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Three people are dead and dozens injured in the bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  Two explosions have taken the lives and limbs of innocent civilians in yet another terrorist act in our land.  Families are grieving in their losses: And we hurt for them as we consider once again the question, “Why?”

There are answers to that question.  But not many of us have been willing to receive them.  They call on us to admit we’re wrong; and that crosses our pride.

The first reason these things happen is because we are a race fallen from the purpose for which God originally created us. The Bible says,

“There’s not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not.”

(Ecclesiastes 7:20)

All of us are born with a “sin root” in us that causes us to live from selfish motives.  Some believe they have a right to the free expression of their sin, be that lying, stealing, un-Biblical sex, or—murder!  This is the most basic reason tragedies happen.  Only Jesus Christ can free us from this selfish pattern of behavior.

But in a larger perspective, tragedies are always messages from the God who created us—and to Whom we owe these lives—to return to a true walk of obedience with Him.  While God sometimes allows great hurt to come to us who know Him in order to pull us up to a higher level of trust in Him, generally hurts come to call us back to a true walk with Him.  And when a tragedy occurs in a nation, it almost always contains in it a call to return to the God of our fathers, Jesus Christ.  While the people directly involved are no more responsible for it than the rest of us, the blame for it can be laid at the feet of all of us because of our corporate departure from obeying the God Who rightfully owns us by creation and redemption.  This is explained in the Bible.

In Isaiah 5 the prophet compares the people of God with a vineyard.  God planted it, but it brought forth “wild grapes,” that is, his people lived outside the commands of Scripture.  God then says what he will do with that disobedient people:

“I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: And I will lay it waste…”

(Isaiah 5:5-6)

He says He will “take away the hedge thereof.”  The “hedge” is the wall of protection he puts around those who walk with Him.  Whenever in the Old Testament history of the Jews, they obeyed God, they had nothing to fear from their enemies.  Their enemies could not touch them.  But once they allowed disobedience in their midst—not calling it sin as God called it sin—the hedge of protection would come down and their enemies had open access to them.  I urge you to consider the story of Achan in Joshua 7:1-26.

God has more and more been removing the hedge of our nation’s protection as we have moved more and more into the mockery of His Word.  Our forefathers warned us this would happen.  At the Constitutional Convention in 1787 this principle was spoken by George Mason, delegate from Virginia, when he said,

“As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this [one].  By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins, by national calamities.”

(Mason, George. August 22, 1787, in addressing the Continental Congress. James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 (1787, reprinted NY: W.W. Norton Co., 1987), p. 504. Marshall Foster and Mary-Elaine Swanson, The American Covenant – The Untold Story (Roseburg, OR: Foundation for Christian Self-Government, 1981; Thousand Oaks, CA: The Mayflower Institute, 1983, 1992), p. 142.))

Ladies and Gentlemen: while we pray for those families who are hurting most deeply from the Boston bombings, let us also repent for our rebellion in this nation against the Word of God!

Think about it; because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—
and for your children!  And you won’t like what that brings to you.  I’m Don Pinson, this has been Think About It.