How Long?

 Jeremiah 5:1-13

In that my income came from being in sales I’ve known what it is to embellish.  That is what Jeremiah is doing in verse one; “Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look and take note!  Search her squares to see if you can find a man, one who does justice and seeks truth, that I may pardon her.”  He would have to be excluding himself and his scribe Baruch, but the fact is that both the leaders and the ordinary people had their hearts set on evil.  It is amazing what God will do.  We must recall Genesis 18:22-32, Abraham asking God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if there are 50 righteous people in the city, and he kept lowering the number down to 10 people, but they could not find that many. 

As we look at verses 2-3, the United States of America comes to mind, and one must ask how much longer Father will you allow this nation not to be destroyed?  Verses two and three, “Though they say, “As the Lord lives,” yet they swear falsely.  O Lord, do not your eyes look for truth?  You have struck them down, but they felt no anguish; you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent.” 

 Many blame it all on the progressives, the Liberals and the under-resourced and also the uneducated, but look at verses 4-6, “Then I said, “These are only the poor; they have no sense; for they do not know the way of the Lord, the justice of their God.  I will go to the great and will speak to them, for they know the way of the Lord, the justice of their God.”  But they all alike had broken the yoke; they had burst the bonds. Therefore a lion from the forest shall strike them down; a wolf from the desert shall devastate them.  A leopard is watching their cities; everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces, because their transgressions are many, their apostasies are great.” (Note: the young lion to them was the Assyrians and later at this time the Babylonians.)  Today it would be Russia, China, or Muslims, the followers of the religion of Islam.  But it is not only a religion, its goal is to make by the power of the sword all nations and people to submit to its rule.

Verses 7-9, is a clear message from our God to us as it was to Judea: “How can I pardon you? Your children have forsaken me and have sworn by those who are no gods.  When I fed them to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the houses of whores. They were well-fed, lusty stallions, each neighing for his neighbor's wife.  Shall I not punish them for these things? declares the Lord; and shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?”  I’m fearful for a nation who turns from God, but it reminds us of this truth, judgment will begin with His church, have we also lost all fear of a pure and holy God?

As we end today, ask this question; why not my nation, are we not like the house of Judea and the house of Israel?  Verses 10-13, “Go up through her vine-rows and destroy, but make not a full end; strip away her branches, for they are not the Lord's.  For the house of Israel and the house of Judah have been utterly treacherous to me, declares the Lord. They have spoken falsely of the Lord and have said, ‘He will do nothing; no disaster will come upon us, nor shall we see sword or famine.  The prophets will become wind; the word is not in them.  Thus shall it be done to them!’”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice