Stay True
Jeremiah 34:1 ? 39:18
These lessons in Jeremiah are so basic. They are about who God is, who we are, our tendency to drift, our stubbornness and God’s faithfulness. We’ve seen our relationship to God move from externals to a new covenant that involves our hearts and our attitudes. They continue to show us how willing God is to win us back, not pay us back. He even allows His prophet to continue preaching up to the last minute before judgment comes. Judgment comes most of the time not by “the hand of God,” but by us reaping what we sow. The people of Judah have been unwilling to repent or turn, no matter how many times Jeremiah told them. They couldn’t shut him up – even in the well.
Why are we not learning from this? Let’s look at a present-day reality in our churches. The command from Jesus is to make disciples, mark them (baptize them) and mature them (“teach them all I taught you”) In order to make, mark, and mature someone, they must be converted.
Our baptisms convention-wide are the lowest in years. The Southern Baptist Convention membership is down for the fourth straight year. Where is our obedience in the matter of impacting lostness? Where are the church members who leave Sunday worship and then share the gospel?
Doing personal evangelism is a must. No matter what the relational bridge is to get to the lost person or persons, somewhere the gospel must be shared. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Romans 1:16).
Transformation of life does not come from our ministries, as good as they might be. Those ministries, events, programs, or whatever activities we participate in must move to a gospel shared or we will never have people to mark and mature – and, thus, disciple-making will continue to be weak.
Many ideas exist in methodology, and that’s good. We see the Rechabites in Jeremiah’s day being used as an example of faithfulness, but today the faithfulness to make sure the gospel is shared in a lost world seems to be missing from our pulpits and our people.
In a message in 1973, Stephen Olford preached on the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2. He said that Ephesus had lost its first love. He said that first love was the lack of the church members of Ephesus not sharing the gospel with the people they knew who were lost.
As we see over and over, Jeremiah reminded Judah to “turn.” It is also time for believers to turn, and return to being believers who share the gospel. Jesus said, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” I think Jesus would say that if we are not fishing, we are not following.
Barker– Lessons by Ron Barker, evangelism and prayer strategist for the evangelization and missions team of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. Barker also taught evangelism at Southwestern Seminary.