In this message I would like to give a word on the biblical principle of being one with God as revealed in the book of Jeremiah.
The book of Jeremiah unveils how God fulfills His economy by dispensing Himself into His chosen people. This is the principle that God wants us to see in the first forty-five chapters of this book, chapters that cover many points and provide many illustrations.
In 2:13 Jehovah speaks concerning the two basic sins committed by the children of Israel. The first sin was forsaking Jehovah as the fountain, the source, of living waters; the second sin was hewing out for themselves broken cisterns that could not hold water. This second sin was a matter of not trusting in God but of trusting in themselves to do something for their own enjoyment. These two sins govern the entire book of Jeremiah.
The principle in the Bible is that God does not want His chosen people to take anything other than Himself as their source. After God created man, He placed him in front of the tree of life, which signifies God as life. By doing this God was indicating that He wanted man to partake of the tree of life, not anything else. To partake of the tree of life is to take God as our unique source, as our source of everything.
What is sin? Sin is a matter of leaving God and doing something by ourselves and for ourselves. This is exactly what the children of Israel did. They forsook God as the fountain of living waters for their supply, and, according to their opinion, they did whatever they could to work out something by themselves for their enjoyment. I wish to emphasize that sin is to forsake God and to do something by ourselves and for ourselves. This is the principle throughout the Bible, and Jeremiah repeated this principle again and again so that we would be impressed.
Jeremiah 34—45 is a section of twelve chapters showing us the stubbornness of Israel in sinning against Jehovah. In these chapters one thing is made clear—that Israel has forsaken God as the source, the fountain, of living waters. Consider, for example, the situation with Gedaliah. Although he was faithful in caring for Jeremiah, God's prophet (40:5-6), he did not seek the Lord's word (vv. 13-14), because this was not his habit. He did not take God as his source to be one with Him and to receive whatever issued from Him. If he had been such a person, the first thing he would have done would have been to receive the word of God.