Today's OT reading at church was from Jeremiah 2.Jer 2:13 says:
"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."
Water is the source of life. Recent droughts here in Australia, particularly in the Murray-Darling Basin crisis, have highlighted that for us. Water has another function basic to our life. We use it for cleansing, for getting rid of dirt.
In the Old Testament, Almighty God says only He is the source of living water. He tells those who are spiritually thirsty to come to him and drink. Yet Jesus says, " If anyone is thirsty, let him come to ME and drink. Whoever believes in ME, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him" (Jn 7:37). How can the JWs & Unitarians teach that Jesus is not fully God?
Judah's twin sins were forsaking the true God and worshipping human gods. It's the same for us. Are we making up our own gods, or our own way of worshipping God? Are you looking for your own tailor-made source of spiritual truth?
This is the sin of humanity as a whole. It is true of those who build physical idols and worship them. But it also true of those who say, "well I like to think of God in my own way." Who think they can improve on the God they find in the bible. That's a mental idol. Even as Christians we can do this. Jeremiah speaks to God's people, not the pagans. God says, "MY people have forsaken me..."
A mental idol is anything that springs from not trusting in Jesus. Romans 14:23 says, "every act that does not spring from faith in him is sin." But Jesus was poured out like water (Ps 22, Jn 19) as an offering for our sins. It's not a matter of building better cisterns for ourselves, but of simply drinking of, and washing in, the Spring that God provides. Revelation 22:17: "Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life."
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