4:4,5
Israel was very religious and very proud. Places of worship had been set up at Bethel and Gilgal. Now Bethel was the place where Jacob had a vision from God, so it had religious significance, but Jerusalem was the place that God had chosen. As humans we have great difficulty in coming to terms with the fact that it is God who decides how He is to be worshipped, not us. Listen to any statements from “Christians” who seek to deny clear instructions in the Bible. They all come down to saying “we decide”, and may even offer nice religious reasons for their disobedience. Man might be impressed, but God isn’t. Israel even had all sorts of religious practices, but obeying God was not one of them.
4:6-8
God had sent various warnings. These included famine, drought and plague. Today we react against the idea of God sending such things, but it is we who are wrong, not the Bible. God sent these things as a warning. What if you are not in the town that was afflicted, what should our reaction be? It should not be to think that they must be terrible sinners, rather it is to look to our own lives. Man cannot live without God, we are not in control of the world. We have stewardship over it, under authority to God, we do not own the world. And we need to come to terms with this truth, and God sometimes sends these things (plague etc) to try and bring us to our senses.
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