Thursday, October 10, 2019
Jeremiah the prophet said to all the people in Judah and Jerusalem, “For the past twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah, until now—the Lord has been giving me his messages. I have faithfully passed them on to you, but you have not listened. “Again and again the Lord has sent you his servants, the prophets, but you have not listened or even paid attention. Each time the message was this: ‘Turn from the evil road you are traveling and from the evil things you are doing. Only then will I let you live in this land that the Lord gave to you and your ancestors forever. Do not provoke my anger by worshiping idols you made with your own hands. Then I will not harm you.’ “But you would not listen to me,” says the Lord. “You made me furious by worshiping idols you made with your own hands, bringing on yourselves all the disasters you now suffer. And now the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Because you have not listened to me, I will gather together all the armies of the north under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whom I have appointed as my deputy. I will bring them all against this land and its people and against the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy you and make you an object of horror and contempt and a ruin forever. I will take away your happy singing and laughter. The joyful voices of bridegrooms and brides will no longer be heard. Your millstones will fall silent, and the lights in your homes will go out. This entire land will become a desolate wasteland. Jeremiah 25:2-11a
The people of God are a strange lot. Apostle Peter calls us “peculiar”. I know that means we are to be different,
set-apart for God’s purposes. We are to
serve God wholeheartedly, never being distracted from that mission. But we are also peculiar in the sense that we
do some really dumb stuff. Under the
leadership of Moses, being brought out of Egypt’s captivity, God’s family had a
tough time making a clean break with the ways of their Egyptian masters. It’s understandable; they’d been in captivity
for hundreds of years, and, frankly, slaves are not accustomed to independent and
creative thinking. When they finally made
it to the land promised to their ancestors, it was not long before they returned
to their former sins and forgot all about being God’s showcase of lovingkindness
for the world.
What’s worse, every time God sent a
prophet to warn the unruly Kingdom Kids they ignored them…and when those
prophets wouldn’t shut up about it all they would murder them. It is no wonder we call Jeremiah the weeping
prophet – he spent most of his adult life in a jail pit and never got the
accolades of Moses or Abraham, even though it was his message to go back to
that time and remember what true devotion to God looked like. They forgot that getting off track leads to the
slavery of staying off track. And that trackless, mission-less wandering always
leads to captivity.
American memory also has a short
lifespan. Israel’s history dates back
more than 4,000 years to Abraham; our recent experiment in liberty is less than
300 years old. In terms of the learning
curve, we’re still in Training – 101! At
present we are doing a great job of playing the class clown, bound to get
left-back for another 40 years circling the wilderness. Check the statistics on murder in the U.S., whether
it is in the streets, or the abortion clinics.
Check out the commandments to sexual purity as opposed to what the
modern day 9 Supreme Pharisees say is right and just.
For You Today
The apostle Peter had his own problems
staying on-track and faithful. We so-called
believers ought to hear his warning:
And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before. It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life. They prove the truth of this proverb: “A dog returns to its vomit.” And another says, “A washed pig returns to the mud.” 2 Peter 2:20-22
When it comes to being godly, America is flunking
kindergarten! It is time for another
Great Awakening before our love affair with returning to the vomit becomes
permanent!
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