Hardened their necks

 2Ki 17:13  Yet the LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets. 

2Ki 17:14  Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the LORD their God. 

The Lord testified against Israel through His prophets. The Lord spoke to turn Israel back to Him. Notice the plural "prophets" not one but all of the prophets were sent to turn Israel back. They did not succeed.

They hardened their necks and would not believe in the Lord God. Just like their fathers.

The Lord ,long suffering and slow to wrath, sent all of the prophets to turn the Israelites back to Him. They refused.

2Ki 17:18  Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only. 

2Ki 17:19  Also Judah kept not the commandments of the LORD their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made. 

2Ki 17:20  And the LORD rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight. 

The Lord cast His people, His chosen, out of His sight. He allowed them to be spoiled, sold into slavery.

So very often we talk of God's hand on His people for blessing but this, in detail, tells us what happens when the Hand of God is removed off His people.

So often we talk of being in the dispensation of Grace, and we live as if there will never be any judgment, but at what point do we grieve God, and His Spirit before He removes His hand from us? From the "Christians" of today?

The removal of the hand of God is different than the removal of the Spirit of God at the rapture. Do not confuse the two. The removal of the hand of God is often used as a chastening, a reminder to His people that they only got where they were by the Hand of God, the blessings of God, the Providence of God.

When all of that is taken for granted, and God is removed from society, then the removal of God's hand of blessing is imminent. 

How does a society know when they are at that point?

Well in the Book of Judges it was when every man did that which was right in his own eyes. In Kings it is when the Kings led the people astray and into idol worship, when they became as the heathen.

When the hand of God is removed from His people, there is turmoil.

His people, turned from Him. His people turned to others gods they sacrificed their children in the fires of moloch. They did that which was not right in the eyes of God.

Even then God was all about choice, personal choice. The Israelites did not choose God, they chose idols, they chose what the world around them was doing.

I can not speak for the world but I can speak for America, where the church has conformed to the world, accepting their standards, their rules, their gods.

The christians are now no different than the world they are trying to reach. They, the christians, or at least the greater majority of professing christians, are no different than the ones they are supposed to be the light to. The world has gone dark, the light has dimmed, no longer is there a bastion of Christ, it is now small pockets, no longer lighting up the dark but a candle in the wind.

We see so many "mega-churches" but watered down or false Gospel. So many profess Christ, but they have no testimony to back it up.

God has sent all the prophets to warn us, to tell the people to return to Him. Yet we have refused. We have allowed so many into the church that have no knowledge of the very God they profess to serve. We have made the "church" a laughingstock instead of a place of respect, life altering change, and holiness. The world told us we could not be as we are supposed to be, Holy as Christ is Holy, we had to be silent, and as them. The worst part is that we listened to them. We let them silence us so that we didn't lose our jobs, our livelihood, and now we pay the price. Remember the old saying? Give an inch take a mile?

Lately I have been harping on this but it is true none the less. We are going to church to go to church. We are not going to church to meet God. We are not going to church to hear God. We are going to church because it is something we are expected to do yet we never get to the God that wants us to be there, longs to meet with us, is eager to talk to us and have a relationship with us.

We are marking off a to do list. 

We have hardened our necks and not turned back to the God of our Fathers. We have tried to win the world from the very mud pit they are in. It will not work.

Not until we learn that we must bow to God, return to His Ways, repent, cast off the world, and be the light of the World.

1Jn 2:15  Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 

1Jn 2:16  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 

1Jn 2:17  And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.