NOTES ON THE SIN OF INDIFFERENCE: A PERSONAL REFLECTION OF AMERICA’S SELF EXILE TO BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY – (WITH VIDEO)

1. THEOLOGY

SCRIPTURE. “Your own wickedness shall chasten and correct you, and

your backslidings and desertion of faith shall reprove you. Know therefore and recognize that this is an evil and bitter thing: [first,] you have forsaken the Lord your God; [second,] you are indifferent to Me and the fear of Me is not in you, says the Lord of hosts.” – JEREMIAH 2:19, AMP

KEY IDEA: “YOU HAVE FORSAKEN ME!” ‘Azab’ [עָזְבֵ֖ךְ]: “From a primitive root meaning, ‘To loosen, relinquish or permit;’ to commit oneself to failure, refuse or become destitute; to abandon or separate oneself from.” NOTE: “The Hebrew verb ‘azab’ primarily means ‘to leave or forsake.’ It is used in various contexts throughout the Old Testament, often conveying the idea of abandonment or neglect.”

QUOTATION. “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s Indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s Indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s Indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s Indifference. Because of Indifference, one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that’s being dead.” — ELIE WIESEL, US News & World Report, Oct. 27, 1986; edited

COMMENTARY. “‘Thy own wickedness shall correct thee’ — The miseries that your own sins have brought upon you, one would suppose, might be sufficient to reclaim you from your evil courses, and induce you to return to God, by a sincere repentance, Hosea 2:7. ‘Know therefore’ — Upon the whole matter; ‘and see that it is an evil thing that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God’ — For that is the thing that makes thine enemies, enemies indeed, and thy friends, friends in vain.

The sense of the Clause is: Call to mind what thou hast found by experience, and reflect seriously upon it, and thou canst not but be convinced how dear the forsaking of God hath cost thee. ‘And that My fear’ — Or ‘The fear of Me;’ or, ‘That thou hast not My fear in thee, saith the Lord’ — Consider this well, for it is the ground of all thy sin and suffering, in order that thy correction may not end in thy utter ruin. This whole discourse of Jeremiah is a kind of Pleading, wherein the Prophet maintains the Cause of God against His people.’” – JOSEPH BENSON, Notes on the Holy Bible, 5 vols., 1811-1818; edited

1. CONTEXT

The Life and Testimony of the Prophet Jeremiah could not hold a more profound Witness to the Remnant Church in America in 2025 than upon close examination how it bears powerfully upon America’s Present Crisis. We have all been wrestling mightily with the ‘Church’s Sweeping Moral Indifference’ in its morbid support for the venal transgressor of all that is truly Christian, DONALD TRUMP.

It seems incomprehensible even for the best Biblical minds among us to grasp how tens of millions of self-confessed followers of Jesus Christ in America could so vehemently abandon Him and all that He has taught us bout Piety, Holiness, Courage, Sacrifice, and Obedience. But here we are: Bathed in the Dark Shadow of Donald Trump’s Second Election to the Presidency of the United States of America, promising to wield unlimited power to become “Retribution” to all his foes!

Terrifying news to the Confessing Remnant Church that stands in firm and vocal Opposition to this American Antichrist. Selah.

HARBINGER. We can learn much of this Crisis from the Life of Jeremiah, who faced nearly identical agonies over the sustained transgressions of Judah in his time. The EDITORS of the Life Application Study Bible (2022) give us rich context for a deeper understanding of this Tragedy, and as importantly, where it is now inexorably taking America toward her Final Destruction.

For most of us, the greatest personal struggle has been to question ourselves about whether or not we are doing the right thing by opposing Trump since the prices for doing so are getting more and more severe and more and more frequent.

The BOTTOMLINE QUESTION for us is this: ‘Are we doing the Right Thing? – Are we succeeding or failing in our Resistance to who we believe to be the first and the last American Dictator, Donald Trump?’ To begin to answer this Question, we have to look at the life that Jeremiah lived as he sustained his own resistance to the wicked rulers of his own era.

The world considers “SUCCESS” in terms of achieving goals, acquiring wealth, prestige, favor, and power. Successful people enjoy “The Good Life” by being financially and emotionally secure, being surrounded by admirers and enjoying the fruits of their labor. They tend to be leaders of opinion with many admirers and accomplishments. They seem to know who they are and where they are going, and they strive confidently to meet their goals.

By these standards of course, Jeremiah was a colossal and miserable failure. For 40 years he served God as spokesman to Judah. ‘But when he spoke, nobody listened!’ Consistently and passionately, he urged people to act but nobody moved. And he certainly did not attain material success. He was poor and underwent severe deprivation to deliver his prophecies. He was rejected by his neighbors, his friends, his family, the false priests and prophets, and pretty much everyone in the entire culture.

And he expressed out loud to his God how miserable he was in this classic exchange with His Sovereign.

“[Jeremiah said], ‘O Lord, You know and understand; [earnestly] remember me and visit me and avenge me on my persecutors. Take me not away [from joy or from life itself] in Your long-suffering [to my enemies]; know that for Your sake I suffer and bear reproach. Your words were found, and I ate them; and Your words were to me a joy and the rejoicing of my heart, for I am called by Your name, O Lord God of hosts. I sat not in the assembly of those who make merry, nor did I rejoice; I sat alone because Your [powerful] hand was upon me, for You had filled me with indignation. Why is my pain perpetual and my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Will you indeed be to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail and are uncertain?’” – JEREMIAH 15:15-18, AMPC

Now then, his brazen accusation against the Lord for His alleged unfaithfulness notwithstanding, the point is obvious – or should be: ‘It is painful to follow God when the great majority of His people are not!’ And yet that has always been the Call to God’s Remnant, and it has always been that they suffer for their obedience, sometimes catastrophically.

1. TEACHING

To spearhead what we are to learn today from God’s Prophet, I again turn to an African American brother and pastor. HOWARD ODUM was born into a family of preachers and raised in the Church. He graduated from the Memphis School of Preaching in 2010 with a bachelor’s equivalent in Bible. He studied at Amridge University and obtained a B.S. in Ministry/Bible.

The article I am reviewing is titled, “Letters from the Prophet Jeremiah,” published July 1, 2022, in South Cobb Church’s online journal. Curiously, the monograph is signed “Tommy” at the end, but I could find no one by that name in the church’s directory, so I am assuming it is the lead pastor’s familiar name.

SIX LESSONS FROM JEREMIAH TO AMERICA. What follow as with my standard protocol is my condensed review of the Pastor’s Main Ideas in Bullet Point Format. His words bite! The Reason I selected this essay.

1. COURAGE TO TELL THE TRUTH. “Sometimes in our culture we are afraid of hurting people’s feelings, so we let them go on in their lives without challenging them and their sin.  Jeremiah told the truth and was punished for so doing. Will we teach and preach the truth no matter the cost?”

• YOU WILL BE HATED. “Jeremiah suffered a great deal of scorn and mockery from the people. He even wanted to quit (Jeremiah 20). It says a great deal today when so many Preachers quit to go find a job doing something else.”

• KNOWN AS ‘THE WEEPING PROPHET.’  He saw the imminent Destruction of Jerusalem and wept. In Jeremiah 4:19-21 we read, ‘O my soul, my soul! I am pained in my very heart! My heart makes a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, Because you have heard, O my soul, The sound of the trumpet, The alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried, For the whole land is plundered. Suddenly my tents are plundered, And my curtains in a moment. How long will I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet?’  Do we weep over the condition of the world? Beloved, we have to see sin as it is and we must remember that the only solution is The Gospel. 

• JEREMIAH PREACHED NO MATTER WHAT! “The people would not listen, but he preached. He did not dilute the message. Pray for preachers and teachers today that will do the same.”

• JEREMIAH, BY INSPIRIATION, WARNED! In Jeremiah 23 and 25 he is ‘Specific’ as to the Sins of the Shepherds of the people. (a) The shepherds had scattered the sheep and have driven some of them away. (b)  God, however, promised to set up other shepherds over them who will feed them, and they shall fear no more. (c) The Problem of False Teachers and Prophets was as acute in Jeremiah’s day as it is in our day. Jeremiah likens the rulers and kings of the people as shepherds and emphasizes that ‘they will have to be punished’ for their sins and failures to heed and obey God’s Law.

• A MATTER OF THE HEART. “In Jeremiah 17 we see: (a) Jeremiah said that ‘The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron and with the point of a diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart; and on the horns of your altars’ (Jeremiah 17:1). (b) Jeremiah also wrote, ‘Thus says the Lord “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord!’ (Jeremiah 17:5). (c) Jeremiah tells us that “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord.’ He compares the man who trusts the Lord as a tree planted by waters, who is not anxious when there is drought (Jeremiah 17:7). (d) We then read, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?  I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings’ (Jeremiah 17:9-10).

1. APPLICATION

What does all this mean for those of us living in The Last Days in the Shadow of Antichrist about to take full power over the Nation and a bit later, the entire Earth? Or in the Words of the Prophet:

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to humble yourself and walk humbly with your God?” – MICAH 6:8, AMPC

• “THE GOOD.” ‘Towb’ [טוֹב]: “That which is: ‘Pleasant, agreeable, beneficial, beautiful, best, better, bountiful, cheerful, at ease, fair, favor, fine, glad, goodly, graciously, joyful, kindly, loving, merry, pleasant, precious, prosperity, ready, sweet, wealth, welfare, well-favored.’” NOTE: The Hebrew word ‘towb’ primarily conveys the ‘Idea of Goodness in various forms,’ whether moral, aesthetic, or practical. It is used to describe what is beneficial, pleasing; i.e. – ‘That which is morally right!’”

• “THE JUST.” ‘Mishpat’ [מִשְׁפָט]: Refers to: “Judgment, justice, ordinance, law, decision, right; a verdict, a sentence, formal decree, divine law, penalty, justice, privilege, style.’” NOTE: “The Hebrew word ‘mishpat’ primarily refers to: ‘The act of judgment or the administration of justice.’ It encompasses a range of meanings including legal decisions, ordinances, and the concept of justice itself. In the Old Testament, ‘mishpat’ is often used to describe God’s Righteous Judgments, the legal decisions of human judges, and the laws or ordinances given to Israel. ‘It signifies a standard of Rightness and Fairness, reflecting God’s character and His expectations for human conduct.’”

• “THE MERCIFUL.” ‘Checed’ [חֵסֵד]: “The term is closely related to God’s forgiveness of sins. More specifically: ‘Lovingkindness, mercy, steadfast love, loyalty, faithfulness, goodness; kindness, piety, reproof, beauty.’ NOTE: The Hebrew word ‘checed’ is a rich and multifaceted term that encompasses the ideas of love, kindness, mercy, and loyalty. It is often used to describe God’s Covenantal Love and Faithfulness towards His people. In human relationships, it can refer to acts of kindness and loyalty that go beyond duty or obligation. ‘Checed is a central theme in the Hebrew Bible, reflecting the Character of God as Compassionate and Faithful.’”

• “THE HUMBLE.” ‘Tsana’ [וְהַצְנֵ֥עַ]: “To be modest; rooted in a degree of humiliation, or willingness to be humiliated [or sacrificed] for some higher purpose.” NOTE: “The Hebrew verb ‘tsana’ primarily conveys the idea of humility or modesty. It is used to describe a demeanor or attitude of lowliness and submission, ‘often in relation to one’s conduct before God.’ This term emphasizes the importance of humility as a Virtue in the life of a believer, highlighting the need for a heart that is contrite and submissive to God’s will.”

CODA. When I was at the very bottom of life during the Halloween Season of 1979 at the age of 35 – alcoholic, anomic, and critically aimless – I stumbled into the office of a Pentecostal preacher and muttered my first prayer as I was about to become Born Again:

“God! I don’t want to be a bad man anymore … I want to be a good man.”

Beloved, I had no idea of the theological enormity of my primitive Shout to Heaven, but I would come to appreciate it more and more as I learned more about our King. The best way I can SUM UP all that has gone before in this teaching is penned by a massively less than perfect King named SOLOMON.

“All has been heard; the end of the matter is: Fear God [revere and worship Him, knowing that He is] and keep His commandments, for this is the whole of man [the full, original purpose of his creation, the object of God’s providence, the root of character, the foundation of all happiness, the adjustment to all inharmonious circumstances and conditions under the sun] and the whole [duty] for every man.” – ECCLESIASTES 12:13, AMPC

This is Our Sacred Charge: All the more urgent in these Last Days of the American Order about to progressively become the Great American Disorder. ‘All for Him, all for Him. That others may drink of His Goodness by those who would dare follow His Royal Lead.’

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/Uodb3G04kvQ