While such compromise has not gotten quite as bad as recorded in Jeremiah 8, there are verses in this chapter that are sounding a warning, but such a cry from the Bible is not being heeded today!
In Jeremiah 8 the leadership and the people had long departed from the Lord. The punishment would be the deportation from Jerusalem to Babylon. The Jews had already left their worship of God and gone over to raw paganism in both their cultural and religious practices. As they departed the land for captivity they took the bones of their kings, princes, and priests from their graves and spread them out before the sun, the moon, and the host of heaven, which they worshiped and gave homage to (vv. 1-2).
With such evil the Lord said death was chosen "rather than life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family" (v. 3). The nation had turned "away in continual apostasy" (v. 5). They held fast to deceit and refused to return to the Lord (v. 5b). They could not speak what was right and "No man repented of his wickedness, saying ‘What have I done?’" (v. 6).
Pastors today seem to be blinded in their departure of teaching the pure Word of God. They call those who remain faithful and focus on exposition of the Scriptures as intransigent and hindrances to progress. We are the cause of the world despising Christianity!
The Lord God calls those who go after the course of the culture mindless war horses who just rush headlong to battle without thinking (v. 6b). But even the stork, the turtledove, the thrush, observes the migrating seasons and does by instinct what is right. Yet Israel, the people of God, is blind—"My people do not know the ordinance of the Lord" (v. 7b).
Pastors today claim they are wise, knowledgeable, and savvy about how to reach the world. They argue as during the time of Jeremiah, "We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us" (v. 8). But the theologians (the scribes of Jeremiah’s day), were writing with a lying pen" and had made God’s law "into a lie" (v. 8). In time they will be "put to shame" and made "dismayed and caught." "Behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord" (v. 9). However it will get worse. The Lord says "Everyone is greedy for gain; from the prophet even to the priest, everyone practices deceit" (v. 10).
Part of the judgment of God upon Judah was to destroy their prosperity (v. 13). With economic production coming to an end the farmers said, "Let us go into the fortified cities, and let us perish there, because the Lord our God has doomed us and given us poisoned water to drink" (v. 14).
Because of waywardness, the nation of Judah would be dispersed. God said, "I will scatter them among the nations, whom neither they nor their fathers have known; and I will send the sword after them until I have annihilated them" (9:16).
So many among the spiritual leadership of America has led this nation astray. Spiritual truth has taken a backseat to cultural mores and secular pretensions. There will be a price to pay. The apostle Paul knew an apostasy would come among believers and that the church would turn its back on the Lord. America is going into a judgment and pastors will be called accountable for its departure.
While revival is possible, it is rare in the pages of church history. Once a people have broken the link with Scripture to go back and seek the Lord generally does not happen. A disaster awaits this nation!
