A few years ago, a billboard advertiser wondered how best to warn motorists about recklessness on the highway. Finally, he came up with a most ingenious message: “For years we have warned you to no avail; kill yourself if you like”.

Similarly, God’s warnings are best seen as signposts dotting the highways of this life. They frantically scream about the danger ahead. They seek to cause men to pause and ponder over the course of their lives.

“Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope” (Isaiah 5:18).

The expressions of God’s disgust with the Jews captured here in four woes are meant to jolt them out of their complacency. It was an act of love. He could not shut His eyes to the cesspool into which they had sunk.

Not just that they violently embarked on their sinful pursuits: they confused moral standards – calling evil good, and good evil.

Although God’s warnings were specifically directed at the Jews, they are also meant for all people in all ages. God would not condone sin of any kind. He remains opposed to those who take pride in sin.

His warning is for those who have subdued their conscience and deluded themselves into believing that they can get away with any action. These are people who give fashionable names to all kinds of evil.

They are those who mislead themselves into thinking they can outwit God through outward show of piety. They are not just self-conceited, but when induced with bribes, they readily turn blind eye to the normal course of justice.

For such, it is inevitable that God’s patience cannot hold forever, especially as they not only reject His words, but despise Him.

Charles H. Spurgeon said in “The Treasures of the Old Testament”: “God always means man’s good and only sets ill before him that he may turn from the dangers of a mistaken way and so may escape the ill which lies at the end of it”. The choice is man’s.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: God’s woes are better than the devil’s welcome.

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