Short-sightedness
The accusation found in verse four is fairly challenging. “What wrong did your fathers find in Me that
they turned away?” I think this is quite
an appropriate question to ask. I was
watching a video last night on Youtube.
The video is done by the 3DM (Three Dimensional Ministries) group.
In the video, some amazing statistics are given. Here’s the current rate that the
“generations” are coming to church.
Builder Generation is 65%. Boomer
Gen is 35%. Gen X is 15%. Gen Y is 4%.
{As the video says, the oldest of
Gen Y turn 30 this year! They aren’t just
the kids and the teens we think of them as anymore.}
God asks, ‘What did your fathers find so offensive in Me that they
turned away?” Indeed. I think this question really frames our
current culture well. In cultures past,
the typical reasons for people turning away from God were along the lines of
laziness or busyness. I don’t think
that’s as accurate anymore. I think
people are turning away from God because they are seeing things that they don’t
like. Our culture itself is separating
from a culture of godly virtue. As that
separation happens, people will find godliness more and more distasteful.
After all, it is becoming less and less cool to respect one’s
parents. {Watch any Disney Channel or Nickelodeon lately?} It is becoming less and less cool to put
aside one’s personal agenda and care about someone else’s problem’s more than
your own. {Anyone listen to political pundits lately?} It is becoming less and less cool to love
your neighbor, live hospitably, and buy into a code that requires submission to
anyone else. As our society departs from
godliness, godliness will become more and more distasteful.
Defilement
Look at where Israel turned once their agenda went away from God’s
agenda. In Jeremiah 2:7 God says, “You
defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.” Talk about a sharp criticism! The Hebrew culture separated from godliness
and God calls it defilement and abomination.
Do I need to make too many obvious parallels here or can we all just
agree that we understand the connection between then and now?
Now look at verse 8. Where
does Jeremiah begin to lay the blame?
The blame rests upon the priests and the religious authorities. The priests stopped asking, “Where is God in
this?” The people who handled the Law
quit teaching it diligently. The
shepherds of the people actively transgressed.
The prophets found their wisdom in other gods. Talk about an utter failure of a hierarchical
religious structure to me.
You see, when the leaders of an organization fail God, the
organization itself is doomed to crumble.
Don’t get me wrong. When I say
crumble, I don’t mean “ushered into oblivion.”
I mean crumble. It will fall
apart. It will be pulled apart. It will – much like the Hebrew people – be
pulled apart and piece by piece sent into captivity. It probably won’t be utterly destroyed. But it will crumble into near-meaninglessness.
Sound familiar to anyone?
In a world where pluralism and politically correctness reign, do we not
all know the experience of spending too much time on social justice and too
little time on an intimate relationship with God? Do we not all known the experience of a
pastor or religious authority or spiritual mentor who quit doing what the Lord
our God has called that person to do? In
case you’re curious, that calling is to unapologetically proclaim the Lord and
His ways to a world that desperately needs Him.
In our culture, do we not all know the experience of watching Christian
public figures vacillating on the fence because their too concerned about
hanging with the majority and the popular?
Neither the Hebrew people nor their religious leaders are the only
ones in the scope of God’s creation who are guilty of turning God’s calling
into an abomination of defilement.
Two Errors
Verse 13 strikes a chord with me.
God’s people have committed two errors.
They have forsaken the living fountain of God’s ways and have hewn their
own cisterns. It’s too hard to live
according to God’s ways, so we find short cuts and then justify ourselves and
rationalize in how our decision just feels right in the end. We short cut consequences and leave other
people reeling in the wake of our decisions.
As we abandon God and His ways we instead to turn to drink out the
waters we have made for ourselves and expect to find refreshment.
Sigh. I’ll confess. I’ve been there. It’s not refreshing at all. Only God and His ways bring about true
refreshment. As verse 19 affirms,
apostasy and evil are bitter.
We Do It to Ourselves
So we turn to the second half of the chapter. Our cry goes out, “We’re innocent! We didn’t turn!” But we lie.
Has God brought any calamity upon us?
Has God placed the evil in our midst?
Or is it the consequences of our own action and our own desire? Do we not slay the people in our lives who
bring truth because it is easier to believe the lie? We do it to ourselves. It is not God who has turned but us who have
turned our back on God.
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