Jeremiah 38:20-21
"Obey the Lord in what I am telling you, so it may go well for you and you can live. But if you refuse to surrender, this is the verdict..."
WAR!
You'll be seized, captured, sunk down into the mire. You wouldn't surrender and now you and all your people will be sentenced to slavery and a firery death.
In this modern age, archaeologicalists have unearthed the burned out remains of the ancient Jerusalem buildings that were burned and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar during the siege that Jeremiah writes about.
And what's notable is that among the ashes they found in every home hundreds of tiny pagan god statues. The very thing they were accused of by the prophet. The Lord had done these things because they refused to obey him. They chose instead to keep foreign gods among them. And their many gods could not prevent the destruction of the city.
Despite repeated warnings from God not to adopt the customs of the pagan nations around them, Israel did just that. They kept rituals for multitudes of demonic gods of war and sexual perversions. Pagan gods like Asherah, Baal, Ashtoreth, Molech, Cronus and Chemosh. Ironically they entered into relationship with these gods in the hopes of having happy productive lives, free from war and suffering. They worshiped the sun, moon, and stars. They burned incense on their roofs (Jer. 32:29), on the hilltops, and under every green tree. Men and women both participated in cultural prostitution (1 Ki. 14:24; Hos. 4:13–14). They sacrificed to demons, practiced witchcraft, sorcery, and spiritualism. And they slaughtered their children, especially the firstborn (Ezek. 20:26), burning them in sacrificial furnaces.
These were not good people. Every unclean thing that God had instructed them not to do, they did, and creatively found even more horrific things to do. But why?
Why do these things?
It's an age old human condition. They wanted to fit in. Israel engaged in paganism because they felt the pressure of the culture, it was a craving to be like everyone else.
Yup...they had their trends too.
They had their celebrities and influencers. They reasoned among themselves, “We will be as the nations” (Ezek. 20:32). They had social credit scores. They gave in to the social pressure.
As Christians, we too are supposed to be distinct among a sea of pagan nations, a peculiar people. And yet the nation we have spawned is an idolatrous society saturated with violence, sexual perversion, debauchery, and the expenditure of children through the abortion gods. We are constantly tempted to concede the biblical truths found in God's word for the sake of blending in and appearing tolerant.
And what will come of this?
It seems, as a culture, we have agreed to conform to the world and to make room for Satan’s counterfeits. We too will end up obscuring the one characteristic that distinguishes us from the rest of humankind—the genuine presence of God in our lives. And so there is only one future for us...
WAR!