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Netarts Friends Church
8-10-2008
Netarts Friends “FAITHFUL UNDER FIRE”
TEXT: Jeremiah 35:1-19 NIV (the Recabites)
INTRODUCTION:
A. Did any of you see the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing this week?
1. We saw athletes waving and smiling. What we didn’t see was the enormous hard work and
dedication it has taken for them to get to the place where they could compete.
2. It reminds me of a high school boy I met in the first church I pastured. [Hartman] His father
wanted me to talk him into going out for a variety of sports in school, but when the boy told me his
passion for wrestling, I realized he was dedicated to excel in that one sport. So he needed to
concentrate on that one sport.
3. That’s exactly what he did. And he went on to become the state champion twice.
B. God is always looking for people who are dedicated and faithful just like that, faithful to Him.
C. At one of the worst times in the history of the nation of Israel, about 600 years before Christ,
the nation was in turmoil and the leadership was corrupt. But God found some faithful people who
stood against the tide. I want to mention a few of them: the Recabites, Jeremiah, and Daniel.
D. They defined faithfulness in an age when everything people trusted seem to be collapsing and
in fact the city of Jerusalem and its religious center, the temple, were destroyed by fire and the
people killed or deported to Babylon.
E. When you read the prophetic literature of that time you realize Jeremiah and Daniel and Ezekiel
and Habakkuk and others were alive before, during, and after the exile, God’s spokesmen to warn
people it was coming and to explain why when it did come.
F. They were calling people to turn from sin and be faithful to God. Somebody defined faithfulness
once as “a long walk in the same direction.” Let’s see if we can get a handle on what it means to
be faithful, as God wants us to be.
I. FIRST, TO BE FAITHFUL IS TO BE UNSWERVING IN DEVOTION.
A. Jeremiah 35 describes the Rechabites, a group of people descended from Moses’s inlaws nine
centuries earlier.
1. Their ancestor was concerned they might ultimately be rejected by the Israelites.
2. So he told them, “ You must never drink wine, build houses, or plant crops. You must live
in tents as nomads.” They raised livestock like Bedouins, and lived this way to keep the Israelites
from becoming envious and eventually kicking them out.
3. Now God tells Jeremiah, “Offer them wine to drink.” And when he does, they refuse it,
explaining how they faithfully followed the command their ancestor gave them.
4. Then God says, “Look how faithful these Recabites are. But my people don’t follow what I
told them. They have gone after other gods, and became corrupt and worthless.”
B. This week former Senator John Edwards has been on the news apologizing to the American
people for having an affair with a campaign aid a couple years ago.
1. His wife was being treated for cancer at the time, and he cheated on her.
2. My guess is that his political ambitions are probably shot down because Americans know
that if he isn’t faithful to his wife, how can he be trusted to be faithful to them?
C. It’s very popular today for couples to live together before they get married. But if you can’t
control yourself before marriage, what makes you think you can control yourself afterward? Why
should a woman trust a man who pressures her into sex before marriage? If he can’t control
himself before marriage, what will stop him from giving in to his urges afterward, like John Edwards
did?
D. The Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegorical story written in the 1600s to describe the Christian life
like a journey toward heaven.
1. The hero is a man named Christian, who has many adventures but at one point gains a
friend named Faithful. Together they travel to a town called Vanity Fair, where both of them are
arrested and Faithful eventually loses his life.
2. But just as he is killed, Faithful is taken by a chariot up to heaven. It cost him his life, but
he was unswerving in his faith and his devotion to Jesus. And he gained everything.
E. When Jesus was talking about his second coming, he said, “Who then is the faithful and wise
servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their
food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he
returns.”
F. What Jesus wanted was not people who could predict when He would return, but people who
were faithful to do what He gave them to do, until He came back.
G. Are we doing what God has given us to do? Are we unswervingly faithful?
II. SECOND, TO BE FAITHFUL IS TO BE TRUSTWORTHY AS A MESSENGER.
A. Once when I was in junior high school I met a girl who had no nerve endings in her scalp, so if
you pulled her hair out she felt no pain. If there were nerves there, they weren’t conveying the
message to the brain: “This hurts. Make it stop.” So she could suffer damage and not know it. She
needed nerves that were reliable messengers.
B. Jeremiah was a man called to deliver an unpopular message. People didn’t want to hear that
they should change their ways, or their nation would be destroyed.
[Read Jeremiah 26:8-15 (NIV)] He knew they might kill him, but the message was vital if they were
going to have a chance to save their lives.
C. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and Christian leader in Germany during the time of
Hitler, when it was so dangerous and risky to speak out for your faith.
1. Lots of pastors watered down the Gospel so the Nazis wouldn’t bother them.
2. But Bonhoeffer determined to be a faithful messenger so people would hear the real
Gospel and have a chance to know Jesus and be saved.
3. He was executed just before the war ended, but he helped thousands of people stand firm
in their faith. He wrote a still-famous book called The Cost of Discipleship. He paid the cost, and
people listened to him because he was a faithful messenger.
4. He didn’t change the message.
D. Abraham Sarker is a man from Bangladesh who came to the USA to convert people to Islam.
Instead, he read the Bible and became a Christian.
1. His dad put a contract out on him if he returned to Bangladesh, but through prayer and
love he eventually led his father to Christ.
2. And recently he reported that he had finally been able to lead his mother to Jesus also.
3. Why not water down the Gospel when it would be so much less risky? Because a watered-
down Gospel lets people stay on the road to hell without giving them a chance to be saved!
E. This week I saw somebody with a fish symbol on their car, but driving wildly.
1. Cutting into lanes, being careless about other drivers.
2. Christian, but not Christlike. What message comes across?
E. Are you a faithful messenger of the Good News of Jesus to the people you know?
III. THIRD, TO BE FAITHFUL IS TO BE TRUSTWORTHY AS A MANAGER.
A. Here we need to switch over to a contemporary of Jeremiah, a young man named Daniel who
was taken captive to Babylon and was being prepared to serve the king. [Daniel 1.]
1. Daniel and his three friends were probably teenagers, raised to be faithful to God but now
thrust into an environment where they were pressured to compromise, at the risk of their lives.
2. They had been trained to eat only kosher meat, where the blood had been drained out,
because God said the life is in the blood, so don’t eat that.
3. They wanted to stay faithful to God, but could they do that now, in the king’s court, where
the only food they were given was food they couldn’t eat in good conscience?
4. Prayerfully and respectfully, Daniel asked the person in charge of training them if he and
his friends could eat only vegetables.
5. He proposed a test: feed us only vegetables, then after ten days compare us with the
other young men you are feeding, and see who looks healthier.
6. The test came out in their favor, so in managing their bodies Daniel and his friends were
able to be faithful to God.
7. Later, God put them in charge of the whole province of Babylon as administrators, or
managers.
8. They were faithful in small things, and God knew they would be faithful in larger things.
B. In Matthew chapter 25 Jesus told a parable of a wealthy man who went away on a long trip and
gave three of his employees large amounts of money to manage while he was away: one got 5
talents, one got 2, and one got 1 talent.
1. A talent was a unit of weight, about 75 pounds. Assuming it was gold, it would be worth
about $800,000 at today’s prices.
2. So it was a big responsibility. And each man made a decision about what to do with the
money.
3. The man with 5 talents invested his money and doubled it to 10 talents. The man with 2
talents also doubled his money to 4.
4. The man with 1 talent dug a hole in the ground and hid it, so he only had the original
amount to give back to the owner.
5. The owner called that servant wicked, lazy, and worthless, and said “Throw that guy out.”
Or in Donald Trump’s words, “You’re fired.”
6. Those are not words you want to hear on judgment day. Jesus was telling us to be faithful
in using what God has given us. What has He given you?
C. This week I got a call from Joe Cox. Joe has been working with Youth Dynamics in the Portland
area, and obviously impressed some people working with him.
1. A church in Oregon City has asked Joe to apply for the job as youth pastor of their
congregation, and he’s pretty excited about the opportunity.
2. They can see he’s trustworthy with young people, and trustworthy in handling the truth of
God’s word ‒ a faithful manager for the Lord.
CONCLUSION:
A. Hebrews 10:23 says, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is
faithful.”
1. Jesus is faithful to us. Even when we don’t feel Him, He is there. He didn’t feel like going to
the cross for us, but He did.
2. And so He calls us to faithfulness, to Him, and to the faith, and to one another.
B. Unswerving devotion, trustworthy as a messenger and as a manager, even when we are under
fire, even when we don’t feel like it.
C. One day at a time, the kingdom of God grows, in each faithful believer, each faithful family,
each faithful congregation, as the Lord faithfully is preparing the crown of life for all who are
faithful to the end.
Netarts Friends “FAITHFUL UNDER FIRE”
TEXT: Jeremiah 35:1-19 NIV (the Recabites)
INTRODUCTION:
A. Did any of you see the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing this week?
1. We saw athletes waving and smiling. What we didn’t see was the enormous hard work and
dedication it has taken for them to get to the place where they could compete.
2. It reminds me of a high school boy I met in the first church I pastured. [Hartman] His father
wanted me to talk him into going out for a variety of sports in school, but when the boy told me his
passion for wrestling, I realized he was dedicated to excel in that one sport. So he needed to
concentrate on that one sport.
3. That’s exactly what he did. And he went on to become the state champion twice.
B. God is always looking for people who are dedicated and faithful just like that, faithful to Him.
C. At one of the worst times in the history of the nation of Israel, about 600 years before Christ,
the nation was in turmoil and the leadership was corrupt. But God found some faithful people who
stood against the tide. I want to mention a few of them: the Recabites, Jeremiah, and Daniel.
D. They defined faithfulness in an age when everything people trusted seem to be collapsing and
in fact the city of Jerusalem and its religious center, the temple, were destroyed by fire and the
people killed or deported to Babylon.
E. When you read the prophetic literature of that time you realize Jeremiah and Daniel and Ezekiel
and Habakkuk and others were alive before, during, and after the exile, God’s spokesmen to warn
people it was coming and to explain why when it did come.
F. They were calling people to turn from sin and be faithful to God. Somebody defined faithfulness
once as “a long walk in the same direction.” Let’s see if we can get a handle on what it means to
be faithful, as God wants us to be.
I. FIRST, TO BE FAITHFUL IS TO BE UNSWERVING IN DEVOTION.
A. Jeremiah 35 describes the Rechabites, a group of people descended from Moses’s inlaws nine
centuries earlier.
1. Their ancestor was concerned they might ultimately be rejected by the Israelites.
2. So he told them, “ You must never drink wine, build houses, or plant crops. You must live
in tents as nomads.” They raised livestock like Bedouins, and lived this way to keep the Israelites
from becoming envious and eventually kicking them out.
3. Now God tells Jeremiah, “Offer them wine to drink.” And when he does, they refuse it,
explaining how they faithfully followed the command their ancestor gave them.
4. Then God says, “Look how faithful these Recabites are. But my people don’t follow what I
told them. They have gone after other gods, and became corrupt and worthless.”
B. This week former Senator John Edwards has been on the news apologizing to the American
people for having an affair with a campaign aid a couple years ago.
1. His wife was being treated for cancer at the time, and he cheated on her.
2. My guess is that his political ambitions are probably shot down because Americans know
that if he isn’t faithful to his wife, how can he be trusted to be faithful to them?
C. It’s very popular today for couples to live together before they get married. But if you can’t
control yourself before marriage, what makes you think you can control yourself afterward? Why
should a woman trust a man who pressures her into sex before marriage? If he can’t control
himself before marriage, what will stop him from giving in to his urges afterward, like John Edwards
did?
D. The Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegorical story written in the 1600s to describe the Christian life
like a journey toward heaven.
1. The hero is a man named Christian, who has many adventures but at one point gains a
friend named Faithful. Together they travel to a town called Vanity Fair, where both of them are
arrested and Faithful eventually loses his life.
2. But just as he is killed, Faithful is taken by a chariot up to heaven. It cost him his life, but
he was unswerving in his faith and his devotion to Jesus. And he gained everything.
E. When Jesus was talking about his second coming, he said, “Who then is the faithful and wise
servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their
food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he
returns.”
F. What Jesus wanted was not people who could predict when He would return, but people who
were faithful to do what He gave them to do, until He came back.
G. Are we doing what God has given us to do? Are we unswervingly faithful?
II. SECOND, TO BE FAITHFUL IS TO BE TRUSTWORTHY AS A MESSENGER.
A. Once when I was in junior high school I met a girl who had no nerve endings in her scalp, so if
you pulled her hair out she felt no pain. If there were nerves there, they weren’t conveying the
message to the brain: “This hurts. Make it stop.” So she could suffer damage and not know it. She
needed nerves that were reliable messengers.
B. Jeremiah was a man called to deliver an unpopular message. People didn’t want to hear that
they should change their ways, or their nation would be destroyed.
[Read Jeremiah 26:8-15 (NIV)] He knew they might kill him, but the message was vital if they were
going to have a chance to save their lives.
C. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and Christian leader in Germany during the time of
Hitler, when it was so dangerous and risky to speak out for your faith.
1. Lots of pastors watered down the Gospel so the Nazis wouldn’t bother them.
2. But Bonhoeffer determined to be a faithful messenger so people would hear the real
Gospel and have a chance to know Jesus and be saved.
3. He was executed just before the war ended, but he helped thousands of people stand firm
in their faith. He wrote a still-famous book called The Cost of Discipleship. He paid the cost, and
people listened to him because he was a faithful messenger.
4. He didn’t change the message.
D. Abraham Sarker is a man from Bangladesh who came to the USA to convert people to Islam.
Instead, he read the Bible and became a Christian.
1. His dad put a contract out on him if he returned to Bangladesh, but through prayer and
love he eventually led his father to Christ.
2. And recently he reported that he had finally been able to lead his mother to Jesus also.
3. Why not water down the Gospel when it would be so much less risky? Because a watered-
down Gospel lets people stay on the road to hell without giving them a chance to be saved!
E. This week I saw somebody with a fish symbol on their car, but driving wildly.
1. Cutting into lanes, being careless about other drivers.
2. Christian, but not Christlike. What message comes across?
E. Are you a faithful messenger of the Good News of Jesus to the people you know?
III. THIRD, TO BE FAITHFUL IS TO BE TRUSTWORTHY AS A MANAGER.
A. Here we need to switch over to a contemporary of Jeremiah, a young man named Daniel who
was taken captive to Babylon and was being prepared to serve the king. [Daniel 1.]
1. Daniel and his three friends were probably teenagers, raised to be faithful to God but now
thrust into an environment where they were pressured to compromise, at the risk of their lives.
2. They had been trained to eat only kosher meat, where the blood had been drained out,
because God said the life is in the blood, so don’t eat that.
3. They wanted to stay faithful to God, but could they do that now, in the king’s court, where
the only food they were given was food they couldn’t eat in good conscience?
4. Prayerfully and respectfully, Daniel asked the person in charge of training them if he and
his friends could eat only vegetables.
5. He proposed a test: feed us only vegetables, then after ten days compare us with the
other young men you are feeding, and see who looks healthier.
6. The test came out in their favor, so in managing their bodies Daniel and his friends were
able to be faithful to God.
7. Later, God put them in charge of the whole province of Babylon as administrators, or
managers.
8. They were faithful in small things, and God knew they would be faithful in larger things.
B. In Matthew chapter 25 Jesus told a parable of a wealthy man who went away on a long trip and
gave three of his employees large amounts of money to manage while he was away: one got 5
talents, one got 2, and one got 1 talent.
1. A talent was a unit of weight, about 75 pounds. Assuming it was gold, it would be worth
about $800,000 at today’s prices.
2. So it was a big responsibility. And each man made a decision about what to do with the
money.
3. The man with 5 talents invested his money and doubled it to 10 talents. The man with 2
talents also doubled his money to 4.
4. The man with 1 talent dug a hole in the ground and hid it, so he only had the original
amount to give back to the owner.
5. The owner called that servant wicked, lazy, and worthless, and said “Throw that guy out.”
Or in Donald Trump’s words, “You’re fired.”
6. Those are not words you want to hear on judgment day. Jesus was telling us to be faithful
in using what God has given us. What has He given you?
C. This week I got a call from Joe Cox. Joe has been working with Youth Dynamics in the Portland
area, and obviously impressed some people working with him.
1. A church in Oregon City has asked Joe to apply for the job as youth pastor of their
congregation, and he’s pretty excited about the opportunity.
2. They can see he’s trustworthy with young people, and trustworthy in handling the truth of
God’s word ‒ a faithful manager for the Lord.
CONCLUSION:
A. Hebrews 10:23 says, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is
faithful.”
1. Jesus is faithful to us. Even when we don’t feel Him, He is there. He didn’t feel like going to
the cross for us, but He did.
2. And so He calls us to faithfulness, to Him, and to the faith, and to one another.
B. Unswerving devotion, trustworthy as a messenger and as a manager, even when we are under
fire, even when we don’t feel like it.
C. One day at a time, the kingdom of God grows, in each faithful believer, each faithful family,
each faithful congregation, as the Lord faithfully is preparing the crown of life for all who are
faithful to the end.