October 16, 2016

Trusting in Man vs. Trusting in God

Preacher: Josh Tancordo Series: Doing Church Biblically Scripture: Jeremiah 17:5–10

Trusting in Man vs. Trusting in God – Jeremiah 17:5-9

The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD”—Proverbs 21:31. “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God”—Psalm 20:7. “The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue”—Psalm 33:16-17. What do these verses have in common? They all remind us not to trust in our own efforts or our own abilities but instead to put our confidence in God. 

You know, this season that we’re in is a very important time in the life of our church, mainly because we’re planning to actually start the church next week. For the past twelve weeks, we’ve been using Sunday mornings to have a kind of church membership class, a time that’s designed to prepare those who are interested to be official members of Redeeming Grace Church and fulfill our covenant promises to one another. We’ve talked about everything from why join a church to each our three core values to conflict resolution to baptism and everything in between. But as we look towards starting Redeeming Grace Church next week, there’s something else we need to understand. We need to understand that the only reason anything has come together so far is because of God’s power, and the only way anything will come together in the future is by God’s power. That’s why it’s so important that we consciously direct our gaze towards God for everything. 

Please turn with me to Jeremiah 17. If you’re using the Story Bibles we provide, that’s on page 524. Jeremiah 17:5-10: “Thus says the LORD: "Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. "Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit." The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”

This passage gives us two different options for the way we live our lives: trusting in man and trusting in God—and these two paths take you to completely opposite destinations. So let’s walk through this passage verse by verse, and then I’d like to discuss two specific takeaways for our lives today. 

Exposition

First, this passage encourages us not to put our trust in man—and not the male gender in particular but human beings in general. Don’t put your trust in them. Verses 5-6:  “Thus says the LORD: ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.’”  

Although these words can apply to Israel in a general way, there’s a strong possibility that they were written with a specific situation in mind.  During this period of Israel’s history, international politics was a very dangerous game.  Things were very unstable, power was constantly shifting from one superpower to another, and making one wrong move could bring disaster on your nation.  Now Israel, and specifically the Southern Kingdom of Judah, was supposed to trust the Lord to defend them and make sure everything turned out okay.  But instead of trusting the Lord, they had the habit of trusting their political alliances, especially their alliance with Egypt.  They trusted man instead of trusting God.   

We learn from the prophet Isaiah that they had been doing the same thing a hundred years before that as well.  In Isaiah 30:1-3, God condemns them for this same sinful tendency.  “‘Ah, stubborn children,’ declares the LORD, ‘who carry out a plan, but not mine, and who make an alliance, but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin; who set out to go down to Egypt, without asking for my direction, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the protection of Pharaoh turn to your shame, and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your humiliation.”  Then God says in the next chapter, Isaiah 31:1, “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the LORD!”  So, back in our main text, Jeremiah is just repeating a common theme of the prophets when he says, “Cursed is the man who trust in man and makes flesh his strength….”  Then he continues in the second part of verse 5, “whose heart turns away from the Lord.”  So when we’re trusting man, who are we not trusting?  God.  When we insist on looking to our own strength and drawing on our own resources, we’re effectively rejecting God.

Then in verse 6, God gives a vivid description of those who put their trust in man.  Look what He says: “He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come.  He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”  So whoever trusts in man is like a shrub in the desert that’s barely alive. If you ever wanted to see a shrub like that, just come over to my house because it seems like we have a special talent for growing those kinds of shrubs. We’ll plant some shrubs and other plants, but it usually doesn’t take long before they’re kind of like these shrubs in verse 6. I don’t know if they don’t get enough sun or if there’s something in the soil or exactly what it is, but for some reason, that’s the way it is. I teased my wife as we went to Home Depot this past time to pick out another shrub that I could actually hear the shrubs at Home Depot saying “Please don’t take me, please don’t take me” and then the one I took was calling out for help all the way home. He knew it was certain death. If you’re a shrub, once you go to the Tancordo house, that’s it for you. So I feel like I know from painful experience what this verse is talking about. Shrubs like the one in verse 6 don’t stand a chance.  

Now, in contrast to that, look at verses 7-8. I’m pretty sure Jeremiah had my neighbor’s house two doors down in mind when he wrote these next two verses: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.  He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for it leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”  In contrast to the person who trusts in man, the person who trusts in God can expect to prosper.  Before, we had a shrub planted in the desert, but now we have a tree planted by a stream.  Even in “the year of drought,” it always has what it needs to flourish and bear fruit.  That’s the person who puts their confidence in God.   

And you would think that this would be fairly obvious to people, that they would see the foolishness of trusting in man and embrace the necessity of trusting in God.  But, unfortunately, people often continue trusting in man.  And in Jeremiah 17, the next verse we come to tells us why that’s often the case.  Right after God pronounces a curse on the one who trusts in man and then a blessing on the one who trusts in the Lord, God says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”  The reason we often want to trust in man is that we have a deceitful heart.  Our heart is like a broken compass that’s often pointing us in the wrong direction, making us blind to our weakness and our need for God.  Our hearts give us a false sense of security as we trust in ourselves.  They lead us to believe the lie that we don’t need God—that we can handle this on our own. That’s why, as one pastor used to tell me, we need to spend less time listening to ourselves and more time preaching to ourselves. We listen to ourselves entirely too much.

Now all of these words were originally written as a rebuke and a warning to the people of Judah.  As we mentioned, the people of Judah had a tendency to put their trust in foreign alliances rather than in their God who had promised to protect them.  And that error simply illustrates a tendency that’s deeply engrained in every human heart, including yours and mine.  That tendency is to rely on our own strength and draw on our own resources rather than look to God.  That’s just the way we are as a result of our fallen condition.  The last thing we want to do is acknowledge our neediness and humbly look to God as the one who meets our needs.  

Takeaway 1:  Looking to God for Salvation

And there are two ways we need to be looking to God that I’d like to talk about. First, we need to be looking to God for salvation. That means we admit, “God, I’m a sinful person. And not only that, but I’m so thoroughly polluted with sin that there’s nothing I can do to rescue myself.” We have to recognize how bad things really are. Kind of like in a war movie when a soldier gets hit with a bullet or a piece of shrapnel, and it’s really bad. But because of the shock and the adrenaline, that soldier may not realize how bad it is until he sees the way other soldiers are looking at him. Then he realizes he’s in trouble. And that’s how it is with us. And the Bible is like a mirror that shows us how bad things really are. As we read more and more details about our sinful condition in the Bible, we realize there’s nothing we can do on our own to repair our broken relationship with God or earn God’s favor or impress God. It doesn’t matter how many religious rituals you perform, how faithfully you attend church, or how often you pray before you eat. None of those things can make your situation any better or get you into heaven. Relying on them is what our text calls “trusting in man”.  “Trusting in God” means that we place 100% of our confidence in Christ and in Christ alone for our salvation.  He’s the only hope we have of being forgiven of our sins and entering heaven.  

You see, when Jesus came to this earth, he was born of a virgin so that he didn’t inherit the sinful nature that all the rest of us are born with.  And then he continued walking in sinless perfection every day of his life.  As hard as we might try to do that, we can’t even come close.  But Jesus succeeded where we fail.  Everything he did, every decision he made, every word that came out of his mouth, every motive within his heart was in perfect obedience to God.  Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus “has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.”  You could say that we took God’s final exam, but we failed it.  We didn’t even answer one question correctly, and so we got a grade of 0%.  But then Jesus took God’s final exam, and he answered every question correctly and earned a perfect grade of 100%.  Now, here’s the beauty of the gospel, are you listening?   As we stop “trusting in man” put our trust in Jesus instead, his test score is applied to our record.  God takes Jesus’ perfect obedience and transfers it over to our account.  And that’s important because only perfect people get to heaven.  God doesn’t tolerate even one sin or imperfection in his presence, so only perfect people can live in His presence in heaven.  But as we put our trust in Jesus, we get to count his perfect life as our own.  

Then after Jesus lived that perfect life, he continued to act as our substitute when he died on the cross.  And the reason Jesus died on the cross was to take the punishment for our sins.  That’s the very center of the gospel message.  You see, not only were we not able to answer a single question correctly on the final exam, we had been caught cheating on every test, quiz, and homework assignment throughout the entire class.  And, of course, cheating comes with a penalty.  But when Jesus died on the cross, he suffered that penalty in our place. And after Jesus died, he rose from the dead, victorious and triumphant.  He was victorious over death, victorious over sin, victorious over the devil.  And did you know that his victory can be our victory as we put our trust in him?  When we stop trusting in man to save us and instead put our trust in Christ, we experience all the benefits of his perfect life, sacrificial death, and victorious resurrection.  But that requires that we abandon our trust in ourselves or our own good works to get us to heaven and look only to Christ.  

Takeaway 2: Looking to God as We Start the Church

So that’s one way in which we need to look to God: we need to look to God for salvation. Secondly, we also need to look to God as we start this church. We want Redeeming Grace Church to be like that tree in verse 8—the “tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” We want to be that kind of a tree for this community. Listen to me: if there’s one thing this area needs, it’s a gospel-centered church—a church that proclaims the gospel with power and clarity, shining the light of the gospel into the thick cloud of both the irreligion and the man-made religion that covers this community. We want to be that church. 

You know, one of the things that many humanitarian organizations in Africa are focusing on now is drilling wells so that the rural villages there can have access to clean water. Polluted and disease-ridden water is a huge problem in Africa. In fact, every year, an estimated 2.2 million African children die from water-related illnesses. And, of course, there are a lot of other ways to help these African villages. There’s an ongoing need for food and medicine and education and other important needs. But it’s amazing how many of those other needs simply having clean water can help meet. For example, with a clean water well, there’s less disease and thus less need for medicine. With a clean water well, the women won’t have to spend 2-3 hours every day simply retrieving water from a distant water source, and that enables them to actually get an education. So not only can clean water wells help keep people from dying from water-related illnesses, but they can actually transform the lives of just about everyone who lives in that village. So for many villages, the best way to help them is simply by drilling a clean water well for them. And that one well will keep on giving them water for years and years and years. 

That’s what we want for Redeeming Grace Church. We want to be a well of gospel truth for this community, recognizing that’s the most vital need that exists. And just like a well, we want to do that year after year after year. Like we were talking about in prayer meeting last week, we want this church to still be reaching people with the gospel long after we’re dead and gone. Not only that, we even want to multiply ourselves—regularly sending people out to start other churches in other areas of the city so that they can have gospel-centered churches as well. And I know that sounds like a lot. You’re probably thinking, “C’mon Josh, we having even started one church yet, and you’re talking about starting numerous churches?” I get it, and it is a lot. But listen: we serve a great God—a God who spoke this world into existence and sustains it by his infinite power. And if we’re trusting in God rather than trusting in man, we have every reason to expect him to do great things.  We have every reason to expect to be that fruitful tree.

And listen to me here: this is the point the entire sermon has been moving towards. The way we do that—the way we demonstrate we’re really trusting God—is through prayer. I once heard someone say that prayer is the litmus test of our reliance upon God. The true level of how much we’re really relying on God is seen in our prayer life. That’s why we have prayer meetings like the one we had last week. That’s why many of us meet regularly in groups of twos and threes to pray together. And that’s why we encourage you to be faithfully praying on a daily basis, especially as we start the church. Pray for God to be at work here!

Of course, God already knows what we need. He knows what’s going on and what we’re trying to do. So why does he want us to pray? That’s the question C. S. Lewis asks and answers in one of his books in the Narnia series entitled The Magician’s Nephew. And he does it through the plot of his fictional story. You see, there’s this majestic, stately Lion, named Aslan, who represents Jesus. And Aslan sends these children named Diggory and Polly out on a mission. But as they journey on their mission, they find themselves hungry and without food when they set up camp for the night. So they talk about their need for food with the horse who’s carrying them around—remember, it’s a fictional story. And they wonder why Aslan has allowed them to be in this situation without enough food. Polly asks the horse, “Wouldn’t Aslan know about our need for food without being asked?” And the horse responds very insightfully, “I’ve no doubt he would, but I’ve a sort of an idea he likes to be asked.”God likes to be asked. He knows what we need even before we ask him, but he wants us to ask anyway so that we can be reminded on a regular basis how weak we are and how desperately we need him. That’s not the way we naturally think, but we need to think that way, and prayer helps us think that way. 

So let me challenge you to spend a significant amount of time every day this week praying for Redeeming Grace Church. In fact, instead of giving out discussion questions for everyone to take home, we’re actually going to give out a suggested prayer schedule. This prayer schedule goes through each day of the week and gives a specific need to pray for for that day. You may even consider fasting for a day or even from a single meal as you pray for these things. 

You know, there’s a verse in James that’s always stuck with me in thinking about prayer. It’s James 4:2, and it states very simply, “You have not because you ask not.” Think about that. It’s so simple: “You have not because you ask not.” Do you want to see God transform more people’s lives through our church? “You have not because you ask not.” Do you want God to use Redeeming Grace Church to spark spiritual awakening in our communities? “You have not because you ask not.” Do you want to see Jesus exalted and truly glorified as he deserves to be in this city? “You have not because you ask not.” I, for one, am tired of settling for a little when I could have a lot. So let’s start asking. I’m going to invite those I’ve asked to pray to join me up at the front now, and they’re going to lead us as we pray for the things listed on this prayer schedule.

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Preacher: Josh Tancordo Scripture: Matthew 26:26–29 Series: Doing Church Biblically

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