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Text: Jeremiah 48
Have you ever sat down in a chair that you thought would hold you and then found out it won’t?! After the collapse, you experience a sudden panic because your trust has failed. You might be embarrassed. You might check to see that you aren’t seriously injured. But the stakes aren’t really high in that trust. The chair is broken. You’re embarrassed. OK.
Now, magnify that to a national scale. Instead of being something small, what if it’s a nation collectively, many people are involved, and the stakes are life and death? Moab exists from the 14th century B.C. to the 6th century B.C. when Nebuchadnezzar puts an end to this culture and state. Where did the nation of Moab go? You’ve never met a Moabite. That nation is history, like so many other nations. Look at 48:42.
I’m not going to read the entire description of the country’s collapse, but I will read what led to the collapse of a once-prosperous people. It’s described in 48:7,13.
In good times, people get comfortable and full of themselves
- Moab had gone years without significant trouble. According to verse 11, Moab had never seen captivity by another nation for centuries. This easy life causes people to associate good fortune and stability with things they’ve come to trust.
- Moabites trusted the structures and technology they had were “too big to fail”.
- They trusted in their intelligence and ability to negotiate with other nations.
- Moab trusted in their wealth.
- They created their own god and worshipped it. How crazy is that?
The solution is found in a Christian view of life
- Christianity is true in that it’s learning to be content in bad times and good. Learning how to live in this present state of the world without being too connected to it.
- Psalm 62:10 …if riches increase, set not your heart upon them.
- 1 Timothy 6:17 Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;
- Philippians 4:11-13
- Use the world without abusing it. Without making the world mean something in my life that it shouldn’t mean. 1 Corinthians 7:31 And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.
- Matthew 6:19-21 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
- The biblical view of life provides a way to live in this world without being invested in it in a way that when things fail, and there’s a guarantee that they will, you don’t fail.
