From devotion to divorce

Jeremiah chapter 2, beginning to read at verse 1. The word of the Lord came to me, go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the firstfruits of his harvest, all who devoured her were held guilty and disaster overtook them, declares the Lord. Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, all you clans of the house of Israel, this is what the Lord says, and this is the key text for the message tonight.

What fault do your fathers find in me that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves. They did not ask, where is the Lord who brought us up out of Egypt and led us through the barren wilderness to a land of deserts and rifts, a land of drought and darkness, a land where no one travels and no one lives. I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce, but you came and defiled my land and made my inheritance detestable.

The priests did not ask, where is the Lord? Those who deal with the Lord did not know me. The leaders rebelled against me, the prophets prophesied by Baal following worthless idols. Therefore I bring charges against you again, declares the Lord, and I will bring charges against your children's children.

Cross over to the coasts of Kittin and look, send a kedar and observe closely, see if there's ever been anything like this. Has a nation ever changed its idols? Yet they are not gods at all, but my people have exchanged their glory for worthless idols. Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror, declares the Lord.

My people have committed two sins. They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Is Israel a servant, a slave by birth? Why then has he become plunder? Lions have roared and have growled at him.

They have laid waste his land. His towns are burned and deserted. Also the men of Memphis and Tarpanis have shaved the crown of your head.

Have you not brought this on yourselves by forsaking the Lord your God when he led you in the way? Now why go to Egypt to drink water from the Sheol? And why go to Assyria to drink water from the river, the river Euphrates? Your wickedness will punish you. Your backsliding will rebuke you. Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the Lord your God and have no awe of me, declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

May the Lord add his own blessing to that reading of his word for his namesake. Thank you, Ferdinand, for that reading. Please do keep your Bibles open because Jeremiah's sermon, and it was his first sermon, and that's worth thinking about, isn't it, for those of you who goes on to chapter 3 and verse 5, but it would take rather a long time to read all of that.

We'll touch on aspects of this sermon as we go through. I don't know what you'll make of this little poem. It was written by a man who obviously had a rather jaundiced view of love.

He wrote this, a mighty pain to love it is, and tis a pain that love to miss, but of them all the greatest pain it is to love and love in vain. Well, I don't know about what our reaction to the first two lines is, but I think that we will agree with the latter two lines. Even a teenage crush, if the other person doesn't want to know or if they're already attached, can be very painful, can't it? We can remember back that far.

And when it goes further than that, when there are a couple who are once devoted to each other and then love is lost or at least from one side, well, some of you who've been involved know what that means, know the trauma of that. Some of you have been brought up in marriages which have broken and you don't need me to tell you what a tragedy that has been. But the marriage we're thinking of this evening is not a human marriage, it's God's marriage.

That's the marriage that Jeremiah is preaching about here. It's one of the most moving chapters I find in the whole of my Bible. There's great pain here and there's passion here in the heart of God as God opens up his heart and it's an aching heart, a bleeding heart for his people and God makes himself vulnerable here and shows such feeling that, well, we can just gasp that the living God can feel this way about human beings.

And this sermon that Jeremiah had to preach, I don't suppose he wanted to preach it any more than I particularly want to bring it to you this evening, but God gave him this word and I believe that he's given me this word for us tonight and so he has to go and cry out in the hearing of Jerusalem just how God feels and aches for his people. That meant just a short walk for this young man. He was probably at seminary at the time, just a teenager I would suspect.

And he walks three miles from the village where he studies and takes up a place in the city where everybody will hear him, perhaps in the temple precincts. And here he is, this is his first ever preaching assignment. This is a very intimate chapter and all the way through the most intimate of human relationships are used.

There is a relationship between husband and wife, verse two, newlyweds indeed. And later on, chapter three, verse four, we have the relationship of a friend of your youth. I suppose we do stay closest to those people that we became friends with when we were young.

And then there is the father-son relationship, verse 19 of chapter three, a little bit further down. But of these three human relationships, I suppose the closest, the most intense and the one that God wants for his people above them all is that of marriage. Let me explain why.

You see, there are many people who want God to be to them some sort of father figure, someone who they can sort of go to when things get a bit rough, someone who will, well, always lend a kindly ear to them. And there are other people who want God as a good friend, as a best mate. But if you just have God as a father figure or a good friend, that means that you can then sort of go and play around with other things.

But being converted, becoming a Christian, is rather like getting married. There's only one way to become a Christian and that is to say to God as you would in a marriage service, forsaking all others, being faithful to you as long as we both shall live. It's exclusive.

This marriage of God to his people, well, we've read about how it was going. We'll see the stages through which it went. The first one is that of devotion, verses two and three.

I remember, says the Lord, the devotion of your youth. And the Lord God obviously had very fond memories of those early years when Israel was his blushing young bride and how radiantly happy she was to be married to him. And all right, they had their ups and downs early on in their marriage, but the proof of her love for him was that she would go anywhere to be with him, even across the backside of a desert, even across the Sinai Peninsula as we know it now.

I remember hearing a man say that when he first went out with his wife, he would have walked around the British Museum in spiked boots for six hours at a time just to be with her. And love is like that, isn't it? There's no security in a desert where these people went with God. And when you started out in the Christian life, there was no other security for you.

There was no one to fall back on apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, even though it wasn't always easy, your circumstances were difficult and that's perhaps why you became a Christian. You were just so happy.

It was ecstasy. And with him and you, well, nobody else really seemed to matter, but you'd go anywhere with him. Settling down to a good job and good money, mortgage, wife, kids, that didn't seem so important when you started out in the Christian life.

Prayer was a dream. You wanted everybody to hear about him and it didn't take anything for you to talk about your Lord. If he'd called you to be a missionary in the jungle, you would have gone just like that.

You couldn't get over his love for you. Even though he is the living God and you, well, you're just little you. You were holiness unto the Lord, as the phrase used of Israel.

Set apart for him to be his and his alone. You didn't want it any other way. And anyone who touched you, touched the apple of his eye and he wouldn't stand for it.

And you may still be there. Hallelujah, if you are. Or you may be on your second or third or fourth or fifth or sixth honeymoon.

Well, praise God if that's the way. But there are so many ways to leave your lover, aren't there? As Paul Simon said, 50. There are so many ways to take our leave of God.

That's what these people had done. And devotion gave way to dryness. Verses 4 to 13, the first part of verse 13.

When a marriage goes ordinary, it's a very sad thing. God was at a loss to explain why his marriage had gone dry. Is it me? Have I done something to upset you? That's what he says here, isn't it, in verse 5. What fault did your fathers find in me that they strayed so far from me? If you're a long way away from me at the moment, if you're feeling dry towards me, at least let's talk about it.

Perhaps there was a time when you started to find fault with God. But you thought, well, perhaps I'm not so sure about this after all. Being a Christian is cramping my style a little bit.

It's a bit limiting. I see now it's not all fun and games. There are tough times as well.

I don't feel quite so great about God. I asked him for this and I didn't get it. The Lord says to you, let me just ask you one question.

Have I ever been unfair to you? Have I ever given you less than you deserve, in other words? If you can say, yes, God, you have been unfair to me, maybe you have a point. But I doubt whether you could put your hand on your heart. In fact, I'm sure you couldn't and say that.

God has been wonderfully merciful to you. Otherwise, you wouldn't be still sitting here this evening. Not only is there fault finding, but there is forgetfulness.

You can always tell if someone is in love, can't you? Because they think about their man or their woman all the time. You've met that girl who's had perhaps other men on the scene of her life, but this one is different. You know that this one is different because she talks about him all of the time.

Even if she's rather more coy, then she can't help his name slipping into the conversation. She wants to talk about him, even if she's a little embarrassed. When she does, then her eyes are aglow.

This is a test of how much you really think of God, how much God means to you, how much time do you spend thinking about him. And the Lord says with great pain later on in this chapter, verse 32, does a maiden forget her jewellery, her bride, her wedding ornaments? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number, days on end. Some people think more of their wardrobe than my people do of me, and that hurts.

That hurts God. Sometimes we tend to think that if I forget God, well, that'll harm me in some way, and undoubtedly it will sooner or later. But how much do we think if I forget God that will hurt God? That's very daring language, isn't it? But it's the whole feel of this chapter.

And you know, to take your leave of God, you don't have to do anything. All you have to do is just forget him, and prayer becomes the first thing that gets squeezed out. And before you know where you are, you're on the slippery slope down to this verse, where God has to say of you, you've forgotten me, days on end, haven't heard from you.

There are some people here this evening, although they come here every week, morning and evening, perhaps it's a habit that's built up, they haven't actually had a quiet time alone with God for months, for years. And this leads to a terrible dryness. Maybe that's where you are today.

This sort of twin core, this flex of fault-finding and forgetfulness has got you into this position where your Christian life is going nowhere, where it seems to mean very little to you anymore, and if you don't do anything about it, you've got big trouble ahead of you. Now, if you're here this evening, please recognise that this isn't a game, I'm not preaching as a game, I'm preaching here God's words to you, because he wants you back, and he doesn't want to see you slipping any further. Some lovely words of a bishop of the last century, he wrote this, God never loves us more than when we handle him with numb fingers.

And even if you can't really feel God at the moment, go back to him, sooner or later you will feel him again, you'll feel the impulse of his love stirring your heart, and once again your emotion will swell in tune with the love of God to you. Let's look thirdly at what happens next to these people, it's desertion, the second part of verse 13 to verse 25. As with marriages, when they actually come to breaking down, it's normally because the man or the woman walks out for another man or another woman.

There are two sins here in verse 13, the Lord says, my people have committed two sins, they have forsaken me, number one, the spring of living water, and number two, they have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. And sin number two almost invariably always follows on from sin number one. Now my parents are of Sussex stock and from so high they used to take me walking on the downs, the great hills of the south country as Hilaire Belloc I think called them, perhaps they rather overstated it.

But you know the south downs are made of the same stuff that the hills of Palestine are made of, limestone, though the downs are rather a softer version, chalk. But water goes straight through limestone and to counteract this in the last century the shepherds on the downs, they constructed a number of small reservoirs, saucer-like pools where they could store water and these are known as dew ponds for some reason, though they wouldn't be very full if they were filled up with dew I can tell you. And on this chalk surface they would lay a layer of clay which is impermeable, doesn't let the water through and then over that there would be a protective layer of flint and if you're walking up on the downs you can still see many of these pools, most of them are empty.

You see the trouble is you only need one hairline crack in your dew pond and it's like pulling the plug out and all the water drains away just when you most need it. Now is this true of your life? You've deserted God and you've spent actually quite a lot of your time and energy hacking out some other kind of dew pond, some other kind of cistern to hold some water, but it's leaky and even if it's not leaking now I can tell you it will leak sooner or later. If you worship your children that's all right until they grow up and leave home and don't want mum and dad around much of the time.

If you worship your career that's all right until they grow up that's all right until you peak then they move you sideways and some upstart comes and leapfrogs over you. If you worship your intellect some people do that's all right till you go senile. If you worship your home well let me tell you that the value of your home is leaking away even now, not worth what it was six months ago you know.

None of these things hold water and the test of any God that you've put up in your life is will it help you when you hit trouble, when you hit bereavement, when illness comes on you, is it going to be of any use to you then? And will you find tragically that you've moved away from God, the overflowing and the ever-flowing stream who could have helped you and would help you? You've done a bad deal if that's the way, you've traded in your glory for some naff idol, now how does that appeal to you, you businessmen? That's what God says here, followed worthless idols become worthless themselves. If you worship unreal things you will become unreal, if you worship useless things you will become useless. Now it's just an awful thought that you could knock God off the number one spot of your life, that's just terrible isn't it? Put someone else there instead, put something else on the top spot.

Even the heavens shudder when they look down on such a thing, even the sun blushes says Jeremiah. Be appalled, oh you heavens, shudder with great horror declares the Lord, verse 12. For Israel their sin involved sex, it may be that your sin and departing from the Lord also involves sex.

If you read from verses 23 onwards you'll see that it's really quite explicit. The Lord says you're like a dromedary, that's really a high-speed camel, they cover a hundred miles a day on a good day, when this camel is on heat it might even cover more, sniffing at the wind and then she's off. Now it's not only TV evangelists who fall for sex, it's a craving that always returns when your craving for God begins to die down.

These people had got to a point where they had said well it's no use, verse 25b, it's no use I love foreign gods, I must go after them, I'm addicted to love. But that's no excuse for God, it's no use is no excuse, you can't say that this side of hell. If you're trapped in some sex sin there is a way out, God is quite adamant about that and he wants you back.

Desertion, that's the third stage. The fourth stage is disaster, verses 26 to 37, disaster. And the Lord is saying to his people don't think that if you desert me in this way you will get away with it, I won't allow you to get away with it because I love you too much.

And he says you'll be like a professional housebreaker getting caught in the act, verse 26, as a thief is disgraced when he is caught so the house of Israel is disgraced. Now you know this happened at the Tab just a couple of weeks ago, late on Saturday evening, Karen looked out of her flat over here, the Tabernacle flat, and she saw a couple of men shinning up the big black gate, the iron gate, and they got onto the roof by our creche and then in through an open window into the office block just opposite to our own offices. Well Karen put in a quick 999 call and you'll know most of you that the police station is only a couple minutes around the corner and there were these men caught red-handed.

And you know when professional housebreakers get caught in spite of what you might think by looking at some movies they don't say oh fair cop gov, they're too embarrassed to say anything, it's a terrible terrible shame to them. And if you're on this road to destruction you might get caught in the same way, you will get caught because God won't allow you to get away with it, how are you going to feel then? It is a road to destruction, a road to hell if you like, a road which takes in a number of stages on the way, damaged emotions, deep depression, wrecked relationships, all of these stages which are catastrophe which spell disaster for God's people when they desert him. As Tony was saying this morning, when we meet so many we just have to sigh and say if only, if only that man, if only that woman had followed the way of God they wouldn't be in this mess now.

These people had got to a state and a condition which can only really be described in one word, instability. This is verse 36, the Lord says to them why do you go about, why do you get about so much changing your ways? Why are you here one moment, there the other, all over the shop? You see when you get to this stage, when disaster comes upon you and strikes you then all kinds of confused messages begin to come out. Let's look at the one moment, why do you bring charges against me? They were getting all stroppy with God, why have you done this to me God, why have you let me get into this mess? And yet in the next minute they were being all pally with God.

Verse 4 of chapter 3, have you not just called to me my father, my friend from my youth, will you always be angry? Sort of sidling up to God. Verse 25, one minute these people are saying well I know I've been into all this but I just can't help myself, it's no use, got to go after foreign gods. And the next minute, verse 35 of chapter 2, they're protesting their innocence, you say I'm innocent, he's not angry with me.

Then one minute these people are saying to God, verse 31, we are free to roam. Why do these people say we are free to roam? We will come to you no more, never going back to you God. And the next minute there they are, siding up to him, all creepy, all these confused messages when disaster hits.

Now do you recognize yourself? Somebody here who will, all these confused thoughts about God, one moment wanting to get close to him, the other moment turning around to blame him. Well the next stop after this on the line, the next place at the bottom of the hill is divorce. Chapter 3 opens with divorce, chapter 2 opens with devotion.

Well that's a very gloomy and bleak picture isn't it? So what are the positive signs here in this chapter? Because God surely wouldn't have said this if he just thought well that's too bad, there's no way out. You know throughout this chapter there are escape routes and this holds out hope for you this evening no matter where you are on this slippery slope, if you are on this slope. You know escape routes don't you? Perhaps if you've driven down Porlock Hill, that trunk road which goes down a one in four gradient, you will know that there are sand tracks up the hill where you can steer off if your brakes fail.

And here in this chapter I think there are three escape routes, there are these three ways back to God no matter where you are and they come at each of our stages which we have outlined in our headings. But at each of these escape routes really means asking the right questions and this isn't always easy because you know when we take leave of our God all of our senses and faculties are affected and one of the things that happens when we take leave of God is that we find it very difficult to think straight and so here is the word of God helping us to think straight this evening. Now if you're at the dryness stage this evening the thing you have to ask yourself is there in verses six and verse eight and it's this, where is the Lord? Where is the Lord? Have you asked that recently? You know it's a good exercise to review your life from time to time.

Okay, you've been through it but God has brought you through it hasn't he? You have come through the deserts and the dark places, just think where you were say ten years ago and where you are now and God has pieced all of your life together in a most wonderful and remarkable way and if you thought about it you would just be overwhelmed with a sense of debt and obligation to him for what he's done to you. Where is God? Cast your mind back to your honeymoon period with the Lord. Remember the height from which you've fallen as Jesus says to a new testament church.

You know God has amazing control of his memory and he expects you to develop that faculty as well to be able to control your memory to remember the good times you had with him. Where is the blessedness I knew when first I knew the Lord? Where is the soul refreshing view of Jesus and his word? Where is it? Where are you Lord? I want you back. I do remember when I think about those times and I want you back and I want those times back.

Where is the Lord now? In your decisions about your future, in the things that grab your attention in the present. Where is the Lord? It's a question that the elders of the church have to ask also when the church goes through a period of dryness and barrenness. That's part of the problem the leaders of the community here we're not asking that question verse 8. Where is the Lord? Where is he? Where are you Lord? If you're dry this evening are you going to go back into your room and say where are you Lord? Where is the Lord? Where is the blessedness I knew? I want it back Lord.

That's the first escape route. The second escape route is at the stage of desertion. Desertion verse 19 and it's this.

Ask yourself when you have taken your leave of God am I really happy? Christian which have been the happiest days of your life? Are you happy? As happy now as you were then? If you're honest I think you'd have to say no I'm not. I'm hyped up now. I'm edgy now.

I'm getting weary of it all. See the trouble is that once you know the Lord Jesus Christ he sort of spoils you for anything else. Nothing else that you sort of go into can ever have the effect that he has had on you when you knew his love and you knew that you were close to him.

Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the Lord your God and have no awe of me declares the Lord the Lord Almighty. Ask yourself am I really happy? But you might be further on than that. You might be at the disaster stage.

Well the question you have to ask yourself is here in verse 30 and it's this. Why is this happening to me? The Lord says in vain I punished your people. They did not respond to correction.

Now the first reaction that most people have when their world caves in is to blame God. That's just what Israel did. They were all for pressing charges against God.

But I have to tell you acting as your solicitor in this case that I doubt very much doubt whether you will win if you bring a case against God. In fact I'm positive that you will lose. There is no point in feeling that way because God is not in the wrong.

Let me ask you another question in return. It's not my question it's God's question to you tonight. If you are in a disastrous situation at the moment.

If your world has fallen in. I wouldn't dare ask you this but the Lord does. He says to you haven't when you consider it when you're honest haven't you really brought all this trouble on yourself? Isn't that the problem? At least you've brought a good proportion of it on yourself.

Yes it's true I've punished you. I do punish people. Punish them because I want them back.

It's a bit of a fine balance really. In some ways it's your backsliding that has rebuked you and your wickedness that has punished you. But on the other hand I have not stopped that.

And that's because I wasn't prepared to see you carry on the way you were. So in some ways yes you're right I am responsible for the mess that you're in at the moment. But it's because I love you.

Now are you going to take my discipline or are you not? I know it's painful. I know it's hard. But are you going to take it? I read this last week after the recent earthquake in San Francisco.

A man who wrote of the people of that city. Their smugness has prompted more than one visitor to depart remarking that they could do with a good shaking. They have had one and it has not changed them.

Threatened with one more the big one they dig deeper foundations lay down stronger footings and stay where they are. If you've had a shaking just recently from the Lord it would be an absolute disaster for you would it not if you dug in your heels and stayed where you were until the big one comes. Please don't do it.

Come back to him now. Admit that God has dealt with you justly but you have no cause for complaint against him. Tell him that you are going to respond to this discipline of love which he's showing to you so painfully at this time and God has people back.

That's the wonderful thing about our God even at this stage even at the disaster stage. Now just before we close let me say that wherever you are on the slope or whether you're at the honeymoon period praise God if that is so then you have far more hope than the people to whom Jeremiah preached. Maybe you're here this evening and you say well I could never actually keep the Christian life up.

The story that I've had explained to me this evening would be the story of my life if I became a Christian but no you have every hope you have every chance if we can put it that way because you see the Lord knew that it would take far more than a young preacher Jeremiah conveying his words to a people who were faithless to actually win them over and to keep them for good. So they would be faithful to him all of their life. He realized that though people might respond when they heard these words in the immediate term in the longer term they would be back running after all of these things which so glittered before their eyes and drew their attention and and devotion and God provided a way of keeping you and he instituted a new covenant a new marriage covenant with a new people and Jeremiah himself was privileged to be able to see God's plans for this new marriage covenant that would come later on which would mean that not only would God be faithful but that his bride his people would be faithful too and so in Jeremiah chapter 31 verses 31 forward we have the most remarkable words of hope in this book.

The time is coming declares the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah it will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt because they broke my covenant though I was a husband to them declares the Lord. Now this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after that time declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God and they will be my people. A new marriage covenant between the Lord and his people seal in the blood of his own dear precious son when the Lord Jesus died on the cross at Calvary and a law written into the minds and on the hearts of his people so that God would do something in his people in you and me when we follow and trust him so that we would want to want him. We would want to stay with him.

We would want to be faithful to him for as long as we shall live on this earth and that's the covenant that now pertains. That's why you have every hope of staying faithful to the Lord Jesus if you give your life to God to him this evening. That's actually the covenant that we should be remembering this evening in just a little while as we come around this table as we take the bread and drink the wine which seals the covenant which the living God has made through the Lord Jesus Christ with those of his people who have come into this marriage relationship with him.

Let's just have a moment of quiet. Think where you are this evening, what action you need to take, what escape route you might need to go drive up at this particular point in time. If you need to take one of those routes, do it.

so you