Play Pretense

September 21, 2016

Jeremiah 3:6-10

Has God had a talk with you of late, have you shared it with anyone, now be very careful that your not sharing your thoughts and not the words of God.  The prophet Jeremiah tells the nations of Israel and Judah in the days of King Josiah about a conversation God had with him.  “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. Yet for all this, her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the Lord.”

In Psalm 111:10, it tells us; “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever!”  But I see no fear of God, not in the Church or the U.S. A. or the Western nations.  One must wonder do we have wisdom; do we not have any understanding of our God?  We first hear in 1 Kings 13:1-2, about a man of God coming to Judah and telling King Jeroboam that a son will be born in the house of David, named Josiah, and he will sacrifice on that altar the priest of the high places who is burning incense on it.  The altar was desecrated by human remains, and yet it would be centuries later before this came to be.  If you go to 2 Kings 21:23, you will see how Josiah becomes the king.  It is important to note that a young boy king could break the line of evil kings, his father was Amon, and he did evil just like his father Manasseh had done.  This eight-year-old king reigned 31 years in Jerusalem, and we find in 2 Kings 22:2, “He did what was right in the Lord’s sight . . .”

My dad often would say that history repeats because mankind does not learn from history.  Now that seem like what was happening to Judah, in spite of what had taken place in 722 B.C. to the ten tribes of northern Israel when the Capital City, Samaria fell to the Assyrians.  Do you recall 9-11, where over 3,000 American Citizen died from an attack by Muslim from Saudi, and our Nation played pretense, yes people who went by the name Christian fill the church building for almost a month.  But they like Judah were pretending to return to the Lord, but not with their hearts but out of fear.

It takes a foolish person to believe they can fool a holy, all-knowing God!

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice