Caught with Our Hands in the Cookie Jar

We all know what it means to be "caught with our hand in the cookie jar." It means that we were doing something we knew was forbidden...we just thought we could get away with it. That's the situation God addresses in Jeremiah 3. The sister kingdoms of Israel and Judah have both been guilty of putting their hands into the "cookie jar" of idolatry.

As I read this chapter, it strikes me that God's wrath was NOT primarily stirred up because of the idolatry...but because of the DENIAL of the idolatry. Consider the following pronouncements from God:

You say..."I haven't worshiped the images of Baal!" But how can you say that? Go and look in any valley in the land! Face the awful sins you have done. (2:23)

Israel is like a thief who feels shame only when he gets caught. They, their kings, officials, priests, and prophets--all are alike in this. (2:26)

Your clothing is stained with the blood of the innocent and the poor, though you didn't catch them breaking into your houses! And yet you say, "I have done nothing wrong. Surely God isn't angry with me!" But now I will punish you severely because you claim you have not sinned. (2:34-35)

Then the LORD said to me, "Even faithless Israel is less guilty than treacherous Judah! Therefore, go and give this message to Israel. This is what the LORD says: 'O Israel My faithless people, come home to Me again, for I am merciful. I will not be angry with you forever. Only acknowledge your guilt. Admit that you have rebelled against the LORD your God...Confess that you have refused to listen to My voice. I, the LORD, have spoken.'" (3:11-13)

Reading from the vantage point of hundreds of thousands of years after Jeremiah, I must ask myself: Has anything really changed? Don't we, as the modern day people of God, all too often deny our own Sin? Aren't our pulpits all too often filled with bold and prophetic denouncements of the sins of non-believers (and other believers) while a deafening silence regarding our own communal sins continues to hinder our prayers and our witness to a dying world?

Currently, American society is still the most religious of the industrialized nations. However, recent surveys have shown that non-belief in modern America is on the rise. The saddest part of this, in my opinion, is that I don't believe this is an inevitable trend. While materialism surely plays a part in this trend, no less does fickle and shallow Christianity. I would suggest to you that the numbers of unbelievers are growing not because our claims are so fantastic...but because our lives are, all too often, so un-credible.

It is my prayer that God is refining His people during this time...that the chaff is being burned away, and that He is forcing both individual Christians and churches to face who we truly are. I know that there are those who are (and always have been) true to the LORD. (Even in Jeremiah's day, at least there was Jeremiah.) But I also know that far too many of us have sold out our ethics and our faith for...what? popularity? money? corporate and/or political advancement? Even as this has happened, we have continued (just as people of Jeremiah's day) to surround ourselves with the external trappings of faith, in the vain attempt to keep up the delusion of our own sanctity. We build buildings. We start programs. We pack venues with thousands of people. We turn up the music. We turn down the lights. We market our faith. We insist upon only hearing "positive messages" and we will brook no prophet in our midst who might challenge our self-absorption. Despite our most strenuous efforts, however, deep in our spirits we know things are not as well as we would like to claim. When will we return to our LORD? When will we "acknowledge our guilt and return to our LORD"? He remains merciful to this day. His greatest desire is that we will come home to Him again.

I ask all of you who read this to pray for me, that I will return home to my Father; And if you too find yourself in the midst of pigs, what say you return with me?

-- justin

Undo by Rush of Fools

Glass Ceilings and Cracked Cisterns

The oracle in Jeremiah chapter two is quite long. As such, there’s a lot to be gained from meditating upon it. I hope that you will have opportunity to do so this week. What I’d like to address in the devotional is what I see as the core of chapter two: abandoning God.

Sadly, we’re all too familiar with the suffering of abandoned children. We know the empty look in their eyes…and the even emptier feeling in their hearts. There is little that is more torturous than feeling oneself unloved and unappreciated. Jeremiah reveals to us that it is just this sort of pain that God Himself suffers when His people abandon Him to place their trust in other “gods” (i.e., other things)

According to Jeremiah, the people had committed two fundamental evils: They have abandoned Me—the Fountain of Living Water; And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all! (2:13) In the midst of the current economic crisis, I fear that many Christians are discovering that they too have placed their trust in cracked cisterns.

Too often, we allow our faith to degenerate into a product to be marketed, rather than a radical counter-cultural call to be lived out. We expect to be popular…not holy. Eventually, however, the cracked cisterns that we have relied upon to keep us afloat drain out, and we find ourselves at the bottom of a deep pit.

It is my prayer that all of us who find ourselves at the bottom of a cracked cistern now, will respond to this time of privation and testing by restoring our worship of the one true Fountain. So that future generations will not look back on us some day an apply Jeremiah’s pithy and pitiable assessment: They worshiped worthless idols, only to become worthless themselves. (2:4)

-- justin

Memory Verse

Picture of an empty cistern

Additional Thought/Discussion Questions

1. What does 2:8 suggest about the role of leadership (both political and religious) in the abandonment of God? Is it even possible for a large group to abandon God without the willing compliance of the group leadership?

2. How does God’s self-identification as the “Fountain of Living Water” (2:13) relate to Jesus’ promise to the woman at the well to give her “living water” (John 4:10; see also John 7:36-38)

3. God’s anguished cry to the people of Jeremiah’s day included these words: …I was the One Who planted you, choosing a vine of the purest stock—the very best. How did you grow into this corrupt wild vine? (2:21) Have you ever made a good start of something in your life, only to see it fall apart…a marriage…a job…a child? What steps do you plan to take in the future to prevent the cycle from repeating?