Israel's Apostasy and Ours

2 Kings 17
      I can completely anticipate that someone, reading 2 Kings 17, would leap to what sounds like a reasonable conclusion but to what is, in reality, completely wrong-headed.
      2 Kings 17 records that the northern kingdom was destroyed by Shalmaneser of Assyria and says, "All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt from under the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt."  Then, the rest of the chapter lists off examples of their wickedness:  worshiping other gods, tolerating the wickedness of the Canaanites, etc.  Here's the conclusion I can anticipate:  "The U.S. better watch out, because we tolerate entirely too much wickedness!"
      Now, let me go on record as saying that I see an awful lot of examples of the U.S. tolerating wickedness.  I see the corruption at all levels of government; I see the dissolution of the family; I see violence and sexual excess.  I see it all.  I don't disagree that the U.S. tolerates sin and that that's a problem.
      I do disagree that the fate of Israel is the appropriate analogy for the fate of a modern nation-state.  Old Testament Israel was sui generis, its own kind of thing, one of a kind, unique.  It was a nation and it was the people of God.  In our language, Israel encompassed both church and state.  However, Israel fulfilled its , purpose in the coming of the Messiah Jesus.  And, significantly, Jesus reconstituted Israel by appointing 12 apostles.  When He sent His Church out, He did not bind them to a specific land nor to a specific nationality (cf. Matthew  28).  He declared the entire world their inheritance (Matthew 5:5).  Paul points out that the Good News is for the Jew and the Gentile (Romans 1).  The Church in the New Testament is the people of God, but it has no 'nation-state' quality.  It is, in the words of one church father, at home in every society and in no society.  ("Every foreign country is their homeland and every homeland a foreign country," Epistle to Diognetus, 180 AD.)
      So, if you're looking for an appropriate analogy for the U.S., you need to look at the prophets' oracles against the nations.  Look at the way Habakkuk said the Lord would deal with Babylon or Jeremiah's warning that the Lord both plants and uproots the nations according to His purposes.  The prophets assume that the nations will not naturally be aligned with the Lord's will and ways, and they prophesy that He will use them as tools for His purposes and set them aside when they've served that function.
      The appropriate analogy for Israel is the Church.  Or, better said, specific manifestations of the Church.  (The Lord has promised that He will always have a people, so the Church in some shape will endure.)  History is littered with churches that have come and gone.  Colossae?  Ephesus?  Those churches are long gone.  Literally hundreds of congregations close in North America each year, too.  The church does well to pay attention to its faithfulness to the Lord and His Word and His mission.  Losing sight of those things are the appropriate analogy for Israel's apostasy.