Jeremiah 48.10 declares a curse on anyone who is lax in doing the Lord’s work.
Imagine hearing the Pastor conclude his Sunday sermon with, ‘cursed is anyone who is lax in doing the Lord’s work:’ many would leave that place cursed!
What is the Lord’s work? Jesus said, ‘the Father is always working and He too had come to do His Father’s business.’
What is that business? The reconciliation of the world to God through Jesus Christ.
Practically this work is carried-out by telling people about Jesus then helping those who respond to Him grow in their faith.
We can measure our work effort by determining how many people we ourselves have come to help know personally Jesus as Savior and the number of people into whom we regularly invest spiritually so that they follow Him more closely as Lord.
The work of God is summarized in the Great Commission which commands all of God’s people to make disciples through going to people and telling them about God’s work in Jesus leading them to repentance and faith in Christ symbolized by baptism then teaching them to obey all of Jesus’ commands so that they continue to grow in Christ becoming fellow workers with us and Christ.
Simple work but as Jesus declared while there is an abundance of it, few are those who have placed their hands upon the plow and not looked back.
God measures our faith not by our feelings nor by our intentions but by our deeds done in obedience by faith for His glory.
The work of God requires our focused effort and energy.
This work cannot be relegated to others for as part of the body of Christ each member is to do their part at building God’s Kingdom.
What kind of worker are we?
Doesn’t the context rein in the application on this verse?
9″Set up a gravestone for Moab,
for it will certainly be laid in ruins!
Its cities will be laid waste
and become uninhabited.”
10 A curse on anyone who is lax in doing the Lord’s work!
A curse on anyone who keeps from carrying out his destruction!
This is a curse on those who refuse to destroy Moab, not a general principle.
so glad you wrote this response, i was hoping someone would! thanks for reading the context and thinking! No, the context does not rein in the application. how could it? certainly the specific work was destroy Moab but that WAS the assignment. does God not expect us to still work, did our Lord not say the Father is always at work? Did our Lord not pray for laborers to join the work? will we not be held accountable, cursed potentially, for failing to join the current work of building God’s Kingdom? our work may be different but God’s expectation and reward for the work remains the same.
Jesus was cursed on our behalf. That’s as far as I want to go with God cursing us for sin. This seems to be in line with the curse for rebuilding Babylon, but now that I’m thinking about it, our failure to walk in faith, generation after generation, will result in stronger evil which could very will feel like a curse to some of us.