II kings 17:13 — fill in the blank

“Yet that LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets.”

John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States

It’s September, and in the same month of 1811, John Quincy Adams, the 6th President of the United States, wrote in a letter to his son:

“I have myself for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year.”

It’s a practice I, too, endeavor to follow; and right now, with some down days in Montana, I’m playing catch-up. This morning, I found myself in II Kings 17. Here, we have an account of the last king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Though not nearly as evil as the northern kings who preceded him (17:2), Samaria yet fell to the Assyrians, and the people were carried captive into far off lands. The remainder of the chapter traces Israel’s history, all the vanities, follies, and great sins that brought about this terrible judgment from the Lord. The God of Israel never dispenses judgment without warning (Amos 3:7); and boy, had He sent His prophets to warn them time and time and time again! Yet, they “did secretly those things that were not right against the LORD their God” (17:9) AND “Notwithstanding, they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the LORD their God” (17:14).

While meditating upon these things, a bit of a fill-in-the-blank statement came to mind:

THAT SOUNDS A LOT LIKE …………………..

American Christian, how would you fill in that blank? If you’d write “Israel” or “the Jews,” you have a spiritual problem not unlike the very spiritual problem described in this chapter. You see, the right answer for any American is US — U.S., the United States of America and her churches. Israel’s history, as preserved for us in the Old Testament and apparent to this present day, serves two very important purposes: to TEACH us (Romans 15:4) and, as in passages like II Kings 17, to WARN us (I Corinthians 10:11).

Israel had the Word of God as a witness against her, and she hardened her neck. We American Christians of this present generation have two witnesses that stand against us, both the Word of God AND Israel’s history. And yet we, too, harden our necks, going along to get along while our country sticks a middle finger in God’s face every day, daring Him to act,  all the while thumbing our nose at one of the most important commandments our Messiah gave to us, His last command before returning to the right hand of the Father. It definitely wasn’t a “good suggestion.”

Who are we to point at finger at Israel? Who are you to point a finger at the Jew or to blame him for every evil in the world? We American Christians bear the responsibility for the evils of our nation, not Benjamin Netanyahu, not the IDF, and not any member of the Rothschild Family going all the way back to the middle ages. JD Rockerfeller wasn’t Jewish, by the way. He was of English ancestry and a professing Baptist!

In studying the Scriptures and meditating upon Israel’s history, as I did this morning, it should always be THE MIRROR BEFORE THE FINGER. Look in the mirror, Church, before you dare point a finger at the Jew. If we looked in the mirror first, perhaps our hearts would actually take our Lord’s Great Commission seriously, and perhaps our mouths would want to go share the Good News of the Gospel to the Jew and pray for his salvation instead of POINTING AND POSTING with the finger.

Wise Christians who truly fear God and His Word don’t judge Israel’s history. THEY LEARN FROM IT. And they approach passages like II Kings 17 with the same attitude that John Quincy Adams communicated to his son in the very same September letter cited above:

“ … I have always endeavored to read it with the same spirit and temper of mind which I now recommend to you. That is with the intention and desire that it may contribute to my advancement in wisdom and virtue. My desire is indeed very imperfectly successful, for like you & like the Apostle Paul, I find a law in my members warring against the law of my mind but as I know that it is my nature to be imperfect, so I know it is my duty to aim at perfection, and feeling and deploring my own frailties, I can only pray Almighty God for the aid of his spirit to strengthen my good desires and to subdue my propensities to evil—For it is from him that every good and every perfect gift descends.”

Read II Kings 17, my American Christian brethren, and “Consider your ways” (Haggai 1:5).