Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Training - 101

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!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com    Unless noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

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