Tell them all this, but do not expect them to listen. Shout out your warnings, but do not expect them to respond. Say to them, ‘This is the nation whose people will not obey the Lord their God and who refuse to be taught. Truth has vanished from among them; it is no longer heard on their lips. Shave your head in mourning, and weep alone on the mountains. For the Lord has rejected and forsaken this generation that has provoked his fury.’ (Jeremiah 7:27-29)It is a bitter lesson for a young preacher to learn. No matter how hard you try, no matter who well you preach, no matter who good the sermon is, no matter how sincere you are – people are not going to listen to you.
They will pretend to do so, they want to think that they do, all that. But they will not listen to you.
And it is not because they are stupid or mean or ugly. It is that they are human. And humans do not want to hear things that go against what they want to do.
After all, why are we in this fix in the first place? God made a perfect garden for people to live in, and made perfect people to live there. He gave them one rule: don’t eat the fruit off that tree, the one in the middle of the garden.
The next thing you know, he comes to the garden and they are hiding because they realized they were naked. He asked who told them they were naked. But he knew. They had all the freedom in the world and chose the one thing, the only thing wrong. They ate the fruit on that tree and the tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Why did God put it there? He knew they would do that. He knew they would not listen to him. Yet he did it anyway. And they continued to not listen to him until now.
We have that as a characteristic, part of our natures. Tell your kids something and chances are, they will not listen. “Didn’t you hear what I said? you holler. On one level, yes. Sound vibrations went out from your mouth, their ears received the vibrations. But on another level, the vibrations were forgotten the moment they were heard.
God tells us stuff and the vibrations are forgotten the moment they are heard. It is our nature and we fight it all our lives.
But there are those who do not fight it, who just refuse to listen. I want to do my own thing, they will say. I want to do what seems right to me.
A whole nation begins to do that and soon they are known for it. And to be known as a nation whose people will not fear the Lord would be a terrible way to live. It is like children who are known for not obeying their parents. There are always kids like that in any group, kids that everyone knows will not listen to their parents and are always in trouble.
The nation of Israel, the favored people of God, the nation God showered his love on, was destroyed because of this. They just refused to listen. And God told Jeremiah that his job was to tell them but to know from the beginning that they would not listen
What a tragic end to a great nation and a people God had loved.
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