“I Won't Listen!” – FBC Morning Light (8/27/2024)

Well a good Tuesday morning to you. I hope your week got off to a good start yesterday. Well today in our Bible reading we're in Jeremiah chapters 21 to 23 and in chapter 22 we we see a statement that occurs in the middle of Jeremiah speaking to Jehoiakim the son of Josiah who is now the king, Jehoiakim is the king.

Remember Josiah was a good king and Josiah brought about a lot of reforms and in the reign of Josiah there was, comparatively speaking, a time of prosperity. Jehoiakim his son comes on the throne and Jehoiakim did not follow in his father's footsteps.

He wasn't a good king particularly and he brought back in a lot of a lot of corruption and so forth but still enjoyed some of the prosperity that came about in his father's reign, okay? So it is in those conditions that the Lord sends the prophets to warn God's people and how do they respond?

How do they respond in times of prosperity? Well this is what the Lord says in verse 21 of Jeremiah 22. He says, I spoke to you in your prosperity but you said I will not hear. This, the Lord says, has been your manner from your youth that you did not obey my voice.

I spoke to you in your prosperity and you said I will not hear. Haven't you found that to be historically the case? In times of prosperity, what happens in the culture, in society, in its relationship to the Church?

It wanes. Interest in the Church wanes. The Church becomes soft and complacent and society becomes soft and complacent and indifferent to the things of God. You see this over and over again throughout history.

We've seen it in our own country. We have, well, I mean think back even of Great Britain. I mean there was a time when Great Britain, as a nation, had what was blessed, was blessed with spiritual prosperity.

Yeah, there were problems throughout the Church in England, not only the Church of England but the way the Church of England handled the dissenters who were not Church of England and all the rest. There's some history to that.

But, but, here's the thing. The Gospel was preached, missions was very active, missions endeavors very active, being missionaries sent out from England, and God blessed England with a great deal of prosperity, in spite of many of the ill-gotten gains that, you know, that went on during that time of prosperity.

But nevertheless, it's a great, great prosperity. And what happened in that time of prosperity is that, you know, people drifted away, drifted away from any interest in spiritual things at all. So that today, in Great Britain, the impact of the Church is incredibly small, minimal, and the interest of British people in the Church is incredibly small.

And we're seeing the same thing in the United States. Over the last couple of decades, interest in Church has waned, and we've enjoyed prosperity in our country, we are a wealthy nation, you look at, I saw this recently, we had a missionary visit our Church who does pastoral training in third world countries, and he showed pictures of the gatherings of pastors, or pastors in training, in places like Chad and Ghana and Nepal, and in Chad, I think it was, the people, they sat on the In Nepal, they sat on the floor, and it was carpeted floor, but they sat on the floor.

And the conditions were just, they were just awful by American standards, impoverishment, but the hunger for the Word on the part of these pastors to be able to learn how to take the Word and communicate it to others was infectious.

And I contrast that with our country, and I wonder, I saw this one church building where the quote-unquote pews were simply like concrete slabs, and that's it, no padding, no back, nothing. And I wondered how many people would come to church in our country, in our community, in the church I pastor, if we took all the pads off the pews, we took the backs off the pews.

We'd lose 70 of the people in our churches, I'm sure. And yeah, we're a prosperous nation, and the danger is in our prosperity when the Lord comes and confronts us with our sin, with our failures, with our misplaced priorities, and all the rest of that.

We can say, I will not hear. I will not hear. I will not hear this. It's making me too uncomfortable. Well, we don't want to be like that. We do not want to be like that. No matter how blessed we are, how prosperous, how well things are going for us, we cannot afford to get to the place where we say, I don't want to hear what God has to say.

It makes me too uncomfortable. Let's keep our ears open, let's keep our hearts open, and be willing even to be convicted of sin, and of unrighteousness, and of judgment to come. Let's not become a hard-hearted, I-don't-want-to-hear kind of people.

Father, help us in this, we pray. May we never lose the interest in your Word, and the desire to grow and change, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, listen, have a good rest of your Tuesday. May the Lord bless you, and have a good day.