Jeremiah 13.8-11 mourns, GOD explained, “This is the way I am going to ruin the pride of Judah and
the great pride of Jerusalem—a wicked bunch of people who won’t obey me, who do only what they want to do, who chase after all kinds of no-gods and worship them. They’re going to turn out as rotten as these old shorts. Just as shorts clothe and protect, so I kept the whole family of Israel under my care— GOD ’s Decree—so that everyone could see they were my people, a people I could show off to the world and be proud of. But they refused to do a thing I said.
God’s description of Israel is certainly apropos to many in the Church today. We don’t obey God, we do what we want to do, we chase after and worship no-gods.
While most Christians believe they are indeed obedient to God the truth is they are not because they don’t know the Word of God, spending little to no time consistently learning God’s ways through it.
Christians know they are not committing murder but God calls us to become like Him: holy, perfect, a living reflection of the resurrected Jesus. To obey God we must begin by spending time with God in His Scriptures which He has provided to us for just this purpose. If we are not regularly reading and studying the Bible we are not regularly obeying God despite our thinking of how good we are.
What we do is worship no-gods. A god is whatever gives us our identity, our significance, our purpose, and our meaning. For many that is the approval of others, for others it’s their status of position or wealth accumulation. Still others define it by their bodies or athletic abilities. The Christian God proclaims we are made in His image for a relationship with Him and to serve His purposes in this life so that we may know His reward in the next life which lasts forever.
Our identity is children of God, our significance is that we are made in His image, our purpose is to know Him by loving Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and our meaning is the mission of making disciples of all nations teaching all people to obey all the words of Jesus.
This is to be the Christian life, this is to be the purpose of the Church; the gathering of God’s people for encouraging one another to love God and do good works leading to the expansion of God’s kingdom upon the earth as it is in heaven.
