Jeremiah 9:12-16
Who is the man so wise that he can understand this? To whom has the mouth of the Lord spoken, that he may declare it? Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through? And the Lord says: “Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accord with it, but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their fathers taught them. Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will feed this people with bitter food, and give them poisonous water to drink. I will scatter them among the nations whom neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them.”
Tag: Why Is Life So Rough?
Jeremiah speaks out in this paragraph what many people, especially Israel at the time, ask - why is life so tough? We wish we had some psychological gymnastics we could applied to such a simple question. We wish there was some complex answer and we were told the “secret” to solving the issues. But, God answers Jeremiah and He is not confused about the answer, nor does He make the answer confusing for us. The reason life is so tough on the nation (and all mankind) is that we have abandoned our first love (God) and we have forsaken His Word AND we have gone after false worship (in this case, the Baals). In Deuteronomy 28 Moses warned the nation that if they did not obey God’s commands than they would have curses instead of blessing. They did not obey and, therefore, the land is suffering for it; the people are suffering for it. You can’t escape the consequences of disobedience. Notice that God had taken the nation to a place of “milk and honey.” Now God describes it, above, as:
Behold, I will feed this people with bitter food, and give them poisonous water to drink.
How quickly milk and honey can turn to bitter food and poisonous water. But, that is what happens when you reject truth. Satan caused Eve (and subsequently, Adam) to reject truth. The consequences: Tossed from a beautiful Garden and into the wilderness of life. Psychology would like to to explain our “wilderness” as something happened to us. God says, no, when we reject truth we end up out of the place of milk and honey and the Garden of Eden and into the wilderness. Our issue is submitting to the truth of God’s Word and Commands. When we reject that truth, God gives us over to:
Romans 1:24
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity,
Romans 1:26
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.
Romans 1:28
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
If the reason for our “wilderness” of life is God giving us over to lusts, passions and debased minds, the solution to get back to the Garden of Eden and the Promise Land is obedience to Divine Truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment