Lessons From Jeremiah – Part 6 – When The Lord Is Forsaken Disaster Awaits Series

LESSONS FROM JEREMIAH – PART 6 – WHEN THE LORD IS FORSAKEN DISASTER AWAITS

PART 6 - Jeremiah 2:13-19

CHAPTER 2

[A]. TWIN EVILS HAVE BEEN COMMITTED

{{Jeremiah 2:13 for My people have committed TWO EVILS. THEY HAVE FORSAKEN ME, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.}}

The first was to forsake the Lord. That was terrible. How did they forsake the Lord? By following a rebellious spirit, and determining not to be dependent on God, and that has been dealt with earlier, for it is a common theme in Jeremiah. They chose to do their own thing. They decided to do what they thought was best, but it was their evil hearts that was leading them. When man maps his own way, the human spirit is pitted against the Spirit of God. That is humanism. Most of the governments of the nations of the world today are humanist. Judah had already concluded God was unjust so the people would pick and choose what of God they wanted to accept. The rebellious mind will justify itself in its perversion.

What was it they had forsaken? God claims it to be “the Fountain of living waters”. That is life forever more. It meant they were cutting themselves off from life. Not only did it mean life, but it meant security and peace and proper direction and the wholesome, correct values that nourish the human soul. Judah walked away from it. The Lord Jesus Christ came with the same message to the same nation and got the same result. {{John 4:10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you LIVING WATER.” John 7:37-38 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow RIVERS OF LIVING WATER,’”]]

It was evil to forsake God but their stubbornness determined they would replace what God had given them, but THEY WOULD DO IT THEIR OWN WAY. That was the second evil. They threw away what was good and proper to make for themselves an imitation that was useless. Jeremiah called that imitation, “cisterns that can hold no water”. If they appear filled with water, then up you go to draw water from them, but they are empty because they can not hold water. It’s like they are constructed of mesh. What God gave them was freely available and that is why Isaiah spoke about the living water which is free without price in chapter 55.

In 1968 Paul Anka wrote a song called “My Way” or sometimes “I Did It My Way” and it was first sung by Frank Sinatra. Someone has written this very true comment on that – [[“Frank Sinatra's 'My Way' Is America's Anthem Of Self-Determination Made famous by Frank Sinatra — who grew to hate it. "My Way" represents the quintessentially American outlook that nothing in life matters more than living on your own terms.”]]

In this path of Israel’s self-determination, Jeremiah uses the word “hew”, and that would be in rock, for a cistern was to have an impervious location. It meant a lot of toil and effort but it amounted to nothing, because the result was cracked or broken. It is always like that with the unsaved. Lots of toil, lots of effort, but in the end it is worthless according to God’s values. The people turned from God but they turned to the flesh; to idolatry and perversion. They had become worthless. They committed twin evils.

So much of the heartache in the world today is from the same mould. The world is doing it “my way”. God has been rejected, but not only that – utterly blasphemed and despised – and replaced by humanism springing from atheism and socialism/Marxism. That is why so much chaos is growing in this world, and it will get worse. In speaking of the last days God warned, {{2Timothy 3:13 “Evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”}} The world’s cisterns are broken; actually, full of gaping breaches. The only solution is the living water of Christ, but the world will have none of that. It has already placed itself firmly in Satan’s camp.

[B]. SAVAGED BY THE LIONS OF THE NATIONS

{{Jeremiah 2:14-15 “Is Israel a slave, or is he a home-born servant? Why has he become a prey? THE YOUNG LIONS HAVE ROARED AT HIM. They have roared loudly and they have made his land a waste. His cities have been destroyed, without inhabitant.”}}