Rocky Road Devotions: O God...HELP!

Friday, September 16, 2022

O God, pagan nations have conquered your land, your special possession. They have defiled your holy Temple and made Jerusalem a heap of ruins. They have left the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of heaven. The flesh of your godly ones has become food for the wild animals. Blood has flowed like water all around Jerusalem; no one is left to bury the dead. We are mocked by our neighbors, an object of scorn and derision to those around us. O Lord, how long will you be angry with us? Forever? How long will your jealousy burn like fire? Pour out your wrath on the nations that refuse to acknowledge you—on kingdoms that do not call upon your name. For they have devoured your people Israel, making the land a desolate wilderness. Psalm 79:1-7

This is a prayer ascribed to Asaph (one of the Scribes who could have been tasked with ghost-writing the king’s thoughts to be shared in worship). There is, in this prayer the beginnings (at least) of that old saying: Be careful of that for which you pray…you just might get it!

I am referring to that part where Asaph asks God to pour out wrath on the nations that don’t acknowledge God, don’t seek His will. Only a righteous person or nation could pray that kind of prayer with a straight face. This was a time of trouble, when the Babylonian Empire had conquered Jerusalem in 586 BC. With the city and the Temple demonlished, there was a lot of lamenting and praying for God’s help. But it was little use offering prayers to God to help them get a little payback on Babylon.[1] That prayer would only bounce-back on their heads. Israel had sinned just as heinously as Babylon, just in different ways. In fact, God was the one who engineered Babylon’s conquest. Jeremiah had prophesied the cauldron[2] of trouble from the North (Iraq) would flood-down on Jerusalem like a pot of boiling water on their heads. In a kind of poetic justice, when an unrighteous person (or nation) prays that God would destroy the unrighteous, it will receive God’s answer, but it won’t be nearly like the praying person thought.

Following the attack of September 11, 2001, it was common during televised ball games, to sing God Bless America during a break. Feelings of nationalistic pride would well-up in tears of millions of eyes of those who hardly (if ever) darkened the doorstep of a church, or bowed a knee in prayer. We pray, or at least sing our national anthem with more gusto, when we’re in trouble. And that is anything but seeking the face of God…it is praying for the ability to find a plausible alibi when you’ve been caught red-handed with hands in the cookie jar.

A better word would be hypocrisy. You cannot live every day of your life without so much as a thought of God’s ways, and then expect God’s kindness, just because you deserve it, and He is that big vending machine in the sky. God does not change his character, and He has told us exactly how he will respond to those who have a pretend relationship with Him. In the final judgment, there are some who will try to run that game right before the throne; the response of God will be:

But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’ Matthew 7:23

For You Today

Let’s give the Scripture the last word today on a better life’s path:

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Proverbs 3:5-6^(KJV)

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

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There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these:

An Empty Lament and Stumbling in Broad Daylight