What Am I Doing Here? Lets Go Back.

Jeremiah 2:4-13 “What Am I Doing Here, Lets Go Back”

1. Jeremiah the Prophet the weeping prophet no wonder he wept because of the sins of Israel

• Jeremiah spoke on behalf of God always trying to get Israel to repent change go back to Godliness. God speaks to us asking us to return to God.

• As a result Jeremiah encountered tremendous opposition, including plots against him, he persisted in speaking against the sins of Israel. Jeremiah says he had to speak against the sins,(20:9). His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.

• Israel’s never asked themselves “What am I doing here?” God Brought them out of bondage, out of the wilderness into lands flowing with milk and honey

2. Jeremiah shares God Loved Israel as a Bride. He asked What are you doing in this adulteress type life. The Bride had forsaken/abandoned Husband God

• Israel had once been God’s bride. ." (Bride imagery appears in Scripture for the relationship between God and God’s people: God tells Hosea "Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of dultery in departing from the LORD

• Ezekiel 16. Israel was known as shrine builders, , 24you built a mound for yourself and made a lofty shrine in every public square. 25At the head of every street you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, offering your body with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by. 26You engaged in prostitution with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, even daughters of the Philistines, were shocked by your lewd conduct. 28You engaged in prostitution with the Assyrians 29Then Babylonia,F a land of merchants, but even with this you were not satisfied. , You acted like a brazen prostitute! 31When you built your mounds at the head of every street and made your lofty shrines in every public square, 32

• What on earth are you doing in this situation? Israel, church Ephesians tells us, Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansingB her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

3. Jeremiah tells those who have strayed like Israel consider what’s really happened.

• Israel no doubt has been a unfaithful wife, as he sees them — who “have forsaken [God], the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.”

• Cisterns were a big part of daily life in the ancient Middle East. This was a desert climate, and there was no such thing as indoor plumbing.

• Cisterns were underground storage tank that collects runoff rain. In the height of summer, the cisterns offered a supply of water, but it was water that didn’t taste the best — the “living water” from a stream or brook was far better and could sustain life.

4. Israel failed to maintain the cistern of their spiritual life that’s what really happened. What on Earth are you doing here?

• They allowed their spiritual life and their cisterns to go into poor working state.

• The people have become “cracked cisterns that can hold no water.” God’s words of comfort and assurance do flow into them, but those precious blessings flow right back out again13"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.

5. Jeremiah gives us and Israel a Solution ask yourself what are you doing here?

• Our answer could be, I can fix this I can repair the cistern

• You know August is the month we start “going back” to many activities … back to school, back to sports, maybe even back to work after a summer vacation.

• It’s also Going back-to-church-time, Going Back to Faith trusting and confiding

• Lets Go back to the fountain of Living water, Jesus said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38Whoever believes in me, asC the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."