If you’re a Christian, you are deeply concerned with the climate of our nation and the outrageous steps in the ungodly direction we’re taking. Last week I attempted to express the way God works among sinful nations to bring about judgment. All of Creation is so designed, His laws written into its fabric, that judgment comes simply by His releasing a people unto their own choices. Obeying the simplicity of Scripture ultimately brings blessing; disobeying it brings curses.
Sunday, Joel McDurmon, with American Vision stated those sentiments more eloquently in a message he spoke at our church. What’s better, he concluded with an encouraging word to believers:
“The sin-gripped heart lives and breathes in a cloud of its own delusion, in which it exhibits all the functions of the Image of God which it bears—it worships, it gets outraged over moral issues, it preaches, it evangelizes for its cause, it cares about knowledge and order—yet it directs these functions toward an untenable false god (some aspect of creation) instead of the true Creator. The worship of this false god—be it that of another religion, or man himself—consumes all that fallen man does, and in the end all the failures of that false god manifest as the failures of the sinners who followed it. That is, to the extent that men worship a corrupt god, to that extent their lives, families, and societies will grow corrupt. And the more they grow corrupt, the more they worship their idols, and the whole process compounds upon itself.
This process, of God abandoning sinners to fill up the measure of their own sinfulness, rarely gets talked about, but it appears all through Scripture. It is one of God’s specific ways of sending judgment upon a people: removing His restraints from a society and allowing that society to have the full measure of the sins they so badly lust for; and the ensuing self-destruction of that people as they devour one another and cannibalize themselves, stands as a testimony to God’s truth as the only salvation for mankind….
The sins of a people (even of individuals) become the method through which God judges that nation unto its own self-destruction. When a nation, even of many professing Christians, elects to educate its children through godless, unbiblical means, that very means becomes the method of driving that generation and its future inheritors further into destruction. When a culture adopts abortion and other family planning measures in order limit and even cancel the growth of families, God judges that nation through that medium and thus destroys its inheritance and continuance into the future….
When a culture denies just weights and measures, God will abandon them to that injustice, and that very tool will run their measures of food and shelter and meaningful work empty. When a culture looks to government to be its benefactor and savior, God will give them their government in all its glory and power to be their savior, and they will all go down together. When a culture attacks everything godly about families and freedom, God will abandon them to a rootless, loveless, tyrannical end.
As people who abhor these very idols, who pray for deliverance, who cry out about the evils around us, who do everything we can to preserve a godly family and society, and yet watch all of it slowly slip away around us due to the lusts of our countrymen and the heart-idols of many of our religious peers, we tend to lose heart….
The question is not whether we can stop it; the question is whether we can be the Ezekiel and the faithful that shall remain after it dies and decays away. Because the ultimate goal of such judgments is to separate the sheep from the goats. To destroy the deluded and gather God’s people unto Him. This is how Ezekiel concludes in verse 11: he intends to punish the false prophets and idolatrous in order that the house of Israel may no longer stray from Me and no longer defile themselves with all their transgressions. Thus they will be My people, and I shall be their God.
It’s a good time to have babies, to join together in churches that support godly causes. It’s a good time to be productive and wise. If you can’t have a big family, the church is your big family; support it in every way you can, and defend her purity and peace. These are basic, simple measures that will keep us gathered to God as the God Delusion leads his enemies to cannibalize themselves; and the meek shall inherit the earth, and the righteous shall have the kingdom of heaven. “
6 comments
perfectly spoken….God must eventually remove His hand because He is a loving, just, merciful, righteous and holy God. He is bound by who He is.
So important, and I appreciate the Ezekiel reference…I can’t help but think the time also calls for Nathaniel – to be without guile – there just isn’t any room at the moment for false representations or shallow indulgence for ego’s sake.
Kelly, your call for productivity and wisdom is important – whether we’re ushering in new life through our own bodies, or new members of any age into the body of Christ – God is GOOD all the time. His faithfulness never leaves us. He keeps his promises – we’re the one’s who turn away.
As my priest says, “The future belongs to the fertile.” Whether that means bearing our own children, gathering children into our family’s fold, or supporting the family of the church, it is true: that’s the way to influence the future.
This is good.
What a powerful and challenging post. It puts me to shame.
Something encouraging I read this morning in Proverbs 21:1
~The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.~