On Being Part of It All

Let's shoot back in time a few thousand years.
We're in ancient Isreal, hanging out with a guy names Jeremiah.
Jeremiah was a prophet to his nation in a time where no one listened to him.
Isreal was sliding downhill and would soon be taken over by babylon... and God often spoke through him about the wickedness of his people.

Here's a couple verses i wanna talk about...
Jeremiah 25:30 & 31, in the NIV:
"Now Prophesy all these words against them and say to them:
"The Lord will roar from on high;
he will thunder from his holy dwelling and roar mightily against his land.
He will shout like those who tread the grapes, shout against all who live on the earth.
The tumult will resound to the ends of the earth, for the Lord will bring charges against the nations; he will bring judgment on all mankind and put the wicked to the sword," declares the Lord."

Now clearly here, God's telling Jeremiah, who is supposed to tell everyone else, how He will roar from on high and thunder against the land.
But there's one itsy word in there.
It's a reflexive possessive adjective.
know what it is?
the word "His".
see, "he will thunder from his holy dwelling and roar mightily against his land"
The HIS part of that is ridiculously important.

why?
because the earth IS GOD'S LAND.

Now read back what the verse is about.
He's talking about bringing judgment on the earth, and causing tumults and craziness.

Why?
I'll get to that.
But frist, try to see things the way i see them.

Say you're sitting at home, doing your math homework.
It's really hard. You have to do like 30 problems, and you're in AP Calc BC, so they're all like impossible.
It takes you two hours to complete, and finally, at 12:30, you're done.
You give your excellent work a final look over, nod reassuringly to yourself, and hold the 2 double-sided sheets of paper between your hands.
You then take hold of them and rip your homework to shreds.

Why?
I'll get to that.

...right now.

SEE?!

Consider the Earth God's metaphysical homework.
Remember all that stuff in Genesis about it being "good" and then "very good" and such?
So was your math homework.
But here God's talking about destroying his creation.
Wrecking his work.

Why destroy the earth?
Clearly something needs to be done about humanity.
In Noah's time, he just flooded the place out and started over, but sometime in the future it's all going away.


Anyone ever play the Sims?
the Sims was always a pretty fun game... for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes your sims start being stupid.
They don't listen to you, the pee on the couch, they starve themselves... it's a complete mess.
After 20 minutes, everyone always ends up making a new game and starting over.

Think of Humans as sims, and think of God as the player.
We've been around for a few thousand years; you'd think that, in that timespan, we'd figure out how to listen to God.
We should know how to do what he says, to uphold his commands.
But the human race has proved itself remarkably bad at that.
We don't listen to God.
We ignore him.
In fact, many people just deny his existence.
How do you think it would feel to be God, with everyone completely denying that you created them?
It would be a bummer.
I'd wanna start a new game.

But what do you do with all the "sims" that actually listened to you?
Give them a way out.
John 3:16-21, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."

There you have it.
God has given us a ticked out of this place; but still billions of people ignore it every day.
Men love the darkness because then they don't have to realize/admit/come out that they're wrong and evil.
We need to show them that that's completely foolish; Jesus said that the Light is in the world.
People who ignore the Way are like someone in a bright room who insists that it's dark.
"what? i can't see you!"
"i'm standing right here, the lights are on! you probably have your eyes closed."

And maybe that's it.
Everyone just has their eyes closed, so they can't see the Light that is Jesus Christ.
They don't understand, they don't want to understand... but if we can't get them to figure it out, they're gonna get swept away through God's judgment on HIS creation.

/nighttime ramble.