We do not relinquish the vain pursuit!

(Charles Simeon)  LISTEN to Audio!  Download Audio

Jeremiah 2:11-13, "Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But My people have exchanged Me, their glorious God, for worthless idols! Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror!" declares the Lord.
"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!"

Grievous, indeed, had been the departure of God's ancient people from Him, and their obstinate attachment to idols. But if God utters this complaint against them, then how much more justly may He urge it against professing Christians today!

What has been the uniform tenor of our lives, but one constant state of departure from God, and a preferring of every worldly vanity before Him! True, we have not bowed down to idols of wood and stone; but we have cared for nothing, and thought of nothing—but the pleasures, or riches, or honors of this vain world!

Look at most of the people who are filling our churches—what are they seeking after?
It is this poor world, in some shape or other!

Though they have found worldly pleasures to be, in fact, nothing but "vanity and vexation of spirit"—yet they go on in the same infatuated course from year to year, setting their affections upon worthless vanities which never did, nor ever can—give them lasting satisfaction and felicity!

We do not mean to condemn all pleasure, honor, wealth, or learning—as evil in themselves. These all have their legitimate and appropriate use, and all may be pursued and enjoyed in perfect consistency with a good conscience before God. But the evil which usually accompanies these things, consists . . .
  in making them the great end of our life;
  in allowing them to draw away our hearts from God;
  or to occupy that place in our affections which is due to God alone!
The creature which is allowed to rival God in our affections, whatever it may be, is only "a broken cistern."

Who will dare to say that he has ever found solid and permanent satisfaction in the creature?

Who has lived any considerable time in the world without learning by his own experience, the truth of Solomon's observation, that all earthly vanities are meaningless, a chasing after the wind!

Yet, whatever our experience has been, we still follow our own delusions, and run after a phantom, which, while we attempt to apprehend it, eludes our grasp!

We suppose that the pleasures of the world will make us happy. We follow them, and for a moment imagine that we are happy. But we awake, and find that it was but a dream!

We next try wealth or honor. We run the race and we attain the prize. But we find at last that we have been following a shadow, and are as far off from solid happiness as ever!

Notwithstanding our daily experience of the insufficiency of all earthly good to make us truly happy, we do not relinquish the vain pursuit!

We have hewn out one cistern, and found it incapable of retaining any water. We have then renewed our labor, and hewed out another cistern—which we have found as unproductive of solid benefit as the former. We have worn ourselves out with the pursuit of various and successive vanities—yet we have persisted in our error, untaught by experience, and unwearied by continual disappointments!

What amazing folly, then, have we been guilty of!

"Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?" Isaiah 55:2

How long will you go on withholding your affections from God, who alone can make you happy—in a determined pursuit after earthly vanities? I do hope that you will see how foolish such pursuits are, and will from this time turn unto God with your whole hearts!