Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you,
Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which
occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and
ashes. Matthew 11:21
Burlap, it's just not for sacks any
more! Burlap is still out there, but about the only time I see it, it
is to wrap the root balls of trees in a nursery. And it is used for
some fall and holiday decorations on wreaths and ornaments. But you
wouldn't want to wear it. Itchy, scratchy, rough, coarse...just a few
words to describe it. But it would have been the cloth of choice for
the mourner in the day of this writing. To clothe oneself in this
way, and to take ashes (to be honest, I don't know what they burned
to get them) and throw them up in the air so that they landed on you
and made you dirty, that sticky, sooty kind of dirty, was man's way
of showing extreme sorrow, usually for one's sins or someone's death
or impending doom. Whole cities would do this to show God that they
were wrong, that they were repenting or turning away from their sins.
It was agreeing with God that they were dirty, sinful, and pleading
with Him for mercy instead of the judgment that they deserved.
Here are 4 cities listed, 2 of whom
agreed with God about their spiritual state and 2 that took God's
grace for granted. The real problem here, as Jesus called them out,
was that the first 2 were Jewish cities, and the second 2 were
foreign. The first 2 should have known better, and the second two
would have been hearing God's Word maybe for the first time. This is,
in essence, Jesus saying that He had wasted His time on the people in
these Jewish cities and would have gotten a better response going
overseas! Or at least out of the state of Israel. He tells foreigners
more than once that He came to the lost sheep of Israel, but often
pointed out that the non-Jews were quicker to believe, had a deeper
faith when they came to Him, and were also blessed and welcomed into
God's fold through their faith and not by Jewish ritual.
In other words, the first 2 cities
should have recognized Him. He performed acts of miracles and mercy,
taught God's Word and backed it up with signs and wonders. They
should have known Him. They should have known better what God
required. They were stuck on religion while not seeing God. The
foreigners saw God, and didn't need religion to get there. The first
2 cities should have known better. And therefore, they were going to
undergo the judgement of God. Woe to them!
And woe to us! Over the last week or so
I have had several conversations with people in the church whose kids
have wandered from the faith, or who do not see the hand of the Lord
in their lives. They act like Jesus is not important or worth
following. And then there is the church...leaving the design that God
gave it...accepting not sinners into the church, but sin itself,
redefining sins that are clearly spelled out in scripture in order to
be acceptable to the world around them. They should know better. But
they do not read the scriptures. They do not let the Word tell them
what right and wrong looks like. They do not fall in love with the
worker of miracles. They don't recognize the hand of God, and
therefore condemn it as works of man. They do not see God's ways
being higher than man's ways, and therefore condemn themselves to a
greater judgment that that of Sodom and Gomorrah! And we who do see
are terrified for them! Not only was Israel struck by God for not
accepting Jesus when He came to earth, they were wiped off the face
of the planet for about 2000 years! They were scattered over the face
of the earth, those that were left after the destruction that made
the holocaust look like a flesh wound.
And yet we test God at every turn. The
people of those days did not have the Word of God in their
hands...they heard it in church once a week and went to Sabbath
school. They were trained in it, but it was not there except in their
minds...and the foreigners had nothing but the Jews around them to
see what God was like and what He considered good...like washing
before eating, disposing of sewage in a certain way, and other
purification rituals that actually make the “western world” a
healthier place than the rest of the non-Judeo-Christian-based world.
We have seen the miracles of God in wars, in people's lives, and in
whole cultures where people have turned to the True God from their
sinful lives. There is peace where there was war. There is order
where corruption had a foothold. The true hot-spots of the world are
where the Word of God is unknown, or worse, totally ignored or
rejected. Woe to them, yes, but a bigger woe to those in the church
who adopt corrupted thinking and sin and welcome it into the church
and their hearts, for those are the ones that Jesus shakes His head
at, not in judgment, but in tears and weeping. He wept over
Jerusalem. He wept over those who didn't know their God when He did
nothing but Good in their midst.
So if you know you are sinful, you
don't need the sackcloth. Sin is uncomfortable to wear in the first
place. Take the garments of sin off and let Him clothe you in His
righteousness. Come to Jesus and ask Him to wash off the ashes of the
burnt places of your life. Then He can rejoice over you and not have
to weep for you any more.
No comments:
Post a Comment