When you go through a Bible reading program and spend weeks reading back-to-back authors from the Major and Minor Prophets who give God’s warnings of impending judgments, it gives you a lot to think about. I have been thinking a lot.
God’s people, Israel and Judah, began to race away from God into the arms of false gods. They turned their backs on the God who protected them, loved them, and made them a special people in order to align with chunks of wood and stone they forged with their own hands.
Please note that these false gods did not force Israel and Judah into their arms. These idols were dumb, inanimate objects crafted from men’s own imaginations. Instead of being image-bearers who worshiped their true Creator, Israel and Judah worshiped the images they created.
Why did this happen? How could people give up so much and embrace so little? Isaiah 44 talks about the folly of idolatry. It speaks of men who cut down a tree and use half the wood to burn in a fire to warm themselves or as fuel to cook their meals. What do they do with the remaining wood?
“And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!” (Isaiah 44:17 ESV).
And so the one true and living God had enough. His people are committing spiritual adultery against Him, and no matter how much He pleaded for them to come back to Him, they continued to turn their backs on Him and worshiped rocks and trees.
You see, their gods let them do anything they wanted to do. Their gods did not argue, did not threaten, did not command. The idolatrous people got to pick what commands their gods issued and what activities they could engage in.
Their gods let them give into their base desires without rebuke. Their gods were popular among the nations around them. Their gods were accepting and inclusive of all kinds of sin. Well, they were inclusive of everyone except those who worshiped Yahweh.
Soon, even God’s people turned on those who remained faithful to the Creator. But you see a progression in how people left God. Early on, their curiosity caused them to check out false gods. Over time, they joined in duel celebrations while still holding to a semblance of Yahweh worship.
Then they moved into a time when their worship of Yahweh continued in practice, while their hearts were with their false gods. Finally, when you get to the writings of prophets like Jeremiah, the whole society grew hostile to God to the point where they demanded godly men cease worshipping and speaking of the Lord and accept their false gods. They threatened these men with imprisonment, beatings, and even death. With the coming of each generation that refused to return to God, the more hostile they grew to God’s people. Soon, they were doing things to godly men and women that they once thought they’d never do.
Truly, what is accepted today was thought impossible yesterday.
The moral and spiritual collapse of a people does not have to take hundreds of years to happen. After the godly men of Joshua’s days passed away, we read,
“And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel.” (Judges 2:10 ESV).
Sometimes, even godly men and women can get stuck in the past by becoming blind to the present. Can we really deny that our generation is seeing things that were once thought unthinkable?
I am not talking about things like brazen murders, entitled looting, and openly practicing depraved sexual acts once not even spoken of. I am talking about the societal attitude that accepts it.
In Romans 1, Paul lists out sins that people commit so willfully that God just turns them over to themselves. But the end of verse 32 says,
“they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” (Romans 1:32b ESV).
The evil that exists in our society is surrounded on all sides by those who give approval to those who practice them. They march with them. They riot with them. They find godly men and women guilty when those godly men and women stand for the values of the one true God.
Do we think that what is going on in our society is new? It is not new. Read the prophets. The gradual decline away from God must be replaced with depravity. It always has been. We are deluding ourselves if we think mankind has changed so much that we can throw off God without embracing the evil one.
“Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush.” (Jeremiah 6:15a ESV).
Have we collectively reached the point where we have forgotten how to blush?
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20 ESV).
Have we collectively reached the point as a society where we call what is evil good and what is good evil?
“who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!” (Isaiah 5:23 ESV).
Have we collectively reached the point as a society where we pervert justice with no sign of shame?
Can a people continue to do these things and escape the eyes of the sovereign King of kings with impunity? The writings of the prophets tell us that the once-beloved children of Israel and Judah could not escape His eyes, though God begged and pleaded with them to turn from their sins and return to Him and live.
How long will God allow our nation, our Western society, to continue mocking Him and persecuting His people? I don’t know. But my beloved brothers and sisters who stand firm, brace yourselves. If we think society has gotten bad today, we’ve seen nothing that the depravity of man is capable of.
We have moved past the stage where we look upon depravity with fascination. We are even moving past the stage where people practice depravity and ask to be left alone. We are in the stage where we sacrifice the innocent and defend the guilty. We steal from those who have and defend those who take. We are beginning to condemn the innocent without fear of society’s consequences.
We are starting to move to the stage where it will no longer be acceptable to let people commit their sinful acts in peace. We are moving closer to being a society that compels the godly to actively support evil or suffer consequences like the loss of a job, fines, or imprisonment.
How long will it be until that is no longer enough? How long will it be before society asks us point blank if we are Christians, punishing the “guilty” with imprisonment or death?
A long way off, I hope.
But what is accepted today was thought impossible yesterday.
What seems impossible today becomes accepted tomorrow.
I don’t know how bad things may end up getting, or if people will return to the Lord and stay His hand a bit longer. But I do know this: When society descends deeper and deeper into depravity and ungodliness, there is only one place I want to be.
By the Lord’s side.
If things get bad, then I need God more than ever. I cannot imagine living in a depraved world beyond what even ours is today, having abandoned my relationship with Jesus. He is my peace in a time of chaos. He is my light when things get dark. He is my joy when things grow heartbreaking. He is my rock when the foundations of society crumble beneath us.
When the Lord reaches the point where there is no remedy (2 Chronicles 36:16), it is precisely then that I need to be at His side lest I be swept away in His wrath.
I am almost out of the prophets in my daily Bible reading and will soon be reading about the coming of the promised Messiah.
I am ready for some good news.
Perhaps the scariest verse in the Bible:
“But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.” (Matthew 25:12 ESV).
The man with no regard for God will steal.
The man with little regard for God will work to have.
The man who regards God will work to have to give.
“Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” (Ephesians 4:28 ESV).
When we forget how to blush, we become blind to the depth of our own depravity.
“Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush.” (Jeremiah 6:15a ESV).
Do you know what would be cool?
If when Jesus returned, we were in the middle of serving others.
Do you know what would be cooler?
If we were in the middle of serving others without grumbling about it in our hearts.
I am in the book of Jeremiah in my daily Bible reading. This is the book where we see the transition of the people of Judah from having their own land to being brought in the land of captivity into the land of Babylon.
Jeremiah was a contemporary of both Ezekiel and Daniel. It must have been something for these two men who served the Lord in a foreign land to read the words of the prophet Jeremiah that the king once tried to destroy by burning with fire.
Jeremiah had the unenvious stewardship of delivering a message of judgment while Ezekiel and Daniel gave glimpses of God’s deliverance that telescoped out far beyond the Jewish people.
Yet God cared for all these men while Judah was in captivity. They learned it was in God’s sovereignty that Judah was delivered into Nebuchadnezzar’s hand. Over and over, Jeremiah calls the Babylonian king His servant.
What does Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel teach me? That no matter what is going on in the land in which we live, we can lean on God for stability and comfort. We are allegiant to a kingdom built on a Rock that cannot be shaken.
We can watch the political changes that sweep all around us, but when we cling to the Lord, we can be sure that we serve a King Who is sovereign over all these changes.
Nebuchadnezzar burned down Jerusalem. He did it only by God’s sovereign decree.
God told king Zedekiah He would spare Jerusalem if the king would yield to God’s judgment. Instead, Zedekiah tried to outrun God’s judgment.
So, Nebuchadnezzar burned the city because that is what God allowed him to do.
No matter how bad things look to us, never assume all is lost and we must outrun the eyes of the Lord. The only safety we have in the midst of turmoil is in the presence of the Lord.