“Woe to the obstinate children,â€
declares the Lord,
“to those who carry out plans that are not mine,
forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin who go down to Egypt
without consulting me;
who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection,
to Egypt’s shade for refuge.” Isaiah 30:1-2
God was not happy with his children, the people of Israel. They stopped listening to Him, stopped looking to Him as their light and and His words as their direction. Instead they chose their own ways. They bound themselves to Egypt instead of to Him.
On multiple occasions God had given the people strict limitations on their relationships with other nations and peoples. But their lusts and desires had caused them to ignore God’s instruction and bind themselves to heathens. Invariably these relationships caused compromises. The people God had called to himself to serve in righteousness would find themselves over and over again participating in the other nation’s idolatry and pagan ways. Instead of the protection and blessing of God they would find themselves in the eye of God’s wrath.
The recent Wuhan virus has shown us just how dependent we are on China. During this pandemic that spread here from China we found ourselves scrambling for supplies. There wasn’t enough PPE, enough ventilators and more. Much of the reason for this? We had tied ourselves to China as our primary supply line. While hiding the existence of the virus from the rest of the world, China went from a net exporter of PPE to a net importer of PPE and began hoarding the and profiteering on the equipment.
It goes beyond PPE though. So much of our overall supply chain in many, many of our industries comes from China. Why is that? Because it is so cheap. But we don’t care why it is cheap. We don’t care about the sweatshops. We don’t care about the oppressed peoples living poverty. We care about the insane profit levels. We care about having the newest smartphone. The coolest Nike shoes.
We bound ourselves to a nation that persecutes Christians by telling them how they can worship and when they do not comply, or even sometimes when they just want to shake them down, put them in prison and sometimes even worse. We must pray for and ask God to liberate our brothers and sisters in this oppressive regime. We bound ourselves to a nation that has over a million people in internment camps. We bound ourselves to a government that continues to steal technology from other countries. We bound ourselves to a government that lied to the rest of the world about a virus while it secretly spread across the globe.
“What fellowship can light have with darkness?” 2 Corinthians 6:14
Light and darkness have no fellowship. People who say they live by morality cannot fellowship with the immoral unless they discard their morality. In order for light to fellowship with darkness it must relinquish its light and become dark. We have done this in our pursuit of wealth.
“Can a man take fire in his bosom And his clothes not be burned? Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned?” Proverbs 6:27-28
If you play with fire you get burned. It happened to us here and it will happen again. God has told us over and over again to depend on Him for our provision and protection. To follow His ways, His words. Over and over again we reject this instruction and we turn to our own ways and then to the unbelievers in compromise. Each time we do, it is only a matter of time before we get burned. Next time it may be worse.