Main Thing Podcast
This podcast encourages others to love God and people by leading them to know and follow Jesus’ truth.
Main Thing Podcast
From Temple Worship to Modern Idolatry (Jer. 2:11-13; 7:1-15)
Pastor Steve examines Jeremiah's powerful metaphor about abandoned fountains and broken cisterns, revealing how this warning perfectly mirrors our modern spiritual crisis.
• Ancient Judah's double sin: abandoning God (the living water) while creating their own spiritual solutions (broken cisterns)
• The danger of making the church building or religious activities a substitute for genuine relationship with God
• Modern idols we purchase and prioritize instead of God: cars, boats, possessions, comfort
• How our desire for control leads us to create substitutes for God's lordship in our lives
• The risk of placing political leaders in "messianic" positions while ignoring our need for genuine repentance
• True Christianity evidenced not by religious activities but by the fruit of the Spirit
• The need for humility and confession to restore our relationship with God
Covenant Church
Thank you, reminder for us to recall in today's divisive and dark culture, from foundational truths and scripture to the hot topics of today's culture. Allow this podcast to inspire and motivate you on your faith journey.
Speaker 2:Well, welcome back to the Main Thing podcast. As always, pastor Steve is here to discuss scripture and how that pertains to our lives and how we can keep the main thing the main thing. So, steve, I know last week you guys looked at Jeremiah and so we're going to continue looking a little bit at Jeremiah today. I'm going to read out of Jeremiah, chapter 2 to start us with, and then we'll get going. So Jeremiah 2.13,. He says For my people have committed a double evil. They've abandoned me the fountain of living water and dug cisterns for scripture. But I think we need a little context. Talk a little bit, if you would, about the context of this particular verse. I know I've heard it preached on before, I've heard people reference it. What's the context of what Jeremiah is saying here?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's imagery there that he's giving us what we need to satisfy our souls. God has provided, but we believe and in their case Judah believed they could satisfy their own souls, take care of their own needs, and so the cistern statement is imagery for us to understand that God has provided for us, he has taken care of us, he has brought us through, and then, routinely, what we do is, when times are good, we turn away from Him and try to design our own fate, if you will.
Speaker 2:So it seems to. In this particular context, the people are putting their trust really in two things. They're putting their trust in idols and false gods, but they're also putting their trust in the temple. Yes, now I know here. If somebody asked me, is it important to go to church? Of course I would say absolutely, you need to be in church. How do we, at least in this day and age, how do we put our trust in the church instead of Christ? Kind of like these Israelites are putting their trust in the temple and not that relationship with God.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I think we have to remember that the church is where the building is, where the church gathers. The church is the human beings that God has saved and brought together. The temple is a building. It represents God and the worship of God, but it's not literally God. It's just a building, it's an edifice, and so I think they, when they built the new temple, it became an object of worship. I've seen this in my lifetime when churches have built new sanctuaries, the sanctuary becomes more important than the mission, important than the mission, and so I think we can be just as guilty. Today. Being in church is what we need to be doing absolutely, but being in church without worship of the one true God is a total waste of your day, and so I think Judah had a misplaced loyalty, a misplaced affection, if you will.
Speaker 2:So another thing that went along with that is this idea of false gods or idols. What were some of the idols at that time period that Jeremiah's dealing with that people might have put their faith in?
Speaker 3:Well, they often fashioned their own idols. That's why the silversmiths hated the Apostle Paul he was getting into their pocket. But even in the Old Testament they tend to make their own gods. It'd be the equivalent today of taking a pottery class and making your own little pottery item and making that your god, worshiping your god. How they could do that after they had seen the power of God exhibited is almost not understandable. But they did and we do the same things today. Our gods are a little different. We usually buy our gods today, but we absolutely worship. You know, we buy automobiles. If somebody scratches them, we want to have a fistfight, because the truth is that automobiles got such a presence in our life, that automobile's got such a presence in our life, such a high place in the pecking order, and that's just one thing, you know. It can be our boats, our camps. I mean we make all kind of things idols in our lives today. We're no different than they were.
Speaker 2:What do you think the draw is to create these idols? Why do we do it?
Speaker 3:I think, because in our sin nature, we all want to be in control of our own lives. This is one of the hardest things for people to come to Christ. If they really count the cost, as Jesus instructed, then they're looking at this understanding that if he is Lord, he is master, at this understanding that if he is Lord he is master. I'm not, and the average human being struggles with this idea that I would give God total control of my life and I wouldn't be in control. And I think theirs was probably the same way. In making their own gods and following their own paths as they saw fit to follow, they felt like they were in control of their lives. So I think that's what leads people to do that.
Speaker 2:I think it's inevitable. When you think you're in control of your life, when you're focused on something that's not eternal, you're focused on something temporary, it's going to lead into a sin pattern.
Speaker 1:I'm guessing yes.
Speaker 2:So in Jeremiah's day you have people living in unrepentant sin. Obviously, we have that happen today. What's the road back from that? In other words, talk about repentance. What does that look like?
Speaker 3:Well, there's a couple of things, one of my fears for America right now and I'll just be very honest I voted for Donald Trump. I think he was by far a better option than the direction we were going, and I like a lot of the things he's doing. He's Trump. He's still saying things that make the world mad, but the policies are important to me. But one of the things that really concerns me is the Christian community. Somehow or another in their minds, have almost made him a quasi-messiah you know where.
Speaker 3:All of a sudden, we're a Christian nation again overnight because Trump went in the White House, and this concerns me, for us, greatly, because we're still living in sin, we're still flipping our finger at God, we're still doing the things we want to do. None of that's changed, and so I personally believe we're still looking, as a country, at the impending judgment of God upon us. He gave Judah every opportunity to straighten it out, and we've had this opportunity for decades now, and I just can't help but believe that we're drawing near to a judgment day in America. So that's one thing. The other thing is that we tend to form our own idea of Christianity. It's not a biblical Christianity. We spend an hour in church on Sunday. You know, we sing the songs, some of us listen to the preaching and we go out and it has no effect or impact on our lives whatsoever, and nothing ever changes on our lives whatsoever, and nothing ever changes. And so we falsely convince ourselves that we're pleasing God because we checked a box or two.
Speaker 2:And so I'm guessing that when we do that, that's how we end up putting a politician in the place of God. That's exactly right. I know I saw in this particular election cycle both sides were convinced their person would fix everything. Yeah, and we have given them so much power they don't have.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:It so reminds me. You know Rich Mullins, who's an awesome guy. He had another song that was fairly obscure. It was on one of his other albums, but it was called Hold Me Jesus. But there was a line in there that has lived rent-free in my head for many years. It says I'd rather fight you for something I don't really want than take what you give that I need. And that line has always really spoken to me, because that speaks to these false idols.
Speaker 3:That's absolutely what's going on in our nation.
Speaker 2:There's so many things we think will make us happy, and they just are not going to do so. So I want to read a few verses here. This is out of Jeremiah, chapter 7. If you would, I'm going to read the verse. You just comment on it, okay. Jeremiah 7, verse 4. It says Do not trust deceitful words chanting this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. The temple of the Lord. Instead, if you really change your ways and your actions, if you act justly toward one another, if you no longer oppress the foreigner, the fatherless, the widow, and no longer shed innocent blood in this place or bringing harm on yourselves, I'll allow you to live in this place, the land I gave your ancestors long ago. What's going on there? What are they doing?
Speaker 3:Maybe a way to say it that we'll understand it today. They were doing religion. They were doing religion, they were following religious rituals and they were checking the box for the times of worship and doing whatever it was the temple was requiring of them at that time, but there was no personal interaction with holy God. It was hollow and I've often said we talked about it a little bit.
Speaker 3:Last week's podcast, Chet, brought up that it seems when we're hurting is when we turn to God. It seems when we're hurting is when we turn to God. And the reality is, until we're in a place where it's just us and God, we tend not to get serious about our relationship with holy God. It's only when we find ourselves in that place we can't control that. All of a sudden we start evaluating is this real? Am I genuine? Is God real? Is he genuine? Can I really know him? And those are legitimate questions. But unfortunately, to really get down, as the old farmer says, to the fodder, down, as the old farmer says to the fodder, get the fodder down to the calf.
Speaker 3:We usually have to be in pain to search those answers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think that's one of the things we don't do well as humans is step back and examine ourselves. Yes yes, and really be honest. Here's another one Jeremiah 7.10. Jeremiah asked the people. He says then do you come and stand before me in this house, call by my name and say we are delivered, so we can continue doing all these despicable acts?
Speaker 3:Again, it's a picture of our world today. We got all kind of people claiming that God does this and that and they have this and that because they trust God. And I think we have to be careful about those things and make sure that something really is the blessing of God on our life, that we're not falsely claiming that. I've told the story before of my pastor friend who was going out to a picnic on an island in a boat with a church member and he had preached on tithing that morning. And the church member said Brother Wayne, the Lord convicted me this morning. As soon as this boat's paid off, I'm going to start tithing and wait. He said that's wonderful, how many payments you got left. He said I just bought, you know. So that's kind of where we are in our affection and dedication to the Lord. You know, we say we love Him, we say we believe, we say he's our Savior, but we continue to do things that scream otherwise.
Speaker 2:You know I love that story. You've told it obviously before, but I've always wondered did that guy say that with a straight face? Yeah, you just got to wonder huh, yeah, it's funny, you know. So that picture in Jeremiah. I think it's a beautiful picture. It pictures people having this clean, fresh water in perfectly good containers and they deliberately choose to pour it out into something broken, so it'll just all spill away.
Speaker 2:So how do we come back from that in 2025, in a world that's very unique to history, I think, this particular time period in life, how do we change? If we are pouring out that living water into the broken cisterns, how do we change?
Speaker 3:Well, for one, I'm not convinced. A lot of people are going to change. We have created a very comfortable Christian environment in America.
Speaker 3:But, furthermore, the only way to change is to humble ourselves, confess our sin and ask God to forgive us and to give us new direction, his direction in the way we would live, the way we'd conduct ourselves, the way we'd do things. You know. So, until we're ready as a church and I'm talking about the corporate church to humble ourselves and to get on our knees before holy God and to beg for forgiveness, I don't know that much will change.
Speaker 2:I know today a lot of the things we'll look at is showing the marks of being a Christian. A lot of those sometimes are kind of outward signs. They listen to Christian radio. They must be a Christian. They go to church, they must be a Christian. You know they dress conservatively. They must be a Christian. But what's the real marks of the cross, so to speak, in your life?
Speaker 3:Well, I think it's the fruit of the Spirit. You know, when someone says, how can you know someone's really a Christian? You often hear well, nobody can really know but God. But I don't think the Bible teaches that the fruit of the Spirit is the evidence that Christ is living in someone. And so you know. You see people who claim to be Christians they mean as a snake. You see people who claim to be Christians and mean as a snake. You see people who claim to be Christians and they steal in from their employer every day. And you can go on and on. But the reality is those are elements in a person's life that scream I'm not a follower. I can't be a follower and live this way, because if you are, we know the Holy Spirit will convict you and that won't last long if you fall into that. And so I believe, when we're God's children, there's certain things Scripture tells us that'll be evidenced in our life, in our behavior, in our thinking, in our speech, in the things we do.
Speaker 2:Well, guys, I appreciate you guys joining us for Main Thing Podcast. We will see you next time, thank you.