TRUE AND FALSE RELIGION
‘They rejected His statutes … and they followed vanity.’
The end has come. Israel is about to be scattered, and never again to be gathered together as a nation. Here is the solemn summing up of her history during the two centuries and a half of existence. From Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, to Hoshea, here is the conclusion of the whole matter.
I. See what we are told about the religion that Israel refused.—The keynote to all God’s dealings was faithfulness. He had covenanted with them, He had given them and their fathers statutes, testimonies, and commandments. The true religion was a religion of law. So it is still.
II. Then contrast with this the religion that Israel chose.—Here are four characteristics by which it was distinguished:—
(a) Folly. They followed vanity and became vain. Idolatry is unsubstantial. Baal could not save, as Carmel had shown. A frivolous religion makes a frivolous people, while, on the other hand, a solid and serious faith makes a solid and serious people.
(b) Cruelty. They caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire. This is contrasted with the mercy of the Lord, His love for the children, His care for the family. Religion is a great preservative to life, and the most earnestly religious periods in any nation’s history will surely register themselves in an increased lengthening of existence. How cruel idolatry is can be seen in Paton’s Life in the South Seas or Moffatt’s Travels in Africa.
(c) Superstition. They used divination and enchantments. The human mind must peer into the future. Where there is not faith there will be credulity. See how strong the religious instinct is in us all, and how, when it rejects the true, it must take up with the false. Here is a striking proof of our need of a revelation. This is what a nation comes to, notwithstanding all its privileges, when it trusts to itself. ‘Peoples and nations never did and never can raise themselves into a higher moral condition.’ The necessary existence of God is proved, if by nothing else, certainly by the state into which men sink when He is rejected.
(d) Bondage. They sold themselves to do evil. In their desperate need people deeply in debt would sometimes go so far as to sell, not their property only, but even themselves; but the bitter sting in this sentence is lodged in the last three words. No advantage came from this final surrender of self, but only evil.
Illustration
‘Not only did Israel turn away from their own God, but they turned after the gods of the heathen. It is always so. We may not worship idols made of wood or stone, but if we leave the true God we really worship some idol. These people, instead of following God and God’s ways, followed the ways of the heathen around them. Worldly conformity is always dangerous. God commanded His ancient people to be separate from the heathen, not to adopt their ways, not to make friendships with them, not to copy their manners or habits. But they disobeyed Him. They added, little by little, heathen rites and practices to their religious observances, until at last they were full-grown idolaters, quite as base as the people whom the Lord had cast out of the land for their sin. We need to learn well the lesson against conforming to the world.’