Israel (once again) has abandoned God, stopped serving Him, and done evil in God's sight. So He turned them over to the Ammonites who oppressed the Israelites for 18 years. Israel was in great distress - and once again, they cried out to God saying, "We have sinned against You because we have forgotten everything You did for us." (my translation). But God initially says to them, "Nope. Sorry. Not this time. Go cry out to the other gods you have been worshiping. I am not your "whipping-god". (again, my translation). But verse 15 says, "But the Israelites pleaded with the Lord and said, 'Punish us as you see fit, only rescue us today from our enemies.' So they put away their foreign gods and served the LORD". Here's the interesting part; It says that God "was grieved by their misery".
God loved them so much that He was grieved by their disobedience. It must have broken his heart. He desperately wanted them to worship and serve Him only - not because He is some kind of narcissist, but because He had good plans for them; a purpose. He wanted to bless them and "tabernacle" among them as their God and they would be His people; but He was grieved by their misery.
It's a miserable thing when you are distressed and oppressed by sin. But here's the good news for us; Jesus took all of that "misery" for us to the cross. He showed us how to live faithfully and restored hope to all us. because Christ lives in us, we are new creations.
This week is a week of remembering. The entire universal church focuses like a laser beam on the nucleus of our faith – the passion and resurrection of Jesus. Because God is grieved by the misery that sin brings to our lives, He sent Jesus to ultimately rescue us from that oppression. Do we recognize that when we sin, it means that we have forgotten everything God has done for us? Jesus must have known that we would constantly suffer from spiritual dementia when at the Last Supper he said, “Do this in memory of me”.
Join us at Bellwood on Thursday evening (6pm) as we are called to remember and celebrate everything God has done for us.
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