Be Faithful, Not Fickle, Toward God

Be Faithful, Not Fickle, Toward God

Preacher Huijun - 2 April 2022

Weekend Devotion: Be Faithful, Not Fickle, Toward God

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Dear all, as we stepped into the month of April, we will be celebrating Easter soon. And in the final week before Jesus’ death and resurrection, there were many reversals, from death to life, and also from triumph to tragedy then to triumph again. We see that all the four gospels recorded one account one week before Jesus’ crucifixion, that is Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Jesus had entered Jerusalem in a triumphal manner, with the crowd praising Him, but the greatest tragedy in human history happened when sinners crucified the Son of God a few days later. Yet, thankfully, Christ our Lord was risen to life after three days, triumphing over death.

Let’s read: (Luke 19) 37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

 

Now, we all love to receive praises. Yet, here we notice that:

Jesus was not taken in by human praise.

Strangely, after all the fanfare on His arrival, Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Why? Isn’t it a happy occasion? Isn’t it great that many people seemed to be on His side, praising Him? Even though Jesus got to enjoy a “red carpet” moment, He was fully aware that the people did not really believe that He is God. In other words, Jesus knew the crowd’s praises were superficial and fleeting, even though they were loud. The people received Lord Jesus with much excitement and praises now, but they would also be shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” a few days later (Luke 23:21). Of course, we cannot be sure that the crowd who praised Jesus as He entered Jerusalem was exactly the same crowd who shouted for His crucifixion. Although Luke mentioned that those who praised Jesus were a crowd of “disciples”, John, Mark and Matthew all described a more generic group of people as “the great crowd” (Jn 12:12), “many people” (Mk 11:8), and “a very large crowd” (Mt 21:8). Thus, it was likely that some in the crowd had praised Jesus without the right reasons or without knowing Him well, but simply just followed the rest of the crowd, thus upon instigation by the Jewish religious leaders, they simply turned against Jesus.

 

1) We cannot fool God.

However, God knows the condition of the human heart. We cannot fool God with our loud prayers or singing or our outward acts of piety, when we do not fully yield to Him in our hearts or when we do not fully trust Him.

 

2) We must also not get too excited over human praises.

At the same time, we must also not get too excited over human praises and build our hopes on human favour, for humans are fickle, and human opinions change so fast that they are unreliable.

 

They “praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen”.

1) But they were not praising God because they acknowledged Jesus as God.

Yes, it is natural for humans to ascribe praises to the miracle-performer when they see signs and wonders. Before Jesus’ triumphal entry to Jerusalem, He had raised Lazarus from the dead (Jn 11:43-44), He had healed a blind man (Lk 18:43), among many other miracles that people might have heard Him performed. The people might be amazed by Jesus’ miracle-performing power, but they did not recognize Jesus as God. That was why Jesus wept for their impending disaster.

 

2) God does not need to meet our expectations to deserve our praise.

The people might have hoped that Jesus could deliver them from the rule of the Romans. They had expected Jesus to be their earthly king and deliverer, but they didn’t realise that Jesus had come to save their souls rather than give them political and earthly freedom. When they found that Jesus had fallen short of their expectations, their praise turned into persecution.

We may criticise these people as we read the Bible, but we may not be that different from them. We can praise God when everything goes well with our lives and when we receive tangible blessings from Him. Yet, when God doesn’t meet our expectations and when life gets tough, we start to doubt God’s love and power, we can’t feel His presence and we turn away from Him. Like the crowd in Jerusalem, we may be tempted to drop Jesus out of our lives when He didn’t live up to our expectations. But we must not forget that Jesus is God, and He does not need to please us in order to get our praise. On the contrary, we have everything to lose if we reject or despise Christ.

 

Thus, let us be faithful, instead of fickle, toward Jesus.

We are often wavered by our own self-interests and public sentiments (what the majority thinks). This makes us easily give up on God when our self-interests are jeopardized or when we want to fit in with the crowd. In today’s scripture, it is quite shocking that the people’s minds could change in just a matter of days. For us too, today we may just be praising God for granting us a lovely spouse or a wonderful job, but tomorrow we may blame God for letting that spouse hurt us or that job stress us. One day we find God so dear, another day we are so quickly tempted to run after other idols. Today we are so grateful to be saved and be called a child of God, but tomorrow we may complain that serving God is too tiring and we want to drop out. Though it is not easy for us fickle humans to remain faithful to God, we thank God that He has given the Holy Spirit to everyone who believes in Jesus. By relying on the help of the Holy Spirit, we can find the faith to overcome our fickleness.

 

Dear brothers and sisters, as we look at the crowd’s reaction to Jesus, let us also examine our heart toward Him as we approach Good Friday and Easter. Do we only praise Jesus when He meets our expectations, or do we acknowledge Him not just as our Savior but also as our Lord, such that we resolve to praise and obey Him regardless of whether He suits our desires? Pray that when Jesus looks at our heart, He will not weep but delight at it!

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Preacher Hui Jun
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Huijun serves as Secretary of The Blessed RUN Ministries. She is also the Preacher at The Life Church and Missions (Singapore). She graduated from Singapore Bible College and currently lives in Singapore with her husband, Chengji.

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