Hope When It Looks Hopeless! 32:1-9; 17-27; 37-40 Compass of Salinas/Marina Life Group Discussions January/February #4

1. Please read Jeremiah 32:1-9 and 17-27 and 37-40. • What is Jeremiah saying to God? He has a complaint!

• What miracle does God promise to angry, hopeless Jeremiah?

2. Consider the following: He’s one of God’s best in the but after 35 years of preaching repentance, there was none. The people were grossly immoral, even worshiping Astarte, the goddess of sex by orgies with her prostitutes, and doing it right in the middle of God’s Holy Temple in ! It’s 589 BC. Jeremiah is 57 years old. He has been arrested and thrown in prison for preaching repentance from immorality and idol worship. So there he is in the cold, damp floor of a dungeon with rodents running around as company. Then the most amazing thing happens. God tells him to buy the land the Babylonian army is camping on outside the city walls. His uncle is trying to sell this worthless land but no one will buy it. God commands Jeremiah to buy it and he does. And people laugh. Dumb Jeremiah. After the deal is done, there comes in chapter 32 this AMAZING SECTION where Jeremiah challenges God. He essentially tells God that he knows God is all-powerful…but God is not going to be able to pull this off. Jeremiah is so discouraged that he says, “God, what You are trying to do is HOPELESS.” First, these people are hopeless. They are never going to change. For 35 years you have used my mouth to preach to Your people. These are NOT my sermons. These are YOUR SERMONS. Have the people changed? No. So why do you think You can change them in another 70 years? You have failed for 35 years, and You will fail another 70 years. They are hopeless. That’s for starters God. But secondly the Babylonians will never let Your people leave captivity in and return to Jerusalem. Your plan of bringing them back to Jerusalem and rebuild from the rubble will never happen BECAUSE the Babylonians will refuse to let the people go. This is impossible even for You Lord! So what is God’s answer to His preacher who thinks its hopeless? First, His answer is a question. God asks Jeremiah: “Is anything too hard for Me?” (Jeremiah 32:37) Every day our answer to God’s question will be tested. Way back in Genesis 18 God promised and Sarah a baby even though all her life she had been barren. Birthdays came and passed. Her 50th, 60th, 70th, 80th…and now she was 90 and Abraham was 100, but then one morning she woke up….and she was pregnant. God said to name the baby boy which in Hebrew means “laughter”. Every time they called Isaac’s name they were reminded that Sarah laughed when God promised her a baby. It was 1800 BC…..and God said to Abraham and Sarah, “Nothing is impossible for God”. God said that to Jeremiah in 589 BC, and God is saying the same thing to you and me this morning. For 3600 years God has been saying that to His people, and He wonders if we will ever believe it! “Nothing is impossible for God”! If you believe in God, the word “impossible” should not be in your vocabulary. It’s an oxymoron. It’s like saying Brad Pitt is ugly. It should be obvious that is not true. Some of you are pushing back right about now. You are thinking to yourself: “Pastor Mike, you don’t know what my spouse is like or my situation or the diagnosis the doc has given me. Pastor Mike, I like to be realistic, and realistically it’s hopeless….” I’m a realist too. And the most realistic fact in life is this: You can never be too sure what CANNOT happen! So kills the unbeatable giant Goliath. And the Cubs come back after being down 3 games to 1 in the World Series. The Cleveland pitchers looks unbeatable, but the Cubs beat them! You can NEVER be sure what cannot happen! If you’re a realist, you have to admit that realistically you do not know enough to say something cannot happen. History is full of surprises. Paul Harvey made a lot of money telling us ‘the rest of the story”.

• Underline the most challenging or sometimes hard to believe sentence and say why.

• “Nothing is too hard for God”….until this or that happens, until you made a mistake in who you married, until you have a terrible disease. So….when has it been hard for you to believe nothing is impossible for God? What situation do you face that challenges that idea about God? Will you share honestly.

• When it is hard to believe God can do what looks impossible, when a situation looks hopeless, what would you suggest is the single most important thing to do to keep believing God when He says “Nothing is impossible for Him”?

3. Maybe this will help. Consider the following: A severe mercy is a phrase from C. S. Lewis. Every loving parents knows what that is. Captivity was very painful but it was merciful because it saved them from worse things happening. That is why I say: Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out. Surely someone here needs to make up their mind to stop complaining about a situation and make the best of it, to rebuild in the rubble. Realistic people change what they can change, accept what they cannot change and make the best of it. They rebuild from the rubble. Because things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out. What I am trying to convince you of is that negative and pessimistic thinking is a luxury you cannot afford! Why? Because it not only makes you no fun to live with….but negative thinking tends to be a self-fulfilling prediction. You become uncreative with solutions. You become obsessed with your complaints and stop smelling the roses.

Golfers know this. Stand on the tee of a 3 par hole surrounded by water and say to yourself “I bet I hit the ball into the water”…and you probably will. Pessimistic thinking will actually affect your swing. All golfers know that the biggest hazards on a golf course are not the sand traps and lakes. The biggest hazard on a golf course is pessimistic negative thinking. The biggest hazard is inside your head. We become our worst obstacle. • Underline the most important or challenging sentence and say why?

• How does this quote apply to your life? EG, on a scale of 1-10 how much of a negative thinker are you? You call it being realistic but actually it is convincing yourself something cannot happen. So on a scale of 1-10 where do you land?

• Would you be honest and say what in your life are you thinking negative, hopeless, can’t happen thoughts?

• Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out.” In your own words what does that mean to do? And what is the negative alternative to doing that?

4. Could this quote help when you are tempted to give up and say something is hopeless? Secondly, hope is the decision not to give up. Remember: 2 snails made it to Noah’s ark because they would NOT give up! I think that is INSPIRATIONAL! J.R. Rowling is a very talented writer but no one ever would have heard of her or Harry Potter if she had decided her dream was hopeless. She was a single mother on welfare trying to get her first Harry Potter book published but only got rejection slips. She refused to give up hope. She stood by the door of her mind and refused to let hopeless thoughts come inside. NEGATIVE THOUGHTS were a luxury she could not afford. Oh those thoughts came knocking, but she would not open the door of her mind to let them in. She realized: If you want to walk on water, don’t be thinking about sharks! Focus. Choose what; you focus your mind on. It’s your choice! Take responsibility! She is a billionaire today because she won the most important battle - - the battle inside her mind. I like what Winston Churchill said in WWII just after their disastrous defeat at Dunkirk and the German air force was bombing London into rubble. Winston said to Parliament: Our situation is more hopeful than the facts indicate. Life gives us lots of invitations to lose hope and give up, but God asks, “Is anything too hard for Me.” Every day life will test your answer to that question. • Underline the most important sentence or hardest to believe and say why.

• In your own words what is the BIG idea in that quote and why?

• “If you want to walk on water, don’t be thinking about sharks”. Why? If you want to walk on water, what’s the problem with thinking about sharks?

• Where in your life are you thinking about sharks or….tempted to focus on sharks? So what are you going to do to stop thinking about sharks?

5. Consider this: Third, hope is a person. David’s life fell apart when his family was captured by his enemy and made slaves. So what did David do. The Bible says: “David encouraged himself in the Lord.” Not with a platitude! Not with a banal cliché! Hope is a person. Jonah, when he was in tough times, said, “When I had lost all hope, I turned my thoughts to the Lord.” (Jonah 2:7) That’s what Jeremiah did. In the worst of times Jeremiah said, “When Your Word came O Lord, I ate it.” (:16) Ezekiel did the same and so did David. They ate God’s Word. They meant that they chewed on what God said. They digested His Word. They didn’t skim it. And it nourished hope in hopeless situations. They ate God’s Word…and it toughened them up. We hear all the time that we are what we eat…. That’s never more true than spiritually or emotionally. We are what we eat. We need to digest God’s Word in order to grow. It’s the law of exposure. We become emotionally and spiritually what we expose ourself to. What we read! Who we hang with. What we watch. Life will test what is inside us. I have seen it 100’s of times. A person is tested by life and they crumble….because they did not know the promises of God in the Bible. Spiritually they are weak and eventually life comes to collect. • What is the most important sentence and why?

• Life will test what is inside us. What do I mean by that? Is it true or would you say no?

• We are talking about ‘holy sweat’! Working at knowing the Word of God; there is no other way to know Him! We can’t lay the Bible under our pillow, sleep on it, and wake up filled with God’s promises. Holy sweat: Doing these studies slowly and thoughtfully. Underlining our Bible. Memorizing a verse out of each study that strengthens us. Most Christians hardly ever read the Bible and they wonder why they are weak. So what is one thing specifically you could do to invest some ‘holy sweat’ into knowing God’s Word?

Pray for each other