The people assumed that Jerusalem was the safest place to be, especially with the temple being there. Surely God would not abandon His home! But quite the opposite was true. Benjamin is urged to flee for safety and this meant fleeing from Jerusalem, not to Jerusalem. There are echoes of this in the Olivet discourse (Matt 24:16) .
God's plan now involved destroying Jerusalem! The people needed to realise that God was in charge, not man. God was summoning the nations to come against her. Verse 6 emphasises that this is a carefully thought out plan. Yet verse 8 contains a hint that if even now they turned away from their sin there was hope. Sadly the nation was not about to do that.
It was not that Judah was not warned, but that she would not listen. Our society today is in no mood to listen to the voice of God. As it says at the end of verse 10, the word of God is offensive to our society.
The problem was the sin of the people. There was violence and greed in the city. And it affected all strata of society. The leaders did not treat the matter as serious. As leaders in churches we need to be sure that we take sin seriously.
Man is faced with a choice (v16). We can choose to follow God's ways or we can choose to go our own way. One way leads to life and peace, the other leads to death. The sacrifices and religious offerings meant nothing to God because there was sin in the camp, because there was no true devotion to the Lord.
So a mighty destroyer would descend upon the land, and no one would be able to stand.
No comments:
Post a Comment