Sounds of Chickens Coming Home to Roost

We cannot read God’s Word and not be overwhelmed by the patience and persistence of God in pursuit of man. He is indeed longsuffering in His wait and He utilizes many strategies to reach us and urge us back home where we belong. Yet, God has set a time limit on His mercy. He deliberately warned that His Spirit would not continue indefinitely striving, warning, pleading with rebellious man. There is a limit and the day arrives when our rebellion is crushed.

Regardless of who we are, we must come to terms with the real limitations of the human condition. It seems difficult for twenty-first century man to adjust himself to the truth of moral limitations when the world offers unlimited resources. We, as a human race has yet to learn that there are some things in this life that we cannot have and some things that we cannot do. The Bible is clear on this and it accepts no compromise. If we fail to come to terms with the limitations of life, we shall be forever rebelling against truth, trying to assume a role we cannot play.

I believe the world we are handing over to the next generation is a world reaping the angry harvest of rebellion against God. In our own lifetime we have been engulfed in a movement that has brought great tragedy. We have belittled Christianity and other religions and philosophies that posited the authority of God and the creature status of man. We have played fast and loose with the moral laws, assuming that they were subject to our whims and desires. We have believed that the future is in our own hands and that men can shape their own destinies. We have ignored the wisdom of our fathers which comprehended a universe subject to divine laws that no man can either repeal or amend.

There is a rising concern that the next Word we hear from on high will be judgment and destruction. And so we over-medicate ourselves with prescription drugs hoping to ease the tension and drown out the raucous sounds of chickens coming home to roost. It is understandable because we now face dangers no other generation in the course of history ever faced, and we are spiritually unprepared, for we have killed God’s divine messengers.

The great drama of sin and salvation began in the Garden of Eden. God put man in Paradise and man sinned. Everything God has done since that awful time has been in relation to that sin and its consequences. And the sin which began in Eden escalates until it covered the world and needed a house cleaning so God sent a flood to cleanse it. But the effect of the flood upon the morals of the postdiluvian people only lasted a few short years.

God sent Moses and the Law but it was to no avail because the people went on and on in their sins.

He sent David and his songs. Repeatedly David told of the greatness of God’s love and how God would care for those who put their trust in Him. Then one day, caught up in the sins of his generation, David himself fell into transgressions. God, in His unceasing mercy, forgave him and put a new song in his heart. David come back to tell how happy a man could be after God has forgiven him in love and washed his sins away. But all the testimonies of David did nothing to move the people; they went on and on in their sins.

God sent Jeremiah and his tears. Jeremiah went up and down the land pleading everywhere with tears in his eyes, a catch in his throat, trembling in his voice preaching of God’s love and begging the people to repent and turn to Him but they went on and on in their sins.

God sent Isaiah, the greatest of the prophets who told the people more about Jesus than any other Old Testament prophet. He assured the people that though their sins be as scarlet, they shall be washed whiter than snow but they went on and on in their sins.

God sent the cruel kings of the earth with their mighty armies and the children of Israel were taken into captivity. But even this did not turn the people from their sins nor did they remember their God.

Perhaps you remember the Amorites. They were sinful and idolatrous and rejected the God of Israel. This went on for four hundred years until the chickens came home to roost. God’s patience and mercy reached its limits and it was judgment time. When God’s patience is exhausted, destruction always follows. God told Abraham to take the city; to leave nothing alive that breathed including every man, woman, and child. “My Spirit will not contend with man forever.”

Last of all, He sent His Son. Nevertheless, behind the scene, the stage was being set, and the alliances against Jesus were forming a strong coalition. They even had a spy within Jesus’ own band itself in the person of Judas. While the final plans for the enemy were being formulated, Jesus was having a last meal with His disciples. Then, the plan culminated in the killing of God's greatest Messenger and we yet continue on and on in our sins.

God has warned that His Spirit would not strive with us always. There is a limit to His patience and He will not be mocked. And when God’s Spirit ceases to strive with man, man is doomed. We only need to review history to validate this truth. Turn to the Word of God and on its very first pages we will find burning warnings against defying and rebelling against our Creator. In every book of the Book is a record of God’s battle and fight with sin. We hear it in the thunders of Sinai. We hear it in the sobs of Gethsemane. We hear it in the agony of the Cross.

If you are skeptical and do not believe sin will ultimately destroy you, ask David. When he sinned for a woman, he fell from the pinnacle of Jerusalem to a nation inundated with wars. And as sin got beyond his control, it made his son Ammon an incestuous rapist and his son Absolom a murderer. Sin is a divider; it separates us from God who wants us closer to Him and it separates us from each other as we become each others enemy. We lose love for the His Church, Christ becomes unreal to us and the Bible becomes a book of myths. Behind every war that has ever raged; in back of every home that is permeated with abuse and jealousy and disharmony; in back of every convict, juvenile, suicides, and every dissipated being is the black scourge of sin.

Looking at our world today, we are ashamed of the fact that we support schools which act as if there is no God. Rarely do two individuals agree on what is morally right or morally wrong. We are a nation adrift without anchors. As we continue in our sins the average man, woman and child are in greater danger today than ever before, of becoming victims of this criminal onslaught. Whether day or night, at work or play our basic right to personal security and pursuit of happiness is under assault. Everywhere in the air of our times we can hear the sounds of chickens coming home to roost.

Well, our God is a patient, loving and merciful God who allows us to run up a charge account of sin. We may think that He is indifferent and thus go on ignoring Him and living as though He does not exist. But God said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever.” The era of His grace is quickly coming to a close. Judgment time nears. Heed the words of Isaiah:

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.” (55:6-7).

Though God’s Spirit will not always strive with man, He is contending with us now and now is the acceptable time to turn from our sins, now is the day of salvation.