Did God Give Us What We Wanted?

WHAT IF GOD GAVE US WHAT WE WANTED?

All throughout history, man has continually rejected God.

God's commands were clear: You shall have no other gods before Me. Obey His commands and receive His gifts with thanksgiving. Submit to His authority and live according to the order He established.

But man said, No.

I would rather do it my way. I know better than my maker. I will be my own god.

And God did not stop them. Instead, He handed them over to their fleshly desires and gave them what they wanted. Even God's chosen people, the Israelites, rejected God as their King and demanded a human king “like all the nations,” despite His warnings of what that king would do to them (1 Samuel 8:19–20).  The people became so corrupt that God said they had surpassed the wickedness of the evil people who came before them (Ezekiel 16:47). And sure enough, God's warnings came to pass. They sacrificed their children seeking blessing from false gods, only to find themselves under God's judgment, consuming their own children to survive the famine (Lamentations 4:10).  

If their deepest problem was rebellion against God's authority, then we must ask: how different is our society today?

We still exalt our rebellion in pride. We reject God’s establishment of two genders, male and female, and we teach our vulnerable children they can become whatever they want to be, regardless of reality. Then we hand them the ability to mutilate the bodies God gave them. We declare that sexual desire determines morality. We declare that a mother has the right to kill the growing child . We call these things rights, freedom, and progress.

But how did we get here?

It did not happen overnight. Scripture gives us a terrifying answer. When man continually rejects God, God gives him over to his wicked ways, or, another way of saying it, God gives him precisely what he wants. Psalm 81 is a great example,

“My people would not heed My voice… So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, to walk in their own counsels.”

Now we often look at modern-day sodomites and begin to blame them, saying, “This is your fault. You forced your ideology into our schools and institutions. You demanded that society celebrate what God calls sin.”

There is truth in perceiving the wickedness of those things. But we are missing the greater judgment if we stop there.

Gay marriage. Abortion. The rejection of God's design for sex and the body. The celebration of what Scripture calls abominations. These are not simply deserving of judgment but are judgments in themselves.

We as a nation are like the Israelites who “...even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks,” and because of this, we have fallen under God's judgment.

Because we do not hate what God hates, we cannot love what God loves. Our hearts have become darkened, and we exalt evil as good and good as evil. We have failed to give proper thanks for what God has given us, instead giving the glory to ourselves and to the systems we built. We look at the Constitution as though it were our savior rather than accepting the God who gave us the principles of ordered liberty in the first place. We have forgotten that all of this material blessing we have experienced in the last 250 years is directly from God. Instead, we boast in our own intelligence, our own American ingenuity, and the remarkable economic capitalistic system. We as a nation have forgotten to honor God.

So the question is simple: How do we reverse the course of this nation?

The answer: the people of God, the Church, must humble themselves, pray, and seek God's face.  

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Our churches are far too wrapped up in pride (literally). Pride marches, Pride parades, pride in man’s ability to choose their gender over God’s design, pride in our constitution, pride in our prosperity, and pride in ourselves.

It is time to root out the cancer in our midst. For far too long, these prideful churches have gone without meaningful repentance. This must end. We have watched churches embrace sexual immorality and many other things Scripture condemns while the rest of the Churches remains silent. We tell ourselves that it is not our problem, that we should not judge another church, or that we do not know their hearts.

Now, one might say, “We are not called to judge men's hearts,” and that is true; only God knows the heart. But we must judge wicked actions and call them out as wicked. (1 John 3:8) This gives us a way to discern hearts, “Whoever practices sinning is of the devil.” We are called to separate truth from error and to judge teaching through the lens of the Word of God. Scripture commands us to expose the works of darkness and contend for the faith. Christ rebuked the church at Thyatira because it tolerated false teaching and sexual immorality:

“20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality…”  (Revelation 2:20)

Paul likewise commands:

“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” (Ephesians 5:11)

This is not a secondary doctrine. We cannot worship God and the devil. We cannot glorify God while making peace with His definition of evil. Churches that knowingly abandon Scripture and teach people to embrace what God condemns must be confronted. Scripture itself uses the term “synagogue of Satan” for those who claim Christianity while opposing God's truth (Revelation 2:9).  That language is potent, and we must not use it carelessly, but neither should we be so afraid of offending men that we refuse to confront falsehood.

It is time for the Church to return to Scripture's simple truths.

God is God. Christ is King. His Word is true. His commands are good. Sin is still sin, regardless of what the culture calls it.

True love does not affirm sin. True love tells the truth, calls sinners to repentance, and points them to Christ.

Christians must remember the promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14: if we humble ourselves, pray, and seek God’s face, He will heal our land.

-The Watchman