Entertained

Today's Bible Reading: JEREMIAH 42:1-44:30, EZEKIEL 33:21-33

Ezekiel 33:32

And behold, you are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it.

We love to be entertained. Listening to concert, watching a movie or a play pulls us away for a moment. We are distracted from life. We escape from our own reality. We relish the talents of others. Provocative performances trigger our response. We engage them. We laugh, we cry and we are moved. We relate to what they are portraying and we applaud them. We contemplate their presentation. Their performance challenges our ideas, rattles our conclusions, and tests our resolve.

A song, a speech, a show can solicit such emotions within us that we must and do respond. At times it even causes us to be reflective to the point that it produces a change in us. We change our mind and we redirect our course.

The Lord spoke to His people. They heard, but they didn’t heed. They were entertained, but they were not engaged. They were moved, but they didn’t move. They were unreceptive and unresponsive to the message that the Lord was communicating to them.

So it is with many of us today. We want to be entertained. We want a show. We want to feel good. We want the positive and uplifting rather than being challenged and convicted. We want the shallow over the substantive and the simple over the substantial. We choose to be comfortable without criticism. We would rather be complacent instead of being called out. We want a show. We want a spectacle. We want preachers to become performers, musicians to be entertainers and every church to be a concert hall.

Yet this only diminished the word. We want exciting worship to replace the exegesis of the word. We want the spectacular without the Scripture. But we need to move past being entertained in worship to being educated in the word.

Regardless what we do, the Lord will not compromise Scripture for the sensational. He will not allow the content of His word to change. Our response and reactions doesn’t affect His message. The prophet proclaimed the truth. His words were eloquent. His passion was profound. The people heard the message. God’s word went forth. Yet, he got a bad review. They didn’t like the show. They discarded his word. They did nothing.

Today we must reevaluated our receptiveness to what we receive from the Lord. We can’t let the exciting replace the exegesis. Ask that Lord to help you to not be like these who were entertained but unmoved. Ask Him to help you be receptive to what He says to you and to respond in obedience to Him.