“A lion stalks from its den, a destroyer of nations. It has left its lair and is headed your way. It’s going to devastate your land! Your towns will lie in ruins, with no one living in them anymore. So put on clothes of mourning and weep with broken hearts, for the fierce anger of the Lord is still upon us.” Jeremiah 4:7-8
Judah had seen the ten tribes of the north go into captivity. Now Jeremiah is asking them to take warning from that. God is rising up power, a new power in the north, and that power will come down and will finally destroy them. The natural man cannot produce any righteousness at all. That is why Jeremiah calls the people to a change of their hearts. But we see here that the people refused to turn to God; and, when a nation or a church or an individual rejects God, God rejects them. Remember that the Lord Jesus came and offered Himself as the King to Israel. When they rejected Him, He in turn rejected them. He said to them, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matt. 23:38). Don’t talk about the gentle Jesus! They rejected Him as their King, and then He rejected them. Friend, you are free to reject God—that is your free will. But remember, if you reject God, God will reject you. He is gracious; He is good; He is patient and longsuffering; He gives you ample opportunity to turn to Him. But it is sobering to see what happens to any privileged people who refuse God, be it Israel or be it the church.
We are in the same kind of position today as were those people in the days of Jeremiah. The nation at that time had rejected God, but the people were still making a pretense of following Him. Such a people will find themselves rejected by God and by the world. America is following that same path. We are not loved by the world today. After World War II we were the pious people who were going to bring democracy to the world. What have we done? We have brought lawlessness into our own land. Do you think we should bring lawlessness into the trails of the jungle as we have into the streets of our cities? Is that the kind of civilization we are going to bring to people? We find ourselves despised by other nations. God said it would be that way. No people can pretend to be God-fearing, be hypocritical about it, and still expect the world to look up to them. A people who turn away from God will find that God turns away from them.