4/20/08 - Stewardship Sunday - Jeremiah 36

TAKE SOME TIME FOR THE LORD
- It's usually thankless
- It's always thankful

Baruch was a man who didn’t have any particular talents which he could give to the Lord. Scripture doesn’t tell us of any special ability Baruch had that was used to God’s glory. He wasn’t blessed with the missionary zeal of Paul, he wasn’t blessed with the military leadership of Joshua, he wasn’t even blessed with the special abilities of the one he worked under, Jeremiah the prophet. It seems that Baruch didn’t have any unique gift that he was called on to utilize for the work of the Church. But Baruch was vitally important to the spreading of God’s Word nonetheless. Because although he was not able to glorify the Lord with a distinctive talent, he glorified the Lord in a way that was just as praiseworthy: he gave glory to the Lord by giving his time.
Baruch was a scribe. He simply wrote down what Jeremiah told him to write down. And granted, the skill of writing back then was not nearly as common as it is today. But it was a learned skill just as it is now. It didn’t take an extraordinary mind, it just took time. It took time to learn it and it took time to do it. And Baruch gladly took that time for the Lord. At the beginning of Jeremiah 36 we read that Baruch copied down all the words of the Lord that Jeremiah dictated to him. And although we don’t know exactly how much Baruch wrote down in his life, it is very possible that he eventually transcribed all 52 chapters of the book of Jeremiah that we have today. That would have taken some time. That would have taken some effort on his part to write clearly and precisely so that many other people could read the holy words of the Lord after him. Baruch took a lot of time and effort for the work of the Lord. But how many of you remembered Baruch’s name or even who he was before today’s service? He is a key component in the transmission of Scripture! His name and his work and the time he spent are even recorded for us in the Bible! But few remember his name or the work that he did. Because it’s a thankless job. Giving of your time for the work of the Lord is usually thankless in this life.
And that’s not all the time Baruch spent for God’s glory. We see as the 36th chapter of Jeremiah continues that Baruch was not only called on to copy down the words of the Lord, Jeremiah then asked him to read those words to the people of Israel. Jeremiah had been banned from the temple after the harsh words he had preached to them before. And so Baruch was the one who had to read the biting words of the law to them again. No special ability needed for this task either, just time. And courage. Baruch knew that the people were not going to want to listen. Baruch knew that they had already kicked Jeremiah the prophet out of the Lord’s temple for repeating the same message. But he spent the time anyway. “Baruch son of Neriah did everything Jeremiah the prophet told him to do; at the LORD’s temple he read the words of the LORD from the scroll” (36:8). Baruch took the time, he read the words, and he didn’t worry about the results. And then he took the time to read them again. Some of the leaders of the people wanted to hear the words of the Lord for themselves. And so after Baruch had read the chapters and chapters of Jeremiah’s dictation to the crowds, he started from the beginning and read them all the way through again for the officials of the people as well.
But he didn’t get thanked for his work. Instead, he was told to hide because the leaders knew that king would be angry at him and the prophet Jeremiah when he heard the Lord’s words. In fact, when those words were read in the presence of King Jehoiakim, the king cut Baruch’s work up piece by piece with a knife and threw the fragments of God’s decrees into the fire. And from then on Baruch’s life was in danger because of what he had done for the Lord. King Jehoiakim even tried to have him arrested - and he would have been if the Lord hadn’t hid him. Giving of his time was not only a thankless job for Baruch, it was life-threatening.
And so what did Baruch do after all that? He gave of his time again. “Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to the scribe Baruch son of Neriah, and as Jeremiah dictated, Baruch wrote on it all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire. And many similar words were added to them” (36:32). Baruch certainly had other things to do! He certainly didn’t want to copy down all those words again! He most likely had a family, friends, hobbies, and activities he liked just like you do. But Baruch’s anger or frustration or complaints are not mentioned. Just the time that he spent. Thankless time for the good of the Lord when he could have been doing many different things that were probably more exciting and a lot less dangerous.
And that is what usually holds us back, isn’t it? Out of everything we have, time is usually the hardest thing to give because we seem to have so many other things to do. Whether you are still in school, whether you have a family, whether you’re working full time or retired, you are busy, aren’t you? Your day to day schedule is filled with different things that you “have” to do and that you “need” to do and that you “want” to do and that you must do. And as the advances of communication and transportation keep giving us more and more options to do different things in different ways, the time that we have never seems time enough. And, consequently, we end up not having time to give time to the Lord.
It’s not a coincidence at all that we are talking about giving time to the Lord right as we begin our congregation-wide evangelism efforts. Because the different things you can do for the evangelism work of this congregation don’t really take any special talents, no unique abilities, they just take time. And time is hard to give. It’s such a precious commodity that we don’t want to let it go. Because once you spend an hour or a day or a week on something - it’s gone. You can never get it back. That time is spent and you can never make it up again. And so we cherish our time. So much so that instead of taking some time for the Lord, we end up taking time away from the Lord. We want to spend time with our families, we want to spend time with our friends. We want to do this, we want to do that. We want to take some time for ourselves. And all those things are good to do, except when those things fill our schedules to such an extent that we no longer have time to take for the Lord. Sometimes our priorities are all mixed up, aren’t they? We want to do, we want to see, we want to participate in so many things, but actually taking some time to do the work of the Lord? Only if we have time. Only if there is some left. Only if it fits into our schedules. But shouldn’t our schedules be built around the work of the Lord instead of trying to cram the work of the Lord into the crevices of our schedules?
Of course our guilt and the realization of our selfish past behavior is not going to motivate us to take some time for the Lord in the right way. Only the gospel will do that. Only the Good News about Christ will move our hearts to take some time for the Lord out of our busy schedules. And so let’s look at the gospel by looking at the time the Lord has spent on us. And we can start before time began. Because as long as God existed, which was so long ago that he doesn’t have a beginning… for all that time the Lord was thinking about you. He cared for you. He already loved you! And then he took the time to create this world for us. For us to live in and work in and play in and worship in. He took the time to come up with a plan of salvation after Adam and Eve fell away. He took the time to preserve that message over the millennia through the pens of people like Moses and Baruch and Ezra. “And when the time had fully come” the apostle Paul writes, the Lord took the time to come down to our level himself. He took 33 years on this earth to put up with the temptations and the evil and the cruelty of a world that we corrupted. He took time to pray for us on numerous occasions, sometimes all night long. He took a lot of time to hang on a cross just to suffer. He took 3 days in the tomb. He took 40 days appearing to his people afterwards. And he is taking the time right now to prepare for us mansions in heaven - waiting for our arrival. The Lord didn’t just take some time out of his schedule for his children, he took all of his time for his children. And he still dedicates every minute of every hour of every day to those he loves. He doesn’t do anything else! He spends all of his time on us. And because he spends all of his time on us, we don’t have to spend any of our time trying to grab his attention or earn his favor or catch his eye. His eye is already on you. He sacrificed his time, his energy, and his very life for you. He knows exactly who you are. He planned for you, he created you, and then saved you! So that now any time you spend time on him, it is not to earn his love, it’s to thank him for it.
That means: although taking time for the Lord may usually be a thankless job, it is always a thankful job. That’s why we do it. That’s why we take the time as Christians to do the work of the Lord. To thank him. To praise him for everything he has done for us. To glorify his name and to show our gratitude for all the time he has spent on us. That’s surely why Baruch spent the time that he did. He copied and read, and read and hid, and copied it all over again because he knew how important the work of the Lord was. He was glad to have a hand in the spreading of the Word and I’m sure he was honored to be a part of God’s plan - be it ever so small a role. Why else would Baruch do it? For what other reason would Baruch spend so much time on painstaking and laborious tasks if they were not to thank the Lord and for the good of the Lord’s word? Baruch wouldn’t have bothered! He wouldn’t have taken the time to do those things if they were not a crucial part of carrying out the Lord’s will.
You have a crucial part in carrying out the Lord’s will as well. He has given you a congregation to live in and to grow in the Word. He has given the opportunities around you in which to spread that Word. And he has called on you to take some time for the good of his Church - for the work of the Lord that reaches beyond the grave and into eternity. This is momentous work, my friends! This is monumental work! And the things we do for the evangelism of this congregation will not be hard to accomplish, it just might be hard to make ourselves take the time to do them. Because as these days and weeks and months go by, as our evangelism efforts expand and continue, you are not always going to want to take some time for the Lord. It is not always going to be fun. It is not always going to be convenient for you. And most of it will be thankless. But every time you take time for the work of the Lord, it will be vitally important to spreading the gospel in this area. Every time you take the time for the work of the Lord, it will make it possible for this congregation as a whole to carry out the Great Commission. And every time you take the time for the work of the Lord, it will be a significant way to thank the Lord for all that he has done for you personally.
Keep this in mind if the results you expect do not show up. Keep this in mind when the amounts of time you spend start to seem like time wasted. Because Baruch had to deal with the same setbacks. At one point he was completely overwhelmed with it all and was losing hope because of the threats on his life and because of the lack of results from his work. “Woe to me!” Baruch said 9 chapters after our text. “The LORD has added sorrow to my pain; I am worn out with groaning and find no rest” (45:3)! And so the Lord said to him, “I will overthrow what I have built and uproot what I have planted throughout the land. Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not” (45:4-5). The Lord knew what he was doing all along. The Lord knew how he was going to use Baruch’s efforts and reminded him that the rewards were not the reason for his service. There was no reason for Baruch and there is no reason for us to worry about how things will turn out. We are not to concern ourselves with seeing the outcome. And we are not to worry about getting thanks for the time we spend. Because we don’t do it for the thanks. We don’t do it to see the results. We don’t even do it for the joy of accomplishment. We take the time for the Lord to thank the Lord for the time he took for us. Do we need anymore motivation than that? Do we have anything more important to spend our time on than him and the work he has given us to do?
Amen.

“Jesus appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.” - 1 Timothy 3:16