February 22
What happens to a nation that forsakes its God? In Judges 2 we read about the death of Joshua and all the elders who had lived during his life. As soon as that entire generation died off, Israel deserted their God and began worshiping false idols. In verses 13-15 we read,
“So they forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. The anger of the Lord burned against them, and He gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them; and he sold them into the hands of their enemies around them, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had spoken and as the Lord had sworn to them, so they were severely distressed.”
It is the consensus of God’s word that we in America have forsaken our God. We have gone after the idols of football, basketball, baseball, hockey, NASCAR, Formula One, hunting, fishing, Brad Pitt, Paul Newman, Danny Glover, Mel Gibson, Miley Ray Cyrus, and computerized games, ad infinitum. The amount of time our children and adults spend on everything but studying God’s word, worshiping him, and helping the lost know how they can enter the kingdom of God is miniscule when compared to the amount of time we watch commercials, much less the programs they pay millions to become sponsors of. Parents who take their children to sporting events out of town and still make it a point to attend church services in the town where the event occurs if they are there on typical days they would be in church are certainly the exception to the rule.
Several people I once actually believed loved God recently got rather perturbed at me, one actually didn’t speak to me for weeks, because I had the gall to suggest their detailed knowledge of baseball and its players indicated they probably spent way too much time watching it. A local pastor actually cancelled a group he was supposed to be leading one Sunday evening because he wanted instead to go out hunting for that ever so illusive big buck. I recall one elder missed church once to enter a destruction derby of some kind a few hundred miles from his home. When confronted about it by another elder, he went complaining to another elder about how he had been attacked. Get it? Sin is a vicious circle that never ends until it is uncovered, confessed, and abandoned. Verse 10 of the second chapter of Judges is really quite revealing,
“And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.”
Why do you suppose the generation after Joshua did not know the Lord? If today’s generation is any indication of what has happened historically, I suggest the answer is quite simple. Children learn to do what they observe their parents doing. It does little good for parents to take their children to church every Sunday and to children’s programs throughout the week if they miss church and/or bible studies to take their children to a school function that just happens to be scheduled at the same time. Unfortunately, what most of those parents don’t realize is the opportunity to choose between studying God’s word and doing something else is usually a test presented by God to determine intended to give them a chance to demonstrate their own priorities.
James 1:3 makes it clear the reason so many never mature is that they constantly fail tests provided by God which He uses to determine their allegiance. “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” Of course, the endurance can only be produced when we pass the test. The phrase peirasmois peripesete suggests more the meaning of falling into temptation than encountering something like a difficult trial. It is literally translated trials you should be falling into. Every single minute of every single day of every single week of every single year of every single decade each of us makes millions of decisions. When one works eight to ten hours a day at a job, he has little extra time daily to watch things like his favorite sport. If he chooses to do that, rather than spend that same amount of time studying God’s word, he demonstrates daily for his children and wife what his priorities are.
In closing today’s instruction, I would like to admit, I probably spend way too much time watching national, international, and local news and commentary on it. I also watch “G” rated things like Cosby and Little House on the Prairie way too much. I am retired and get weary after spending seven or eight hours studying God’s word and writing things like this daily instruction. When I worked eight or nine hours a day, I spent at least four hours most days studying and writing. Even then I probably watched way too much news. Parents’ priorities in this life should be God, his church, each other, their children, their friends and acquaintances, and their jobs in that order. Their jobs must reflect their spiritual, personal, and social values in that order. Any job that interferes with one’s ability to maintain those priorities in that order and balanced, is the wrong job for one to continue doing, period.
I can’t begin to count the number of men and women I’ve personally dealt with this last year alone who have given up their spiritual life or a significant portion of it for a “good” job. Their incessant excuse is that they have been given the responsibility by God to take care of their families. Most of them have two or more cell phones. Most of their children past the age of five have their own cell phones. Their children have Game Boys, televisions in their bedrooms, personal computers, and myriads of other things no one on planet earth needs. And they continue to excuse their unbalanced lives as divinely blessed because, they claim, God wants them to take care of their wife and children. Of course God wants men and women to care for their children. He expects them to nurture them, teach them His word, provide them with food, clothing, and shelter, and leave them some kind of inheritance. But in most places in America, that can be done on a great deal less income than most married couples make.
You’re constantly being tested. You’ll have many opportunities in the coming days, months, and years to demonstrate your priorities to God. Will you pass the test? (II Cor. 13:5)
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