Word of Salvation – Vol. 40 No.12 – March 1995

 

How Not To Heal The Wounded

 

Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp on Jeremiah 8:4-12

Scripture Readings: Hebrews 3:12 - 4:2; 1Corinthians 10:1-13

Suggested Hymns: BoW 359; 497; 443; 358

 

Theme: Superficial healers miss God's diagnosis of the fatal disease.

 

Introd:            It’s easy to be a superficial healer... to patch over serious diseases.

We see it all the time in government and in politics.
Our society has heaps of serious social problems.  It's a sick society.
            Alcohol and drug abuse continue to increase.
            AIDS continues to be scourge claiming many victims.
            The divorce statistics are shocking.  So are the suicide stats.
But look how we deal with these social sicknesses.
            Drug abusers get free needles in a needle exchange program.
            AIDS is dealt with by promoting the myth of safe-sex.
            Divorce is handled by providing easy court settlements.

In the church of Jesus we can be superficial healers too.
A serious problem occurs and we ignore the issue.
            ‘Kind of hope that the problem will go away.
            Or make a social visit or two but play down the problem.
            And so often there is no real grappling with the issue.
Someone comes and shares with us a major problem.
            In some area in their life they are not coping well.
            We respond by saying: "We all struggle with those sorts of problems."
            And again no real attempt is made to heal the wounds.

In marriages and families too we treat problems in shallow ways.
Broken family relationships are shrugged off.
We say:  "We just have to face facts and realise we don't get on."
So we finish up with yet more skeletons in the family closet.

Effectively working through problems is something we don't find easy.
To dig deeply into a problem and get to the root cause is hard.
We're much better at sticking a bit of a band-aid over it.
And then hope the problem will sort itself out.
That is not how we are to deal with the wounded... or with the wounds.

 

A]        FALSE OPTIMISM IN THE FACE OF DISASTER.

 

1.         In our text we find the same thing.

Leaders who really don't want to face up to serious difficulties.

Who don't want to do the hard work of problem solving.
So they put a brave face in it and shrug it off.
They  adopt a false optimism that it will all be okay.

But that is happening against background where Israel problems are very serious.

The nation is in a mess.
It's a sick society and it's going to get worse... far worse.
The disease is a degenerative disease.
The way it's going, from here on it will be down-hill all the way.

Jeremiah spells it out.
The opening of the chapter talks about banishment.
About exile to another country.
With conditions so wretched that people will prefer death (vs.3).

In fact in vs.10 Jeremiah implies many will become casualties.
Their wives will be given to others.  And their fields to new owners.
Notice how our reading ends by saying: They will fall among the fallen.

So the problem is very real.  Jeremiah has not minced his words.

Some of his colleagues (Hosea) had been saying the same thing.
The nation of Judah is among the walking wounded.
And the prognosis for survival is not real good.
There is something fatally wrong with the society.

 

2.         In that context notice the reaction of Judah's leaders.

There is a false optimism among them.

It's a little like it was before the second world war.
England's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to Munich and met Hitler.
He came back with a message for the English people and rest of world.
The message he gave was 'Peace in our time.'
But within a year England was involved in World War II.

In our text it's just a few more years to the big battle for Jerusalem.
Nebuchadnezzar's armies are already flexing their muscles.
BUT... in Judah the leaders are saying:  Peace, peace!
They refuse to see the danger.  What danger?  What problems?

But please understand what these leaders are really saying.
For the Jew 'peace' is more than just 'no hostilities'.  It’s a very rich word.
Peace is 'shalom'... and shalom means well-being and prosperity.
In fact it's a word that has overtones of God's new age.
The time of the coming of Messiah Jesus and His perfect peace.

So these leaders are saying more than:  Don't you worry about war.

If they had been Aussies they'd be saying:  She'll be right mate.
Things are going to go really well... we're in for good times.
Shalom, shalom.  Health and wholeness and well-being.

But they preached peace apart from the Messiah who brings peace.
It was a time when Messianic expectation was at an all-time low.
They forgot:  You cannot have peace without Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

 

3.         So God pictured these leaders as superficial healers.

Israel is a sick and diseased nation.
We pick up something of that back in Jeremiah 6:7:
            As a well pours out its water
            so she pours out her wickedness.
            Violence and destruction resound in her;
            Her sickness and wounds are ever before me.

 

And these leaders are now dressing those wounds as though they are not serious.
Superficial healers.
The state of the nation is that of a horrendous wound.
But these leaders use band-aid solutions.

John Calvin put it this way: They soothe the injured with some flattery to take the pain away.

Peace, peace.  That's the sort of things a patient likes to hear.

All's well, all's well...!  That's the message we want.

We don't like to hear about the need for radical surgery.

There is a major problem with this kind of superficial healing.
Solutions like that don't uncover the real injuries.  That’s one problem.
But even worse: not only do they ignore the real disease.
The worst is that it covers over and hides the real injury.
A superficial treatment covers it over from sight.
So that unseen it festers further and leads to death.

What is needed is a razor sharp scalpel.

And with that scalpel to dig deeply into the flesh.

To remove the cancerous growth that lies at the heart of Israel's wound.

So our text is showing that superficial cures aren't cures at all.

We never do anyone a favour by patching things over... by soothing the wounded.

We only drive the disease inward when we don't deal with it.

The analogy to surgery is very apt.
Many of us know it from experience in our own life.  We struggled with a problem.
And someone was soothing and easy on us and we didn't solve our problem.
But when someone lovingly... but boldly... took to our problem
            we found healing and restoration.

 

B]        GOD'S RADICAL DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE.

 

1.         It is not accidental that verse 11 talks about these superficial healers.

Because in a sense the whole of this passage is about healing the wound.

Except that in the surrounding verses there is a different healer at work.

The contrast is that the Lord God is the great Physician.

And He is making His diagnosis of Israel's problem.  And that has some lessons for us.

Like any good doctor the Lord diagnoses the symptoms.
And there’s a lot of checking out of the symptoms in these verses.
The wound is a sin wound.  The sickness is a sin sickness.
And the symptoms of that are many and varied.
Outwardly plenty of things are wrong.

Some of the symptoms are spelled out in our text.

First, in vs.10, the Lord sees greed and covetousness.
And then not just here or there... but from least to greatest.
IOW right across the nation. (READ v.10)
Here is a selfish, materialistic society.
            A society whose priorities are possessions... and things.
            Where people are never content with what they have.
That's a symptom of diseased society  And doesn’t that sound so familiar?

Second there is deceit.
But it isn't just deceit that some happen to fall into.
Verse 5 speaks of it as something they cling to.
Truth and integrity are missing in this society.
Lies and deceit are the order of the day.
I think of the prominent Aussie politician who said: To survive in politics you have to lie.

In the rest of Jeremiah other symptoms surface.
Here it's all summarized under the heading: loathsome conduct.
And verse 12 spell out that this leads to their downfall.

 

2.         However the Divine Healer looks a little deeper than the symptoms.

One important thing is to see the patient's attitude to the disease.

Does the patient want to get better.
It's awfully hard to help someone who doesn't want to be helped.
Healing can be hindered by a wrong attitude to one's disease.
In fact in this disease-attitude is all important.

Here Israel definitely has a wrong attitude to its sin disease.

An attitude that is counter-productive to good health.

An attitude that the superficial healers are not dealing with.

In verse 12 there is no sense of shame.
The Lord says:  They don't even know how to blush.
                        They are so used to wickedness and evil.
                        Comfortable with the disease that devastates them.

In verse 6 there is no repentance.
God says: Instead everyone pursues his own sinful course.
                        Like a horse charging into battle.
Verse 4:  They fall but they don't want to get up.
Verse 5:  They are going the wrong way and don't want to turn back.
That is so common.  Things are a mess... but we don’t want to change.

It's a little like a heart patient.  He refuses treatment.
He blithely sticks to the bad life-style that caused the problem.
Therefore the disaster will come.   The exile became a reality.

The problem is mentioned so the attitude can be dealt with.

In Jeremiah God the Lord often says:  If only you repent I will restore you (15:19)

God wants to give healing but that spiritual healing is dependent on repentance.

And that is so not only for Israel – in another way it is true for everyone.

This sin-disease is not only there for Israel.
It affects everyone born into this world.
Okay: God has provided a remedy for that disease in Jesus.
But if your attitude is being happy with that sin-disease then there is no remedy.

Jesus not only called people to believe... He also called for repentance.
But there is no salvation where there is no repentance.
Because lack of repentance is an attitude that lives comfortably with the problem.

 

3.         That still hasn't taken us to the core of the matter.

There are the symptoms... outwards expressions of the wound in specific sins.

There is the attitude... an unwillingness to turn and be healed.

But that hasn't yet got us to the root of the disease.

Something is deeply wrong deep down at the core of the nation.

The heart of the problem (in vs.7) is this:  Ignorance of God and His ways.
The stork in the sky knows her appointed season.
The dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration.
But my people do not know the requirements of the Lord.

The fact is that these people had been given the law of God.
Entrusted with God's special revelation.
But they have perverted it.
The scribes with their lying pens handled the law falsely.

So what passes for wisdom is no real wisdom.
How can words of wisdom be wise without the Word of the Lord?

Here is the real problem with these superficial healers.

They do not bring the word of God.

They do not teach what God wants His people to know.

Here is the root cause of a diseased society and nation.
Ignorance of God.  It does not live out of the word of God.
It took the exile to bring Judah back to the Word of the Lord.

Read the history of England before the Wesleys and we see the same thing.
Christianity became 'churchianity'... dead formalism.
Priests in the Church of England still went through the rituals... empty forms.
While those who brought the gospel were prevented from preaching.
Society sunk lower and lower... crime was rampant.
At times Parliament was suspended because members were too drunk.
Life was cheap.

But then Wesley and Whitefield began to preach the Word of God.

They called for repentance and thousands responded.

The pubs went out of business... slavery ended.

England's wound was healed thru the word of the gospel.

Today we have many problem... many wounds.
In society... in the church and in our personal lives.
And we have many people today trying to heal the wounds.
But too often superficially.
            Because the root cause is not being dealt with.
            Ignorance of the Word of God.
            Ignorance sometimes even in Christian churches.

The real remedy for the wounded is to know the Word of God and to do it.

And if we want to be healers of the wounded
we need to apply the Word of God and the gospel of Jesus.

May the Lord enable us to do so for His glory and our well-being.

Amen.