"Why, God?"

“And when your people ask, ‘Why did the LORD our God do all this to us?’ you must reply, ‘You rejected him and gave yourselves to foreign gods in your own land. Now you will serve foreigners in a land that is not your own.’ [Jeremiah 5.19]

So when everything goes wrong and we finally come to our senses enough to ask, "Why, God?" we need to hear what God's reply is!

The main problem we have caused ourselves is when things go wrong, we have come to the silly notion that we should not ask God, "Why?" Well-meaning, but woefully uniformed religious leaders have made no small effort to convince hurting people that they should not question God in their troubles. Refusing to acknowledge that troubles are punishment, these religious leaders are failing miserably at directing the people to repent.

Jeremiah 2.35 says it all too well:

And yet you say, ‘I have done nothing wrong. Surely God isn’t angry with me!’ But now I will punish you severely because you claim you have not sinned.

And, as part of today's OYCB reading, it comes out again just how disappointed God is when we depend on everything except him. Actually the verse immediately following Jeremiah 2.35 articulates this:

First here, then there—you flit from one ally to another asking for help. But your new friends in Egypt will let you down, just as Assyria did before. [Jeremiah 2.36]

God does not like the idea that we depend on everything and everyone except Him only to turn to Him when every other option fails! God dislikes this so much He refers to it as prostitution and adultery!

I am not making this up - the Bible is rife with this  message!

When will we hear it? When will we repent?

Father, the message of repentance is re-surfacing in Christendom. I know most will utterly reject it, but I also know their rejection of it only further indicates the necessity of it!