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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.
Then the Lord said to me, “There is
a conspiracy among the people of Judah and those who live in Jerusalem. They
have returned to the sins of their ancestors, who refused to listen to My
words. They have followed other gods to serve them. Both Israel and Judah have
broken the covenant I made with their ancestors.”
“Therefore this is what the Lord
says: ‘I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry
out to me, I will not listen to them. The towns of Judah and the people of
Jerusalem will go and cry out to the gods to whom they burn incense, but they
will not help them at all when disaster strikes. You, Judah, have as many gods
as you have towns; and the altars you have set up to burn incense to that shameful
god Baal are as many as the streets of Jerusalem.’”
Jeremiah 11:9-13
This ends today’s reading from God's holy
word. Thanks be to God.
In yesterday’s devotion, we looked at two primary truths:
First, God has made covenants with His people since Old Testament
times and, secondly, God always keeps His covenant promises.
Unfortunately, in regard to the latter, we are not as good
as keeping our end of the covenants. As we will see from our scripture passage
for today in regard to the Israelites of Jeremiah’s day, it was true then and unfortunately,
it’s still remains true today. Look at these words from the 11th chapter of
Jeremiah:
Then the Lord said to me, “There is a conspiracy among the people of
Judah and those who live in Jerusalem. They have returned to the sins of their
ancestors, who refused to listen to My words. They have followed other gods to
serve them. Both Israel and Judah have broken the covenant I made with their
ancestors.”
“Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘I will bring on them a disaster
they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them. The
towns of Judah and the people of Jerusalem will go and cry out to the gods to
whom they burn incense, but they will not help them at all when disaster
strikes. You, Judah, have as many gods as you have towns; and the altars you
have set up to burn incense to that shameful god Baal are as many as the
streets of Jerusalem.’” Jeremiah 11:9-13
God had made an agreement with the Israelites. He would be
their God and they would be His people. All they had to do was remain completely
obedient to His commands and follow His will and way but as we see in these
verses, the people of God had chosen to compromise the covenant God had made
with them.
In essence, the Israelites decided to be unfaithful to a
God who had been nothing but faithful to them. As the Lord professes, His
people had formed a conspiracy against Him, returning to the sins of their
ancestors who had been stubbornly disobedient to Him in the past. God had
expectations that this new generation of Israelites would be different but
unfortunately, they weren’t. They refused to listen to His words which included
commands to not worship any other god except for Him and adopted the pagan
worship practices of other peoples who lives in their midst.
How bad was the extent of the sinfulness of God’s people?
So bad that the altars constructed
to worship the chief false god Baal outnumbered the number of towns in the
southern kingdom of Judah and the streets within the holy city of Jerusalem.
Not good.
And so God, who will not be disrespected
or disregarded in any fashion, took action and brought judgment upon His
people. You see, there are always consequences for compromising the covenant
with God.
In the case of the Israelites, God
promised He would bring disaster upon the Israelites that they would not be
able to escape. That disaster came in the form of the Babylonian invasion and
the subsequent destruction of the holy land to include all of Judah and the
city of Jerusalem. The people who survived the onslaught would be hauled off
into seventy years of exile and when they cried out to the Lord for help, He
would not listen.
And why would He? The people had
chosen to place their faith in other gods so the people could cry out to those
gods for help. When they did, they would soon learn what they should have known
all along. For those gods were as dead as the materials the idols were made
from. You could pray to them until death and never receive an answer.
You see, God’s punishment may have
seemed harsh but He had to show His people that He was indeed the only true God
and sometimes we need to live apart from Him in order to appreciate all He is
to us. Compromising His covenant will always result in discipline but through
that correction, the Lord is always trying to teach us to be better believers
and followers of His word, will, and way.
So where does this leave us today?
Are we in violation of God’s
covenant that expects His people to be completely obedient to His commands?
Could disaster be sent on any one nation today where its people have
compromised their covenant with God?
I think the answer to both
questions is “yes”.
We have become less and less a
people who give God the honor and authority over our lives and thus have become
a people who have fallen more and more into sin than ever before. We live as if
there are no consequences for our actions because we live as if God does not
exist and as we can see in what happened to the Old Testament Israelites, that’s
a very dangerous proposition.
So what is it going to take for God
to get our attention? What measures will He need to adopt to turn us back to
Him and the covenant promise we are so blatantly compromising?
I shudder to think about what may
come and my prayer every day is that we wake up and correct ourselves before He
has to do it for us.
Trust me when I say, it will be
exponentially easier that way.
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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