"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." (Jeremiah 2:13)
Sometimes we dig our "cisterns" - our wells - where there is no good water.
We look to idols for what we think we need. Food, alcohol, drugs, sex, relationships; we seek out all kinds of sources of satisfaction in life. We go back again and again. We always come up short.
Pastor Neil Kring from The Revolution (the church on the Ball State campus) spoke yesterday about "cisterns" he builds for himself.
Like so many of us, he seeks distractions. He likes articles about technology. There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, of course. The problem arises when we seek out distractions and believe they're not distractions. That they are the main thing. A source of life to pursue.
The prophet Zephaniah was a contemporary of Jeremiah. Both prophesied in the kingdom of Judah, which had split off from Israel around 930 B.C. Descended from a king himself (Hezekiah), Zephaniah was especially authoritative in his criticism of Judah under King Josiah (640-609 B.C.).
Idolatry was pervasive in the land. What had begun as distraction from God, the source of living water, had turned into an obsession. No longer were the Hebrews merely flirting with worship of foreign gods. Some even sacrificed their children to them (Jeremiah 7:30-34).
Like Jeremiah, Zephaniah prophesied judgment for Judah. They had allowed their distractions from God to become a replacement for him. They would pay a heavy price for their sin, but there was also hope.
As Neil pointed out, the pattern Zephaniah predicted for Judah is similar to the pattern in our own lives as people who seek a relationship with God.
JUDGMENT
Zephaniah proclaimed the Lord was going to stretch out his hand against Judah, destroy every remnant of worship of the false god Baal, the names of the priests who officiated idol worship, and all who swore by the name of another false god, Molek.
More than that, he would destroy "those who turn back from following the Lord and neither seek the Lord nor inquire of him." (Zeph. 1:8)
By the end of that century, Judah would be crushed. Assyria, Babylon and Egypt were the imperial giants of the day. A political pawn of Assyria, King Josiah would march on the advancing Egyptian army and fall to it in 609 B.C. The effort would prove useless as Babylon ultimately conquered the region.
Gone were the days when God would deliver the enemies of Israel and Judah into the hands of their kings. The people sought comfort in lies that convinced them to burn their own children in ritual sacrifice.
We humans can easily go too far. When our distractions become idols, we allow all kinds of evil into our lives. We become violent, hateful, apathetic to the plight of our neighbors. God is good. He can only tolerate idolatry for so long before he brings judgment on us.
He brings it to save us.
REPENTANCE
God's judgment is not about punishment. It is about restoration.
Zephaniah's prescription for Judah was to gather together to acknowledge their shame, seek righteousness, and humbly submit themselves to God once again. If they did so, "perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of the Lord's anger." (Zeph. 2:3)
We are to do the same thing when we realize we have strayed from the true source of life. The church is a place to gather, to confess our sins, to ask for and receive forgiveness.
The only difference today is that we know Jesus. We have a human picture of God to look at in our mind's eye. We have a new story that had not yet been fully told in the time of Zephaniah - the words of Jesus, his ministry, his death and resurrection - to give us hope.
"Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you - even Jesus." (Acts 3:19-20)
RETURNING HOME
Zephaniah foretold that God's jealous anger would consume like fire those who clung to their false gods, leaving behind a faithful remnant.
"They will do no wrong; they will tell no lies. A deceitful tongue will not be found in their mouths," Zephaniah said (Zeph. 3:13). "They will eat and lie down and no one will make them afraid."
These, God will delight over. He will be overcome with love for the children who have returned home to him, and he will sing over them.
That's us. After judgment comes, and we have chosen to repent, we will come home to find a place where the lies that kill have ceased. We will be with Jesus, and with our Father in heaven, who still adores us to the point of singing our names.
This can be so difficult to believe.
Pastor Neil pointed out that the world was still broken 600 years after Zephaniah, when Jesus was born, and it is still broken today. Each one of us arrive in the middle of a mess.
Avondale UMC is situated in a neighborhood that has suffered from poverty, addiction and broken families. We look at our streets and we lament the pain our neighbors experience. In our hopelessness, we look away. We seek distractions. In time, we may even worship them.
It is tempting to stay inside and to cling to our idols as another emergency vehicle arrives at a neighbor's house to take someone away. Sometimes in handcuffs. Sometimes on a stretcher.
These are not isolated events.
"This neighborhood is a microcosm of the entire world," Neil said.
God calls us to repent of our idolatry, and not just once. If we want to be a part of God's faithful remnant here and across our broken world, we must experience judgment, choose repentance and return home to him; and we must do it over and over again.
Neil reminded us that no matter how bad the world looks, the Bible says that God is always working behind the scenes. Isaiah 9:6 predicted the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, at a time when it was just as hard to believe God was doing something good in the world as it is now.
And yet, the faithful remnant does not choose despair. We do not allow the fire of judgment to consume us.
We are the ones who return home, and expect our Father to make everything right again.
"God is keeping his promises," Neil said. "We have to believe that."
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