Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2928
“And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the LORD: therefore the LORRD sent lions among them, which slew some of them. They feared the LORRD and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from which they were carried away. Unto this day they continue practicing the same rituals: they fear not the LORRD.” 2 Kings 17:25,33,34.
THE world is full of deceptions and counterfeits. We have had to protect ourselves by law against adulterations of the most common articles of food, but all the laws in the world will not be able to protect us against the constant, the almost universal deceit which is found in daily life. Men seem continually to be set on making the worse appear the better—putting the bitter for the sweet and the sweet for the bitter. If any man shall go through this world with his eyes shut, believing all that he hears, he will find himself the dupe of a thousand knaves. You must keep your eyes open—you must carry a test with you by which you shall be able to discern between things that differ, or else in the ordinary affairs of life you will soon be brought to bankruptcy and poverty.
In the highest regions, also, where we have to do with spiritual and eternal things, there are even worse cheats than anywhere else! That old enemy of God and man who is rightly said to be a liar from the beginning, takes care to use falsehood in order, if it were possible, to deceive even the very elect. If there is a Christ, he sets up an antichrist. If there is a Church of Christ, he makes a world’s church that shall mimic it. If there is a Gospel, he, too, comes with his good news and sets up “another gospel, which is not another.” In the matters which concern the inner man—in the work of the Holy Spirit upon the soul—Satan is also adept at deception there. He can imitate repentance with remorse. He can match faith with credulity. He can mimic assurance with presumption. He can give us the pleasures of this world instead of the joy of the Lord and, instead of a simple confidence in Christ, he can offer us that which may look remarkably like it, and yet, after all, be confidence in self. Hence, one of the very first things that a man has to do if he would be right at last is to search his own heart, to test and try that which he supposes to be there whether it is the work of God or not— whether his spot is the spot of God’s children or only a vile imitation of it.
Conversion which is absolutely necessary to salvation—conversion by which man turns from sin to righteousness, from self to Christ, from the world to Heaven, from rebellion to obedience—conversion which we must all experience if we are to be right towards God, for, “except you are converted and become as little children you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven”—conversion, too, has been mimicked in many ways. In this discourse we are going to look at one instance in which the false has been put for the true in order that by the light of that instance, as by a beacon, we may be warned off this dangerous rock! Another man’s shipwreck ought always to be a beacon to us—so where these Samaritans failed, let us take heed unto ourselves lest we fall after the same fashion.
We shall have three points which will follow the order of the narrative. We shall look, first, at their first estate— “They feared not the Lord.” Secondly, their sham conversion—“They feared the Lord and served their own gods.” Thirdly, their real state while they professed thus to be converted—“They feared not the Lord.”
I. First, then, let us observe these Samaritans in THEIR FIRST ESTATE. They were brought, very likely much against their will, from different parts of the Assyrian empire and they were put down as colonists in the various towns which had formerly been occupied by the tribes of Israel. There they were compelled to dwell. They do not appear to have had any reverence for God at all. They were wholly indifferent ”They feared not the Lord.” They scarcely knew His
name and they seem to have made no inquiries. They found that the land was good and they tilled it. The vines were fruitful and they pruned them. The houses were built and they inhabited them. And thus they settled down. What did it matter to them about Jehovah? Who was He and what was He? No doubt there had been a people living there who more or less had reverenced His name, but what was that to them? They were strangers. It had never crossed their mind that they should be interfered with at all in the matter of worshipping Jehovah and so they lived altogether carelessly and indifferently. How many there are that are doing the same today—many who are altogether thoughtless about Divine things, taken up with trifles—occupied only with the things of this life. It does not seem to enter into their heads that they are immortal—that they will have to live in another state. As to their having a Creator and One who daily preserves them in life, no doubt they believe it, but they are not concerned about it! Practically they say, “Who is the Lord that we should obey His voice?” That was the condition of these Samaritans at the first. They were altogether indifferent to the matter. It never troubled them at all.