SURVIVABILITY

I Was Just Thinking About - - -

There is considerable opinion about how well a civilization or nation can survive amid the cultural and political pressures of a given period of time. The current political rhetoric about survival of the current Presidency and a different Administration to be elected has one glaring omission – the absence of God in the discussions. The USA has proclaimed for years: “In God We Trust.” The obvious question is – Do we trust in God at all? If we have abandoned God in our culture, can the nation survive His absence? More importantly, if God has abandoned this nation, survivability is impossible.

There is a very sad scene in Judges 16:17-21. It is the account about Samson, his source of strength and the ultimate loss of it. By means of his rejection of God’s standards and purpose for him, he allowed himself to become arrogant, ego-centric and a womanizer. The Philistines wanted to eliminate him as a force to be reckoned with and had Delilah cater to his arrogance, ego and womanizer tendency. It came to a point where he indicated that he loved her and ultimately revealed his heart to her and that led to his demise. She reports this to the Philistines. His head is shaved and he did not realize that he had been abandoned by God. The sad commentary of his demise and situation: “But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him.  So the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, brought him down to Gaza, bound him with bronze chains and he became a grinder in the prison." 

In a similar historical moment, the Lord sent a resounding message by his prophet Amos to the nation of Israel that He was going to abandon them because of their pride and wickedness - Amos 6:11-14, “For behold, the Lord is going to command that the great house be smashed to pieces and the small house to fragments…you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood, You who rejoice and say: Have we not by our own strength taken a nation for ourselves? Behold, I am going to raise up a nation against you, O house of Israel, declares the Lord God of hosts, And they will afflict you…” God would abandon them to their pride, arrogance and wickedness.

That which was true for Samson (Judges 16)  and Israel (Amos 6) is also true for the politicians and people of our day and any nation that has forgotten and abandoned God. In Jeremiah 13:13-27, the pride of the nation is about to lead the people into captivity. One of the indictments against them is stated in verses 24-25: “I will scatter them like stubble that passes away by the wind of the wilderness. This is your lot, the portion of your measures from Me, says the Lord, because you have forgotten Me and trusted in falsehood.”

The message for us is to be warned and to repent before it becomes too late. Ignoring God’s warning(s) will result in His abandonment of this and any nation that has ignored and forgotten Him. 

Prayerfully – consider these things with me.