Averting ruin

Because he was too blind to see it himself, Pharaoh's servants screwed up their courage to tell him:

"How long shall this man [Moses] be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the Lord their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?" (Exodus 10:7).

We tend to be the last ones to see our own ruin: "Strangers devours his strength, and he knows it not; gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knows it not" (Hosea 7:9).

There is a Christian institution I know that is the last to see that it has become a "horror…a reproach, a byword, a taunt" (Jeremiah 24:9). It continues to pipe out cheery newsletters, healing its wound lightly, "saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace (Jeremiah 8:11).

When I asked an insider why they don't stop business-as-usual and call a week of prayer and fasting, he said they didn't want the matter to spread beyond the boundaries of the community. That's very different from King Josiah's style (2 Kings 23), or Moses' (Numbers 14), or Nehemiah's (Nehemiah 9), who called for public, sackcloth-and-ashes repentance.

Esther also knew better than to make a move without insisting on three days of a fasting back-up (Esther 4:16). Zipporah averted her husband Moses' ruin by quick, godly thinking (Exodus 4:24,25). And even an evil man in Luke 16 had the good sense to take drastic action to avert his ruin.

"A little folly outweighs wisdom and honor" (Ecclesiastes 10:1). It is a commonplace that "more is caught than taught." Who will be attracted to the Lord's kingdom when in the time of testing of our faith, we prove that we don't believe a word of it?