Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2306
“Nevertheless they shall be his servants; that they may know My service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.” 2 Chronicles 12:8.
THE people of God had left their God and He had left them, so that Shishak, the king of Egypt, came against them, and though the Lord had respect to their humble prayer and would not suffer Shishak to destroy Jerusalem, yet He brought them into subjection to the Egyptian king. Our text tells us the reason for this servitude—“They shall be his servants; that they may know My service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.”
Beloved Friends, the children of Israel were bound to the service of God. Jehovah had chosen them out of all the nations of the world to be His people. He had committed the Holy Oracles to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—they were, from before the foundation of the world, set apart in the eternal purpose to be the Lord’s. That highly honorable and gracious choice ought to have bound them to His service. In addition to this, they were called out by His own voice. Their father, Abraham, was fetched out from Ur of the Chaldees where he served other gods, and he was led to know Jehovah and to follow Him. He walked with God and God was very familiar with him, so that He spoke with him as a man speaks with his friend. All along the ages God called His people out from the world. Especially did He call them out of Egypt, delivering them out of the house of bondage with a high hand and with an outstretched arm. He led them through the wilderness, fed them with manna and instructed them and, in this way, He separated them to be His own peculiar portion beyond all the sons of men. By their calling, then, as well as by their election, they were bound to keep close to the one living and true God.
And above this, as if to make them doubly His own, He entered into a Covenant with them. It was first made with Abraham, then it was renewed with Isaac and with Jacob. The Covenant was still further ratified in the wilderness where the Lord promised that when they came into Canaan, He would be their God and He would bless them. But He stipulated that they must obey His voice, cling to Him and have Him, only, to be their God. Also His Word and His Law were to be the rule and guide of their life. This Covenant, God always kept, but the people broke it very soon, so that Moses shattered the tablets of stone, a fit symbol of the way in which Israel broke the Law of God!
Is it not very sad to think that the great God, who made the heavens and the earth, should have but one nation out of all the inhabitants of the world—and these His by choice, by calling and by Covenant—and yet that they should continually grow weary of Him? Other peoples did not change their gods. It was a rare thing for a nation to cast away its idols in those days. But Israel, which alone had the true God, while the rest had gods that were only idols, quit the living and true God to set up in His place the gods of the heathen which could do them no good!
Now, this phenomenon of human nature, this going after idols and leaving the true God, is constantly being renewed. We have the same thing, even, in the Church of God, which never seems to be satisfied with chaste love for Christ, but continually goes after one strange lover and another. Thus Christ’s pure Truth is left for some brilliant error! And His simple worship is deserted for some invention of man! Even when God spoke by His servant, Shemaiah, the Prophet, the men of Judah were itching to be after their idols and panting to get away from God! And the Lord said, “Inasmuch as they have forsaken Me, I have left them in the hand of Shishak, and they shall be his servants; that they may know My service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.”
I. In considering these words, tonight, I shall say, first, that THERE ARE SOME WHO HAVE ALREADY CHOSEN THE SERVICE OF THE KINGDOMS OF THE COUNTRIES.
We have many round about us who have deliberately chosen not to serve God, but to serve other masters. O Beloved, if you have chosen to serve God, it is because God has chosen you! If I am speaking, tonight, to any of you whose one objective in life is God’s Glory, who can truly say that you live as in the fear of God, and before Him, endeavoring to please Him—that is evidence of a work of Grace within your heart. You are very grateful that such a work of Grace has been worked upon you, but how many there are of our follow men who have chosen some other god and some other way of living!
Some choose to be the slaves of open sin. Hardly, I think, would they choose such slavery if they really knew all that it included, but they have chosen it practically. How many there are who are the devotees of drunkenness! Ah, me, what can they see in Bacchus that they should worship him? Others are the slaves of licentiousness. I need not mention the forms of uncleanness in which so many wallow in this foul city of ours, where the temptation to sin is in every street. The forms of evil are many—I need not mention them, for, if I did, I might omit one and then, perhaps, the person who is under its influence might fancy that I did not think it to be a sin! But if you choose to live for sinful pleasure, let me tell you that you have entered upon a servitude compared with which the service of God is light and pleasant, indeed. Whatever the strictest form of religion may require of you, it will never demand of you so much as vicious pleasures will. I could stand here and tell of cases that have come under my own notice, of men and women who, in pursuit of sin, have brought themselves to beggary. Have I not seen the son of honest and godly parents clothed in rags and covered with vermin, so that when I spoke to him, I could not, with the utmost sympathy, dare to come within an arm’s length of him?