THE importance of everything connected with Israel's history and Israel's hopes receives
striking illustration and proof in a passage but little thought of in the present day: " When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance " (Deut. 32:8, 9). The distribution of mankind into nations took place more than one hundred years before the birth of Abraham, and Israel had no national existence for nearly five hundred years after this; and yet we are told in the passage before us, that Israel was so present then to the thoughts and purposes of God, and occupied in these purposes so central and important a place, that when he, the Most High, separated the sons of Adam, dividing to the nations their inheritance, he set the bounds of the people—that is, he arranged the situation and extent of their several empires—according to the number of the children of Israel. Israel's failure on trial has resulted in quite a different state of things,—an arrangement of the nations which seems to have no regard whatever to Israel and their land. But it is only for a time. God has not relinquished his intention to make Israel the center of the nations, and their beloved city the metropolis of the whole earth. The testimony which Scripture renders to this is the subject of the two following lectures. My present object is rapidly to sketch the process by which they have reached their present abject, scattered state. Their future prophetic history is so linked with all that is recorded of them in the past, that we cannot so well consider the subject of their future restoration without glancing, however briefly, at what has occurred to them in times gone by.
It was the abandonment by mankind of the worship of the true God, and the success of Satan in leading them into idolatry, that formed the occasion on which God called Abraham the father of this people; thus separating to himself both Abraham and his posterity forever. We learn from Rom. i. how men, " when they knew God, glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." Because of this, we are told, God gave them up to uncleanness,—to vile affections; in a word, to all the unmeasured horrors of paganism in its various forms. " Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate (or undiscerning) mind, to do those things which are not convenient." They gave God up for idols; and God gave them up, in consequence, to dishonor themselves and one another. But, while thus for a time abandoning the nations to the fruit of their own ways, he would not leave himself without a testimony on earth to his supreme Godhead, and to the happiness of those, who, blest with his immediate presence and government, were obedient to his laws. " And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor; and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him through all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed," &c. (Joshua 24:2, 3). By the call of God, Abraham was thus separated from the guilty, idolatrous mass, to be the depositary of God's promises, and the witness to his title and his claims.
The promises made to Abraham were unconditional and absolute. They included a great deal besides the possession of the land of Canaan; but they certainly embraced this in the most explicit terms. " And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land " (Gen. xii. 7). " And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward; for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever... Arise, walk through the land, in the length of it, and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee (chap. 13:14 -17). Abraham was apprised, indeed, that it was not immediate possession of the land which was to be given him. " And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years: and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance " (chap. 15:13, 14). The land is then given to Abraham by covenant, and its boundaries most accurately defined. "In the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the River Euphrates: the Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites " (verses 18 -21). The promise of the land was repeated to Isaac (chap. 26:3), and to Jacob (chap. 28:13, 14).
Such were the promises made to the patriarchs. How touching is the first reference afterward made to them in Ex. 2:24! All had come to pass according to God's word. They had gone down into Egypt, and been afflicted there in a land that was not their own. The four hundred years were expiring, and their affliction was at its height. "And God heard their groaning; and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob." So surely will God yet remember the same covenant, on behalf of the same people, amid the far deeper afflictions which yet await them.
It was in pure goodness, and on the ground of this unconditional covenant with their fathers, that God delivered Israel out of Egypt. They were a wicked and gainsaying, and, withal, a self-righteous people; and they manifested this both in Egypt and immediately after their deliverance from it But God wrought for his own name's sake. He bare with all their waywardness; each time they murmured, he manifested himself in fuller grace; and all this continued till they reached the foot of Sinai. There Moses was directed of God to propose to them that they should be placed under law, and enjoy their promised blessings conditionally on their obedience. We are not told what the result would have been had they humbly confessed their inability to keep God's law, and entreated that they might still have their blessing on the tenure of the unconditional covenant long before made with their fathers. Had there been in them a heart for this, they would not have needed to be put to the test of the law given on Sinai: God knew well the pride and self-sufficiency of their hearts; though they, alas knew it not. The fact was, they undertook to keep the law; promising and vowing, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do." (Ex. 19:8; 24:3; see also verse 7 of the same chapter.) It was thus with their full consent that they were placed under a covenant of works.
The result is well known. Before the words had well passed their lips, they were defiling themselves with idols at the foot of that mount of terror, at the sight of which they had but lately so feared and quaked. I do not enter into the particulars of what passed. God's relations with them were restored through the mediation of Moses; and they were again, with certain modifications, placed under a covenant of works. It was under such a covenant that they entered the land of Canaan. Deut. 28 gives us the terms of it very plainly. Continuance in the land, with all kinds of temporal blessings there, are promised in the case of their obedience. Visitations of wrath, one after another, the inflictions becoming heavier and heavier, till they should be rooted out of the land, are threatened in case of their disobedience and obstinate rebellion. How accurately and minutely have all these predictions been fulfilled! It is after all this has been spread out before them, in this chapter and in the next, that we read, " And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart and with all thy soul; that when the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all nations whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee (chap. 30:1-3). We have a similar promise in Lev. 26:40-45.
Israel's history in the land, all are familiar with. The Book of Judges shows how soon they began to depart from the Lord and how, by one enemy after another, he chastened them for their iniquities. In the days of Samuel, their sin, and especially that of the priesthood, brought on a dreadful crisis, in which God suffered his own ark to be taken captive by the enemy. After its restoration they desired a king, and God granted them their request. He first gave them a king after their own hearts, who ended his days in disgrace on the mountains of Gilboa. Then God placed over them the man after His own heart,—David, of whose seed, according to the flesh, Christ is, who is God over all, blessed forever. With David, God made another covenant, in part conditional, and in part unconditional (2 Sam. 7:10-16). As to his offspring who immediately succeeded him on the throne, their retention of the throne, and the blessing of the nation under their sway, depended on their obedience; and, if they disobeyed, they were to be chastised. But the covenant was so far unconditional, that God's mercy was never to be finally removed from David's house. There was to be one proceeding from his bowels, who was, without fail, to sit upon his throne; and in him was to be accomplished the faithful word, " And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever before thee; thy throne shall be established forever." We need not be told who is this blessed Son of David,—the Heir of God's throne and kingdom.
The times of David and Solomon form the brightest period in the past history of Israel. Each constitutes a striking type of the future reign of Christ. David's conquests depict to us the triumphs of Jesus when he comes as the Lion of the tribe of Judah; while the peaceful reign of Solomon is, perhaps, the liveliest type of the millennial reign of Christ which Scripture anywhere affords. But it was only for a brief space. Solomon was corrupted by his wives, and fell into idolatry. Ten tribes revolted from his son, and became a separate kingdom, of which Jeroboam was king, and of which afterward Samaria was the capital. The history of this kingdom was one of uninterrupted and increasing wickedness down to the end; when, in Hosea's day, they were carried away captive by the Assyrians, and have never been restored.
The patience of God waited still with the kingdom of Judah, until the iniquity of David's house made it impossible for him any longer to bear with either. Jerusalem was taken; the temple was destroyed; and the Jews were carried away captive to Babylon. The throne of God no longer existed at Jerusalem. Power was given into the hands of the Gentiles, and has remained with them till now. With Nebuchadnezzar the times of the Gentiles, and the captivity and dispersion of the Jews, alike commenced A remnant, indeed, returned in the days of Cyrus: for what end, and with what result, we shall soon see. But, as to the nation at large, dispersion and captivity have been their lot, from Shalmaneser's and Nebuchadnezzar's days down to the present time.