I think it was G K Chesterton who said "when people stop believing in God they don't believe nothing, they believe anything". Now here it says that God had abandoned His people, but this was only in response to their abandonment of Him. As a result they became full of all sorts of superstitions.
Deuteronomy 17:16,17 forbid the accumulation of excess wealth and horses by the king, but this was what had happened. The land was also full of idols, and the people bowed down to the work of their hands. You see, an idol is something we make, so it is senseless to worship it. When we put God first we become truly wise, when we abandon God we become fools. He is the bedrock of all wisdom. So the end result of abandoning God is humiliation.
Verse 10 is echoed in Revelation 6:15,16. The splendour of the Lord will come, and then all human pride will be brought low, it will be shown up for what it is.
The Lord has a day in store. There is a day of reckoning, it is already in the diary. We need to live our lives with this day in view. On that day only God's wisdom and splendour will remain. All the things that people glory in today will become worthless and they will want to get rid of them.
The chapter closes with an exhortation: "stop trusting in human beings". We can sometimes be intimidated by the apparent strength and power of men, we need to look at all things in the light of the Lord, then we will see all things in their true perspective. When we consider our lives and our actions we need to ask ourselves ,"how will this look at the last day?"
No comments:
Post a Comment