God warned Israel from the moment they left captivity in Egypt right up to the end. He had over 300 years of patience with Israel and over 450 years of patience with Judah, giving them every opportunity to turn back to him. He provided prophets to speak to them and warn them. But they continued in their destructive paths until Assyria put Israel back into captivity and Babylon put Judah back into captivity.
Where did they go wrong? “The Israelites secretly did things against the Lord their God that were not right… They worshiped idols, though the Lord had said, ‘You shall not do this… They would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their fathers, who did not trust in the Lord their God… They imitated the nations around them although the Lord had ordered them, ‘Do not do as they do,” and they did the things the Lord had forbidden them to do… They forsook all the commands of the Lord their God and made for themselves two idols… They bowed down to all the starry hosts, and they worshipped Baal. They sacrificed their sons and daughters in fire.” II Kings 17:9-17
It is so easy to look at that and say, “What were they thinking? How terrible they were to turn their hearts away from God! They even sacrificed their children!” But I wonder, if I am willing to look more closely at the character of these people and the character of people today, myself included, if there might be more in common than I would like to admit.
The church as a whole is not as separate as it once was from the world. Our structures have gone from being spirit led to being modeled after corporations. Rather than praying and carefully appointing leadership, we apply and hire. Rather than appointing based on prayer and expressed gifts of the spirit, we appoint based on wealth and power. We choose comfort over anything. We have become a consumer oriented church entertaining with programs rather than seeking what God might be saying to us. We get ourselves so busy with all the ‘things’ our churches are ‘doing’ that we fail to take time to study his Word and use it as our life guide. We fail to pray because we don’t understand the power of prayer. We don’t know the God we are supposedly talking to. If we do pray, we try to get him to line up with our plans rather than moving our hearts to line up with his.
As individuals, we choose our heroes from TV and movies, from performers of music and arts or sports and from those who make political splashes in the world – good or bad. We continue to search for the elusive ‘Fountain of Youth’ rather than enjoying the wisdom that comes with age. We go to doctors and expect them to be able to make us live forever and without pain rather than saying with Paul, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain,” (Philippians 1:21) or we become like King Asa and look only to doctors for healing and not to God (II Chronicles 16:12). We fail to see that it is God who gives us life and every day is a gift from him.
We make idols out of power and prestige. We shop at the finest of stores and parade in our latest fashions. We take only positions that come with high regard and monetary rewards. We will serve on the church board, but not clean the toilets or visit the sick or imprisoned. No one wants to teach the youth because that would take too much time and energy to keep them entertained. So we pay charismatic youth leaders to take them to concerts and entertainment parks. We avoid positions in ministry because they usually come with lower salaries or no salaries and ministry people don’t often get invited to the prestigious parties and ‘happening’ events.
We may not burn our children in fires, but we sacrifice them nevertheless. We sacrifice them to our own careers and entertainment or recreation plans. We leave them with day care workers, babysitters, neighbors, or even by themselves so we can work our prestigious, high-income jobs in order to have more ‘big toys’ to play with like high cost cars, vacation homes in exotic places, yachts, etc. We selfishly make our plans for retirement while our children jump up and down trying to get our attention about today’s needs to be loved and nurtured and to have a role model they can respect.
While the things done by the Israelites back in those days may have been more primitive to our way of thinking, their hearts were really not so different than ours – still in need of transformation by a loving and patient God. Of course, not all of our churches and/or Christians fall into all the trappings described above, but many do. And the ‘success’ of a church is often seen in how many people we have coming to our programs rather than what God is doing and how many lives have been transformed by the saving power of Jesus Christ.
Is it any wonder that the world looks at us and calls us hypocrites and says we have nothing to offer them? We often look so much like them that they can’t tell us apart.
A friend recently found that transforming power of Christ and is now looking for a church that understands it and will nurture spiritual growth. This person has been going to a fairly large church in a metropolitan area for a number of years. Suddenly, they see how void of Christ, his authority and power to change lives this particular church really is. It had provided a place to find friendship with basically ‘good’ people. But finding a place to be nurtured and discipled in this new found faith has become a challenge though there are thousands of churches all around.
Paul frequently talks about ‘freedom in Christ,’ yet we so blindly walk into captivity. I would that our hearts would be set free to follow Christ. “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21 God, please help me to keep my eyes and ears tuned in to you so that I will not become “ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving,” as the people in Isaiah 6:9. Help me to avoid the trappings of this world and to follow whole-heartedly after you.
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