Steps in the Downfall of Israel
“And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites: and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the groves. Therefore the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel and he sold them” (Judges
in: 5-8).
Jn this passage we have the six steps in the downfall of Israel:
I. They [ailed to drive out the idolaters as God told them.
God covenanted with Abram. centuries before. that He would give to his seed all the land of Canaan, “from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis xv: 18). Moses in his last address to the children of Israel had recalled this wonderful heritage in the words found in Deuteronomy xi: 22-24: “For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I command you, to do them, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto Him; then will the Lord drive out all these nations from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier. than yourselves. Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilder-
(2« ness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.” After Moses’ death the Lord appeared to Joshua and renewed the promise: “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, thai have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses” (Joshua i: 3).
One would think that such a bright promise would have stirred the ambition of the nation to obey God, but we read in the second chapter of Judges that one after another of the tribes of Israel neglected to drive out the idolatrous races who dwelt in the land. For four hundred years they never took Jerusalem. Mount Lebanon in the north was held for centuries. Remnants lived all up and down the land. Then God sent an angel to warn them, but in spite of everything they wandered farther and farther away from Him until finally He withdrew His aid and left those nations to be “as thorns in their sides” (Judges ii: 3), and “to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord, which He commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses” (Judges hi: 4).
BESETTING SIXS
ThejT failed to drive out their enemies. I believe the reason so many Christians have such a stormy passage, and the Christian life is not what they expected it to be when they became Christians, is that they don’t drive out everT foe and every enemy. In other words, they are not more than half converted. They don’t get control of their temper. The god of pleasure seems to have a grip upon them.
Lust and covetousness and selfishness come in, and they don’t get victory. Nine-tenths of the battle is won, it seems to me, if we start right.
In the forty-first Psalm and the eleventh verse are these words: “By this I know that thou favorest me, because mine enemy doth not triumph over me.” Now I believe that we all have some besetting sin, and what we want is to get -victory over that besetting sin, whatever it is. “By this we know that God favors us, that our enemy doth not triumph over us.”
Is there some habit marring your Christian life, hindering your usefulness, checking your progress in divine life? Then make up your mind that you are going to get victory over it. It may look like a small enemy, but it will become stronger and stronger if not checked. You remember God told Saul to go and utterly destroy Amalek. He did not fully obey but spared some, and in the thirty-first chapter of Samuel we read that it was an Amulekite who boasted that he had slain Saul and stripped him of his crown. Some one has said that it would be easier to find a man that had not done any one sin than to find a man who had done it only once. Sin multiplies. The tendency to sin gathers force with every new commission. So the battle goes on in every one of us. We must either overcome sin, or it will overcome us; we must decide.
Have 3’ou completely forsaken your sins, or is there some enemy that you allow to remain alive?
2. They dicelt a mong the heathen.
What was God’s call to Abraham? “Get thee out.” What was His word by Isaiah? “Go 3-e out
. touch no unclean thing.” And for us the
command is, “Come out ... be separate.”
Dwelling among the enemies of God was the cause of Lot’s troubles. How many Christian parents follow his example! They move into some city for the sake of the associations, it may be, when they know its influence will blast religion and piety. Their children get contaminated, and their religious life sapped, and then when their boy goes astray and prefers the saloon or the gambling-den or the brothel to his own home, the parents cannot understand it! Be separate! Choose carefully vour companions, and do not, like these Israelites of old, settle down among the enemies of God.
May God help us who are parents to pray continually for our children, that God will preserve them from the corrupting influences of those amongst whom they are thrown. But it is folly to pray for our children if we follow Lot’s example, and run right into the devil’s camp.
3. Then they intermarried with God’s enemies.
That was an easy step to take after the other two.
Now from the eery beginning of the history of the chosen people we see that intermarriage with the heathen always brought disaster. Think how it was with Abraham and Hagar; Esau and his heathen wives; Solomon and his wives. “What overthrew the house of Saul? What overthrew the house of David? What overthrew the house of Jehoshaphat? Intermarrying with the heathen; they did what God told them not to do. When Jehoshaphat was right in the zenith of his power, lie went down to Samaria and formed an affinity with Ahab, and from that time his star began to decline, and it was not long before the house of Ahab had destroyed all the house of Judah.
1 believe this is the door by which more woe and unhappiness enters into our homes nowadays than almost any other. Many a Christian woman agrees to go to the theatre with her husband if he will go to church with her on Sunday. She thinks she will convert him in that way; but my experience is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the wife loses her assurance, loses her testimony, and is dragged down to her husband’s level. I met one lady who married a rich man’s son although she knew he was addicted to drink; but she thought she could save him. Such mixed marriages always mean mixed principles. God has drawn the line against them. How can Christian men and women expect God’s blessing when they go in the face of His commands and join themselves in marriage with some ungodly person?
4. They served the heathen gods.
Instead of raising the heathen and converting them to the knowledge of the true God, they were themselves dragged down into idolatry. If there is one rotten apple in a barrel it will not be long before the whole barrel is rotten.
The Bible would lose half its personal interest for us if idolatry had ceased to be a temptation. But though we do not worship images of wood and stone in America, we have our idols that are just as bad. John’s words, “Little children, keep yourselves from
Step* m the Downfall of Israel. 33
idols,” were addressed to Christians. Any thing that we love more than we love God is an idol. With some it is the idol of money; with others the idol of dress, fashions; with others the idol of pleasure. Man doesn’t need to be commanded to worship, because there is not a nation so low or so high in the scale of civilization but worships some kind of a god. What man needs is to have his worship directed aright; to be directed to worship the true God in spirit and truth, and not let his heart run away after other gods.
5. They forgot their own God.
Man’s heart must be occupied with something. There is an old adage that says: “If the bushel is .lot filled with wheat, the devil will fill it with chaff.” But there is not room in the heart for two thrones. If Satan is enthroned, there is no room for Christ.
It is a solemn thing to think that Christ does not remain as an uninvited guest. He must be invited. He will stand at the door knocking, but will not force an entrance. And so here, when they began to worship heathen gods, they naturally forgot God. All thoughts of Him were crowded out of their hearts by the new affinities they had formed. They forgot how He had delivered them out of the land of Egypt; how He had brought them through the Red Sea on foot; how He had supplied their wants for forty years in the wilderness; how He had led them into the promised land. His altars were now neglected, while the children of Israel crowded to the groves of Baal.
Did you ever notice how often in Scripture, Moses and Joshua and Nehemiah and other leaders called back to memory God’s past dealings with Israel, using these as a warning and as a lever to induce them to trust Him still? But just as to-day young people scoff at the counsel of their parents and have to learn by bitter experience what their elders can tell them, so warnings from history were often lost upon the Israelites.
It seems to me that this nation is just doing the same thing that Israel did. When worldliness comes in godliness goes out. They are tearing down God*s altar; they are breaking down the Sabkith; and the time has come lor us to call a halt all through the church of God. Every man and woman that believes in God ought to take a high stand — a finn stand — now.
6. The sixth step was — Cod sold them into bondage.
Six times in the book of Judges do we find that the children of Israel did evil in God’s sight, and six times were they given over to their enemies to be chastised. God set a blessing or a curse before them, and they had to reap the fruit of their conduct. When they obeyed they were blessed; and when they turned aside, judgment came upon them. And there has never been disloyalty to Christ that has not brought retribution.
1 believe that the deepest wound that the Son of God received while on earth was from Judas. The Roman soldier’s spear did not cut as deep as the kiss of Judas. He professed to be a friend, and yet he betraved his Lord and Master. We should rot profess one thing and do the opposite. No Christian has ever bought the friendship of the world without disloyaltT to Christ. Are we His friends? Then let us not show any quarter to His enemies, but let us stand up against them and fight them, knowing that we shall come off more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
DELIVERANCE.
Thank God the story does not end there. The Bible tells us of one more step, for we read that “when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer [margin, “a savior”] to deliver them.” God never turns a deaf ear to the cry of a contrite heart, and there is a Deliverer for you and me, no matter under what bondage we have fallen.