Why?

“And when your people say, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all these things to us?’ you shall say to them, ‘As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve foreigners in a land that is not yours.’” (Jeremiah 5:19, ESV)

One of the strangest debates was answering the why question. I do not have a specific example, but it went like this. Being in authority, you might tell someone to do something. The person would say, “Why?” Perhaps you did not know why or did not have the time to give a lengthy answer, so you replied, “Because.” This should have answered the question, but the person given the task might say, “Because why?” To that the person in charge would say, “Because I said so.” You get my drift.

Here in this passage, after explaining what would happen to Judah due to the Babylonian conquest, the natural question that the remnant of the people would ask is, “Why has the Lord our God done all these things to us?” Why the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem? Why are we being carted off to Babylon? The answer to these questions should not have been a surprise to the people but apparently, they would need to hear the reason.

So, here is the concise reason. The Lord stated the reason, “As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve foreigners in a land that is not yours. They brought the calamity upon themselves. They reaped that which they had sown. As they chose to serve foreign gods in the land that God had given them, they would now serve foreigners in a foreign land, Babylon.

It is interesting to me that with all the forewarnings given to the people of Judah, the people would not listen. God spoke to the people through Jeremiah. He would give ample warnings and calls to repentance. If they understood the law, they should have understood the veracity of the prophet’s message. Yet the warnings were not headed. Not even the king and priests of the nation took seriously the prophetic warnings.

So, today the Scriptures cry out to us with many warnings. These warnings are given to us as individual believers and to the churches. We must guard our hearts, individually and as churches, against the apostasy of the culture. We must not morph to adapt to cultural morals. We must not grow cold or apathetic in our devotion to God. To do so is to fall into the same trap that ancient Israel experienced.

The good news for us as true believers is that our future is guaranteed. We have a place in heaven guaranteed for us. However, on this side of heaven we leave ourselves open to missing many blessings if we slide into the diversion of moral relativism and a cold heart. Sometimes we will slide and suffer the consequences thereof. Then when we hit the bottom and find ourselves asking the question, “Why?” perhaps we should just examine ourselves. Have we compromised the full truth of God’s unchanging word? Have we grown spiritually cold in our devotion to God? The solution for us is the same as that which God gave Israel. Repent.