Today’s
Scripture Reading (April 20, 2017) Jeremiah 26
Have you ever been offended by
the truth? Accountability is one of the buzz words inside of the church.
Unfortunately, too often I have heard someone insult somebody and then add that
he was just trying to keep them accountable. Accountability is offensive when
it is done outside of community –
sometimes it is even offensive inside of community.
We need to hear the truth, but we need to hear
the truth from someone that we trust and with whom we are in a relationship.
This is why God seeks a relationship
with us before he speaks truth into our lives. Our journey with God starts with
just a relationship with him – everything else comes second.
As the Kingdom of Judah was
winding down, it quickly became apparent that though the people of Israel were the
chosen people of God – a group of people that were
called into a special relationship with God – they had left the
relationship with God.
Jeremiah spoke the truth
continually to Israel, and continually they were being offended because they were out of relationship. Finally, Jeremiah makes one of
the most offensive statements he could make. If they would not seek a relationship with God, then Judah would become like Shiloh.
Shiloh was a city that had become
the first resting place for the
tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant. When the people of Israel entered the
land of Canaan, the Ark of the Covenant was placed in Shiloh. The Ark represented the
presence of God, and therefore it represented
a relationship with God. While Samuel was
judge over Israel, before the time when there was a
king over Israel, the sons of the Samuel came to Shiloh, and they
removed the Ark of the Covenant from the tabernacle and subsequently lost it to a
foreign power. When the Ark was finally returned to Israel, for decades, it resided in a farmer’s barn.
The presence of God had been lost to
Shiloh – and by the time of Jeremiah, Shiloh was nothing more than a pile of
ruins.
Jeremiah’s message to his friends
in Jerusalem was this – without a relationship
with God, this city would not remain. And their response was to kill him. They
had already lost their relationship with God, but they didn’t know it.
We suffer from the same thing. Things are happening in our lives that we are aware shouldn’t be true because we have lost our
relationship with God – but we aren’t
ready to hear that message because we
don’t know that we are out of the relationship.
Shiloh was destroyed, and a few years after Jeremiah said this, so was
Jerusalem. Life comes with a relationship
with God and destruction is inevitable outside of God. We may survive for a
while, but eventually, the destruction will come. God
wants a relationship with you, but he won’t force his
way in. He will wait until you want a
relationship with him.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 27
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