We have a similar theme in Jeremiah 8 of people thinking they are godly, but God rejecting them.

Here we have people saying, “We are wise. The law of the Lord is with us.” They think they have God’s word. They think they have God’s wisdom. They are deceiving themselves.

God calls them perpetual backsliders.

We are on an upward climb in Christ Jesus. We never stop the climb. The Lord gives us times of rest, and we are always at rest in Christ, but we don’t ever stop and decide we’ll just camp out somewhere, that where we’ve gotten is good enough.

The Lord warns the people of greed and says that He would have gathered them, but there was no fruit among them. He even says that what He had given them had passed away from them.

God gave you gifts. He gave you the gift of Himself! It’s for you to produce fruit. Think of the parables. We have the vine and the branches. Jesus is the vine and He brought you into Himself. The sap is the Spirit in the vine. The vine is healthy; it’s Christ! The branch does not produce fruit. The life in the vine produces the fruit. The branch just has to bear it, let it come out.

If you are not bearing fruit, then you are not allowing the Spirit into your life. He’s not working through you. You’ve cut off the flow by your sin. We are warned in the gospels that those who don’t produce fruit will be cut off and thrown into the fire.

We also have the parable of the talents. The men are given gifts from their master to put to use for his benefit. Those who do something with what they’ve been given are rewarded. Those who don’t, who act in fear instead of faith, have their gift taken away and are sent out to the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. That’s more than just losing a reward.

We need to not take lightly the gift of the Spirit given us. God gave us Himself! It’s so He can live through us. That’s all we have to do, just give ourselves to Him for Him to do His thing. He does the work. He gets the glory.