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Recently I awoke from a dream with a start. I didn't know where I was or what was happening. I didn't even know who I was. I had fallen asleep in an armchair in the family room. That was quite an awakening to reality.

Some time ago, I had left a message at the desk of a hotel where I was staying. I wanted to get up at 6 a.m. so that I wouldn't miss an important meeting. The phone rang and a very pleasant voice on the other side said, "Mr. Lavin, this is your wake up call." Startled, I jumped out of bed, asking the question out loud, "What am I supposed to do?" Wake up calls are like that. They face us with reality, sometimes before we think we are ready.

Jeremiah was trying to wake up the people of his day to the reality of God. They were asleep to the reality of God; filled with illusions about themselves and religion. They accused Jeremiah of being a dreamer, but they were the ones who were out of touch with reality. Jeremiah said that they were cursed because they trusted in human potential and neglected the potential of the living Lord.

Jeremiah was a God-driven man who spoke fearlessly about the moral laxity and social ills of the nation and warned of disasters. Faith in Yahweh instead of idols is the call of Jeremiah. Faith means trust. Trust in Yahweh, instead of trust in false gods or mortal man, is Jeremiah's theme.


Trust In Humankind

Specifically, the people of God of Jeremiah's day had put their trust in idols, in kings, in treaties and in human effort to achieve pleasurable goals. Man, God's two-footed handiwork, had worked himself into the center where Yahweh alone belongs. Humankind in the middle was the problem. Jeremiah predicted that this arrangement of man in the middle would never work.

Can a stunted plant in the desert survive with no life-giving water? Can a desert tree survive without life-giving water? Neither can you survive if you put yourself in first place where you do not have the water of life, says the Lord. The human heart is deceitful. It fools us. We give our love to those things which will only hurt us. We are lured into self-centered and self-defeating patterns of trusting those things which do not deliver happiness. We turn from the Lord who alone produces true life, who alone belongs in first place. Human beings are eccentric, off center. That's the heart of sin. The result of this radical dislocation of authority is hopelessness. "The beast is easily deceived," Jeremiah said. The human problem of the dislocation of the authority in the deceitful human heart is as modern as the morning newspaper.

In the early 1900s, a parish pastor in Switzerland by the name of Karl reflected the spirit of his times which was human achievement. Like so many other clergymen of liberal persuasion, Karl saw the kingdom of God in human terms. He believed that political changes for the common man could usher in the kingdom of God. He was a socialist politically and a liberal theologically. He was also a scholar who began research on a commentary on the book of Romans.

In 1919, Karl published his commentary on Romans. In this commentary, he broke from anthropocentric and cultural Christianity of the European liberals of his day. Paul's words in Romans led Karl Barth back to a God-centered Christianity and ushered in a movement called neo-orthodoxy. Barth said, "The main problem with (theological) liberalism is that man is the center, and measure and goal of all things." One of his biographers puts it this way: "Liberals began with Christian experience. Barth begins with objective activity of God in revelation." Thereafter, Barth saw the kingdom of God in terms of God's sovereign reign; not humankind's efforts. Thus Barth echoes Jeremiah: "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord."

At a more practical level, John was a materialist. He had caught the spirit of his time which was "Take care of number one." He believed what authors and lecturers in the 1970s were telling him about self-fulfillment. "If you can't take care of yourself first, nobody will take care of you," he said. He was successful in business, rich and owned so many things (later he called them "adult toys"), that he could not keep track of them. He was a part of the instant-gratification "Me Generation." His world fell apart when his wife left him because of his alcoholism and drug habits. John began what he later called "a long journey home" by hitting rock bottom, going to Alcoholics Anonymous and eventually returning to his church and his faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.

As a materialist, John had gone to church with his family on holidays, but he always thought of church as "a place for weaklings." Now that he could not get himself out of his own hands, realizing that he was ruled by alcohol, John submitted to Christ as Lord and Savior and started a new life. Thus John echoes Jeremiah's corrective, "Cursed is the man who trusts in man." He also reflects Jeremiah's admonition, "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord."

Trust In Our Lord

Trusting God is the one thing needful, and the hardest thing of all. Trusting is the one thing needful because faith means trust and the Bible teaches that only faith saves us. "By faith you are saved through grace and this is not your own doing lest anyone should boast (Ephesians 2:8)."

Paul, who wrote these words, also wrote, "The gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe (Romans 1:16)." The gospel is the good news that we can trust God in Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Lord. Paul had trusted his own religion and his own opinions prior to his conversion.

Saul had a man-made religion before he became Paul of the Christ-centered faith.

Man-made religion is upward and inward. Christ centered religion is downward and outward. The difference is immense. It is the difference between idolatry and true faith. It is the difference between being cursed and blessed, to put it in Jeremiah's words. The blessed ones trust God instead of self.

Trusting God is not easy. It is hard for Paul, Karl and John. It is hard for all of us to trust the Lord. When people have disappointed us, we find it hard to trust God.

At a practical level, a woman, let's call her Dee, found it almost impossible to trust God. As a little girl she had experienced incest, forced sex with her father. Now as an adult she was having trouble trusting Christ as Lord and Savior. A Christian counselor helped her overcome her background and start a new life as a Christian. She felt dirty. He helped her see that she was loved by God. She felt trapped in a dysfunctional family. He helped her to be a functional and integrated adult through Christ. "That is a blessed state," she said. "It was like waking up to a reality, the reality of God, whom I now confess as my heavenly Father." Dee got her wake-up call and answered it positively.
We wake up to reality as we trust in Christ. We know who we are and where we are when we
discover whose we are.

Thanks, Jeremiah. We needed that!