Picking Your Battles

Lately I have been reading through Jeremiah. And yeah, I know, that's kind of like saying lately I have been depressed. It isn't exactly the happiest of books, but there are an amazing number of thought provoking themes throughout Jeremiah. It isn't just about how Israel was evil and how god used Babylon to give the the mother of all woopin's. It was probably a lot like when I told my grandma that the spanking that she had just dished out didn't hurt....yeah, the one after the one that didn't hurt. 

Jeremiah isn't just about that........but still that's what I am going to ponder for this particular blog. 

If you read through Jeremiah and don't pick up on the fact that Judah is evil, then you are seriously missing the point of Jeremiah. Judah has lost it. They had already seen their big brother Israel fall and be driven into exile, but they weren't getting their act together.  Judah and God had an agreement: You will be my people, and I will be your God. 

God even gave them a list of things to do to be His people. I mean admittedly it wasn't the easiest list ever, but at least they got one. And instead, what do they do? They start worshiping the God's of virtually every other nation around them. Now, I don't know if you have ever thought about this much, but how much do you think the Egyptians worshiped the gods of the nations around them? Or the Philistines? Do you think the Babylonians worshiped all the gods of the people that they had conquered? No they didn't. That just would have been ridiculous. They obviously weren't very good gods and they had their own anyway. Yet here was dumb ol' Judah. Trading in their Lamborghini for a whole bunch of Hot Wheels. 

So God was jealous. How could he get them to turn around? Enter Nebuchadnezzar. He was the King of Babylon. God used him to teach Judah some sense. A lot of painful sense. In fact, three times in Jeremiah, God calls Nebuchadnezzar "My servant." That deserves some thought in itself. However, that will have to be a follow-up, because I want to get to chapter 50. 

I will just sum up chapter 50 for you, although I really encourage you to read it for yourself (Although don't read it from a 1984 NIV. I'm assuming you already burnt all of those anyway and replaced them with the 2011 NIV....................). Essentially Babylon is going to be destroyed. Seriously destroyed. Why? Because they attacked God's people. Even though, as it is beautifully recorded in Jeremiah 50:6-7:

6 

“My people have become lost sheep;

Their shepherds have led them astray.

They have made them turn aside on the mountains;

They have gone along from mountain to hill

And have forgotten their resting place.

7 

“All who came upon them have devoured them;

And their adversaries have said, ‘We are not guilty,

Inasmuch as they have sinned against the Lord who is the habitation of righteousness,

Even the Lord, the hope of their fathers.’

No matter how lost they got, it didn't matter; God still loved them. This is where we come to the application. We as the Church are God's people. But it can be so easy to see a lot of the sheep all over the mountains, far away from their resting places. We see them as evil and so we try to work against them. We try to thwart them. We see churches that so brashly disagree with our view of atonement, post-millenialism, or the frequency that we should take communion, and we can't help but work against them. They are clearly lost sheep. 

If you couldn't tell, there was a small amount of sarcasm in that last paragraph. I mean I totally get it. Obviously we all think we are right. If we didn't we would think something else, and then think we were right. And it is hard to think that people are being taught things that you yourself might not believe. But please be careful about choosing to work against the Kingdom of God. Even if you don't completely agree with what they (another church or person) are doing, let God work them out because if you try to do it yourself, He might just destroy you after he gets done restoring them.