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The Sermon for Sunday, October 26th, 2025, the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity
The Lessons: Psalm 84; Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22; Luke 18:9-14
The Text: Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22
INTRODUCTION
In Guideposts, Ronald Pinkerton describes a near accident he had while hang gliding. He had launched his hang glider and been forcefully lifted 4,200 feet into the air. As he was descending, he was suddenly hit by a powerful new blast of air that sent his hang glider plummeting toward the ground.
‘I was falling at an alarming rate. Trapped in an airborne riptide, I was going to crash! Then I saw him – a red-tailed hawk. He was six feet off my right wingtip, fighting the same gust I was….
I looked down: 300 feet from the ground and still falling. The trees below seemed like menacing pikes.
I looked at the hawk again. Suddenly he banked and flew straight downwind. Downwind! If the right air is anywhere, it’s upwind! The hawk was committing suicide.
Two hundred feet. From nowhere the thought entered my mind: Follow the hawk. it went against everything I knew about flying. But now all my knowledge was useless. I was at the mercy of the wind. I followed the hawk.
One hundred feet. Suddenly the hawk gained altitude. For a split second I seemed to be suspended motionless in space. Then a warm surge of air started pushing the glider upward. Nothing I knew as a pilot could explain this phenomenon. But it was true: I was rising.’
On occasion we all have similar “downdrafts” in our lives, reversals in our fortunes, humiliating experiences. We want to lift ourselves up, but God’s Word, like that red-tailed hawk, tells us to do just the opposite. God’s Word tells us to dive – to humble ourselves under the hand of God. If we humble ourselves, God will send us a thermal wind that will lift us up.[1]
Today’s Collect underlines the truth that without God we cannot please Him and petitions God for the Holy Spirit to direct and rule our hearts in all things. For us to practice humility effectively, our will must be directed by God’s Holy Spirit. God and not sinful ego must rule our attitudes to others. Today’s Gospel Lesson highlights the humility that lies at the heart of effective prayer, contrasting it to the hypocritical pride that God despises.
JEREMIAH 14:7-10, 19-22: GOD’S REJECTION OF INSINCERE PETITIONS
In today’s First Lesson, we find that God rejects the hypocritical prayer of the people of Judah (Jeremiah 14).
The situation is a great drought in the land of Judah. In a land with scarce rainfall, a prolonged drought had devastating effects, some of which are described in Jeremiah 14:1-6. There was a severe shortage of water. In the opening verse of our First Lesson, the people plead for the Lord to act for His Name’s sake to deliver them from the drought, though their sins and backslidings are many. What they are asking is for the Lord to overlook their sins sand instead of letting their sins cause him to refrain from saving them, he must act to bring glory to His Name.
They continue their plea by asking why God, who is the hope of Israel in time of trouble (Jeremiah 14:8), should be like a stranger to them or a traveler who stays the night and leaves again in the morning. They were presuming on the graciousness of God to save them, even though they were continuing in their sinful ways. They were accusing God of being a stranger to them when they themselves had become strangers to Him by breaking his laws. They regarded God as a traveler staying only the night, when it was God who had brought them into the Promised Land, driven out sinful nations, and caused them to make their homes there. This was a charge that God was willfully neglecting them. In the following verse (verse 9), they even compare God with someone who is confused, like a mighty warrior that cannot give help. There is a kind of sarcasm, or even mockery, in these words that they used of God. In the same verse, the people of Judah acknowledge that God is among them, and that they are called by His Name. On the basis of these facts, they plead with God not to forsake them.
CONFESSING SINS WHILE CONTINUING IN THEM IS NOT REPENTANCE AND CANNOT SAVE
In verse 10, God replies through the prophet to the effect that the people enjoyed committing their sins and had not ceased from them. Therefore the Lord does not accept them. Instead, the Lord will remember their sins and punish them accordingly. The people’s pride in continuing to rebel against God by disobeying his commandments, while hypocritically confessing them, brought them no forgiveness, and no relief from the terrible drought.
In the verses that are omitted from our Lesson (Jeremiah 14:11-18), the Lord tells Jeremiah not to pray for the people of Judah for their good, and he warns of the punishment that will come to those false prophets that assured Judah they would have peace, and there would be no famine.
The final verses of our First Lesson (Jeremiah 14:19-22) reflect a deeper sincerity of plea for salvation from the drought. This could be another plea made by the people of Judah, or it could be the prayer of the prophet himself.
In verse 19, the question is asked if God has utterly rejected Judah and despised Jerusalem. Another question is put to God: why has he struck Judah but not provided healing? Instead of peace, there is no good, and in place of healing, trouble.
Though another confession of sin follows, this leads to an appeal to God not to bring dishonor on the throne of his glory. The petitioner could here be thinking of Jerusalem as the throne of God’s glory, or he could be appealing to God to be true to his own sovereignty over Israel and to the covenant he made with the nation.
Finally, the petitioner acknowledges that neither the Gentiles nor the heavens themselves bring rain, but only God can give it. Therefore the best thing to do is to wait on God.
APPLICATION AND CONCLUSION
Though this passage contains prayers of people and prophet in the face of a severe drought at a certain period in Israel’s history, it has lessons relevant to us today. We live in a culture of moral darkness, and this is even affecting the Church and its leaders, whether we think of the Church generally, or the Anglican Communion, or Anglicanism, or the Anglican Church in North America. Whenever we find sin in our midst, and moral compromise, we must pray that at all levels, leaders and people must repent of their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness. However, we should not just be content with confessing our sins while stubbornly continuing to commit them, and thinking that somehow God will bring healing and forgiveness for his Name’s sake. We should pray that not only ourselves, but also our leaders, take their sins seriously, and turn away from them all with heart, and mind, and soul. This requires humility and sincerity from us all. We must not push the skeletons back in the closet, but deal with them, truly repenting from the sins of the past and present, confessing them to God, and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of all our sins.
[1] pp. 254-255, 750 Engaging Illustrations for Preachers, Teachers and Writers from Craig Brian Larson and Leadership Journal. Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerBooks, 2002. Second Printing, 2008.