Message summary: Throughout the Bible we have many warnings. People must choose between the gods of the age or the one eternal true God. Today, let us reverence the Lord our God and renounce the many false gods of our age. Let us determine that we will faithfully serve Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength!

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"To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so they cannot hear. The word of the LORD is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it” (Jeremiah 6:10). “But they were unfaithful to the God of their fathers and prostituted themselves to the gods of the peoples of the land” (1 Chronicles 5:25). "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God" (Hebrews 3:12).

Several weeks ago I had a dental bridge installed, essentially a false tooth glued in beside two existing natural teeth. I was missing a front lower tooth which had fallen out. That would be fine if I was acting as a hillbilly at Silver Dollar City in Branson.

My dentist recommended I use a water jet flosser to keep the space under the new tooth clean so among my exciting Christmas gifts this year was a Philips Sonicare Cordless Power Flosser.

The device works by squirting a very strong, concentrated stream of water. Now I have a confession to make, I don't always read all the warnings and cautions that come with most new products today. But I did look over the list for the water jet flosser and want to share two possibly helpful highlights for our readers:

Wherever you are today you are surrounded by warnings and cautions. In fact we are so flooded with warnings that we may tend to ignore even reading them since they generally state the obvious. Even a tube of toothpaste has a warning.

Some warnings are needed; many others are imposed by the legal system as a precaution against a potential lawsuit. Some warnings ignore common sense (like using a dental flosser to wash your eyes) in part due to the fact that many lack common sense these days and others might be illogical, even humorous such as these:

But there's nothing funny about the warnings of Scripture, even though for many they are a source of mockery. We must never grow hardened, indifferent or neglectful of these warnings. Today’s verses are certainly not the typical Scriptural promises of encouragement we normally use in this devotional series, but we can be thankful for God’s warnings and should actually see them as evidence of His love. The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:6 regarding the spiritual failures of people in the past, "These things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did".

Today’s second verse is an historical record regarding the descendants of the half tribe of Manasseh. They had a reputation as being "brave warriors, famous men, and heads of their families" (v. 24). But spiritually they had failed miserably as bluntly described in our daily text, "They were unfaithful to the God of their fathers and prostituted themselves to the gods of the peoples of the land".

We may on the surface consider this verse to be a mere record of the apostasy (falling away) of an ancient people (this happened some 3000 years ago). Surely such a crude and graphic expression of apostasy would not apply to our day would it?

Well, let’s open our eyes! It's not any different!

The character of God has not changed. His holiness and hatred of sin has not diminished one iota. "For I am the LORD, I change not" (Malachi 3:6). Surely His assessment of the condition of modern humanity would be the same as that of today’s verse, although the "gods of the people of the land" are modernized to reflect our time period. In our estimation we may feel that we’re more sophisticated than past peoples.

Throughout the centuries people must choose between the gods of this age or the one eternal true God. Today, let us reverence the Lord our God and renounce the many false gods of our age. Let us determine that we will faithfully serve Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength!

B e encouraged today, Hebrews 3:13