Death in the city - Chapter three

Death in the City – Chapter Three: The Message of Judgment

Schaeffer continues his look at Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. Just as he wept, we too must weep over our church and culture. Neither Jeremiah’s life nor his message was easy. So must our message be. Schaeffer writes: “Christianity is not romantic, not soft. It is tough-fibered and realistic. And the Bible gives us the realistic message I am convinced the church today must preach if it is to be any help in the post-Christian world.” Such a message will make us unpopular both in the church and in the culture.

In Jeremiah’s day there was much external religiosity, but the people had turned away from God to other things. Thus, He rejected their offerings and sacrifices. “When men turn away from the propositional revelation of God, it destroys the acceptability of our worship to God. We are not jousting over abstract theological terms. We are dealing with a question of believing God and believing his revealed truth.”

Jeremiah also rebuked the people’s apostasy. This is the hallmark of our current generation and shows up in the church as relativism. “Men no longer believe that there are absolutes, and more and more it has become the accepted thing not to speak the truth….As men have turned away from God, who alone gives a basis for absolutes in truth, men have become untruthful and hypocritical with each other.”

Jeremiah also rebuked the people for looking to the world for help, everywhere except to God. But that help failed. In the same way the church today looks elsewhere, to mere psychology, to new theology. Schaeffer is adamant that we must look directly to God for help. “It must be the Lord’s work done in the Lord’s way.”

As a result, Jeremiah’s message to the Jews was: utter destruction. “When men turn away from God, the city becomes the city of destruction.” Jeremiah 9:11 says, “I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals; and I will lay waste the towns of Judah so no one can live there.”

Schaeffer concludes: “Our generation needs to be told that man cannot disregard God, that a culture like ours that has had such light and then has deliberately turned away stands under God’s judgment. God is a god of grace, but the other side of the coin of grace is judgment. If God is there, if God is holy (and we need a holy god or we have no absolutes), there must be judgment….The final reality is that God is really there….But does your Christianity end with something less than God who is there?