Pragmatic religion and faithful preaching

Then all the men who knew that their wives hadburned incense to other gods, with all the women who stood by, a greatmultitude, and all the people who dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros,answered Jeremiah, saying: “As for the word that you have spoken to us in thename of the LORD, we will not listen to you! But we will certainly do whateverhas gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pourout drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings andour princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For thenwe had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble. But since we stoppedburning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her,we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.”– Jeremiah 44v15-18

The hearts of the people had gone terribly hard. Not only were thesefolks hypocrites, they were the ultimate pragmatists. These people were livingby ‘whatever works’ and it made no difference what Jeremiah said, they weresticking with the ‘queen of heaven.’

These folks said whenever they worshipped their goddess things wentwell, but when they tried to serve God things did not go well. They based theirworship on how things went for them. They were definitely walking by sightwithout any regard to faith.

‘Stop preaching to us Jeremiah, we are going to do what we want,because that is what works.’

And yet Jeremiah kept on preaching. He did not give up. Jeremiah wascertainly not motivated my numerical success. He could have said, ‘You knowwhat, they are right! I have only had trouble since I started preaching. Thingswere better before. I am just going back to that. I didn’t want to do thisanyway!’

But Jeremiah didn’t do that. He kept right on preaching. He kept righton serving God because He was motivated by a higher cause.

We can’t live for God and serve Him based on how things go for us. Weneed to keep our eyes on the finish line and keep plugging away. Don’t give upwhen things get tough. Otherwise we are no better than those who chose to keep burning incense to their ‘queen of heaven.’