Archive for January 6, 2008

Getting to the Source

January 6, 2008 by PastorMark.

Play now #298. Getting to the Source, Sunday 01-06-2008, Pastor Mark Boucher

Text: Jeremiah 2:13-19
Theme: God wants you to experience Him as the source of your life.

INTRODUCTION:

  1. Story of the building in Stockholm.
  2. Jeremiah was called by God as a young man (20)
    1. He ministered over 40 years to Judah.
    2. The nation was growing dim.
  3. At the beginning of Jeremiah’s ministry, God gave him a special message.
    1. God summarized the problem visually by pointing out two problems.
    2. Text: Jeremiah 2:13-19
    3. The spring had been forsaken.
    4. Their cisterns replaced the spring.
    5. They sinned by what they did and did not so. As a result of these sins they experienced a back-slidden life.
    6. Theme: God wants you to experience Him as the source of your life.
  4. Don’t give in to the temptation to replace God.
    1. Replacing God doesn’t look like total rejection.
    2. Israel still had the temple, law, meetings, ceremonies.
    3. In America we are trying to “marginalize” God.
    4. We want to move God from headline to a footnote.
    5. God has His place … just not in our government, schools, politics or personal lives and choices (We try to keep Him in the box)
    6. I’ve thought a lot about my own heart’s temptation to replace God as the source of life … and asked questions.
  5. How do we replace God?
    1. Go to the beginning … (Genesis)
    2. God made Adam and Eve.
    3. God made them to depend on Him for all their needs.
    4. There came a time when they stopped trusting.
    5. They were tempted to doubt His word.
    6. “Did God really say, “you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” (Genesis 3:1)
    7. They were tempted to doubt his love.
    8. “God wants to keep you in the dark”
    9. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, “knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5)
    10. “He doesn’t love you enough to let you have the best.”
    11. Does life become better or worse when we try to replace God?
    12. Did Adam and Eve fall up or down? They welcomed a sinful nature which brought guilt, shame, alienation, fear.
    13. “I’ve never seen a person turn away from Jesus and be happy. I’ve never seen a person turn to Jesus and regret it.” ~ Billy Graham
  6. What happens to us when we try to replace God?
    1. We become slaves. (v 14)
    2. “for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.” (2 Peter 2:19)
    3. “wickedness will not release those who practice it.” (Ecclesiastes 8:8)
    4. We experience defeat after defeat.
    5. Towns are burned and deserted. (v 15)
    6. The men of Memphis have shaved the crown. (v 16)
    7. The foul water makes us sick.
    8. We say, “that’s just the way life is.”
    9. We’re empty, irritable and we complain to God. Our backsliding rebukes us. (v 19a)
  7. What can we do?
    1. Take spiritual inventory. (v 19)
    2. “ ‘Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the Lord your God and have no awe of me,’ declares the Lord Almighty.” (v 19)
    3. Go back to the spring. (repent)
    4. We convince ourselves that we can’t go back to God.
  8. The prodigal was still loved by the Father when he left and while he was in the pig pen.
    1. The spring hasn’t moved.
    2. Make God your source of life.
    3. Seek Him and drink in His Word.
  9. You have to want Him – He won’t feed you intravenously.
    1. Don’t just drink at church.
    2. “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink …” (John 4:13)
    3. Become a “self-feeder.”
    4. The living water is the presence of Christ within.
    5. “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13)

CONCLUSION:

Don’t stay in the cistern. The people of Jeremiah’s day didn’t listen. Enjoy the source of life.

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FROM PASTOR MARK, 01-06-2008

January 6, 2008 by PastorMark.

All across America this week (and month) Christians are praying and many are fasting. God’s Word challenges us: “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber” (Romans 13:11). Urgent, fervent prayer must grip our hearts and focus our vision. In America, we have allowed our religious freedom to produce spiritual apathy. Christians in other nations, such as China, pray for the church in America, the “sleeping giant,” to awake and rise up as in the Great Awakening. A prayerless, powerless church eventually becomes irrelevant. Will you be among those whose lives burn with Christ’s presence? Praying, Spirit-filled Christians determine the future of our America.

Pastor Mark Boucher

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