While we confess that God is always enough for us here in our worship time, and as we come together as the church in general, there are times when this affirmation can seem to slip away from us; slip away from our hearts and our lives both practically and confessionally.
It is just as easy as the lie from last week, that you are not enough. This sneaks into our lives and it begins to help us create a distance between us and everyone that we have come to trust and rely upon—God included.
At times this is a deliberate choice; we don’t want to be faithful. We don’t want to grow as Christians. And we call those times moments of sin and backsliding in our faith. We just don’t want to build our relationship with God and deepen what God began in us. . . for perhaps God is not enough for us right now. As odd as that might sound. But is it that odd?
Yet in the oddness of this confession or statement, we find the people of Jeremiah 2 hearing a message that would affirm our feelings. That while God is wonderful; and God’s presence is healing and in God we find wholeness. There are times when we confess, in one form or another that God is not enough for us. And so, we make a choice to remedy that conclusion—just as the people who heard Jeremiah’s letter in chapter 2, made a choice.
Today I want to consider this concept of exchanging God’s glory for something that does not profit and instead harms us. Jeremiah will tell us this is an appalling sin. The prophet will state that this is like putting water in cracked, broken, cisterns, or as Jesus would say, it is like putting new wine into old wineskins. It does not work. Yet if this was not something that the people in Jeremiah’s day, and in our day, are guilty of doing, then it would not have been included in God’s word for us to consider.
So, let’s try and understand it so that we can choose to avoid it.
Move 1- exchanging Gods
Our text comes to a head in verse 11 with God speaking. The Lord has gathered the people together. Multiple generations are present to hear what is about to be said. We can imagine that no one knows the gravity of what is about to shared, and then it happens. God wonders if a nation has ever changed its gods?
And while the question seems rhetorically curious, and unnecessary. Who would do such a thing? What people would act like this? By God asking it, the question lands in the lap of anyone who hears these words. Now there will be deniers and doubters. The people will look around and with their eyes, they will say, ‘he’s not talking to me.’
But there can be little mistake here. God is talking to all those people who have gathered. . . the generations who stand before the Lord. Us included. Have they, have we, exchanged the glory of God for something that does not profit.
For God’s own people. God’s covenanted people. The people that God called, the ones that God protected and set apart, they are guilty of this behavior.
The exchange that is happening here occurs 27 times in the Old Testament. And all 27 times that it takes place between God and humanity it is always negative. This is the substitution of something holy, something wonderful, something given by God to us, for something that we elevate as better. And like I said, it is always a less-than exchange. It is as if we know better and when the scale is balanced, it is not balanced at all.
Are we guilty of looking at the greatness of God, the wonder of God, and then deciding that we will work, and live, and act on our own? Do we pretend that the nature of who God is, and what God calls us to be and become, does not apply?
That is what it means to attempt the exchange of God.
It’s not truly a choice, but it is one that God sees His own people, like us, make time and again.
Move 2- Looks like?
In just a few short verses I imagine the stuffing, the air, has been taken out of the people who stood before Jeremiah’s message hoping to hear God offer them a word of hope.
But for how long? How long will any of us have to wait to hear some good news from God?
That is truly the challenge that we face when we read Jeremiah, or any of the other prophets, and we are confronted with their strong message—a message that in its passion should draw us into introspection and consideration. We feel the gut-punch of exchanging the truth of God for something that is of lesser value, but then we leave worship, or we put down our Bible, or we say Amen to the prayer, and we hope to go back to our lives, and we hope that the conviction can end.
But this text tells me, that it should not be this way.
Jeremiah 2 will continue after verse 13. The tempo will pick rise, and it will slow. God will speak over and over again to the people, the church, in verses 19, 22, and 29. . . and God will keep on speaking to them asking them to make a change in their lives and return to a life of faithfulness. God will ask them, and us, to recall what the Lord has done to save us and what God has taught us.
But will any of us continue to listen?
Will they, will we, take the message with its passion and will we listen? And more than listen will we heed and make the necessary changes?
Outside of today’s pericope, God will repeatedly say that we have brought this upon ourselves (verse 17), and as we hear this, we will point at others and say, ‘ah it’s those people. It’s that behavior right there that is causing all of this. They are the ones who are not enough. . . oh wait did I just say that.’
But that thought process, and choice, does not get to the root of the problem. We like to push away the conviction that we repeatedly exchange the glory, the goodness, the presence of God for something that does not profit rather than wonder about where the places in your daily life are where you exchange the goodness of God for goodness of a god that you create and elevate.
And so, when we wonder, ‘well, what does it look like? Or what were the people in Jeremiah’s day doing?’ I can say, they were living like we live right now.
Move 3- worthless
And as we live as the people who heard Jermiah 2 firsthand lived, we turn back in our text to the beginning to see the fruit of this choice. . . And we notice that exchanging the glory of God harms our identity and our value. It makes us: worthless.
The verb that Jeremiah employs it exposes the human pursuit that lack of substance. Becoming idolatrous. A sense of misplaced trust. In scripture, every time this verb is used it is placed in stark contrast to the steadfast character, and word of the Lord, which underscores the futility of turning from God to anything else. Why turn away from God when God is so perfect and so good for us? This choice, this turning, the exchange of our text, it defines us worthless when compared to goodness and perfection of God.
For idolatry is self-destruction. Deceptive speech always hurts us, and it hurts our relationship with God and each other. We are not secure here on earth when compared to the wonder of our heavenly inheritance that God offers to us as we are faithful.
According to Jeremiah, we become worthless as we exchange the goodness of God for the goodness of a god that we create and elevate into the place in our lives and heart that only God should hold onto.
Conclusion
So, as we leave behind the power of Jeremiah’s call in chapter 1, and the trading of God’s in chapter 2, we are left to wonder about the places and moments in our day where we live in this way. What does it look like in your life and how might God be asking you to root that out so that you can continue to grow your faith and share in the work of discipleship in this community?
DM
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