SPEAKER_00: So today we continue through the book of Jeremiah as uh our Lenten series um is allowing the the weeping prophet, as Jeremiah is called, to lead us into tears and truth and trust.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so I'd invite you to get your packet out if you have that.
SPEAKER_00: If not, there's still a couple available, I think, in the back.
SPEAKER_00: But turn with me to page 21 in your booklet where you'll find the sermon outline.
SPEAKER_00: Take some ample notes there during today's message.
SPEAKER_00: Um, as we get started this morning, invite you to picture this.
SPEAKER_00: A farmer and his family own a big cornfield that serves uh really as their sole means of income.
SPEAKER_00: One night the farmer is walking through the field and he hears a voice and he sees a ghost.
SPEAKER_00: And this experience convinces him uh to tear up a large portion of his cornfield.
SPEAKER_00: As he begins to find himself in severe financial trouble after destroying productive farmland, his neighbors and his brother-in-law start to think that he's lost his mind.
SPEAKER_00: Got that picture?
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you've ever seen the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, you have pictured this because that's exactly what happens.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this now classic film stars Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella, uh, the Iowa farmer still reeling from his broken relationship with his dead father, who had loved the game of baseball.
SPEAKER_00: Well, after this ghostly experience that Ray has, he decides that he needs to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield.
SPEAKER_00: What a foolish investment.
SPEAKER_00: But while Ray's vision-prompted decisions seem desperate and insane to everyone around him, what initially appears to be an irrational act ends up becoming a vehicle for hope and restoration.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this morning we've heard the account from Jeremiah 32 where the prophet buys a field because of his hopes and dreams for the future.
SPEAKER_00: Get it?
SPEAKER_00: It truly is a field of dreams.
SPEAKER_00: Now, initially, when I decided to plunder the title from the movie for my sermon this week, the title was really only the connection that I had in mind.
SPEAKER_00: But as I revisited the plot of the movie, it struck me just how many similarities there are between the fictional story of Ray Kinsella and the very real story of Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: Both acquire a field in a way that seems like the height of foolishness.
SPEAKER_00: Both of these crazy investments are prompted by hope for restoration and redemption.
SPEAKER_00: And both of them, in time, are vindicated.
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't look that way at first.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that Uber famous line from that movie, whispered by that mysterious voice in the cornfield?
SPEAKER_00: If you build it, he will come.
SPEAKER_00: It's an intriguing and hopeful saying in the movie, but for Jeremiah and the people of Judah, the Babylonians had already come.
SPEAKER_00: And that was a huge problem.
SPEAKER_00: Their armies were literally at the gates.
SPEAKER_00: They had surrounded the city walls.
SPEAKER_00: They were pressing in and strangling their prey like a boa constrictor.
SPEAKER_00: It was just a matter of time until it would all be over.
SPEAKER_00: By just about every measure, Jerusalem was a lost cause.
SPEAKER_00: The city's days were numbered, and those days, the days in which Jeremiah found himself in Jeremiah 32, were days when businesses and trade were collapsing, diseases were sweeping through the city, property values were plummeting, food was running out.
SPEAKER_00: Lamentations tells us that parents were actually resorting to eating their own children to live.
SPEAKER_00: For the people and the city and the nation, all was lost.
SPEAKER_00: It was hopeless.
SPEAKER_00: If you build it, the Babylonian enterprise was the opposite of building.
SPEAKER_00: They were all about tearing down and burning up the scorched earth stuff of legend.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 32 takes place just months before the Babylonians would ransack and pillage and destroy Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And until then they were trapped.
SPEAKER_00: Prisoners in their own city.
SPEAKER_00: And while Jerusalem as a whole found itself a prisoner within its walls, where was Jeremiah?
SPEAKER_00: In prison.
SPEAKER_00: He was shut up in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah.
SPEAKER_00: For Zedekiah, king of Judah, had imprisoned him, saying, Why do you prophesy and say, Thus says the Lord, Behold, I am giving this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall capture it.
SPEAKER_00: Essentially, Jeremiah had been doubly imprisoned for pointing out the obvious.
SPEAKER_00: That Judah was a lost cause, a kingdom with no future and no hope, in which any investment at all would be the height of foolishness.
SPEAKER_00: And just then, Jeremiah decides to invest.
SPEAKER_00: Well, he's imprisoned.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah hears a voice, not a mysterious voice in a field, but the clear voice of Yahweh, which Jeremiah knew very well by this point.
SPEAKER_00: And God tells him that his cousin Hanamel is going to be paying him a visit and presenting him with a real estate offer.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to invite Jeremiah to buy his field in the prophet's hometown of Anathoth, a town just a couple miles outside of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: A town, by the way, that was now fully under the control of the slashing and burning Babylonians.
SPEAKER_00: Location, location, location, right?
SPEAKER_00: This would be like purchasing a downtown lot in the heart of Tehran right now.
SPEAKER_00: Like buying an expensive meal while someone is in the process of dumping an entire shaker of salt all over it.
SPEAKER_00: The dirt of the field on offer has effectively already become Babylonian soil.
SPEAKER_00: Now Leviticus shares a little bit of light on what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: The law of Moses stated, if your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold.
SPEAKER_00: In the chaos of the Babylonian invasion, Hanumel has become poor.
SPEAKER_00: Of course he has.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody has.
SPEAKER_00: So he visits his probably even poorer, imprisoned relative and looks for a bailout.
SPEAKER_00: In desperation, Hanumel is really trying to swindle his cousin, to sell him something worthless.
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah says, sold.
SPEAKER_00: He is willing to bet the farm.
SPEAKER_00: He's willing to buy the farm.
SPEAKER_00: The farm overrun by foreign invaders.
SPEAKER_00: The earth that had probably already been scorched by the Babylonians.
SPEAKER_00: The weeping prophet is ready to get his heart broken again.
SPEAKER_00: He writes, And I bought the field at Anathoth from Hanamel, my cousin, and weighed out the money to him, 17 shekels of silver.
SPEAKER_00: I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Why would you buy stock and blockbuster after Netflix has taken the world by storm, despite your bent pride?
SPEAKER_00: Why would you buy an ocean front lot right when a Category 5 hurricane is making landfall on the property itself?
SPEAKER_00: How on earth does Jeremiah's investment make any sense?
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing about this is wise from a worldly standpoint.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah doesn't invest based on his realtor's advice or on the counsel of his financial advisor.
SPEAKER_00: No, this is from God.
SPEAKER_00: And God has a habit of making investments that seem foolish at the time.
SPEAKER_00: With this nonsensical crazy purchase, Jeremiah isn't looking to flip the property in a few months or a few years.
SPEAKER_00: No, with this transaction, Jeremiah is doing just what prophets do.
SPEAKER_00: He's proclaiming a message.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah is proclaiming hope.
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because God said so.
SPEAKER_00: For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.
SPEAKER_00: It looked impossible that that could ever be true again.
SPEAKER_00: But Jeremiah knew that all things are possible with God.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah was well aware of the dark reality of the situation.
SPEAKER_00: He always had been, more than anyone else.
SPEAKER_00: But still, he was willing to hope beyond hope.
SPEAKER_00: He praised to God.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the siege mounds have come up to the city to take it.
SPEAKER_00: And because of sword and famine and pestilence, the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans who are fighting against it.
SPEAKER_00: What you spoke has come to pass, and behold, you see it.
SPEAKER_00: Yet you, O Lord God, have said to me, Buy the field for money and get witnesses, though the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans.
SPEAKER_00: So Jeremiah did.
SPEAKER_00: Yet is a powerful word, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah recounts for God all the reasons the land is a lost cause and the field is a foolish investment.
SPEAKER_00: Then he says, Yet, you, O Lord God, have said, What's your yet right now?
SPEAKER_00: The cancer has come back.
SPEAKER_00: Yet I will trust in God.
SPEAKER_00: My friends have abandoned me, yet, with Christ, I am never alone.
SPEAKER_00: The world is at war.
SPEAKER_00: Yet the Prince of Peace is still in charge.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah is willing to hope in something crazy that makes no sense, that has no evidence whatsoever in its favor, except the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's all he needs.
SPEAKER_00: How about you?
SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to cling to a hope that looks foolish to the world?
SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to invest in something costly even when it looks like it's going nowhere at all?
SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to trust in God when everything is turning to nothing and his word is all you have?
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah did.
SPEAKER_00: And so did Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Talk about someone who never considered anything or anybody a lost cause.
SPEAKER_00: Someone whose investments looked as foolish as could be.
SPEAKER_00: Tax collectors and prostitutes.
SPEAKER_00: And you and me.
SPEAKER_00: While we were still weak.
SPEAKER_00: At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
SPEAKER_00: At the right time?
SPEAKER_00: There's a strong argument that that is exactly at the wrong time.
SPEAKER_00: We had nothing to offer him.
SPEAKER_00: We had very little strength of our own.
SPEAKER_00: And what strength we did have, we used to rebel against him.
SPEAKER_00: But God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did not invest in people who had promise.
SPEAKER_00: He invested in the ungodly, and in doing so, he gave us a promise.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a promise that he spoke to the man dying next to him.
SPEAKER_00: Today we heard Luke's account of the thief on the cross, a thief who, in his last moments, finally came to realize that he was weak and a sinner, that he was a lost cause, and yet he dared to hope beyond hope that this innocent man that shared his sentence would save him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, in the very process of dying for sinners, for the ungodly, for cheaters and crooks and the self-righteous, for the weak and the rebellious and the unholy, says to him, Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.
SPEAKER_00: What a shocking, life-breathing hope.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus takes a man who is literally going nowhere, who is nailed to the piece of wood on which he will soon die, who has no future, no prospects, no hope, who is in the eyes of the world worthless.
SPEAKER_00: And he gives everything to him, and everything for him.
SPEAKER_00: He redeemed that thief not with silver or gold, but with his precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death.
SPEAKER_00: And he promised him paradise that day.
SPEAKER_00: And he's done exactly the same thing, exactly the same thing for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus once told this two-sentence parable about a man who found a treasure hidden in a field and went and sold everything that he had and bought that field.
SPEAKER_00: For this guy who happened upon this plot of land, it was a field of dreams.
SPEAKER_00: And this parable is often interpreted as teaching us that we should essentially be like Jeremiah and this guy.
SPEAKER_00: We should sell everything, give up everything for the kingdom of God, our priceless treasure.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that is part of the lesson.
SPEAKER_00: But I tell you today, Jesus is that man, and you are the treasure.
SPEAKER_00: While you were still a sinner covered in dirt, Jesus found you.
SPEAKER_00: And in his joy he went and gave everything he had to purchase you and win your soul for his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: God has a habit of making investments that seem foolish at the time.
SPEAKER_00: And the cross was the height of that so-called foolishness.
SPEAKER_00: For the word of the cross is folly, foolishness to those who are perishing.
SPEAKER_00: But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: The power of God for our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is God's yet to our sin.
SPEAKER_00: God's yet to the destruction all around us.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is Jesus saying to us, Yes, you were weak, ungodly sinners, yet I have died for you.
SPEAKER_00: I have made you whole, I have restored you.
SPEAKER_00: You were dirty yet.
SPEAKER_00: Now you are clean.
SPEAKER_00: You were a lost cause, yet I came to seek and to save the lost.
SPEAKER_00: You were a foolish investment, yet.
SPEAKER_00: The price of my blood has made you holy.
SPEAKER_00: What a surprising hope.
SPEAKER_00: For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.
SPEAKER_00: Today Jeremiah teaches us that there is life beyond Babylon, beyond disaster and destruction.
SPEAKER_00: There is life beyond divorce, beyond disease, beyond death.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah's deeds, signed and sealed, testified that the land would be restored.
SPEAKER_00: The cross of Jesus, sealed by the flow of his blood that run down it, testifies that we have been restored.
SPEAKER_00: We who were a lost cause and a foolish investment, we who were doubly imprisoned by sin and Satan.
SPEAKER_00: We who had no future, no prospects, no hope, who were in the eyes of the world worthless.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gave everything to us and everything for us.
SPEAKER_00: He redeemed us not with silver or gold, but with his precious blood, with his innocent suffering and death.
SPEAKER_00: And today he promises us thieves, us exiles, paradise.
SPEAKER_00: So if I may be so bold as to spoil a 37-year-old movie.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of Field of Dreams, the voice at the beginning is proven to be true.
SPEAKER_00: It turns out that the he that would come if Ray built it is Ray's father.
SPEAKER_00: His father shows up as a young man, and the film ends with Ray asking his dad for a game of catch.
SPEAKER_00: It's a moving symbol of reconciliation and restoration.
SPEAKER_00: And as they throw the ball back and forth, the camera kind of zooms out to reveal this long line of headlights.
SPEAKER_00: Car after car after car coming to watch the game.
SPEAKER_00: Ray's field of dreams becomes a place where broken stories are healed, a place where people gather together.
SPEAKER_00: It's a mystical space of memory and redemption.
SPEAKER_00: But the kingdom of God is all of that and so much more.
SPEAKER_00: It's a place where sinners are restored to the Father, a place where broken people and broken relationships are made whole again.
SPEAKER_00: Not as ghosts that wander off into the rows of corn, but as those resurrected and made new again by the one who conquered death, the one who welcomes us into his paradise.
SPEAKER_00: For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.