Jeremiah 27:1-22
God uses many things in our journey of life to get our attention. God shows himself in so many ways to us. The truth is we are looking so much at the world we have become blind to God. He sends us messages, but we are so busy listening to the sounds of the world we no longer hear what God is saying to us. Time, places and names change on the stage of time, but our problems remain the same.
In 1999 Bill and Gloria Gather released an album, “God on the Mountain.” The words are speaking to us today: listen to the song here.
The message in the song, “God on the Mountain,” was Jeremiah’s message to King Zedekiah and all Judah. It is the message that God himself gave in His life with us. Jesus told us to come to Him by faith, all of us that are burdened and have heavy loads that we are carrying in our lives. Jeremiah wears an oxen yoke to get the people to see and hear the message that God had given him. Even before Jeremiah wore the ox yoke, he was sharing the message of God’s judgment on Judah for its sin. In Chapter 25 Jeremiah gave Judah God’s message of truth that they would face seventy years of captivity.
“Again, and again the Lord has sent you his servants, the prophets, but you have not listened or paid attention. Each time the message was this ‘Turn from the evil road you are traveling and from the evil things you are doing. Only then will I let you live in this land that the Lord gave to you and your ancestors forever. Do not provoke my anger by worshiping idols made with your own hands. Then I will not harm you. But you would not listen to me,’ says the Lord. ‘You made me furious by worshiping idols you made with your own hands, bringing on yourselves all the disasters you now suffer.’ And now the Lord of Heaven’s armies says, ‘Because you have not listened to me, I will gather together all the armies of the north under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whom I have appointed as my deputy. I will bring them all against this land and its people and against the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy you and make you an object of horror and contempt and ruin forever. I will take away your happy singing and laughter. The joyful voices of the bridegroom and brides will no longer be heard. Your millstones will fall silent, and the lights in your homes will go out. This entire land will become a desolate wasteland. Israel and her neighbors’ lands will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years’.”
When Jeremiah put on the ox yoke, he was trying to help the leaders and people of Judah to see and hear God’s message. “Then I repeated this same message to King Zedekiah of Judah. ‘If you want to live submit to the yoke of the King of Babylon and his people. Why do you insist on dying, you and your people? Why should you choose war, famine, and disease which the Lord will bring against every nation that refuses to submit to Babylon’s king? Do not listen to the false prophets who keep telling you, ‘The king of Babylon will not conquer you.’ They are liars. This is what the Lord says, ‘I have not sent these prophets! They are telling you lies in my name so I will drive you from this land. You will die and all these prophets too.’”
The leaders and people did not listen to Jeremiah’s message and they lived in Babylon for seventy years and die there. In the Scriptures, God’s word is speaking to each of us in America. Many of our so-called political leaders and church leaders are playing the race card. The race card is the card that divides people by color of skin, economics, gender, and elite educated people that can tell all the rest of us what is wrong and how they can fix our human problems. The race card is as old as the human family. Racism is not about the color of our skin, but it is the condition of the inner life of a person. When you don’t know Jesus and his message which is to love one another as he has loved us, you don’t know God. Then the evil of racism takes place in the human family. The message of the scriptures is that the people of faith become one in Christ. When we believe in the message of the scripture, we, by faith and forgiveness, belong in one family. Racism is just one of many evils that is wrecking the lives of people. Sin in our lives has produced pain and problems that we face. We can name some of these things if we look and see and stop and listen to the people that do not listen or follow God’s plan of life. We see dishonesty from elected leaders that get rich while they are in an elected office. As Jeremiah said, we see when they speak, they are liars. We see the corruption by many in the judicial system, because it is not about justice; but about misuse of their office as judges for political power. We see broken families because fathers and mothers no longer love and care about the family. They care about me, me, me and therefore children no longer have the guidance of Christian parents. Even much of our education, and teachers of today care more about some political ideology than teaching children the honest facts of life and shaping them into being persons of worth with honest character.
God sat in judgment on Judah for their rejecting Him as God of their life. God is still the same and His judgment now is falling on us as a nation. We are all riding on a two-seater bicycle. God designed the two-seater bicycle. He is to be in the front seat so He can determine the direction for our lives. When God is in the front seat, he holds the handlebars of life and that is in the direction of His love that gives us eternal life now and forever. We ride on the back seat, but we must do our part as God uses us to pedal and trust Him in the direction He leads by the way of the cross of death to the resurrection of new life. Many of us have put God off the bike, or put Him on the back seat. God will let us do that, because He gave us free will in our lives, in the lives of the people of America, even the church. All will be shaped by who is on the front seat of the bike. It will determine if we live or die. Who is on the front seat of your bike of life?
