Broken Cisterns - Jeremiah 2:1-13

Finding the true God who brings life.

Originally preached at North Pine Anglican Church on 28th August 2022

What is Tom French Preaching?

These are the sermons and Bible talks given by Tom French. Simple.

https://tomfrench.com.au

Tom French Preaching

I'm gonna tell you something that might surprise you, but sometimes my wife gets annoyed at me. The way it happens is usually I'll notice that she's annoyed at me, and, it'll be because there's something in the, the way that our relationship has changed a little bit. Maybe when I make a joke, which is hilarious, she'll say, Mm.

Or maybe the conversations we have are a lot shorter and we don't engage in as much banter. And so I think to myself, I think I must have done something wrong at some point. And so I'll start going through my mind thinking about all the things that have happened in the last hour. And then if I can't find something I've done, which could be annoying her, I have to go two hours into the past. Four hours... A day... A week. And usually I don't have to go that far back. I can generally find something and then when I, I pick the thing that I think it was that might have annoyed her, I start to to think through, you know, what it is that I did and then what I'm gonna say when we discuss it so that I can show that I actually wasn't trying to be annoying.

I was actually doing a really good. And she has just misinterpreted my good actions. And so I'm preparing myself for this. And, uh, I've, And then we, we get to the end of the day and I'm, I'm ready to say to her, you know, I know that, you know, I wasn't around when your father was here to visit, but as you know, I had a big youth group event on and I couldn't be there.

And we did discuss it. You know, I, I, I understand that it's difficult, but, and I, and I hope that, you know, we can, we can be okay. That's, that's, you know, I'm ready for that kind of discussion. And then, and then we sit down and I say to her, Are you annoyed at me? Or she'll say to me, I'm annoyed at you. And then I will say, Why are you annoyed at me?

And inevitably, whatever I thought the problem. I was not correct. , I was probably about 20% right. You know, I was in the ballpark, but I didn't have the emotional intelligence to figure out exactly what the problem was. And so she'll say, Yes, I am annoyed at you. And the reason is my father has come to visit and you left me to go to your youth group event and to set up for youth group event.

But not only I knew that was happening. And that's fine. That's your job. We understand how that works. But you left me in an apartment with my father and our daughter and also with a hundred pool noodles with 30 ox tongues, which are smelling, and two live monkey. How am I meant to look after them for your youth group event?

When I'm looking after, when I'm trying to entertain my father, and I'll be like, Oh, I do see how that is annoying . And then whatever defense I've prepared for myself, I realize that it does not work because nobody wants to hang out with ox tongues, poor noodles, and a monkey or two. Now this is not a true story.

I never have actually had live monkeys. No, never actually live monkeys. But you know, it's the kind of thing that happens, you know, I will not think things through and then I'll, and then my wife will be left dealing with the consequences, and then she will be understandably annoyed. And the great thing about my wife is she tells me what she is annoyed about.

She's clear about it. She, she doesn't, she's not the person who I say, Are you annoyed at me? And she says, Yes. And then I say, Why? And she says, Well, if you don't know, I'm not gonna tell you she doesn't do that. Because I would never know, I would go the rest of my life thinking that I was actually a, you know, a like 80% less annoying than I actually am.

And so it's very helpful that she tells me, And in this way, one, this is one of the ways that she mirrors the character of God. Because what we see in this passage is that God is annoyed at his people. He's probably more than annoyed at his people. He's got who gone way past annoyed, and he's sharing with them exactly what the problem is.

He's not leaving them in the dark to figure out what has gone wrong. A, as you are beginning in this series in Jerem, Uh, we are at the beginning of Jeremiah and he's at the beginning of his preaching career, and he's, and this is a, a sampler of the kind of things that he is gonna talk about throughout the book of Jeremiah.

And there's this image that is, that reoccurs throughout the Old Testament and reoccurs throughout the prophets and reoccurs with Jeremiah of God having a relationship with his people, like a husband and a wife. And the way that they relate, uh, shows how faithful they should be to God and how faithful God is to them.

And so the people of Israel, at this point in time, they've split two, they've become two different kingdoms. There's the northern kingdom of Samaria, and they have. Uh, and that right? No, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, I'm getting my places mixed up. The northern kingdom of Israel has been, uh, taken over, obliterated by the Assyrians, and then there's the southern Kingdom of Judah, which he is preaching to, and they are staring down the barrel of a disaster.

The Babylonians are threatening to come in and take them into exile, and God is letting them know why this is going to. , and he begins by saying this. This is the beginning of this, the passage that we had read to us. The word of the Lord came to me. Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem. Jerusalem being the capital city of Judah.

This is what the Lord says. I remember the devotion of your youth. How was a bride? You loved me and followed me through the wilderness? Through a land not sewn. Israel was holy to the Lord. The first fruits of his harvest, all who devoured her were held. And disaster overtook them, declares the Lord. So he is saying at the beginning, things were great, We had this honeymoon period, and God is recalling the time when he rescued them outta slavery in Egypt and they wandered through the wilderness.

And when they were in the wilderness, uh, God looked after them and there were some problems there. But in general, they were devoted to God and God was devoted to them. , and this is often a time in a marriage when things are really good, when, when the, the marriage has just begun and people are willing to go through hardship for the person that they love.

When I first got married, uh, to my wife, we changed our life. Pretty much everything all at once. Within the first, uh, few months of our marriage, uh, we moved states, we left Sydney where we were living, and we moved down to Melbourne. Uh, we got, I got a new. And so my wife was willing to leave the the home that she'd grown up in, leave her family, leave her friends, leave her job, and start in a whole new city where she didn't know anyone and she did it because she was committed to me, that was love.

And this is what's going on here. This is their commitment to each other. But then it goes on to say that that things did not continue that well. It says, Hear the word of the Lord, you descendants of Jacob or you clans of Israel. This is what the Lord says. What fault did your ancestors find in me that they strayed so far from me?

They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves. They did not ask, Where is the Lord who brought us up out of Egypt and led us through the barren wilder? Through a land of deserts and ravines, a land of drought and utter darkness, a land where no one travels and no one lives. I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce, but you came and defiled my land and made my inheritance detestable.

The priest did not ask, where is the Lord? Those who deal with the law did not know me. The leaders rebelled against me. The prophets prophesied by BA following worthless idols. So they've gone from the wilderness into the land that God has prepared for them. And it's a good land. A land where there is, there's plenty of produce for them, A land where God has abundantly blessed them and instead of us remaining faithful to God, they've looked around at the land they are in, and they've seen the gods that the people around them have worshiped and they've decided that they wanna worship those gods instead of the true God who has saved.

They worship the worthless gods and they become worthless themselves. And this word for worthless is the same word that Ecclesiastes has. When it says meaningless. Meaningless, everything is meaningless. It's this word of worthlessness, meaningless nothingness, a word of breath. There is a, they choose a God.

A God who is a true God, who gives them life and gives them rescue and choose gods that are no gods at all. Gods that are nothing Gods, and they become nothing themselves. They've become people who are unfaithful to the God who loves them and the God who saves them. And this idea of, of, you know, coming into the land and choosing the gods of the land is a thing that we see over and over.

uh, I see it regularly with young people, with young people who grow up in a Christian family and they go to a good church and they, all their friends are Christians and they will go to a Christian schools and they live in this Christian bubble, which is great, and they get taught about Jesus and they love him.

But then when they go out into the world, when they finish school and they start going to university, things fall apart. Because suddenly they meet non-Christians who are actually lovely people. They meet people who they've been told their whole life are sinful, and they realize that they're good people and they, it doesn't gel with what they've heard in their Christian bubble.

Or they have a, a lecturer who is wise and smart and has a devastating critique of Christianity and they don't know what to do. and they see the lives that their friends are leading and they think that looks pretty good. And so they go and they follow that way because they have never had any resistance to their faith.

And so they don't know how to respond. And so they choose the gods of the land that they're in. But it doesn't just happen for, uh, young people who go into the world. We are living in the world and we are living amongst the gods of our world. and we are always challenged, always asked, Do we wanna worship those other gods instead of the true God?

Do we want to choose what is worth less than the one who over the one who is worthy? And the challenge is what will we choose? He goes on to say this, therefore, brave bring charges against. I'll bring charges against your children's children. Cross over to the coast of Cypress and look, Send to Cada and observe closely.

See if there has ever been anything like this. Has a nation ever changed its gods, yet? They are not Gods at all, but my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols. He's saying, Look at the nations around you. If you go as far to the east as you can. . When you look there, have those people, have they given up on their God?

Have they chosen other gods? No. They haven't go to as far to the west as you can. Look at those nations, have they left their gods even though they're Gods are no gods at all? No, they haven't. But you have left your God. The one true God who brings you life is saying, It's absurd what you are doing. It's absurd to behave this way, but you are doing it.

I have a car. It's a Subaru Impreza. It's a 2011 Subaru Impreza. When I bought it, it was the best car I'd ever bought. In fact, it's still the best car I've ever bought, and it's a, a lot of, I've done a lot of driving in this car. I've driven between Melbourne and Sydney and back many times. Sometimes with my wife, uh, sometimes by myself.

Uh, once with, uh, well, no, twice with my daughter, but we thought maybe we, we'll put her on a plane most of the time because she doesn't like my Impreza as much as I do. She's not impressed with it, which is disappointing. Anyway, when I drive in the car, when I'm out on the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne, listening to my audio books and, and drinking my, my soft drinks and eating my road trip snacks, I'm having a great time.

I love my car. I'm like, this is the best car in the world. No one has a better car. Than my car. But then I arrive in the city and I see all the other cars and I'm like, My car is good, but look at those cars. Those are nice cars. I was like, Oh, I could, I could get one of those. I could get one of those. And then I see the car that I really want, and that's a Tesla.

I see the Teslas. I'm like, Oh, I would love a Tesla. Woo. It would be nice to have one of those. And then my friend bought a Tesla. And I was like, Oh, that's very exciting. And then he said to me, Would you like to drive my Tesla? And I was like, Yes, I would. So I cheated on my car with a Tesla and I had a great time.

And so what I could do is I could, I could see my good faithful car that has given me no problems except once when the window broke, but it's fixed now. It just stopped going up and down. It's, yeah, it's very annoying, but it's okay now. The drive, I can, I can go through the drive through. Fine. I know you are worried, but it worked.

Anyway, I could. I could say, I'm gonna get rid of my car, I'm gonna sell it. I'm gonna take the money and I'm gonna put it into a deposit for a new Tesla Roadster. Oh, this is the new Tesla that's coming out. At some point it goes from not to a hundred in less than two seconds. That's pretty good. I wouldn't mind that car.

Like I definitely need to drive that fast. It's very, I. And so I could do that. I could invest in that, and then I would, I would have my deposit paid, and then I'd be like, Hey, everyone, look at me. I'm a Tesla guy. And everyone would be very impressed with me, except I have no car. Because the Tesla Roadster was promised in 2017.

It was debuted in, in a, in a special event where we saw it drive, and then every year they said, Oh, it's coming. It's coming. It's coming. And it's not turned. Yeah, maybe it'll turn up at some stage, but it hasn't yet. And so I would've exchanged my good car for a no car at all, and I might be impressed with myself as a Tesla man, but really I'm just a bus and a tram man, , because I've exchanged a car for no car at all.

That's an absurd way to behave. I should at least wait until the Tesla exists before I put my money into it, and probably I. Use the car that I've got, the car that's cheaper, the car that works rather than the car that doesn't exist. But that's how absurd Israel is behaving. They're choosing. They're choosing to leave the God who loves them, the God who saved them, the God who has never let them down.

The God who's window has never even broken the God, the God who is reliable and faithful. And they choose. They leave him for no God at all. It is absurd, but they do it anyway. And so God calls a witness. He says, Be appalled at this, you heavens and shutter with great horror, declares the Lord. He's saying, Look at this.

Be a witness into how my people have been behaving. And then he has one more image of how absurd this is. He. , my people have committed two sins. They have forsaken me the spring of living water and have dug their own systems, broken systems that cannot hold water. So in the Middle East it doesn't rain that much.

And, uh, in Israel, what they would do is they would dig these pits and, and these pits would, uh, were there to collect water. So when the rain would fall, they would fall into the pits. They'd seal the pits with pla. So that it wouldn't seep out into the ground. And so they'd have these pits full of water so they could get water during the, the dry times.

And that was, that was a way that they survived. They had water for themselves and water for their cattle and water for their plants if they needed it. It wasn't great. You know, you'd get the runoff from the, the, you know, the animal feces and, and dead animals could fall in there. It wasn't great once safe, but it.

But imagine if you had on your property or you had access to a spring of fresh water, you wouldn't have to ever go to the system anymore. You could just go to the spring. All the water you need, all the life you needed there flowing out for you. And God is saying his people have committed two sins. One is to leave him the spring, the source of living.

And the second is they have gone to false gods. They have gone to broken systems, not just systems which aren't very good, but broken ones where even what water they have is seeps out into the ground and they have nothing at all. They have left life and chosen death. It is an absurd way to behave, and this is what they have done and God is saying, this is why disaster is coming.

This is why you are staring down the barrel of being taken into exile because you have abandoned the true God for no gods at all.

Now the question is, what are we to do with this? There are a few different ways we could respond. The first way is we could, we could look at the Israelites, look at the people of Judah, and we could say, Aren't they. That was a stupid thing to do. I'm glad we're not like them. And then we'd be like, Sermon done.

Let's go home. Feeling good about ourselves, but probably we shouldn't do that because humans haven't changed that much in the thousands of years since this was ridden. So the second way that we could respond is we could say, Oh, we are exactly like them. We are, We are always running after false. But I think that's not quite right either.

Because what we have that the people of Judah did not have is that if we trust in Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit, he lives in us and he is inwardly changing us, making us more like Jesus calling us to faithfulness day after day. So we are not exactly like them either, only by the grace of God and the fact that we live when we live, but still, we are not quite like, And so perhaps the third thing we should do is to say, where are we in danger of being like them?

Where are we in danger of turning to the gods that are around us and loving them and, and trusting in them, rather than trusting in the true God who has saved us? And so where are those gods? The gods of our abundant nation? We might be saying, Well, the gods of our nation are the gods of. The gods of money, the gods of power, the gods of comfort.

Maybe those are the gods. But I suspect that under all those things, there is another God, a God that we worship and we have worshiped for a long time, and a God that we worship in our churches, in our homes, and a God that we rarely see as the true God that we are worship. And that's the God of the individual.

Now, we live in a time when the individual is king, when following your own desires is what makes you truly human. It's this idea of expressive individualism. And this is what, uh, one writer described expressive individualism. As he said, it is the view that you are who you feel yourself to be on the. And that acting in accordance with this identity constitutes living authentically.

It's the idea that if you want to be truly living, truly free, truly yourself, then you find your deepest desires and you, and you embrace them, and you live them out. And then you will be an authentically human person. And the only person who can tell you who you are is you. The only person who can define you is you.

The only person who can make you happy is. and so find yourself and then be true to yourself, and then you'll have a good life. I was watching a, uh, show on Disney Plus called Light and Magic. It's about a, a film, a special effects company called Industrial Light and Magic. They did. The special effects for all the Star Wars films and for, uh, the Indiana Jones films and for Jurassic Park and for, uh, a lot of the Marvel films.

It's a, it's a good documentary. It's definitely worth watching if you are, you know, a bit of a film nerd like me, I had a very good time watching it. But there was this one, uh, person who got interviewed and they were an animator and they'd be working in London and they animated this ad in London that got a lot of publicity and people really.

and uh, and then they got a call from Industrial Light and magic saying, Do you wanna move over to San Francisco and work for us? And they, they said, Yes, of course, it's a dream come true. The only problem was they had a spouse who was living in London with them and the spouse didn't wanna move. And so what were they gonna do?

Well, they moved. They said, Well, you've, because you've gotta follow your dream, don't you? And there we have the story of two people who are both committed to their own authentic selves and they turned on back, turned their back on each other because they wanted to live out this true truest self to follow their dreams.

That's what it looks like to, to worship the God of the in. , and we see it here in our churches when we say we wanna make sure that we have churches that fit our own ways, that we think that that theologically we believe is right. We want a church that fits our own desires, our own needs. And now that could be because we want a church that fits them in our own liberal ideas or our own conservative.

Is it's, it's not about, you know, where you fit on the political spectrum. It's that you want your church to fit where you are on the political spectrum, and everyone should fit in with you. That you want a church that doesn't ask too much of you, but helps you be your authentic self. You want a church that doesn't call you to repentance, but a church that says, You are doing well, you are great.

Keep going. Be your best. You want a church that affirms you in whatever you believe. I see it in myself. Like I write books and, and I, and I write these books because I really want young people to know about Jesus, but I also want people to know about me. Like if I wrote a book and it was, you know, a weird, crude, funny and nude, the Bible exposed by anonymous, then that would be okay.

but I really want it to be weird. Cri funny. I knew the Bob exposed by Tom French. I'd be like, That's the guy who wrote that funny book about Jesus. Jesus Great. And so is Tom. That's what I want because cuz then I'm fulfilling my dream of being a famous, respected author. I'm fulfilling my dream of getting laughs from people, from young people.

It's great. Feels good. We, we see these desires before. And we give into our desires. And we embrace our desires. And as we do that, we tell ourselves that this is what is right, because we are being true to ourselves. So what do we do to make sure that we are not worshiping the God of the individual? We are not giving into this God that pervades our society?

Well, I think we look to the greatest individual of all time. We look to Jesus. We look at the way he lived, that he is the one person who was truly an authentically holy himself, who was defined by no one else but himself and his place within the Godhead. And even though he could choose to do whatever he wanted, and he deserved to have whatever he wanted, even though he had no need to do any anyone else's bi.

He chose to give up his life, his desires for us, that before he went to the cross, he prayed a prayer. The prayer was not my will, but yours be done. That we maybe to make sure we do not worship the God of the individual. We pray that prayer with Jesus. We say to Jesus, we say to the Father, Not my will, but yours.

not my desires, but your desires. Not my authentic self, but your authentic self so that we turn our back on the God that is no God at all. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot define ourselves, but God can. And so we choose him. And what does that look like? It doesn't look like a. Of following your dreams, but it looks like life of obedience and following God's kingdom.

And even though that is hard, and even though it costs us, and even though we will not get to do the things that we want to do, the promise is that we will find our true selves there because we were built not to be defined by ourselves, but to be defined by God and to find our identity in him and the people that he has saved us.

And so as we pursue him and his kingdom, we will find our true selves what we are searching for in ourselves, we find in him. And so we do not leave a God who loves us for a God that is no God at all. We see Jesus who chose to give up his life for us and rose again for us. and the promise is if we take up our cross and follow him, if we are willing to give up our life to lose our life, then we will save it.

If we are willing to follow him to death, we will find life in him, and we'll have new life forever if we trust in him. Do not make the mistake of Israel. Do not give into the gods of our society. Do not give into the desire to live for your. To be authentic to yourself, but be authentic to the God who loves you, the God who sees you, the God who loves you, like a husband, who loves his wife perfectly, who give up his life for her and did so that you might have true life in him.

Let's be those people who follow our true God, the one who gives us life so that we might find life in. I'm gonna pray for us, Father God, this is a challenging passage and we live amongst a nation which worships a God, which is no God at all. And so we pray that we might seek you, that we might not turn our back on you who has loved us and saved us, but we might seek to know you more and.

to seek to live obedient lives that we would choose obedience over authenticity, that we would choose to be defined by you rather than ourselves. That we would see, choose to give up our life. And in doing it that we might find it and we would find it in you, so that as we live differently, that others might see us and they might see the true God through the way that we live and love you, and they might find life in you too. Amen.