3.196 Trying to Have It Both Ways

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello, my friends. It's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve.

I've got a new word for you today. One that I came across in my studies of our reading in 2 Kings 16 through 25. That new word, syncretism.

I hadn't heard that one before, and as I did some research inside of this it's really kind of sticking with me, and I wanted to capture the thought here. Especially as we look at the results of syncretism inside of 2 Kings chapter 17. 16 and 17 are difficult chapters to read as we really get the full laundry list of what's making the children of Israel ultimately reject the Lord so much so that they're going to be scattered again. This is the most famous, I guess, most well-known time of the scattering of Israel as the Assyrians are going to come in and ultimately take them, whoever knows where, into the Northlands and basically disappear until the days of the gathering of Israel that we talked about in the front end of this week.

I want to get to our verse for today, which is ultimately the results of these things. And then I want to kind of back up to how in the world we got here. So our verse for today is 2 Kings 17, verse 23.

All of these things are happening. The children of Israel are making all these choices. We're going to get to those choices in just a second.

But ultimately it leads to verse 23. Until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets, so was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day. Here's the ultimate part where the Lord removes Israel from his sight.

And if you just read just that verse, you think, gosh, that seems awfully harsh. This is, you know, the Lord's covenant people. What could have possibly happened here?

Until you get studying 16 and 17 in the laundry list of things. I don't mean this to be an all-inclusive list, but just a few of the things that I've noticed inside of here that I made note of. The children of Israel make their high places and their groves.

And I've done a lot of study inside of that. Quite an interesting perspective there. I'll let you dive into what you can research on that side of things.

But their high places, their groves. We got child sacrifice here. Some of the darkest things happening here with child sacrifice becomes normal with the people here at the time.

They walk with the heathen. They follow the statutes of the heathen. Their neighbor countries that didn't follow the same beliefs that they did, they started to adopt those beliefs.

They did it secretly. They served idols. They made idols.

They practiced vanity. They practiced nature worship and worshiping the heavens, worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. They worshiped the stars and the moon and the sun.

They practiced divination, enchantments. The list continues to go on and on. And the interesting thing is I studied this and looked into this and really wanted to understand, it was the word that came up was syncretism.

And this is just a little understanding of what syncretism is. I'm still trying to study it, but I wanted to share it with you today. I learned that syncretism comes from the natural human tendency to blend beliefs when cultures mix, especially when God's people fail to stay distinct.

In the Old Testament, it arose as Israel lived among the Canaanites and other nations. Ultimately, what's the root of syncretism? It's a divided heart that prefers compromise over exclusive devotion.

Isn't that interesting? It's dividing. It's a concept of both/and.

It's a concept of saying, 'Well, yeah, I worship the Lord, but I'm open to do the things that you're doing as well.' And so rather than this singular eye, as Doctrine and Covenants would say, the 'eye single to the glory of God,' this is an eye that looks over there and says, 'Well, what have you got? Let's combine some of your practices in mine.' Asking for an eye single to the glory of God. That's some deep thinking I've got there.

I wanted to at least capture it here so that I've got it for my own studies going forward and also share it with you. Hoping that it does something to uplift and strengthen your studies inside of the things we can learn from the mistakes the children of Israel made in their time. That's all for today, my friends.

You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be Savory Salt. We will be here tomorrow, and we hope you are too.