Oh, great triune, God, you are our anchor to our souls individually and corporately.
God, we need you desperately.
God, we're so grateful that you are unshakable in who you are and unshakable in your commitment
to us.
Lord Jesus, you say that you are the source of living water.
And this morning we come to you as a people who are thirsty.
God, I pray that this morning you would call out a people from the desolate, parched places
of trusting in man.
And God, you would call them to the oasis where there is the fountain of living water,
Jesus himself.
You beckon us, come.
God, would you use your word to beckon us to come.
Pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
You may be seated.
Children, you are now dismissed to learn about this great God.
We're going to be looking at a passage in the book of Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 17, verses 5-8.
And if you're looking at one of the NIV, the blue Bible in your pew, turn to page 1201.
I think that's what it is.
I wrote it.
So it's around 1200 somewhere.
And if you're looking at the ESV, the white, it's page 546.
We read,
Thus says the Lord,
Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the Lord.
He is like a shrub in the desert and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
He's like a tree planted by water
that sends out its roots by the stream
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green.
It's not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.
O God, would you just please anoint your word this morning.
Give us ears to hear, hearts to receive.
God, address us as your children.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, if you think about American culture as a religion,
who would be the object of worship?
If our culture was teaching us to trust in someone,
who would our culture be teaching us to trust in,
to rely on?
And when I mean by rely,
I mean ultimate reliance.
Whose voice are you ultimately obeying?
Who is defining who you are?
Who determines how you live your life?
Who says what is the most dangerous thing you face?
And who says the way of deliverance?
Who says is our destiny and how we reach it?
Whose voice are you ultimately relying on?
If you think about American culture as a religion,
Americans worship the triune God of me, myself, and I.
We are an individualistic culture.
We are a humanistic culture.
We are raised to be self-reliant.
And it shows up in whose voice we ultimately obey.
Who defines us?
How we walk?
How we live?
Another way to talk about this ultimate self-reliance
is to call it trusting in man.
That's how the prophet Jeremiah describes it in Jeremiah 17.
To trust in man.
It's the air we breathe.
But it's just not outside of us.
It's inside of us.
This ultimate self-reliance,
this ultimate trusting of man
is like a taproot in us
that goes down deep.
It's called pride.
We think we're at the center of everything.
We oppose God at our very core.
And what the Bible uses again and again
is the word to describe our core
is the word heart.
And in Jeremiah 17.10,
God says this.
Now notice, it's God saying this.
He says,
the heart is deceitful above all things
and desperately sick.
You see, the self-reliance,
the trusting in man
that our culture prizes,
even promotes,
and even protects,
has a fatal flaw.
In our pride, we think we can define ourselves.
We think we can
make ourselves the ultimate authority.
We think we know what's best for us.
We think we can determine our own ways.
In Jeremiah 17.5-8,
we are presented with two groups of people.
One group, those who trust in man,
they have a motto.
In man we trust.
And then the other group,
those who are God-reliant,
those who trust in the Lord,
their motto is,
the Lord is our trust.
Two groups of people with two mottos.
In man we trust,
and the Lord is our trust.
Those who persistently trust in man
experience God's curse.
But those who trust
ultimately rely again and again
in the Lord,
they experience God's blessing.
So let's look at these two groups
and what we'll see
is that there are two ways to live.
So first group,
this in man we trust group.
We see this described in verses 5 and 6.
And what I want you to see
as we talk about
in man we trust this group,
there are four realities about this
I want you to see.
Reality number one is,
those who say in man we trust.
That motto is built on lies.
There's a fatal flaw.
It assumes man can ultimately rely on man
for ultimate answers.
But let me just give you some data.
According to the Bible,
human beings are created.
Not the creators.
We are dependent.
We are dependent on God
for our next breath.
We have some severe limitations.
Significant limitations.
Limited by place and time.
We can't be more than one place at once.
No matter how much we'd like.
We're limited in our knowledge.
We don't know everything.
There's not one person
on the face of the earth today
that knows everything.
And then if we kind of combined
all human beings for all of time
and then we measured how much we know,
we still wouldn't know everything.
Nor will we ever know everything.
Limited in knowledge.
Limited in power.
Did anybody eat this morning?
Did anybody sleep last night?
We get worn out under fears and anxieties.
When we make man our strength,
human flesh our strength,
man, we suffer for it.
There's these limitations,
but then there's also this
deep-seated taproot of sin.
This pride that goes down deep
in each of us.
It motivates us.
It affects us.
There's nothing that we do
that is pure in motives
because this sin runs so deep.
And so at best,
our motives for doing things
are mixed.
So human justice is mixed.
That's why our government
has checks and balances.
Our love is mixed.
It runs deep.
So the lie here is that
human beings
have all the answers.
We know what's best.
The flail flaw is
we don't.
It's wrong to believe,
biblically speaking,
that the ultimate authority
on all things is man.
In man we trust
is built on lies.
It's built on something
that can't sustain our trust.
But there's another reality
I want you to see.
In man we trust,
this motto of a people
who trusts in man,
in man we trust,
it goes by another name.
What trusting in man really is
is a turning of one's heart
from the living God.
Would you look at
chapter 17, verse 5.
Cursed is the man
who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away
from the Lord.
Whose heart turns away
from the Lord.
Now just a little
historical background.
Jeremiah was written
by the prophet Jeremiah.
And it was written
to the people of God
who were persistently
disobeying God's Word.
They kept on arching.
They kept on resisting God.
And so at this point
in Judah's history,
Babylon was on the scene.
And so in Jeremiah 39,
there is an account
of the fall of Jerusalem.
And what we have leading up to it
is all that preceded that.
Jeremiah.
God using to warn His people
again and again,
don't go that way.
Come back to Me.
Turn back for Me.
He has some really strong language
to talk about His people.
He calls them a whore.
Come back to Me though.
One of the areas
where God warns His people
at that time was
Judah sees Babylon coming
and what do they do?
Where do they turn?
They turn to Egypt.
They turn to Assyria.
They look for help
from man.
And God says,
no, don't go there.
Turn to Me.
You see,
in man we trust,
goes by another name.
I want to tell you something
about your heart.
Biblically speaking.
Your heart.
It's your heart
that
kind of assesses things.
It determines something's worth.
It's value.
And from your heart as well
comes your willful choice
to live for it.
And so you determine
what is of value,
ultimate value,
and your heart also says,
I'm living for it.
That all takes place
in your heart.
That's why
there's such a huge emphasis
in the Bible
on your heart.
your heart
is where you worship from.
And just to heighten this
a little bit more,
if you flip a couple pages
to the left in your Bibles
to Jeremiah 2,
to get at the situation
a little bit more,
Jeremiah 2.13,
God warns His people.
And He uses, again,
vivid imagery.
He says,
for My people have committed
two evils.
They have forsaken Me.
They have turned their back
on Me.
And then He calls Himself
the fountain of living waters.
They have forsaken Me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns
for themselves,
broken cisterns
that can hold no water.
And what we see Jeremiah
talking about is
His people
turning away from Him
the fountain of living waters,
the One who gives life.
The One who sustains.
The One who strengthens.
The One who is for them.
They turn from Him
and they turn to
things of their own making.
Cisterns.
Designed to hold water,
but these are broken.
They don't deliver.
They don't give them
what they want.
They built them themselves.
Do you know what it's a picture of?
It's a picture of idolatry.
This trusting in man,
in man we trust,
the other name for it,
is idolatry.
That's what it is.
It's the creating of something else
to worship
in the place of God.
Ultimately,
what is being gotten at here
is that idolatry
is relying on something else
ultimately.
You're going to that
because you want strength from it.
You want hope from it.
And it's not God.
In man we trust,
it's built on lies.
In man we trust,
goes by another name,
idolatry.
And in man we trust,
is cursed.
Cursed is the man
who trusts in man.
God's response
to persistent disobedience
from His Word
to His Word
is what cursing is.
It's the negative consequences
for persistent disobedience.
That word curse is lifted.
It's calling us back
to Deuteronomy 28
where God has saved a people
and He says,
if you want to move forward,
you're going to have two choices.
Either obey My Word
and be blessed.
Experience My blessing.
Or disobey My Word
and experience curse.
The negative outworkings
of your sinful choices.
But I just want to let you know,
our God is a wonderful God
and He is patient.
And so in a passage like Exodus 34,
6, and 7 where He reveals Himself,
He says that He is slow to anger.
Slow to anger.
He is patient with His people.
Patiently calling them back.
And Jeremiah repeatedly calls
His people back to God.
But God's patience
eventually came to an end.
He eventually handed them over
to what they wanted.
Romans 1.
He allowed for their consequences
to come upon them.
They tasted
and experienced
the outcome of their sinful choices
and their disobedience
to God's Word.
And that's a bad place to be.
In Jeremiah 17,
verse 6,
we have a very vivid picture
of that place.
Let me read it for you.
He is like a shrub.
Those cursed.
He is like a shrub in the desert
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places
of the wilderness
in uninhabited salt land.
It's a picture of desolation.
It's a picture of barrenness.
That word shrub
can also be translated naked,
believe it or not.
Barren.
Exposed.
We see here that
there is a hopelessness
to those who
persist in their disobedience
to God.
Shall not see any good come.
It's a lonely place
in uninhabited salt land.
It's a parched place.
No water.
Doesn't see the good come.
And when the heat of life arises,
there's no place to run to.
No place to hide.
It's a really hard place.
No shelter from the heat.
We've all tasted
of the curse.
We've all tasted this.
Maybe you've binged on pornography.
You know that place afterwards?
It's a parched place.
It's a lonely place.
It's an empty place.
Desolate.
Maybe you've binged
things get hot in your life
and you go shopping.
And afterwards,
you're like,
what?
This is empty.
Parched place.
This doesn't satisfy me.
This is a broken cistern.
Maybe a web of lies.
It's a bad place.
Hard place to be.
We all know this place.
I know this place.
This is a hard place.
When you trust in man,
you turn your heart from the Lord
and you experience the consequences
for disobeying His voice.
It's a hard place to be.
And man,
we trust is a cursed place.
Would you look at
chapter 17 again,
verse 13?
O Lord,
the hope of Israel,
all who forsake You
shall be put to shame.
Those who turn away from You
shall be written in the earth,
reference to death,
for they have forsaken the Lord,
the fountain of living water.
There it comes again.
The fountain of living water.
Not only have we seen it
in chapter 2,
now we see it showing up
in the very passage
that we're looking at.
God is the fountain
of living water.
And so,
in man we trust,
we experience curse.
We miss the waters.
And so,
the last reality
I want to show you
is this.
It's a call to those
who are trusting in man.
It's a call
to the fountain of living water.
It's a call to turn away
from trusting in man.
From self-reliance.
How do we respond?
If you find yourself
in the parched place,
how do you respond?
You turn from it.
You turn from it
and you turn to your God.
You turn to the fountain
of living water.
Turn from trusting in man
and turn to God.
Come out of the cursed,
parched place.
Come out of there.
Stop trusting in man.
Stop trusting in yourself.
And come to the oasis.
The blessing
of trusting in the Lord.
Of drinking deep
from the fountain
of living water.
Can I tell you something awesome?
Flip over in your Bibles
to Galatians 3.
Galatians 3.
Chapter 3.
Verse 13.
Christ Jesus, Christ,
redeemed us
from the curse of the law
by becoming a curse for us.
For it is written,
cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree
so that in Christ Jesus,
the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles.
That's us.
Are you in the parched place?
Jesus took on your curse on Himself
so that you could experience God's blessing.
Who do you ultimately trust in?
Whose voice do you ultimately believe?
Who's defining you?
We're being shown here,
don't trust in man.
Turn to God.
And now let's turn to verses 7 and 8 of Jeremiah 17.
Let's turn to the fountain of living water.
Let's turn to the One
who is the source of our strength,
our hope,
and even in the midst of heat and drought.
We are not to trust in man.
The cry of our hearts
is the Lord is our trust.
Four realities.
The Lord is our trust.
Verses 7 and 8.
The Lord is our trust.
Is our model.
It's what we proclaim.
It is the banner over us.
And I just want to show you
that this motto is built on a foundation of truth.
Not lies.
God is the Creator of all.
All things depend on Him.
We depend on Him.
He does not depend on us.
He is unlimited in terms of place and time.
He's omnipresent.
He is unlimited in His knowledge.
He knows all things all the time
and He doesn't sweat it.
He's unlimited in His power.
There's nothing that God cannot do,
so He wills.
He is holy.
He doesn't have a deep root of sin.
He's holy.
He's perfect in all that He is.
He's gloriously good
and right and true.
And that shows up in His justice.
His justice is always pure.
That shows up in His love.
He always loves purely.
God is great.
Now, if you were wondering
who to choose at any given moment
to trust in, man or God,
if you do the math,
it's pretty obvious.
God is worthy of your trust.
But there's a step of humility, isn't there?
There's a step of coming under God's authority.
And that's where our pride can trip up.
I just want to help you to see.
If you do the math,
God is worthy of your trust.
He is able to bear your ultimate reliance.
He's big enough.
Nothing or no one else is.
He is able to carry you.
The Lord is our trust
is a motto established on the truth
of who God is
and what He's done in history.
The second reality I want you to see is this.
The Lord is our trust
goes by another name.
If you look at v. 7,
you see,
blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord
whose trust is the Lord.
There's a little emphasis there.
He goes from
blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord
to whose trust is the Lord.
So maybe think about it this way.
What we're called to here
is not to trust in your trust.
To not have more faith in your faith.
It's not about how much faith you have.
It's about who you are trusting in.
And what we're seeing here,
it's the Lord is our trust.
He is our confidence.
On Him we rely.
Remember, trust is reliance on God
as an ultimate reliance.
He defines who we are.
He determines how we are to walk.
He lets us know
what our greatest danger is.
He let us know.
He shows us
where deliverance is to be found.
Jesus.
And He ultimately
determines our destinies.
The Lord is our trust
goes by another name.
Did you know that your heart
is designed for something?
God designed it for something.
It's designed to recognize
something of worth.
It's designed to give
kind of
credence to it
and follow it.
To live for it.
God designed your heart.
He designed your heart
for Himself.
He designed your heart
to recognize
His glory
and
live for it.
That's what your heart
was designed for.
These words,
the Lord is our trust.
trust.
This goes by another name.
And it's not idolatry.
It's worship.
True worship.
Trusting in the Lord
is an act of worship.
Recognizing His worth
and then
living for it
with all that you are.
Calling back
from Jeremiah 2.13.
The Lord is our trust.
It's kind of putting away
the cisterns
that we make.
It's putting away
of the places
we go to
to find strength
that's not God.
It's putting away
of idolatry.
It's putting away
of things that we look to
for deliverance.
And it is
drinking deep
from the fountain
of living water.
it's depending
on God
as our source
of strength.
Augustine
said it this way.
Our hearts
are restless
until they find
their rest
in you.
Until they find
their ultimate
reliance
in you.
ultimate
worship
in you.
Ultimate
trust
in you.
The Lord
is our trust.
Goes by another name.
Worship.
The fourth reality
I want you to see
under this banner
the Lord is our trust
is the blessing.
How God responds.
When we trust
God's Word.
This is back to
Deuteronomy 28.
Blessing and curse.
When we trust
God's Word.
When we rely
on what He says
blessing follows.
The positive consequences
to relying on
God and His Word.
We see the picture
of it in verse 8.
He's like a tree
planted by water
that sends out
its roots
by the streams.
It does not fear
when heat comes
for its leaves
remain green.
It's not anxious
in the year of drought
for it does not cease
to bear fruit.
It's a picture
of life.
It's a picture
of vitality.
It's a picture
of a tree
planted by streams
of water.
That should ring
a bell.
Psalm 1.
It's a picture
of vitality.
This tree
sends out its roots
by the streams
of water.
It's a very
vivid picture.
Water gives life.
Water sustains.
We all need water.
water.
It's in sharp contrast
to the shrub
in the desolate
parched places,
isn't it?
Quite a contrast.
Contrast in pictures.
What makes
verse 8
so wonderful?
This blessing,
this vitality
of living
is the water.
water.
And
Jeremiah
seems to have
water on his mind
because
he references
water in 8
and then in verse 13
again,
I pointed this earlier,
for they have forsaken
the Lord,
the fountain
of living water.
What's the water?
The water is our God.
He's the fountain
of living water.
It's a picture
of a thriving
oasis.
in the midst
of stifling
Middle Eastern
heat
and drought.
With God
as our trust,
we thrive
even when
the heat comes.
Did you notice
the references
to fear
and anxiety?
To heat
and drought?
Those can make you
a little fearful.
A little anxious.
But with God
as our trust,
our leaves
remain green.
We bear fruit
even when the heat
comes,
even when there's
drought.
God
is our
fountain
of living water.
We experience
heat regularly.
We experience
drought,
and when we see
it coming,
we can be afraid.
We can be anxious.
ISIS is in the news.
And so,
I'm guessing
many of you
are thinking,
okay,
where are they
going to hit next?
What's going to happen?
Who's going to die?
How many people?
It can start
making you anxious.
It can make you fearful.
Syrian refugees
coming to Wisconsin.
How do you
respond to that?
It can raise
questions of fear
and anxiety
because you start
wondering who's
coming in with them.
As Christians,
we're to respond
compassionately
and wisely.
Financial strain.
Unemployment.
Conflict with loved ones.
Huge decisions.
What is the next step
we're going to make?
Difficult work environments.
When you look at yourself
in the mirror
and you start fearing
what other people
are going to think about you.
It's all different
kinds of heat,
isn't it?
We've been going
through some heat
as a church.
And it can expose
who we trust.
I know it does with me.
The Lord is our trust.
He is our ultimate reliance.
When we experience
this kind of heat,
we're tempted
to go to places
trusting in ourselves,
trusting in man.
We go to the Lord
who is our trust.
Trust.
The Lord is our trust.
There is where blessing is.
There is where life is.
When God turns up the heat,
we send our roots
to the streams
of living waters.
The Lord is our trust.
The fourth reality
I want you to see
under this
is that word water.
Water.
Planted by streams of water.
It sends its roots
out by the streams.
I've already made
the connection
with verse 13
of chapter 17
that God is the
fountain of living water.
He is the one
who gives life.
Did you know
later in Jeremiah,
Jeremiah 31,
Jeremiah speaks
of a future
when God will make
a new covenant
with a new people
and He'll write
His word
on their hearts.
We learn from
Ezekiel 36
that that new covenant,
the Holy Spirit
will come upon
God's people
in a new
and pronounced way.
A new covenant
with a new people
with new hearts.
And what we learn
from our New Testaments
is that
it's Jesus
that inaugurated
the new covenant.
His life,
death,
and resurrection.
It was by His blood
that He shed
that we are now
living in the new covenant.
And so now
on this side of the cross,
we're reading back
through Jesus
Jeremiah 17.
We're reading back
through the establishing
of the new covenant
in Jesus.
A better covenant
built on better promises.
We're looking at it
through Jeremiah 17.
We're looking at it
through the cross.
Through Jesus.
And so when we read
a passage like
John 4,
where Jesus meets
a woman at the well,
He says this
and it takes on
new significance
in light of Jeremiah 17.
this is John 4,
verse 10.
The Samaritan woman
just asked Jesus,
hey, can I get you
a drink of water?
Jesus answered her,
or actually,
He asked her for it.
If you know the gift
of God and who it is
that is saying to you,
give me a drink,
you would have asked Him
and He would have given you
living water.
Later on, He says,
everyone who drinks
of this water
will be thirsty
again from that well.
But whoever drinks
of the water
that I will give him
will never be thirsty again.
The water that I will give him
will become in him
a spring of water
welling up
to eternal life.
John 7 says
that water
is the Holy Spirit
living inside of us.
New covenant reality.
When we put our faith
in Jesus,
we are indwelled
by the Holy Spirit.
He dwells in us.
He fills us.
He empowers us.
He enlivens us.
We're like a tree
planted by a stream.
We don't fear the heat.
We're not anxious in drought
because the Lord Jesus
is our trust.
He is the fountain
of living water.
To Him we turn.
So when we read,
blessed is the man
who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord,
we read that
back through
where we are.
We read that
through the cross of Jesus.
And so we can say,
blessed is the man
who trusts in the Lord Jesus,
whose trust is
the Lord Jesus.
the Lord
is our trust.
The Lord Jesus
is our trust.
We've looked at two ways
to live here.
Man
is our trust
and the Lord
is our trust.
I just want to
do a quick
three things of application
and then close.
the first thing
in light of what
we've been talking about
is this.
The Christian life
is a continual turning
from yourself
and turning to Jesus,
the fountain of living water.
There is the
first initial
repentance and faith
where we're converted.
But the Christian life
is a continual turning,
turning from broken cisterns
and a turning to
the fountain of living water.
water.
Ongoing renouncing
of false gods.
Ongoing relying
on Jesus.
The true fountain
of living water.
So,
we come out.
We regularly come out
of parched places.
And we regularly go
to the fountain
of living water.
It's par for the course.
That's the life we live.
Second,
God uses heat
to expose
who we trust.
What are you afraid of?
What are you anxious over?
God is using heat
to expose
who you trust in.
He's been doing that with me.
So,
what do you do
when the heat comes on?
You turn to Jesus.
You trust in Him.
He's over it.
He's in it.
He's through it.
Let Him lead on.
So,
we come out
of the parched places
and go to Jesus
to drink
of the fountain
of living water.
The final thing
I want you to see
is,
in light of the culture
we live in,
the Christian life
is
counter-cultural.
The motto
we live by
is a sharp contrast
to that of the American culture.
We live by
our Lord's voice,
by His strength,
not our culture's voice.
And so,
there will be
a standing out
when we come out
of the parched places
and when we drink
from the fountain
of living water,
we'll stand out
in this culture.
So,
in close,
whose voice
are you living by?
Who are you
ultimately relying in?
Jeremiah 17,
5-8
points to two ways
to live.
In man we trust
or the Lord Jesus
is our trust.
He became a curse
for us
so that we can
experience His blessing
ongoingly.
The difference
is who you
ultimately rely on.
Let me pray.
Lord Jesus,
You are our trust,
You are our confidence,
You are our fountain
of living water.
God,
You are our hope
in the midst
of hardship
and heat
and God,
we look to You.
And You,
Jesus,
we follow You.
We look to You
and trust You.
In Jesus' name,
Amen.