1 Kings 16:15-28

Persistence in Sinful Ways

1 Kings 16:15

These Chapter s afford a dreary record of apostasy and revolution, of idolatry and national disaster. Perhaps the great mass of the people-the peasantry-were not greatly affected by these dynastic changes, though severe judgments of famine and drought were soon to make the nation realize what an evil and bitter thing it is to desert the Fountain of living waters for broken cisterns that can hold no water, Jeremiah 2:13. Four times in this chapter we meet the phrase, “provoke to anger,” 1 Kings 16:7; 1 Kings 16:13; 1 Kings 16:26; 1 Kings 16:33. To idolatry was added intemperance, 1 Kings 16:9, and the fruit was suicide, anarchy, and civil war, 1 Kings 16:18; 1 Kings 16:21. But great as these evils were, they were to be surpassed, I Kings 1 Kings 16:30.

The one sufficient bulwark against universal anarchy is the maintenance of true religion. People talk with glib tongues against the Puritan conscience and demand the secularization of the Lord's day, but they are surely imperiling the stability and order of the commonwealth. More than is ordinarily realized are the relations between man and man affected by the relation between the nation and God. The writings of Voltaire helped to bring on the French Revolution; while the religious revivals of the eighteenth century, both in England and in America, contributed greatly to solid national progress.