DAY 304

ITCHING EARS

Jeremiah 18 & 19 and 2 Timothy 4

2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Itching ears…they can be a problem. In the last two chapters we read how Jeremiah prophesied against Judah. The result was that he was beaten and put in the stocks. Jeremiah endures quite a bit as he seeks to be faithful to God. Remarkably the king knew he was a man of God, because as Nebuchadnezzar was “knocking at the door of Jerusalem,” he, the king, seeks a Word from God through Jeremiah. Jeremiah has a word for him and it is not good…get out of Jerusalem is his word…God is going to fight against you!

How have the people of God gotten themselves on this wrong side of God? How have they gotten to the point of having God say that He is going to fight against them? The answer is itching ears! As Jeremiah was prophesying the dark reality of the situation, the prophets of the Temple and the priests were preaching a message of peace…all of which was untrue. Why did they preach falsehood? Because they preached what the people wanted to hear…they were scratching the itchy ears of the people (and of themselves).

The alternative was to follow a course of repentance. Repentance is hard. It requires admitting you have made a mistake, that you have sinned. It then requires that you ask God to forgive you. And then it requires that you seek to never sin again…hard things to do. It is easier to say, “Don’t get upset, what you did was not a big thing, it isn’t like you killed someone…” It is easier to say, “All this talk of sin is unhealthy, after all it is your life…live and let live.” How many other phrases can you come up with?

The hard reality is that God cares about how we live our lives: God will not be mocked. When we live in a ways that seek to justify sin, condone our lack of concern for others, or simply ignore the serious issues of our day…and when we find God’s appointed messengers say “it’s OK,” then we should expect that God’s true prophets will have something to say to us.

What makes your ears itch?