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Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends on this Friday.
You and I live at a time in history when the number of voices clamoring for our attention can be overwhelming. Politicians, entertainers, journalists, social media, voices from around the world calling for help, our own extended families, friends and of course God.
But…do you find it a challenge to hear the voice of God in all the noise, my friends? Part of the reason we’ve been walking through Israel’s history in the Old Testament is to learn from those who lived in much the same challenge we face daily. How did they learn to discern and listen to God’s voice in all the noise?
Yesterday we concluded several days of exciting discovery in Daniel 2 and King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream interpreted by young Jewish captive Daniel. Daniel helped King Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful man in the world, hear the voice of God and God’s very strong, clear message at a strategic time in world history! It shook Nebuchadnezzar to the core. The King took serious action by appointing Daniel and his three friends to very high positions in the Babylonian government, so they could help him respond to God’s voice.
Yesterday we also saw that the Egyptian Pharaoh, more than 1000 years before, had done the same thing with Joseph when young captive Joseph helped the Pharaoh hear God’s message of warning. Here’s the big question…do you and I hear God’s voice, especially His voice of warning?
Do the leaders in your city and mine or the national leaders in your country and mine hear God’s warnings and do they take corrective action or are their spiritually deaf ears putting you and me at risk of falling under God’s judgment along with them?
When reading a book, we naturally flow from one chapter to the next, but not always so in the Bible! The story of the Bible does not always flow chronologically from one chapter to the next. In this case I believe there’s a significant time gap of perhaps 10 years or more between the end of Daniel 2 and beginning of Daniel 3. During that time Daniel and his three Jewish friends with Babylonian names Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego transitioned from being young Jewish captives, to very high-ranking leaders in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian government! (Daniel 2:48,49)
Can you even imagine that? Think back to times when you’ve started a new job and the transition process, especially if you were in leadership or management. Remember learning who your coworkers were and their roles and developing the needed business relationships with them? Imagine young Daniel suddenly put in charge of ALL the wise men, the advisors to King Nebuchadnezzar! So, for the next few days, let’s leave Daniel and his friends as they settle into their new leadership roles and let’s look back, at what was happening, 700 miles to the west in Jerusalem.
You’ll remember Daniel and his friends had been forcibly taken as captives from Jerusalem perhaps 15 years earlier in 605bc when King Nebuchadnezzar ransacked Jerusalem for the first time. Sadly, Jerusalem rapidly decayed in the following years… morally, socially, economically, politically but especially spiritually.
Let me ask an important question right here: If you look closely at your city do you see progress or decline morally, socially, economically, politically and spiritually in the past several years? And what or who are the primary contributors to that progress or decline?
Here’s a more focused question:what contribution to that progress or decline have the people in your city made, who claim to be religious people? I phrase it that way so you can look at ALL religions practiced in your city… Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity or even Atheism or Secularism both of which reject God. Now don’t rush past that question. If the religious people in your city and mine have made NO positive DIFFERENCE or perhaps have even contributed to the decline/decay of our cities, what does that mean?
While Daniel was God’s spokesman to King Nebuchadnezzar and all the leaders in the Babylonian empire, God was simultaneously speaking to the leaders and people in Jerusalem through His prophet Jeremiah. Actually, Jeremiah had been called by God into his role of being God’s spokesman even before Daniel was born, during the reign of King Josiah, in about 627bc. Now, between Daniel 2 & 3, let’s return to Jerusalem to see what God was saying through Jeremiah during an ever darkening and dangerous time in Jerusalem, the reign of Jewish King Jehoiakim who refused to hear from God!
Listen to these powerful words from God through Jeremiah: “I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals; and I will lay waste the towns of Judah so no one can live there!” (Jer. 9:11) Wow! That is a very strong message of warning from God, isn’t it? Why would God threaten such devastation for His people and His favorite city in the world?
And as God often does, so there would be no misunderstanding, God gave a fuller explanation through Jeremiah of WHY such a threatening warning to religious Jerusalem should be taken seriously: “Who is wise enough to understand this? Who has been instructed by the LORD and can explain it? Why has the land been ruined and laid waste…? The LORD said, “it is because they have forsaken My law, which I set before them; they have not obeyed Me or followed My laws. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts; they have followed the Baals, as their ancestors taught them…”(Jeremiah 9:12-14)
Well, that’s clear isn’t it my friends? When people who have received God’s truth reject it; when people who have known God’s commands turn away from them; when people who have tasted the wonder of a relationship with God reject it and pursue the self-consuming, self-destructive things of our world, God responds with discipline! When people allow or even nurture their hearts toward stubbornness, pride, selfishness and they turn their hearts away from God… God responds with discipline!
Why? Because God’s discipline is intended to draw people back from the precipice of disaster into living the life God has lovingly designed for them in alignment and relationship with their Creator! As parents and grandparents we understand that as we discipline our rebellious children and grandchildren, am I right?
Let me conclude today with what God promised would be the result if His people turned a deaf ear to His warning, His discipline. The next words of Jeremiah’s message from God were these: “I will scatter them (God’s people in Israel) among the nations that neither they nor their ancestors have known and I will pursue them with the sword…”(Jer. 9:16)
If you know history, not long after Jeremiah spoke those words, because the generation who heard them refused to respond in repentance, the people were forcibly disbursed from Jerusalem to many nations they had previously not known, by King Nebuchadnezzar and other invading armies.
To this day, 2000 years later, Jews reside in almost every corner of the world, descendants of those whom God drove out of Jerusalem and Israel, in fulfillment of Jeremiah’s rejected words! Now think about that a moment my friends and ask yourself what God might be saying to you and me, your city and mine in 2025? Do we hear God’s voice? Can we discern God’s message to us in all the noise of our world today?
Now friends I usually give you a worship song, sung in a worship setting, by a worship leader I know. In this case, I found a powerful song that fits amazingly with our reflections today in Jeremiah. This song is sung by a young person I don’t know, and sung, of all places on a nationally televised voice competition show, in front of an audience who I presume has little interest in any message from God… but as you’ll hear and see, the response is what I think God desires when the world hears God’s voice in the deafening noise of our world!!
God bless you as you listen to this song, and I’ll meet you right back here tomorrow…
Today’s Scripture: Jeremiah 9:11-16.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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