What makes for an effective witness about God

I have an old print that I bought during my gap year in Israel when I fell in love with an original painting that I saw in an artist’s shop. Since I could not afford the real thing, the artist’s husband who sold her work, gave me the print at a reduced price. He said his wife was from Russia, so he understood what it was like to have little money. I kept that print for many years, but it has become sadly faded in the sun, the colours bleached and the outlines almost lost. That picture reminds me of our reading, where Israel, who were meant to be God’s image and represent Him to the world around (see Deut 4:5-8), have become worn and dull, too. What they were meant to represent became hardly an outline.

An opportunity to hear about the true God

It was Assyrian policy to re-settle captive populations in different areas of the empire thereby displacing people groups and breaking their spirit so as to safeguard against potential rebellions. Thus, Israel’s land is repopulated with foreigners who do not worship the Lord and are judged in the form of lions (2 Kings 17:24-25). This seems harsh to us, but we must remember that the Old Testament predominantly stresses God’s sovereignty and is less concerned with secondary causes. It is possible that the emptying out of the land in Israel’s exile led to the increase of wild animals. God uses these circumstances much as He does hardship in our context, where suffering can bring an openness to hearing from the Lord. Since gods in the ancient world were seen as territorial, the conclusion that the new population must learn the ways of the local god, Yahweh, leads to an Israelite priest being brought back to teach these nations (2 Kings 17:26-28).

Israel’s blunted testimony

Although Israel was not expected to go out and convert people to serve the Lord, the present context is a tremendous opportunity for the nations to hear about the true God. However, readers would see the irony. How can a people who were taken into exile precisely because they failed to fear (i.e. revere and serve) the Lord be able to teach others about their God? In fact, the priest sent back to do this job settles in Bethel (2 Kings 17:28), the place infamous for its shrine where the northern kingdom’s first king set up a golden calf to be worshipped (1 Kings 12:28-33; cf. Amos 4:4-5). As a result, these foreign nations serve God and also their own gods (2 Kings 17:33), much like Israel has done. In fact, reading the description of what they are doing (2 Kings 17:34-40), it is hard to tell if the summary is about Israel or these exiled nations as their attitude is identical. Israel can only pass on the distorted image of God that they have lived with and reproduce for others the same twisted practices that they themselves followed. Thus, the writer of Kings highlights that Israel’s sin was not only a tragedy because they were destroyed by their own sin, but because they thwarted God’s purposes for them in showing the world what it meant to be in relationship with the living God.

What makes for an effective witness about God

Scripture, once again, puts a mirror in front of us. Our testimony can be blunted when our relationship with the Lord is not genuine or is compromised, like Israel’s was. People quickly smell a phony. An effective witness is not a question of eloquence or brains. God can use even our halting language when we feel we do not explain ourselves very well, as long as we seek to honour Him and we have a living relationship with Him. As with the Israelites, we inevitably lead in the way that we ourselves walk. This is true not only of individuals but of a collection of people like the church. What do visitors sense and experience when they walk into our local congregation? May we be people individually and collectively who recognise the stakes for faithfulness not just for ourselves but how it impacts our testimony to outsiders.

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