When God Calls Your Name: Jerusalem, Jerusalem

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often have I wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. And now, look, your house is abandoned and desolate. For I tell you this, you will never see me again until you say, "Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!"

Matthew 23:37-39

You’ve probably seen the bumper sticker as many times as I have – maybe you even have one on your car. Across the sticker, in the background is the familiar red, white, and blue of our flag, blowing in a breeze. In the foreground is the slogan, "God bless America."

There’s something that kind of bothers me about that slogan. I wonder about the particular use of the word "bless" that is used there. Hasn’t God already blessed us? We are one of the wealthiest nations, both financially and materially. God has blessed us over and over. But why?
Some would make a case that the United States of America is God’s new "chosen people." Our country, after all, was founded under Christian principles. We have doubtlessly been blessed – even Americans living in impoverished conditions have more than our counterparts in other parts of the world, and that’s just material and financial. We enjoy freedoms that many people don’t even dream of. God has blessed us.

God had blessed Jerusalem as well. Though I have serious reservations about claiming America as "God’s chosen people," I have no such reservations when talking that way about Jerusalem in Jesus’ time. Israel was indeed God’s chosen people, a people with a special blessing from God, a blessing that dated back to their ancestor Abraham. Do you remember the special blessing God gave Abraham? In Genesis 12, God told Abram to, "Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to a land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous…"

But God didn’t stop there. He went on to say, "… and you will be a blessing to others." He finished up by saying, "All the families on earth will be blessed through you."
Jerusalem had the first part down. Under the leadership of great people like Moses, Joshua, King Saul, King David, and King Solomon, they became a great nation. They were famous. But they never quite latched onto the second part of the blessing – that they were blessed specifically to be a blessing to others.

Instead, they turned inward, focusing on themselves. If you read all of Matthew 23, Jesus is extremely critical of Jerusalem’s leadership, accusing them of hypocrisy, of loving attention, of loving money, of neglecting justice, mercy, and faith, of deception and murder. Thus he makes his statement about Jerusalem.

I wonder if the same comments would be appropriate for us as a nation. I believe we are headed in the same direction as Europe, which used to be a Christian continent, but is now completely secular. When I was in college, one Sunday in church we had a missionary speaker from India. Now, I was used to a certain kind of missionary – the American ones who went to far-away places like India to share the Good News. This missionary was somewhat different: he was a Christian from India, and his mission field… was the United States. It completely changed my thinking – we as Americans don’t have the Christianity market cornered.

God’s chosen people? To be honest, I still believe we are. But we’re only a small part of God’s chosen people. But I believe Jesus grieves over us like He did over Jerusalem. He says, "How I’d love to gather them together as a mother hen protects her chicks under her wings, but they won’t let me."

You see, God doesn’t force His will on us, not as individuals, and not as a nation. He wants us to freely follow Him.

In Amos 8:11, the prophet speaks these words from God: "The time is surely coming when I will send a famine on the land – not a famine of bread or water, but of hearing the words of the Lord." Much of our nation is gripped by this famine – but it’s a self-inflicted famine. We have Bibles readily available, but when we don’t read them, we are starving ourselves. We have a direct connection to God through prayer, but when we don’t pray, we are starving ourselves.

Think of it this way: I know many of you farm. Imagine that this year provides a bumper crop. Your fields are completely full of crops. You have all the equipment to harvest them, but for some reason or another, you don’t do it. You’ve got all kinds of other commitments – your other job, your family, your kids’ or grandkids’ activities, and by the time you get home, you’re exhausted. So you never get the crops out of the fields. What would happen? You wouldn’t have to go too long until someone from the bank came to foreclose on something, whether it’s your farming equipment or even the farm itself.

Let’s take this a little further: suppose it’s not just you individually who neglect to take your crops out of the field, but all the others as well. Now the effect is far more pervasive. Think about those who were counting on those crops to eat! Now not only are farms being foreclosed on, but people are starving.

When we neglect to hear God’s Word and to be obedient to His will, we are willingly putting ourselves into famine conditions. But it does not only effect us; it affects others, too, and they starve if we haven’t done our part.

The unfortunate thing? We can live our entire lives never seeing how the other half lives. We can be so sheltered in our own little worlds so much that we never know what goes on elsewhere. We can miss out on the fact that in many parts of the world, children die, one every three seconds, for want of one dollar a day. We can miss out on the fact that we’re living in a post-Christian nation. Even right here in town, almost ⅓ of the entire community claims no religious affiliation whatsoever. These are people you know and love. These are your family members, your friends, and your co-workers.

God has indeed blessed America. Each of us is a recipient of that blessing. But just as Jesus grieved over Jerusalem, His people who had squandered His blessing, so too I believe He grieves over us. We are meant to use that blessing to be a blessing to the world.

So what do we do next? Our first step is to examine our hearts and determine what we’ve done with our blessing. Have we acknowledged the blessing God has given us? Have we shared it?

Our second step is to pray. Pray for those you might share with – that God will show them to you and will give you the boldness to speak. Pray that God will show you new people to pray for, that He will lay new situations on your heart that you can pray over. If you watch the news, pray over each news story. If you read the newspaper, pray over each story. Pray that we can ease damages that have been caused by the church and can give people a taste of the Living Water that comes from the Holy Spirit.

Our third step is action. We can be pretty good at caring for our own, and I know that some of you are or have been highly involved in mission projects, but what are we specifically doing to share the blessing? What are we doing for the world? What are we doing for the persecuted church? What are we doing for African children who are starving or dying from AIDS? What are we doing for Darfur? And when you act, don’t just do it to ease your conscience. Don’t bring a "we’re better than you" attitude along – remember, Matthew 25:31-46 tells us that whatever we do to the "least of these" we actually do to Jesus Christ. So we can take a humble, servant’s attitude, knowing that when we work for God, we’re actually doing that work to God. That He blesses us to serve Him, that by doing so, we may be a blessing to the nations and bring glory to Him.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Christmas Eve: Jesus is Hope, Love, Joy, Peace

Life Together: Live in Harmony with One Another

The Lord's Signet Ring