Sermons

Hope is desperately needed in our sinful, fallen world. Where do you find your hope?

The passage in many ways lays out for us the basics of what it means to be a genuine disciple of Jesus – Discipleship 101. A true disciple is imperfect but learning to follow Jesus. They are also those who deny themselves in favour of following Jesus and being obedient to him. This is done even at great cost, without being ashamed.

Despite the fact, that the book of Jeremiah has a lot of “woe” in it, there is also a lot of “hope” in it. What we simply read here is that the Lord himself, will bring about healing. He himself will act, the one who is the Great Shepherd of the Sheep. Instead of relying on the frailties, weakness and self-interest of human beings, God will act and he will send the perfect Shepherd for the Sheep.

Jeremiah had really looked. He had observed the poor, the rich, the princes, the rulers, the religious elite and he had come up empty. Jeremiah would have been cut up about this. Everything depended on him finding just one “righteous man.” The fate of the whole city of Jerusalem relied on him finding this one person. The problem for Jeremiah was that he wasn’t looking for a needle in a haystack because there simply was no needle.