The Old Testament presents much of Israel’s history in very negative terms. Though God had demonstrated His goodness to them, particularly in bringing them out of Egypt, He had to say of them: “My people would not hearken to My voice” (Ps 81:11). They were God’s people in the sense that He had revealed Himself to them as the true God, and that was just one of their many privileges. But not only had they privileges; they had special responsibilities – they were obliged to be faithful to Him, to obey all that He commanded them.
Yet, time and again, the Israelites went their own way. And they found that “the way of transgressors is hard” (Prov 13:15) – not only in terms of wars, invasions and captivity – but also because, apart from God’s abounding grace, the way of transgressors leads to eternal destruction. When they would not listen to God’s directions – when He said, “My people would not hearken to My voice” – then He indicated His displeasure by declaring, “I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust”. And that was more serious than all the wars, invasions and captivity that the nation had to endure; it was confirming them in their sin and their neglect of God, leaving them to continue in the broad way, which leads to eternal destruction.
Clearly, neither Britain, or any other country which has seen many conversions, and has experienced much of God’s restraining grace in bringing about a considerable degree of outward obedience to God’s commandments in society generally, can be described as God’s people in the same sense as Israel. Yet there are many parallels between the way God deals with such nations and the way He dealt with ancient Israel.
What we have seen in Britain for several generations now is an increasing unwillingness to listen to what God has to say. Time was when most people accepted that the Bible is divine, even if they did not care to put that idea into practice by believing its teachings and obeying its commands. But leading ministers and teachers of theology began to cast doubt on the accuracy of God’s Word. Some of them no doubt wished to make a name for themselves by their brilliant articles and books, and in many cases God allowed them to end their careers under the glow of fulsome praise from their fellow scholars. But He had given them over to their delusions. And so, like the Israelites, “they walked in their own counsels”. God left them to follow their own ideas; they were not brought back to the truth.
In the course of time, their undermining of the authority of Scripture had unwelcome consequences for themselves in the widespread, severe decline in church attendance that has continued till today. They were not willing to listen to what God revealed and, in many cases, what is preached in churches today is largely, if not entirely, unprofitable and downright dangerous. When ministers preach from what they present as an unreliable Bible, it is scarcely surprising that people do not attend their services. Yet even if such people cannot find profitable preaching in their vicinity, they could read the Bible and seek the Lord in the homes. The fact is that they have no will to do so and God gives them over to their sinful desires, especially their wish to find enjoyment apart from God. He has left generation after generation to walk “in their own counsels” – following their own sinful ideas and the godless ideas that circulate among their friends and in the media.
We might similarly trace the decline in moral values through the liberalisation of divorce, the legalisation of homosexuality and abortion and on to the introduction of same-sex marriage. At the various stages in this process, people may have felt that it was impossible to go any further, but society and the legislature did go further. Yet what God did at each stage in the process was to give them up to their own godless thinking.
For God to give a generation up to follow their own counsels is the most severe judgement possible. If judgements such as wars, famines, or epidemics fall on a generation, there is hope that people may recognise their dangerous spiritual position and turn to God in repentance. But if God gives people up to their lusts finally, to reject the authority of the Bible and to live as if there is no God, there can be no hope.
Does that mean that the situation today is absolutely hopeless? No, it is not. For God is a God of grace; He is willing to bless the unworthy. In the days of the judges in Israel, the people time and again forsook God; they would not listen to Him. And He gave them over, for a time, to live according to their own sinful desires. Yet when they pled with Him to deliver them from the judgements that they experienced, He showed His mercy and delivered them. After the long years of captivity which were the result of Israel and Judah forsaking the true God for false gods, He returned and not only restored the people to their own land, but also began to “sprinkle clean water upon them” (Ezek 36:25) in saving mercy.
Now there is today a remnant according to the election of grace, as there was among the captives in Babylon. God has not left Britain, for example, without some who truly value the Scriptures, look to Christ for the salvation revealed there and seek to follow Him in all the ways of new obedience. They may be few, but “the effectual fervent prayer of [even one] righteous man availeth much” (Jas 5:16). How God’s children should pray that the Church would be built up through the conversion of multitudes!
Alexander Moody Stewart, the nineteenth-century Edinburgh minister, has written thus on “Jesus stilling the tempest” on the Lake of Galilee: “Jesus in the ship does not save it from jeopardy, till He is called upon and awoke by prayer. He seems to take no charge of it till then, not even of His own personal interest in it. So He often appears not to care even for His cause and kingdom, till called upon to arise and help us. It is not because He forgets, but because He would be entreated by us to stretch forth His arm to save.”1
Yet God’s children have been praying, though doubtless they have not been as earnest or as persistent as they should have been. Accordingly they should begin by asking for more of the Spirit of prayer – the Holy Spirit working more powerfully in their souls and pouring into them the grace that they need to send up believing petitions to heaven, on the basis of Scripture teaching, for a spiritual transformation of society.
If God’s children have been praying, one might ask, where is the answer? A first response to this question is: God is still delivering sinners out of Satan’s kingdom. Converts may be few, but God has not allowed His Church to die out. Indeed He never will, for there always will be those who fear God “as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations” (Ps 72:5). Second, God is sovereign as to when He will answer prayer. The prayers of God’s children are not rejected. Whenever it will please God to return in power and bring multitudes into His kingdom at once, it will be in answer, not only to the prayers offered up in that generation, but also to the prayers of many previous generations.
We do not know when God will give that answer, when He will come to any part of His Church, or to many parts of it, to bless His Word on a large scale. Nor do we know how much lower He may allow His Church, and society in general, to drift before He gives that blessing. We have to confess that our “iniquities have separated” between us and our God (Is 59:2). This should make us mourn; it should make us seek repentance; but it should not leave us in despair. We are to remember that God is gracious, and accordingly we are to come before Him pleading, for the sake of the blessed Saviour, that He would return to revive His work – gathering multitudes of sinners out of darkness into His marvellous light.
1A Moody Stuart, Capernaum, London, 1863, p 230.