Thus has it ever been when the twin evils of either narrow party spirit or broad latitudinarianism have been allowed to do their deadly and soul-destroying work. The one makes bigoted fanatics, who imagine that all divine counsels centre in themselves, and become intolerant, formal and exacting. The other produces careless, pleasure-loving “broad-churchmanlike” professors, who are indifferent to all that is vital in religion, content to have a form of godliness while denying its power.
For us, who are seeking to learn lessons of practical value from all this, one thing stands out as a solemn warning: the people of the Jews had largely lost that godly separation and dependence which should have been their sanctification. In their distresses, in place of implicit reliance on the God of their fathers, they turned to alliances with the heathen, depending on an arm of flesh that often failed them, and was to be their ruin in the end. Who that is even ordinarily familiar with the history of the Church, can fail to see that the same snare has ever been the bane of every movement which in its early beginnings was marked by devotedness to Christ and reliance upon the living God, but which as the freshness of early days passed away, and numbers were added who had obtained the truth at little cost (often coming into it almost by natural birth), lost this peculiar link with the Divine, and depended more and more on what was merely human? This is the weakness of practically every religious society, and no company of Christians can afford to be indifferent to the danger of such a course. Power and blessing, victory and spiritual freshness are the portion of those who cleave to the Lord alone. Weakness and barrenness as surely follow upon amalgamation with the world, as in the case of the Jews in the days upon which we have been dwelling.
Jonathan was solemnly robed in the high-priestly garments, which he assumed for the good of his people. Yet it is clear that all this was opposed to the plain word of God. Trusting to or acting in the flesh to procure a desirable end, can never be of the Holy Spirit.
His reign was somewhat lengthy (twenty-seven years), and in his later years he vigorously carried on his policy of subjugating and proselytizing by force the surrounding nations, who were given the alternative of submitting to circumcision or being put to death. He died in 79 B.C., and in his will directed that his body be given to his old opponents the Pharisees to do with it as they would. This unexpected submission of the grim warrior so surprised and pleased them that they buried him in great honor.
The Pharisees were still the dominant party in Jerusalem, while the king was openly a Sadducee. He detested the strictness of the separatists and publicly defied them on one memorable occasion by pouring the water from the Pool of Siloam upon the ground instead of the altar, at the feast of tabernacles. This was a ceremony prescribed, not in the law, but the ritual, and referred to by our Lord in John 7:37, 38. A terrible uproar was precipitated by what the Pharisees regarded as a sacrilegious act, and Alexander called in his foreign troops to quell the riot. So fearful was the disturbance, that ere it was put down six thousand people had been slain. But this was only the beginning. Rebellion and insurrection broke out everywhere, and before peace was established some fifty thousand persons were killed.
For us, who are seeking to learn lessons of practical value from all this, one thing stands out as a solemn warning: the people of the Jews had largely lost that godly separation and dependence which should have been their sanctification. In their distresses, in place of implicit reliance on the God of their fathers, they turned to alliances with the heathen, depending on an arm of flesh that often failed them, and was to be their ruin in the end.
familiar with the history of the Church, can fail to see that the same snare has ever been the bane of every movement which in its early beginnings was marked by devotedness to Christ and reliance upon the living God, but which as the freshness of early days passed away, and numbers were added who had obtained the truth at little cost (often coming into it almost by natural birth), lost this peculiar link with the Divine, and depended more and more on what was merely human?
He ever emphasized the supreme importance of the word of God, though he himself was looked up to in later days as if among the inspired, and in this we have another serious lesson for our own times. For there is the constant danger of either setting aside God-given teachers, or else actually allowing their ministry to supersede the Bible. Such men would indeed be the last to wish that such a place be given them. The object of all divinely-gifted servants of God would be to assert the authority of Scripture; their one desire in oral or written ministry would be the elucidation of the Word, and recalling the people of God to the Book, in place of giving them a substitute for it. But again and again has the ministry of great gifts, justly valued, been put in place of the Word of the living God, and thus made into a creed, which to maintain is to be orthodox, and to vary from is to be accounted heterodox.
The Old Testament closes with the people of the Jews partially restored to their land, but under Persian dominion. The New Testament opens with the same people greatly multiplied and dwelling in the the same country, but under Roman sway, and yet with an Edomite vice-king exercising jurisdiction over part of the land.
