Serve Not as Israel, Who Failed, July 9

Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things. Deuteronomy 28:47. God chose Israel to reveal His character to men. He desired them to be as wells of salvation in the world. To them were committed the oracles of heaven, the revelation of God’s will.... But the people of Israel lost sight of their high privileges as God’s representatives. They forgot God, and failed to fulfil their holy mission. The blessings they received brought no blessing to the world. All their advantages they appropriated for their own glorification. They shut themselves away from the world in order to escape temptation. The restrictions that God had placed upon their association with idolaters as a means of preventing them from conforming to the practices of the heathen, they used to build up a wall of separation between themselves and all other nations. They robbed God of the service He required of them, and they robbed their fellow-men of religious guidance and a holy example.... The Jewish leaders thought themselves too wise to need instruction, too righteous to need salvation, too highly honored to need the honor that comes from Christ. The Saviour turned from them to entrust to others the privileges they had abused and the work they had slighted.—The Acts of the Apostles, 14-16. “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” is Christ’s command to His followers. Not that all are called to be ministers or missionaries in the ordinary sense of the term; but all may be workers with Him in giving the “glad tidings” to their fellow-men. To all, great or small, learned or ignorant, old or young, the command is given.—Education, 264.