SELF INFLICTED HARM

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“But am I the one they are provoking?” declares the Lord. “Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame?”

“‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: My anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place—on man and beast, on the trees of the field and on the crops of your land—and it will burn and not be quenched.”

“‘This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves!”

Jeremiah 7:19-21

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Here are some simple truths about all of us, truths we may not want to admit but truths nonetheless.

First, all of us are sinners. The Bible tells us so. (Romans 3:23)

Second, because we are all sinners, all of us fall short of God’s glory. (again, Romans 3:23).

Third, God hates sin. If you don’t believe that, then ask yourself why His judgment came on His people every time they rejected His call to righteousness, defying Him in wicked disobedience and disrespect.

Fourth, sin always has consequences. No one sins and gets away with it. There is always a price that gets paid, maybe no more evident that at the cross where Jesus, God’s only Son, died bearing the sins of man and paying the penalty we all deserved.

Fifth, despite all this, we still choose to sin to our own harm.

It’s this last one that just doesn’t make sense, does it?

I mean, as believers, we know all the damage sin has done and how God feels about it. And yet, we still allow ourselves to reject and rebel against God, pursuing the ways of the world and our own desires instead of His will, even though it will bring His judgment on us today, just as easily as it did in biblical times.

In other words, we seem to be bent on bringing self inflicted harm on ourselves through daring God to punish and correct us for our wrongs. In doing so, we’re only repeating the mistakes of the past as you will see when you relook at today’s scripture passage from Jeremiah 7:

“But am I the one they are provoking?” declares the Lord. “Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame?”

“‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: My anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place—on man and beast, on the trees of the field and on the crops of your land—and it will burn and not be quenched.”

“‘This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves!”  Jeremiah 7:19-21

Note here the Lord asks two very interesting questions as His people were blatantly disregarding His commandments and worshipping false gods and idols: “Am I the one they are provoking?” and “Are they not harming themselves to their own shame?”

First, the Lord wanted it made clear that the people of Israel were doing Him no harm by their actions. God isn’t effected by His people’s behavior but rather the people’s behavior is expected to be effected by God. The only provoking that was happening was the irritation the Israelites were bringing to God, the irritation that led to His anger and wrath to be poured out upon His people.

This led to the second question because the people were only inflicting harm upon themselves through their shameful sinfulness, harm that would involve the destruction and devastation of their homeland and a seventy year exile as they were carried off to a foreign land to be oppressed at the hands of the Babylonians.

Did I mention that sin always has consequences?

So what is it going to take for us to wake up today in the 21st century and stop provoking God to punish us to get our attention? Are we heading back down the road of self afflicted harm?

These are two questions we had better not waste any time addressing. Neither of them will be applicable if we only fully devote ourselves to obedient compliance to the Lord’s word and way, allowing His righteousness to displace any hint of sin we might feel tempted to commit.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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