People who used to have a covenant with God Almighty, with Jehovah, people who, as we read about in the book of Deuteronomy, were admonished to teach their children so that they would know all of this law; amen?  So that the nations would fear them because they know they’re a people of the book, of the law of God.  The fear of the God that delivered them from Egypt, that reputation lived on in this region.  These are the people that God delivered from Egypt.  These are the people that crossed the Red Sea on dry land.  These are the people that put blood on the doorpost of their houses and the death angel passed over them, but every first child of Egypt died.  This is the reputation and they’re coming here.  It was that reputation that caused Rahab to repent and not betray the spies and, by her obedience, got her in the lineage of the Messiah.  Rahab escaped Jericho when those walls came down.  She turned her back on her culture; she turned her back on all of her relatives, blood, kin.  She turned her back on all of those molten, hand-made gods and recognized the one true living God; and God delivered her, praise God.

As these nations are being destroyed, as God was moving through, we know that the children of Israel failed in keeping all of those commandments to the nth degree.  Some were spared, some they feared and compromised with, those that possessed certain regions.  The continued dealings, then, with Moab and the Ammonites, but we see right here, as we’re looking at this hour, the age that they’re in, it says, “Therefore (verse 18) the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight… (only Judah remained) …also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel…”  Their brothers, the ten northern tribes, and we read on how they, then, came to be overcome.  The trials and tribulations that were coming upon them.  Verse 25 says that they gave no regard, there was no fear of God, and so the Lord sent lions among them that began to devour some of the people.  Then the King of Assyria said, “We need to send some priests up to this land because it’s obvious that the people of this land need to be re-instructed.”  In essence, what is being said, is they need to be re-educated in who their God is so their land is not overrun and turned back into a wilderness.  They are being destroyed, look at verse 26, because “…they know not the manner of the God of the land.”  I would say that describes Christianity today very well.

Most professed Christians have no understanding of the manner of God, who He really is.  There is such a lack of the fear of God—and I’m not talking about our nation, I’m not talking about pagans—I’m talking about mainline, traditional churches.  Mainline churches, Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, many of them today are ordaining homosexuals into the ministry.  What an abomination.  There is no clear distinction between the holy and the profane, and this lukewarmness that Jesus speaks of in the Book of Revelation, “Because of this lukewarmness, ‘I will spue thee out of my mouth.’”  The professed Christian church of America today is being vomited out through the justice and holiness of God.  But thank God He has a bride; amen?  Thank God Jesus has a lover of His soul, and He loves us, praise God.  “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine, (praise God) (Song of Solomon 6:3).  Can I ask you, in the midst of our society today, are you jealous for our God?  Are you jealous for your lover?  Will you stand by and let people profane Him and mock Him in our midst?  We read this book and it’s full of commandments and we despise them and mock them and walk after our own flesh and ease of life, weighted down by weights and sins, distracted by the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of things.

As you’re sitting there, and if it doesn’t apply to you then let it go by, praise God.  But if there is conviction in your hearts and your lives are not being lived and poured out because of your absolute love of God, compelled.  “I will run through a troop and leap over a wall just to get a glimpse of my lover!”  He says we have bold access, twenty-four hours a day, to come into His presence and how much time do we spend in prayer and say we love Him?  God is not a man that He should be mocked.  He’s not a man that He should lie.  If we look at the condition of the church; fifty percent of all fundamentalist, evangelicals who say they believe the Bible, who say Jesus died on the cross for their sins, answered the survey and say they believe there are multiple ways to God.  We sit here, and we can’t even imagine that.  Can you even imagine that coming out of your mouth?  What if the Lord tarries a couple more years?  We just talked about a young lady who sat here her whole life, where you are seated, and heard every teaching you ever heard and when it comes to real life, unable to apply it to any practical situation.  Why?  This chapter will tell you.  Let’s read on a couple of verses and let them go back and bring forth the understanding of the manner of their God.  “Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord.”