Unfaithful

Introduction

Illustration: Trust & faithfulness required for a long distance relationship

“Long-Distance Relationships, Revisited: The pandemic and technological change prod us to revise our perspectives” by Roni Beth Tower Ph.D., ABPP

During the pandemic, ways in which we communicate with and otherwise relate to other people changed significantly.

Important relationships, from the closest like a lover through the most casual, like a co-worker, have been forced into distant communications.

Information that is potentially lost, distorted, or misunderstood when communicating virtually can require adaptation in interpretation.

The role we want someone to play in our lives might require re-evaluation but efforts can strengthen the integrity of a close relationship.

Challenges

Re-evaluate Physical contact. People need to be in the same physical space to share touch, energy, eye contact (and with it true synchronization), honest information, emotional contagion, and timely feedback that renders the relationship more responsive to the people involved in it.

Re-evaluate Shared context. what people experience (and can be influenced by) simply because they share a common environment. their experiences might be embedded in separate cultures that influence perceptions, attitudes, beliefs. Outright differences or subtle nuances can impact the way the relationship is managed. Separate contexts mean that two people may be embedded in separate networks of other relationships.

Mistaken or distorted communications of intent or reactions. We filter what we perceive, and what we perceive is already distorted by the context in which we receive it. The greatest risks from long-distance relating range from assumptions that lead you down a misguided path to misinterpretation, most critically in appreciating the meanings of silences. Without solid communication to question problematic interpretations, assumptions, trust can be eroded.

Opportunities- . At the same time, long-distance relationships provide us with unique opportunities to improve communication and to strengthen the relationship through our struggles to maintain it.

Communication. By using words to help each other interpret body language, we can better identify our own cognitive and emotional reactions and teach someone else to better understand them as we do.

Strength through struggles. Certain challenges are built into long-distance relationships: can you develop strategies to help the other deal with adversity, including painful absences? Can you form new rituals and reinvent traditions, retaining meaning that is relevant? Can practice in managing separations and reunions help you built creativity, trust, and faith in the future? Can the distance help you use times of reflection to clarify expectations of each other and to explore differences in perception, style, goals, dreams, and memories?

Transition To Body- the purpose of the prophet of God

Challenges

Re-evaluate Physical contact immanent God?

Re-evaluate Shared context transcendent God?

Mistaken or distorted communications of intent or reactions- Lying Prophets

Opportunities

Communication. Poetry of the prophet Jeremiah to bring a covenant lawsuit and confront the false prophets

Strength through struggles. People of God experiencing trials and tribulations due to their unfaithfulness

Enters Prophet Jeremiah

one gifted with more than ordinary spiritual and moral insight

one regarded by a group of followers as the final authoritative revealer of God's will

an effective or leading spokesman for a cause, doctrine, or group

Body

Declaration of the LORD God's Omniscience & Omnipresence

Jeremiah 23:23–25 ESV

23 “Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? 24 Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord. 25 I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, ‘I have dreamed, I have dreamed!’

Dreams of a Deceitfully Depraved Heart

Jeremiah 23:26–27 ESV

26 How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart, 27 who think to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, even as their fathers forgot my name for Baal?

Jeremiah 23:11–14 ESV

11 “Both prophet and priest are ungodly; even in my house I have found their evil, declares the Lord. 12 Therefore their way shall be to them like slippery paths in the darkness, into which they shall be driven and fall, for I will bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment, declares the Lord. 13 In the prophets of Samaria I saw an unsavory thing: they prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray. 14 But in the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his evil; all of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.”

Power of the Faithfully Proclaimed Prophetic Word

Jeremiah 23:28–29 ESV

28 Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? declares the Lord. 29 Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?

Faithful prophets/preachers/proclaimers of the LORD’s Holy WORD stand in His counscil

Jeremiah 23:22 ESV

22 But if they had stood in my council, then they would have proclaimed my words to my people, and they would have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their deeds.

Illustration. of Jeremiah 23:28 (Difference between straw & wheat)

Straw is an agricultural byproduct consisting of the dry stalks of cereal plants after the grain and chaff have been removed. It makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. It has a number of different uses, including fuel, livestock bedding and fodder, thatching and basket making.

Animal feed

Straw may be fed as part of the roughage component of the diet to cattle or horses that are on a near maintenance level of energy requirement. It has a low digestible energy and nutrient content (as opposed to hay, which is much more nutritious). The heat generated when microorganisms in a herbivore's gut digest straw can be useful in maintaining body temperature in cold climates. Due to the risk of impaction and its poor nutrient profile, it should always be restricted to part of the diet. It may be fed as it is, or chopped into short lengths, known as chaff.

Wheat is an important source of carbohydrates.[9] Globally, it is the leading source of vegetable protein in human food, having a protein content of about 13%, which is relatively high compared to other major cereals[11] but relatively low in protein quality for supplying essential amino acids.[12][13] When eaten as the whole grain, wheat is a source of multiple nutrients and dietary fiber.[

Wheat roots are among the deepest of arable crops, extending as far down as 2 metres (6 ft 7 in).[40] While the roots of a wheat plant are growing, the plant also accumulates an energy store in its stem, in the form of fructans,[41] which helps the plant to yield under drought and disease pressure,[42] but it has been observed that there is a trade-off between root growth and stem non-structural carbohydrate reserves.[43] Root growth is likely to be prioritised in drought-adapted crops, while stem non-structural carbohydrate is prioritised in varieties developed for countries where disease is a bigger issue.

Illustrate: The word of the LORD being like fire and alike a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces

Devastating Effects Of False Prophet's Deceit & False Confidence

Jeremiah 23:30–32 ESV

30 Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, declares the Lord, who steal my words from one another. 31 Behold, I am against the prophets, declares the Lord, who use their tongues and declare, ‘declares the Lord.’ 32 Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the Lord, and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them. So they do not profit this people at all, declares the Lord.

Jeremiah 23:16–18 ESV

16 Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. 17 They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’ ” 18 For who among them has stood in the council of the Lord to see and to hear his word, or who has paid attention to his word and listened?

Transition To Close- Unfaithfulness Leads to death

Why the sermon title preacher pastor? I thought this sermon title was inspired by your summer playlist

Before she was the Good Girl Gone Bad, Rihanna, Sis an album called

"Unfaithful" is a song by Barbadian singer Rihanna from her second studio album A Girl like Me (2006). The song was released by Def Jam Recordings on May 1, 2006, as the second single from the album.

Originally titled "Murderer", the single speaks about a woman who regrets cheating on her partner.

Story of my life, searching for the right

But it keeps avoiding me

Sorrow in my soul 'cause it seems that wrong

Really loves my company

He's more than a man and this is more than love

The reason that the sky is blue

The clouds are rolling in because I'm gone again

And to him, I just can't be true

And I know that he knows I'm unfaithful

And it kills him inside

To know that I am happy with some other guy

I can see him dying

I don't wanna do this anymore

I don't wanna be the reason why

Every time I walk out the door

I see him die a little more inside

I don't wanna hurt him anymore

I don't wanna take away his life

I don't wanna be a murderer

Close- For the time is coming

Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Jeremiah 17:10 ESV

10 “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”

The LORD God will forgive!

Jeremiah 31:31–34 ESV

31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Jeremiah 23:5–6 ESV

5 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 6 In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’

2 Timothy 4:3–4 ESV

3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

2 Timothy 3:5 ESV

5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

Charged in the presence of God &

Christ Jesus

2 Timothy 4:1–2 ESV

1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

Hebrews 11:1 ESV

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:6 ESV

6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Jesus, God, Incarnate In Flesh

John 1:1–5 ESV

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:9–14 ESV

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

1 Timothy 3:14–16 ESV

14 I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, 15 if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. 16 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.