THE KING’S BUSINESS
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in God. It is rather a reason for believing in God, and that the real God is just such a being as the Bible describes Him to be. v. 14. “And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands i of jspoilers that spoiled them, and He sold them into the hands of their enemies round about them, so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies.” In throwing off the yoke of Je hovah they doubtless fancied they would be free, but in reality they took upon them selves a more grievous yoke, the yoke of Baal and the Ashteroth (cf. 2 Chron. 28 s 2, 3; Deut. 28:47, 48). Nor was that all, they soon found themselves “in the hands of spoilers that spoiled them,” subject to the power of all their enemies “round about them.” The men who reject God and Christ today flatter themselves that they are going to be free, but soon find themselves help less slaves. It is only the one who sur renders absolutely to the Lord Jesus and whom He makes free, who is free indeed (John 8:36). Israel found themselves help less before their enemies. As long as they were true to God, God was with them and so they could stand before all their enemies (Deut. 27:4; cf. Joshua 7 :13), but now, that they had forsaken God, He forsook them, and almost any enemy is more than a match for them. v. IS. "Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for evil." This is an appalling statement, but it is thus that God always deals with back sliders. It seems severe on God’s part, but the purpose of it all was to bring them back to Himself and to their own highest good (Hos. 2:6, 7). This was all coming to pass just “as the LORD had said” (cf. Lev. 26:14, IS, 17). God always keeps to the very letter His word of threatening, as well as His word of promise. Doubtless many in Israel had fancied that God was “too good to send such awful judgment upon them,” but in reality God is not too good not to keep His word, however stern and
site religion, but they ended by forsaking Jehovah, the true God, altogether. It was their evil conduct recorded in verse 11 that led to their forsaking the LORD recorded in verse 12. Evil practices lead inevitably to forsaking the God of the Bible. If we knew the secret lives of some of the men who were once faithful to the truth as it is in Jesus, but who now are vaunting their departure from “mediaeval theology” their great liberality of views would not be diffi cult to .account for. Their forsaking the Lord God of their fathers was not merely an act of great folly, but of gross ingrati tude, for He had “brought them up out of the land of Egypt;” but it is an act of still greater folly, and far more appalling ingratitude, for us to forsake the Lord Jesus Christ, for He has redeemed us by His own immeasurable suffering and by His death in our stead (Gal. 3:13; 1 Peter 1:18, 19; Titus 2:14; 2 Peter 2:1). “And followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them.” They went with the crowd. They were un willing to be singular and peculiar; what was good enough for the majority they felt was good enough for them. That is the spirit of the average man in every age. He doesn’t so much ask who is the true God, or what is the true religion, but whom and how do the people round about him wor ship. Doubtless their action was very satis fying to themselves, and very gratifying to their neighbors, but note the Holy Spirit’s awful statement, they “provoked the LORD to anger.” God is a God of love, but He is also “a holy” and “a jealous God,” and He will tolerate no infidelity towards Him self. He is long suffering, but His anger was now aroused and dark days for Israel followed. Many are asking today why the present war with all its countless and ap palling sorrows, is permitted by God. May it not be that the nations by their per sistent forgetting and forsaking God have at last brought upon themselves his long re strained anger. Some people see in the present war, with the frightful calamities that it involves, a reason for not believing
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