For several weeks, I have been seeking the Lord about what our focus is to be for the next teaching series. I had several ideas rolling around in my head but none seemed to be ’right’.
1. Then out of the blue, during a prayer time, I felt led to turn to the book of Jeremiah, which hadn’t even been on my radar. And as I read portions of this book, there was one section in particular about which I had this very strong sense that this was God’s message to us for this season in time.
2. It was Jeremiah chapters 2-4. The more I read these chapters, the more convinced I became that God was wanting to speak to us from these chapters about a particular area of sin that the people in Jeremiah’s day were struggling with and that we also struggle with.
3. That area is sexual sin. In these chapters, God is speaking directly to His people--not to those outside a r’ship with Him--No. He is speaking to His beloved people, His chosen people, and He is sharing His heart about their sexual involvements.
4. Quite honestly, these chapters are a bit unnerving and unsettling because they are so raw--they are so passionate and direct. This is not someone else telling us what God thinks. This is God speaking directly to His beloved people.
B. And His heart is broken. You can feel it in these chapters. God is a broken hearted lover, speaking to His unfaithful spouse, exposing her sin and calling her back to Himself.
1. Now the similarities between that situation and ours are striking. For one thing, the people in these chapters have a r’ship with God.
2. We see in Jeremiah 3:4 that they called God "Father" and friend. They prayed to him. They were in r’ship with Him. But they lived in a very sexually obsessed culture.
3. For instance, on every high hill there was a ’temple’ where anyone could engage in sex with a temple prostitute--just drop in and do your thing. So sexual immorality was very accessible and acceptable.
4. Just like our culture. With pay per view television and the internet, sexual involvement is incredibly accessible. Any time of day, within moments-- a person can be completely absorbed in acting out any kind of sexual fantasy imaginable.
5. Even regular television is filled with this stuff. We are inundated with the message that sex is what life is all about. Statistics reveal that more and more kids are experimenting with and involved in various sexual activities--from porn, to oral sex, to intercourse you name it.
6. Just like in Jeremiah’s day, sexual involvement in any form is accessible and accepted by our culture. So that’s one similarity but there is another similarity as well.
C. In Jeremiah’s day, the people of God didn’t think it was any big deal. Throughout these chapters, we see God’s people saying, "I’m not sinning. This isn’t a big deal. No one’s getting hurt. Everyone’s doing it."
1. Just like us. We so easily rationalize our sexual immorality--our behind closed doors internet searches, our late night channel surfing, our eager anticipation of the sports illustrated Swimsuit edition, our sexual fantasies no one knows about, our adulterous flirting, our occasional pay per view purchase, our sexual involvement outside of marriage.
2. We say to ourselves, it’s no big deal. Everyone’s doing it. No one’s getting hurt.
D. Well God’s message in Jeremiah 2-3 is very clear and to the point: God is saying to us, ’This is a big deal. This a very serious issue that is sapping the life out of your r’ship with Me.’
1. So God says to us, let’s look at it together. I want to share with you My heart about this issue--for your own good. I want you to see this sin from My perspective rather than your culture’s perspective.
2. I think this is one of the reasons we struggle so much with sexual purity issues. It’s because we allow ourselves to get so inundated with our culture’s perspective, that we lose sight of seeing our sin from God’s perspective.
3. That seeing is hard to do but it is life giving to do. Are you willing to open your heart to see from God’s perspective? There may be a battle going on inside right now, saying "I don’t want to hear this." Which is a very strong indicator that you desperately need to hear this. You need to hear God’s heart about these things.
E. So let’s begin reading in chapter 2:1-3.
The word of the Lord came to me: "Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem: ’I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved Me and followed Me through the desert, through a land not sown. Israel was holy to the LORD, the firstfruits of His harvest; all who devoured her were held guilty, and disaster overtook them,’" declares the Lord.
1. We immediately see something fascinating here. Notice how God begins addressing our sin. We tend to think of sin in the context of doing bad things and breaking rules and all of that. We envision God as this school principal who is ready to punish us the moment we get out of line.
2. So in our minds sin is this breaking of rules. But notice how God talks about sin--in the context of a love r’ship. Not rules and regulations. God sees our sin in the context of this love r’ship we have with Him.
3. Look again at vs 2 "I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me..."
4. God is not some rule based, ruthless school principal. No. He is a lover. If you have any conception of God that is not rooted in Him being a divine lover, you don’t understand who God is.
F. He is first and foremost a passionate lover. Look at the language He uses here. He sees us as His bride. Now I know that for us guys this image doesn’t necessarily resonate. It’s a bit hard seeing ourselves in a white gown. But many of us can relate to seeing our bride and feeling incredible affection for her. That’s God heart for us.
1. That was His heart in Genesis when He created Adam and Eve. That was his heart in Exodus when He rescued His people and brought them into the Promised Land.
2. That was what He is referring to here in vs 2. But this is also the language He uses to describe our r’ship with Him in the NT. In Ephesians 5, when Paul is talking about marriage, he then says in vs 32, "This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church."
2. Because of Jesus, our r’ship with God is that of a bride and groom. We are His bride. He is our groom. It is no coincidence that in the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22, we read "The Spirit and the bride say, Come."
3. We are the bride saying, Come Lord Jesus. From Genesis to Revelation, this is the language God uses to describe His r’ship with us--it is the passionate intimacy of bride and groom on their wedding day.
4. But the wedding day is eternal. It doesn’t last for only 24 hours. It is an eternal r’ship between bride and groom. An eternal invitation to a passionate love r’ship with God.
G. This is the context in which God talks about our sin. It is in the context of a love r’ship. Now in this context, there are three images God uses to describe our sin from His perspective.
1. The first is found in vss 5-6 of this chapter. "This is what the Lord says: ’What fault did your fathers find in me, that they strayed so far from me?’ They did not ask, "Where is the LORD, who brought us out of Egypt and led us through barren wilderness, through a land of deserts and rifts, a land of drought and darkness, a land where no one travels and no one lives?...vs 8 The priests did not ask, ’Where is the Lord?’
2. Notice, the people are not even asking, Where is the Lord who brought us out of Egypt. They have forgotten him.
I. In these verses we see that, from God’s perspective, to sin is to forget God. It is to forget who He is and what He has done for us.
A. This is more clearly articulated in vs 32 of this chapter: "Does a maiden forget her jewelry, a bride her wedding ornaments? Yet my people have forgotten me, days without number."
1. In a love r’ship, to be forgotten is a painful thing. More than that. It is an unnatural thing. Does a bride forget her wedding ornaments?
2. No. A bride spends hours getting herself ready for her groom. It would be unnatural for her to anything else.
3. When we give into any sin, but in particular sexual sin, we are in that moment a bride forgetting about her groom, a bride forgetting about her wedding clothes.
4. We are forgetting the ultimate love that is ours and are trying instead to find it in an airbrushed supermodel, or in looking sexually attractive to a co-worker or in giving in to the sexual desires of our boyfriend.
5. We’re forgetting our divine lover, who loves us in the depths of our soul, in a way that no person or thing can ever do.
II. But sexual sin, from God’s perspective is not simply forgetting. It is also forsaking.
A. Look at vs 13 of chapter 2. "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."
1. He also says in vs 19 "Consider than and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the Lord your God and have no awe of me," declares the LORD, the LORD Almighty.
2. To forsake is not simply to forget. It is to abandon. In the context of a love r’ship, it is to break covenant.
3. In fact, notice the language God uses in chapter 3:6 "During the reign of King Josiah, the LORD said to me, "Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every spreading tree and has committed adultery there."
B. This is what sexual sin looks like and feels like from God’s perspective. Adultery. A breaking of covenant between two lovers and He is one of the lovers. He is the faithful spouse who is forsaken by us.
1. This reference to adultery here is not talking about the people committing adultery in their r’ships--which was happening. No. It is a description of how our sin feels to God.
2. God doesn’t primarily view His people’s sin in terms of breaking commands. He views it from a broken heart. He feels it as would a forsaken lover. My people have committed adultery against Me.
3. Why would God use language like this? We begin to see here a window into the spirituality of our sexuality. Did you know that there is a connection between those two things?
4. Our culture wants to believe and wants us to believe that sex is not a soulish engagement. It is not an activity that affects our spirit, our heart, the core of who we are.
4. No. It’s simply a physical act that feels great at the time, but has no impact beyond that.
C. But God, the One who invented sex, the creator of us as sexual beings, says that He created sex to be a spiritual activity--an activity in which two committed lovers who are in covenant with one another experience a soul to soul union.
1. This sexual union adds life and fuel to the fire of love within a marriage. It’s an awesome thing that unites us with this person at a soul level. That’s how wonderful and powerful it is.
2. But what happens when this incredible, soul to soul connection is ripped from its life giving context and is instead viewed as simply a physical act that brings pleasure? It doesn’t work.
3. No matter how hard you try to remove sex from its soul to soul connection, you can’t do it. Our sexual involvements impact our soul. They impact us at the core of our being.
4. Which is why it’s so amazing and powerful in its proper context and so hurtful and destructive outside of it.
5. This soul connection is what makes sexual sin unique to all other sins. While overeating may be a sin for you, the image of the first bacon wrapped triple hamburger that you ate as a 13 year old doesn’t stick in your memory.
6. But the first playboy centerfold you looked at will. That scene from a particular movie will. The sexual activity with your boyfriend will.
D. I can remember images from pornography I looked at over 30 years ago. Sexual sin has a way of staying with us because it is not simply a physical act. It is a soul encounter.
1. There is a connection made that is deeper than we realize.
Why is it that when a 13 year old girl is grabbed on the shoulder by her older cousin, it’s no big deal, but if that 13 year old’s breast are grabbed, it’s traumatizing.
2. It impacts her at the core of her being and may even carry into adulthood. Why is that? Do we really believe that sex is just a physical act?
3. Our sexuality touches us at the core of our being. We may not remember every sexual encounter or every lustful image we’ve looked at, but they affect us none the less.
4. In fact, there is a very interesting phrase used in vs 5. God says "They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves."
E. That word, ’worthless’ is perhaps not the best translation since every human being has worth, because we were created in the image of God.
1. A more accurate way to translate this is the word ’empty’. Some translations actually translate it in this way: "They followed empty idols and became empty themselves."
2. Others use the word phantom. What a vivid picture of what happens as a result of the repeated engagement in sexual sin. Emptiness. Becoming a phantom.
3. Someone may say, "I don’t remember all the sexual encounters I have had. I don’t remember all the images I’ve looked at. They don’t impact me."
4. But they do. Not perhaps through a specific memory but rather through a hardening of the heart that happens over time--where people are more and more viewed as objects.
5. Where we lose the capacity to love. This happens so often when a husband for instance gets increasingly involved in pornography. He begins to distance himself from r’ships, especially his wife.
6. He doesn’t feel like loving her and serving her. Pornography is much easier than love. And what happens is, over time it brings a deadness to his soul, to his capacity to love.
7. It brings an emptiness. Again the lie of our culture is that lust and sexual engagement are simply recreational activities that bring no harm. The truth is, no matter how hard we want to try to separate our sexuality from our soul, we can’t.
F. This is why God uses the language of adultery to describe sexual sin. It is not simply a broken rule. It is an issue of the heart.
1. Something is happening at the core of our being--that place where God’s love can be full and active in our lives--something is happening there that instead brings a deadness, an emptiness. Not only in our r’ship with others but also our r’ship with God.
2. Now I’m not saying God turns His face away or that He removes His presence. We know in the gospel that that is not true. Jesus paid for all of our sin. So our sin doesn’t bring condemnation from God or a removal of His acceptance or love.
3. But our sexual sin can affect us. It can infect our heart and can bring a deadness in our response to God’s love and grace. In this way, it feels like adultery to God because we are no longer responding to and embracing the fullness of His love.
III. Which leads us to a third way that God, our divine lover, views our sin. It is not only forgetting and forsaking. It is also an exchange of worship. Sexual sin is an act of worship.
A. Look with me beginning in verse 9 "Therefore I bring charges against you again," declares the Lord. "And I will bring charges against your children’s children. Cross over to the coasts of Kittim and look, send to Kedar 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 Glory for worthless idols. Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror", declares the Lord.
1. This is an incredibly powerful and disturbing passage. We are seeing this vivid picture of sin from God’s perspective.
2. And here it to comes to a climax. God is absolutely beside himself. He says, you can go west to the coasts of Kittim or east to the region of Kedar and not find any nation that changes its gods--even though the gods they worship are not even gods.
3. They don’t change their gods. But My people, the people that I-- the Almighty God, the Lord of the universe--these people that I redeemed and love, the people that I chose to be My own, the people that I care so deeply about--these people have voluntarily exchanged Me for empty idols.
4. Now the critical word in this passage is the word Glory in vs 11 My people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols.
B. The word "Glory" is a sort of like the word ’holy’. It is a word that encapsulates who God is in His very being. He is glorious.
1. But while we use that word a lot to describe God, it feels a bit nebulous. What does glory really mean?
2. The word glory is the Hebrew word "Kabod". It literally means ’heavy’, something of substance. Something of significance. Something that matters.
3. When we say God is glorious, we are saying that He is the one thing in the universe that truly matters. The One thing that truly is significant and of substance.
4. He is God. He is at the center of all thing. Everything derives its meaning and significance from Him. That’s what glory, capital G, means. He is the essence of, the substance of life and value.
C. Now what does this mean to us? It means that any attempt to try and derive glory and meaning and substance apart from Him is absolutely empty and futile.
1. It is completely irrational. Which explains God’s bafflement here. He’s saying, "I am what matters. I am what brings life. I am what brings meaning." And yet, my people are trying to find life apart from Me. They are trying to find life in things that don’t bring life.
2. And it’s turning them into empty phantoms of who I created them to be. Now we’re going to unpack that a bit more next week, But I don’t want us to jump there too quickly without truly seeing what God is saying here.
3. To exchange His glory for another is not simply unwise and unsatisfying. It is cosmic treason. Look again at vs 12 "Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror, declares the LORD."
D. Do we hear what God is saying? Sin from His perspective is out and out treason. It is to look the God of Glory, the Lord of the universe, to look Him in the eye and say, "I’m going to what I want to do. I don’t care what you think. I don’t care if you promise life and joy and meaning. I know what’s best, so bug off."
1. When we willingly give in to sexual sin, we are in essence saying that very thing to the Holy God of the universe. We don’t really talk about this much or think much about sin from this perspective.
2. But I think it’s important that we do. That we see sin for the horrible, appalling reality that it is. It is easy for us who have embraced the gospel to become flippant about sin. Almost comfortable with our sin.
3. No one’s perfect. God will forgive me anyway. It doesn’t even bother us. As long as its consensual, as long as its secret, who’s getting hurt?
4. Do we see the horror of what’s happening? Our sin doesn’t even bother us. We’re forgetting God. We’re forsaking our Divine Lover, we’re exchanging His glory for a worthless idol--and we’re going along as if our r’ship with God is great. Just like the people in Jeremiah’s day.
E. There was no heartfelt brokenness, no humble repentance. In fact, listen to how God describes this in Jeremiah 3:3-4 "Yet you have the brazen look of a prostitute; you refuse to blush with shame. Have you not just called to me: ’My Father, my friend from my youth, will you always be angry? Will your wrath continue forever? This is how you talk, but you do all the evil you can."
1. Wow. God is saying, ’you call Me your Father, your friend from youth--’oh yea, God and I have always been close.’
2. But in these areas in which you know are sinful, you have the brazen look of a prostitute. There is no remorse, no repentance, no humble confession of sin to Me. You just keep doing all the evil you can.
3. What is God asking for from us? Simply this: An honest, open hearted look at our sin. To stop rationalizing and hiding and excusing our sin.
4. To look openly and honestly at our sexual sin before Him. There is a very important word used throughout the Scriptures to describe this posture of the heart. It’s called repentance.
F. To repent is to see our sin the way God does. It is to be broken over the ways in which we have compromised, disobeyed, run after other loves, allowed our hearts to become hardened.
1. In repentance, we stop viewing our sin from our perspective or our culture’s perspective, and we instead with the help of the Holy Spirit, see our sin as the appalling thing that it is before God.
2. We are saddened by our sin. We are grieved by our idolatry. We are humbled by our waywardness.
3. This is a painful and yet life-giving place to be. As we are going to see, this is the direction to which these chapters in Jeremiah point.
4. God isn’t simply pointing out our sin so that we feel miserable about our situation. No. He is exposing our sin so that we can experience His life and mercy and power flowing into these areas of brokenness.
5. But if we aren’t willing to see our sin, if we aren’t willing to feel the weight of our disobedience, we will miss the life giving pathway into joy and freedom and fullness.
G. There is a very powerful verse and image God uses at the end of this passage in chapter 4:3. I really feel like this is the key verse for us in this season.
1. This is the verse that has continually been brought to my mind as I have been praying about and thinking about these chapters. I believe it encapsulates what God wants our response to be.
2. Jeremiah 4:3 "This is what the Lord says to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem: "Break up your unplowed ground and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, circumcise your hearts, you men of Judah and people of Jerusalem."
3. Now we’re going to unpack this in more detail over the next couple weeks, because it is such a powerful verse, but the phrase I want us to hone in on and the phrase that has resonated in my heart for a couple weeks is this: Break up your unplowed ground.
4. What a vivid image of what can happen in our inner being over time. Unplowed ground. Can you see that image in your mind? Hard, flat, soil. Unplowed, Untilled. It’s the condition of the soil every spring before planting. This is what happens to soil if left untended. It grows hard and unfruitful.
5. This is also what happens to our hearts if they are left untended. They grow hard, empty, unfruitful. It’s not that our hearts are bad. In Christ, we are given a new heart. A cleansed heart. A heart in which God dwells.
H. But sexual sin has a way of infecting our heart, causing it stagnate and harden.
1. But here’s the hope we have: Unplowed ground isn’t a permanent condition. If this hardened soil is tilled and plowed up, seeds can be planted and life can burst forth.
2. The same thing is true in our hearts. This hardened, rebellious, emptiness doesn’t have to be a permanent condition.
3. We can rototill that unplowed ground. How? By looking honestly at our sexual sin, embracing the truth that we have been adulterers in our r’ship with God.
4. We have rejected His glory and His love and have run after other gods. So we humbly admit to God these specific areas of sexual sin--both in thought and deed---areas that perhaps have been secret and hidden for years. We bring them out into God’s merciful presence.
4. Now in this act of humble repentance, something wonderful begins to happen. God will begin to soften our heart. His life can burst forth into those areas of shame and rebellion.
5. How is this possible? How is it possible that a God who feels so strongly about our sexual sin, a God who is appalled at our forgetting and forsaking and exchanging His Glory through our sinful choices? How is it possible for His life to burst forth in these places of sinfulness and shame?
I. There is only one reason. It’s because on the cross Jesus was forgotten FOR us. It’s s because on the cross Jesus was forsaken--my God, my God, why have you forsaken Me. It’s because on the cross there was a dramatic exchange: His perfect life given for our sin.
1. The horror of our cosmic treason was paid for by God’s innocent Son. The heavens shuddered at this incredible thing. The earth quaked. The sky turned dark. The wrath of God’s holiness was poured out upon Jesus.
2. That’s how serious an issue our sin is before God. When we truly understand and embrace the cross of Christ, we realize that it doesn’t make us comfortable with our sin. It reminds us of the seriousness of our sin and the depth of God’s incredible love for us.
4. Are we willing to break up the unplowed ground? Are we willing to stop hiding, to stop being comfortable with our sexual sin? And instead open our hearts to this God who loves us so passionately?
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Alan Kraft is lead pastor of Christ Community Church in Greeley, CO and author of Good News for Those Trying Harder. He is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. To find out more about Alan’s ministry to the spiritually exhausted, check out his website at www.alankraft.net. For free MP3 downloads of sermons by Alan Kraft, visit www.cccgreeley.org. For Alan’s blog, visit www.stoptryingharder.com
