Standing Up And Taking The Heat
February 28, 2021 Jeremiah 38:1-6 I Timothy 4:1-8
Have you ever had the experience that for some reason a person just didn’t like you? You can’t think of anything you did or you said, but you knew they just didn’t like you. I use to go jogging at this park, and there was a lady with a dog who arrived about the same time I did.
Every time I got close to pass them on the trail, the dog would just start barking away. One day the lady said to me, “I’m sorry he acts like this, but for some reason he just doesn’t like you.” That was over 10 years ago, and I still wonder, why that dog didn’t like me.
We all want to be liked, but that can become our Achilles’ heel as a believer in Jesus Christ. Achilles’ mother had dipped him into a magical river that was to protect him from arrows and sword. But in order to dip him in, she held him by the heel.
That part wasn’t covered and protected by the dip. The only place Achilles could be defeated was an arrow in his heel. The desire to be liked can be used as our Achille’s heel to get us to turn away from Jesus.
Who was it that said, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first?” What is Jesus trying to tell us? What do you think he means by the world?
If you want to be a sincere follow of Jesus Christ, not everyone is going to like you, as a matter of fact some people are going to hate you. Jesus says the reason they are going to hate you, is because I have called you out of the world. Are we willing to come when he calls?
How many of you realize the Bible tells us to renew our minds? It says it because something is always seeking the control of our minds. If it can get us to think a certain way, we will let all kinds of things slip into our hearts and our love for Jesus takes a slight shift.
Let me ask you something, how many of you know some other believers who love Christ where you work? How many of you know of other believers at your school or where you shop, or get your hair done? How many of you know there are millions of believers in other churches in this country? I’m talking about just normal believers who are great people.
Let me ask you something else, are there any normal believers who have leading roles in the tv shows you watch? I mean you know the person is a Christian because they actually talk about going to church or to say I can’t do that because of my faith in God?
Can I ask you this, who decided that followers of Jesus Christ have no place in society on tv? What is there agenda?
I have to confess, I was looking forward to the series on the Black Church. I became very disillusioned very quickly. The Black Church, they were talking about was not the Black church I grew up in.
In my Black Church, Jesus was the foundation upon which the church was built. That program insisted the Black church’s foundation was built upon women and gays. It made it seem as though women were never allowed to preach.
That have been true at some black churches, but there were a whole lot churches where women preached their hearts out and were pastors. The established churches may not have ordained them, but the smaller churches did. And many women started their own churches.
What was the intent of the program? Was it to humiliate the church today? To change people’s minds on the church today and to further marginalize us.
Somebody asked, where was the church during Black Lives Matter. Now that politics have subsided, can we lay aside our prejudices and actually talk about Black Lives Matter.
I can remember another highlight of my life was the birth of our daughter Samantha. I could hold her entire body in the length of my arm. She was wrapped in a pink and blue blanket.
I pledged to her that day, that I was going to be there for her and for her mother for the rest of my life. She had no idea what I was saying, but I remember those tiny little eyes looking back at me.
I’m a morning person and my wife is not. So for the next 18 years of her life, I was the one that got up with here early in the morning. I fixed her breakfast. I drove her to school almost every time she went from grade k to 12.
I was there for nearly every game in which she was a cheerleader, every piano recital, and whenever she needed her father.. I invested myself in my daughter and I believe it made a difference in her life.
She’s about 40 and I still love to hear her call me DAD. Shew throws in a couple extra A’s. Her mother and I gave her the best we had to offer as we did the kids that came after her.
Look at this quote: We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
This says to me that I am an insignificant part of my daughter’s life and it does not matter if I were there are not. It says having your mom and dad get married is not at all that important in your life. As long as we have the community, we will be fine.
Really. I mean Really. Let me ask you, what will happen to you if you try to tell a Mother to make her kids behave when they are acting the fool in the grocery store. Are you going to say I’m part of the village helping you to raise your child?
When I was growing up, if a teacher told a parent that a kid cursed them out, the parent would say, don’t say another word. I will take care of this as soon as I get home. Today if a teacher told a parent this, the parent response is, “well what did you do to make him do that.” Is this what raising a child by the village means?
This quote comes directly from “Black Lives Literature that they pass out.” You want to eliminate Black fathers and expect the church to blindly join the movement. We need every Black family intact that we can possibly have.
I’m looking at the totality of what’s affecting our community. Here’s what Black Lives Matter say they are interested in when it comes to violence.
It started out as a chapter-based, member-led organization whose mission was to build local power and to intervene when violence was inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.
In other words, if you aren’t killed by the police or the KKK, your life does not matter quite as much. I believe Black Lives Matter should mean all Black Lives Matter. The media uses us as Blacks for its own purposes, and when they don’t need us they move on to the next topic.
How many of you know this guy. This is Vincent Belmont an 18 year old. I’m told his father said he was reading by the time he was 3 and was taking some high school classes in the 4th grade.” Why don’t we know him?
He was shot and killed by the Police less than 20 minutes from our church. He was shot in the back of the neck, shoulder and head. He was running from the police, because the police thought the car he was in was stolen. So you shoot a person over a stolen car that they have already abandoned.
Shouldn’t Vincent’s life matter. Where was the national press CNN, ABC, NY Times? Why didn’t we have a Fergurson moment? Is it because it happened in January of this year after the election?
Is it because the policeman that shot him was black? Is it because it happened in the poor black community of East Cleveland so we accept it as normal behavior? He must have been guilty of something.
The church has a history of saying Black Lives Matter seven days a week 365 days a year. Every time we give out groceries we are saying Black Lives Matter. Every time we cook meals. Every time you donate money for kids for Christmas in the community.
Every time we hold a health clinic or life screening we are saying Black Lives Matter. Every time we send kids to camp, hold community events for kids, make our building free for those who have lost loved ones to violence we are saying Black Lives Matter.
Every voter drive that has been held, every trip of people to the polls, every time we take care of each other we are saying Black Lives Matter.
The church does not simply exists in the walls of a building. We send our people out to make a difference. You see the Church in operation, but we don’t wear a badge saying we are the church.
When you see the school principals that have come out of this church like, Kamilah Williams and Valerie Flowers you know Black Lives Matter. When you see A Helena Harrison, a Vivian Smith, or Evelyn Davis coming down here to tutor kids you know we are saying Black Lives Matter.
Go upstairs and see Sunday after Sunday how Susan Calloway invests her life in the kids in the Nursery and you will see us saying “Black Lives Matter.”
Every time we hold events for marriages, take kids on field trips, hold a worship service or a bible study, we are saying Black Lives Matter. They matter because all lives matter to God.
We are going to be faithful to doing things to improve the lives of people whether the press is here to cover it or not. We are not here just for Black people. We are here for all people. Being here for all people doesn’t mean we are going compromise our moral convictions which are rooted in the word of God.
In our Old Testament Reading, we again saw the prophet Jeremiah was getting himself into trouble because he dared to say, this is what the word of the Lord is. He told the truth and because of censorship, he ended in the bottom of a murky pit and was basically left to die. The people in power during his day didn’t want the people to here both sides of the story.
The power structures were saying to the people, the army is going to protect us and in the end we are going to win this battle over the Babylonians.
Jeremiah was saying,” your only hope of saving your lives is to voluntarily go and surrender to the Babylonians. This city and everybody left in it will be destroyed.” Why did the power structure want to censor Jeremiah’s word from the Lord? Why did they hate him for telling the truth? They wanted to control what the people had access to so that they could control the people.
Censorship is a real problem right now in our country as people seek to control our minds. You can sell a book on Amazon on how you found joy in the gay lifestyle, but you can’t sell a book on how Jesus gave you freedom from that lifestyle.
We’ve never had a discussion on the Transgender movement as a nation. It was a one sided if you disagree with me you are transphobic and bigoted.
Two excellent books have been written on why we should consider the long term consequences of doing surgeries on our kids who think they want to be of the other sex.
One Book by Abigail Shrier is “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” and the other by Dr. Ryan Andrews” “When Harry Becomes Sally Responding To The Transgender Movements.” Both books have become best sellers. Neither book contains anything hateful about anybody. They both say let’s talk about this.
Both books are now banned from Amazon and Other Big Tech Media. Why is that we can find many books on these sites in favor of the movement, but anything that might want us to think carefully is banned? Is it mere coincidence they were banned before The Human Equality Act was voted upon.
If the most powerful book that speaks against what we see taking place with anything goes sexually is the Bible, what makes you think it won’t be banned at some point as a hate filled book.
There are people who leave the Church for the gay life style and write a book about how much happier they are and they write a book. I fully endorse their right to do so and to have it on Amazon. But there are gays who leave the lifestyle and want to tell what Christ has done for them. How come their book can’t be on Amazon. Is it fair.
The Human Equality ACT will fully support this unfairness. It says that Christians cannot follow what they believe the Bible teaches whenever they do anything that might touch someone from the public. This is not 1964. We could have done a better job of reaching a compromise rather than giving one party the chance to sue someone. If I go to a Muslim mosque, there is no use of me claiming I was offended because they didn’t say Jesus was God.
What are you going to do with the Cultural Wars around us. At some point it is going to hit yo,u and you will have to decide whether you will stand for what is right or you will do what it takes to be liked.
Is your position going to be, “yes they should shut down and shut up anybody that you disagree with. Do you really want some unknown group of people deciding for you what is fact and what is not?
Somebody has already decided that the Bible is a hate filled, bigoted, and racist book. Somebody has already decided that you as a believer are not a part of society and therefore your opinion should not be heard. Your presence should not be seen on tv.
You should not be allowed to read information they don’t want you to see. You should be thrown into a pit for saying what you think God wants you to say.
Jeremiah was in that same position. Half of his body was sinking in the mucky mud. It didn’t seem like anybody was going to speak up for him. Even the King had told the power structure, “there’s nothing I can to oppose you.” The king wasn’t willing to stand up and take the heat for justice.
But God always has a plan. Somebody who is willing to risk everything, willing to stand up for what is right.
King Zedekiah was to afraid to stand up to the Big Tech Censors of his day and of the cancel culture that wanted to shut down the voice of God. But there was a man in his Cabinet, who had more backbone than the king.
The man’s name was Ebed-Melech. Every now and then you run into people who want to explain how Christianity is the white man’s religion.
Yet the hero that came to Jeremiah’s aid is an Ethiopian, which means he’s a Black man from Africa. He wasn’t a servant or a slave. He is sitting on the King’s Court which means he had a high level Cabinet Position. But what’s most impressive about him, is that he has a relationship to the Living God.
Even though he was sitting in the palace, where everything was cool, he takes a risk. He goes to the king and says, “What these people have done to Jeremiah is wicked and not right. They have given him a death sentence by throwing him into the cistern. He will starve to death down there.”
Sometimes God wants you to be the conscience for somebody else. The king had wanted to pretend Jeremiah wasn’t in that pit. But Ebed Melech was like the ringing voice of God saying, stop this injustice.
Because Ebed Melech spoke up, the king got enough courage to tell him, take 30 men and go rescue Jeremiah out of the pit. Even though the king didn’t like Jeremiah’s message, he knew Jeremiah should be able to say, thus says the Lord and to allow the people to decide for themselves if it really was the Lord that said it.
Ebed-Melech probably didn’t make any friends with his actions. He probably was hated by the other Cabinet Officers, particular the ones who had put Jeremiah in the pit. But God saw what he had done.
Do you remember Jeremiah had told the people if they went over and surrendered they would live but if they stayed in the city they would die?
Well the same people who said Jeremiah didn’t have the people’s best interests at heart, were the people who tried to sneak out of the city at night with the soldiers. They were leaving the city completely unguarded.
This made it easy for the Babylonians to kill them. But Ebed Melech did not try to sneak out with them.
God told Jeremiah to go and tell Ebed-Melech The Ethiopian, I know you are terrified of the Babylonians, and even though they are going to destroy this city, I will watch over you and the things you fear will not happen to you. I will save you and you will escape with your life because you trust in me.”
God takes notice of every stand that you take. What made it easier for Ebed- Melech in those final days, is that he knew how the story was going to end. Despite all that is going on around us, and we can be sure it’s going to get a lot worse, we still know how the story ends. Jesus is going to be Lord and everyone from all times and all places are going to bow the knee in his presence.
The Apostle Paul ended his ministry locked in a jail cell for the cause of Jesus Christ. Could you accept that as your fate. Some of us will stand up and take the heat and pay a severe price for doing so.
But when it happens you can say like the Apostle Paul I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
My friend Jesus stood for you. Are you going to be willing to stand for him?
