Tuning Out God

God's People Worship
The Prophet and Praise
Meaningless Worship

Jeremiah 13:1-11

The Message

People Who Do Only What They Want to Do

13 ^1-2 God told me, “Go and buy yourself some linen shorts. Put them on and keep them on. Don’t even take them off to wash them.” So I bought the shorts as God directed and put them on.

^3-5 Then God told me, “Take the shorts that you bought and go straight to Perath and hide them there in a crack in the rock.” So I did what God told me and hid them at Perath.
^6-7 Next, after quite a long time, God told me, “Go back to Perath and get the linen shorts I told you to hide there.” So I went back to Perath and dug them out of the place where I had hidden them. The shorts by then had rotted and were worthless.
^8-11 God explained, “This is the way I am going to ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem—a wicked bunch of people who won’t obey me, who do only what they want to do, who chase after all kinds of no-gods and worship them. They’re going to turn out as rotten as these old shorts. Just as shorts clothe and protect, so I kept the whole family of Israel under my care”—God’s Decree—“so that everyone could see they were my people, a people I could show off to the world and be proud of. But they refused to do a thing I said.

For Reflection

Why is that so hard to believe?  People believe they have no choice, but, they do.  Some may even choose alternatives which lead to undesirable choices (the answer to a dilemma is always an undesirable choice).  OK, so it was 1948 and I was lying on the floor in front of the Zenith portable radio listening to the Jack Benny show.  Yes, I remember it clearly!  One always has a choice.

Hear the Benny bit,  "Your Money or Your Life:"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tVzdUczMT0 

Pray

that you will always be lead by God in making all decisions large and small.  Pray for God-centered wisdom.