Interlude 1: Lessons From The Old Testament

It is a lovely Saturday afternoon in Las Vegas. And I mean genuinely beautiful spring weather! It’s 73 degrees outside with a perfectly pleasant breeze that would be great accompaniment for a hike in Red Rock canyon. Alas, I must report for work in an hour.
            In following my plan to read the whole Bible in a year, I’ve been working through the books of Samuel and Kings for the last 2 weeks. This morning I wrote down some of the lessons I’ve gleaned from the Old Testament in general, but these 4 books in particular.
         1.) Am I listening for God’s voice? 1 Samuel 3:10: “…Speak; for thy servant heareth.” No, God doesn’t use an audible voice today as He did with Samuel, but that’s because we now have his Holy Word in the form the Bible. We also have the Holy Spirit if we are truly born again. I need to make sure that I’m always listening for the Spirit and seeking God’s wisdom in all things. I should never be so busy with daily life, nor should the noise of the world be so loud, that I don’t hear God when He speaks to me.
         2.) God does not tolerate sin. Eli was a servant of the Lord, but he failed to rear his sons to also fear and obey God. Because of this, God took the lives of all three and gave the priesthood to Samuel. Same for the nations of Israel and Judah. Throughout the books of Samuel and Kings, God punished his chosen people over and over as they continually disobeyed his commandments and turned to idol worship. There were occasional respites, short periods where certain kings would obey and fear God; David and his son Solomon, for example. Unfortunately, those two – and two or three others in the succeeding generations – were the exception, not the rule.
Am I always obeying the Lord’s commandments? Am I living my life in complete service to Him? When I do sin, am I genuinely repentant? God will forgive me, His love and mercy are as vast as the universe He created. But He is also a jealous God, and He will punish me when I turn from Him, as a loving father will discipline his child when he strays. I should always be striving to please God and obey Him always in all things.
        3.) There are consequences for sin. God’s divine patience with Israel and Judah finally reached an end in the latter half of the book of 2nd Kings. He delivered His people into the hands of their enemies, and both nations were exiled into Babylon. Chapter 17: 7-23 summarizes the sins of Israel and Judah and God’s punishment for their continual sin.
Even though God will always forgive me when I sin, He will not spare me the consequences of my sin. Therefore, I need to always be seeking Him first and be making good choices.
       4.) God will reward obedience and faithfulness to Him. David was chosen as King of Israel because he had a heart that was always seeking God. Even in the worst times of his life, when he was on the run and hiding from Saul, David never lost his faith that God was always with him, and that He would take care of him. (Psalms 23 & 46.) God rewarded this faithfulness time and again throughout David’s life.
          Same goes for Solomon. When God spoke to Solomon early in his life, Solomon requested not riches or long life but, instead, the wisdom to lead the nation of Israel. God rewarded Solomon’s request with not only wisdom but riches as well.
Now, it should also be noted that, even though David and Solomon always sought to please and obey God, they also sinned. Both men were polygamists, and David even committed murder to try to cover his sin of covetousness and adultery. But God used them anyway, and each still suffered the consequences of their sin. Which brings us to the final point:
        5.) God always keeps his promises. The Israelites were never completely wiped from the face of the Earth. God had made a covenant with Abraham, and He had also promised His people salvation through the lineage of David. Therefore, while He allowed His people to suffer the consequences of their disobedience, He still protected them and kept His word to them.
         God will do the same for me. No matter how many times I stray, I will never lose my salvation. God has promised me that He is preparing a place for me in Heaven, and He will keep that promise. But neither is that a license to go do whatever the hell I want. Refer back to lesson #3.
 
            What I also found most striking about these four books was the clear parallel of the nation of Israel/Judah at this time and the United States today. Over the past year, I have argued with strangers on Facebook who try to convince me that America is not now and never was a Christian nation. That belief utterly baffles me. The phrase “In God We Trust” is still stamped on all our coins. The Declaration of Independence uses the phrase “divine Creator”. Despite all the scrubbing and washing by today’s social justice warriors, it’s still a known fact that all our founding fathers believed in the basic religious principles taught in the scriptures. Those principles are scattered throughout the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and other documents such as the Federalist Papers. George Washington and his compatriots might not all have been born again Christians, and they were most certainly as flawed, failing and sinful as you and me. But they regarded the Bible as an essential guide to the basic facts of our flawed, failing, sinful human nature, and they crafted a carefully constructed form of government that was designed to enhance the best in all of us and, by the same effect, discourage the worst.
            Today, that government is in serious threat of being dismantled from the inside out. The founding fathers had not anticipated what Paul wrote to Timothy: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” (2 Timothy 3:1-5)
            Today’s generation is all about the self. Just as Israel and Judah in the Old Testament continually turned away from God to worship false gods and idols, so we today have turned away from God to worship the idol of ‘self’. There is not a single news headline lately that doesn’t bear some form of the phrase “personal rights”, or “individual truth”, or “living as him/her/itself”. Everyone screams about their own “truth” and that their “rights and freedom of expression” are all that matters, especially when it comes to the homosexual and transgender movements. Everyone’s rights are more important than everyone else’s, and our nation has become a people who are “…lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” (And no, before you even say it, I am not referring to the COVID/mask/pandemic government mandates. That specific case is a whole ‘nother argument where, yes, personal rights and freedoms most definitely matter.)
            And, just as He did to Israel and Judah at the end of 2nd Kings, God’s divine patience is rapidly running out for America. God delivered Israel and Judah into the hands of their enemies, the Babylonians. His chosen people spent seventy years in exile as punishment for their wickedness and their disobedience. Something I didn’t know before reading the commentary in my MacArthur study Bible is that Israel never returned from that captivity. Several thousand Israelites had migrated to the kingdom of Judah prior to the Babylonian captivity, so that all twelve tribes were still intact seventy years later, but it was only the former kingdom of Judah that actually returned, whole and united as the ‘new’ nation of Israel, seventy years later.
            Think about that. God kept his promise to Abraham. The whole of His chosen people were not utterly wiped from the face of the earth, but the meager, reunited nation that returned from Babylonian captivity was nowhere near the size or power that it once was. God’s wrath was justified and vast.
            If you study world history, you will find that ANY nation that has ever put God first has ALWAYS prospered. Think of the Victorian era of 19th century Great Britain. Queen Victoria was – and still is – revered as one of England’s greatest monarchs, and it’s because she believed that her empire was blessed by God. The evidence is self-explanatory. At that time, England – and the United States – were considered by all the world as the greatest powers, and the best lands of equal opportunity by all those seeking a better life. Our founding fathers built this nation on the premise that God had created every man and woman – no matter his/her race or station in life – equal. That ALL of us were endowed by our Divine Creator with certain, inalienable rights. And that, as long as we continued to recognize the source of our blessing and our greatness as a nation, we would prosper.
            Sadly, that cannot be said of us today. We, as a nation, have fallen so far from God’s grace that I wonder what our exile will look like. Though I have not yet done a close reading and study of the book of Revelation, I am fairly certain that nowhere in that book is there a mention of any western nation such as ours. We are rapidly losing our reputation as a world super power, and I believe that America as we know it today will not exist by the time chapter one of Revelation begins. And, right now, it’s not hard to see why.
            John 1:4-5 says, “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (Emphasis mine.) America has become filled with great darkness. For me, personally, that is my only mission for the rest of my life. I will do what I can to be a light for Christ and the gospel as we get closer and closer to that first chapter of Revelation. God’s wrath is coming, and only those who have believed on His name and accepted Him as their Lord and savior will be spared His judgment.
        The only answer for today’s corrupt generation is the command from God found in Matthew 6:33, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” For those who are still ignoring that command, Isaiah warns, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while he is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”
            Amen.