Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
This passage speaks of God’s judgment upon a nation that turns away from him. That nation was Israel years ago, but we are God’s client nation as defined by (the nation which has a large population of believers who share the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world and practice the instructions in the Bible representing God’s will.) However, The United States of America as a whole does not represent God as it once did, but apparently enough of its citizens still do. Many of our founding fathers came here for that reason. That reason has been forgotten today and God is judging us too. His hand of blessing has been slapped by the proud and insolent of this nation just as Israel did, Isa.5:14,15,18,21 and thus his blessings and hedge of providential protection is being removed from us as well, Isa.5:5,6,10,13,and 24.
America and the rest of the world are suffering due to inattention to God’s word.
Many in our generation have a hard time understanding why there is so much suffering going on in the world. And our young people have an even harder time understanding it.
They see starvation, political unrest, disease, war, environmental catastrophes and natural disasters.
The adult, biblically misinformed, unbelieving sector of the American population with its political media and pop culture has its answers as to why all of these problems exist and their solutions are becoming our youth’s solutions. A degenerative societal shift is occurring as our youth are putting their hope in man and giving up hope in God.
Rather than the many icons of change turning to God’s answers to help lift up our youth they are stirring fear among them where fear does not have to exist, “The wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as a lion.” Prov.28:1. If they are stirred with biblical answers they will place their trust in God and follow his solutions and have peace in their hearts and minds. Genuine faith in God will replace all their unfounded fears.
But our youth are not getting God’s answers to all of these vexing problems? I know many of our nation’s youth have sinful lascivious trends and they are turning more to sex and drugs and sub cultures to escape the fallout from all the mess they seem to be inheriting. Some of our youth have the sin nature trend toward asceticism; an activist self-righteousness legalistic trend, and they seek change in order to bring about social equality. This sounds good, but if they do not know how God judges sin, they will find themselves even more frustrated.
Many folks preach that they want equality for everyone, but equality must be framed within certain contexts. As an example; if you want financial equality then either one of two things will have to occur. The folks in poverty will either have to advance their human IQ and get a solid education to raise their standard of living, or the wealthier will have to voluntarily give their earnings away to the poor. Neither of these solutions brings equality. We are all different and have different interests and capabilities. There will always be poor folks and some will become wealthy one day, but most will not. There will always be wealthy folks and some of them will become poor one day, but most will not.
The issue at hand comes back to the principle of human sin, not money.
One group may suffer from the sin of envy and covetousness (wanting what the other has: but not the burden of hard work and sacrifice to acquire wealth) and the other group may suffer from greed and never feel pity for those truly in need. But in either case, it is not God’s answer to forcefully take away from one (individual or nation) to give to the other, but to encourage those well off to help the poor.
It is biblical to voluntarily give the gleanings of the field to the poor, Lev.19:9-10, but it is not biblical to take the field from the owner and give it to the poor. The poor according to this passage still had to go out and gather the gleanings, (wheat).
The problem with sin is that the envious become more envious and the greedy become more greedy.
There is no law against greediness and envy except God’s law, but the unbelieving self-righteous activists try to play the part of God. The issue that must be dealt with in wrong behavior is the issue of sin. Until that issue is established as the central problem with our world; solving equations will be absent of God’s solutions and we will be left with the same problems.
God help us to see this before it is too late.