City On A Hill

Jeremiah 33: 9

Then this city will bring Me joy, glory and honor before all the Nations of the Earth! The people of the World will see all the good I do for My people, and they will tremble with awe at the peace and prosperity I provide for them.

This was God's plan for His people Israel. This is why He chose them out of all the Nations of the World, to give them His Law, and have them follow it. If they had only taken Him seriously, and done all the proscriptions the Law demanded, then they would have experienced all the good God wanted to do for them, and provide the peace and prosperity we all want.

But Israel never did fully implement all the provisions the Law described. They picked and chose the ones they thought were "reasonable" and ignored the rest. For instance, they never did let all the fields lie fallow every seven years, or celebrate the Jubilee in the fiftieth year. So God took them from the land, into exile far away for 70 years, all the Jubilee years they didn't observe during the 490 years they were in the land.

God wanted Israel to be the City on a Hill that would draw all the other Nations to the knowledge of the Lord. That was their advantage, that they had the Law, all the rules to follow to cooperate with how God made this Earth to operate, and enjoy all the benefits God designed it to provide. But they were drawn away by their own pride, and thought they knew better. So they were enticed and seduced by all the idols of the peoples around them. They refused to submit to God, so were deceived, and they suffered the consequences.

Many years later, our Founding Fathers based our Nation, America, on God's eternal principles as laid out in His Word, and God honored that and blessed us with peace and prosperity. And all the Nations of the Earth beheld us as a great city on a hill, because all the peoples saw all the good God did for us, and they came to America to begin new lives. Others did tremble with awe, and plotted against us in envy. 

And we, also, in our pride, thought we knew better, and have been drawn away from God's pure, righteous ways, and decided that good is evil, darkness is light, and we twisted the pure ways into unrighteous, unhealthy acts. And we are experiencing the moral, ethical, physical, relational and financial repercussions of our ways. 

We have turned against God in our prosperity, deciding that we got our wealth of ourselves. And in our foolishness we have opened the door to our enemies to come in and destroy us. And they will destroy us, if we don't turn back to God and His ways.

O my Father, please grant this Nation repentance! Wake up Your church, bring us great revival. Turn our faces away from all the idols we have set up. Cast down all their shrines and altars, and bring Your righteousness back, so that we can again be that shining city on a hill, to draw others to You and Your ways, to Your glory!

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!