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December 28, 2014 |
| Warnings and Correction | ||
When God's people turn away from him, God's love for them is such that he will always try to turn them back to him. At first he sends simple warnings, then progressively more serious warnings and if these are ignored correction is given that is designed to humble them and break their spirit of rejection.
We see these steps through Israel's frequent rejection of God.
God's early warnings to his people are often so mild that they can be missed. The evidence for them can be no more than unexpected failures where success was expected. We come to expect these unexpected failures in our lives because it seems that is the way of things. Therefore the warnings are not seen for what they are.
Our example for this comes after Israel had served her time in Babylonian and Medo-Persian captivity. Israel was allowed to return home. Their first actions were to rebuild their lives and homes. Without thinking about it they neglected to rebuild God's house. God, however, wanted them to consider him first.
3 Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: 4 "Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?"
5 Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways. 6 You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it."
7 This is what the Lord Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways. (Haggai 1:3-7)
Notice how God first tried to get their attention, unexpectedly small harvests, not having enough food or drink, and wasting away their wealth. God is trying to get their attention by not allowing their efforts to prosper.
Through the prophet Haggai, God is saying, look at this lack of success and ask yourself why this is happening. From this we know that God can use many things as signs for us. When unexpected failure happens, our instinct should be to ask ourselves if this failure is a sign that we should have a look at what we are doing.
This is a fundamentally foreign idea to our modern world. In its scientific achievements and its belief in a rational world (i.e. one without a God) it has come to believe that an explanation replaces the need to look for a cause.
Take for example a farmer who plants a crop and it gets sun and rain. When harvest time comes if the harvest doesn't bring in much grain we always look for a rational explanation. Perhaps the rain came at the wrong times. Perhaps bugs injured the crop when it was young. But we never consider the "irrational" explanation that God may be trying to get our attention.
Even if the explanation is just a guess by someone, we tend to find that more satisfactory than saying God caused that to try to get your attention. If you are in a car accident, the explanation may be that the other driver was speeding and couldn't stop in time. But for the Christian the question has to be why did this happen to ME and why NOW.
This doesn't mean that everything bad that happens to you is a warning from God. For example sinners must be allowed to sin and sometimes those sinful actions impact Christians. There are many other reasons why bad things happen to God's people. Every bad thing that happens should be seen as an opportunity to ask ourselves if we have stepped outside the will of God. In fact every day should be an opportunity to ask that question.
To the world the idea that God warns people through "natural" events this way conjures up ideas of frightened primitive people sacrificing virgins to gain the favor of their god or gods. Nothing could be more crazy to them. However, the Bible makes it clear that God works this way. Our response should be self-evaluation to see if we have slipped away from God's will.
Haggai isn't the only place we see this. The prophet Amos said much the same thing.
7 "I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away. I sent rain on one town, but withheld it from another. One field had rain; another had none and dried up. 8 People staggered from town to town for water but did not get enough to drink, yet you have not returned to me," declares the Lord.
9 "Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards, destroying them with blight and mildew. Locusts devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you have not returned to me," declares the Lord. (Amos 4:7-9)
God caused unexpected failures of their crops and shortages of water. These were to be seen as a call to repentance.
As was mentioned before, these signs are often missed, especially by a people who have rejected God. Instead they come up with rational explanations. God says something important in these verses that must not be missed. He says he has sent rain on some crops but not on others. Therefore he is asking, what rational explanation do you have for that irrational event.
If we continue to miss the warnings we are given, the warnings become louder. In Old Testament days that usually meant that prophets would show up to explain to the people what the problem was. That is what we see with the prophets Haggai and Amos. The people missed the warnings and the prophets are there to make it clear.
But the people usually rejected the prophets. By the time the prophets arrived the people had often turned so far away from God that they didn't want to do what was right. They usually justified their rejection of God's prophets by bringing in false prophets who would tell them what they wanted to hear.
There are so many examples of this in the Bible. The one we'll look at comes from 1 Kings 22. The evil Ahab, king of Northern Israel, and the good king Jehoshaphat, king of Judah and Benjamin, are trying to decide if they should fight the Aramaeans to regain territory that belonged to Israel.
6 So the king of Israel brought together the prophets-about four hundred men-and asked them, "Shall I go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?"
"Go," they answered, "for the Lord will give it into the king's hand."
7 But Jehoshaphat asked, "Is there no longer a prophet of the Lord here whom we can inquire of?"
8 The king of Israel answered Jehoshaphat, "There is still one prophet through whom we can inquire of the Lord, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad. He is Micaiah son of Imlah."
"The king should not say such a thing," Jehoshaphat replied.
[…]
15 When he arrived, the king asked him, "Micaiah, shall we go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or not?"
"Attack and be victorious," he answered, "for the Lord will give it into the king's hand."
16 The king said to him, "How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?"
17 Then Micaiah answered, "I saw all Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd, and the Lord said, 'These people have no master. Let each one go home in peace.'"
18 The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, "Didn't I tell you that he never prophesies anything good about me, but only bad?"
[…]
26 The king of Israel then ordered, "Take Micaiah and send him back to Amon the ruler of the city and to Joash the king's son 27 and say, 'This is what the king says: Put this fellow in prison and give him nothing but bread and water until I return safely.'"
28 Micaiah declared, "If you ever return safely, the Lord has not spoken through me." Then he added, "Mark my words, all you people!" (1 Kings 22:6-28)
Ahab ignored the warning from the one prophet of God and listened to the words from the hundreds of false prophets because those were the words he wanted to hear. He went into battle and died.
In many cases Israel ignored the warnings from God's prophets for a long period. The prophets would warn them over and over, often acting out the desperate circumstances the people would find themselves in when God's judgment came. For this the prophets were often mistreated as Micaiah was above.
If his people would not hear his warnings, eventually God would act. For Israel this correction was generally done by using the neighboring countries to bring destruction upon her. Israel was brought to her knees. Everything she had was taken from her.
Jeremiah the prophet went through all of this. He was sent by God to warn the people and he did so for many years. His warnings were rejected in favor of the happy words coming from the false prophets. Jeremiah was also abused on many occasions because he was such a 'negative' guy.
But the time came. Everything that God said would happen did happen. Jerusalem was destroyed and left desolate. Still the people would not listen to God. Some people escaped the destruction and were taken captive. Others were told to stay in Israel to work the land and they would be safe. Through Jeremiah, God instructed them not to run away to Egypt. Many of them did anyway.
15 Then all the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods, along with all the women who were present-a large assembly-and all the people living in Lower and Upper Egypt, said to Jeremiah, 16 "We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord! 17 We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm. 18 But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine." (Jeremiah 44:16-18)
They reject Jeremiah and forget all the years he warned them this destruction was coming. Instead they blame it on their failure to worship their false god.