God has a major lesson weaving its way through Scripture that our leaders today would do us all a great favour taking note of.
Because what makes God really angry is us humans daring to flaunt our contempt for him and his ways, by thinking in our arrogance and self-congratulating cleverness that we can sort ourselves out without him, and our little brains can do better. But how dare we pipsqueaks think we can just carry on as we please without a thought for our Creator – because where in our historically proven stupidity do we hope to be without him?
And to get that point across, there’s lot of time spent in the Bible telling the story of Jacob, from the time Jacob first appears on the scene as a fledgling nasty piece of work in Genesis 25 to the fearsome threats God makes to his descendants in Hosea 12.
Because in Hosea 12:1 we’ve got Ephraim (down the road descendants of Jacob) who’ve got themselves in a right pickle “pursuing the east wind all day and multiplying lies and violence.” An “east wind” in that region was crippling and destructive, meaning Ephraim was well on the road to ruin the way it was headed.
Ruin, that is, in the form of two mighty powers on their doorstep, Egypt and Assyria, who could wipe them off the map in a heartbeat. So in such dire circumstances with an easy road to hell facing them, did they turn to God for help? Not on their pitiful little lives they didn’t. Instead, “he (Ephraim) makes a treaty with Assyria and sends olive oil to Egypt” (1).
So instead of admitting they don’t have a clue how they’re going to get themselves out of this latest mess and lowering their pride enough to trust God to sort things out for them, Ephraim tries to win over Egypt as an ally with gifts of its famous olive oil, just like Jacob sent Esau a steady flow of gifts to win Esau over in Genesis 33:8.
A thousand years after Jacob was alive, therefore, things haven’t changed at all. We’ve got fellow humans still hellbent on conniving their way out of trouble, without a thought for God and what he would want them to do.
And that’s a bad move for anyone to make, including our leaders today, because the story of Jacob is a clear warning that “Resisting God is asking for trouble”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 