“What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’ then you shall say to them: ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, and because you have done worse than your fathers.” (Jeremiah 16:10–12, ESV)
We now live here on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, OBX. Down on the southern end of the OBX we have been watching the collapse of some homes into the ocean. With the recent hurricanes off shore, Humberto and Imelda, we have seen nine homes collapse and end up completely destroyed by the sea. Some of these homes were built some fifty-years ago.
What is the underlying reason for the recent collapse of these homes? After all we have endured many hurricanes here over the past fifty years. It was the constant erosion of the sand upon which they were built. The ones that recently collapsed were not originally ocean front homes. Other homes and streets were originally in front of them. The steady erosion of the beach over the generations that preceded resulted in this calamity.
This brings me to the point. There is a such thing as spiritual erosion in Christendom. It is the erosion of biblical values that often happens from one generation to the next. This is what happened to Israel. The problem was the spiritual erosion of biblical truths and the erosion of the people’s desire to follow them. Look at what the Lord told Jeremiah in this regard.
“your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, and because you have done worse than your fathers”
Do you catch the big issue. The people’s fathers had forsaken the Lord and His ways. They had morphed into the ways of the nations around them. Yet the Lord condemns the current generation stating that they were even worse in their abominations than their fathers. They were among long line of generational spiritual erosion.
You might say, “Right, that happened to Israel, but we’re not Israel.” That is only partially correct. We are not living in Jeremiah’s time, but this generational erosion of biblical values tugs at the sand of our lives. Moreover, like the homes that have been collapsing on the OBX today, the nation of Israel collapsed due to the Babylonian conquest to come.
I am afraid that in many cases this collapse is coming on the children or grandchildren of many Christian parents today. It is a sad reality that our children and grandchildren may experience a gradual erosion of the biblical values that we have held. As a result, they can end up collapsing as the sand washes out from under their spiritual footing.
Sadly, the collapse of the homes on the Outer Banks was preventable. The ban on solid structures to prevent or at least slow down the beach erosion has led to the demise of these homes. Yet here, regarding spiritual erosion, we are speaking about the collapse and demise of people and this too is preventable.
Some of the problem we can put on the parents. While the children have watched, many parents have failed to demonstrate what solid biblical convictions and consistent devotion to the Lord looks like. It can be due to churches that have eroded from scriptural truths and have indoctrinated people into a religion that does not hold to the infallibility of the Scriptures. Another issue is the influence of unbiblical cultural moral values on our children and grandchildren. In all these cases our children often see no relevance to the truths and authority of the Scriptures.
Can we stop the spiritual erosion of the day in our families and churches. I will say yes, but it is not us. It must be stopped by Christ in us as we repent and seek the Lord our God with a whole heart, rejecting the culture’s influence, and affirming the absolute truths of the Bible and thus seeking to live accordingly.
Renewing the Heart 