“Trading in Glory for Brokenness”

Scripture: Jeremiah 2:4-13

Throughout our lives, we have to make decisions:
- Which answer do we pick on tests and quizzes in school
- Which clothes did we choose to wear to church today
- Who will I marry?
- Is 7 enough children?
- Which college should I attend?
- Which job offer should I accept?
Sometimes, our decisions are good ones, and other times, not so good.

Companies also struggle to make the same types of choices – product mix, employee qualifications, the details for mergers and acquisitions, which people to promote, and so on.

And decisions in faith are no different – what does God want me to know, and what does He want me to do about it.

In 1994,the humor magazine Funny Times, reported on some very strange decisions that some companies, and their customers, have made:
In January of that year, Israel's national telephone company initiated a fax service that transmited messages to God via the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
And in May, the Roman Catholic Church unveiled a high-tech confessional at a trade show in Vincenza, Italy, that will accept confessions by fax.
And in December, a sect of the Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, N. Y., began selling its members special beepers so they would know the instant when the Messiah arrives on Earth.
--Funny Times, January 1994, 3.

There was no indication in the article as to how many people have actually taken advantage of these services, or even if they are still available today. Even if they aren't, there are plenty of replacements on the market!

Read Jeremiah 4:4-8

Israel had been given everything - they lived in a land that they didn’t own, ate from vineyards that they didn’t plant, benefitted from victories that they didn’t win, and had a loving God who they didn’t deserve.
And yet, it was all theirs, and all that they were asked to do in return was to give honor and loyalty to the One who had given them so much. But apparently, it was just too much to ask of the people. Their ancestors had forgotten who the Giver was; the priests – the very ones who were charged with preserving the faith – had forgotten the One whose authority they lived within every day; and the people had obediently followed suit.
No one knew the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob any longer. He had become an unnecessary burden from the past, and they had set Him aside.

And I have to say that many people of this day have done the same thing. We want faith to be convenient; we want it to stay on touch with our earthly lives instead of the other way around; and when Jesus begins to interfere with our plans, we declare Him to be irrelevant and deftly step around Him.

Read Jeremiah 4:9-13

As with every decision, there are always the unknown outcomes that will suddenly take on life. Sometimes, the decision brings about unexpected benefits and rewards, but all too often, it’s just the opposite - they cause us great grief. We go for the brass ring, but instead of winning the prize, we wind up falling off our horse! That’s what happened to Israel, and I believe that it is happening again in our world of 2010. We take the easy way out, and expect our life to be everything we could ever hope for. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

Cal Thomas believes that C.S. Lewis had it right: Lewis wrote - If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The apostles themselves, who set out to convert the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English evangelicals who abolished the slave trade, all left their mark on earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven.
It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one.
Aim at heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in.' Aim at earth and you will get neither.
--Cal Thomas, Not of this world, Newsweek, March 29, 1999, 60.

Lewis seems to think that our tendency to place our hopes and dreams in this world is a relatively new concept, but Jeremiah is telling us something totally different. Our reading for today reveals that Israel had been doing the very same thing over 2,500 years ago. The “Easy Way Out” has never been a good choice, and even the “Easy” button in the Staples’ ads doesn’t work as well as we are lead to believe.
Verses 11 & 12 – “But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols. Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror.” We all should be shuddering at this worthless trade, and yet, at times, even the church tends to turn a deaf ear to the clamor.
We don’t want to hear it.
We don’t want to deal with it.
We don’t want the risk of saying anything about it.
But if the faithful don’t, who will? The faithful of Israel didn’t want to confront the hierarchy of their day- whether out of fear or complacency, I don’t know which – but it was allowed to continue unabated until the great Jehovah took matters into His own hands.
And that may not be the best solution for the church of today! It’s time that the Church took a stand, and revealed the truth about trading glory for brokenness, a Redeemer for worthless idols. How do we here in this little country church go about doing that? I don’t know, but maybe we should start talking about it.

Jeremiah leaves us with one final thought – vs. 13 – “They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

The spring of living water is flowing right past every door, but the world is choosing the barren existence of their own leaky pits. We may have chosen the gift of eternity for ourselves, but until we have lead the world to that great and never ending flow, our job will not be complete. We are being called this very day to show others how to reverse their bad deal, and to trade in their brokenness for the glory of Jesus Christ. Will you join me?