15th Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture: Jeremiah 2:4-13
Jeremiah was a young priest who God sent to His fallen children, the Israelites, seeking to draw then back into His fold.
They had strayed far, far from His presence and He longed to have them back.
Jeremiah’s whole ministry was a challenge and an opportunity to draw them back into a covenant relationship with God. God promised them, “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.”
Throughout Israel’s long history, time and time again they strayed from God’s loving presence. Still, God always kept a remnant of them, offering them chance after chance to be redeemed. He offered them the promise land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Praise God! He is slow to anger and full of patience with them, as well as with you and me yet today.
I believe that God allows us to stray not because He wants us to, but because He created us with free will. And because of that free will, we want to do our thing, our desires and not the will of God; however, there will be a day of judgment for our behavior.
I’m going to take a big step here and ask this:
Are we so busy today with the world so full of noise that we don’t hear the voice of God speaking to us?
Paul was so bent to destroy the Christian movement that he was seeking Christians to take back to Rome to be crucified. As he was traveling, God struck him down on the road to Damascus. Paul’s words were, “Who are you, Lord?”
I sense with all my heart that we are a special chosen vessel of the Lord today, intended to share His message of love and forgiveness to the whole world. He has planted us in his promised land. But like the chosen people of Israel, we have forsaken God’s desire for our own. We have raped our land of its rich minerals for the sake of a profit while not doing God’s will. We have allowed society to cripple the church’s witness and time with God for one or two hours of time a week in our lives. Look at the church’s services today compared to what it was 50 years ago.
Commerce today is 24/7 today. The church has no control or voice in our world. If someone goes to the corner of our streets, crying out the love of God, they are labeled a religious freak or fanatic.
Yes, I know the Lord is slow to anger and patient, but let us wake up to the potential to see the judgment that I spoke of. It is more than 2000 years closer to us than when Christ walked among us on the earth.
Let us pray!
