Tanilba Bay Baptist Church
Worship

      • Jeremiah 2:1–19ANGLNIV2011

  • Losing your first love

    I want you to imagine a couple. Let’s call them Simon and Sarah.
    Simon and Sarah met in a church young adults group and quickly formed a friendship. They both loved the outdoors and found themselves going on bushwalks together. The bond between them grew and they were soon expressing their love for each other.
    After a period of time dating each other, they then got married. It was the best day of their lives. Simon and Sarah spoke at the reception about how it felt they were marrying their best friend. They both cared about each other. They loved spending time with each other. It was the perfect love story.
    But let’s fast forward ten years.
    Simon and Sarah now have two young children, and they both want to provide for these children that they love.
    Simon has moved into middle management in his work place, and he knows, if he knows there’s further up the chain to move if he puts in the right effort. More income means he’ll be a better provider for his family.
    Sarah’s trying to juggle parenthood and part time work. She loved her job, but they agreed that she was in a better position to work part time so she could look after the children.
    They start noticing that they are fighting more often. Usually nothing too big, but some of their annoying habits that they had previously happily glossed over, now seem really annoying.
    They’re less intimate, partly because whenever they finally get some time together, they are so exhuasted.
    This goes on for some time. A new woman starts working at Simon’s work place. She young and attrative. Now Simon still loves Sarah, he’d never cheat on her. But this new colleague is fun to be around. She has this quirky sense of humour and Simon finds himself laughing like he hasn’t laughed in such a long time.
    This colleague starts meeting a need that Simon didn’t actually realise he needed. His colleagues go out for drinks after work, and Simon finds himself spending time with this new colleague.
    Things feel fun and exicting when he’s with her. Each night he goes home to his wife. Things drift further apart. In some ways, he feels he has lost motivation to fix his relationship with Sarah, because he’s having his intimacy needs met elsewhere.
    How far do things go?
    Well, while this is a made up story, the sad reality is that similiar stories to this happen all the time. Sometimes it never progresses beyond some flirtatious behaviour. Sometimes it results in a significant breach of marital faithfulness.
    But can I suggest that though having a sexual affair is worse and a bigger breach of trust, but when one spouse, whether the husband or the wife, starts seeking their intimacy needs elsewhere, something has already broken.
    The first love has been lost, and it’s being sought in what only amounts to a fake.
    This imagery of marital unfaithfulness is often used throughout the Bible as a way of describing the broken relationship between God and his people.
    It’s so powerful because we all know how devastating it is when marital unfaithfulness occurs. I suspect most, probably even all of us know of real examples where unfaithfulness has occured in someone we know. You’ve probably seen the absolute heart break the spouse feels when they find out their trust has been broken.
    Maybe you’ve been that person.
    The pain is real.
    God is telling us, this is the same pain he feels when his people look for satisfaction elsewhere.
    This message today is not going to be to tell you to stay faithful to God because you might make him sad, but rather, we stay true to God, because that’s where true satisfaction is. Everything else is an illusion of satisfaction.

    Jeremiah goes to Jerusalem

    Well, let’s jump into our text for this morning.
    Chapter 1 saw the call of Jeremiah, which as I described last week, was in the year 627 BC, a year that also marked the start of a major transition in the order of world powers.
    Well, we’re told that the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah in verse 1 of the second chapter, and he’s told to go and proclaim the message God is about to give him in the hearing of Jersualem.
    Now back in the first chapter, we were told that he was from Anathoth, which is a town just a few kilometers from Jerusalem. So, Jeremiah would have walked down the road and gone to some public place in Jerusalem.
    Now you might remember from last week, this is somebody who only a short while ago was terrified at speaking to others because he is not very good at speaking. This is somebody who was worried because his young. So who’s going to listen to this young, inarticulate person?
    Well, Jeremiah is feeling empowered by God, so even if he still feels aprehensive, he goes in power. Where not told exactly who his audience is at this point. We’re not told exactly where he’s standing in Jerusalem. But the message he gives is powerful.
    It starts very evokatively.
    Jeremiah speaks the word of the Lord to them, which starts with God reminiscing about the devotion of Israel’s youth, and how they were a bride that loved God. He reminds them of their wandering through the wilderness.

    The devotion of their youth

    So let’s go back there and remind ourselves of this time.
    In fact, let me go a few steps back to before Israel was even born.
    Israel started with Abraham - just one man. God gives him a promise that he will be a great nation, which must have seemed a strange promise when Abraham is childless and an old man with an old barren wife.
    But as strange as it was, with this promise, a nation is concieved by God. Abraham has Isaac. Isaac then has Jacob. Jacob has twelve sons, and the nation is like a new born baby.
    They find themselves in Egypt for about 400 years, which sees them go from infancy to childhood.
    But after childhood comes adolescence. Adolescence is a very important in the shaping of a person.
    You could describe Israel’s adolescence when they left Egypt and wandered in the dessert for 40 years.
    It was in these years that they formed a covenant with God. God spoke through Moses, and showed his people how he wanted them to live. It wasn’t that he was being some sort of a spoil sport. Rather he wanted to mark these people as different. He wanted to mark them as his own.
    It was a marriage of sorts. The people pledged themselves to God and God pledged himself to his people.
    Now, it is true that during this time, there were some quite rocky times, including quite a bit of rebellion. I guess that goes with adolescence.
    But during this period, the Israelites did love their God. They did have a devotion for him. As much as they grumbled, they knew that God had saved them. They remembered the spectacular way God had taken them out of Egypt.
    God had also led them into the Promised Land. It was like their first steps into young adulthood. God did what he said he would.
    God’s telling the people of Jeremiah’s day - remember those day. Remember in your youth how much you loved me.
    Now after those early years, things certainly went up and down. After the initial entry into the Promised Land, they did turn their backs on God, but God would keep raising new leaders, and the people would turn back to God.
    We come to a high point with King David who really kept God in focus for them. And while there were a few high points after that, the general direction was away from God after that.
    As I mentioned last week, only a short period of time before Jeremiah, Manasseh had been king of Judah, and he had completely turned his back on Yahweh - the one true God.

    Turning away

    As the Lord notes in verse 5, these people strayed from God.
    The Lord asks, “what fault did your ancestors find in me?”
    Now this is actually an interesting question. You see, in that day, as we might today, some people might say, well actually, I can find fault in God.
    People just have to point to the suffering that people experience. They could point to the losses they’ve experienced in battles. They could point to droughts they’ve experienced.
    The problem with this, however, is that when we start picking on God for these things, they have very narrow view of things. You see, it can be very convenient to leave out the part that much of this suffering is a result of their own sinfulness and neglect of God.
    It’s a matter of wanting God to serve them but have no responsibility for their own actions.
    The reality is, when we do look closer at the way God works, we do actually realise that God is not at fault. In fact, God has been true to his word from day 1.
    One of the reasons this is so hard, is because to recognise that God was not at fault, we actually have to admit that we were wrong in what we did.
    I mentioned just a moment ago about Manasseh, the king of Judah that was still in living memory of the people Jeremiah is preaching to.
    Conceivably, they might have laid fault with God. You see, they could argue that the reason that they turned their back on God and served other gods, is because God allowed this foreign power to raise up and dominate them. What are they meant to do when such a dominant force is bearing down on them?
    But God was not at fault there.
    You just need to go back to the Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah had been prophesying a few generations before Jeremiah, and he told the king at the time, don’t trust in yourself, or in alliances with anyone, trust in God and God alone. What did they do? Well, they made their own alliances. In fact, they made an alliance with Assyria, the very nation that was so devastating the world.
    What had happened was not because God let them down. It happened because they didn’t trust God to protect them. They forgotten the many many times that God had come through for them before. They’d forgotten their devotion of their youth.
    And things spiralled out of control. Once they had made an alliance with Assyria, it was hard to get out of it. It’s easier to just go along with it.
    Once you embrace a worldview, things make sense in that worldview. Once they started finding help in something else, they forgot that it was God and God alone who could help them. They became unfaithful and they were paying the price as a result.
    You read through this message that Jeremiah is giving to the people, and he says as much. He reminds them of God’s great provisions. In verse 7, he reminds them how he brought them into a fertile land. How quickly they forget.

    The charge

    The charge is laid out in verse 13:
    Jeremiah 2:13 “‘My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
    So, what are the two sins he points out?
    First, that they’ve forgotten the one that gives life.
    And second that they’ve tried to make some kind of replacement, but it’s hopelessly inadequate.
    Just bring this back to the imagery of the unfaithful spouse.
    The unfaithful spouse has forgotten the first true love that they first committed to.
    And they’ve tried to recreate something that is hopelessly inadequate.
    God watched as his people so foolishly messed things up. And his heart broke.

    Images

    From verse 20 onwards lots of different images are provided. Images designed to evoke an emotive response to show how foolish these people have acted. I won’t explore each but let’s just fly through them.
    In verse 20 he describes them as an unruly ox. Also in that verse, they’re likened to a prostitute.
    In verse 21 he describes them as a vine with useless fruit.
    Verse 22 they are a stain that can’t be washed.
    If you look at verses 23 to 25, they’re described as a female animal on heat.
    Verse 26, they’re a thief caught in the act.
    Verse 32, as a young woman who forgot her jewellery.
    We could spend time looking at each, but the point is clear, they’ve been foolish and messed up. They’ve acted in ways they shouldn’t when they had a much clearer path before them.
    The first 5 verses of chapter 3 returns to the image of an unfaithful spouse, and it’s heartbreaking.

    Our Spiritual Adultery

    But we need to bring this back to ourselves now.
    Would it be out of place if Jeremiah came and preached this message to the contemporary church?
    It’s a big question, and the truth is, the contemporary church is so large today and you will of course find many examples of faithful churches that are relying a God and God alone. Likewise, you’ll fid many contemporary churches that have embraced the world and doing things their own way.
    Here’s the problem though. most churches think that their expression of faith is how it should be, and the other churches have missed the mark.
    So we’ve got a big question here. At what point do we say a church or an individual believer has lost their trust in God and have started following other ways. You might recall that this was a big question during Covid. When churches and individuals started following government directives, some people through around accusations that they had lost trust in God and doing things their own way.
    I want to make the argument that that is not the measure we should be using. ‘
    Keeping faithful to God does not mean that we necessarily have to reject any piece of advice from the world. In fact, when you go into the New Testament, Paul is very clear that we need to submit to ourr ruling authorities - that they have been placed their for our good.

    The test

    I think the big test is actually in the questions that we are asking.
    Let me take you back to chapter 2 verse 6. They had stopped asking the question: where is the Lord.
    Again, in verse 8, the priests this time had stopped asking, “where is the Lord?”
    If I go back to the Covid example, the test for a faithful church is not whether they follow government orders or not, the test is, are they asking the question and seeking after God in all things?
    This is the test for when we as individuals start commiting spiritual adultery: when you stop asking, what is God’s will in this matter, and you start doing it your own way.
    We do this without realising. We make choices based on how much they suit our wants and desires rather than how much they are going to honour God.
    Let’s say for example you have a new job opportunity. Our thought process might go - how much money will I make? How will it affect my lifestyle? How’s it going to affect my reputation?
    An approach that seeks to remains faithful to God will instead say: God, can I honour you with this new job? Is God opening these doors for me? Am I using the skills and gifts God has given me?
    But it doesn’t have to be big decisions like that. You can look at the way you spend and use your money.
    This is a big test. The person seeking to be faithful to God will recognise that actually, all of their money belongs to God.
    I don’t want to suggest that you can’t use any for luxuries , but when you do spend money on luxuries, how self-indulgent are you being? Is it a reasonable amount that will allow you to enjoy the simple pleasures of life? Or is it overly extravagant and completely focussed on yourself.
    The faithful person realises, money is just a tool, not the pleasure in and of itself.

    Conclusion

    What we need to recognise is that unfaitfulness often comes in subtlies.
    If I come back to my story in my introduction of Simon and Sarah, I ended before any kind of sex came into the picture. Simon could have very easily argued, it’s not really anything to worry about. It’s just some harmless flirting.
    Similarly, we argue, I haven’t actually been unfaithful to God. After all, it’s not like I’ve changed my religion. I haven’t set up any gods in my house that I’m bowing down to, so I’m all good.
    But when you’ve stopped asking, “Where is the Lord?” and have instead say “where is the money?”, you’ve started the flirting. You have started the unfaithfulness.
    The good news, despite the fact that God would be in his rights to say you’ve messed up and you can pack your bags now, where going to find a God who says - I want you to come back.
    But he’s going to ask you to repent before you do.
    You see, this is where we are in this journey through Jeremiah. We’re going to have to tear ourselves down, before we build ourselves back up into something beautiful that God is going to treasure.
    Let me pray...
Tanilba Bay Baptist Church
secretary.tbbc@gmail.com
+6149823022
http://www.tanilbabaybaptistchurch.com
9 members