We’re going to be in Jeremiah 2 this morning; Jeremiah chapter two, looking at a verse that is near and dear to my heart, and we’re continuing our series when God gets left behind. We looked at when God gets left behind in our hearts, when God gets left behind in our worship, and today we’ll be looking at when God gets left behind in our pursuits, and next week, when God gets left behind in our service.
Let’s talk about pursuits. We all have them. We all have something that we pursue. Call it a hobby if you will, or a recreational activity, but we all have things that we pursue in our lives. And one thing I’ve noticed about our pursuits is the simple fact that we always pursue what we love most. And you can often tell by a person’s lifestyle what they are pursuing. Some of this is just practical and simple observation. A runner on the side of the road, or a cyclist on the city trail is pursuing some sort of health and fitness. The shacks on the lake show some sort of pursuit of the outdoors or sport fishing. Subscriptions to Netflix show some sort of pursuit of entertainment. We have these pursuits and we pursue what we love.
I remember when I really began to pursue what I loved when I was dating my wife. I loved her, and I still do. But when I first started to “fall in love with her” so to speak, I make conscious choices to pursue that love. I would find myself at her house regularly. . .
As we come to Jeremiah 2:13, our main verse for today, I think Jeremiah shares with us a similar observation in our spiritual lives—we always pursue what we love. And this can be a really good thing in our spiritual lives if we love the right things—if we love God and His Word and the truths of the Bible. But this can be a really, really bad thing if we don’t. And as we unpack our text for today, we’re going to find that Jeremiah found that God’s people Israel, were in a really bad place. Because he found it to be true that people always pursue what they love, only God’s people Israel were pursuing the wrong things. They were pursuing what they loved, but he came to realize that they were not loving the right things, thus they were pursuing the wrong things! He observed this cause and effect relationship between what a people love, and what they pursue, and in this case, this led them down a very dark and empty road. So, God steps in and gives Jeremiah a caution concerning God’s people and where they were at in their own spiritual walk as God seeks to use the prophet Jeremiah to call them back to himself.
I’m concerned that we do not walk down the same pathway that Israel began pursuing. I’m concerned that we, both individually as believers and corporately as a church, make certain that we are loving the right things and thus pursuing the right things. So as we begin to unpack this passage, there is one big idea I want us to keep in the front of our minds this morning, it’s the observation that God makes of Israel in this text:
Big Idea:you always pursue what you love
