11-5-2014

  Good Morning All,

       Jeremiah 2:13; “My people have done two things wrong.  They have abandoned me, the fountain of life-giving water.  They have also dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that can’t hold water.”

    I remember reading a sign at a repair shop.  It said that labor was $50 per hour, $60 per hour if you watched them fix, $75 per hour if you offered advice and $125 per hour if you tried to fix it first.  This repairman had tried to repair too many of someone else’s “fixes”.  Why do we insist on fixing things on our own?  Usually, we think we can do as good a job, or better, then the man who is trained in this task.  We may want to save a little money or time but in the end we do neither.

    Our verse speaks to people trying to fix their own problems.  In this verse God is speaking to his prophet Jeremiah and telling him what his people (Israel) had done wrong.  First they left the true God then they made their own false gods and lost everything.  So what made them do this? The same reason we do it; sin causes us to do things that always end badly.

    What leads us to abandon God?  Sometimes it is fear.  We look at the world and the events as they occur and we wonder how God can possibly resolve the problem at hand.  Often when we look at the size of our problems instead of the size of our God; we tend to see fear.  When we look at the size of the wave instead of the size of the master’s hand, fear can rule our hearts.  Fear can cause us to seek our own strength, to dig our own wells (cisterns), that is to seek our own path and soon we find that our path is disastrous.    

    Sometimes it is the lack of patience.  We think that God doesn’t move fast enough.  So we think we can fix it fast and better than God is willing to provide.  So we follow our own path, dig our own cisterns, rather than trust the true God to provide for us the true life-giving water. 

    Sometimes it is because we think that our way is better and faster.  This might come from the idea that someone is “ahead” of us.  We might be jealous of those around us.  Our selfish greed leads us down a path that only hurts us.  Instead of the life-giving water, we have dug a worthless cistern that only holds our false beliefs.  This cistern will always fail; it will crumble when the stresses of struggles arrive.  Only when we rely on God’s strength and love can we withstand the assaults of the devil. 

    God gives us the power to withstand the devil’s attacks.  He strengthens us so that the battles of this world will not defeat us.  Yet we must have faith in him and his grace.  We cannot go after our own selfish or foolish path.  We cannot dig our own cistern and expect to find God’s life-giving water.  This wonderful gift only comes from God the true source of all that is good.

Gracious God, you are our only source of hope.  Keep us from straying or looking to our selfishness as our guide.  Keep us firm in your gracious and loving arms.  Be with those who have found that the cisterns they have dug and now are empty of hope may hear your words of comfort and forgiveness.  Redeem them by your mercy.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret