Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction
Good morning and welcome back!
Hopefully everyone has had a great week and a good and safe Halloween.
This morning if you would start turning in your Bibles to .
This morning we are going to be moving into a slightly different direction, but one that I believe many in the church find themselves in every single day.
And that subject is one of Spiritual Drought.
And we often wonder what causes Spiritual Drought?
What is it that leads us down the path that we feel like God is nowhere near us.
And the truth of the matter is, all of us at times have gone through times of Spiritual Drought.
In fact, all the way back in the 16th century, St. John of the Cross wrote a poem called “The Dark Night of the Soul,” which looks at the Spiritual Drought that is so common to all of us.
And this type of Drought is one that is meant to help us.
It is meant to build our faith and our dependence on God.
It is meant to show us that God is always with us and that God never leaves us.
However, there is a different type of Spiritual Drought as well.
This type not caused by anything God has allowed in order to draw us closer to him.
No, this type of Drought is caused by our own actions and our own behaviors.
It is the type that is caused by becoming complacent and, well, lazy in our relationship with God.
This type is caused by our own sin and indifference toward God.
And This is where our Scripture is focused on this morning.
Background
And just to sort of bring us up to speed on where we are, we are in the final years of the kingdom of Judah.
Things were winding down and very soon, Babylon would be coming in and all of them would be carried off into captivity.
Judah had wandered so far from God that they had reached the point that they had totally abandoned God.
God had sent prophet after prophet to warn them, but still they would not listen.
They refused to change their ways.
They refused to repent.
They refused to follow God.
And the result was severe drought which led to famine.
Chapter 14 starts out this way . .
..
Jeremiah 14:1-
So, things were bad, really bad for them.
So, things were bad, really bad for them.
No water and because no water, there were no vegetables and all the animals were dying.
The people were dying of starvation and even dehydration in some cases.
All of this was going on and God was nowhere near them.
What’s up with that?
Where is God when his people needed him?
After all, they eventually realize and acknowledge their sin . . . .
They did what they were supposed to do, right?
Jeremiah 14:
They did what they were supposed to do, right?
They confessed to God.
Admitted their backsliding ways.
So, why isn’t God listening?
Why isn’t God fixing their problems?
In fact, the people themselves begin to wonder the same thing.
They are confused about why their God has not shown up, so they ask . . .
Jeremiah
Scripture Focus
God’s Answer
Surely now God will move.
Surely now God will hear our prayer and heal our lands.
Surely now God will come and rescue us.
Well, they were partially right.
God did hear them and God did respond.
But, God’s response was not something they probably thought they were going to hear.
And this is what God had to say to them . . .
Jeremiah 14:
Definitely not what they wanted to hear.
And definitely not what they thought God would say.
After all, again they acknowledged their sin and their backsliding.
Why isn’t it good enough for God?
Well, it all boils down to the fact that all they were doing was paying God lip service.
All they were doing was really going through the motions.
Checking the things off the boxes, and even though they were confessing they were never repenting.
They were never turning around and going the other way.
Again, God says . . .
Jeremiah 14:
And their pattern was this.
They would go along doing their own thing and when things started getting bad, they would admit they have sinned and backslid.
God would forgive them and give them another chance, hoping they would see their true ways and change them.
They wouldn’t though, they would go along good for a while and then slip right back into those old sinful patterns.
They would go to God again and repeat the same pattern.
Each time though God warning them that they had better really examine themselves and change their ways before it is too late.
Each time though they wouldn’t listen.
And finally, enough was enough!
God tells Jeremiah . . .
How bad does it have to get when God even tells his prophets not to pray for the people?
These people are in serious trouble.
They had turned their backs on God for centuries and now, God’s back was being turned against their sin.
And he wasn’t going to listen to their lies anymore . . .
And here is where we come into play.
We do the very same thing as the children of Israel did.
We go through our lives living in these times of Spiritual growth but also Spiritual drought.
Somewhere along the line in our lives we were introduced to Jesus and the church.
And somewhere along the way, we made a decision that maybe there is something to all this “God stuff.”
And we start to listen to what we are being taught and start changing our lives to match the expectations of the Church.
Maybe even somewhere along the line we confess our sins and acknowledge our own sinfulness.
But then, soon after we start to drift away.
We start to slip right back into those same old patterns, those same old sins, those same old behaviors.
And we figure out it’s because we’ve not been going to church like we should, or praying like we should or reading our Bibles like we should.
We’ve basically been neglecting God and indulging in our own flesh.
And so we make a decision that we are going to tell God we are sorry.
And we repeat the same pattern, over and over and over again.
And we can’t figure out why we cannot get over this hump, why we can’t just be “dedicated enough.”
Well, the problem is we are trying to do everything own our own.
We have confessed but we have never repented.
God changed our mind, but we never let Him change our heart.
And all we are really doing is offering God lip service, with no true change, no true repentance, no true heart in anything.
And as a result we are in a state of Spiritual Drought.
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