Bad Trades

Well, good morning, church, it's good to be with you

this morning. If you haven't started turning there yet, do

open your bibles to Jeremiah chapter two. It's just over

halfway through the scriptures, and we'll be there here in

just a minute.

So Jeremiah chapter two.

But even before we read it this morning, I wonder

a quick question for you. Have you ever made a

bad trade? Have you ever made a bad trade? Maybe

maybe it's of a car, maybe it's some sort of

an investment or for the younger ones among us, maybe

a toy. A bad trade you know on that. Well,

I certainly have. I know that's been the case for me,

and plenty of regret with this. As I think about it,

I can recall a couple of car scenarios that were

downright bad trades that I made. I was in a

hurry and ended up doing a trade that didn't make

sense for the next step for an automobile. And along

those lines, there's a there's a scene in a nineties movie.

It's a it's a very silly film, it's not worth

your time, but a comical scene where two foolish, dim

witted guys named Lloyd and Harry.

Some of you know where I'm going with this.

Are traveling across the country and the utility van at

one point, low Lloyd he's it's unbeknownst to Harry, but

he trades in their van for the smallest moped that

you've ever seen. He's a full grown man. This thing's

built for an eight year old. And he rides up

to his friend and you think that generally already unwise,

Harry is finally finally going to speak some sense into.

Foolish Lloyd there on.

The moped when he says, just when I thought you

couldn't get any dumber, you go out and do something

like this and totally redeem yourself. So in the ridiculously

elated Harry manages to get a portion of his backside

on the bike behind his friend, and they soon find it's,

in fact, this miserable journey down the highway, it's the

ultimate bad trade, at least.

In the realm of automobiles.

Now that's just a goofy movie scene, right, but we

know in real life, bad trades have real consequences for us,

sometimes even to the point where life and death may

be on the line, and that was certainly the case

for the Hebrew people in the days of Jeremiah the prophet.

He was a young man appointed by God to call

out the wickedness of his fellow inhabitants of Jerusalem and beyond,

and early in the book we have a kind of

summary statement that captures the types of disobedience people were

engaged in. So let's look at Jeremiah Chapter two, initially

only verse thirteen. Here, So Jeremiah two thirteen says, for

my people have committed to evils.

They have forsaken me the fountain of living.

Waters and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that

can hold no water.

So there we go.

There's the judgment from God himself to two main acts

of evil given to us in word, picture or metaphor form.

The first one, they're turning away from the living waters fountain,

who is Yahweh God? Second making broken cisterns or these

stone holding tanks for their supply and security in life. Now,

regardless of what you know about God, or if He

is valued much by you at all, any of us

can see the ridiculous end.

Results in this verse.

Right, everybody's just sitting there with their busted, waterless water tanks.

That's the image that we're given. But let's back up.

From that here for a moment and take things from

the top where God calls this group his audience, my people,

says for my people have committed to evils.

So who is this people?

And what did it mean for them to belong to God?

And then what does that have to do with us?

Of course too, So to see just a bit of this,

let's back up in the chapter, starting from the top,

verses one through twelve we'll read now, so follow along

with me. I'll make a couple of short comments along

the way. The Jeremiah two to one, the word of

the Lord came to me. It's Jeremiah saying, go and

proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord,

I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as

a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in

a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord,

the first fruits of his harvest. All who ate of

it incured guilt. Disaster came upon them.

Declares the Lord.

So in other words, beautiful beginnings, protection from enemies. This

marriage scene at the beginning between God and his people

and then hear the word of the Lord O house

of Jacob and all the clans of the House of Israel.

Thus says the Lord, what wrong did your fathers find

in me? That they went far from me and went

after worthlessness and became worthless. They did not say, where

is the Lord who brought us up from the land

of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, and a

land of deserts and pits, and a land of drought

and deep darkness, in a land that none passes through,

where no man dwells. So, in other words, turned away utterly,

not even praying, crying out to the Lord, seeking his face,

And then further, and I brought you into a plentiful land.

I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits.

And its good things.

But when you came in, you defiled my land and

made my heritage an abomination. In other words, squandered his gifts,

took what they had given and used it in their

own ways, and brought into it things that were not fitting.

The priests did not say where is the Lord. Those

who handled the law.

Did not know me.

The shepherds transgressed against me. The prophets prophesied by bail

and went after things that do not profit, so even

the spiritual leaders promoting what is false in the scenario here. Therefore,

I still contend with you, declares the Lord. And with

your children's children, I will contend for cross to the

coasts of Cyprus and see, or send to Kedar and

examined with care. In other words, far to the east,

far to the west, wherever you would look, see if

there has been such a thing. Has a nation changed

its gods even though they are no gods. But my people,

my people, have changed their glory for that which does

not profit so, in other words, senseless bad trades. And

then finally, be appalled, Oh heavens at this, be shocked.

Be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. Don't you love that?

Ending there, it's one of the closest statements to oh,

my heavens that we probably have in the Bible. And

it's so fitting given the ludicrous behavior.

Of the people.

God had cared for and been clear with and gave

warnings to all along the way over the roughly eight

hundred years since their exodus from Egypt. So here we

are roughly twenty six hundred years after these words from Jeremiah,

those of us called the people of God through faith

and him adopted into this family with Jesus as Lord,

and just as they so much needed to remember all

he had done and reconsider what it meant to actually

belong to him, so we too should remember we are his.

You Christian today should remember you are his. It's your

first line there to fill in if you're taking notes, Remember.

You are his.

So you, who are His, are there built into your

life rhythms of recollection of His faithfulness and rescue and

kindness to you as one of his children, just like

the people in Jeremiah's day were being called to. I

know my heart needs work here. Maybe yours does too.

You know, one of the problems we see in this

chapter is that the people weren't even calling out to

God from adoring or even just desperate hearts. And you know,

I found myself sometimes lately I've been reflecting on this

similarly lacking at times engaging and just kind of perfunctory

going through the motions prayers in my life, whether in

the opening or closing of a meeting that I might

be leading, or before a meal that I'm enjoying, or

with my wife before bed.

You get the.

Picture, going through the motions. Maybe you're like me sometimes

and you take these these beautiful holy moments and just

kind of just kind of move on through simply because

you've been told to practice the habit of prayer, and

and maybe you even truly believe somewhere in there that

it's the right and good thing to do. It's what

you do if you're His right. But friends, do we

do we commune with him? Do we take pause to

reflect from from a truly grateful heart for the blessings

of the day, maybe the rescue we've we've received in

the past, or the clear provision in all those moments

when when things could have gone a very different and

destructive way for us, And we say, oh God, thank

you for your rescue. But then also, what about not

just our praying, but also our our doing. To be

God's people means be holy, to be set apart unto

Him using the gifts of our homes, our cars, our clothes,

our televisions, our tablets, our phones, our food, and our

relationships in a manner where we'd be glad at any

moment for Jesus to pop in next to us or

look over our shoulders, because guess what, we'll guess whose

spirit is already here?

By the way too.

I should remember that, you know, I personally, honestly find

this area terribly difficult at times, and I'm a good

number of years into following him. I read verse seven again.

If you look at it, it says, and I brought

you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits, and

it's good things. But when you came in, you defiled

my land and made my heritage an abomination.

You know. I read that and realize that.

I don't enjoy so many gifts in a worshipful manner,

with right remembrance over where they came from and how they.

Should be used.

The TVs, still, after all these years, can still be

one of the worst places for me, I think. You know,

it seems that as a couple or a family, we're

regularly on the hunt for, you know, some little pleasant

show to enjoy as the day winds down, and about

seventy five percent of them when we try something new

an episode or two in are not the ones I'd

feel comfortable watching with Jesus.

And we have to pick something else.

I know that sounds weird, right, It kind of sounds

weird to say it that way, but shouldn't we think

more like that as we thoroughly contemplate what it means

to have the privileged position of being in the my

people category, looking back at how He purchased us with

his own blood, cleansing us from our sin. Now, I

know there's room for conscience and all of this. And

the problem isn't that Jesus is surprised or embarrassed over

what goes on in the world or what comes across

a screen. I know that, but I think the opportunity

is still there for us right to contemplate this. Let's

more consistently recall what God has given, remembering that we

are his, and let that change how we pray and

proceed through life, including how we handle things like recreation.

Fair enough, fair enough, But.

Now let's push into the meat of this little verse

before us, God's ungrateful and ungodly people were accused of

committing to evils, and let's be sure to not miss

that very.

Description evil evil.

There's no mincing of words here, and we need to

notice the severity instead of just pushing past it. You know,

we tend to reserve the word evil for only those

supposedly really bad things that hit the news, where the

destruction is so obvious.

It's the evil out there.

We've got to let the word evil hit closer to

home for us if we want to apply this portion

of God's word rightly.

So he describes for us.

He describes the first evil as forsaking him the fountain

of living waters. Forsaking him the fountain of living waters.

If we put that into the form of a command,

we might say, don't forsake the fountain. And that's your

second spot there in your bulletin, don't forsake the fountain.

We've already explored some of the ways in which they

had been forsaking or turning away from God in their

hearts and with their actions. But now it's worth considering

this rich description of the fountain of living waters. There's

lots for us in this. God loves to use water

stories and illustrations throughout his word. This makes sense because

He made us to need water for even physical survival.

I mean, about sixty percent, give or take, of our

bodies are just that constantly needing to maintain these right proportions.

So to understand this part of the verse. Better, what

we'll do is we'll look at the present context for Jeremiah. There,

we'll hop backward in the scripture, and then we'll look

forward in the Bible to see how it all climax

is in a kind of a fulfillment for us. God

means in all of this to help us understand that

He is our very life, a kind of sustaining and

refreshing water for our souls, a fountain we'd be fools

to forsake. So again, in the present context, right here

in Jeremiah, look down at verses eighteen and nineteen. In

chapter two, it says, and now, what do you gain

by going down to Egypt to drink the waters of

the Nile, Or what do you gain by going to

Assyria to drink the waters of the Euphrates. Your evil

will chastise you, and your apostasy will reprove.

You know and see that it is.

Evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord, your God.

The fear of Me is not in you.

Declares the Lord, God of Hosts. So obviously the idea

here isn't that the Israelites simply preferred the taste of

these two rivers like one of Us might prefer Desani

over Aquafina.

No, it's that they grew.

Tired of, bored with, or irritated over having God as

their father, believing the lie that Egypt and Assyria had

something better to offer for their safety and security through

alliances with them. You know, the heart of discontent.

What does it do?

It always assumes that the best water, the greatest satisfaction,

is found somewhere else. So that's Jeremiah's water related illustration

right here in the chapter.

But if we were to look.

Backwards in Exodus seventeen, you don't necessarily have to turn there.

But it's the time between Egypt and the Promised Land,

and we find the people desperate for actual physical water

in the wilderness, and God miraculously provides by telling Moses

to strike a certain rock out of which water flowed

for the people of a miraculous moment. We understand that

supply as directly related to the presence of Jesus himself.

When Paul tells Us in One Corinthians ten four that

they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and

the rock was Christ, it's a wild statement. So while

it's clear that they were drinking actual water. Back in Exodus,

the deeper reality was that God himself was refreshing and

sustaining them. That's the lesson Israel in the Wilderness was

supposed to have learned.

The Lord was the one who.

Took care of them at every level, body and soul,

inviting them to trust and obey him, which would be

the only way for them to flourish personally. And that's

a special community. So that's the backward look in Exodus seventeen. Well,

how about that future fulfillment where the metaphor reaches its

peak and we see things drawn together. We need to

look with one another at John chapter four, John chapter four,

verses five through fourteen.

This is worth turning to John four.

Starting in verse five, John's about eighty percent of the

way through your bibles there as you're trying to find it.

So John chapter.

Four, verse five says, so he that's Jesus came to

a town of Samaria called Psychar, near the field that

Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there,

So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was

sitting beside the well.

It was about the sixth.

Hour a woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus

to her, give me a drink, for his disciples had

gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan

woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew,

asked for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria,

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her,

if you knew the gift of God and who it

is that is saying to you give me a drink,

you would have asked him and he would have given

you living water. The woman said to him, Sir, you

have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep.

Where do you get that living water? Are you greater

than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and

drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.

Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water.

Will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks of.

The water that I will give him will never be

thirsty again.

The water that I will.

Give him will become in him a spring of water

welling up to eternal life. So there it is, and

our look forward. In the scriptures, Jesus says to receive

into yourself the water of truth that he is and

that he offers. And when that happens, it will be

like this ongoing spring welling up like a fountain into

life that lasts forever. The Lord, the author of life,

puts within his people a sustaining source of life, unending,

perfect water for the soul, available to all who turn

from other sources and receive from him this gift of life. Why,

oh why would be ever forsake a fountain like that him,

even in the smallest of ways, turning aside from that?

So what about those other sources and securities or many

saviors that aren't good enough. That's the final part of

today's text, and the second evil very much connected here

to the first, that we need to examine together.

So look back again.

We got to turn all the way back in the

middle of our Bibles to Jeremiah chapter two. Turn back

to Jeremiah two thirteen, where we get to see that

the people had secondly queued out cisterns for themselves, broken

cisterns that can hold no water. Now, modern plumbing means

that today most of us don't think much about cisterns

or holding tanks for it for water. But for thousands

of years they were very important to the whole man community.

See these stone tanks that people dug out of would

often be plastered then on the inside with the kind

of limestone material to hold the rain water or water

collected from local springs or rivers, springs or rivers that

maybe were just far enough away that they couldn't really

be readily accessed for the daily needs of water.

And like anything else, these.

Tanks, whether they were built poorly in the first place

or certainly over time, would eventually degrade and wouldn't be

much good for anything, anything better than maybe throwing your

unwanted profits into like they did with Jeremiah later in

the book. But don't worry, he was rescued, kept on writing.

In other words, they knew about broken cisterns and how

they weren't valuable for doing the very thing that people

wanted them to do, store water for you so that

you could have the daily provision of physical life. We're

starting to get the picture then, of the terrible change

the people of Israel had chosen for themselves. They'd made

a bad trade God the fountain of living water for

the equivalent of busted up leaky holes in the ground.

They were essentially trying to seek bounty from what was broken,

and that's our final destination here. Don't seek bounty from

broken this image it became particularly interesting to me as

I thought about our own yard and some of the

things that I've discovered there over the last several years,

one of them only a few weeks ago. It's an

older little property going on eighty years now, so it's

been fun just kind of discovering bits of history there.

Things like two large underground holding area covered by concrete.

Caps no joke.

I'm assuming one was probably used for something related to

landscape care or watering at one time, and the other

might be the remnants of an old septic tank before

the house was hooked up to city sewer, long before

we purchased it. With both of them, you know, dirt

has fallen in, roots are starting to crack through the sides,

and they're probably only good for the day when our

garbage company goes on strike and we need a temporary

waste management solution. Hopefully we don't get there, but I

want you to pretend for a moment, pretend I went

a little crazy, although please don't wish it on me.

But imagine that I told Jen and the kids, Okay,

I've got a better plan for our household water supply.

Let's fill up these holes in the ground and use

these book these buckets that I bought to bring in

the water that we need for each day. I'm tired

of the sound the running water makes in the kitchen faucet,

and the way it sprays from those shower heads, and

the way our cups and glasses kind of sweat on

the table when the tap water is colder than the air,

and quite frankly, I'm not sure that water is even

going to be there when I turn the handle later.

I can't see any water at the moment, so that's making.

Me real suspicious. Yep.

Once I filled up the tanks outside, I'm gonna call Saws,

our water company, to shut things off, and we'll do

the cistern thing. That'll be all family. And after doing that,

I step outside.

And say, oh my, oh.

My, these cisterns, these beautiful cisterns. Let me plant some

flowers around them. It'll make them look so nice. Once

I start thinking about things, I might say, Now, kids, kids,

make sure that you don't let the dog pee anywhere

close to them or dig around them.

Let's protect the cisterns.

And then after a few hours, what do you mean

you're feeling sick after drinking from it? Didn't I tell

you that the best water comes from from the middle,

and not to scrape along the side, oh brother? And

then by nighttime, what do you mean one of the

tanks is almost empty?

Hunt?

I calculated it out with how much rain we'll be

able to funnel into them, even going on the conservative side,

since we've been in a bit of a drought, why

did you use so much water for the bathtub leaking?

What do you mean leaking My cisterns, My precious cisterns

are fine. They've been here for eighty years. There's no

way they are the problem. Okay, end scene. Are you

all buying yet that I'm absolutely out of my gored

in this scenario?

Yes, yes, good. But let's think about this.

I mean, running San Antonio water and the leaky tanks

in my yard are actually much closer to one another

in value and trustworthiness than the distance between the infinite, redeeming,

all satisfying, steadfast, love producing God of the universe and

anything else in this world that you or I would

construct or cling to as a source for our ongoing

happiness or hope or security. We need to believe this,

We have to say, see this now, believing the seeing this.

Doing so has been mankind's battle since the Garden of Eden.

It was the faithful one trade it out for a

bit of fruit with some false promises attached to it.

The problem showed up in the wilderness on the edge

of Canaan, where their strong God was exchanged for some

perceived safety from the giants in the land across the river.

We now read in our passage today about foreign waters

of hope and and conformity to nations like Egypt, like

a Siria. Solutions sought after when they slowly fell away

from their devotion to Yahweh and figured the way back

to security.

Would be found.

And yet something else outside of him in his good

way for them. The crazy has always been present. Crazy

has always been present. We've forever been out of our

gourds trying to seek bounty from what's broken.

I suppose in some.

Ways it's especially tricky because often what we do.

What we do is we take the good gifts.

The truly good thing is God supplies for our enjoyment

and try to make them something other than what they

were intended for, perhaps especially today in our affluent society,

as we try to exist as the modern church, with

so many benefits that have built up over time, we're

meeting freely here right now. There are even government benefits

to bearing or adopting children we would seek to raise

in the Lord.

Most of our.

Households who have more than one driver have more than

one car. Typically, we're only a little bit hungry when

we're trying to lose weight, because we've eaten well.

Beyond our hunger.

We have generally secure banks to put money in, out

of which we freely spend and give. Some of us

have grandkids and lots of reserves out of which to

buy them things like too much ice cream or too

many toys. Right, my goodness, my goodness, we have been

blessed with many cisterns that we should appreciate. But the

best of them, the best of them, are still so temporary.

The most lovely among them are leaking away. There's a

way in which the most treasured among the gifts are

in some sense broken. None of them, none of them

have what we ultimately need for the saving of and

satisfaction for our souls. And so when we think about

how it plays out with some of what is most

dear to us, some of the people who are most

dear to us in the scriptures, that, for instance, we

won't even be married in heaven, and so it probably

follows that we won't have kids our grandkids in heaven.

Don't get me wrong, there's no reason to believe that

we won't still enjoy relationships with those very people. Our

delight in them will likely be magnified and certainly certainly purified.

The good news is that once we're in God's presence

and our faith has become sight, we won't seek satisfaction

and happiness with what was never meant to fully fill

us up. So right now here in this place, we

find ourselves trying to coax contentment out of earthly treasures

and relationships and then eventually clutching and ringing them out

to supply us the gladness we're so greedy for. The

right question that we should be asking them at this

point is how do I know? How do I know

when I'm seeking ultimate bounty from what's broken? How can

I know that it's definitely a good question. We can

probably best answer that by asking ourselves some other questions,

things like, first, how do I respond when things I

enjoy are threatened are taken away? How do I respond

when things I enjoy are threatened or are taken away?

Meaning do I in anger sin against God and others?

With my attitudes, my actions, my words? And Second, a

good question to ask is how do I respond when

something I want hasn't yet been given to me? How

do I respond when something I want hasn't yet been

given to me? Meaning do I in coveteousness and jealousy?

Sin against God and others through manipulation, coldness, control, or

sabotage even a brother sister. If you're identifying these sins

in your life, for one, join the club and first repent. Repent,

confess this to God, change your mind about these matters.

He wants to meet you in that with grace and

forgiveness and encouragement when you do so. And once you've

done that, then replace replace those ways of acting and

thinking by regularly recounting God's goodness and wisdom and salvation,

giving him thanks. Also make changes if there are priorities

in your life that are contributing to great distraction from Him.

If you're consistent over the seasons ongoing mantra is I

don't have time to prioritize God and his word and

write practices.

Then you need to reorder some things.

So that you stop essentially telling God you know better

than him for how to order your days, and finally

ask God to help you and ask others to hold

you to it to enjoy true blessings without trying to

attain your hope or security or satisfaction from them. We're

here for each other. And now Church, here's the thing

I need to say this as well. Some of you

are you're weeping over great losses or have fresh wounds

from recent trials.

You don't need to see.

All disappointment and grieving and tears as sins against God.

I mean, have we read the psalms or lamentations. We

should care for one another through those things and tenderly,

patiently help one another go God word in that sorrow.

You're all each and every one of us are going

to need that kind of care from one another in

this life. So if things are pretty straightforward, maybe for

you in this season, if if you feel like you've

got things dialed in pretty well by all means, by

all means, praise God for that, and at the same

time guard against pride. A life that's well in hand

can be its own broken cistern that you can start

to hope in like anything else, your competency and good

situation are at base level. Only gifts God's word to

the Corinthian Church captures this well. What do you have

that you did not receive? If then you received it,

why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

We're all indebted to the fountain of living waters offered

to us in its fullest form through Jesus Christ, who

for our context here might we might refer to as

the Fountain made flesh.

He is the fountain made flesh.

To rejoice that having him means, like it did for

the woman at the well, means that you've got a

source of life that never runs out, that takes you

into eternity. If you're like that Samaritan woman at the

well in Jesus's day, who initially was quite taken aback

by the Lord and was simply looking for a bit

of water to scoop up and then go on with

her her life that had all of its own troubles

in it. You should also like her slow down long

enough to find out that he was indeed the one

that she needed. Her pursuit of a bucket of water

ended up with her finding eternal life, a spring inside

her that never ran out. She ended up with a

personal testimony of faith in him, trusting him to save her.

And it's to the extent that she spread the word

to others who also believed. And this could be your

story as well, if it's not already so earlier.

I also referenced the Corinthian Church that.

God delivered his word to through the apostle Paul, and

he provided a summary of the essential good news of

Jesus for them, also by saying that Christ died for

our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried,

that he was raised on the third day in accordance

with the scriptures. This is the crucified and the risen Jesus.

We proclaim in this church that you should ask more

about if you don't know him already. He's the very

fountain of life offered to sinners like me and like you,

so friends, all of us, all of us. Let's pray

to him now. So Lord, we do that, we come

to you, and Lord, even now, I don't want to

do this in a perfunctory way. We're done with the sermons,

so I pray that's the thing that we do.

Lord.

But instead, Lord, I am asking that you would do

your work to help us to see the immeasurable value

of Jesus as the source for life that we need. Lord,

guard us from making the kind of bad trades that

would make much of the things in this world and

little of you. Lord, Guard us from a heart that

starts to tend in that direction. Lord, we need your help,

We need your forgiveness, We need your grace. Today we

trust you in Jesus' name.

Amen.