The first words of the prophecy, “Behold, the day! Behold,
it comes!” don’t exactly prepare you to hear the next words, “Your doom has
come.” That is perhaps the most jarring
juxtaposition of words in the entire Bible.
It sounds as if something wonderful is about to happen and then the
words are of nothing but doom and destruction.
The Lord will have no mercy on the people, all will suffer from this
judgment because all share in the guilt of the nation. Those who have remained did so after Jeremiah
warned them to leave but they did not believe, they believed instead the false
prophets. It is an awful thing to think
that the Lord could judge His people without mercy and we think surely such
will not happen to the church or the nation of churches that enjoys prosperity
but we are sadly mistaken. Read the
letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3 and then tell me He won’t judge
the church. Judgment begins at the house
of God and a people who are ostensibly in covenant with Him, who have taken the
responsibility of making His Name great, honoring Him, hallowing the Name, who
reject His words will be judged for taking His Name in vain, dishonoring it and
leading others astray.
When Jesus sent out the seventy two they were sent to do one
simple thing, proclaim that the kingdom of God had come to them. That proclamation was to be made in word and
deed. The healings were meant to be
harbingers of the kingdom, when there will be no more disease and dying. The power of God to heal and make whole that
which is weak and broken was on display.
When the kingdom comes, such healings will be the norm, all will be made
whole and clean. If the towns where such
proclamations were made rejected them, they were to shake the dust off their
feet as a sign, that the Lord had rejected them as well. Judgment will come on such places Jesus says
but we are not to call it down, we leave that to the Lord in His time. When the seventy two returned, they rejoiced
that the Lord had done through them exactly as Jesus had prophesied. The mark of a true prophet is that his word
is validated.
The covenant between God and Abraham was one-sided. Abraham simply did what God told him to
do. He took some birds, cut them in half
and arranged them apart from one another, creating a path between the
parts. God, in the forming of the
smoking pot, passed through the pieces but Abraham did not. The imagery was meant to signify that the one
who passed through the pieces was making an oath to do something and putting
his life on the line to ensure it. The
message was that it would be done to the person making the oath as to the
animals he passed through if he failed to do what he promised. God’s oath was on Himself while we might
swear on the Bible in court to tell the truth, invoking the idea that God’s
judgment would be on us if we failed.
God did all He promised to Abraham. He can be trusted, the evidence is
clear and plain.
No comments:
Post a Comment