What's the problem?
Refusal to obey God, it's a propensity to follow the plans of their own hearts, and building alliances with other gods. Following after cheap grace like empty wineskins, making themselves useless to God. They will not allow themselves to be filled with the Holy Spirit who inspires the faithful to become useful.
Let's look at the words spoken by the prophet...and see if we can find some answers and maybe a little wisdom.
The Lord asked:
"If you stumble in a peaceful land,
what will you do in the thickets of the Jordan?" (Jeremiah 12:5)
"Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard...All the land is desolate,
but no one takes it to heart." (vs 10, 11)
Jeremiah 12:13 "They have sown wheat but harvested thorns. They have exhausted themselves but have no profit.
Be put to shame by your harvests
because of the Lord’s burning anger."
I honestly think our spiritual and moral culture has peaked. We've exhausted our souls and spiritual resources on cheap religious causes. And we've buried our spiritual heads in the ground as the world has eroded our love for God's word. We've hidden it for so long that we've forgotten how to use it. We've unleashed ourselves from God's glory, and instead hitched up our lives to a false star. 💫
We're no longer able to keep up with the wickedness. We're in a foot race, and we're already exhausted. Meanwhile the wicked are riding horses. We've brought a knife to a gun fight. And so our efforts are becoming futile. Soon the wicked will be preparing a virtual religious world built upon every kind of imaginable sin and attractive to everyone. You'll find heaven in a machine. Paradise will be as easy to find as turning on the VR device. And we'll be stuck in our ways still being of no use to anyone.
And like the underwear that Jeremiah buried in the ground by the river Euphrates, (Jeremiah 13:1-7), these spiritual people will turn up ruined. And of no use to the Lord. Their testimony will become dirty, rotten and filled with holes. They won't be able to be fastened to the Lord and no longer clinging to the Lord.
#TheWordOfTheLord
#ThanksBeToGod
Reality check...making application
Don't you hate old worn out underwear? The stretch band loses its grip. The leggings sag. There's holes in the crotch. Things are not packaged properly anymore. But we don't just toss it out do we? It's like we just can't bring ourselves to buy any new underwear. Why? It's cheap enough.
Linen wastes away almost as much with washing as they do with wearing. And with time the fabric doesn't fit well anymore. It doesn't cling tightly to the wearer. It's of no good use. It's really not doing anything useful at all. It's like how Satan blinds the minds of the believers. He dirties them up and wears them down with fame, sex, escapism. He enslaves them with false hope. He tempts them to serve the gods of materialism. They find themselves among the hogs, fighting with the hogs for the hog's food. Imagine what the hogs thought about this new hog among them.
The lesson continues...
The prophet Jeremiah was instructed by God to buy brand spanking new fine linen underwear. Put it on, (don't wash it in water), and wear it on a mission trip to Babylon aka Syria and Iraq, and bury the underwear by the river Euphrates. Once there in Babylon, (in the land of the pagan gods), bury the underwear near the river in a cleft of rock.
Then he leaves.
How long?
Don't know.
After a while he goes back (another long misson trip to Babylon) and finds that the underwear were badly damaged by the floods, the dirt and the heat, and whatever other natural stressors that might happen in that state. They were damaged to the point of being of no earthly good to anyone.
The Moral Of The Story:
The underwear is you. For a time you were clinging to the prophet. Carried along by the wisdom of God's word. Serving the purposes of the Lord. Not worn out, not exposed to the false gods. And then something changed. You're the new strange hog among the hogs fighting for hog food. Your linens are no longer clinging to God. Instead you find yourself in the land of confusion and living in the ways of the pagans. Now you're exposed to the stressors of that place. You're stuck there, enslaved to it. Hiding your godly purpose within that place and among those false gods. And ultimately you've become useless. By living in these idolatries and other iniquities the people have loosed themselves from God and have neglected giving him honor. They buried themselves in foreign soil. They've mingled in the ground of pagans, they are subjected to, and corrupted by its riverside views. They walked around in the imagination of their own hearts while the community of pagans surrounding them were trampling the truth of God under their horses hooves.
Conclusion:
Time to change your underwear.
God has already stripped off the useless undergarment linens. He's going around commando while his people are submitting to pagan gods and making themselves useless.
Get a new grip. Get some new underwear so that the Lord will put you back on and make you his own again. Cling to him again. Live the right life for Christ.
End of lesson.
May the Lord God in heaven inspire you and make you whole in His Spirit. Now and forever. God bless you and keep you.
Amen.
Further study: Learn about being careless with your blessings
Read the parables in Luke 15