“But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries,” Exodus 23:22.
The words of our text clearly suggest that there is an alternative outcome to the response from the Lord to the obedience of those who heed His voice and keep His Word!
If there is disobedience on the part of His people, then He will act as an enemy toward them and they shall be overcome by their adversaries!
The implied threat of the above words was enacted upon at the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonian army.
“How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger! The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied: he hath thrown down in his wrath the strong holds of the daughter of Judah; he hath brought them down to the ground: he hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof. He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about. He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire. The Lord was as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel, he hath swallowed up all her palaces: he hath destroyed his strong holds, and hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation,” Lamentations 2:1-5.
These words were written by Jeremiah in the wake of the siege and horrific overthrow of Judah and the massacre of thousands and the captivity and scattering of many more in the years BC 587/586.
Jeremiah, the faithful prophet, unheeded and despised, had warned of the consequences of disobedience of God’s Word and a casting aside of His truth.
“Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee; lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited. Thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall throughly glean the remnant of Israel as a vine: turn back thine hand as a grapegatherer into the baskets. To whom shall I speak, and give warning, that they may hear? behold, their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken: behold, the word of the LORD is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it. Therefore I am full of the fury of the LORD; I am weary with holding in: I will pour it out upon the children abroad, and upon the assembly of young men together: for even the husband with the wife shall be taken, the aged with him that is full of days. And their houses shall be turned unto others, with their fields and wives together: for I will stretch out my hand upon the inhabitants of the land, saith the LORD. For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely,” Jeremiah 6:8-13.
Now he explains how that which he warned of has come to pass!
“Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy . . . Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward,” Lamentations 1:5, 8.
It has to be noted, dear Christian, that the Lord still acts toward disobedience today as He did back some two and half millennia ago!
Men, many of them professing to be Christians, have put forth the false notion that the God of the Old Testament no longer exists. He has changed. He no longer acts now as He did back then! That is a lie of the devil!
The Lord has clearly stated that He is immutable! The Shorter Catechism states (Answer to Question 4): ‘God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.’
With Him there is “no variableness, neither shadow of turning,” James 1:17. He makes this so very clear. “For I am the LORD, I change not,” Malachi 3:6.
That being so, disobedience by His people and an abandoning of the path He would have us walk in, will be followed by a withdrawing of His favour and the lifting of the hand of His blessing and a subsequent descent of a night of trouble and distress, the setting of the sun on a day of blessing and heavenly goodness!
Did the Saviour not indicate, back in the days of the apostles, that such was the harvest of sin?
“Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent,” Revelation 2:5.
“So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth,” Revelation 2:15-16.
“Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee,” Revelation 3:3.
“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth,” Revelation 3:15-16.
The principle embodied in these warnings is set down in those well known words of Paul.
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting,” Galatians 6:7-8.
How often Christians have quoted those words to unsaved men and woman BUT they apply equally to Christians also! Sin is always followed by a harvest of judgment!
Here in Ulster, we cannot but see that, day by day, we are sliding further into a ‘United Ireland’ and out of the United Kingdom.
The possibility of being under ‘Dublin Rule’, which was deemed by our forefathers as being under ‘Rome Rule’, was such a dreadful prospect that they banded together to form ‘The Ulster Volunteer Force’ and armed themselves in readiness to resist any attempt by a treacherous London Government to force such a political change on them!
But for the refusal of some senior British Army officers, stationed at the Curragh army camp in Co. Kildare, to obey orders and enforce the Home Rule Bill should it become law, who knows what would have happened.
The ‘Curragh incident’ of March 1914 saw 57 British Army officers, led by Brigadier-General Hubert Gough, threaten resignation rather than obey orders to move against the Ulster Volunteers opposing Home Rule.
That defiance, coupled with the outbreak of World War I, stopped the implementation of the ‘Home Rule Bill’ and resulted in the establishing, in 1921, of Northern Ireland.
The Ulster Volunteers readily volunteered to fight for the government that was ready to sell us out to our enemies and they thus demonstrated where their loyalties lay.
Sadly, that sacrifice by Ulster men was never duly recognised. Some tens of thousands of UVF men were killed and wounded serving the British government in WWI, but there has been a persistent spirit of treachery shown by London toward the cause of the Ulster Protestant, culminating in the present situation where London is blatantly allied with Dublin and its interests and has aided the activities of the terrorists of the IRA and their political mouthpiece, Sinn Fein.
IRA leaders, such as McGuinness, have been lifted and laid and honoured and fêted in a manner in which no Unionist leader was ever treated.
Yes, the British Army was sent to fight the IRA and many brave soldiers along with local security force members were murdered, but at all times the British government hindered the full force of the military resources to be used against the IRA. That was because they ultimately wished for the republican terrorists’ objectives to be successful!
These facts have played an important part in bringing about our present situation.
However, there was treachery on a greater scale found amongst the Protestant people!
Our Province has known many divine visitations whereby we were blessed and preserved. 1644, 1690, 1798, 1859, 1920s and the 1960s — these times all were marked by the blessing of God strengthening our cause and reversing the advances of popery, terrorism, the infiltration of false doctrine and the anti-Gospel influences resident amongst us.
While there is a professed remembrance of God’s past mercies, such as is witnessed on the ‘12th July’, such a remembrance is effectually denied by the total surrender of the three main denominations to the pro-Rome, ecumenical and liberal religious movement, that is now the religious force in Ulster.
Modernistic apostasy dominates the three main churches and with them the large majority of the Protestant population!
Warning
God in His mercy, gave clear warning of the invasive flood of error that was breaking upon our shores. The World Council of Churches, a world-wide gathering of heretics determined to overthrow the Word of God, was formed in 1948. The three main churches here were foundation members.
In 1951, the Lord raised up the Free Presbyterian Church, led by Rev Ian Paisley, to combat Ecumenism and the modernistic theology that had infiltrated of the main churches.
Protests
For many years the evils of Ecumenism were faithfully exposed and denounced by preaching and literature and by public protests.
Particularly in the late 1960s, and for some twenty years thereafter, this witness was heard clearly throughout Ulster, and indeed, much further abroad.
Despite the routing of ecumenical spokesmen by this witness, the vast majority of professing Protestants within these heretical denominations refused to obey God, hiding behind lamentable and inexcusable attempts to conceal their disobedience.
As a result, ecumenical ‘politics’ flourished and the adherence to the old paths of ‘Unionism’ declined and in the face of this, Irish Republicanism flourished and prospered.
Adherence to Ecumenism in the religious and political arenas cost us the blessing of God and ‘Samson-like’ the strength of Ulster’s Protestantism declined and died!
The decline in the vigour and vitality of Protestantism was evident in an ever increasingly ‘secular’ society. The Sabbath was desecrated, mission halls were closed, evangelistic endeavours declined and revival was rarely sought in prayer as once it was.
‘Moderatism’ emerged and with it attempts to ‘tone down’ the old truths. Simpering sermons and worldly-inspired hymns began to emerge where once was heard, ‘Thus saith the Lord’ and the ‘songs of Zion’ alone were sung!
Of course, in the political area, compromise and a placating of and kow-towing to, Irish Republicans abounded. Even Dr Paisley turned aside from his early Biblical zealotry, and entered a power-sharing arrangement with Sinn Fein/IRA. The party he formed is now riddled with pro-sodomite and related perversions and continues in its compromise and cooperation with Sinn Fein/IRA.
This is where we are now — helpless, weak and dominated by the enemy! We are as was Israel in the days of Hosea.
“O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help,”Hosea 13:9.
That verse denies to the Irish Republicans any notion of victory when a United Ireland comes about. They didn’t win, rather the majority of Ulster Protestants committed ‘spiritual and political suicide’!
But Hosea did not only document the cause of Israel’s ‘decay’ but he also set forth the ‘abiding’ hope that is even yet available to that foolish and disobedient people!
The time is late and the night approaches BUT still there is hope for the cause of God here.
I love Psalm 80. How succinctly it states our only hope.
“Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved,” Psalm 80:19.
That is a prayer, THE prayer we MUST earnestly pray if we are to see the Gospel cause preserved irrespective of political events in the future.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
Saturday, 14th March 2026