Rightly dividing the Word of Truth. 14
Rightly dividing the Word of truth
This is part 14 in a series of 53 articles about RIGHTLY DIVIDING GOD’S WORD OF TRUTH. All scripture quoted will be from the King James Bible.
In part 14, As it is with every parent-child relationship, whenever we are obedient we will enjoy the blessings of God; but when we are disobedient like it is when we do something wrong, our parents will discipline us, in a similar-manner God will discipline us with the rod of correction. So, let’s look at some requirements God had of Israel. Would they be obedient or not?
Deuteronomy 10:12-16: 12And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, 13 To keep the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good? 14 Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD’S thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is.15 Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day. 16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no more stiff-necked. (stubborn or rebellious).
Israel truly was a stiff-necked people because the Old Testament is a chronicle of Israel’s repeated failure to obey God, of its refusal to keep His commandments and statutes. In Psalm 78:10-11, 40-42, 56-57, the psalmist mentions that Ephraim (meaning Israel at large) did not keep the covenant of God; they refused to walk in His law, and forgot His works and His wonders that He had shown them. How often they provoked Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert! Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. They did not remember His power. Yet they tested and provoked the Most High God, and did not keep His testimonies, but turned back and acted unfaithfully like their fathers.
II Kings 17:7-8 speaks of the sins of the Kingdom of Israel, up north:
For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and they had feared other gods, and had walked in the statutes of the nations whom the LORD had cast out from before the children of Israel.
Jeremiah 32:30 quotes God’s condemnation of the people of both Kingdoms: For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evil before me from their youth: for the children of Israel have only provoked me to anger with the work of their hands, saith the LORD.
Because of their sins, as II Kings 17:13-23 indicates, God was very angry with Israel, and removed them from His sight. Also, Judah did not keep the commandments of the LORD their God but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made. And the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel, afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of plunders, until He had cast them from His sight.
In part 15 I will quote II kings 17:13-23 where God removes Israel from His sight because of their sins.
To be continued