(This post is the next in a series of posts containing my first blush reactions to passages I come across in the reading of Scripture. I am currently going straight through the book of Jeremiah and will be sharing with you which verses the Spirit causes to jump out at me and the unrevised, unpolished feelings which they invoke.)
“Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’-only to go on doing all these abominations?” (7.9,10)
My own arrogance sometimes, and the arrogance of Western Christianity in general, astounds me as we go about doing “whatever the hell” we want to, only to show up on Sunday and say “God, you are great!”, yet just as quickly run back into our earlier deeds. God’s grace is good and is unmerited, but what assurance of faith can I have if a “love” for God and a knowledge of his commandments does not compel me to obedience? We are so quick to tell others not to judge us, but how can we even bear our own judgment in doing these things if truly we are Christians?
“Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel.” (7.12)
God’s Word gives testimony to his wrath so that I can know what awaits a disobedient life. There is a sense in which we can go overboard and attribute all affliction as active punishment for sin, but at the same time there is a very real way in which God’s wrath is poured out on unrighteousness. We have the Bible for a reason. There is an extent to which God is saying “Obey or else!”, and far from being an evil despot, God’s judgment is just against us and all our iniquity.
“And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste.” (7.34)
God commands that the Gospel be taken all places but he never directs that it must persist there. Thus we should be aware that it is possible for God to remove his presence from a people and voice from a community if hearts are hardened in disobedience against him. We should not be so arrogant as to assume that God’s hand of blessing will always stay on us. We must constantly be in an act of worship and devotion, of obedience and killing of sins in the flesh, so that God’s name will be revered and not reviled in our land. It is the complacency and lukewarmness of our hearts which spiral us into the position of occupying God’s contempt.
