I'm so thankful that you're here joining us today as well, and that I have the opportunity to be with you all together today. It's really neat. It's like old home week for a few of us who haven't been around for a little while, so it's fun to be together. So that's great. So great. So Pastor Jamie invited me to come preach today, and it's a joy to share God's Word with you all. I think this is a wonderful, teachable, learning crowd, a crowd who loves God and loves His Word, and I trust I can be faithful to the Word today and let the Word speak to us today as well. You know, there's been many things that, you know, as you know, I'm an older guy, right? So I've been around for quite a few decades, and I observe a lot in the church at large, our church through the years, other churches I've been a part of, and then observe what's going on in the church culture around America anyway. I know a little bit about what's going on around the world, but around our nation and around the Bay Area. And this scripture that I'm gonna invite us to look to today, I think has a lot to say to us, no matter whether we're a brand new believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, or whether we've been around for decades in your church, or maybe you've been in another church growing up. But this is a chance for us to understand God's word, I trust, and to have some fresh thoughts about what He might be saying to us today. So let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to the book of Jeremiah. I know your pastor's been leading you through the book of Galatians, and I didn't want to interfere with that flow of the book of Galatians. I know he's done a great job. I listen often on Sundays to his preaching and the other pastors who preach here, but this today is a little diversion from the book of Galatians in the New Testament. We're going back into the Old Testament to the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter two is where we're gonna go. And I think there's some things, as I've looked at this through the years, that Jeremiah two has so much to say to me and to us if we've been a longer term believer. And so it's something for us to be awakened to and aware of as well. And even though it's in the Old Testament, it speaks volumes to today, in our day as well. So I'm gonna use the English Standard Version that we read through. It's similar to the King James, and you'll probably follow along fine if you have a King James Version or NIV, whatever you choose to use, but I'll be reading from the English Standard Version. It'll be on the screen behind us here today as well. But in Jeremiah chapter two, there's a very poignant thought that the Lord is bringing to his people of that era, that day. These are the Hebrew people, the people of Israel, back probably 500 to 700 years before Jesus came to this earth. And so let me read in Jeremiah chapter 2, starting in verse 1. I'll read verse 1 through 3 to begin with. the word of the Lord came to me. Now, this is Jeremiah. The word of the Lord came to me, Jeremiah, saying, go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, thus says the Lord. Now, let me just stop right there. When the Lord says, thus says the Lord, we better listen, right, to what the Lord is saying, because he's speaking to his people. And so Jeremiah now is going to be faithful to convey what the Lord wanted the people of Israel to know. These were the followers of God at that time. So here's what, 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 incurred wrath, incurred guilt, excuse me, disaster came upon them, declares the Lord. Let me just pause now and let's have Jeremiah help us understand here. What did the Lord remember? The Lord is calling them to remember something, because he was remembering something. He remembered their early devotion to the Lord. He said, the devotion of your youth, when you were a youthful or young follower of mine, when you were a young person or when you were young in your faith, you had devotion. And that's an interesting word. The word is a Hebrew word called hesed. It means the covenant faithfulness of relationship. It's a covenant agreement between God and his people. It means loyalty, faithfulness, and a commitment. And so there's this great sense here that Jeremiah is starting off, says, remember when you were devoted as a young person to me, or young in faith to me, you had a covenant relationship. In fact, it was like your love as a bride for her husband. Now, some of us in this room have been married, and you know that early love, that love, hopefully it was love and not other things, but it was early, and there's a sense of commitment that was made in the earliest stages. Now, he's implying it doesn't always last that way, but he's saying here, and with himself, he's even implying that you, the people, had an early love for me but it maybe wandered, it maybe got cold. He says, you followed the Lord in the wilderness, in the wilderness. Now, the wilderness of our life, have you had a wilderness in your life? And the Lord, guided you, called you, invited you while you were in the wilderness or helping you get out of that wilderness. It was a desolation. It was an emptiness. It was a vagueness of life. It's like, where am I at? How did I end up like this? It's a wilderness. It's a land sown with thorns and thistles and rocks, sandy, desert kind of territory. He said, when you were in that wilderness, I was with you. I was walking with you. I brought you out of there. I've come with you. I brought you through this. He said, I remember that. I remember when you used to be that way. And then he says, Israel was holy to the Lord. Now holy means set apart. So here's the people of God were set apart. They set themselves apart. They were called out to be set apart of the Lord and they were called out to be different than the culture around them. They were called out to be different than their past, different than their flesh, different in the way they were born in the sense, but they were to be different and set apart special in a different way here. He said, you were the first fruits of his harvest. First fruits of a harvest, you know, I didn't grow up on a farm, maybe some of you did, but I didn't even know what harvest was or, you know, sowing. I don't know what sowing is. I may say it's sowing with a sowing machine or sowing, but no, sowing of seed. You know, there's a lot of things that are in the Bible that I didn't wake up with, I didn't grow up with. It's kind of hard to remember some of these things, but his point was that the first fruits of his harvest So you, the people of God, he's saying to Israel, you are the first beneficiaries of me giving life. You are the first beneficiaries of those who are coming out of the desert, coming out of the wilderness. Most of us know the story of them walking through the wilderness and the Lord leading them through the escape from their servitude to Egypt. They were making bricks. They were stuck there for generations. They were slaves to the Egyptians. And here was this whole sense, he's saying, you became the first fruits of freedom. You got a freedom from the past. You had a freedom from what you were once stuck with. And so he's giving them this great sense of you are the first fruits of God's harvest. And he says, all who ate of it, or ate of you, incurred guilt. In other words, if somebody offended the people of God, God was there to incur discipline or justice on them, as the Egyptians did. They incurred, the Egyptians incurred a lot of guilt. pain, punitive, disciplined because of how they treated the people of God at that time. And disaster came upon them. And the Lord says, I remember this. I'm remembering that. And so this is a very important part here to help us understand how Israel had come out of something. They were made new. They were given a new life. They were given a freedom, a grace of God had come to them and gave them a future. And so this is what the Lord is helping them remember, and he's remembering it himself. Now he goes on in verse four, and on it says this, 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, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that none passes through, where no man dwells? So what an interesting section here that God is saying through Jeremiah to his people. The first thing he says is all the clans of the house of Israel, all that means is all the family groups, all the little tribes within Israel, all of them, everybody, all the parts. Now I don't want to over speak from the Old Testament are parallel to today. But in one sense, this would be like all the churches of today. In other words, all the pockets and gatherings of Christians or professing believers around the world are all like little clans. We all belong to a group. We're kind of a church. We're all a community. And his point is saying here to Israel, for all the little communities within Israel, this is a word for everybody. He says, well, what wrong did your fathers do and they stopped finding me. What did the Lord ask the people? The Lord asked the people something here. What wrong did these fathers find with God? The scripture asks the question. What did your fathers do to walk away from me, to abandon me, to leave me behind? Israel became faithless to God. although he was faithful to them. So here he's continually being faithful to them. They became faithless back to him, after what he had already done for them. As he says here, they went far from me, he says. These fathers pursued worthless things. So he had walked them through many things, we'll look at in a minute, but they pursued worthless things. I started thinking about examples of this, of things that look good, but they're worthless. And the first thing that came to my mind is one of my favorites, cotton candy. I love cotton candy. It looks good, it's colorful, it's pink. And when you bite cotton candy, what happens in your mouth? It just melts and it disappears and you might have a residue of sugar in your mouth, but it's just gone, it's like air. It's like there's no substance to it. And in one sense, cotton candy is a worthless thing. And it's my interpretation of what worthless might have been like to the Israel people. They were tasting things that, oh, it looks so good, it tastes so good, I want that, it looks so colorful, it's bright, it's something I want, and they just take it themselves and it dissolves. It dissolves, it's gone, there's nothing left, nothing to last. And so this is one sense, what I think, he's getting at here is that the people of God, who one time were devoted as a wife is to a new marriage, they were devoted to a committed loyalty to God, and then they start tasting of things that dissolves in their mouth. It's worthless and it's gone, and they have nothing left to taste. Verse six says this, they did not ask, where is the Lord? The people of God, stopped asking, where is the Lord? Now how in the world does that happen? You know, when the Lord changes our life and we've been radically transformed, we become a new person, a new group of people. But when we get used to him, or used to the environment, or used to our clan that we're in, or the family we're in, or used to the church we're in, or used to the way of faith around us here, we can stop. seeking the Lord. We can stop knowing the Lord for ourselves. We can stop, we're giving all that attention to other things. And we want things that are now worthless. It might be colorful, it might be like pink cotton candy, and we taste it and it just dissolves. And he's giving here a very interesting analogy. He's saying here, they stopped asking themselves, where is the Lord? Let me ask you all. I've been a believer for about five decades. That's a long time. I'm an old guy. But you know what? I've been concerned at different times in my last 20 years. Am I still wanting to know the Lord? Am I willing to know the Lord afresh and the way He really is, or am I going on the way I thought He was, or the way that others told me He was, or the way that I was taught as a kid He was? Or is there a digging now to know the Lord for myself afresh? And I read other people's devotionals, but am I devoted? Am I learning in God's word myself? And it's important for us to not become like the older generations of Israel who pursued worthless things for a season, and they're still in the faith, they're still of the faith, they're still known as God's people. They were set apart, but they gave up doing what they did in the earlier days of their faith to grow and to dig in and learn new things and be committed and fresh. And so, what had he done? It says here in the text, he had brought them out of Egypt, one thing. Where has God brought you? From where were you to where you are now? Where have you come from? Number two, he led them in the wilderness. Has the Lord led you or is He leading you now in a wilderness, through a wilderness, giving you life and a future? It says, He walked them through their many deserts and pits. Have you been caught in pits or a desert save your life? Wow. And drought and darkness. Man, there's times our body, our heart, our spirit, our mind can become caught in spiritual darkness or drought. It's like, I'm starving. I can't, there's nothing. I'm empty, I'm empty. He then, though, brought them to a plentiful place, a plentiful land, fruitful. It was full of good things. And even in spite of that, the scripture says here that they turned and soured on God themselves. Now I'm not here trying to poke at anybody in this room or anybody watching online, because we have a lot of stuff and chaos in our culture and the world around us. I don't know everybody's stories and everybody's history. My sense from what Jeremiah is saying here, he's giving a warning. to all the believers, no matter their age or stage of their spiritual life, is don't let yourself fall into that experience of turning your back and souring on God because you don't get what you thought it was. Your cotton candy isn't tasting really good right now. You know, and sometimes we eat and it's gone. And so this is, they did not ask, where is the Lord? And so my question to all of us today is, are you, am I, I look in my mirror when I say this, are we pursuing the Lord for who he is and not for what other people have told us about and what he once might have been to us? So it's pursue the Lord for yourself. Well then, verses seven through eight say this. And Jeremiah is now the voice piece of God himself. And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But, oh boy, when you say that word in the scripture, but, there's something coming there. There's a contrast coming here. But when you came in, you defiled my land and my heritage, made my heritage an abomination. The priests did not say, where is the Lord? Those who handle the law did not know me. The shepherds transgressed against me. The prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit. Okay, so here's a very interesting challenge that God through Jeremiah is giving the people of Israel. We brought you into a plentiful land of vibrancy, good fruit, good things, but you came in, you defiled it yourself. He goes on to say the priests did not ask where is the Lord. So first he said the people weren't asking where's the Lord. Now the priests aren't even asking where's the Lord. See the contrast there? It's one thing for the average lay person, the average person, who's been in the faith for many years to just say, well, I'm not gonna find the Lord anymore. And I know quite a few of those right now who have walked away from the Lord after 20 or 30 years of being a follower of Jesus, follower of the Lord. and it concerns me greatly, I meet with some of those people to try to see how they're doing and not that I'm trying to rescue them, I'm trying to engage with them just to talk and to listen and say, come on home, come on back, it's okay. But you know what troubles me is when the priests, translation pastors, or the next verse here says shepherds, or even the prophets, those who have a prophetic, strong voice, or those who were shepherding the people of God, or those who are priests or pastors of the people, they also did not know me. Oh my goodness. And I have to say, I'm saddened. I'm so saddened by the number of what were public pastors, public prophets, public foretellers, public shepherds, who have, in their middle age or older years, have abandoned the faith. They've walked away from the scriptures and their churches of people who are listening to these pastors and listening to the prophets and listening to those who are shepherding the people, watch their pastors walk away from faith, walk away from the Lord, and even some have claimed to be now atheists or other language they'll use because they just don't believe anymore. You say, oh my goodness, how disheartening is that? And so here is the Lord in the Old Testament calling out through Jeremiah the forefathers, the priests, the prophets, the shepherds, who have stopped knowing God, who have left the faith, are choosing to not know the faith anymore. It saddens me, it does bring tears to me, it brings anger at times to me, to be honest with you, because I see the ripple effect. I see so many others who were once under someone else's leadership, who then departs from the faith, and the people start to lose faith and hope themselves, and they begin to walk away. Now, I didn't know if your pastor and wife were gonna be here today. I am so thankful, I am so thankful in my 10 plus years of knowing this couple, how they pursue the Lord. They love the Lord. They love the word of God. They love the gospel. They love the truth of God and they're willing to say it and live it for themselves. They've changed their lives in being transformed by their pursuit of God and pursuing what's right and good and truthful. And you know, you all are here because God's given you a pastor and a leadership couple family who loves the Lord and going through many things and how they're raising their children. I have the joy of spending time with their children on Friday and I love those kids and how they are growing in the Lord, but how their family is. And so, Even in spite of what our culture's saying and culture's doing and so many people in mega churches and loud churches and smoke and mirrors and all the things going on in so many churches here, there's a love of God's Word, a love of the Lord Jesus Christ, a love of God that happens by these humble servant leaders and the other leaders I know in this church who love God and they're staying with it and they love the Lord. And so it's a joy for me to join in with you like this and to say before God, I believe you have a godly shepherding couple here walking with your church family. So what this scripture reminds us is the question, what did the priests, shepherds, and prophets neglect? That's the question here. See, there's a lot of responsibilities and a lot of accountability when you're a shepherd, a priest, or a prophet, because there's all sorts of eyes and ears listening to you and watching you and your life. It's not so much only what you say when you preach or teach, but it's how you live your life. It's how your daily, ongoing life is lived. And so, if you know this couple and you know other shepherds and pastors that are walking close to Jesus on a consistent basis, stay with that. Even if the church is not huge, even if the church is not glowing, it's not renowned, it doesn't matter. The Word of God and people who know God and are always pursuing God to know Him better, to know Him rightly, to know Him well, to know Him with conviction, to know Him with truth, matters deeply. Don't depart from that. Find that and stay with that, no matter what it's going through, okay? I'm saying that, it's really important here. So see, the shepherds themselves transgressed against God in this passage here. They neglected the pursuing of God themselves, and in so doing, they had an inability to assist people. They might have a following. but they don't have the help people need. Because these shepherds at that time, they did have crowds or people they were working with, but in fact, they have to know God for themselves as pastors, as prophets, as leaders, so they can shepherd people well in personal conversations and in the word of God. It even says this, the prophets prophesied by Baal. I don't know if you know who Baal was. It was an idolatrous view of God. There's a whole tragic view of what the Baal worshipers did. I'm not going to get into the details right now. I'm just saying it was very sensual. It was very feeling-oriented. It was very... their worship was very much part of their flesh. And the flesh is what led these people to worship the Baal gods. And so there's a whole sense here of what these prophets were doing. What they did neglect is the clear commands and convictions of God's word. Baal worship did not come from God's word. It was of fleshly making. It was very worldly. It was cotton candy. It was tasteless. The scripture goes on to say in verse nine, therefore, that's after God says, but, in other words, hey, wake up to what's coming after the but, this is gonna happen. Now he says, therefore, so here is messages to the people, God, therefore, I will, I still contend with you, declares the Lord, and with your children's children, I will contend. I will contend, that's a legal term. I'm not sure if you've ever been in a legal system, or you've been involved with attorneys, and there's contentions going, there's things said and done, and there's a tension that's made, but God is saying, He is gonna contend with these people who have gone astray. He's not gonna just let them go. He's gonna try to work with them, fight for them, but fight with them to bring them back. But there's an ongoing contention with them. He's not gonna let them go easily. Now, I love our God like that. Our God just doesn't let us go, and He will often stay with it, and He sticks with it, and He'll often be close to us. He'll remind us, He'll keep staying with it, even if people are fighting Him back. Have you ever fought with God? Do you know people that fight with God? Where it's almost like, in their attitude, they may shake their fist at God, or in reality they may do it, but they're fine to have arguments against God. Well, God's a pretty good lawyer. I tell ya, and he will contend for himself. He will always come back to what's true about him and about what's right. And so people will fight with him, but he's gonna contend with you as well. So if you've been in a boxing match with God, good luck. But he's gonna, he loves you enough to contend for you and to contend for the people that have wandered from him, whether they be prophets, shepherds, priests, or forefathers, he wants them back. But he wants them back truthfully. He doesn't want to just back to say they're back. He wants them to have truthful responses. So he invites you back no matter what you've done, where you've been, what your attitude has been, wherever you've gone astray, he still is fighting for you. He might fight with you, but He's fighting for you, because He wants you back. He wants you to be His. And so this is a beautiful truth about God. And you know, contention with God is gracious. In other words, He doesn't give up on us. Grace is undeserved favor. For God to stay with it, to want you back, he's gonna stay with you, reminder after reminder, truth after truth, opportunity after opportunity, a voice to come in here, a voice to come in there. He's going to find a way to try to bring you back, because he loves you and his grace wants you back. He wants you whole and truthful and honest with him. but he's gonna stay with it, so contention can go on there. He goes on to say this, and now, to me, as we get closer to the end of this part of this chapter here, verse 11, has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. That, man, that shakes you up. God contends. And then what did the people do? The people substituted their glory with God for other non-glories. In other words, people found other things to glory in. as opposed to God and His ways Himself. And they were found other non-glories, things that filled their minds or their hearts or their desires, futilely, faithlessly, worthless things they gloried in. They were glorying in this and this and this, treasuring this, wanting that, the weight and glory of something, as opposed to the glory of God, the honoring in the glory of God here. And the question that Jeremiah is asked is, has a nation, these people, the nation of Israel, have they changed their gods? They once had the God who walked them through the desert, who walked them through the wilderness, who brought them through the pits and the droughts of life and the struggles of life, and now, they're going after other things, other deities, other glories, other gods, small g, for themselves, and they're missing the glory of God. So now, the thing here that shakes heaven Verse 12 and 13. Be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and they've hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. I don't know if I've heard many times in the Bible what shakes heaven up. But it says heaven is shaken here. Be appalled, heaven. Heaven's looking down. Somehow the beings, either the angelic beings or God himself in heaven, I don't quite know, but the sense is heaven is aghast. Look what's happening. Look what's gone on. The people have turned their back on the God of glory, they've turned their back on the God who loves them, the God who's contended for them, the God who's won them, who's brought them, who's healed them, who's helped them, who rescued them, the God who did all these things, they've turned their back on Him. And here, it says in verse 13, really, that heaven is a witness. Heaven is dealing with shock. Have you ever seen anybody in shock? They're still alive, but it's almost like they can't see. You can talk to them and they're kinda like looking at you. I've only been with people that are truly in shock a couple times. And I look and it's like, it's almost like you're going, are you really there? And heaven is like, you've gotta be kidding me. No way. What happened here? Well, they substituted God's glory for the cheap, worthless glories of earth or of the flesh. But now it says here, God's redeemed people committed two evils. The first was they forsook God themselves. The people that were cared about, rescued, redeemed, brought about by God, they've turned their back on God. And they've chiseled out cisterns for themselves. Again, since I'm not a farmer, I don't think I knew what a cistern was until I did some homework on it. A cistern in that culture is chiseled out of stone in the ground in the desert. It's a big basin. and there's some big cisterns in the Middle East, cisterns that collect runoff water, if there is any, or a spring, or even rainfall, but just a water to capture the water so that people have something to drink or livestock have something to drink. But it says here, these cisterns that they're chiseling themselves, they're spending all this time chiseling out cisterns for themselves, but it's cisterns that cannot hold water. So notice, two things have gone on here. They forsook the living God, who is the source of living water, and they've chiseled out cisterns for themselves that can't even hold water. What a contrast. And so here's the two things the people of God were told that they did two evils. And so today, I do believe that we're seeing a departure around the world and in our country from many, many people of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ or faith in the God of the Bible. And they're forsaking the God who has rescued them and brought us along through all these generations. maybe brought them along as a child of faith, maybe through their own wilderness experiences, their own habits or deserts of life or wilderness or travails and stuff they've gone through, the God who once brought them out, they have turned their back on him. And it's happening a lot of places. The other thing they do though is that people are instead of listening to that God, the one true God who saves them, redeems them, loves them, promises eternity, and to never forsake them or forget them, they are chiseling out cisterns. They're using their efforts, their emotion, their commitments to create holes in the ground to try to drink water for themselves that are just leaking anyway. And it's empty, it's emptiness of life. And so there might be physically strong people on the outside, but soulishly, they're empty, they're broken, they're caving in. And so this is an amazing text of scripture from the Old Testament here that reminds us to say that heaven's going through its own shock. They're going through, they can't believe what's going on, because look what the people of God in this setting have done. And so, I wanna ask this final question. What can we learn from these earlier followers of God? From this text. This sounds negative. It is negative if you pursue what the people of Israel are doing. Yes, it is negative. It is dangerous. It's hard to read this and hear this. I would say, though, flip it over and say, okay, What did they do and what should we be different? How can we be different in these same ways? So number one I'd suggest is remember what God has done for you. What has God done for you? And what has God done for the people of God that you know? We need to recall and remember and not just think about what's wrong in our culture or around us, but know. I remember. Lord, I remember when you called me to yourself. I remember how I walked with you. I remember how you rescued me from stuff that I did. I remember how you worked with my family when I wasn't working. All these remembrances. We need to remember what God has done for you and for us as the people of God. Number two, honor him. above all else. Don't let the things of the world or the glories that are being conveyed to us or the cotton candy that's offered to us in life, even in the church and religious circles, it is God who is worth honoring, to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and love our neighbor as ourself, to honor God first. And then I would say this as well, repent of digging any leaky cisterns. Is there a cistern you've been digging, chiseling away at it for your own satisfaction to try to live life or to try to survive? I know we have a lot of pressures in our life, but the Lord God is your living water. The Lord God and his word is your grace, it's your strength, it's your vitality. There's promises and truths with God's word that we never will find and see in the broken cisterns of all the promises of the world. So I know we have to make decisions every day, but friends, Don't chisel cisterns that leak. Don't pursue cotton candy because it's gonna dissolve as soon as you taste it. And there's something of life, of substance, living water, living grace, living hope, living strength from God's word. And so, I wanna invite us all to just really think about that. We're gonna have a time of community in just a moment, but I wanna just, pray for all of us first, and then we'll have some deacons or ushers that'll help us serve community in just a minute, as soon as I finish praying here. Let me pray for us.