Good Monday to you my ‘Walking with Jesus’ friends,
This Thanksgiving/Christmas season of the year fills our minds and hearts with MEMORIES of wonderful times past, right? I wonder, did you grow up in a family which had a spiritual focus from the week before Thanksgiving all the way into the first week of the New Year or was your family focused on food, gifts, parties, travel and lots of activity but very little awareness of God in these weeks?
Of course, the marketplace focus has been on Christmas already for several weeks hasn’t it and Christmas music, Christmas lights, and all types of Christmas festivities fill the air, right? But what will touch you deep in your soul this month? And let’s be honest with this question: Where you live, have the Christmas celebrations pushed Jesus to the side, maybe even eliminated any true mention of God at all?
While the prophet Jeremiah lived in Jerusalem 600 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which as you know is only five miles south of Jerusalem, some of the messages God gave Jeremiah are good wakeup calls for us today. Listen to these words of Jeremiah’s first message from God: “The word of the LORD came to me: ‘Go proclaim this message to Jerusalem: ‘This is what the LORD says: ‘I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved Me and followed Me through the wilderness…Israel was holy to the LORD…” (Jeremiah 2:1-3)
God, of course, was talking about the people of Israel who fled as God rescued them from their Egyptian slavery several centuries before, and with great joy they followed the cloud by day and pillar of fire by night as God led His people to Mount Sinai where they spent several months learning how much God loved them and what it would mean to be God’s chosen, holy people! (Ex. 19:4-6)
Jeremiah probably proclaimed this message in the streets of Jerusalem during the final years of King Josiah’s reign, about 625bc. Especially if Jeremiah spoke these words around the Passover celebration time, oh how the words of this message would have brought great joy to the Jewish people in Jerusalem as they remembered their heritage.
So, let’s think back for a moment…to the days of our childhoods. What was the Christmas season like in your extended family when you were a child? In your childhood schools were the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas filled with celebrations and Christmas wishes and maybe even nativity scenes in front of your school? How much has your town changed from the time of your childhood when it comes to this Christmas season?
Jeremiah’s next phrase in his first message was not as pleasant! God asked a hard question for the people of Jerusalem 2600 years ago: “Hear the world of the LORD you descendants of Jacob, all you clans of Israel: ‘What fault did your ancestors find in Me, that they strayed so far from Me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves. They did not ask ‘where is the LORD who brought us out of Egypt…”? (Jeremiah 2:4-7)
Can we hear God asking us the same question? If Christmas today is very different from Christmas generations ago where you live, why? When and why did the drift away from a God centered Christmas happen in your town and mine, your extended family and mine? How long ago did people stop asking for the Jesus of Christmas during December in your part of the world? Do you know why?
Jeremiah continued as he received another important question from God for the people of Jerusalem, which is a good question for us to consider: “The priests did not ask: ‘Where is the LORD…” (Jeremiah 2:8) In Jeremiah’s time it was sadly true. In the early years of King Josiah there had been a great spiritual revival and the greatest Passover of all time in Jerusalem! (2 Chronicles 35:1-19) But that was a generation ago, and the spiritual fervor in Jerusalem had waned.
So, what about our cities my friends? Will the churches in your town be filled this month with worshipers passionate about celebrating the Jesus of Christmas? Will the spiritual leaders in your city, your nation, be leading the people to God in a great Christmas spiritual pursuit? If not, why not? What has happened to the spiritual fervor of your city and mine?
Once more Jeremiah brought God’s questions to the people: “Those who deal with the law do not know God; the leaders rebelled against God. The prophets prophesied by Baal following worthless idols.” (Jeremiah 2:8) As you and I look at the condition of the judicial system, the law and order or our cities and countries, has God been pushed out or invited in? As we look at government leaders, have they been seeking to run our cities and nations using God’s standard of truth, God’s ethics, God’s principles? And what about those whose voices in times past were highly regarded as men and women who called our people to honor God in all ways of life, where are those voices now?
Finally, Jeremiah proclaimed this powerful statement from God: “Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all) But My people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols…My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken Me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. “ (Jeremiah 2:11-13) Once again we apply God’s question to the places where we live. Was there a time in the past when Christmas was a much more spiritual, God honoring time than this December?
Has Jesus been replaced by parties and gifts or other events and festivities? Have we elevated someone or something to the place of Christmas prominence in our lives replacing Jesus? Is that festive someone or something a viable alternative to Almighty God or are we succumbing to the same delusion which has destroyed great cities through the centuries? What delusion? That we don’t need God, that we can live our lives without any reference to or acknowledgment of God? God’s message through Jeremiah was a huge wakeup call but few in Jeremiah’s day listened.
So, God’s final word for the uninterested people of Jerusalem was this: “Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the LORD your God and have no awe of Me,” declares the LORD, the LORD Almighty.” (Jeremiah 2:19) Oh my! Those in Jeremiah’s day totally rejected this profound message from God calling the people to awareness of their spiritual drift. They were too busy with other things, and within 40 years Jerusalem was a pile of rubble and most of those to whom Jeremiah had spoken were hauled off to Babylon as prisoners of war! (2 Chronicles 36:15-20)
As we begin the wonderful month of December, let’s do so thanking God for this wakeup call message God gave Jeremiah which is very important for us all around the world today! Don’t rush from Jeremiah 2 my friends, let it challenge your heart.
No song today… rather I invite us to reflection and prayer, as we begin the Christmas month 2024. What is God saying to your heart today, my friends, as He invites us to Honor Him as the LORD of Christmas by taking an honest close look at our lives, our families and our cities.
Today’s Scripture: Jeremiah 2.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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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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