OPEN: How many of you have ever bought “generic” products? Many of us do. We’ll go to the pharmacy and we’ll ask for the “generic” version of the medicine the Doctor has prescribed. Or, we’ll go the grocery store and purchase the store version of whatever product Kellogg’s or Seyfert’s or Land ‘o Lakes may have on the shelves.
And we don’t feel bad because there are times when accepting “substitutes”… SEEMS to make sense. Sometimes there’s ALMOST NO DIFFERENCE between the name brand and a substitute.
But, of course, that’s not always true
Centuries ago, when food production moved from the home to the factory, and the pressures of large-scale manufacturing and marketing prompted merchants to resort to… shortcuts.
Cash-hungry bakers got more dough for their dough by adding alum and sulfur of copper.
Dairymen sold cream thickened with flour, watered down milk and often added chalk or plaster of paris to perk up the color of milk that came from diseased cows.
To stretch sugar, grocers routinely added sand.
Buying butter could be an exercise in futility. Merchants would sometimes put together a collection of calcium, gypsum, gelatin fat and mashed potatoes that they passed off as butter
But oleomargarine - which was known as "bogus butter" - could be even worse. It was distilled from hog fat, bleach and other unsavory substances.
One of the most blatant cases of food adulteration occurred as recently as 1969, when a man in England was charged with selling phony grated Parmesan cheese. What he was really selling was ground up umbrella handles.
APPLY: Like I said, sometimes substitutes can be as good as the original - but sometimes not.
I. The Israelites had gotten into the habit of accepting substitutes for God
In Jeremiah 2:11 complains: “Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols.”
Israel had accepted substitutes for their God.
The verse that really caught my attention in our text this morning was Jeremiah 2:13 "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.”
When I was a boy, my family owned a trailer resort on Silver Lake, up by Angola, Indiana. Down by the lake, there was an artesian well. Does anybody know what an artesian well is? It’s a source of water that literally shoots up out of the ground without any need for pumps or any artificial assistance. It’s literally “living water.”
I remember that the water from this well came out of a pipe in the ground and filled a metal horse tank. From there, it spilled out thru a hole into a little stream that fed into Silver Lake.
On hot summer days, you could cup your hands under the stream and splash the water over your head. Or you could put whole head underneath and feel the freshness of it cool your body.
And the taste???? I’ve never tasted any water since that tasted as good the water from that pipe.
Now, underneath our house, there was a cistern.
Does anybody know what a cistern is?
It’s hole in the ground, an underground tank that is designed to hold water. The eave spouts from the house emptied into the tank, and you could access the cistern from a trap door just beside the garage.
I once asked my mom once what the cistern was for and she told me the girls sometimes used it to wash their hair.
Unlike the water from the well, this was soft water.
To my knowledge, we never drank the water from the cistern. The water would have been stagnant and not exactly appealing on a hot summer day, but it was useful.
Likewise, Cisterns were a useful in many parts of the middle east. Springs weren’t always abundant, and so the people would dig wells and cisterns to catch rain water and hold whatever water they might be able to carry from other sources to be their source of drinking water for the family and their herds and flocks.
But when push came to shove, any man in his right mind wanted “living water” not cistern water.
Oddly enough, here in Jeremiah 2, we find that God is accusing Israel of preferring the stagnant waters of a cistern to the cool refreshing living water that God wanted to supply them.
II. Why would they do that? Why would they prefer stagnant water to fresh?
Well, I believe the key can be found right here in verse 13 - “they… have dug their own cisterns…”
These were “THEIR” cisterns
They owned them… it was THEIR water
They didn’t have to ask anyone… let alone God… for permission to use this water.
BUT… to get God’s water… there was a price.
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.” Isaiah 55:1-2
Well now, wait a minute…If this water doesn’t cost any money… how would you go about buying it? Well, you had to COME to the waters… and you have to LISTEN to God.
Jesus said pretty much the same thing John 7:37-38 where we’re told that Jesus stood up during the feast and in a loud voice He said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”
That is the catch… in order to get God’s kind of water…
… you have to come to God
… you have to listen to what Jesus has to say
… and you have to accept His standards and live according to His desires.
Some people have a difficult time with accepting anybody’s standards…let alone God’s.
ILLUS: I read an interesting article in Time magazine a couple of weeks ago. It was an article about Superman – and it seems this superhero has fallen on hard times lately. Even tho’ as a cartoon character he is the icon of DC comics he trails behind Batman in popularity.
(now I realize this seems a bit trite… but bear with me a little here)
At DC Comics, Jim Lee, who was a popular illustrator of the Batman comic series was tapped to take over the art on Superman. He said he looks on this as a serious challenge.
"Batman is a more modern-era type character," Lee says. "(Batman is) fueled by vengeance; he’s the boogeyman. Superman is the altruistic alien hero (kind of like God) that protects us all. It’s difficult to make that believable in this day and age."
Now… at the end of the article there are these final words: “Superman… is a metaphor for America, but an outdated, obsolete America: invulnerable to attack, always on the side of right, always ready to save the rest of the world from its villainy whether or not it wants to be saved. In the past, every decade has got the Superman it deserves, and don’t worry, we’ll get ours, but he will probably be flawed, more man than super.”
Now catch these last few words… “Americans don’t want to be told what to aspire to anymore, who we should be.” (Lev Grossman, 5/17/04)
Now, I don’t know if that is true or not.
I don’t know if ALL Americans don’t want to be told what to aspire to anymore, and who we should be. But THIS AUTHOR knew people that were like that.
(pause…) And God knew people like that too… they were called Israelites. Israel had gotten to the point where they didn’t want God or anyone else to tell them what they should aspire to or what they should be.
They wanted to dig their own wells.
Drink their own water.
It’s not that they didn’t WANT God.
They just didn’t want THIS GOD.
They didn’t want His rules… His regulations… His expectations in their lives.
III. Now… how did the Israelites get to being like this?
Did they just wake up one morning and say – Hey! I don’t want to serve God anymore???
Oh no. These were still a very “religious” people
According to verse 8, these people still had priests… and prophets… and those who dealt with the law.
The problem was NOT that Israel had stopped being religious. They had simply gotten INTO the habit of creating God IN THEIR OWN image.
They WANTED gods…
They just WANTED gods that would allow them to dig their own wells
They wanted gods that would mold into their lifestyle
Gods who would morph into what THEY wanted them to be
At times, accepting substitutes for God isn’t a matter of openly REJECTING God.
Sometimes it’s simply a matter of compromising our faith so that the God we claim we love doesn’t actually resemble the God who died for us.
ILLUS: During the 1st Gulf War Ann Landers asked citizens to send letters of encouragement to our soldiers. She asked we address the letters to "ANY SERVICE MEMBER, OPERATION DESERT STORM, APO New York," and put Operation Dear Abby on the return address.
Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse, heard about the campaign, he decided to get involved. He purchased a million tracts printed in Arabic and distributed them to Churches, who in turn gave them to their members to send with their letters for the soldiers to distribute in Saudi Arabia.
Now, this didn’t set well with the Arabs, who, tho’ they were glad to have the Americans shed their blood to defend them, they wouldn’t allow them to share their faith. American soldier were not even allowed wear a cross.
So, General Schwartzkopf called in a Military chaplain, with the rank of Colonel, and ordered him to call Franklin and confront him about what he was doing.
In his book, “Rebel With A Cause,” Graham tells of the conversation with this chaplain:
The chaplain said ’’We, as chaplains, are not here to evangelize. We’re here to provide for the spiritual needs of our men and women in uniform. Our responsibility is to them only. Period. Is that understood, Mr. Graham?"
Graham replied "Colonel, I appreciate that. Everyone in this country is backing and supporting our men and women in uniform. We’re proud of you. But I’m going to be honest with you, sir. The religious unfairness has upset me and a lot of others in America. Our men and women are being asked to put their lives on the line - possibly to spill their blood to protect the oil there. And you, a chaplain, can’t even wear your cross in public! The Saudis want our blood, but not what we believe in."
Graham wrote: After I finished; a hush fell over the line. The Colonel finally replied: "I understand what you’re trying to do. I’m an evangelical as well. But I’m under orders…”
Graham interrupted with these words: "So am I, sir - orders from the King of kings and Lord of lords - to go into all the world and preach the gospel and make disciples of every nation."
That Chaplain was confronted by very uncomfortable reality.
Without realizing what had happened to him, he had begun to dig his own wells
He had allowed his God to be molded by his job.
The God he tho’t he loved had morphed into a god that wouldn’t offend anyone.
He had accepted a substitute.
IV. We must be careful that we don’t fall into the same trap
We must be careful not compromise our faith
We must be careful to avoid accepting substitutes for our God.
So… how do we do that???
Well, this may seem a bit simplistic… but the answer is this:
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES
SEEK GOD
SEEK HIS WILL
HUMBLE YOURSELF UNDER HIS AUTHORITY
God condemned the priests of Jeremiah’s day because “The priests did not ask, ‘Where is the LORD?’” Jeremiah 2:8
The Priests never bothered to Seek God or His will or anything else that God wanted.
But, God promised us “if… you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.” Deuteronomy 4:29
God isn’t talking about a half hearted “Sunday worship – going thru the motions” type of seeking. We are to look for Him with ALL of our hearts and ALL of our souls.
David recognized that when he wrote: “O God, Thou art my God; I shall seek Thee earnestly; My soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh yearns for Thee, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Ps 63:1
What David was saying was: there were no substitutes.
He was crying out that there was nothing else that would satisfy… nothing else that be acceptable.
David literally felt that he would die of thirst if he accepted anything less than what God could supply.
CLOSE: Tertullian was a theologian who lived in Carthage around 200 AD. One day a man came to Tertullian asking how he could be both a faithful Christian and successful in business.
At that time, Christianity was publicly ridiculed, scorned by many and frequently persecuted by the government.
The man knew he was supposed to be completely loyal to Christ, but he wondered if some compromise might be permitted. Couldn’t he carry commitment to both his faith and his business? He feared his church membership might ruin him financially.
“What can I do? I must live!” he exclaimed.
Tertullian replied: “Must you?”
Must you live???
No… you don’t have to.
You have the promise of so much better a life than this. Why settle for a stale, stagnant life that rarely tastes good… that simply gets by when you can have God and all that life was meant to be.
All through Scripture we’re told stories of men and women who were faced with the temptation to compromise. Faced with the potential loss – not only of their possessions – but of their very lives. The great ones chose God. And God was always faithful.
Don’t compromise…
Don’t accept substitutes
Don’t allow yourself to believe that… you can EVEN live without God’s Word in your life
SERMONS IN THIS SERIES
· Formed For A Purpose - Jeremiah 1:4-1:10
· Accept No Substitutes - Jeremiah 2:4-2:13
· The Smell of Sin - Jeremiah 5:20-5:25
· If I’ve Got It Why Can’t I Flaunt It? - Jeremiah 9:23-9:24
· The Effect Of Judgment - Jeremiah 10:17-10:25
· Time To Decide - Jeremiah 15:15-15:21
· Planning For The Future. - Jeremiah 29:8-29:14
· A New Hope - Jeremiah 31:31-31:35
· Knowing God’s Phone Number - Jeremiah 33:1-33:3
· You Can’t Tell Some People Anything - Jeremiah 44:1-44:30
