NOVEMBER 2024
FROM THE PASTORS DESK
What should God’s faithful people do in a time of moral, spiritual, and societal degradation and collapse? As followers of Christ and believers in the Bible we must give serious consideration to this question.
We can learn so much from the greater testament. God was finished with that particular generation of Jews in Jeremiah 7 because of their idolatry and pluralism. They thought that as long as they gave a pretense of temple worship, they were good. God would never destroy them or their temple. They were dead wrong! God was not having it: “Do you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you have not known? Then do you come and stand before Me in this house called by My name and say, ‘We are delivered, so we can continue doing all these detestable acts’? Has this house, which is called by Me name, become a den of robbers in your view? Yes, I too have seen it.” This is the Lord’s declaration (Jeremiah 7:9-11). A few verses later God unequivocally stated, “It’s too late for you!” God told Jeremiah, “As for you, do not pray for theses people. Do not offer a cry or a prayer on their behalf, and do not beg Me, for I will not listen to you. Don’t you see how they behave in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The sons gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods so that they provoke Me to anger. But are they really provoking Me?” This is the Lord’s declaration. “Isn’t it they themselves being provoked to disgrace?” Therefore, this is what the Lord God says: Look, My anger - My burning wrath - is about to be poured out on this place, on man and beast, on the tree of the field, and on the produce of the land. My wrath will burn and not be quenched.” (Jeremiah 7:16-20)
However, later in the prophecy God gives the Babylonian captives a message of hope: “This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city I have deported you to . Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it has prosperity, you will prosper.” (Jeremiah 29:4-7)
How do we reconcile these two chapters? The answer is the Garden and the Cross. Regardless of the cultural climate, God has never rescinded nor changed the Garden Mandate. God’s intention from the very beginning of creation has been to expand His sanctuary by expanding the Garden. In light of the New Covenant in Christ God’s sanctuary is His people. The Apostle Paul said that believers’ bodies are they sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. As the Gospel is spread across the world, the sanctuary of God expands. The moral imperative for God’s faithful remnant is the same as it has always been - be fruitful and faithful and multiply. The Garden mandate is still true. Our marching orders today, regardless of whether America repents and thrives or continues to decline and collapse, are the same as they have always been.
The Apostle Paul told his mentee, Timothy, “But know this: Difficult times will come in the last days. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of godliness but denying its power.” (2 Timothy 3:1-5) What was Paul’s advice for this young minister of the Gospel in difficult times? Paul instructed, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 3:14-15) Are these not the same instructions God gave Moses millennia earlier? Moses told the ancient Israel, “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) May we follow God’s ancient, well-defined marching orders in theses last days!
We can learn so much from the greater testament. God was finished with that particular generation of Jews in Jeremiah 7 because of their idolatry and pluralism. They thought that as long as they gave a pretense of temple worship, they were good. God would never destroy them or their temple. They were dead wrong! God was not having it: “Do you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you have not known? Then do you come and stand before Me in this house called by My name and say, ‘We are delivered, so we can continue doing all these detestable acts’? Has this house, which is called by Me name, become a den of robbers in your view? Yes, I too have seen it.” This is the Lord’s declaration (Jeremiah 7:9-11). A few verses later God unequivocally stated, “It’s too late for you!” God told Jeremiah, “As for you, do not pray for theses people. Do not offer a cry or a prayer on their behalf, and do not beg Me, for I will not listen to you. Don’t you see how they behave in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The sons gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods so that they provoke Me to anger. But are they really provoking Me?” This is the Lord’s declaration. “Isn’t it they themselves being provoked to disgrace?” Therefore, this is what the Lord God says: Look, My anger - My burning wrath - is about to be poured out on this place, on man and beast, on the tree of the field, and on the produce of the land. My wrath will burn and not be quenched.” (Jeremiah 7:16-20)
However, later in the prophecy God gives the Babylonian captives a message of hope: “This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city I have deported you to . Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it has prosperity, you will prosper.” (Jeremiah 29:4-7)
How do we reconcile these two chapters? The answer is the Garden and the Cross. Regardless of the cultural climate, God has never rescinded nor changed the Garden Mandate. God’s intention from the very beginning of creation has been to expand His sanctuary by expanding the Garden. In light of the New Covenant in Christ God’s sanctuary is His people. The Apostle Paul said that believers’ bodies are they sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. As the Gospel is spread across the world, the sanctuary of God expands. The moral imperative for God’s faithful remnant is the same as it has always been - be fruitful and faithful and multiply. The Garden mandate is still true. Our marching orders today, regardless of whether America repents and thrives or continues to decline and collapse, are the same as they have always been.
The Apostle Paul told his mentee, Timothy, “But know this: Difficult times will come in the last days. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of godliness but denying its power.” (2 Timothy 3:1-5) What was Paul’s advice for this young minister of the Gospel in difficult times? Paul instructed, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 3:14-15) Are these not the same instructions God gave Moses millennia earlier? Moses told the ancient Israel, “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) May we follow God’s ancient, well-defined marching orders in theses last days!
-Pastor Clint Miller
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