Substitutes

Substitutes

“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other

 name under heaven by which we must be saved.”

                                                    Acts 4:12

The margarine dish on vacation reminded me of years and years of substituting margarine for butter in our house because of the constant warnings on butter causing high cholesterol and other health evils. We eventually went back to using butter, having concluded that the substitute didn’t even come close to the real thing. Something very similar happened years ago with egg-beaters after a not so positive cholesterol report from the doctor. It didn’t take long to realize that egg-beaters scrambled didn’t compare with the real thing over easy (we’ll talk about the bacon crispy another time), but isn’t that how all substitutes are?

Spiritually, we have to realize that the substitutes we put in our lives to take the place of God just don’t satisfy. Jeremiah 2:13 gives a good example: “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” Using the symbol of water, Jeremiah portrays  a people who instead of receiving what they need in life from the Lord, from the very source and fountain of life, substitute a man made, far inferior method of collecting water, cracked cisterns where all the water would eventually leak out leaving them empty and dry. The cisterns were a poor substitute for the real thing but that didn’t stop them from doing it because substitutes, by their very nature, are so deceiving.

Some substitute drugs and alcohol in their attempt to find peace when the Prince of Peace stands ready to calm the troubled waters of their lives. Others do the same with money, relationships and their career, taking something that has a clear purpose and value in its own right and putting it in place of finding purpose in life through a relationship with Jesus Christ. And maybe the most deceptive is when we substitute work for the Lord and religious activity for a relationship with the Lord, or as one man said, “Getting so busy doing the work of the kingdom that we forget who the King is.”

We must all be careful to avoid accepting substitutes for God Himself, for the relationship He wants to have with each of us, and for what He wants to accomplish in each of our lives. Substitutes are not the real thing and substitutes for God will, at the end of the day, always leave a person empty and without hope. Accept no substitutes for the awesome God we serve and for the close, personal, loving relationship He wants with each of us.

God Bless,
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church