Ignoring God's Warnings When Life Is Good

Ignoring Warnings in Times of Prosperity

No one seems to enjoy hearing warnings when things are going well. We often block them out, we believe tomorrow will be just like today—trouble free. You see it in a booming stock market, when people are warned about a coming downturn. You see it in nature, when people are warned of impending storms and ignore them, much to their misfortune.

God tells us that He has warned us as well in our times of prosperity. Have we forgotten Him when things are good? Has He become something we give a nod to when we have time on Sunday mornings?

In Jeremiah 22 we read Jeremiah's messages to good King Josiah's sons. Where Josiah worshipped the Lord and was obedient, his sons failed to follow in their father's footsteps. They were raised during the good times. The country was spiritually prosperous and at peace, having been blessed by God because of King Josiah's faithfulness.

But times were about to change. The nation had been repeatedly warned that due to their continuing unfaithfulness and disobedience they would be punished. The Babylonian captivity was around the corner. Yet even in these peaceful days, the seeds of future judgment were already being sown.

History records the tragic outcome. In 586 BC, after years of ignored warnings, Babylonian armies breached the walls of Jerusalem. King Zedekiah, another of Josiah’s sons, watched as his sons were killed before his eyes, after which his own eyes were gouged out. The temple was burned, the city destroyed, and the survivors led away in chains to Babylon. What began as comfortable prosperity ended in unimaginable suffering—all because God's warnings were ignored. Tragically, the same danger still threatens us today.

Prosperity Can Blind Us to Sin

Josiah's sons, like us, may even see the good things in our lives as God's blessings on us. We then begin to assume that outward blessing is God’s endorsement of our lives, even when we are sinning. We think to ourselves, "Well I can't be so bad because I have a good life, lots of material things, a beautiful home, and a nice car." Or perhaps we see that God has blessed our parents and because of that He will automatically bless us. But no, each of us are responsible for our own relationship with God. Our comfort blunts our conviction that we have sinned. Because our world is not falling apart does not mean that God approves of our lives. Scripture repeatedly shows that outward peace is not always a sign of inward faithfulness.

The Continuing Pattern of Ignoring God's Warnings

Through Jeremiah the Lord announces to the son, Jehoiakim saying, in part,

"I spoke to you in your prosperity, But you said, ‘I will not hear.’ This has been your manner from your youth, That you did not obey My voice." Jeremiah 22:21

Believing things would always be good as they had been during his father's reign, he does not listen to the warnings. This is not accidental. He made a choice, "I will not hear." When we do wrong, don't we do the same? We want to continue in our sin because we see no immediate consequences, so we don't listen to correction.

You might think that God is not warning us today like He did in the days of Jeremiah but you would be mistaken. This pattern of rejecting God's warnings did not end in the days of Jeremiah, it continued throughout Israel's history and even into the time of the early church. Yet even as they resisted, God continued to plead with them in love, often through strong and direct words.

In Acts 7:51 Stephen warns the Jewish mob that is about to kill him,

“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you."

Do we resist the Holy Spirit today as they did? Sometimes our hearts and ears are stubborn and unloving. Stephen is talking about deliberately rejecting God, not by accident. How is God's word warning you and me?

The Danger of a Hardened Heart

Today we are blessed to have the Scriptures. Most of us have access to them whenever we want to read them. God's Word instructs us against complacency and disobedience. His Word explains how we are to treat God and others and warns us quite plainly what happens when we don't.

Jesus Himself warns us of the end of days, hell, and the importance of watching and being ready for His return. The New Testament is full of warnings from the apostles to avoid sin, discern false teachers, and remain faithful no matter what comes.

Even more than that today we have been blessed with the Holy Spirit to convict us of sin so we will turn from it. The book of Revelation contains explicit rebukes to the churches: don't forget your first love, don't allow false teachings to invade the church, and don't just "play church" but live it in your heart, among others.

So we cannot say we have not been warned. The warnings are already there in Scripture, history, and conviction. But have we heard? Do we live life as if we have not been cautioned about the consequences of our actions? Sometimes it takes a lot before we will listen. Our soul feels the warnings but our flesh fights obedience.

If we fight obedience long enough sometimes we become so hardened in our hearts, so set in our ways, that we find it extremely difficult to change. Cursing, gossiping, sexual sin, or anything we place before God becomes harder and harder to turn away from. We stop seeing sin for what it is. The Bible calls it the complacency of fools (Proverbs 1:32).

We lose track of our own self destructive behavior and begin to see it as normal. This is why we need to be there to lift one another up before the Lord. Hebrews 3:13 reminds us,

"but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin."

So we should encourage one another to do what is right while we have the opportunity. Sin lies to us and can harden us to the need for repentance. But when we are rebellious as young people it is easy to get in a pattern that is hard to stop. I know people who, at fifty years old, still live a life of defiance and sin that began at an early age. Will we choose obedience or not?

Obedience Flows from Love

As Jesus tells us plainly in John 14:15,

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”

We make obedience complicated when it isn't really. Why do we do something someone who loves us tells us to? Because we love them. We want to make them happy and proud of us. We want them to know we love them by doing as they say.

This is why our children sometimes lie to us when they have done bad. They don't want us to think that they don't love us. They don't want to disappoint us. How much more should we love God.

Our love for God comes from His love for us (1 John 4:19). God's grace changes our heart so that we are able to love as we should. Love flows from our unbounded gratitude for the undeserved gift of His Son on the cross for our sins. We revere Him as our Creator and Redeemer.

While It Is Called Today

So what do we learn from the warnings to King Josiah's son? We learn that God graciously warns us before He brings judgment, we learn that not listening to God is a choice, and those choices can become a pattern for us from a young age. Ignoring God's warnings comes at a cost.

God loves us so much and He mercifully calls us to respond with love and obedience. Make the choice to listen and yield to His will because out of that comes blessings and a fruit-filled, Spirit-filled life that brings joy to both ourselves and to God. Obedience is not a chore it is a path to peace with God. By it we can move from complacency to repentance and hope.

Repentance should not be delayed. "While it is called today" is the time to act. Josiah's sons did not listen, but we still can. Prayerfully ask God to help you see how you can obey Him with the love His Spirit has placed in your heart.