SOME MISTAKES AND THEIR LESSON.
By G.
While salvation is an individual matter, and individuals are held personally accountable for their acts as individuals, the work of the Lord in the earth is conducted through the medium of the people as a body. Be the body small or great numerically, God reckons with the body in blessings for faithfulness, or judgments for unfaithfulness. When Israel failed to enter the promised land by faith, there were some who had faith to go in, but all suffered the consequences of the great mistake. While many suffered the penalty of death, all had to undergo the ordeal of a thirty-eight years' wandering in the wilderness, with all the trials and hardships and temptations incident to that experience. When Achan transgressed the commandment of God in taking a wedge of gold and some raiment from Jericho, the whole nation suffered humiliation. When Joshua fell into the mistake of making a league with the Gibeonites (Joshua 9), the whole nation had to suffer the consequence; and not only the whole nation of that time, but those of many generations afterward. 2 Sam. 21:1-6. That league so bound the people that they never could drive out all the heathen, as God had designed. Yet, notwithstanding this great mistake, fraught with such consequences for many generations, the Lord did not remove Joshua from his position as leader. David made a great mistake, on one occasion, in numbering Israel; and he did it against the counsel of Joab, captain of his host. When David came to realize that he had committed sin, he was given the choice of three afflictions,—seven years of famine, or three months pursued by the enemies of Israel, or three days' pestilence in the land. Now the mistake was a sin of David individually, but these judgments, no matter which one he chose, involved much suffering among the people. “And David said unto God, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the Lord: for His mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hand of man. So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed; and there died of the people from Dan even to Beer-sheba seventy thousand men.” Thus was affliction brought upon the entire body through the sin of one man. But David was not removed from his position. Should the question be asked, Why did not the Lord remove Joshua when he made such a blunder in face of a positive injunction not to make a league with the people of Canaan (Deut. 7:2)? or, Why did He not remove David from being king, when he so flagrantly disobeyed the command of the Lord in numbering Israel (1 Chron. 21:1-4)? we have only to answer: (1) These men repented of their sins, and were forgiven; (2) The Lord knew that there were no men who would not make mistakes, no matter how plainly the testimony might be written. When the king of Babylon sent messengers to King Hezekiah, to congratulate him on his restoration to health, instead of telling them of the greatness and goodness of the God of heaven, who had healed him, Hezekiah showed the strangers his own greatness and wealth, including the valuable gold and silver vessels in the house of the Lord. This was a terrible mistake, for it not only dishonored God, but it naturally excited the covetousness of the Babylonians. And Isaiah the prophet delivered this message to him from the Lord: “Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, saith the Lord.” Isa. 39:6. Altho there was about a hundred years of respite for the people, the word of the Lord was eventually fulfilled. He permitted their enemies to carry them into captivity, to destroy their city, and to rob and demolish His own temple. The awful calamity came upon the whole nation. It might have been averted, had the people remained steadfast themselves. Did God design that this judgment should be permanent? No; it was designed for a lesson. They had withheld the honor due to God, and now they must pay for it. They had neglected to observe the Sabbath day, and were deprived of the fruits of the land, which now had a rest while they were serving their enemies. They had withheld their service of God, and their tithes and offerings, and now their great national institution, that had cost so many millions of dollars, was taken away from them. “There is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.” But the city and the house of God were to be restored; and because of a lack of faith, the work was done under the most trying circumstances. In a time of great financial distress, the command came to arise and build. The Lord did not want them to longer lie under the reproach of their humiliation in the presence of their enemies. It was no time to fall back and lay the blame of the situation on the men who had brought about the trouble in the first place. The mistake was Israel's mistake; the loss of their city and their great house of worship was Israel's loss. The duty to arise and build was Israel's duty. Israel's faith, however, was so weak, and they were so full of complaints and fears, that they built a house much inferior to the one that was destroyed because of their unfaithfulness. Then a man of the world, King Herod, took hold, and, in their stead, made it far greater and more magnificent, altho God had designed a much grander one. See Ezekiel 40-43. And the “Desire of all nations” honored this house with His personal Presence, and filled it with His glory, until His people again rejected His counsel and crucified Him. Now these lessons were written for those upon whom the end of the world should come. They are lessons first for the individual, and then for the body. A calamity to the hand is a calamity to the body. The healing of an injured limb is the healing of the body. A single defective member mars the symmetry of the body. G.