Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Every day we live by trust. In fact, without trust, life would be impossible. We drive over a bridge and trust that the designer of that bridge knew what he was doing. We enter into a agreement and trust the other party to do his part. We accept someone's check, and trust that he has money in the bank. We secure a loan with a deed of trust. We trust our spouses to be faithful, our bankers to be honest, our pilots to be sober and our doctors to be well-informed. Every day, without thinking about it, we put our fate into the hands of people and institutions we deem trustworthy. And we do this, in every case, without certainty.

If we can't trust (for one reason or another) life becomes a twisted knot. Every situation becomes an opportunity for cynicism, doubt and anxiety. How do I know this person is really a policeman? How do I know this is the right price? How do I know this is really my car? While I was in the store, someone might have switched it with one that looks like mine but has more miles on it. (Thoroughgoing doubt gets pretty sick pretty fast.) If we are to be healthy, we must find a way to get through life without perfect certainty. Call it trust, or use the religious word: faith. Whichever, it is the oil that makes the wheels turn.

Jeremiah, whose words, about a tree planted on a riverbank, I just read, is talking in this passage about ultimate trust and where we put it. What is the culmination of all our trusting? Where do we go when there is no place else? And he draws a stark contrast between the person who puts his ultimate trust in "mere mortals" and "makes mere flesh his strength," on the one hand, and the person who puts his ultimate trust in God, on the other. One, he says, is like a dried up desert shrub and the other is like a tree planted by streams of water. "Blessed are those who trust in the Lord. ..."

Let's take a second to remember what Jeremiah was up against. He had a specific reason for raising the question of ultimate trust. His king, Zedikiah, King of Judah, terrified by the threatening armies of Babylon, made a defense pact with the king of Egypt, an agreement which bound Egypt to come and help if Judah were attacked by Babylon. Jeremiah begged him not to. Put your trust in God, he said, and not in "mere mortals" (like the king of Egypt), but Zedikiah persisted and signed the treaty, which infuriated the King of Babylon, who then attacked Judah and destroyed her. Sometimes these "airy" discussions about where we put our trust have important, practical implications.

I like plants. (They don't talk back!) Once in a while someone will ask, "How much should I water a plant? Howoften?" And there's no simple answer, because there are variables. Obviously, ifa plant sits in the scorching sun, it will need lots of water. If it's in a cool, shady place, less. Ifit's pot is big, it can be watered less, because a big pot holds more water. Clay pots absorb some of the water, plastic pots don't. And so forth. And then there is the nature of the plant itself. Some like it wet, some dry. I'm always tempted to ask, "How do you like your plant to look?" Most plants can live a long time with little or no water, but they can't thrive. They'll have fewer flowers, withered leaves, drooping branches -but, if you don't mind that, you can save money on water .

So it is with men's souls. A few wither and die for total lack ofwater, a few are well-watered and do beautifully, but most are underwatered. Like that shrub in the desert that Jeremiah was talking about. Not dead, but not vitally alive, either. Just surviving. And here's the prophet's point: the difference comes in where we put our trust, where our roots are. Changing the metaphor a little, but saying the same thing, Jesus (centuries later) told the woman at the well that he had water for her to drink that would slake her thirst forever, that would be a never-failing spring within her. (And she said, "Gimme J some!") But Jesus, like Jeremiah, knew that what stops people from enjoying that ~- unfailing supply of spiritual water, what keeps them from being healthy and productive, what stunts their growth, is putting their ultimate faith (their trust) in all the wrong things. The parable of the rich fool is one of Jesus' toughest. Some people are spiritual idiots, he says, and here is a man who actually trusted ultimately in all the stuff he had. And then he died. And then what good did it do him? "There are no pockets in shrouds." The story of the rich, young ruler teaches the same lesson. Here was a man who had a chance to go down in history as a disciple Jesus, to have his face up in stained glass, forever. And he said no, because his ultimate faith was in his money, and he would rather hang onto that than to have "saint" before his name. (We don't even know his name.) That's a sad, sad story.

Our message to the world comes in two parts: First, life without God isn't worth living. We have to be tough enough to say that. The twentieth century will be remembered as a time when the intellectuals gave up on God ( declared him "dead"), but did not offer anything to take his place. As the result, we turned out a generation or two whose lives were full of contradictions and marked by inconstancy and unrest. Not knowing their destination, their journey was chaos. They put their ultimate trust in transient things, for they knew nothing else, but they discovered that such a life is withered and stunted and ultimately unsatisfying. So we came to the end of the twentieth - century searching. What is worth living for? Where are the lasting rewards of life? What can we trust? Who can we trust?

Life with God (This is the second part of our message. ) is good, abundant. When men put their trust in God, and have faith in Him, they are like trees planted by streams of water. Even ifa drought comes (and droughts do come), they don't panic. Their leaves remain green, and they flourish. They are rooted in the very source of life. In the one hundred and twelfth Psalm, the writer speaks of one whose "heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord." I take that to mean one whose faith is "nailed down," is "there to stay," regardless of the circumstances. Like Job who said "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." The faith we proclaim is not just a faith for good times; it is a faith that sustains us through it all, like that tree. One preacher many years ago said that living a life of trust was like being a rower in a boat. The rower turns his back to the goal, the distant shore, and watches, instead, the one who sits in the helm, the one who sees where the boat is heading, and trusts him to give directions. The helmsman, of course, is God, and if he tells us to pull left, or to pull right, we do so, because "our hearts are fixed, trusting in him."

The best known evangelist of the nineteenth century was Dwight L. Moody. He preached to millions, in a time when there were no microphones, no radio, no television. Moody said his favorite Bible verse was Isaiah 12: 20, "I will trust and not be afraid." And then Moody would tell his audience that there were two ways to get to heaven, "first class" and "second class." Second class was like this: "When I'm afraid, I'll trust." It might get you there, but it's a hard way to travel. First class was the other way around, as Isaiah had said, "1 will trust and not be afraid." And then Moody would look at his audience and ask, "Why not buy a first class ticket?"

As I was preparing this sermon, I knew I would be preaching on the Jeremiah passage, and that I wanted to put the emphasis on trust. So I did what I usually do: I opened my trusty concordance and looked up the word "trust," to see what else the Bible had to say about it. Of course, there were lost of entries under "trust," (lots of Bible passages) but what was more interesting were the sub-references. "See 'faith,"' it said. See "assurance." See "providence." "See "God -trust in." See "Christ -faith in." The word "trust" was sending me everywhere. It is a very central concept. Grace is what God does for us, and faith is what we do in return. And the essence of faith is trust.