When we read through the Old Testament, one thing stands out, people keep turning their back on God. Its like watching the same disaster movie with different characters for 8000 years. After a while, we know the plot and we know how its going to end. Its hard to imagine how they could have God play such an active roll in their lives and turn their back on Him or even forget about Him. Often God even sent prophets to warn them of the doom before them, but they were too stubborn to listen and often killed the prophets so they wouldn’t have to hear the judgment of their complicity in sin. Inevitably God raises up a foreign leader to rise up against His chosen people and they’re destroyed until they repent. This just keeps going on, over and over and they just didn’t get it. What is wrong with them?
Still, if we do a bit of reflection, the Christian church of today isn’t much different. Just as the Jews allowed the worship of God to become a hollow inconvenience, so have we. Statistically, the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God, at least in theory, but our country is racing away from Him. We are back to worshipping idols again. How is this possible? The American reliance on God has become empty lip service. Sin has become a viable personal decision and calling something sin is the greatest sin. Even the name of God or Jesus is being banned from the public forum.
So again we see His people turning from Him and many believe that God will discipline us yet again. Perhaps our Babylonian captivity isn’t too far into the future. Its as hard for us to imagine, as it was for the Jews thousands of years ago. Would God really allow His people to be crushed so cruelly? Everything in the Bible is there for a reason and there is a lot of history to show us that He would. Our debauchery isn’t something new and although we do have new technology to promote it, its the same old deadly sins rearing their ugly head. Just new idols.
We must remember that even though the world seems to be going crazy around us, God is in control. God wasn’t surprised by Babylon or taken off guard by Egypt. Neither is God fretting over Islam. Islam isn’t making progress by its own merits, the power isn’t in those leaders. Perhaps God is no longer constraining another Middle East dragon to, once again, discipline His people. I believe God is in control. This isn’t the way He wants it, He just wants His people to return to Him and misery is the only thing that seems to work. We are a stiff-necked arrogant people.
Christians often look at the times we’re in and think that Jesus must be coming soon. Perhaps He is, but why aren’t His people acting like it? Many are sure that they will escape the horrors to come because the rapture is near. If we really believed that, would we be so busy with things that really don’t matter? All that garbage that you’re wasting your life to acquire, wont even survive if He comes back tomorrow. So you’ve then wasted your life for nothing. Cheap idols that stole your life. Reconsider your priorities. Is it God or mindless acquisition of garbage that pushes God away from us? You have to choose. Lets make our heavenly Father our passion before we follow the stereotype.
Lets not become one of those dreaded sequels. We can change how this ends. Seek God with humility and a driven passion. What idols insulate you from God? Are the powers of those idols so intoxicating, that getting rid of them will leave a void in you? What would your friends says if you tossed away your useless idols? What would you do with all that time, read about your Savior? What if people called you names for not following the greed and sensuality of the world? God wants so much more for us than cheap trinkets.
We aren’t any different from the Jews in Scripture, just different people at a different time. The struggles are the same. Lets not follow the same path, friends. Lets stop the sequel today.
humbleshoeshineboy 