False Causes and Phony Cures

Lamentations 2:14 "Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment."

When the soul is denied, then all causes are physical, and all cures are physical. God is defined out and what is left is drugs and spells.

This is the very wickedness of socialistic egalitarianism or humanism, which refuses to see that the difference between men lies in the soul.  Equal treatment is demanded for all people because of their physical humanness, not because of the moral and spiritual choices they make.  The fundamental wickedness is this: There is no real God, just an imagination in the minds of some men who can be safely ignored.  There will be no final division of men into the righteous and the wicked; God himself will do neither good nor evil.  Zeph. 1:12 "And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their heart, The LORD will not do good, neither will he do evil."

Such people, though they do not love nor follow the words of God, are quick to say "Judge not" to those who believe that God knows the difference between right and wrong and we should to.  They don't care about the Scriptures, they just want everybody to be a clueless as they are.  God doesn't distinguish, and neither should we.  So they throw dust in the eyes.

Even to the very end, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, her walls torn down, dead carcasses rotting in the streets and fields, being devoured by the birds of prey. their iniquities were not taken away nor their sins forgiven.

Why?  Jeremiah said it was because of the prophets who saw vain and foolish things.  They were vain and foolish because they did not go to the source of Jerusalem's troubles: the sins of the people.

Because the prophets deliberately turned away from the true causes, they had to invent false causes, laying upon the people false burdens which God had not commanded them to bear.  Therefore healing could not take place [verse 13].  They did not trace their problems up to their source: God Himself in Heaven bringing chastisement because of their sins and iniquities.

God can win all victories by sheer physical power, for who can stand before Him?  He could have destroyed the army of Babylon just as He had destroyed the army of Sennacherib in the days of Hezekiah, a few generations before, and Jerusalem could have been spared again.  Physical matters are nothing before Him: famine and peril and sword and storms and fires are all in his hands.  He both brings the manna from heaven and causes it to rot and breed worms.

But God is longsuffering and patient. He would win the moral victory over evil and be justified when He speaks.  How could he deliver Jerusalem when their sins were as rotten, if not worse, than the Babylonians?

Jerusalem's problem was not with Babylon.  Their problem was not the size of the army of the Chaldees nor the weakness of their own forces.  Their problem was with God.  The problem was not physical, it was moral and spiritual. 

They hid and justified their wickedness and did not repent.  The city was filled with idolatry, with the murder of innocents offered to idols, with fornication, adultery, and all sorts of sexual sins and depravity.  Long before Solomon's temple was razed by Nebuchadnezzar's officers it had been polluted by idols and Jerusalem, herself, had slain the prophets of the Lord and had shaken their fist in the face of God.

They refused to do what God had said, but God did what He had said:  "The LORD hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath not pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee, he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries." [Lam. 2:17]

The problems facing America are not physical: they are not economics nor terrorism, not hurricanes nor floods nor fires.  They are not because marriage is defined wrongly. They are not because our borders are not guarded, nor because government prints money and gives it away, threatening to bankrupt the country.  All of these things are not the problem: our problem is with God.  These are all symptoms of a much greater problem.

The problem is not that we not a "Christian" nation, for that is a stupid debate. America's problem will not be cured by a few ceremonies in Washington, D.C., or in the state capitals.  Jeremiah nailed the problem:  the men of Jerusalem refused to confess and repent their sins.  This was the elephant in the room, and nobody wanted to talk about it, the prophets who did were persecuted, tormented, and some were slain.  Just as Jeremiah had suffered the persecution and would die in Babylon, carried there from Egypt by the Babylonians and sawed in two.  He knew that he was hated of Jerusalem because he told them the truth.  They wanted to discuss other causes.

36  To subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approveth not.
37  Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?
38  Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?
39  Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?
40  Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD.
41  Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.
42  We have transgressed and have rebelled: thou hast not pardoned.
43  Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us: thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied.
44  Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through.
45  Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people.
46  All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.
47  Fear and a snare is come upon us, desolation and destruction.  Lamentations 3

Ten righteous men would have saved Sodom.  Are there a few that will repent their sins and turn in honor and humility to the Lord in sincerity and truth.  I think so.  But we need to exhort and call to one another and support each other.

40  Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD.
41  Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.  Lamentations 3
24  The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
25  The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
26  It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.  Lamentations 3.

If you scoff, scoff to yourself.  Scoff to the false prophet that encourages you in your sins, in whose face you see yourself.   My heart is too tender this morning to bear it.

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14  Moreover all the chief of the priests, and the people, transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen; and polluted the house of the LORD which he had hallowed in Jerusalem.
15  And the LORD God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place:
16  But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against his people, till there was no remedy.
17  Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age: he gave them all into his hand.  2Chron. 36.

The devastation was from God; the Chaldees were the instrument.