November 2003 we launched New Hope Hawaii Kai as a midweek service that has now grown into a church of over 500 people. Here is our first church photo. There was no one to take the picture except me so I didn’t get in.

Then Jeremiah returned from Topheth, the garbage dump where he had delivered this message, and he stopped in front of the Temple of the Lord. He said to the people there, “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘I will bring disaster upon this city and its surrounding towns as I promised, because you have stubbornly refused to listen to me.’” Jeremiah 19:14-15

Observation

When God speaks at a garbage dump rather than in his holy temple it’s obvious that something is wrong. When a priest must turn trash man and stop at the front door of the church to deliver a message from God days are not looking good. And when the garbage can has more authority than the pulpit something is rotten in the church.

Imagine this: a ring of priests with skin pink from their latest bath and robes crisply ironed standing in a semicircle at the council tip. In the center is a passionate prophet uttering words of a God who is at his wit’s end. In his hand the emotional preacher holds a piece of fine china. At the climax of his sermon, with one dramatic hurl he smashes the porcelain. The message was clear even without Jeremiah’s narration. God in heaven was saying, “You just wait until I get down there!”Â

Why couldn’t the worshipers hear this message in the comfort of the temple? Why did God have to resort to the garbage dump to deliver his message? The answer is simple. The people had come to prefer only what pleased them.  As a result the preachers told them what they wanted to hear. When preachers pander to the people in the temple or the church God will not just stop speaking, he will also show up where we least expect him to get his message across.

In his last tell-all letter, the apostle Paul put it this way:Â

For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. 2 Timothy 4:3Â

The trend of Jeremiah’s day did not diminish. Selective deafness is on the crescendo today. If stirring truth is being spoken outside of the normal gathering places of God’s people, then the Lord’s own need to ask if they want to hear anything God has to say. For the temple of the Lord can be full prattle that anyone sitting in the audience could have written on their own. But if God is speaking through his preachers then the perspective of the man in the pulpit will be different from those who listen, and those who listen find their minds and hearts challenged to change. As Billy Sunday the baseball star turned evangelist used to say to critics, “They say to me, “Bill, you rub the fur the wrong way.” I don’t. Let the cats turn ’round.”

Application

I must admit that there is a part of me that wants to hear what I’ve heard before because it is easier to remain than to change. Then I hear preaching at the garbage dump and my heart is humbled. I want God to speak where I am. I don’t want to have to camp with flies to hear him.

Prayer

Father, I open my heart and ears to listen to you as you want to speak so you can access me especially when I am gathered at your feet with your people. And give me courage to speak in your house as if I were at the garbage dump when I need to. Amen.Â