Jeremiah 2:1–13 CEB

1 The Lord’s word came to me: 2 Go and proclaim to the people of Jerusalem, The Lord proclaims: I remember your first love, your devotion as a young bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in an unplanted land. 3 Israel was devoted to the Lord, the early produce of the harvest. Whoever ate from it became guilty; disaster overtook them, declares the Lord. 4 Listen to the Lord’s word, people of Judah, all you families of the Israelite household. 5 This is what the Lord says: What wrong did your ancestors find in me that made them wander so far? They pursued what was worthless and became worthless. 6 They didn’t ask, “Where’s the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, in a land of deserts and ravines, in a land of drought and darkness, in a land of no return, where no one survives?” 7 I brought you into a land of plenty, to enjoy its gifts and goodness, but you ruined my land; you disgraced my heritage. 8 The priests didn’t ask, “Where’s the Lord?” Those responsible for the Instruction didn’t know me; the leaders rebelled against me; the prophets spoke in the name of Baal, going after what has no value. 9 That is why I will take you to court and charge even your descendants, declares the Lord. 10 Look to the west as far as the shores of Cyprus and to the east as far as the land of Kedar. Ask anyone there: Has anything this odd ever taken place? 11 Has a nation switched gods, though they aren’t really gods at all? Yet my people have exchanged their glory for what has no value. 12 Be stunned at such a thing, you heavens; shudder and quake, declares the Lord. 13 My people have committed two crimes: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water. And they have dug wells, broken wells that can’t hold water.

That Won’t Hold Water

Have you ever used that phrase before? When I’ve used it I say in the context of an excuse. For some people, any old excuse will do. Often times the excuses that are used just make no sense, they “don’t hold water.”

I hear excuses every week. I hear excuses as to why people do things or don’t do things. It is one thing for people who are not yet disciples of Jesus to make excuses. We expect them to make them.

One of the most profound examples was when I was in high school and was spending my second summer as a summer missionary with Child Evangelism. I was at the Cameron County Fair in Emporium with a friend from my home church. We spent the entire week there sharing Jesus with kids who came by our trailer.

There was one boy, his name was Michael and I learned he was 12 years old. He was there with his family and they were camped out at the fair. I don’t remember why. He kept coming by and would talk with us if we were hanging outside. He wouldn’t come into watch the filmstrip stories.

I finally asked him why he wouldn’t come and hear the stories. He said that he was to old. He was 12 and he had made up his mind that he was to old to hear about Jesus. Nothing I could say could convince him otherwise.

He was on my prayer list for a long time. I’ve often wondered what happened to him. I wondered if someone else has had the opportunity to share Jesus with him. He would be pretty close to 60 if he is still living.

There was a song that the Kingsmen quartet sang a long time ago that was about excuses. The chorus had these words

Excuses, excuses, you'll hear them every day.

And the Devil he'll supply them, if the church you stay away.

When people come to know the Lord, the Devil always loses So to keep them folks away from church, he offers them excuses.

As we look at revival preparation, I want to take a look at excuses as illustrated by Israel. In the Lectionary, the scripture for today began in verse 4. I had to back up to verse 1 because if we don’t we miss out on why God said what He did to them.

Jeremiah 2:1–3 CEB

1 The Lord’s word came to me: 2 Go and proclaim to the people of Jerusalem, The Lord proclaims: I remember your first love, your devotion as a young bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in an unplanted land. 3 Israel was devoted to the Lord, the early produce of the harvest. Whoever ate from it became guilty; disaster overtook them, declares the Lord.

Verse 2 really stuck out to me. It has always amazed me how no matter how many times I may have read a passage of Scripture that something new pops out at me. I’ve read the Bible from cover to cover more times than I can remember. I don’t say that to brag, it’s just a statement of fact. Even though I’ve read this verse multiple times it has never stuck out to me like it did this week.

God said

Jeremiah 2:2 (CEB)

The Lord proclaims: I remember your first love, your devotion as a young bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in an unplanted land.

God is talking about Israel following God out of Egypt into the wilderness and ultimately into the land of promise. He uses the image of a young bride going with her new husband into the wilderness. They were deeply in love, they were devoted that no matter what they were going to face life together.

I think of some of my ancestors who packed up everything they could and moved to the west in our nation when vast areas were opened to homesteading. It wasn’t easy, going into a new land where there were no towns or villages. You had to provide for yourselves.

God pictures himself as the groom and Israel as the bride and they followed God into that wilderness, that land of promise.

God says that He remembers their first love.

There is another place in the Bible where we read about that first love.

Revelation 2:4 CEB

4 But I have this against you: you have let go of the love you had at first.

I pray that Jesus will never say that to me or to this church. The NRSV uses the word “abandoned.” The NIV uses the word “forsaken.” That is a purposeful action, they have let go or abandoned, or forsaken God.

Jesus is saying this to the same church that Paul wrote

Ephesians 1:3 CEB

3 Bless the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing that comes from heaven.

In less than a generation, this grand church has forsaken God.

Ephesians 2:8-10 “8 You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed. 9 It’s not something you did that you can be proud of. 10 Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives.”

We are God’s accomplishment yet we can easily be like that church and walk away and abandon God. We can make up all sorts of excuses. They didn’t hold water then and they won’t hold water now.

God had brought Israel out of slavery and bondage in Egypt. God brought them to the land of promise, that land flowing with milk and honey. There is this concept of God that He doesn’t want us to have any enjoyment in life. The idea is that if we become a Christian then we have to give up fun and pleasure. That is a lie from the Devil. God asks us to give up sin and evil. Sin is pleasurable for a season, but it pails in comparison to what God has for us. Remember those spiritual blessings that God has blessed us with.

Why would we want to settle for something less than what God has already blessed us with. Let’s take hold of those blessings.

God is speaking to all of Israel and says

Jeremiah 2:5 CEB

5 This is what the Lord says: What wrong did your ancestors find in me that made them wander so far? They pursued what was worthless and became worthless.

I’ve seen couples where the husband is confused because his wife is angry with him. He is clueless as to what He did. He might ask his wife “what did I do wrong?”

God is asking “What wrong did your ancestors find in me.” God already knows the answer, but he wants Israel to answer the question. Obviously, the answer is there is nothing that God could do to cause His people to wander away from Him.

That wandering comes from us. One of the great hymns of the church has these words in it.

Oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be! Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee: prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; here's my heart, O take and seal it; seal it for thy courts above. (Come thou fount of every blessing)

That sealing is by the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote:

2 Corinthians 1:21–22 CEB

21 God is the one who establishes us with you in Christ and who anointed us. 22 God also sealed us and gave the Spirit as a down payment in our hearts.

God has sealed us and gave us the Holy Spirit as a down payment. Wow, if the Holy Spirit is a down payment, can you imagine how much more God has in store for us!

I don’t know about you, but that gets me a little excited. Jesus said in Matthew 6:33 “33 Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

That is the key to receiving all of those blessings that God has already blessed us with. We have to seek God first and foremost. He have to seek His kingdom and His righteousness.

I want God’s kingdom and His righteous. That is something I want today. Jesus taught us to pray “thy kingdom come.” He wasn’t praying that would happen in the future, He was praying that it would come today.

Following his temptations in the wilderness, Jesus opens his public ministry with these words:

Matthew 4:17 NKJV

17 From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

When something is at hand, it is here or it is near by, it is easily accessible.

People, the kingdom of heaven is at hand!

What happened with Israel?

Jeremiah 2:5 (CEB)

5 They pursued what was worthless and became worthless.

God had blessed them beyond anything they ever dreamed. I picture Joshua on the banks of the Jordan River and God saying to him to march around that great city of Jericho. Have the priests go first with the Arc of the Covenant, not the military, have all the people go with them. March around that city 7 days in a row. On the 7th day the priests are to blast the trumpets on the 7th time around and the people are to shouted a war cry and the walls of that city fell down!

Time after time the people witnessed the power of God in their lives and yet they went chasing after the worthless.

They wanted a god that was no god who was like the god’s of the nations around them. They wanted a god they could see. They began worshipping Baal, that pagan god. It was worthless, Baal couldn’t do anything for them.

God had done so many things for them, but they went after a god who could do nothing for them. The ones who were blessed of all people on earth had run off to idolatry, they were pursuing the worthless and had become worthless themselves.

When I picture a worthless person, I see that unemployed person who makes excuses for why he can’t work. There are children with multiple women and he doesn’t provide for any of them. I think of that person as worthless because they are constantly taking and not giving anything.

Israel was worse, they left all of the blessings and went chasing worthless god’s and had become worthless themselves.

The picture that Jesus gave us with the prodigal son really illustrates this. He had everything provided for him by his father, but he wasn’t happy. He demanded his inheritance and went chasing happiness. When all of his money was gone, all his friends abandoned him and he ends up feeding pigs. He’s wanting to eat what the pigs were eating. We might consider him as worthless.

He had something going for himself - Jesus said he came to his senses. He makes a plan to go back home in hopes that his father will hire him to work the farm. His dad sees him and runs to greet him and he welcomes him not as a hired hand, but a son!

Israel was like that prodigal son, but they didn’t come to their senses. They wandered away and became worthless because they were chasing after something worthless.

Jeremiah 2:6 CEB

6 They didn’t ask, “Where’s the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, in a land of deserts and ravines, in a land of drought and darkness, in a land of no return, where no one survives?”

They didn’t ask because they had gotten so far away with their chasing after the worthless god’s that they gave no thought to god.

Jeremiah 2:8 CEB

8 The priests didn’t ask, “Where’s the Lord?” Those responsible for the Instruction didn’t know me; the leaders rebelled against me; the prophets spoke in the name of Baal, going after what has no value.

The priests, the ones tasked with instructing the people and leading them in worship, the prophets no longer spoke in the name of Jehovah, the spoke in the name of a worthless god.

Look at the result there in verse 11

Jeremiah 2:11 (CEB)

11 Yet my people have exchanged their glory for what has no value.

They had it all going for them, but they exchanged, they handed over all of their blessings and in return they got something that had no value.

John Guest in his commentary on this passage wrote:

The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 19: Jeremiah / Lamentations Judah’s Husband Pleads His Case

What a dreadful price they had paid for their waywardness! They had become what they worshiped. Here is a principle for all Christians to watch. What we give our imaginations to, our personalities to—that is what we become. The investment of our time, our energy, and our money will result in something, either emptiness or glory. Which it will be depends on what it is we have been worshiping.

Would that this apostasy had been found in only one segment of his culture. Perhaps it could be cured were it localized. This condition, however, was described as all pervasive. The priests, who should have instructed the people in the knowledge of God, had lost sight of Him themselves and had quit seeking. The scribes who handled the Law had no knowledge of His will. The pastors, who should have kept the people from transgressing, were too busy transgressing themselves. The prophets were uttering the words of Baal and not the word of the Lord (v. 8).

God seems amazed at what has happened because of what is written in verse 12.

Jeremiah 2:12 CEB

12 Be stunned at such a thing, you heavens; shudder and quake, declares the Lord.

When I’m stunned by something I stand in silence unable to talk because of what I’m seeing. On September 11th I watched in stunned silence and horror as the towers in New York City fell. Shudder and quake about what has happened. On 9/11 there was that fear of what was going to happen next.

That is the picture that God gives us here.

Have you exchanged all the blessings of God and gone chasing after worthless things?

Do you make excuses why you can’t do anything for God and His Church?

God identifies two sins that the people committed there in verse 13.

Common English Bible (Chapter 2)

They have forsaken me, the spring of living water.

The first is that they have forsaken God. That word “forsaken” means to “renounce or turn away from entirely.” In the exchange of the blessings for the worthless god, they have totally turned away from God.

It is interesting that God identifies Himself as the “spring of living water.” Jesus spoke about that Himself.

John 7:38 CEB

38 All who believe in me should drink! As the scriptures said concerning me, Rivers of living water will flow out from within him.”

Remember that song from years ago?

I’ve got a river of life flowing within me; It makes the lame to walk and the blind to see. It opens prison doors, sets the captives free. I’ve got a river of life flowing within me.

They exchanged life for death. God had promised a limitless supply of living water, but they turned away from God.

The second sin that they committed was

Common English Bible (Chapter 2)

And they have dug wells, broken wells that can’t hold water.

Rather than going to the source of living waters, they dug their own wells. Their wells were worthless, they couldn’t hold any water. Everything about them was worthless.

God though invites to come to the living water. In Isaiah we read:

Isaiah 55:1 (CEB)

1 All of you who are thirsty, come to the water!

Where are you today? Does the river of life flow out of you or are you digging a well that won’t hold water?

When Jesus died on that cross, his blood was shed, water and blood flowed from his side. The hymn write captured that thought beautifully.

There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel's vein, and sinners, plunged beneath the flood, lose all their guilty stain.

Have you experienced that? Are you chasing the worthless?

If we want to have a revival we have to cry out to God to refresh us with His Holy Spirit. If there is sin in our lives that will block up that flow of living waters. We have to do as Jesus said, Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!

“Forsake.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forsake. Accessed 27 Aug. 2022