Our God Who Pursues: Setting the Stage

 

However, if you turn aside and do not obey, but are lured away to worship and serve other gods, I declare to you this very day that you will certainly perish! You will not extend your time in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.  Deuteronomy 30:17-18

Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but prefer that the wicked change his behavior and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil deeds! Why should you die, O house of Israel?'  Ezekiel 33:11

 Over the course of the Old Testament, Israel turned away from God over and over and over again. He had made plain to them the truth, had shown them His love and care for them, and yet they continued to pursue other gods. It wasn’t necessarily a result of long periods of silence from God either. The first time the Israelites rebelled in the wilderness and made a golden calf to worship, Moses was only on the mountain for 47 days, and during that time the appearance of the LORD was like a devouring fire on top of the mountain and the people could clearly see it. They saw God’s presence and still chose to make a false god to worship instead.

 It's really easy for us to sit back and judge the Israelites as we read their story in hindsight, but are we like them? Do we slip back into old habits from before Jesus came into our lives? Are we drawn to the drama of the news, the dopamine hits of social media, the urgency of the cause we champion? What is our god? We don’t have to set up a golden statue in our house and burn incense and bow down to it in order for it to be our god. When we are setting as a priority anything in our life over Jesus, that becomes our god. It can often feel like a good thing, like we are doing the right thing. Maybe we set out to serve God by doing something, and then that thing became all consuming, drawing our attention away from God.

 I have an addictive personality. I don’t know if that’s a clinical thing or not, my son could tell me, but it’s something I’ve noticed over the course of my life. What that means is that when I get into something, I get really into it. I struggled with reading fiction when my kids were little because I would get so sucked into the books that I wouldn’t do anything else, not care for the children or cook or even sleep. I’ve gone through several stages with video games, whether on the computer or my phone, where I just can’t stop playing. It takes up every spare moment of my time, and then starts bleeding into my not so spare moments. In those seasons, my addiction is like a god that I’ve allowed into my life. I put it before my Bible study, or I hurry through my Bible study so I can get to it. I put it before the priorities that God has set for my life.

 There are a lot of things that can come between you and God, and it’s different for everyone. As you were reading this, the odds are that one or more things came to mind for you. The great news is that God already knew this about us, and He has made provisions to turn us away from our sin and back to Him. No, reading fiction is not sinning, but putting reading above my relationship with God is. There is not a specific list of dos and don’ts that make up what sin is or isn’t. Sin is simply disobeying God. But when the Holy Spirit brings it to our attention, whether by talking to our spirit or through others, or by another way altogether, we are given the opportunity to be restored into right standing with God. I strongly encourage you not to put it off because the deeper you get entrenched in sin, the harder it is to turn away later.

Here's the Thing: The prophets were sent to turn the hearts of the people back to God. That was relevant in the Old Testament, and it is relevant today.