Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 723
Delivered on Sunday Morning, December 2, 1866
“Lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood.” Deuteronomy 29:18.
THE people of Israel, after all the wonderful things which God had done for them, should have felt themselves bound forever to their father’s God. They had received the clearest possible proof that Jehovah alone was the living and true God. How could they debase themselves to worship graven images when they had seen such signs and wonders worked by their great I AM? Surely idolatry after such a history as theirs must have been sinful to the worst degree.
They were, however, in great danger from two or three circumstances which in the chapter before us are set before them as a ground of caution. “You know how you dwelt in the land of Egypt,” is the first caution. They had dwelt so long in the midst of the idolatrous Egyptians that it would have been strange if they had not become tinctured with the idolatrous spirit which was so powerful in the land of Ham. Alas, Israel’s hosts drank deep into Egypt’s superstitions, and not long had they been in the wilderness before they made a golden ox, contemptuously called by Moses a golden calf, in imitation of the ox so solemnly adored in Egypt.
Probably the mixed multitude never wholly ceased from idol-worship, for we find it said in Amos, “Have you offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? And you have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which you made to yourselves.” The Egyptians were infamous among all nations as almost indiscriminate worshippers of innumerable objects. They not only worshipped beasts, comely in proportion and useful to men, but they bowed down before the snake and the crocodile. They worshipped the beetle that is engendered from filth and the frog that comes up from the slime. “Oh, happy nation,” says one of the old satirists, “whose gods grow in their own gardens,” for they actually bowed down before onions and leeks, as though these were the gods that made Heaven and earth!
Knowing, as we do, that depraved nature is so strongly inclined to worship visible objects, we do not wonder that the contagion of Egyptian idolatry infected the children of Israel. Remember again, that in passing through the wilderness, all the people that Israel came in contact with for forty years were idolaters. With the exception of Moses’ father-in-law, who may have been a priest of God, a spiritual worshipper, it does not appear that there were any tribes on the face of the earth that worshipped the Most High. When the children of Israel passed by Moab or Edom, or when they came into contact with the subjects of Sihon or Og, they found them all prostrate in the same reverence of idols, bowing down before abominations—idols of wood and silver and gold.
We are all too much affected by our surroundings. The imitative faculty is very forcible, especially in a direction pleasing to our fallen nature. And when these people found themselves to be singular and alone, worshipping God whom they could not see, while their neighbors practiced gorgeous rites and mystic ceremonies, it is no wonder that they were strongly tempted to set up idols. Yet further, when they had passed through the forty years in the wilderness, what kind of country were they to enter into? Not a land in which there was a temple to Jehovah—or where the inhabitants would all assist them in cultivating the worship of the only true God—but a land that was full of idols! Where every green hill was consecrated to a false deity. Where the stones of the valley were piled up into a thousand altars. Where every city had its own peculiar deity!
The country was full of temptations to allure them from allegiance to the true God. Israel should have been faithful under every test, but he who knows what is in man will perceive the need of the heavenly caution, and of the warning of our text by which the Lord assured His people that to rebel against Him would be to plant a root that bears gall and wormwood.
Let us apply their history to ourselves. Remember the Egypt out of which we have been redeemed by mighty Grace! Remember the sins which once had the mastery over us! Do we wear no relics of our bondage? Is it so easy to shake off old habits? Is there no hankering after the flesh pots of worldly pleasure? I am sure we have to protest before the Lord’s people that we are in very great danger from our former habits, and that the twitching of the old Adam are not things to be laughed at! Would not our evil hearts soon lead us back to our old slavery if the Grace of God did not prevent it?
Look, moreover, at the people among whom we dwell! Is this vain world a friend to Divine Grace? Do you not, on the contrary, find it to be your perpetual foe? Why, you cannot go out into your trade, or follow your occupation—no, worse—you cannot even tarry at home without meeting with temptations! This world does not worship the true God. It bows down before gods of its own choosing. They may not be of wood or stone, but they are, nonetheless, dangerous! Men say unto their lusts or to their pleasures, to their persons, their intellects, their gains, “These are our gods! These are the pursuits which we count worthy of our immortal minds!”