Can you imagine the looks on the faces of the people when Jeremiah began to confront them about their sins? I’ll bet they looked like deer in headlights. "Who me?"
This reminds me of the character Steve Erckle saying, “Did I do that?”
(Read v. 10-13)
Why would God judge harshly?
A. The people refused Him (idolatry – chose other life experiences over Him)
God tells Israel, that if they really want false gods or to live life their own way, then fine. Here it is. You can live any way you want to live, but without me involved. In other words, you will find out how involved I have been with you.
God says turn about is fair play – “You chose to abandon me; now feel what abandonment feels like.”
B. The people rejected Him (disobedience – chose selfish desires instead of His way)
This is exactly what the people of Israel where doing. They started out just going to church and being just enough involved as to look spiritual. Their children took it s step farther. They stopped going as soon as they could. They didn’t see it in the lives of their parents, so why should they bother.
The rejection of God took the people of Israel into deeper measures of sin. They were living out sinful fantasies and ignoring the way of life God had for them. Their disobedience grieved God who had done so much to establish their nation as a city on a hill for people to find Him.
I cannot imagine living in a land where God has removed His love and mercy.
America could very well be at the edge of another great punishment. Our nation is not any stranger to sin. For hundreds of years it tolerated the sad destruction of two peoples. It pushed the Indians into lands unsuitable for living, and enslaved a people from Africa in a manner that crushed spirits through inhumane means of labor. The slave trade ended with a Civil War and the punishment on the South. The sad state for the Indians still goes on, but thank God for the church who is making every effort to bring joy and peace to a people who believe there is not any hope.
The United States has seen other moments of sin. The roaring twenties brought sins into our nation that had once been looked down upon. The Great Depression came due to it. The sixties brought on the free love societies and now AIDS, teen pregnancy, and abortion fill the papers. Our eagerness to keep up with the Jones, our refusal to allow prayer into schools, and our demeaning of the Christian faith that keeps the Bible out of workplaces and off the school curriculum cannot lead anywhere except to a nation that is forsaking God.
God is the only hope for our nation. Unfortunately, too many people live in the moment when they could be living in eternity. Like people who come to church on Sunday to ask God to forgive them for what they about to do (not what they have done)…Another name for it is forsake. To forsake God is to let other things become more important in our lives than Him. It is to leave, give up, renounce, desert, and abandon God.
People who forsake God ask Him to give them this one last pleasurable drink. They look for the one more risqué website online because it is not as bad as the rest. They don’t mind using the cuss words they hear on TV because obviously those words are not as harsh as they once used to be. They spend too much time alone with their special someone because they can handle the consequences that no one else can…They try to justify their sins like a clumsy Steve Erckle….Their motto is "The Devil made me do it"…
So many people are using alcohol, drugs, pornography, lies, cheating, sexual pleasures, and other sin practices because they like who it makes them. I guess they like being ordinary and temporary because those devices of pleasures are just that – temporary.
Too busy living in the moment for that momentary pleasure, they fail to see the damage it does to the image God has of them. God is not a god of the moment. God is the God of eternity, and His desire and image of us is an eternal image. But when we choose temporary, selfish, sin-filled pleasure we are renouncing the eternal. We are forsaking God.
We need to wake up and see the impending judgment of God. God has placed the church strategically throughout the world to help the world see the hope found only through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
The church helped the black Americans find a voice. Without the voice of the church Africans would still be traded freely across this world. Without church leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. the plight of black America would still be that of second class citizens.
We have a voice and we have a hope to give to our nation. We need to find our voice and let our community know that we serve a God who is high and risen up. Our actions need to speak louder than words, and the only way to do that is to stop justifying our sins and start walking away from them.
We are here in this time for a reason. Suffering is going on all around us due to the sin of others. Our voice, the voice given by Jesus Christ so that we can be set free from the tyranny of sin, our voice is what God is wanting to use to help us through this national crisis. We have to set the example in business practices, in financial decisions, TV viewing, in movie watching, in faith walking….
We can and must allow God to renew the image He has of us. We can and must start living for eternity and not just for the moment. Our voice can be heard, as long as we start listening to the voice of the Spirit of God.
Our sins demand judgment and deserve the consequences. However, God has decided…
- Have you found yourself living for the momentary pleasures in life lately rather than living in the eternal image God has of you?
- When the Bible says, "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." (Heb 10:31 (NIV)), what do you think?
- When you read, "So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised." (Heb 10:35-36 (NIV)), what do you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment