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Where is the Lord |
Dear Brethren,
We have a growing spiritual problem in our
country, and I suspect, also, in the Church of God. We are
witnesses of a period of rapid national decline that does
not bode well for our country – and it is a warning from God
– especially to His end-time people. God gives a nation the
leaders it deserves. As in Jeremiah’s day, our national
leaders and our Church leaders are failing in their
responsibilities. God warned all Israel through Jeremiah.
“Hear ye the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all
the families of the house of Israel.” (Jeremiah 2:4)
These words of Jeremiah apply doubly to those
of us in the Church of God because we are the spiritual
Israel of God (Galatians 6:16). Then God asks the
rhetorical questions, “What did I do wrong? – What did I not provide for
you? – When did I break-off my betrothal to you?” (Of course, we
understand that iniquity was not with God, but with our forefathers.)
God is saying, in effect, that He did everything for Israel and Judah - and
still, they broke the covenantal relationship.
"Thus says the Lord, What iniquity have
your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me,
and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?"
(Jeremiah 2:5) Vanity means that all we do will soon come
to nothing. Our strength, our power, our reputations, our
stone monuments, and our dreams will all come to naught.
God clearly warns that all who forsake Him shall be ashamed,
and they who depart from God shall be written in the
earth (Jeremiah 17:13). A name written in the dirt
will not prevail at all – like a sand castle on the beach –
destined to be obliterated by the next wave – that is what
we would amount to without God.
"Neither said they, Where is the Lord
that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us
through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of
pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death,
through a land that no man passed through, and where no man
dwelt? (Jeremiah 2:6) We would not have been born if
it were not for those things God did with our
forefathers. We would not even exist! "And I brought
you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and
the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my
land, and made mine heritage an abomination."
(Jeremiah 2:7) Just look at the bountiful resources God has
bestowed on us as a people.
"The priests said not, Where is the
Lord? and they that handle the law knew me not: the
pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets
prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not
profit. (Jeremiah 2:8) Things that do not
profit, refers to anything that goes contrary to God’s way. "For
my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me
the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns,
broken cisterns, that can hold no water." (Jeremiah
2:13)
Jeremiah preached in a day when the people of
Judah had turned away from God to do their own thing. No
longer were they devoted to God or depending on Him to meet
their spiritual needs – they were guilty of two evils –
rejecting the holy things of God, and replacing the holy
things of God with artificial reservoirs of substitute
religion. Their faith was only a pretense faith – approved
of only by others who practiced a pretense faith themselves.
No faith at all would have been preferred –
then at least they would not have been hypocrites –
so God records their being off the mark as being two
evils – doubly wicked. Instead of practicing a pure
religion of serving God and the brethren – of expressing
mercy and forgiveness – of reconciling and healing…they were
all show – like the Pharisees of Christ’s day.
Brethren, we cannot be living our Christian
lives as though there was no possibility of falling away.
It is still possible to reject the Son of God – even after
we have accepted His blood for the forgiveness of our
sins. Jesus Christ reveals that conditions in His end-time
Church would be very much the same. He is outside knocking
and saying “get zealous or be rejected.”
(Revelation 3:19) The situation of the outside world is
reflected to a large extent in the Church of God.
Where is the Lord in all of
this? That is the problem – we have rejected, neglected and
refused our God. The reason that our nation is in a nose
dive to devastation is not financial, or governmental, or a
border problem. It is not the courts, or the Muslim
peoples. It is not education or politics or lawyers. In
America, God is not in our thoughts, our actions or our
deeds – we do not ask, “Where is the Lord
that gave us this great land?”
We do not ask Where is the Lord
because we have become ungrateful and un-appreciative – we
take our great blessings for granted. "Because you do
not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness, and with
gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things."
(Deuteronomy 28:47) We have a growing spiritual problem in
our country and in our Church. Because God is not in
our thoughts and our ways, God is giving us over to the
seeds of destruction. We in God's Church can be
spared. God will save His people and a remnant as well. God
says to that remnant that goes into captivity, “I will
give them an heart to know me, that I am the Lord: and they
shall be my people, and I will be their God: for
they shall return unto Me with their whole heart.”
(Jeremiah 24:7)
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"Where is the Lord"
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