"For my people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me,
The fountain of living waters,
To hew for themselves cisterns,
Broken cisterns,
That can hold no water."
That's from the second chapter of Jeremiah. There's 52 chapters in Jeremiah.....66 in Isaiah. Do you think that God gave these books and the rest of the prophets only to Judah and Israel....that for us they are only something where we might glean some good history and maybe an idea or two? We in America might want to look at England to see how a once honorable and mighty nation can fall without a whimper? The church in England.....not the Church of England but almost the entire church in England collapsed after many warnings....given over many years at the end of the 19th century....by men such as Charles Spurgeon and J. C. Ryle....and the nation followed afterwards.
These books....and all of the Old Testament.....are every bit as much for us as they were for Jerusalem and Judah and Israel. How do I know this? We've forsaken God.....and we have hewn for ourselves broken cisterns. "Make America Great Again' is a broken cistern. This 2nd chapter of Jeremiah is but one chapter of many chapters from numerous books that God gave to us to read....and thereby to live....and sometimes to prepare for judgments about to take place. Jeremiah himself follows with 36 similar chapters to this! When is the last time that you read Micah....or Malachi.... or Zechariah....or any of the prophets? We have no excuse! The Bible is probably ten feet or so away from where the readers of these posts sit.
We are no different than God's people in that day. Yet we consider ourselves so advanced....as they probably did! Our brains function the same way....we have the same evil desires....we think that we can put God somewhere that He cannot see us as they did....and guess what.....they thought that God wasn't angry with them either!
So where does Jeremiah take us in just the rest of chapter two? (and folks this is no special chapter concerning us in America.....it's just the chapter that I happened to be reading as I started back into Jeremiah again....I could have been reading any of the other prophets and written this post) Well God said that in their time of trouble....Judah's time of trouble in this case....that they will cry out to Him to "Arise and save us".....but God would say to them......"But where are your gods that you have made for yourself.....for the Lord has rejected those in whom you trust, and you shall not prosper with them."
Friends....open these books with the genuine desire to hear what God is saying to us....and you will see just how far we have fallen....and you might even weep like Jeremiah...in fact you haven't really read Jeremiah unless you have wept....but you may also see something else that will astonish you. You thought that God was great and powerful? Think again....the god you thought so great....(in far too many cases in America)....was our own man-fashioned god.....not so weak that he can't save us when we die....which we think is too far ahead to even really worry about....but then again not so strong that He might really mean what He said to Judah and Israel.
They have forsaken Me,
The fountain of living waters,
To hew for themselves cisterns,
Broken cisterns,
That can hold no water."
That's from the second chapter of Jeremiah. There's 52 chapters in Jeremiah.....66 in Isaiah. Do you think that God gave these books and the rest of the prophets only to Judah and Israel....that for us they are only something where we might glean some good history and maybe an idea or two? We in America might want to look at England to see how a once honorable and mighty nation can fall without a whimper? The church in England.....not the Church of England but almost the entire church in England collapsed after many warnings....given over many years at the end of the 19th century....by men such as Charles Spurgeon and J. C. Ryle....and the nation followed afterwards.
These books....and all of the Old Testament.....are every bit as much for us as they were for Jerusalem and Judah and Israel. How do I know this? We've forsaken God.....and we have hewn for ourselves broken cisterns. "Make America Great Again' is a broken cistern. This 2nd chapter of Jeremiah is but one chapter of many chapters from numerous books that God gave to us to read....and thereby to live....and sometimes to prepare for judgments about to take place. Jeremiah himself follows with 36 similar chapters to this! When is the last time that you read Micah....or Malachi.... or Zechariah....or any of the prophets? We have no excuse! The Bible is probably ten feet or so away from where the readers of these posts sit.
We are no different than God's people in that day. Yet we consider ourselves so advanced....as they probably did! Our brains function the same way....we have the same evil desires....we think that we can put God somewhere that He cannot see us as they did....and guess what.....they thought that God wasn't angry with them either!
So where does Jeremiah take us in just the rest of chapter two? (and folks this is no special chapter concerning us in America.....it's just the chapter that I happened to be reading as I started back into Jeremiah again....I could have been reading any of the other prophets and written this post) Well God said that in their time of trouble....Judah's time of trouble in this case....that they will cry out to Him to "Arise and save us".....but God would say to them......"But where are your gods that you have made for yourself.....for the Lord has rejected those in whom you trust, and you shall not prosper with them."
Friends....open these books with the genuine desire to hear what God is saying to us....and you will see just how far we have fallen....and you might even weep like Jeremiah...in fact you haven't really read Jeremiah unless you have wept....but you may also see something else that will astonish you. You thought that God was great and powerful? Think again....the god you thought so great....(in far too many cases in America)....was our own man-fashioned god.....not so weak that he can't save us when we die....which we think is too far ahead to even really worry about....but then again not so strong that He might really mean what He said to Judah and Israel.
