A Very Bad Day--Romans 12:9-12. Sermon preached on Rally Day. August 31, 2026

            I wonder if this past week you could join young Alexander, the childhood story character, and confess that you too have had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? 

            “Everybody has a ‘bad day’ from time to time: moments when things just do not turn out the way we would like them to turn out. It is natural to expect that when we try to do our best or, at least, when we have not intentionally or knowingly done anything wrong, ordinarily, things will work out all right in the end. Nevertheless, in spite of good intentions and best efforts, there are times when plans fail, friends disappoint, relatives do not understand, health falters, calamity strikes, or stress mounts. Not surprisingly, we often ask ourselves and God, why?”[1]

            Gospel music writer Walter Hawkins wrote a song that expresses these feelings, a song that I suspect Jeremiah might sing as well if he were with us in worship: 

Everywhere you go, there is trouble (there is trouble)

Everywhere you go, there is strife (there is strife)

Everywhere you go, there is something to worry about.[2]

 

            Jeremiah experienced these struggles himself. He likely joined you, when you have experienced one of these very bad days, by wondering “How do I survive this mess?”

And we both know that a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, easily can be a day when we are unable to confess or affirm God’s presence in our lives. Yet in the middle of that space, and during that bad time, the Triune God is present.

While our text today does not explicitly label or define the Triune presence, God is in this text—The Father, the Son and the Spirit. Creative. Working. Alive. Even if the daily evidence is harder to find than we might like, God is with, His people, the prophet, and us, in our time of need.  

Move 1- Triune Formula

            This is a passage first off of lament. Jeremiah is lamenting; offering up a prayer as he pours out his heart. 

Our text today is written during the last years of the southern kingdom of Judah and Babylon is coming… the very bad day is coming. 

As this chapter opens, God’s frustration with His people is palpable. In Jeremiah 15:1 the Lord says that even if Moses and Samuel, two heroes of faith, were to come before him, God would not return to His people. God would not hear their prayers. God wants his people out of his presence. Later in verse 1 God says these shocking words, “Send them away from my presence! Let them go!”

Or course, the prophet is wounded deeply by these words and by God’s apparent lack of action. As these final years of Judah take shape, and as Babylon comes closer and closer to its final invasion and conquest, what the people need most is the presence of the Lord—not the Lord pushing them away.

Now we know that God is not a genie in a bottle who instantly saves his people when they call. Not always can we confess to an immediate action on behalf of our prayers. Even if God once acted as a military savior of his people during the Exodus, God has not practiced this type of behavior recently. We hear God’s voice in the back of our heads saying “What you reap is what you sow,’ and the Israelites have not sowed a deeper relationship with God. 

In this very moment what the people need is God. They need God’s presence to comfort and sustain them when their struggles become too much—a word that is also applicable to us, I believe. For we need that as well. 

            Back in Jeremiah 15, the prophet and God go back and forth with Jeremiah begging God to come save his people; to examine their hearts, and even though they are sinful now, and even if God wanted to push them away, Jeremiah believes that God will remember the covenant that He made with their forefathers. Jeremiah hopes that God will look past the sins of his people one more time and be with them. 

            Knowing that Babylon is coming, Jeremiah begins to travel down that most dangerous road… the WHY road. It comes to a crescendo in verse 18 as Jeremiah says, ‘why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable.’ He is having that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad… season. Not a day. 

            Yet in the midst of that challenge, in the midst of his cries for the Israelites, in the midst of unfaithful living, Jeremiah calls out for the presence of God. The Triune presence. Jeremiah reaches back out to God. 

            We first see this in verse 16. “O Lord, God of hosts,” Jeremiah says. This is the proper name of Yahweh written by the prophet; perhaps spoken by him as this letter is dictated to his scribe. God’s name is echoed previously in our text in verse 15, “O Lord.” The Fatherhood of God; the one who is in control of everything that takes place in this world. And Jeremiah continues to lift up the triune formulation. 

            In verse 16, Jeremiah clearly illustrates the ministry of the Holy Spirit. He says, ‘Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy.’ Is this not what the Holy Spirit does in our lives as we interact with God’s word through prayer and meditation? Doesn’t the Holy Spirit illuminate the word of God for us we can be fed with it often?  The Holy Spirit helps us see things from God that we normally might have missed.

            Finally in the midst of his pain and his questioning, Jeremiah once again turns to God towards the end of our text. In verse 19 the prophet reaches out to God with language that echoes the ministry of Jesus the Savior. Here God is speaking and says, ‘if you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me.’ This is the act of redemption. Sin is confessed. It is forgiven. And the person stands before God redeemed once again. 

            In a few verses, with the WHY question coming out of his heart, Jeremiah offers the church some wisdom: the Triune God is with him. The Triune God is present. 

Move 2- manageable

            Confessing that God is with us and understanding how fundamental this confession is to our faith, act of affirming God’s presence helps. It helps us to find language and a location where God is with us when the WHY question buzzes around our lives and in our hearts. When we can be distracted and led astray by what we witness occurring around our homes, and as we want to only ask God WHY, the confession that the Triune God is present, is essential. It is grounding; it is foundational to our faith.

            In those places of deep tension that we encounter so often, at home, at work, in the community, locating the presence, fully, of the Triune God crucially reorients us. We are reoriented from places of doubt and hesitation and towards the affirmations of our faith that confess that even if we see calamity on the horizon, and even if deliverance might not come, God is there for us. 

            Knowing that God is with us creates a sense of manageability. Because no matter what we face, we do not, and we will not, face it alone. As neither the Israelites watching the southern kingdom end, or Jeremiah as he stood their begging the people to return to God, and as this tension become real, God was still there. 

            God takes what we define and label as unmanageable, as unsurvivable, as faith breaking, and in His presence, we find something that heals and restores us. 

Move 3- the wall

            The Triune God says that even when these calamities come, and they will, and even as we suffer, and we will, God is working to build us so that we will not lose the battle—verse 20. 

            God says, “They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you, declares [not the prophet] but the Lord.”

            I know that each of you, and myself included, as experienced recently a very bad day. You know that ones are coming over the horizon that you cannot avoid, and while it is tempting to lead with WHY and offer questions and considerations that only shake your faith, the Triune God is present. 

            He says that He will build His people into something that cannot be smashed down or broken apart. In this case, that is the image of a bronze wall. And that wall symbolizes three things: divine protection (the Father), unbreakable strength (the Son), and resilience against our enemy (the Spirit). 

            As we are in union with God in this way, God will take care of us even when very bad days happen.  

Conclusion 

            Yes, Jeremiah’s message, and his cries out to the Triune God, did not stop the Babylonians from coming and destroying the city of Jerusalem. And yes, with Jeremiah by their side, the leaders of Judah were carried away into exile and there was great sadness in that place. And it was easy to ask God WHY. 

            Perhaps when we find ourselves in these moments is to true acknowledgement that God is indeed with us—he is fully with us. What we must affirm together is that God will help us in our times of need by being present. He will act in ways we do not realize to draw us and to His very side. 

And in that act of drawing, we do find the ultimate victory over whatever we think makes this a very bad day. 

 

 

 

DM

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[1] Ronald E. Peters. Emphasis added.

 

[2] George L Parks Jr., 21^st Century Ministry Beyond the Norm: Emerging Models for Preaching. Article found in Preaching: The Professional Journal for Ministry Leaders, Summer 2026, 18.

 

Evangelism--Romans 10:l5-15. Sermon preached on August 9, 2026

            One of the most challenging concepts that God presents to the church is the call to evangelism. Now we know that some people are effective at this work, and some are not as effective as they might hope to be. 

If we had a six-week class on evangelism here, most people who attended would do so by taking a deep breath as they walked into the room. There would be some unspoken tension that they might confess—if they were honest with themselves. For we can love the Lord deeply, we can confess our faith clearly but going out to share our faith in public… that can be a different type of challenge for many Christians.

Evangelism, even though we understand what it means, it feels challenging to many people. This challenge is not related to weak faith. It is not related to any lack of understanding about who God is and what Jesus did for us on the cross. 

Instead, I think the challenge is expectational; the challenge, if we can get words to it is: ‘How will I share the gospel as Jesus taught, when I am going through… whatever I am going through in this moment.’ 

            We are not the first, and we won’t be the last, who feel this challenge creeping into our hearts as we work to share God’s message of salvation. 

            Looking at the context of Romans, I wonder how would those people, the first audience who heard Paul’s words, how would they handle the call from the Apostle Paul to evangelize? What does the call to share God’s message and word look like given all that these people confronted each day? 

            For last week I told you that ministry often happens when we are not ready. It happened in Jesus’ life in Matthew 14 as they crowds followed and pursued him as he sought to withdraw, and it happens in our lives when those same feelings of unpreparedness and experiences define us. And if any group of people felt that they were not ready to effectively share the gospel as it was revealed by God, it was the Christians living in Rome. 

Yet in Chapter 10, Paul makes a deliberate point to speak about the necessity of proclamation for these people—hard as it might be for them and today for us. Proclamation, evangelism is necessary if the church is to fulfill its calling. 

Today I want to spend a little time with you thinking about evangelism and how it relates to the places where we go each day. 

Move 1- not understanding it all.

            Our text begins with Paul trying to focus the Church on where their attention should rest—and not where it does rest. Often, we get hung up as these people did in the superficial details or facts that we cannot affect or solve. Verse 5-7 illustrate how easy it can be to get distracted by details that only belong in God’s hand alone… not in ours. 

            Who goes to heaven? Who ascends? Who descends? The law. Righteousness based on faith… these are big concepts that, while important for us to think about as the Body of Christ, those decisions, these ideas, they rest alone with God. 

We do not have to understand everything in the Christian faith to share the gospel. Too often I meet people who think that if they are going to evangelize effectively and deeply, as Paul teaches here, then these same people must be ready with, and they must be clear on, all the theological details of God’s Word. 

            Sadly, this is a first trap that we fall into when we begin to consider evangelism. 

            We can spend our lives thinking and reflecting and discussing the deep theological truths of God’s Word, and I do enjoy those conversations as much as the next person, but those discussions should not stop us from reaching out to the people of our community and telling them about the Lord. Paul says it this way:

“The Word is near you…” verse 8.

            You and I do not have to understand the whole Bible; we are not called to. That is the reason that Paul begins our text this week in the manner in which he does and it is the first lesson of this text. We do not have to have every answer right at our fingertips. We simply must take the steps that we can today and speak to the people of this neighborhood about who God is and how God is revealed to you. The word is indeed near to you and me. 

            “In an age of uncertainty and shaky foundations, resurrection life brings meaning, Hope, and purpose. Our confession and our belief begin and end with Jesus. From this foundation, a life of faith and discipleship flows.”[1]

            Evangelism is about the proclamation of the resurrection life it is not always full of complete understanding. But that is where discipleship begins. This is task, a responsibility, for the entire church and not just those who think that they are ‘evangelical.’ We all are called to share the story of how the Lord is with us and help others learn, and build, that foundation. 

            Paul begins by reminding the people that they do not have to understand it all and neither do you.

Move 2- we are necessary.

            Without the work of the church, sharing who God is and how God has been with us, how will the people of this community learn His story? This is the basic question that evangelism attempts to help others solve and it is the second step in Paul’s message today.

            Sure, anyone can pick up a Bible. Sure, they can spend time reading it and working to understanding it, but that can feel daunting. How many times have you met a person who said that they would like to read the Bible but don’t know where to start? 

It can, and I have heard others say, that just picking up God’s Word at trying to ‘get it’ is overwhelming. But hear again Paul’s words, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And who are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?”

            These words tell me that we cannot hold back the message of God because we would prefer someone else to share it for us. And we cannot solely hope that the people in question will find that message on their own. Paul knows that the church has an important role to play in the evangelistic work of God. 

            The church, we here at Bethesda, we are a necessary part sharing of God’s word with the people of this community. For what is evangelism but the sharing of how God’s story has become our story.[2]Evangelism is the reflection that we have on how God’s story has changed our stories. Remade those stories. Reoriented them towards a practice of discipleship and faith. And in this way, we, the Body of Christ, the particular Christian in question, we are necessary. 

            “Despite poor efforts of evangelism [that we can remember], we are called to go out into the world and proclaim Jesus. [That is our job; it is our call] Because if we do not, how will those who are lost hear and have the opportunity to call on his name? . . . Our job is to share the one who we know is trustworthy, the one who welcomes our questions and doubts. We are sent out to share Jesus, who offer certainty, and Hope, regardless of circumstances.”[3]

            Of course, history is replete with the stories of how God stepped into the lives of His people and transformed His children because of that revelation. But burning bushes are not a common story. The overall story of God would stop at some moments if we do not share how we are changed because the story of the Lord changed us. Evangelism is the practice of faithful witness that we participate in. 

Move 3- confusion

            Because let’s face it, there is so much confusion that we are confronted with each day. So many people lock evangelism into a small box. They tell us how it should look and how any evangelistic work should sound. But then things get worse, and they take it a step further and talk about what the proper results should be. “If we are going to evangelize then it must be done like this,” they say. 

            But Paul ends our text today with a very basic statement that cuts through all the confusion, doubt, hesitation. Paul’s words cut through any unmet expectation and he provides a clear through line for us as we continue to seek the Lord and share His message. He says: “If you confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be safe.”[4] It does not get any simpler than that. 

            The world can tell us how things should look, they can tell us how we ought to believe, they can say there is confusion in the evangelistic work, but the clarity of this text is that the message of evangelism is clear… Jesus is Lord, and we seek to believe only in Him. This is why Paul ends our text today in this manner. 

            For the life of those same Christians living in Rome, suffering as they did, they needed something solid on which to preach, and on which to live. Much the same as we do in this context today.

Conclusion

            So, we are called to evangelize. Not a few times; not when it feels easy. But we are called to take our story as a church in total, and people specifically, and talk about how Jesus is Lord. He is the one we confess. 

            I wonder if that is a practice that we can do? For we will find people who are lost, who are suffering, and that might just be the perfect opportunity to share with him how God has changed us. 

 

 

 

DM

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[1] Mary Beth Anton. Feasting on the Word. Year A, Volume 3. 

 

[2] Bryan Stone.

[3] Mary Beth Anton. Feasting on the Word. Year A, Volume 3. 

 

[4] Romans 10:9 ESV.