"A Foolish and Stupid Nation...Its People Have Turned Away From God"

"The people are like the dead branches of a tree, broken off and used for kindling beneath the cooking pots.  Israel is a foolish and stupid nation, for its people have turned away from God."
(Isaiah 27:11, NLT)

If that was true of Israel, what does our text say of the United States of America?  The foolishness and stupidity of Israel was not of an intellectual nature.  It was of a moral, disobedience nature-- they "turned away from God," and so too America.  I saw symptoms of "a foolish and stupid nation" in my reading in the Psalms today.  Psalm 73:9-11 says, "They boast against the very heavens, and their words strut throughout the earth.  And so the people are dismayed and confused, drinking in all their words. 'What does God know?' they ask. 'Does the Most High even know what's happening?'"  The press, the present White House and Congress, and the majority on the Supreme Court, even in the American church we hear the "boast against the very heavens, and their words strut throughout the earth."  What is the result?  "....The people ( i.e., the "foolish and stupid") are dismayed and confused, drinking in all their words." 

But do not be so quick to condemn the present generation.  Those of us who stood by and did nothing when "a foolish and stupid nation" told Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, that we no longer wanted His "God-Breathed" Word and His Prayer in our school system, and later stood by as the nation declared a war of extermination on the unborn, we are just as guilty of foolishness and stupidity.

Now what?  Has America passed the "point of no return?"  I really cannot say.  But I know that any individual who follows in the steps of Enoch, Noah, Abraham, "Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets" will escape "those things which are coming on the earth."  Of course we continue to pray for America and the nations of the earth.  We look to the Living Triune God in Jesus Christ, and say with the Prophet Joel, "Who knows?  Perhaps he will give [us] a reprieve, sending [us] a blessing instead of this curse.  Perhaps [we] will be able to offer grain and wine to the LORD [our] God as before."

Father, in Jesus' Name, even so, may You have mercy on the American Church, on America--------------------- and on me, too many times in life, "a foolish and stupid" person.   Amen.
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I have committed to go to Israel in October for the Volunteers for Israel program.  The cost is around $1400.  I know, I still owe about $2000.00 on the Berlin/Albania mission, but, hey, why stop now, right? 


"Looking Unto Jesus"
Hebrews 12:2



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