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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
“Announce this to the descendants
of Jacob and proclaim it in Judah:”
“Hear this, you foolish and
senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear:”
“Should you not fear me?” declares the Lord. “Should you not tremble in my presence? I made the sand a boundary for the sea, an everlasting barrier it cannot cross. The waves may roll, but they cannot prevail; they may roar, but they cannot cross it. But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts; they have turned aside and gone away. They do not say to themselves, ‘Let us fear the Lord our God, who gives autumn and spring rains in season, who assures us of the regular weeks of harvest.’”
Jeremiah
5:20-24
This ends today’s reading from God's holy
word. Thanks be to God.
Take a look at the world we live in today and ask yourself
one simple question:
Are we behaving in a way that shows we fear God?
As far as I see it, the answer is a big “no” and that leads
to a second question:
Shouldn’t we be fearing God?
There’s no doubt that the answer to that question is “yes”
and yet we’re not doing it. Not even close. Instead, we’re bent on doing
whatever we want to do. It doesn’t matter if God said to not do it. We act as
if we have no regard for anything God has said, especially if it runs counter
to our own will and desires.
Go back more than 2,000 years and you’ll find an Israelite
people who weren’t much different than we are today. They too lived in blatant
disobedience to God and chased after their wishes, not His. They decided sin
was more of a priority than righteousness and as we will see in today’s
scripture passage, that was a fatal mistake to make. Look again at these words
here:
“Announce this to the descendants of Jacob and proclaim it in Judah:”
“Hear this, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not
see, who have ears but do not hear:”
“Should you not fear me?” declares the Lord. “Should you not tremble in my presence? I made the sand a boundary for the sea, an everlasting barrier it cannot cross. The waves may roll, but they cannot prevail; they may roar, but they cannot cross it. But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts; they have turned aside and gone away. They do not say to themselves, ‘Let us fear the Lord our God, who gives autumn and spring rains in season, who assures us of the regular weeks of harvest.’” Jeremiah 5:20-24
The people of Israel had tuned God out of their lives. They
chose to see and hear only what they wanted to. They had stubborn and
rebellious hearts and minds, totally rejecting anything God wanted. They turned
aside from Him and had gone their own way, a way that could not have been
further from His way. And they certainly exhibited no trepidation when it came
to God which led Him to ask the same question I posed earlier:
“Should you
(speaking to the Israelites) not fear Me?”
They should have but
they didn’t and God’s word tells us that made His people foolish and senseless.
Ouch!
Look at the definition of these words and you will find
that God had called His people stupid, idiotic, witless, and ridiculous. This
might seem harsh but when you really think about it, they are accurate
descriptive terms to define God’s people at the time. For anyone who would
intentionally snub the God who was the Creator and Master of all things, the
God who had the power to do anything He wanted, had to be crazy, crazy because
they exhibited no fear of God. They dared God to act and so He did in the way
of judgment, judgment that resulted in devastation and isolation in the form of
lengthy exile.
Friends, there is no doubt that we should be a God-fearing
people. It’s time to start behaving like we are before God’s patience runs out
and He brings His consequences upon us, consequences that will certainly lead
us to a place of fear because we will be under the siege of an angry God
through which nothing is impossible to include the kinds of punishment He can
dole out on those who are sinfully foolish and senseless. None of us should
want to be counted in that number.
Amen.
In
Christ,
Mark
PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
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