Psalm 106:41

Psalm 106:41

He gave them into the hands of the nations

This Psalm has been a wake-up call about the way we view our relationship with the Lord God. We cannot say that we believe in Him and yet treat Him as if He were nothing. We cannot say that He is our God, but we barely speak to Him and are so easily tempted to pursue other, lesser gods. We cannot proudly declare that we love His Word and yet make that word a religious formula that has to be repeated and chanted but not obeyed. Faith is nothing if there are no works. How can believers wear their faith as a badge of respectability but still use God’s name in blasphemy and speak of Him as if He doesn’t exist? The list goes on, but it is right to declare that true faith affects every part of our being and every moment of our waking days, and true faith is not an outward expression of religion but an inner devotion, a relationship that surpasses all others. 

Israel treated Yahweh with contempt at times, they certainly abandoned Him for other gods, and they trashed the generosity that He showed them by exchanging Him for idols and pagan religion. God never completely rejected His people, instead He gave them away! He allowed them to pursue their fantasies and their idolatries until, one day, they woke up to discover that He had turned His back on them, and they had become the property of other nations. This happened time and again and although they learned from the experiences, it didn’t stop them from repeating their folly. And I guess we are no different!

We are, in this country, experiencing the beginnings of a similar fate. This is not just me speaking for we are being warned in our media and the warnings are being voiced by our politicians. We have allowed large chunks of our cities to be taken over by migrants and some of these have deeply held religious beliefs that are very different to the traditional Christian values that have been the backbone of British culture for centuries. There are real tensions appearing, exacerbated by the war in Gaza and the struggle between Judaism and Islam. I pray that Gt Britain will not be ruled over by its foes, although we deserve to be abandoned in the light of the way we have despised and rebelled against the Lord in recent decades.  

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