Author: admin

Few things are as insulting to God as false promises. God knows the falsehood of our statements to Him even as they are leaving our mouth. While we make loud protests of our commitment to Him, God knows full well that our heart is unreliable.

Even as the Israelites promised God they would forever remain steadfast in their loyalty to Him, they were already selling themselves to other gods at every opportunity. God’s people naively assumed that righteous God could be pacified with empty words. But our Creator has no patience for insincere rhetoric. Words mean nothing to Him when they are not accompanied with actions.

How often do we sing songs of commitment to God in our worship services that mean nothing with regard to how we are actually living? How often do we utter words in our prayers that are hollow and devoid of true commitment? How many discussions among Christians sound pious on the surface but are never followed through in actual living? We are a people who love to substitute words for obedience in our walk with God.

Take an inventory of what you have said to God lately. God has a record of every word. He knows which ones you have followed though on and which ones you have blatantly ignored. In light of this, how does God view your current walk with Him?

Contrary to popular opinion, not all roads lead to God. In fact, many of them lead us far from Him. Throughout Israel’s history God continually expressed amazement that His people would place their trust in anything other than Himself. When trouble came, the Israelites would hurriedly turn to Egypt or Assyria for deliverance. These “deliverer’s” were far from reliable, or trustworthy. In fact they continually betrayed and disappointed them. It is the epitome of human foolishness to reject God and his proffered deliverance in favor of nefarious suitors.

Nevertheless, people continually place their trust in their own preferred deliverers. Perhaps it is because we feel we can negotiate our own terms for our rescue. Or perhaps our sin blinds us so we cannot recognize what is in our best interest. But whatever the reason for our apostasy, God views it as a bitter and evil thing.

People are often matter of fact, or even glib about their perpetual backsliding. But God is not laughing. He does not treat our spiritual failure lightly. He sees it as evil and bitter. God views our sin as a personal affront. You might consider your backsliding as a time of wandering or carelessness. God sees it as spiritual adultery.

Where is it you instinctively turn when you need help? If it is not to God, why is that?

We can be an incredibly audacious lot. We can betray our Creator and then blame Him when we suffer the inevitable consequences.

We are a blame-oriented society. There is always someone or something to castigate for our woes. It was our parents who did this! It is the opposing political party and its decisions that has produced our predicament! It is our boss or the economy or our staff that is ruining our world.

Yet God has a way of bringing the responsibility for our life back to us. We may loudly protest that it is God who has forsaken us. But the truth is that we are the ones who departed from the relationship. We chose to reject God’s will for our life. We ignored His standards. We excused our sin. We explained away the Bible’s inconvenient passages. And now, when we are experiencing exactly what God warned us about, we look for someone to blame.

If you are being tempted to blame someone or some thing else for your current predicament, consider for a moment, where God would place the blame for what is happening in your life.

Every idol in our life causes us to commit two sins. First, we turn away from our first love. When we sin, we do not merely break a rule. We betray our Savior. Second, we give our love to someone or something that is unworthy of it. Both acts are offensive to holy God.

So astonishing was the betrayal of God’s people that God called the heavens to serve as witnesses to the heinous adultery that was occurring. The heavens have been a silent witness to all of humanity’s wrongdoings, but God knew that such brazen betrayal would be shocking even to them.

The Church is often too accommodating to those who forsake their Savior. We can be more concerned about offending a sinner than we are with despising the Son of God. To reject Christ for temporal, worldly pleasures is abominable. The insolence of human creatures is incomprehensible.

Are you astonished at your own betrayals of God? Are you shocked at your own actions when you neglect Christ so you can embrace sin? Are you ashamed when you heed the call of the world but you are deaf to the still, small voice?

With God, there is no competition. Nothing compares to Him. No power in the universe can match His. No wealth can begin to match equal that of heaven. No love can approach that which God daily expresses toward you.

Yet people reject God regularly. Incredibly, they trade in their walk with God for cheap, tawdry substitutes. It is unfathomable. Why would anyone exchange a vibrant, personal relationship with almighty God for a frail, powerless, unsatisfying idol? It seems ludicrous for anyone to make such a poor substitution. Yet we do it all the time.

God expressed disbelief that after all he had done for His people they would so readily discard Him for cheap substitutes. He called witnesses from surrounding, pagan nations to come and observe. For even people who do not walk with God would be amazed that someone who had been adopted by the King of the universe could so brazenly walk away from their inheritance.

Take a moment to consider what draws your love and commitment away from Christ. Is there anything in your life or in the world around you that is more crucial to you than Him? How fervently are you clinging to Him and protecting your relationship?

As go leaders, so go the people of God. Whenever God’s people had godly leaders who listened to and obeyed God’s voice, there was always hope for deliverance. But when the leaders went astray and refused to do things God’s way, the people were doomed.

In Jeremiah’s day, those who should have led people back to God were actually leading them farther away. People trusted in their leaders but were thoroughly deceived. Instead of blessing those who followed them, these leaders profited their followers not at all.

These religious leaders claimed to speak for God, but their teachings came from the world. They proclaimed that theirs was divine wisdom, but it was merely worldly thinking. These would-be leaders had nothing with which to profit God’s people.

Just because someone holds a leadership position or claims to have your best interests at heart, do not summarily believe them. Many who claim to speak for God are actually leading people astray. Judge your leaders carefully. Does what they claim match the truths of Scripture? Is their leadership strengthening your walk with God?

Some of the leaders you are presently following may actually be racing toward a divine accounting

One of the severest punishments God can inflict upon people is to withdraw His presence from them. This is the essence of Hell.

Yet when God did this to His people in Jeremiah’s day, they didn’t even notice. They had become so disoriented to God and so dependent upon other

Gods, they never cried out to God, even when they experienced hardship. God expressed dismay that even after all He had done to reclaim His people’s attention, they still refused to cry out to Him.

How tragic when we grow so alienated from God that even calamity and pain does not drive us to our knees. How pitiful when we grow so accustomed to living without the Holy Spirit’s work in our life that we don’t even notice when He withdraws His manifest presence from us. When a people degenerate to that point, all that is left is judgment.

We live in a day when our nation is experiencing the withdrawal of God’s hand. Disasters and crises are commonplace. Human suffering is epidemic. Yet even God’s own people refuse to cry out to Him for deliverance. Instead we look to government agencies or financial institutions to rescue us. We turn to every other deliverer but God. What will it take for God’s people to cry out to Him, once more?

We creatures of dust are an audacious lot. Not only do we have the nerve to turn our backs on our Creator, but when we begin to suffer the inevitable consequences, we find a way to blame God for our discomfort!

God had showered blessings upon His people. He had delivered them from their bondage. He had provided them with abundance. God had protected them from their enemies and enabled them to defeat nations more powerful than they were. Yet that was not enough.

God’s people lusted after the immoral temptations offered by the pagan gods and customs. Incredibly, the blessings of heaven were not sufficient for God’s people. They wanted that which they had been told they could not have. So they turned their backs on the one Person who had loved them steadfastly.

God might ask us a similar question. What injustice has He been guilty of in His dealings with you? How has He been unfaithful to you? Why is it that despite all He has done for you, you do not love Him with all of your heart?

It ought to bring us enormous comfort to know that despite our inexcusable waywardness, God always remembers the tenderness of our earlier walk with Him. Though our hearts may have grown cold toward Him, He continues to remember when we were fervent in our devotion. While we may forget where we have come from, God never forgets what our walk with Him once was and could be again.

God’s people had wandered far from their earlier commitment to God. Whereas they had once placed their trust in their God; now they were hoping in deliverance from people. Whereas they once had repented of their sins, now they claimed they had not transgressed. Whereas their worship was once vibrant and sincere, now it was dead and infrequent. To observe God’s people at this time would have been disheartening to even the most seasoned prophet. But God remembered.

God is continually working to restore His people into the vibrant walk with Him they once had. God never loses hope. He never compromises His standards for His people. He knows what could be. So He continually works to bring us to that place. We may be distracted, but God remains forever focused.

We tend to forget that God spoke these words to a timid teenager! To anyone who knew Jeremiah at that time, the last thing they would have thought of was a fortified city! Jeremiah looked more like a trembling leaf or a tender flower. Yet God was preparing him to be a fortress of righteousness.

This humble youth would oppose kings and princes. The most powerful people in the nation would consider him their enemy. Yet for decade after decade, enemies would come and go but Jeremiah would remain as an outspoken testimony to God’s word. Though people desperately wanted to silence the meddlesome prophet, Jeremiah would remain steadfast in delivering God’s unwavering word.

God has ways of transforming even the most gentle and kind servant into a stronghold of godliness and truth. Is that what He has made you to become? Do people know they can depend upon you to remain unwavering in your convictions and loyalty to God? Do people see you firmly resisting every assault of wickedness? Do the enemies of God know what they can expect from you?

What manner of fortress for God are you?