Jeremiah 24:1-10
We don’t live long until we can look back at life and see we have come through some hard times. What gave us the strength of character — spiritual and moral — to get through the rough patches that come with being alive?
In her book “Raspberry Kingdom,” Renee Hermanson tells us that to get through the rough patches just take the time to journal. That by writing things down we learn how we got through those rough patches. What she was telling us is to learn from our mistakes so that we will not repeat them over and over. Renee wrote, “I have found it helpful in keeping my perspective, in seeing the truth of today and tomorrow. When we get on the other side of something, we see it differently. I can read my journal and relive an experience and answered prayer. I can look back and see how some of my anxieties were unfounded, how they were taken care of when I gave them in trust to the Father who knows how to give perfect gifts to his children. I don’t review it to live in the past or revel in the ‘good old days’, but only to see how far I have come and sometimes see something I missed the first time.”
God gave Jeremiah a vision about his nation. In that vision Jeremiah could see God working in a very hard patch of trouble for Judah. The nation had turned away from God and the people had been taken as slaves to Babylon. In the vision God gave him, Jeremiah could see where his nation was and that was in Babylon. God also gave him the vision of God’s judgment on that which had caused them to be in Babylon.
“I saw two baskets of figs placed in front of the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem. One basket was filled with fresh ripe figs, while the other was filled with bad figs that were too rotten to eat. Then the Lord said to me, ‘What do you see Jeremiah?’ ….Then the Lord gave me this message: ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The good figs represent the exiles I sent from Judah to the land of the Babylonians. I will watch over and care for them, and I will bring them back here again. I will build them up and not tear them down. I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them hearts that recognize me as the Lord. They will be my people and I will be their God, for they will return to me wholeheartedly.”
As a nation of people, we have become like Judah. We have rejected God’s gifts to us. We have rejected God’s son, Jesus, as Lord and Savior. We have rejected the things God has shown us to be sinful and produced great harm in our lives. We have rejected the gift of the Holy Spirit that gave birth to the Church. The Church is born of God’s Holy Spirit. In that Church we can come to a saving faith from our life of sin, for in that Church the Living Holy Word of God is proclaimed and taught so we can have God’s plan of salvation. That plan was at work in the captives’ lives in Babylon. That plan gave them new hearts of faith. That plan restored them to their homeland.
In his vision God also gave to Jeremiah the judgment on the bad figs that had caused the people to be in Babylon. “But the bad figs’, the Lord said, ‘represent King Zedekiah of Judah, his officials, all the people left in Jerusalem, and those who live in Egypt. I will treat them like bad figs too rotten to eat. I will make them objects of horror and a symbol of evil to every nation on earth. They will be disgraced and mocked, taunted and cursed wherever I scatter them. And I will send war, famine and disease until they have vanished from the land of Israel which I gave to them and their ancestors.”
The movement of socialism and communism is taking over our lives and we have many leaders like the bad figs in Jeremiah’s vision.
Many of our churches never call out sin because we have a political agenda for every aspect of life today. For many of the so-called church leaders today do not take their identity from faith in Jesus Christ, that by the grace and forgiveness of Jesus we can say to the world, “I am a Christian.” The political agenda of socialism is about division based on gender, race, education and economics. The goal is to replace God that gave us life and the church born out of His death on the cross for our sin. God’s plan is based on our response of faith to the gift from him, called life now and life forever.
The socialist movement has invaded every aspect of our lives: church, government, our work day lives and economics. The Christian faith teaches us that we are accountable and responsible for what we do with God’s gifts of grace and forgiveness. Socialism is based on a human god that wants to control every aspect of our life. It rejects that we alone are accountable and responsible to God, the creator of life.
You cannot be faithful to God and live life as a socialist, because socialism becomes a god of humanism.
Some years ago, a weightlifter wrote about the weightlifter’s theology that shaped character, spiritual and moral strength. He expressed the idea that theological thinking must be pursued with a crucified mind not with the crusading mind. This character of theology means that the person who wants to think about God and about God’s world must do so with the qualities which are consonant with God’s own way of engaging the world in Jesus Christ.
Which mind do you have? A crucified mind that engages your life in the life and way of Jesus, or a crusading mind that wants government to take total control of your life? Christians believe we live in the freedom that God has given us through His grace, love and forgiveness. In socialism you can’t have freedom because government regulates and controls life. Christians have life with a happy heart. Other gods will give you a sad heart – and death. I choose God’s plan. Do you?
I pray that each day, each month and each year God gives us hearts that recognize He is Lord and Savior for us sinners.
