Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 12, 2020 | Stand Strong - The Five Steps Away From God

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January 12, 2020 | Stand Strong - The Five Steps Away From God · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's the shortened version.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: And stand strong is our theme for our Jeremiah series.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting, we're doing a Jeremiah challenge.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: We'd like you to join us in reading Jeremiah and Lamentations between now and Easter.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: It'll be four chapters a week.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: This coming week, I challenge you to read chapters five and eight with me and uh do the daily devotionals, if you would.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: They weren't very daily this last week.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: The first floor, I was a little bit behind because I was praying for the Chiefs.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: So just fervently praying.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: My prayers for KU didn't work, so um, yep.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Friend of ours, I took my boys to KU game yesterday where they got spanked.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: And and a friend of ours, uh, Paul Carr texted us and said, would you guys please, please not go to the Chiefs game tomorrow?
0:55
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, because we're bad luck whenever the four of us go, we're we lose.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: So we're um uh today is a very interesting topic.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: We're in a book uh that we're we're doing this challenge two years ago.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: It was the Ezekiel Challenge last year, Isaiah Challenge, this year, Jeremiah Challenge.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll read it with us.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: Theme stands strong.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: This morning's sort of theme, thing I'm gonna talk about, is a perfect, it just comes naturally right out of Jeremiah, five steps away from God.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh there's another possible title.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: I can call it the backslider, but I don't know, sounds like a bad movie.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: Or but it's really uh this is a this the morning is about backsliding.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have heard of the word backslider?
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's make sure we understand what we're talking about.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about lost people.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: You can't slide back if you've never been ahead.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: This is about law, not about lost people, this is about Christians, this is about saved people, this is about people who've been in a relationship with the Lord, and they are now sliding or have slidden away from where they were in that relationship.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: And the wonderful thing is that the Old Testament, as Paul says in Corinthians, is given to us as an example, and the nation of Israel and now the southern two tribes of Judah are a perfect example of our Christian life and the life of the church.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: And when you come to Jeremiah, there are all these pleas with this nation to stop backsliding.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: The word backslide is used in the Bible not very often in the English Bible, I think 17 times used 14 of the 17 in Jeremiah.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: This book is all about backsliding.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: And uh let me just say the temptation we have is to say at this point, okay, backsliding is not being lost.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm not lost, and I'm not a backslider, and at least not like that person I know.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: It's too bad they're not here this morning.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, they need this message.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: So, and I'm convicted the moment I think that by this line from Harry Ironside who said, if you were ever closer to the Lord than you are right now, hear backslid.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to see that quote.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: I just hate that quote.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: No.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: But you know, the truth is that that is true, isn't it?
3:19
SPEAKER_00: You know it's true.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: You know that there was perhaps a time shortly after you came to Christ where you were much more in love with him, much more fervent for him, maybe in worship or in prayer than you are now.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: And some of you know that you would like to be back to the place where you were when your prayers were sweet, when your prayers were fervent, when you had this close relationship with God.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: I pray that this morning will help you in that.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: I pray that it'll help me in that.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: That we'll all realize that backsliding is easy, backsliding is tempting, backsliding is something that God's own beloved people did in the Old Testament.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean you're lost, but it's something you want to stop doing.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
4:00
SPEAKER_00: Typical of Jeremiah is this verse from the chapter we're not looking at.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, look at Jeremiah 2.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Open to Jeremiah 2, turn on your cell phone to Jeremiah 2, at least pretend to be reading Jeremiah 2 while you answer your emails.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: And but Jeremiah 3, verse 22, goes like this: return you backsliding children, King James, and I will heal your backslidings.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: So this is a book about slip sliding away from the Lord that you love.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
4:33
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna talk to you about five steps away from God, or sort of five signposts, or five uh uh significant uh experiences that move you away from God.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you have a Bible, Jeremiah too, I'm just gonna read a couple of verses and then I'm gonna share these five with you.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: It's don't I've got too much material to read the whole chapter and also do this.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: Let's go with um verse 12.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh no, verse, yeah, let's go read verse 10 through 13 with me.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Verse 10, cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and take a look.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Send someone to Kedar and consider carefully.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: See if there's this is God talking, this is God gushing, okay?
5:22
SPEAKER_00: See if there's ever been anything like this.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Has a nation ever exchanged its gods, though they weren't even gods, and yet my people have exchanged their glory, that is, God Almighty, for useless idols.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Be appalled at this, heavens, be shocked and utterly desolated.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord's declaration.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: My people, for my people have committed a double evil.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: They've committed, your translation may say, two crimes.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: One, they have abandoned me, the fountain of living water.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Two, they've dug cisterns for themselves, crack cisterns that cannot hold water.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: We'll get back to this.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about the five steps away from God or the backslider.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: And the moment I say that, I'm sure you immediately, immediately, or I think and think of somebody.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: I think the first time I heard the word backslider is when I was in junior high, middle school is called today, and I went to a church to look.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: The building in sort of downtown Portland, it was a congregational church, looked a lot like this.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: It was smaller, but had stained glass windows and all that stuff.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: And um, and my dad was the choir director, so we were there for a number of years, and the organist who was really gifted, they had a pipe organ and everything, one of these old-fashioned churches.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: The organist was a teenager who all of us, middle school or junior highs, really looked up to.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: His name was Don, and he went to a high school downtown, and he could play the organ.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: He was just amazingly musically gifted, and he was also really smart.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: And as we grew up, he got a scholarship as he was graduating to an Ivy League university, and he went away to that Ivy League University, and we were waiting because he was our hero, and he came back for Christmas, and he seemed like a little bit of a different guy, you know.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: And then he came back for the summer, and he definitely was a different guy, and now he he he stopped playing the organ for the church, and then another year, and then he stopped coming to church very much, and eventually I began hearing, as he was no longer with us, I began hearing that that he had backslidden.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's when I understood that backslidden means that you don't love the Lord the way you used to, that you don't come to church, you don't pray, you don't read, and so forth.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: But wow, you're our whole lives.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: Most of us who've been around for a while have known all kinds of people.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, kids, kids backslide, they come from small towns in Kansas, they go to the big city and they get some professor of religion that convinces them the, you know, that uh, you know, God wasn't needed to create the world and the Bible is full of errors and so forth, and they backslide, but we find all kinds of adults backsliding.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: You know some adults who've just sort of slipped away from God, especially in this modern age of media and 134,000 channels on the television.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: It's easier to stay home from church on Sunday morning.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: The average church attender now used to attend three times a month.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: Now it's down to about 1.75, and you know, and more and more people just sort of slip slide away from God.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: They don't pray as much, they don't read the Bible.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Last summer we heard the famous stories of two famous Christians.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: One, a pastor and a writer who wrote a book called I Kiss Dating Goodbye in July.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Josh Harris came out, said, uh, you know, I've been considering this for some time.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm leaving the church.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe in Christianity anymore, don't believe in any of this stuff.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, um, so forth.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: Well-known Christian guy.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: And then two weeks later, you got Marty Sampson, who's a songwriter and also a worship leader for a huge church called Hillsong Unitsong.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: He was Hillsong United, who he wrote songs for, has eight best-selling Christian albums, and all of a sudden Marty Sampson announces on public magazines and TV that he doesn't buy this anymore, and he just left, he's leaving the faith, and we go, oh my goodness.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Right?
9:27
SPEAKER_00: I remember I remember being so shocked when I was in college, and I went through this span where I had to do something on Sunday morning, but I didn't really want to go to church.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: So uh so I signed up to go down to to Skid Row in a van with about a dozen other college kids and to witness, which seems like a really stupider thing to do than going to church.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: But for me, I was I was bored, tired of going to church.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: So I went down with them and go down Michigan Avenue, and there was Pacific Garden Mission, and it was Skid Row, and 8 to 12 in the morning, all of the bars were closed, so all these guys were lining the streets and sprawled out in the sidewalk.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: And so even in cold mornings, they'd be out there and you'd just walk down for several hours and you'd talk with people.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: And I was stunned and amazed to find out how many of them had been like Sunday school teachers, gone to church.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: They'd tell me their wife and their children still were really fervent Christians and so forth.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: They were alcoholics, and and and I just thought, and they would quote verses to me just to prove it.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, you know, it's just weird, right?
10:28
SPEAKER_00: And you know, these were people who were who truly had believed in Jesus at some time in their life, right?
10:35
SPEAKER_00: And they had slipped away.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: That's that's what we're talking about this morning.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna get into the question of which of those were really Christians and which of those weren't.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm just talking about what Jeremiah's talking about.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: God's genuine people, his beloved people, his chosen people who've walked away from him, right?
10:54
SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about the steps away.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: And the first step we see in this chapter is that it's a gradual slide away, not a sudden fall.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Now, sometimes it can look like a sudden fall, like when King David suddenly, you know, you know, look goes to the, you know, to the top floor, looks down, sees Bathsheba, commits adultery, kills her husband.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that looks sudden.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: We can assume, however, that probably there had been a gradual, he'd stopped being involved in the things he was involved in before.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: He'd probably been, he'd probably been on the top floor of his palace looking down before that and so forth.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes it appears to be pretty quick, but in almost every case, it's a gradual slide away.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: It is uh not a blowout, it's uh it's a gradual leak.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: And then eventually, as someone takes step after this last week, um, what was it, Monday?
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Some someday I was sponsorable to to babysit a couple, my two youngest grandsons in town.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: So even though it was cold, I didn't want to entertain them.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: So I took him out to Gage Park, even though it was about 30 below.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: And I and I just said, shut up and be tough.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: And so anyway, they got the coats, and you know, and then I found a pair of mittens for one of them on the ground out of Gage Park.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Some kid was smart enough to have left and thrown his mittens away.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: But so uh there was nobody there except for us all morning.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: That just shows you how cold it was.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And and you know, I say, you know, the elephant's not cold, climb on the stone elephant and so forth.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: And then finally they go up to the top of the slides.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: They have really nice stuff there at Gage Park, and they go, it's really cold here.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Just slide down, shut up.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, but the thing is, but I don't move because the slide's too cold.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, but they would start moving and then they go faster, and eventually, you know, you can go pretty fast.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: And all of that to say that was a really long and stupid story, just to tell you that anytime you go on a slide, you start slow and you go faster.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: You could have just said that.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, anyway, so um, that's really what happens.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: You've seen it in people's lives.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: You hopefully it hasn't been your son or your daughter, grandchild, brother, sister, but I know that for some of you it has.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: I can't be the only one in here, you know, who can count a number of people in my extended family who once sat here, sang Christian songs, loved the Lord, opened the Bible and prayed, and does so no longer.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Right?
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Am I the only one?
13:32
SPEAKER_00: Can you not?
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Or go thumbs up.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: I've seen people like this.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay, just me.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay, but anyway, it's a gradual slide.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it just, it almost it's almost never uh uh a sudden fall.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: And that's clear in this.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna quote this one verse here, but all the other verses that I'm gonna quote from Jeremiah 2 on the screen are gonna say the same thing.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: Look at the verse 5.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: What fault did your fathers find in me that they went so far from me, followed my worthless idols, and became worthless themselves?
14:03
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's not even this generation with Judah.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the generation he's talking about from the previous verse is the generation that wandered through the wilderness 800 years before.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: You talked about a gradual slippage.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: 800 years is kind of a gradual slippage, but this is the point.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: The point is that it takes place over time.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: You compromise in one little area, then you compromise in another little area, right?
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Then it's no more, it's no fun praying, because as one guy said to me, I don't feel like praying anymore.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: I just feel like God's going, why don't you care for me anymore?
14:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, I haven't seen you in a long time, right?
14:46
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: They stopped asking, where's the Lord who brought us from the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness?
14:52
SPEAKER_00: People don't even ask anymore.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: They don't even say, Well, I miss the Lord.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: They don't.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: Because they've wandered away from him.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Which moves, uh, which is the first point, a gradual slide away, not a sudden fall, which ties in with the second.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: That is, you've lost the love, the fervency of the love that you once had.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, you need to understand the major theme, if you've done the devotions, you know this.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: The major theme of the three chapters, chapters two, three, and four, is this right here.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: That is, you and I, who are Christians, are married to God.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: Israel was married to God.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: And there was a love relationship, and it used to be really fervent.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: What we're talking about today, backsliding, is not a surface issue, it's an issue of the heart.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: AW Told you, you can blame circumstances, but backsliding always begins in the heart.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about a love affair.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: God is our husband, we are his wife, Isaiah 54, your maker is your husband.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: The Lord of hosts is his name.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: We are the bride of Christ in the New Testament.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: And when you came to Christ, you came to him, in a sense, as your lover, and he took you as his lover.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: And in this chapter, we find out, and in this book we find out, that God is the jilted lover.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: God feels like the abandoned spouse.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: God is the deserted husband, and it hurts him and it pains him.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: And one of my favorite Christian writers is a guy named Philip Yancey, graduated from Wheaton the year before me, but he's written all these books and so forth.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: And uh a year or two, a couple years ago, he went out.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: He loves to go out to a cabin up in the mountains of Colorado every year, and take, take a suitcase of books and his Bible, and so and writing materials so he can write magazine articles and whatever.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: He's a really prolific writer.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: So he did this a couple years ago, and he was telling about how he started, he opened the Bible, and he ended up, after two weeks, having opened no other book, but he'd read the Bible all the way through from Genesis to Revelation, and he said the snow started falling, and I ended up sort of being trapped.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: He said there were several inches of snow by the time I got to Deuteronomy.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: By the time I got to the prophets, he said the snow was halfway up the uh mailbox out front, and at the end of two weeks, uh, when I closed Revelation, I picked up the phone and I called a uh a truck to come because there were 60 inches of snow outside this cabin.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: And he said, but he said, I was astounded.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: He said, you know, you go to you go to Bible school, you go to seminary, you go to these other things, you learn about God as this omniscient being, you learn all of these doctrines, you learn this stuff.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: He said, when you actually read the Bible, especially when you read the whole thing straight through, you meet God as a person.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: A person who in some ways is a lot like you emotionally.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: You meet this God who seems to change his mind at times, whether he really does or not.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, you you read this God who moans, you read this God who laughs, you read about this real God, and he said, you know, the one book out of the 66 that I ended up loving more than any other.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: Surprise me, he said it was the book of Jeremiah.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: So it was the book of Jeremiah because that is the book where God is the most emotional, the most like me, the most personal.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: And he said it was in chapter two of Jeremiah that I saw God as this jilted lover.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: He wrote a magazine article entitled that way, who so loves us and so hurts when we walk away from him.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you where this is in this chapter.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: It starts at the beginning.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: God says, I remember the loyalty of your youth, your love as a bride.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: How you followed me in the wilderness in a land not sown 800 years ago.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, 40 years going through the wilderness, you read the story in numbers, you don't, you don't think of that as a honeymoon, but God's saying, Yeah, you know, we got married there uh, you know, uh at the Red Sea and at Mount Sinai, and then we had our honeymoon in the desert for 40 years, and oh, it was so sweet.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: And I remember that, he says.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: He says in the same chapter, he has verses throughout these chapters about love and marriage, and he goes, Can a young woman forget her jewelry or a bride or wedding sash?
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Yet my people have forgotten me for countless days, it feels like forever, since my beloved bride has wandered away from me and forgotten me.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: It reminds you, doesn't it, of Revelation 2, 4.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: I have this against you.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: You've left your first love.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the point is here in Jeremiah.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: This is a verse written to the church at Ephesus, complimenting them for doing so many good things, but down deep in the heart, they've begun to backslide.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 2, Jeremiah adds, God adds, long ago, you broke your yoke.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: You know how when you are married and you have an argument and your spouse says, Man, I just feel, I just feel stifled here.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: I want to get out of here.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've all felt that at times.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Or when even in a dating relationship, remember when you were in love with someone and finally, and you know, you just felt chained, you felt like it was a yoke, and you tore off the chains, you said, I'm breaking up.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, God says, you know, that's what you did with me.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: You said, I'm not gonna be a slave anymore.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: I feel chained to you, God.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: And yet, God says, and yet, look what you're doing now.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: On every high hill and under every green tree, you're sprawling out, is the verb in Hebrew, like a prostitute.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you've adopted the Canaanite gods instead of me.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: You stopped loving me, now you love the Baals more.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: But you know, the Baal religion requires that you do sacred prostitution up there in the hills where they have their shrines.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: You have no choice, the priest makes you do that, and so you're sprawling out there having actual sex within.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to do this, and you're a slave to that.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: What are you what are you what are you saying you don't want to be a slave to me?
20:59
SPEAKER_00: It's just heartbreaking.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: How can you protest?
21:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm not defiled, I've not followed the bales.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: And then God has these two pictures.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: He says, for one thing, you're like a swift young camel, it's a girl camel, you know, a little uh young camel, and they just run back and forth, crisscrossing literally, racing back and forth.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: You keep coming back to me, and then going to the false religion, going to the other gods, and you can't make up your mind.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: And even worse, and and don't look at this unless, okay, so if you grew up on a farm, you're fine with this.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: I grew up on a farm.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: I've seen this, okay?
21:30
SPEAKER_00: If this is gonna offend you, the farm farm language, get ready.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: Because God says this.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: He says, you're also like a wild donkey at home in the desert, sniffing the wind in her lust.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Who can restrain her when she's in heat?
21:43
SPEAKER_00: Anybody ever heard in heat?
21:44
SPEAKER_00: If so, you're a farmer.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: No male pursuing her need to, no, no male pursuing her need to tire himself out.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: In her mating, I added mating, because you know, in her mating season, they'll find her.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: And God's point is you are so desperate to.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Run from me, your true love, to other loves, to other pleasures, to other desires, to stupid stuff.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: You're like a wild donkey in heat.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: This is sort of PG-rated, okay?
22:13
SPEAKER_00: And then chapter 3, the next chapter, I just excerpted a couple of the lines.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: Because it's the same theme.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: You've prostituted yourself with many partners.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: You're unfaithful.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: You've committed adultery.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: As a woman may be, and by many partners, Israel is choosing all kinds of gods down in the Brook Kedron, and even in the temple, they didn't have just one other shrine or one other idol.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: It was like a dozen, the one from Moab, the one from Edom, the one from Philistia, the one.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: So you've got so many other partners.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: So as a woman may betray her lover, you've betrayed me.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: Please return, for I'm unfailing in my love.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: Still pleading, pleading, the way a cuckolded husband pleads for the spouse.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: By the way, I threw this in because this is the last stanza of a hymn we don't sing anymore, but this is to remind you of what heaven is going to be like.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: Because people say, Oh, I sure hope my wife will be in heaven.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: I sure hope my husband will heaven, I sure hope my friends will be in heaven because I really love them.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: I want to be with them forever.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize when you go to heaven, yeah, they'll be there, you love them, but you know who you'll love even more?
23:15
SPEAKER_00: The person who all love flows from, the Lord Jesus Christ.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: And so this famous last stanza goes, the bride eyes not her garment, of course she doesn't, but her dear bridegroom's face, right?
23:29
SPEAKER_00: I will not gaze on that day.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: I will not gaze at glory, but on my kingdom grace.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Not at the crown he gives me, but on his pierced hand.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: The lamb is all the glory of Emmanuel's land.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: That's what heaven will be like.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: It'll be like an eternal love affair.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be boring, it's not going to be dry, it's going to be emotional, it's going to be sweet.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: And that's why J.C.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: Ryle, one of these British theologians, I think actually had it right when he said stiffly, of course, backsliding generally begins with neglect of private prayer.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: And the more I thought about that, the more I thought that's exactly right, because you pray when you're in love with someone.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: You converse with God because you feel close to him or you want to be close to him.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: And when you're sliding away from God, what do you do?
24:16
SPEAKER_00: This is the first thing that goes, isn't it?
24:19
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, you lost the love that you once had.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: Point three, you're enjoying, get this, you're enjoying success or blessing from God, and it's gone to your head.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: Rarely do people backslide when they're in pain or when they're hurting.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it happens you hear about someone who's lost a child or something else and decided God must not be real, and they just leave the church and leave God and everything.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: That's rare.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: Most often it's when somebody's doing well, when they're prospering, when they're successful, when they're on TV now, when they're famous, you know, when everybody likes them, when they're popular, and basically when God's blessing them.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: And that's true in this chapter as well, 2.7.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: I brought you to a fertile land out of the desert.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: God prospered Israel, brought them to the land of milk and honey to eat its fruit and bounty.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: And after you entered, you defiled my land.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: You made my inheritance detestable.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: Basically, you left me.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: Hosea is the book that Jeremiah quotes most often, and he's probably thinking of Hosea 13, 6, which says, When I fed them, God speaking, they became satisfied.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: When they were satisfied, they became proud.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: Then they forgot me.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: You see it happen all the time.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: When a church is small, the pastor and the people are fervent, it gets big, it gets famous, gets on TV, and then there's all these other temptations.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: To be honest, I and a number of other people think that's what happened to Marty Sampson and Josh Harris.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: They were on TV all the time, they were interviewed in talk shows, and they are asked, as famous Christians, well, what do you think about hell?
26:04
SPEAKER_00: Do you really think that God would send millions of people just because they don't, what, believe in his son?
26:10
SPEAKER_00: What do you think about the gender change?
26:12
SPEAKER_00: What do you think about marriage?
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that unfair to say that marriage can't be for everyone?
26:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and so forth.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
26:18
SPEAKER_00: I haven't had much experience with this.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been on TV a lot more than me, but I mean, it's tough.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: You want to please people, you don't want to be unpopular, you don't want people to hate you.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: And what happens is your courage fails you.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: You're in a place of success.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: You want that to continue, prosperity, popularity, and so you begin to back off of those things, and finally you just say, you know, I think I'll just throw all of that in the trash.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Basically, what you're doing is preferring other lovers.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: You're preferring, you know, the popularity of the world rather than the popularity of God.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: King Isaiah was that way a godly king, but when he became strong, he grew arrogant, and it led to his destruction.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Jim Collins, the well-known business writer, says that this is really the first step towards a fall for a successful, prosperous company in his book, How the Mighty Fall.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: The very first step is hubris or pride born of success.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: It's when you're prosperous, successful, and popular, there's a real danger that you will then love something more than your first love.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Number four, your favorite leaders talk lots about man, less about God, and little about truth.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Your favorite leaders, that is your pastors, your spiritual leaders, the people you like to listen to on radio or watch, they talk lots about man and relationships.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: Nothing wrong with that.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: We do that here as well.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: They talk less about God.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: You don't hear a lot of talking about God and who he is, and very little about what we used to call doctrine, about truth, because truth is controversial.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Truth alienates people.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: If you start talking about sin, the people don't that that believe everybody's innately good are gonna walk out.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: If you talk about hell, the people who don't believe in hell.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: If you talk about God being at times a wrathful God, they'll say, Well, you're part of the Phelps family, and then they walk out.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many controversial issues, right?
28:17
SPEAKER_00: That we try to that we want to avoid.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: And frankly, it's stunning to me that some well-known evangelical churches around our country, not many, fortunately, but some large ones have proclaimed they will not address any controversial subjects, say homosexuality, abortion, and so forth, because they do not want to offend people.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, then of course what you're doing is allowing society to set your agenda rather than the Bible.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: So this is why I'd say just plead with your children or your friends, your cousins, your family, anybody you know, to try to go to churches and try to listen to people who talk, who talk about doctrine, you know, who are firm on who Jesus Christ is and salvation and sin and the future of heaven and so forth.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: And who talk about God.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: Yes, talk about man and relationships and psychology and so forth.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and do that as well, but anyway.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: And you see that in this chapter very clearly, Jeremiah says this, lists the four kinds of rulers in ancient Israel, and he says, the priests quit asking, where is the Lord?
29:30
SPEAKER_00: The priests were like the pastors.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: So when you would go to the temple, they would never ask you anymore, how are you doing with the Lord?
29:38
SPEAKER_00: Where's the Lord in your life?
29:41
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't the issue, right?
29:43
SPEAKER_00: And the experts in the law, these are the scribes who copied the law of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: It was only a job for them.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: They no longer even knew the God they were writing about.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: Three, the rulers, literally the shepherds, rebelled against me, against the over-shepherd, and they rebelled, and the prophets who were supposed to be hearing a fresh word from Yahweh God, they weren't listening to him at all.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: They were prophesying by Baal.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: So make sure that your leaders, the people you prefer to listen to and follow, make sure that they're not the kind of people who are going to be so loose, so weak spiritually that it'll be easy for you to backslide.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: Notice that in Revelation, remember those churches, the angels of the churches, the condemnation in Revelation is not to all of the people, it's to the leaders of those churches.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: Leaders are really critical.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: Evangelist Billy Sunday, you can't often quote him.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: He was a baseball player, a star player for the White Sox, and he didn't lose any of his language or character when he became an evangelist a hundred years ago.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: One of the nicer things he said is the backslider likes the preaching that wouldn't hit the side of a house, while a real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: All right?
31:03
SPEAKER_00: And number five, finally, your desertion, if you're backsliding, boils down to two sins, the ones I read about at the beginning of the service.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Number one, deserting the fountain of living water, and instead two, hewing for yourself cracked cisterns that can hold no water.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Think about what we do when we leave God, when we drift away.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: We are leaving.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, here's the text, and I read it already for you.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: 2, 12, and 13.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: Be appalled at this heavens to be shocked.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord's declaration.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: My people have committed a double evil.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: Your translation may say two crimes.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Number one, they've abandoned me, fountain of living water, dug cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold, cannot hold water.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: Very close to each other in the Judean desert down there in the land that Jeremiah is speaking to.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Very close to each other are these two things.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: This is a very famous spring of water in the heat of the desert.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: The spring at Engedi is one that I always take my groups, those who are able to hike the half mile up to it.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: It just pours out of the rock.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: It's famous.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: This is where David hid out from Saul.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: And it's just so delicious.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: And back in the old days, before anybody, before they had military or anybody there, you'd sneak in there and stick your face up and you would drink, and it was so fresh, and it was so wonderful.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: That's God says that's what I am.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm a fountain of fresh water.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: A mile or so away, not far away, is Mizzata.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Mazata, in order to survive for the people to survive, cut in the limestone and that rock.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: They cut all sorts of cisterns to collect rainwater.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: Cistern's not the same as a well.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: A well connects with underwater springs.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: A cistern collects rainwater, rainwater which falls down and then drips in, and they have to, they have to coat the rock with limestone so that the water won't just seep into the dirt and be gone.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: So they coat it with this limestone.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: Imagine how that makes the water taste.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: Imagine how that makes the water looks in a cistern, it looks like soap suds, just gray stuff.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: It tastes horrible, tepid like dirt, or if it's in a near a town like a stable, and it's got worms in it everywhere, so it's slimy.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: And man, can you imagine choosing a cup of this over a cup of that?
33:40
SPEAKER_00: But God says, you know, it's even more than that.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: You're hewing out cracked cisterns, which are everywhere.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: There's no cistern, there's a big crack, and this one famous, it's the most famous cistern of Mazzara.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: Because we are on the greatest fault in the world in Israel, that's a Sino African fault, and the ground's always shifting, and so the limestone coating is breaking, and so the water is seeping out, and so in a when you're really thirsty, you're down here on the ground and you're digging with your fingers to get muddy water to drink.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: And is this stupid or not?
34:16
SPEAKER_00: God says, I'm appalled.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: This is just absolutely crazy.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard of anybody who would exchange fresh water for cistern water, much less a cracked cistern that can hold no water?
34:27
SPEAKER_00: But that's what you're doing when you leave me.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: You're leaving the fountain of living water.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: When you leave me, you're leaving Jesus Christ, the spring of living water, right?
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And you're digging out for yourself something that's that's so stupid.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: You know what the result of this is, he says in this chapter.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: The consequences of backsliding, first, your backsliding behavior is gonna bring you pain.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: Your own behavior, your own backsliding, that's exactly what it'll do.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: The principle, Proverbs 14, 14, is the backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: That's bad fruit.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: Good man will be filled with the fruit of his ways.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: And we read in pro in Jeremiah 2 your own evil is going to discipline you.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever met a happy backslider?
35:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure they're out there somewhere, but I mean them, you know, they go to the opposite side of the street or they're in pain.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: It's no fun to be away from the Lord, especially when you know he's your Savior.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: And your own behavior, your own backsliding is evil and it is bitter, and it's and it's and it's painful.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Haven't you brought this on yourself, though, God says, by abandoning the Lord your God?
35:38
SPEAKER_00: By walking away?
35:42
SPEAKER_00: This is what I thought of.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, I thought of a couple of things when, you know, I thought, you know, this is like, yeah, backsliding is easy, but it's so dangerous.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: And you start backsliding, you're gonna kill yourself.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, this sheep did.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: This sheep wandered away, deliberately wandered away from its shepherd, who went out hunting for it.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: The sheep was named Shrek, the most famous sheep in the world a few years ago, New Zealand.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: And by staying away for six years and hiding in caves when the shepherd would come looking for it, it grew 60 pounds of extra fur, it grew over its eyes, it couldn't even see.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: When they finally found it out wandering, they had to carry it down the mountain because it couldn't even walk, they had to flip it upside down to cut all that fur off, and it's now dead.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: But but I mean, this is the result of wandering away from your shepherd.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: I know, this is not spiritual, and the name Shrek is reminding some of you of stupid stuff.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: But but this is the point.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: You hurt yourself.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing that happens is that God's gonna come for you like Perry Mason.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Some of you don't know who Perry Mason is, you know, you're under 60 or whatever.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: And uh but the point of this chapter is that God's not gonna let you go.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I'm gonna bring a case against you again.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: And in this chapter, over and over, he says, I'm gonna drag you into court and I'm gonna prove to you that you're stupid and that you're wrong, and I'm gonna plead with you to come back, and this is my declaration, I'm coming after you.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: And he does come after you because he really wants you to come back.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: I I saw Condi Rice, Condoleezza Rice, who used to be a national security advisor for one of the presidents, and she was uh, I think I saw her the sidelines of a Stanford game.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: One of our Kansas teams played Stanford, and there she was, and I thought, she's a Christian, she's nice.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: And then I thought of her, she tells a story in her biography that she'd grown up, she was a Christian.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: Now she is super gifted, a concert pianist, she was all these things and so forth, and so she got hired on as faculty at Stanford.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: Hard to be a good Christian at Stanford, and so that's when she backslid.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: As the faculty member at Stanford, Condoleezza Rice stopped going to church, she stopped reading the Bible, stopped doing all this stuff.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: And she says, So one morning, Sunday morning significantly, not in church, she says, I walked down to the lucky supermarket there outside Stanford to buy some groceries, and there was a fellow African American guy, and he was in the aisle and he's looking at me, and I guess he looked at her fingers, you know, looked like a piano player and other stuff.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: He says, By the way, can you play the piano?
38:19
SPEAKER_00: She said, Well, yeah.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: She says, he says, our little our little uh African AME church down the street really needs a piano player.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: Could you come and play?
38:29
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Well, I did, and one thing led to another, and that brought me back to the Lord.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: And and in her uh testimony, she says, This now the Lord's reach, she says, has got to be mighty long if it includes the lucky supermarket on a Sunday morning.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: But that's how long his reach is, because he really wants you back.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: So he says uh in chapter three, what I want from you is I want you to return.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: Just want you to come back, for I'm gracious and I'm not gonna be angry together just forever.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: Just acknowledge your iniquity, please come back to me.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: So that that would be the plea of the Lord.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: If you feel like you're not where you were a few years ago with prayer, with the word, with worship, and it's a hard issue, remember, it's a hard issue.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: Not the public scene, you know, we can all fake it.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: Where's your heart today as compared to a few years ago?
39:30
SPEAKER_00: If you're not where you were a few years ago, to that extent, I can say you've backslidden.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: To that extent, the Lord says this morning, I want you back.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: Please.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray and then we'll sing a song.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for uh calling us back, and thank you for such a clear word that reminds us of why it's so easy, why it's so tempting to step away from you, especially in times of success.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: Because we're fickle, our love doesn't last.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming to us this morning and calling us back.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Bring us back to yourself, Lord, in Jesus' name.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Amen.