Closer to God, Part 7 - A Serious Warning

2 Chronicles 7v19-22

17^th February 2017

It's always more pleasant to focus on the good news than on the bad news, to meditate on God's conditional promises of blessing than on His conditional threats of punishment. But God takes the trouble to give us both the promises and the warnings, and so we should take the trouble to consider both. We've studied God's conditional promise to Israel - and so to us - and His conditional promise to Solomon. Now we turn to this warning to God's people (both occurrences of the word "you" here are plural):

2 Chronicles 7v19-22
"But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple which I have consecrated for my Name. I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples.
And though this temple is now so imposing, all who pass by will be appalled and say, 'Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?'
People will answer, 'Because they have forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshipping and serving them - that is why he brought all this disaster on them.'"

How seriously do we take God's promises? If we really believed them, wouldn't we change our lives rather more than we actually do? And how seriously do we take God's warnings? Do we preach them in our churches? If we believe it's worth encouraging our brothers and sisters, and ourselves, to meditate on God's conditional promises of blessing, to inspire us to faith and obedience, then surely it's worthwhile meditating on God's warnings, to inspire us to refuse to compromise, drift and get infected by worldly thinking.

And just as we've seen that the promise of verse 14 applies to the church just as it did to Israel, so we must understand that this warning applies to the church now as much as it did to Israel then. Let me ask you:

• To what extent has your church turned away from the decrees and commands God has given us in the Bible?
• To what extent has your church forsaken Biblical truth?
• Does your church still accept that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant word of God?

It's so sad to see a building that used to be a place of vibrant worship of the true and only God, but that's now become a furniture shop, or a nightclub, or a warehouse, or even a place where people now serve other gods. Listen:

Churches die because they neglect biblical truth. Either they don't preach it, or they preach it but don't live in accordance with it.

Does your church teach the unfashionable biblical doctrines as well as the fashionable ones? Or has your church tried to attract people by compromising with worldly ideas?

Does your church merely teach biblical truth, or do the church members endeavour to live out God's just requirements for righteous living, love, holiness, biblical justice and mercy?

And does mine?

If not, then why on earth would we expect God to bless our ministry? Why would God save people into a church that neglects His teaching?

As our passage from 2 Chronicles shows, to forsake the decrees and commands of God is to forsake the Lord Himself. As Jesus asked His disciples, "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?" (Luke 6v46)

Of course we're all still sinners. Of course we will still get things wrong. But we should be taking God's precepts seriously, and we should be changing. We should be becoming more Christlike. Are we?

Is Jesus saying to your church or mine the same things that He once said to an ancient church:

Revelation 3v1b-4
These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.
Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy.