No Awe of God
(Jeremiah 1:11-2:32)
1. We have it good in our day. Consider this list of nurse duties in a hospital in 1887.
In addition to caring for your 50 patients, each nurse will follow these regulations:
1. Daily sweep & mop the floors of your ward, dust patient’s furniture & window sills. Wash the windows once a week…
4. The nurse’s notes are important in aiding the physician’s work. Make your pens carefully, you may whittle nibs to your individual taste.
5. Each nurse on day duty will report at 7:00 AM & leave at 8:00 PM., except on the Sabbath, on which day you will be off from noon to 2:00 PM.
6. Graduate nurses in good standing with the director of nurses will be given an evening off each week for courting purposes or two evenings a week if you go regularly to church.
7. Each nurse should lay aside from each payday a goodly sum of her earnings for her benefits during her declining years so that she will not become a burden. For example, if you make $30 a month, you should set aside $15.
8. Any nurse who smokes, uses liquor in any form, gets her hair done at a beauty shop or frequents dance halls will give the director of nurses good reason to suspect her worth, intentions & integrity.
9. The nurse who performs her labors & serves her patients & doctors faithfully & without fault for a period of 5 years will be given an increase by the hospital administration of 5¢ a day, providing there are no hospital debts that are outstanding. (Charles Swindol, "The Quest for Character" P 159) Sermon Central, edited down
2. Modern nurses are also dedicated professionals, although that dedication shows itself in more specialized, more reasonable ways.
3. What matters, when it comes to dedication, is the heart. And our actions evidence the attitudes of our hearts.
Main Idea: When we lose our Awe of God, our backsliding shows up in many ways.
I. Signs of Spiritual DETERIORATION (1:11-2:32)
These signs were indicators of a problem in the heart. Signs do not create a reality, they merely expose it (like signs on a highway…Chicago is not 160 miles away because the sign says so; it we changed the sign to 60, Chicago would still be 160 miles away).
A. The Almond: We forget that God SEES (1:11-12)
1. This is a pun
2. Shoqed means "watching" and shaqed means "almond."
B. The Boiling Pot: We do not take God’s WRATH into account (1:13-14)
1. Note it is God who summons the people from the north to attack (Babylonians)
2. Loved ones who does not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ are waiting for the boiling water of God’s wrath to spill out…
Before we entertain points C-F, we must set the background.
In chapter two through chapter 4, God tells Israel (of which Judah is a part) that he is divorcing them. God married Israel at Mt. Sinai and took Israel on a wonderful honeymoon, leading them out of Egypt and providing them with the promised land and great blessings. At first, she clung to the Lord.
But Northern Israel and later Judah were not satisfied with the LORD, and she began to court other gods. She committed spiritual adultery by bowing before images and worshiping the gods of the land. She became degenerate and promiscuous, eventually becoming a prostitute in her worship of beings other than God.
God writes both Israel and Judah a bill of divorce, it seems.
But then he predicts a time (particularly in chapter 31, the New Covenant chapter) when He will give the people of Israel a new heart and restore His relationship to them. In Hosea 3, this is pictured as a remarriage. Again, these are illustrations based upon human experience, not counsel for life. Marriage, divorce, and remarriage should not be based on allegories about God, and God is not bound to the dictates He has ordained for human society. God does not actually marry, divorce and remarry Israel.
C. The Broken Cistern: We seek our primary meaning APART from God (2:13)
If you lived in an arid climate, and you were thirsty, where would you go? To a sparkling brook of fresh running water, or to a container for stagnant rain water, a container that was dry because it was cracked?
Although surprising, most people go to the cracked container.
The children of Israel were so predisposed against Yahweh, they prefer the Baals, the Canaanite gods, the images, the broken cisterns.
Jesus expands on this same theme with the woman at the well in John 4:13-14
Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." Jesus is the source of this living water.
D. Egyptian Drinking Water: We lose the AWE of God (2:17-19)
Most of the Jews were trusting in political alliances to save them from the Babylonians.
1. One group was pro-Assyrian
2. Another the "has-been" empire of Egypt.
3. But Babylon would soon trash Assyria and Egypt.
4. Neither party trusted in God, who said, "Do not resist Babylon."
5. Physical dilemmas are often caused by spiritual problems.
6. Our nation’s economic mess is complicated, but the major cause seems to be our runaway materialism, consumerism, irresponsible use of credit. A spiritual problem, a broken cistern issue. But the innocent suffer along with the guilty.
E. The Vine Gone Astray: Wandering in the WRONG direction (2:21-22)
1. A cultivated, good strain of grape vine went wild and produced nasty fruit.
2. The vine did not put dirt on people, it put stains in people. Some sins are like that. They penetrate our very souls. Only God can wash them out.
F. The Forgetful Bride: Not taking TIME for God (2:32)
1. A bride would never forget her wedding ornaments, yet Israel somehow managed to avoid forget to find time for God.
2. They did not find time for God because they did not sense the need…they were too busy trying to lap up what muddy water was left in the broken cisterns…
3. For centuries, Christians have reserved Sunday mornings for God, a protected, priority time. That’s not enough, yet many Christians are not even committed to that.
II. Choices When Our Awe of God Is WEAK
A. To be BOTHERED or distracted
The pre-requisite to repentance or change is to be disturbed about what needs to be changed… if it doesn’t get to you, you won’t address it.
B. To EXAMINE our hearts or condemn others
• Our failings and sins are not uncommon; it is easy to focus on the failings of others instead of our own… many of us rarely take time to examine our hearts…we set ourselves us as the arbitrators and judges of others, but we may rarely take a deep look at our motives, our mannerisms, and our attitudes.
C. To PURSUE God or put Him off with "good intentions"
How serious are you about pursing God?
1. For example, some people view church as optional
2. The "You’ve Got the Time" program we just finished was a blessing to many because you made it happen…others let it drift by like a cloud overhead…
3. When you think you are above church, time in the Word, prayer, and spiriual structure of any kind, your "good intentions" will never materialize. The Christian life is not primarily about helping others and living a decent life or embracing Christian moral values. It is about pursuing God.
4. If you think, "others need it, but not me," then you need to return to point A and start being bothered by your attitude.
D. To MODEL seeking God’s face or live in half-hearted routine
1. We cannot generate fervor, but we can be found faithful.
2. If we are faithful, fervor will come and go, but our direction will be upward.
3. But if our attitudes are arrogant and unteachable, like the people of Judah, if we don’t sense our need of God Himself-- as did the people of Judah, then we will reap what we have sown.
When we lose our Awe of God, our backsliding shows up in many ways.
CONCLUSION:
In 1996, the Chicago Tribune ran a story on Buddy Post, a lottery winner who is “living proof that money can’t buy happiness.” In 1988, he won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania Lottery. Since then, he has been convicted “of assault, his sixth wife left him, his brother was convicted of trying to kill him, and his landlady successfully sued him for one-third of the jackpot.”
“Money didn’t change me,” insists Post, a 58-year-old former carnival worker and cook. “It changed the people around me that I knew, that I thought cared a little bit about me. But they only cared about the money.” [sermon central]
Like this man, many come to God because He has a lot to offer us. But God wants those who genuinely care about and want to know Him, not just get out of Him what they can.
