)

In Jeremiah seventeen verse five and six, the Lord also says, “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. They will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.” (Jeremiah 17:5-6)

And Jesus himself says, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. That’s in Matthew chapter five verse twenty. And again in Matthew seven verses twenty-one to twenty-three he says… Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matt 7:21-23)

What is the will of our Father who is in heaven? What do you think God will give you for your deeds? How will God, who sees everything, reward your conduct?

We don’t do ourselves or anyone else any favours, by covering up the ugly truth of these answers, or by putting aside God’s written word and the life and death truth it puts in front of us!

We hear the life and death truth direct from Jesus’ lips in the Gospel reading today. This reading from Luke six verses seventeen to twenty-six has two sides; the first part are blessings which in Matthew’s account of the Gospel are known as the Beatitudes (Matt 5:1-12). Have you ever noticed in these Beatitudes that the blessed are those associated with weakness, failure, unpopularity, and other negative human-centred perceptions? Ask yourself why?

And then in Luke’s account of the gospel, he continues with Jesus’ declaration of woes, or curses, for the wretchedness and the things our flawed human perception takes for granted as strengths. Woe to the rich, woe to the well fed, woe to those who laugh, and woe to you when others speak well of you! Why does Jesus speak like this? He’s not saying this to outsiders, it’s to the disciples and those gathered with them. He says it to you and to me. Again, ask yourself why?

If we allow the Holy Spirit to examine our hearts in all truth and honesty we know why Jesus says this. If we ask of ourselves, “What do my deeds deserve? What reward does my conduct merit?” No matter what we do to hide the truth, deep down God swiftly makes it known to us, we are sinful in nature, and God’s word tells us, the wages of sin is death! (Romans 6:23)

But these questions and the ugly answers before us; put before us by God, are known by God and answered by him too. As much as we must live in the painful reality of our sinful deeds and conduct, so we don’t lose sight of our weakness, and poverty, and unpopularity, and our misguided human perceptions. We are also called to live at the same time trusting that God has answered these very questions. Is it not because of your constant failures, weakness, poverty, and mortality that the Son of God became a mortal and bore all our eternal consequences of guilt?

If this is so, then perhaps in the constant reality of our weakness, hunger, sorrow, and rejection from the world, and in the constant reality that we would rather be seen as rich, well fed, happy, and popular, we can see each other in the light of Christ who has died for us all and answered the questions of death and life, in his death and resurrection, and in ours and other’s baptism into this life-giving death and resurrection.

If we assume that other’s deeds and conduct don’t deserve God’s grace, what are we really saying about our own deeds and conduct which before God are exactly the same as those we might condemn?

The greatest of all deeds, the most honourable conduct, is to believe that Christ has done enough for you, and enough for everyone else who trusts in him. So put your confidence in Christ and the cross as your answer.

What do your deeds deserve? What reward does your conduct merit? The answer is this: Christ’s death on the cross, and your resurrection from eternal death, perfected in your baptism into him, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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