Keeping the Lions Away

If you didn’t read or can’t remember the previous post on 2 Kings 17, go back and read it a moment before continuing.

Another thing that strikes me about this incident is that the people who were trying to find out how to serve the Lord properly were basically just trying to get the lions to leave them alone. They were not really God’s chosen people. God had not rescued them from Egypt and guided them through the wilderness and given them the promises and commandments. He had given it to His people Israel who had just been exiled.

These people then tried to adopt enough of the right principles of worship, added to their own religious system to get them past the difficulties that the lions had brought to their villages.

Sometimes I think this is what’s happening in much evangelicalism today. People hear some watered down version of the gospel that doesn’t involve repentance or believing faith. They hear how God loves them and how He can help them have a more fulfilled life and so they pick up some of the routines and rituals of the worship of God and add this to the rest of their habits of life and think that things are going to be fine. They’re trying to keep the lions at bay.

But it doesn’t work. God will not share His glory with another. The passage in 2 Kings 36ff reads like this: “but the Lord, who brought you up from the land of Egypt with great power and outstretched arm, Him you shall fear, Him you shall worship, and to Him you shall offer sacrifice. And the statutes, the ordinances, the law, and the commandment which He wrote for you, you shall be careful to observer forever; you shall not fear other gods. And the covenant that I have made with you, you shall not forget, nor shall you fear other gods. But the Lord your God you shall fear; and He will deliver you from the hand of all your enemies.”