Jeremiah 4:11-28
“Skilled at Evil”
September 12, 2010 - Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

         There’s Captain Nemo in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Professor Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes novels and Lex Luther in Superman comics. There is Dr. No and Blofeld and Goldfinger in the Bond movies and Darth Vader in “Star Wars.” There was Hitler and Stalin and Chairman Mao and Slobodan Milošević. Who are the most memorable evil geniuses in your mind?

         We have a fascination with characters who are not only truly rotten, but are in some way brilliant about it. A fine intelligence, normally a good thing, is perverted toward doing unspeakable things. And that captures our imaginations, invites us to dwell on these people who are so skilled at doing evil.

         That’s the complaint God has against Israel in our text this morning from Jeremiah 4. In verse 22, God says, “They are skilled in doing evil; they know not how to do good.” It was not just a few evil geniuses among the people of Judah and Jerusalem. The whole society was skilled at doing wrong.

         The scene is the late 7^th century B.C. The northern half of Israel was overrun and destroyed by the Assyrians a hundred years before, but the southern kingdom, Judah, managed to escape by submitting and becoming an Assyrian satellite nation. But in 626 the old and decrepit Babylonian empire began to revive and rebelled against the Assyrians. Egypt was frightened by the Babylonians and came to the aid of Assyria, but the Babylonians soundly defeated the Egyptians at the battle of Carchemish in 609. In the process, Judah was caught in the middle and Josiah, one of its better kings, was killed opposing Pharaoh’s forces on the way to Carchemish. So Judah came under the control of now dominant Babylon.

         As the 7^th century ended, Judah hadn’t learned any spiritual lessons from its political troubles. There was a continuing and constant current of idolatry and worship of false gods. And God’s judgment on that spiritual unfaithfulness was out there on the horizon in the form of a fully revived and powerful Babylonian empire under the leadership of Nebuchadnezzar. That’s the “scorching wind” Jeremiah is talking about in verse 11. It’s a wind of divine judgment in the form, says verse 13, of the horses and chariots of Babylon. In verse 18 God says, “Your own conduct and actions have brought this on you. This is your punishment.”

         It’s really easy to distance ourselves from ancient Judah just as we distance ourselves from book and movie super villains. Judah’s captivity and punishment 2,700 years ago seems no more relevant to you and me than is 007’s strangling of Goldfinger or Batman’s defeat and punishment of the Joker. We are glad to see proper consequences for those who are evildoers.

         This all good to think about on the day after the anniversary of September 11, 2001. As recent media events have proven, that vicious attack is still raw and painful in our minds. Many of us would still like to see judgment and punishment for those who were skilled enough in evil to drive planes into buildings and kill several thousand Americans. Evidently, many are still angry enough that they choose to despise and even find ways to insult and offend millions of Muslims who had no part in the attack and who abhorred it as much as we do. The fear is that such insults will only spark more terror.

         So a vicious cycle of violence and evil is perpetuated in continuing animosity between people who differ in race and belief. There is no end in sight to all the ways we human beings manage to trouble and hurt each other.

         It’s also easy to pin the blame for all this sort of trouble on a few grandiose idiots like Terry Jones or Osama Bin Laden. The dishonoring of God through hate and violence in His name is all their fault. It’s not what good people like you and I do. Or is it?

         God could have pinned the blame for Judah’s punishment on a few grand idiots in Jerusalem, evil kings like Jehoiakim and Zedekiah and the false prophets who led them astray. But verse 22 begins, “My people are fools; they do not know me. They are senseless children; they have no understanding.” The same might be said of us. It’s not just a few evil idiots, or evil geniuses for that matter, that trouble our lives. It’s all of us together who God says are “skilled in doing evil.”

         Psalm 14 verse 3 plays that same note: “Every one has proved faithless; all alike have turned bad; there is none who does good; no, not one.” The truth Jeremiah and the psalmist ask us to face is that we are all pretty good at doing bad and pretty bad at doing good.

         We all know what to say that will cut someone to the quick. We all have practice at getting what we want even when it hurts another person. We all are well-trained in covering up our hidden vices and we’ve studied since we were little how to lie in order to avoid getting caught. Many of us have also worked very hard at learning to deceive ourselves when it comes to our relationship with God. We’re clever enough to get ourselves to believe that we pray and read the Bible and give more than we actually do. We are good at bad.

         The consequence of Judah’s evil in Jeremiah 4 is desolation. Verses 23 to 28 describe an earth that is “formless and empty,” heavens that are dark, fields that have become deserts, towns that have no people in them, and skies where all the birds have flown away. “The whole land will be ruined,” God says.

         We know the consequences of our own evil. Marriages and families are wrecked. Friendships are destroyed. Jobs are lost. Wonderful plans for the future get shattered. Beautiful places are made ugly. Good memories become painful regrets. We are good at evil and we are good at making a mess of our lives and other lives.

         Jeremiah’s response to all that ruin is in the middle of our text in verses 18-21, particularly in verse 19, “Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart!” As he watched and saw in his mind the coming war and suffering and ruin, his heart was crushed. Jeremiah is called “The Weeping Prophet,” because he was so full of distress for what’s happening to his people.

         I watched an old episode of “The Closer” the other night. The lady detective went to her car after stopping at the coffee shop. As she got in her cell phone rang. She hung up, turned to back out and the mocha she had left on car roof spilled all down the back window. She got out, picked up the empty cup and soggy bag and what was left of her muffin, then got back in as the phone rang again. Talking on the phone, in a hurry to get to a murder scene, she backed up again trying to peer through the splattered window and backed into another car. She quickly got out, in the process dropping her phone. She got in an argument with the other driver. When she went to get back in the car she stepped on her phone and broke it to pieces.

         All those little mishaps and misjudgments could just as well be the kind of tangled mess of anger and lying and jealousy and greed by which we regularly ruin our lives. The Closer could be any of us in the process of doing a good job of doing what’s bad. It’s funny watching it happen to a TV character, but put yourself in her shoes and it’s really sad.

         The weeping of Jeremiah over Judah’s evil invites us to put ourselves in their shoes, to weep with him about our own skill in doing evil. We’ve made a shipwreck of our lives and in the process shipwrecked the world. With Jeremiah we need to stop and have a good cry about it all.

         The good news is that the mess and the tears is not the end of the story. Even in the midst of all this judgment, God says in verse 14, “Jerusalem, wash the evil from your heart and be saved.” Even as the desolation of the world is pictured, God says in verse 27, “I will not destroy it completely.” It’s so clear here in Jeremiah today, but it’s absolutely plain in our Gospel lesson from Luke and our reading from I Timothy. There is hope for people who are really good at doing bad.

         Jesus told the two little stories at the beginning of Luke 15 to those who thought there was no hope for people skilled at evil. They wondered why He was wasting His time and sullying His reputation by hanging out with people who were hopeless, people who were really, really good at bad. Jesus told them God was like a shepherd who had lost one sheep out of hundred, a woman who had lost one coin out of ten. God goes looking for those bad people, those people who are good at ruining their lives. God goes looking for sinners.

         It’s love that makes us look for things. We search for the things we truly care about. Two weeks ago I stood one evening in the church parking lot as my wife Beth talked with a couple other women. Suddenly she said, “I lost an earring.” Before you know it, there were three women kneeling down all feeling the pavement in the dark. I surveyed the situation for awhile thinking it was hopeless. Then I asked Beth which side she lost, considered the angle of fall, and asked Carolyn to lift up her purse. There was the earring.

         I’m good at finding earrings because I’ve been searching for them for thirty-one years. On the evening of our marriage, as we entered a hotel room, Beth realized she had lost the pearl earrings that were my wedding gift to her. We searched the room, then the next day we went down and searched the car in the daylight. We found one. Then we drove back to the quiet residential neighborhood where we had stopped to cut off the cans her brothers had tied to my car. Maybe the other had fallen out on the street there. It seemed hopeless, but I spent two or three of the first twenty-four hours of married life looking for earrings, because I loved my wife. I’ve been doing it ever since, because I still love her.

         We are good at sin, but God is good at finding sinners and saving them. That’s how the story ended for Judah. They wrecked their world and got carried off in exile to Babylon. God went and found them there and brought them home. That’s how the story ended for the apostle Paul. He seemed hopeless. He began as a persecutor of the Church. He was complicit in the murder of the first Christian martyr. He got letters from the high priest to throw believers in prison. He was good at doing bad. Yet he says in I Timothy 1:15, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” Jesus came to save, He came looking for, people who are good at bad. He came looking for Paul and He came looking for you and me and everyone else who is making a mess of life.

         God is good at finding and saving sinners because He loves them. That love makes Him patient. I eventually gave up on that one earring we couldn’t find the day after our wedding. God does not give up. He keeps trying, right up to the end. That’s why even when the armies of Babylon were bearing down on Jerusalem, Jeremiah was there to warn them and implore them to turn back to God and be saved.

         He did not give up on Paul. In verse 16 of I Timothy 1, he tells us, “I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.” God in Jesus is immensely patient with us because He loves us. He wants us to be found. He wants to find us and turn us around. He wants to save us and make us good at good and bad at bad.

         We are here today because of that beautiful, trustworthy saying, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” And like Paul we recognize that we are some of the worst. But believing that bad fact about ourselves gives us just that much more reason to rejoice in the fact that we’ve been loved and found and saved by Jesus.

         I gave up on that second earring thirty-one years ago. I figured it was lost forever. But that’s not the end of the story. We went off on our honeymoon and came back two weeks later. We stopped at Beth’s parents’ home and opened wedding gifts. Then Beth’s mother said, “Oh, I have something else Laura left for you.” The earring. Beth’s maid of honor found it as she was undressing for bed after the wedding. I’ll just tell you that as she and Beth hugged each other in the receiving line, the earring landed, well, there on Laura’s person. You should have seen the smiles and the joy and the laughter as Beth got that earring back. She and Laura still laugh about it whenever they see each other.

         I thought it was hopeless, but the earring was found. That’s how it is, Jesus told the Pharisees. God is out there looking for those we imagine hopeless. He’s looking for us when we think we are hopeless. God laughs with joy whenever He finds a skilled but hopeless sinner and brings that person home. That’s how it was when God brought His people back from Babylon. That’s how it was when Jesus met Paul on the road to Damascus and changed his heart. That’s how it is when you and I are found in whatever ruinous mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. God laughs and rejoices and celebrates. As good, as skilled as we might be at losing ourselves in sin, God is better at finding us.

         Let’s give up our skill at doing evil and rejoice in God’s skill at doing us good. Let’s join Him in looking for those who are still lost in sin. Let us be found here in worship and out in our community in service. Let’s learn to be like our patient, loving Lord. Jesus is always good at doing us good.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2010 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj