“She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore.” (Jeremiah 3:8, ESV)
When I was in the United States Army in Germany, I had several humorous experiences. On one field exercise while serving as the Battalion Maintenance Officer, I was sent to a maneuver area to assess and plan a recovery operation for a tank that was stuck in the mud.
When we got to the maneuver area in my jeep I decided to stay on the main to avoid getting stuck in the mud also. However, I looked over the maneuver area and did not see any tank, only a handful of soldiers on foot in the muddy area.
Upon closer inspection, I could not believe what I saw. All I could see was an antenna sticking out of the mud. The entire tank, the hull and turret were submerged in the mud. I knew that it would take two M88 recovery vehicles to pull this sunken tank out.
However, what I saw next was the most comical thing that I had seen in the entire field exercise. As the soldiers on the ground were standing around looking at their sunken tank, another tank came barreling along at high speed to that location. I could see the tank’s commander pointing to the sunken tank’s crew and laughing hilariously.
The laughter did not last long as the approaching tank drove at high speed into the same mud hole, in which the first tank was stuck. I watched as a wave of brown mud and water swept up over the front hull of the tank and buried that tank also. So, now not just one, but two tanks were stuck in the same mire, while two tank crews covered in mud were standing around looking at their sunken tanks.
The point of this story is that some people just do not learn. You would have thought that the second tank might have learned from the first one and approached with caution. They did not and the result was their own misery.
This is often the way it is in life. People observe things but do not learn from their observations. This is the situation for Judah, the Southern Kingdom of the nation of Israel. They should have observed that the idolatry of the Northern Kingdom, Israel resulted in disaster as they were conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. The southern Kingdom, Judah, knew the history and should have understood that this happened because the Northern Kingdom, Israel, turned their back on God, removing His hand of protection from them. Judah knew of this but did not learn from it.
Today, we often see things that happen to other people, but do not learn. Some can see people dabbling with substance abuse and the resultant disaster it usually brings, and yet jump into the same lifestyle. Some see people hopelessly in debt due to foolish choices and end up in unsustainable debt themselves by making the same foolish choices. These often get into the problem by thinking it could never happen to them.
Have we not seen professing believers disappear from the church only to be overcome by the flesh and the world system? Many people struggle in life because that do not seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness with a whole heart.
Churches are not immune to this problem either. How many churches have turned their back on the Scriptures and moved to a progressive position that denies full authority of the Bible. These churches experience weakness and spiritual decline, and even numerical decline.
Let us not only grow in knowledge but also in wisdom. Let grow in wisdom by observation. We should be able to observe those that walk by faith and not by sight and see the difference in their lives as compared to those who walk by sight and not by faith. When we do, we will see that to walk by faith takes us on the path of the greatest blessing.
Renewing the Heart 