Have deprived you of good

“Your wrongdoings have kept these away; your sins have deprived you of good.” (Jeremiah 5:25)

 

Chapter 5 of Jeremiah identifies clear the causes of judgment to be given to Jerusalem and Judah. The rejection against God among several kinds of sins was a fundamental cause of the judgment given to them. Their spirituality was in a state without perception, without sight and without hearing. There would be hope if they had been in faith afraid of Jehovah, but they couldn’t get through the difficult situation because they had't been. Turning one’s back on God is a foolish act of rejecting good things, so there can be no hope for a man who are against God. Even present time, the soul that does not with God can never escape such a sinful foolishness.

 

A person who has let oneself in an unrighteous life has to be received the corresponding pain of judgment. But rather than realizing and repenting what is wrong with oneself, people are intend on complaining about why that misfortune came. Many graves in the cemetery have each their own reasons for death. That means same a saying “No tomb without a reason”. However the living may speak toward the graves this, “The dead have no words.” It is that the dead constantly make their excuses, and contrary to that, the living do not lean to listen to them even a little. That shows a composite of the two situations different one another mentioned above. Thinking like this, can’t you imagine something of a new image? People of dead soul complain anyway and make excuses in any situation. But a person of renewed soul in Christ has a peace and hope by repentance.

Those who do not know Christ regard as intelligent themselves and boast of. And yet they do not understand about God’s righteousness and holiness. So what they try to look for and have is of gold, silver, and splendor and beauty etc of secular world. They just would like to listen to the talks regarding to bodily delight and secular desire. However, they are not interested in purifying their soul or doing good. It is self-evident how such a person’s life will proceed in future. What will be the future of a child who does not listen even if parents ask him to study hard and live properly? Disobeying the teachings of parents will bring great misfortune to the children's life. Much less not to mention how the lives of those who betray and rebel against God will unfold.

The world is an exposed site of many appearances the human characters, so in order to change the world people must change. The way of principle to change the world is simple like that, but it is difficult to change the world in actuality. Changing the world might be impossible until the end of the world. If the cause is outside, we can find it easily and get rid of it, but since the cause of impossibility is inside humans, how can we remove it in brief? But if this of saying is the really last and right, the gospel of Christ God will be meaningless. When Nicodemus came and asked how a man could be reborn, Jesus replied that he could not see the kingdom of God unless he was reborn through water and the Holy Spirit. The fundamental way to change people is to be cleansed in the name of Jesus Christ and renewed in the Holy Spirit. That’s the only way of complete hope to change people of the world.

It was a reality of that time, “The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way.” Oh, what a pitiable thing that is! When the human soul is darkened by sin, unfortunately, the world is bound to be like that. We have heard too many the explanations of being reborn through water and the Holy Spirit through internet. And it’s also common things we can often hear from many preachers’ mouth. But really the important point is not in theory, but practical life.

 

Jeremiah the prophet says in Jeremiah 5:25, “Your wrongdoings have kept these away; your sins have deprived you of good.” The keywords of that verse are ‘your wrongdoings’ and ‘your sins’. We can see the cause of the problem is one’s own wrongdoings and sins from Jeremiah's words. The ‘wrongdoings’ refers to wrong deeds of thinking, and sins means a disobedience to God’s Word. If so, we can know there is hope only when sins and realize wrongdoings are eliminated, and a new life can be made. Let’s make the world renew entirely by eliminating the sins and wrongdoings through the redemption of Christ.

 

(Written by Koonoh, Pastor of JDO Presbyterian Church in Korea, on July 4th 2021)