The pagan endgame [Jer 7]

There are two things to consider here: what level of depravity it was that triggered the destruction of Jerusalem, and what the consequences were. BUt the issue of Justice is not in question.

Not in question. For the people of Judah were like us. They had plenty of warning. And like us, they left the faith of their fathers and the God who had bought them out of Egypt for the rancid fruit of neopaganism.

As if this does not have an endgame: the turning away from the truth and beauty means that it moves from pretty (let’s face it, the twitter screenshot is pretty, but it is not “awesome”) to narcissistic, to evil.

And do not say God was unjust. The people of Judah were burning infants in a fire to worship Topeth. They had exceeded the iniquity of the Amorites, who they displaced.

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.

“So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the LORD their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.

“‘Cut off your hair and cast it away; raise a lamentation on the bare heights, for the LORD has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.’

“For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the LORD. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste.

(Jeremiah 7:21-34 ESV)

So the question is not why did Israel to into exile. They were in a covenant relationship with the Almighty, and this clause was given to them: there are a series of blessings and curses that Moses turned into a song, so it would be remembered.

As an individual, turning away from the gospel and walking steadfastly away will lead to your damnation. It matters not how pretty the externals are: prettiness is superficial, but the ugliness beneath rots the bones.

As a society, turning from the natural law and justice offends God, but when you reach the point where the blood of those you oppressed stenches overmuch, your society falls: be it the Gulag, the slaughterhouse of Topeth, the abortion charnel mills of the US Supreme Court, or the current endgame of the Islamic State.

We forget that God is just. He gives us fair warning. We think he is a weak horse, to be ignored, at our peril. We need to reform. Daily. And pray that our society comes to its senses before too late it is.