WHAT COUNTS
W W W W World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page Contents Page for this Volume What is New
Chapter 10
THE NEW, BUT NOT THE INNOVATION
New and not Novel
Old but not Aged
Christ the Citadel
Part 2
The Immutable God calls to His creation
past all the connivings of unconscionable mutations,
that bring only grief, being mere deceptions served with panache,
achieving nothing. We return to the things new,
but not innovation;
for with God the truth is forever fresh as the morning dew,
operational as any aircraft taking off in power,
but devoid of alteration of its pith,
unlike all philosophy and the governments of man.
¨
WHAT COUNTS
¨
WHAT IS
INCLUDED
¨
WHAT CHANGES
IN MAN WHAT STAYS AND GOES:
THE PLUS AND THE MINUS
¨
THE NEVER
ENDING GLORY OF THE IMMUTABLE GOD
¨
THE SOURCE OF SUCH TREASURE,
AND THE CHARACTER OF THE CHANGE,
NOT OF GOD, BUT FOR MAN
WHAT COUNTS
1) Jeremiah 31:22 - the New Thing
"How long will you gad about,
O you backsliding daughter?
For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth—
A woman shall encompass a man."
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:
‘They shall again use this speech in the land of Judah
and in its cities,
when I bring back their captivity:
"The Lord bless you,
O home of justice, and mountain of holiness!"
And there shall dwell in Judah itself,
and in all its cities together, farmers and those going out with flocks.
For I have satiated the weary soul,
and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.’“After this I awoke and looked around, and my sleep was sweet to me.
‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord,
‘that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah
with the seed of man and the seed of beast.
And it shall come to pass, that as I have watched over them
to pluck up, to break down, to throw down, to destroy, and to afflict,
so I will watch over them to build and to plant,’ says the Lord.‘In those days they shall say no more:
“The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
And the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
But every one shall die for his own iniquity;
every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord,
‘when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah -
not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers
in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them
out of the land of Egypt,
My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them,' says the Lord.‘But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,'
says the Lord:'I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts;
and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
No more shall every man teach his neighbor,
and every man his brother,
saying, “Know the Lord,”
for they all shall know Me, from the least of them
to the greatest of them,’ says the Lord.
‘For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.’· "Thus says the Lord,
Who gives the sun for a light by day,
The ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night,
Who disturbs the sea,
And its waves roar
(The Lord of hosts is His name):
‘If those ordinances depart
From before Me, says the Lord,
Then the seed of Israel shall also cease
From being a nation before Me forever.'
"Thus says the Lord:
‘If heaven above can be measured,
And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath,
I will also cast off all the seed of Israel
For all that they have done,’ says the Lord."
This New Covenant, new but not innovative, the fulfilment of all that God had shown to them (cf. Hebrews 1-10), the substitution of Christ for animal sacrifice, His once for all act for their many times repeated pictorial representations of what in love He was going to do personally, it fulfilled all. Until it came, in the meantime, the animal sacrifice in its extraordinary dismalness of taking life, illustrating the depravity of man's sin. In the end, the sacrifice of Christ in its divinely human intensity, showed of sin its very immensity. It also exhibited the remedy through this, His ransom (Matthew 20:28).
As seen in Hebrews 8:7ff., this New Covenant is not only for the Jew; for as in Isaiah 422:6, 49:6, Israel is too small an entity for so sublime a covenant to be limited to them; it is for the Gentile as well, and Israel has the same opportunity to receive it - that nation which did NOT receive Christ when He was physically with them - as anyone else. In fact, in a large swathe they will fall in faith to Him, and so arise from their peril (Zechariah 12:10-13:1 cf. Romans 11:25ff.); but the one faith and the one Lord and the one sacrifice, once made now once in the Age, it is this which will avail for one as for any.
Here is what is new without innovation to perfection. The mercies of God are new every morning; the word of God anoints anew in every faithful reading; but the truth of God progresses as the sun day by day, in bringing the same light in the same way to the same sinful world; though its warmth arises greatly in perception at times of revival, when what is old, becomes new again, yet this without changing!
This is that New Covenant, of which Christ declared this: "This is My blood of the New Covenant which is shed for many for the remission of sins." This is that which Christ announced as seen in Matthew 26:28-29, before He replaced the Passover with His own passion's consummation, arising in vindication and victory, just 3 days later as prescribed and predicted (cf. SMR Ch. 6).
Wisdom would have all partake of this, every human being on this earth, for there is no other way back to the God who made us, and who is our judge, merciful but not foolish, faithful but not deceived (cf. John 6:47ff.). Parents know something of the folly of refusing what is good, when blind adolescents in temporary insanity or at least inanity, follow the promptings of flesh which soon is gone, but the result ? they often stay, and stay long, very long!
.
WHAT COUNTS
2) Revelation 5:9ff. - the New Song
"And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts,
and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain,
having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God
sent forth into all the earth."And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne.
And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps,
and golden vials full of fragrances, which are the prayers of saints.
"And they sang a new song, saying,"You art worthy to take the book, and to open its seals:
for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood
out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;
And have made us to our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth."
What is new about this song ? It is the song of attainment, by Christ, of consummation of His sacrificial plan, His way of salvation, of its applicability to all peoples, and of its results assured in His resurrection (as in Romans 1:4), the seal of sovereignty, just as His mighty healings and resurrections such as the work on Lazarus, had already exposed. Satan had indeed fallen like light from heaven as He said (Luke 10:18), and while suffering remained, as featured and indeed focussed in the book of Revelation, what is pain to peace, what is reckless hatred from the people of the beast compared with the divine love of Christ and what is error to truth, the lie to the realities of which the wonderful construction and creation of human life is testimony! What is temporary soldier's self-discipline to the eternal life of God! (cf. I John 1:1-4 and notice his stricken enthusiasm, as deep as his being, who had known Christ personally).
WHAT IS INCLUDED
1) II Corinthians 5:17-21 - the New Creation
"For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus:
that if One died for all, then all died;
and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves,
but for Him who died for them and rose again."Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh.
Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh,
yet now we know Him thus no longer."Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
old things have passed away;
behold, all things have become new."Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ,
and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,
that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself,
not imputing their trespasses to them,
and has committed to us the word of reconciliation."Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ,
as though God were pleading through us:
we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us,
that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
In what sense is it so, that if one died for all, then all died ?
Only in one sense: for obviously the 'all' CANNOT mean that all in fact did die, since many are not so affected as is in view (i.e. so that the result of no living for oneself, inter alia, might accrue). It is not written that all WILL die, or OUGHT to die, but rather this, that they died. Those in view therefore in context, in terms of His dying for all, are those who have died with Him, crucified with Christ (Galatians 5:24), true of all Christians. Thus the 'all' is all to whom it pertains operationally, the Christians. Not all people, then, so follow Him; but as to those who do, they are those who 'live', and these live not for themselves but for Him who died for them. He is their loyalty and their ground, better than idea or mere ideal, the person who made them and redeemed them, Creator by right of action and Lord by right of reclamation, freely received (Romans 3:23ff., Ephesians 2:1-12, Romans 10:1ff.), and that with thanksgiving.
It follows that those so placed, those in Christ, embodied in His ambit, restored through His ministry, given hope and faith by His application, are new creations. He has regenerated them through His Spirit (John 3, Titus 3:5-7), and there is a newness not innovative; for what ?
It is to the image in which He first created us that we who are His, are restored as Colossians 3:10 tells us. We both have put on "the new man who is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him" - that new product for the new Christian, and again, as in Ephesians 4:24, are exhorted to "put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness."
What we are to put on is the creation of perfection as in Ephesians, and what we have put on is the restoration to the image which we should bare. The latter is complete, and that to which we must attain; the former is fundamental, which is the gift. The one is new in type, the other in culmination; the one at once, the other by much renewing and work by the Spirit of God (as in II Corinthians 3:17-18). One refers to status and emplacement; the other to consummation which is in heaven, though now the type appears.
New ? yes, but scarcely innovative, since it back to the first, at the hand of Him who is both first and last, and it is on to the last, the image of Him from whose action we were made at the beginning.
2) John 13:31ff. - the New Commandment
"So, when he had gone out, Jesus said,
'Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him.'If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself,
and glorify Him immediately.'Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come,’ so now I say to you.
'A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another;
as I have loved you,
that you also love one another.'By this all will know that you are My disciples,
if you have love for one another.' "
How new was the new commandment ? As to the first and greatest commandment, to love God with all the heart and strength and mind, this is from Deuteronomy 6:5; and the second greatest, to love your neighbour as yourself, it is from Leviticus 19:18. But what of this ?
It is in fact an expatiation, a concentration, a dispensation of universality in the name of Him whose love is toward all His creatures, though those who disdain it simply meet the justice they deserve, part of which is the arbitrary wilfulness of refusing reconstruction in the image in which they were first made.
It is new, but certainly not an innovation. Did not Jonah love Nineveh enough, in God's direction to be sure, to risk his very life to confront it with the ultimatum of God! the God in whom they had placed no selective trust, amidst their cruel living and slaughters.
Did not God protest His love to Israel in word and deed repeatedly (as seen in Ezekiel 20, 33:11, Jeremiah 9-17), passionately seeking a deliverance for those hypnotised by the way that was to be their doom! Did God not show His intense concern even for Moab, who would not hear, this also! (cf. Jeremiah 48:31-33, where it is the God of v. 33 who speaks in v. 31) ... Now however, it is as if the supersaturated solution has a seed crystal set in it, and suddenly, a beautiful crystalline mass comes into sight, and it grows now here, now there. It is new, but not innovation.
It is necessary, instead of lustful confrontation and consummation.
It is fitting for God's creatures, and though it does not displace judgment, it may postpone it or even give grounds for its removal. It is not mere palliative, but it helps. It is not mere help; but it fortifies. It is not merely a reduction of temptation, it is increment in example, indication, redirection without abuse.
Novelties in this world are many; but the grace of God, and His mercy, His justice and His righteousness, His love in the midst of truth: this yields no innovation. The very Gospel itself, in the protevangelion, was shown from the first, in this, that in the pure grace and mercy of God there would be one who as man, who crush the power of Satan, and IN THE PROCESS be hurt (Genesis 3:15). Hardly novel, except to sinners' ears.
3) Romans 6:4 Newness of Life
"What shall we say then?
"Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?
Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?
Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into His death?"Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death,
that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,
even so we also should walk in newness of life.
"For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death,
certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,
knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him,
that the body of sin might be done away with,
that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
For he who has died has been freed from sin."Now if we died with Christ,
we believe that we shall also live with Him,
knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.
Death no longer has dominion over Him."
Is the very concept of not living in sin novel ? Hardly, for the soul that sins, this shall die (Ezekiel 18:4). There is no transference of guilt; for in Exodus 20, the sins of the fathers being visited on the children to the third and fourth generation is restrictive. This, it is ONLY FOR THOSE WHO HATE GOD!
In other words, if you in any case deserve death for your sins, yes, then a certain cyclotron situation can arise in which you reap in the end what has been sown; but then, death is death, and that is your personal equation in such a case. Do you expect to live in the sight of God when sin is your killer, as if abundant life were some sort of nostrum, some political ruse! Life is life, and God is truth, and the soul that sins shall die. It is despite this that mercy intervenes to GIVE eternal life (John 3:16, Titus 2; 3:5ff.), but when mercy is dismissed, then eternal life, being dispensed with, is not dispensed. Indeed, as a family continues to wallow in the hatred of God, the sty grows worse.
Again, in Ezekiel 33:11 we find in the most INTENSE fashion, the intimation of mercy, the exhibition of love, the protestation of desire to deliver, the exhortation to LIVE. It is even given in the most intensive form, "AS I LIVE": the Lord in this, exhibiting the depths of His heart (as in I Corinthians 2:9ff.). There is no novelty in
a) not being given up to sin and
b) being so given up to God that in mercy you have LIFE,
life in the God who KNOWS you as one of His own (Psalm 1:5),
not as chaff to be dispersed (1:6).
Nor is it some mode of formality which is in view in this of Romans 6, some sacrament or ceremony. If it were, then to be buried, would be part of a trilogy. You would be
a) buried with Him,
b) planted with Him (underground operation) and
c) crucified with Him (above ground, but not above reproach, and bringing blood into the sanctuary).
Ludicrous as it might seem, some try to bring innovation of initial ceremony in the God of creation and salvation, into this text. It is far deeper than that. It has significantly more to teach than having people to 'arise' dripping from a bath, as if this were some kind of resurrection image. It is a figure like the rest, to be interpreted in its own mode. As you see in Hebrews 9:10, various 'baptisms' are mentioned from the Old Testament, and the washings are symbolic and normatively by sprinkling (cf. Leviticus 4, 16ff., Exodus 24:4ff., John 13:10).
It is not formality but life which is in view in Romans 6. Having died with Christ, AND been buried, AND been crucified with Him (Galatians 2:20 - Paul was not about to have himself on the cross), then what ?
It is that this being so spiritually, then "just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (as in John 14:19). Indeed, we who are His are 'naturally' - though sin seeks to subdue (Galatians 5), to walk, act, speak as "children of light, " a glorious opportunity (cf. I Thessalonians 5:5). This is an intimate life, near to the very heart of God. It is life more abundant (John 10:10); but it is the same life of God that King David knew (as in Psalms 21, 23). Now the transformative gift is paid for; now the guilt is dismissed by the action of God in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, though most of it ignores it, and much of it even fights against it.
The life has an even more direct intimacy with God as to mode of approach; but it is the same God and the same salvation, now no more merely depicted, pictured in symbol, but expressed and provided in certified fact. New ? yes in its nearness. Innovation ? Not at all: it is precisely for this reason that the Psalms of David are as songs of fellowship, speech of the heart, as for him, so for Christ's disciples. After all, not only was David, on the female side, a progenitor for the Christ born of a virgin, but in life, a member of that same family of whose Messiah he wrote so much, as inspired by the God of creation, as in Psalm 2, 16, 22, 40, 69, 72, 109, 110.
WHAT CHANGES IN MAN
Ephesians 4:23, 3:16 - Renewed in the spirit of your mind
Strengthened with Might in the Inner Man
Titus 3:5 - the Renewing of the Holy Spirit
Isaiah 62:2 - a New Name
David often, in the Psalms God gave him, expressed a certain renewal of hope, of vitality and of dynamic when, cast down in many adversities, he had waited on the Lord. You see just such a change in Psalms 3:3-8, 16:3-9 (in which part of the renewal is this, that the very body of the Messiah, Son of David as incarnation of God (Psalm 2, 110), will not rot; and in this, as one of His, David's body can also rest in this same hope. It was, naturally and supernaturally, both, not of his own body at the present time, that David spoke, but of that of the coming Messiah, whose gift of eternal life was (as in Psalm 21) through His own payment on the Cross (Psalm 22) made secure (Isaiah 52-55).
Whatever the cause, in God there is found, in the Psalms of David, abundant evidence of categorical renewal, uplift, enlightenment, restorative power and peace. So it is in Psalm 18:16-19, 23:3, 30:11-12, 37:1-26, 37ff.), , 52:8-9, and what then is new when we read in Paul, at Ephesians 4:23, speaking to Christians, that they are to be "renewed in the spirit of your mind" and in Ephesians 3:16, "strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man." To be sure, there is a more abundant access, without the paraphernalia of the ceremonial law or priestly intercession of man; but the principle, the refreshing of heart and head, of spirit, the renewal, it is one, for God is one and man is one creation in His image.
The renewing of the Holy Spirit, spoken of by Titus in 3:5ff., is associated with the washing of regeneration; and it is wrought as with David for example, "not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy", and IN THIS, He has "saved us" - a fait accompli (cf. Ephesians 1:11, Titus 3:7). This is as in Psalm 21 with Psalm 32 and 71:16 and Genesis 15 in parallel with Romans 4. A strong tendency is found in some to imagine that because the law was added to show the 'exceedingly sinful' character of sin (Romans 7:13), that therefore the fact that if you failed to take to heart the utter necessity of blood atonement, you could just go ahead and be perfect and live by it, a challenge to pride and a deletion key for self-righteousness: therefore salvation was then not by grace. The prodigies of sacrifice were PRECISELY the point, both in their extent, continuity and comprehensive varieties.
Prodigious misconstructions of the flesh had resulted in the position outlined by Paul in Romans 10, regarding much of Israel; but this is not what the Bible has consistently taught (cf. Micah 7:19ff., Psalm 51, Ezekiel 33:11, Proverbs 1) whether in word or deed, or both. The New Testament emphasis is new, however, in the degree and extent of the emphasis and exposure of these magnificent and glorious dealings of the Lord, at Calvary. What had been yet to come, when it came, became an all-important focus; but it was not missing before, merely spread out in numerous 'shadows' preparatory to Christ's one great deed.
This atonement essentialised the more vigorously after all the predictions of the substitutionary atonement of the Messiah had one and all, been perfectly fulfilled, this is extended. It is new; but certainly and assuredly not innovation!
Even in Isaiah 62:2, there was talk of a new name for the people of the Lord; but this, it was not because He had changed His mind, and indeed, it was centuries before Christ that this intention was made clear; but as in many prophets, so here, there is the Messianic name which beyond that of Moses, comes into exceptional and final focus (cf. Ephesians 1:10, Hebrews 3).
The name, that of the Lord Jesus Christ - "for there no other name under heaven given among men by which they must be saved", Acts 4:12 - this is new; but as that of the Messiah, not at all innovation.
WHAT STAYS AND GOES: THE PLUS AND THE MINUS
Revelation 21:1, Isaiah 65:17 - A New Heavens and
a New Earth
(minus the old ones, Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 24:35, Revelation 20:11)
Revelation 22:1,17 - the River of Life
(the
streams of living spiritual waters on earth,
the fulness of tide and flow in heaven):
John 7:37, 4:14)
A new heavens and a new earth are displayed to John, in Revelation 22:1, "for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away." WHY had the first passed away ? Was it not good ? It WAS! But man in his desperate drives to OWN it and CONTROL it and ESCAPE from the love of the Founder and Maker of the celestial universe, has brought into it sin, which is precisely like grit sprinkled liberally into smooth oiled machinery; but it is worse. It is like sand in the eyes, but it does not blind God; it is man who is blinded by sin (Ephesians 4:17-19), and it alienates him from the life of God.
A vast new house has near us been bought for a very large price; but for all its splendour, the people who had owned it quarrelled, and at times one could hear the conflict. Indeed screams of grief came as the verbal difference arose on one day; but the man was determined that his wife should obey him on one point. He may or may not have been right, but the manner of it was unrelenting. They eventually left each other, and the home, which was then sold at a great price to someone else.
In some part, that forms an illustration.
Man has broken with God and members of the human but increasingly un-humane race have quarrelled each with the other, to such an extent that war and not peace, rudeness and not courtesy, self-esteem and not repentance, new gods and not the Creator, are all the order of the day. Although this is precisely as foretold (Revelation 6, Romans 1:17ff.), it is not the less severe a pathology of the spirit for that; but rather the more so, as is the case when one is warned.
Thus, when corrected, man as a race will not heed. When given opportunity, he merely waits the more for further exploitation of the earth and of his neighbour. Some come to God through Christ in His mercy thus appointed (II Corinthians 5:17ff.); for God in Christ was reconciling the world to Himself, for He who knew no sin, Jesus Christ, became sin, a sin offering, that we who believe might become the righteousness of God in Him, by GIFT of grace and reckoning through the penalty-bearing Lord (Romans 5:15-17). They, the ones who receive Him (John 1:12), not by the will of the flesh or the blood of this kind or that, but by divine grace through faith in the One who would have ALL come but forces none (Colossians 1:19ff.), they are many; but as a PERCENTAGE (Matthew 7:15ff.), they are FEW. The earth writhes in the grip of vice.
In Sudan, so horrific is the religiously backed hacking and dying, the loss of life from surging militants and so incredibly heartless has been the kidnapping of Christian children, by report, by Islamic insurgents, to name but one, that it is hard to believe that such an earth of wonder and abundance should exist, when such things occur in it. Nor is this all: now we learn that the authorities, such as they may be, in this country, are cutting off UN supplies, so that numbers in the millions lose the food support which was helping to prevent malnourishment, not least in children, turning into an horrific plague. THIS goes on and there is a United Nations ? there is a heart on this earth ?
That is mere illustration, without going to North Korea where one finds report of male-female meeting on the part of two individuals, once per month, provided they earn the privilege by their abundant products as they work in that period. This is allowed; , but they are not allowed to pick the one they love. Depersonalisation is the very essence of Communism (cf. *4 of Ch. 9 above), the State being the recognised identity which is given, as far as man may, the place of God.
That ? a mere example of humanism, that idolatry of flesh that makes of flesh a mere mirage of what it might be, run by ruthless men ... and women, as it riots like suppurating sores in the midst of order, against God. .
Small wonder then, that in Jeremiah 4:25ff., you see something of the removal of the very support structure of this earth, as if, before one's very eyes, it were being specifically UN-created, as one reads the vision of the prophet. Thus, in grief, the Lord opens to the mind of man just what he is doing, just where he is going, just how much his inglorious ingratitude and self-elevation is costing him, who despises increasingly his Creator and spouts hideously irrational magic as the ground which he simply assumes into existence, of life ... and love (cf. Ch. 1 above, Barbs ... 29, The Kingdoms of this World and the Kingdom of Christ Ch. 9 and The gods of naturalism have no go!, with indexes).
The appointee to superintend the planet (Psalm 8 with Hebrews 2:6ff.), man has instead increasingly become the dis-appointee, not only in wastrel follies, but in terms of dis-appointment! Thus, though the Lord knew the result before it came (as in Isaiah 46:8, Revelation 2:8, Ephesians 1:11 with Romans 8:29ff., and Ephesians 1:4), the emotion is not altered for that reason, but is rather all the more apt, and the result is all the more sure.
Thus, not only is it a disgrace to the planet, the earth, to the powers that watch (Ephesians 3:10 and in a different setting, Ephesians 6:12), but it means that man loses his position. Instead of blessings abounding on all sides, the Lord has appointed a measure of curse so significant to this earth, that as in Revelation 6ff., it is seen to unwind as man proceeds in his headlong and headstrong courses. The evidences of the curse (cf. Romans 5:1-12, 8:17ff.), these will increase as Christ indicated until this situation arrives: that unless He Himself returned in his sequence from Cross to tomb to resurrection to teaching for 40 days, to heaven, and then came to this earth to rule it (Psalm 72, Isaiah 11, Acts 1, Zechariah 14), man on earth would end. It would cease to be possible for man so much as to LIVE on the planet given at all! (Matthew 24:21-22).
Then it becomes as in Micah 7, as in Isaiah 24, before the next step, as found in Matthew 24:35. Thus this world is first to be moved, and then removed as in II Peter 3, Micah 24:35; for it has become a hotbed of such ruthlessness, such venomous outpourings, such abrasive brutalities, such devilries that no more is it given lease for life. Accordingly, after a time, to vindicate the righteousness of God (Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 11, Revelation 20), it is gone.
Then gone is the site for impenitent impertinence in the strictest sense of the word, gone the place for exploitation, expropriation of land and life, of impulsion and compulsion of slavery and discontent, of making gods that are not there, non-gods and serving them with such distortion of design and defilement of the energies of man and both their direction and dynamic! (cf. Deuteronomy 32:16-18 )
Gone ? Its time is up. A new heavens and a new earth supervene. These, they are novel in this, that gone is the place for pride, ended is the relevance of abused liberty; but this new heavens and new earth, it is no innovation: for here the righteousness of God which has always been so, and the holiness which is His eternally. Now removed is any place for obstruction; for those who are there found, in this new heavens and earth, are in that place freely in the love of Christ, the evil dismissed, mercy dispensed; and they are the redeemed and the chosen, those who in the milieu of the mercy of God, which He DELIGHTS TO GIVE freely (Micah 7:19ff., Isaiah 55, John 4, Romans 3:23ff., Galatians 3, 5), have taken it and so live. It is in Him they live, in His care; and they partake of His life without impediment! Here is the HARVEST of the love which was pleased to have all in heaven or earth reconciled to Himself through the blood of Christ (Colossians 1:19ff.).
Yes, as in Revelation 20:11, the old heaven and earth ... have fled away, for there was no place found for them!
There is even more in the novelty without innovation. In Revelation 22:1,17, we find there is a River of Life (which reminds of the one in Ezekiel 47). It is as clear as crystal for it knows no pollution and its source is of spectacular purity, and it proceeds from the throne of God and of the Lamb, one throne. It reminds one in one aspect, of the ocean waters. Though much is poured into them, yet they largely remain clean and even cleansing. It is of course the blood of Christ which purges sin, but that is God who took it; yet He is not polluted, for on the Cross is the clearance and not merely the acquittal, but the action to remove the folly of ages in one action in one Person in one place for all time (Hebrews 9:12-10:14).
These waters were also offered, long before the world was to go, when Christ was upon it in His Messianic mission: both to the Samaritan woman (John 4:14), with the glorious promise of never thirsting again when once these waters were taken, while a spring of it would rise up within, and to others more generally, as in John 7:37. There it was even more abundantly expressed, in this that the waters would flow from one, as the power of God used His servants for the spiritual watering of the earth.
In Revelation 22:17, we find not innovation but continuation, for here is the charge, the challenge and the opportunity on THIS earth in THIS world at THIS time, till He comes, for man to take of such waters freely. If you do not will to have it; it is not diminished by your contempt, indifference or futility. If you do will to have it, then partake of it freely! Such is the entreaty, the provision, the mercy and the might of the mind of God as shown in the fifth verse from the end of the entire Bible! Innovation ? hardly, for it is this same challenge and blessed hope which has echoed as exhortation in the test of Adam and Eve, and invitation since, whether in Amos or Isaiah, in Psalm or Proverb - especially Proverbs 1!, in Jeremiah, especially 9-17, or in Hosea, in Deuteronomy or in Zechariah. God, He does not change; and as He is, there is perfection.
THE NEVER ENDING GLORY OF THE IMMUTABLE GOD
There there is ...
NO NEW GOSPEL,
NO NEW JESUS,
NO NEW CHRIST
Hebrews 13:8,
Acts 1:7,
Ephesians 1:10,
Galatians 1, 3, 5,
Revelation 19-22
Put differently, but with the same message:
We find:
· Multiple Wounds, but One Site (Galatians 2-3)
· Multiple Predictions to Him, One Body (see SMR Ch. 8)
· Multiple Graces, One Face (II Corinthians 11:4,13),
· Multiplied Predictive Outputs from Him, One Precise Parallel
called history (Galatians 4:4, cf. SMR Ch. 9).
For this field, let us revisit an earlier sermon, in small part. It is found here - 133; but we will excerpt a part only, and slightly modified. It is called: THE SUPERNATURAL GOSPEL FOR DIVINE REDEMPTION OF THE HUMAN LIFE - Galatians 1
In Galatia, they were getting other ideas. Add to what Christ did, become kingdom-through-obedience people, not kingdom through Cross, or try to wed both of these, and have illegitimate children of the spirit and of the mind! What an idea, what disgraceful addition to deity, of the thoughts of the heart of man! Fancy trying to alter what God gives. Bad enough to alter some mathematical solution to a problem, found after years of work; but to alter what the Eternal Lord and God of the universe has to say, that is an act of piracy of purity, robbery of truth, defilement of peace, removal of remedy.
That, says Paul: Never! That is the sense of it, in Galatians 1:6-9.
The Lord did not spend the purity of infinity to cover us, in order that we should add our imperfect works, presumptuously to His payment (Hebrews 9:12); for He has already purchased everlasting redemption, which comes freely (Romans 3:23ff.). HE justifies! Where YOU come as RIGHTEOUS (as if already so, in yourself), He quits His saving offer. Why ? It is because HE is the truth, and the truth is that all have sinned, and there is no other name (such as your own on the Honour Roll) by which ANY of mankind in his fallen state, may be saved (Acts 4:11-12).
His is the ONLY ONE. In Him, the ONLY BEGOTTEN, the only exact portraiture in life of God is to be found. Disbelieve (or alter, modify, it is the same in essence), and you disbelieve in the ONLY GOD THERE IS! In Galatians 3, Paul asks if having begun in the Spirit they will now continue in the trust in their own works! How ludicrous! Did they find God that way ? Then the way to find Him is not departed; and to imagine it all changes because it has happened, is like imagining you should give up a job, because you have taken it. It is ALL free through the cursed condition endured by Christ in the act of redemption.
So did the people at Galatia have another Gospel, a changed message! Marvellous, amazing, says Paul, like some white ant eradicator who finds on the very next day, a new colony festering in the floor boards! THAT, it is no foundation but failure! There IS NO OTHER GOSPEL, he declares, adding that if HE or an ANGEL were to publish one, one or the other alike, that party would be ACCURSED. No man, woman, child, no prophet, apostle or expositor, NONE can alter the Gospel without being accursed. Apostle is safe and has great power ? Not at all: IF the apostle (and Judas was a type of it) is to betray Christ by making ANY alteration to HIS Gospel, then no apostle is he, but a deceitful worker (as Paul describes in II Corinthians 11), a fraud.
It is precisely like a chemist adding potassium cyanide to aspro, and thinking it a good mix, while killing the patients. Wise guy, and wicked tormentor, and so accursed: that is the point of the analogy here! Another means of knowing God than the one God has provided in divine grant ? Heinous! What an imposition, and it is one which is to be found in some of the sects...
What, Paul is demanding: Are you to produce new gospels for me to present to God in order to persuade Him that you are good at the invention of new gospels ? Are you to dicker and bargain, to barter and negotiate ? Is this what you think ? asks the apostle. Do you conceive of me, then, as seeking to persuade GOD to your ideas, or YOU to God's truth, which does not change, just as God does not change (Malachi 3:6, Psalm 103, Hebrews 13:8).
An APOSTLE, even Paul himself, an angel, ANY ANGEL (such as Moroni) which preaches (as that one does) another Gospel is accursed. Such folly kills; it bypasses the truth, puts lies for truth and misleads if it were possible the very elect (Matthew 24:24). It was to come, and it has come, and in Galatia at that time, it was waving tiny arms of sin.
So, you think it relevant to make me a negotiator with God in order to please you and get you a different gospel! Paul derisively asks. IF I were to seek to please man, he continues, I COULD not be the servant of Christ.
It is man or God, not man plus God.
Paul is SENT by the Lord, who died and rose again, not supple in spirit to man who fell, and now falls again! As to the Gospel, says Paul, "I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ."
Thus Paul shows of the Gospel,
that its origin is divine,
and ministers are limited to
presenting what it is,
without adornment,
alteration,
innovation or
equivocation.
THE SOURCE OF SUCH TREASURE,
AND THE CHARACTER OF THE CHANGE,
NOT OF GOD, BUT FOR MANThe nature of the Gospel is supernatural as to origin; it is divinely donated, as it proceeds from the works of God who planned it for man and paid the price for it. It is nothing at all to do with mankind as to source and origin. The bonds of sin are not freed by the power of man, but by that of God. The guilt of sin is not removed by the works of man, but by those of God alone. The Gospel was not TAUGHT, nor was it was BROUGHT by man; and it is not in nature after the HEART of man!
Use Paul as illustration. He himself, as a persecutor of the church, had misplaced zeal until, a zealot among zealots, he excelled in the religious company of Judaism.
Yet when God in His good pleasure, profound mercy and inimitably certain decision took Paul, the Paul whom He had in mind from the first, and whom He took to Himself by grace; when He chose to REVEAL Christ to and in Paul
(cf. Matthew 11:27 - and Christ WILLS to reveal the Father to those whom He takes, just as His Father has foreknown them - John 6:65),
He had a purpose.
It was that Paul might PREACH this Gospel to the other nations, the Gentiles. At that, Paul proceeded to make his way to Arabia, and returned to Damascus, and only after 3 years went to Jerusalem and Peter.
There, as we see in Galatians 2, he found nothing new, nothing different: the Gospel of the close and intimate disciples who had seen Christ physically resurrected was the very same as the one which Paul preached, all being in the hand of the Almighty.
ALL preached His one truth as revealed to and for man, in that definitive expression of Himself, Jesus Christ, God incarnate, who came to die at the appointed time. That date ? it was just as Daniel had predicted it*1; for He did not come in secret, but with a public display of those very words ordained for Him by prophecy for centuries, some direct, some in principle portrayed. Likewise was their a crowd of works in His ministry, with that miraculous flurry and power and wonder which was one of the distinguishing marks by which He was to be known. We read more than once of milling multitudes, and ALL were healed. The power was unlimited, for to Him came grace and Spirit without measure: after all, as the second member of the Trinity, though He took the human form and format for His work and mission, as man to show man and as man to die, though Godhead was His status (Philippians 2), what else could be! (cf. John 1:15-16, 3:34-36).
How amazed were the disciples, who glorified God, that the former persecutor of the church was now a preacher of the same Gospel, in harmony and unity with the brethren who had followed Christ!
The singularity of the Christ COMING, and of THOSE WHO KNEW HIM, now becomes a multiplied singularity; for what they SAW, and found, is what was REVEALED to Paul: and the one God who exists gave to new and old, one message. It was of one Gospel, of one Lord, who in one act, provided salvation for everyone who receives Him in truth, according to that Gospel (Romans 1:16).
There is nothing else. There is need for nothing else: the ONE GOD has given the WHOLE TRUTH for man in His BOOK, the Book of the Lord (Isaiah 8:20); and the Gospel is the narrow but necessary way by which man may come, and receiving the Lord, receive with Him all that He has said over the millenia, in that Bible of His hand. No jot or tittle of this divinely inspired word has ever failed over all that time, nor will nor can it fail: for God who has spoken it (I Corinthians 2:9ff.), cannot lie (Titus 1:2ff.): knowing all things, needing nothing, and giving freely in His changeless truth, first His own word, then His living word, His own and only begotten Son, who implemented it.
Thus whether it be the CULTURE of man, the PHILOSOPHIES political or other, of mankind, the false dreams of false religionists, or the temptations of one's own heart, the desire to disobey or to have a liberty as if a car wanted to climb a light-pole to see what life was like at the top: it is all trash. It is truth or trash - and with this one must proceed, like someone who knowing the rules of the road, and being registered as a driver, has no interest whatsoever in trying 'something else', whether 'wheelies' or other wantonries.
It is novel from the first, for the creation, in this, that God thought of it, the Lord implemented it, its love is transparent, its power impactive, its wonder glorious, its mercy prodigious, its empathy limitless, its precision presented, its nature immutable: of what ? It is first of all, His word which is truth, to proclaim to earth the wisdom of heaven; it is secondly, His Gospel, which is fixed for ever (Ephesians 1:10, Galatians 1), everlasting (Revelation 14:6): it is fixed in its love, delimited in its nature, infinite in its lovingkindness, exclusive in its operation, being WHAT GOD PROVIDES. If you leave it, you leave God.
In His wisdom, there is no innovation; for changeless He, He knows from the first. In His grace, it is novel for man, being without parallel or intimation, except in this, that HE SAID IT, once and for all, the thoughts of His heart and the place for man. To want some other way, to be some other creation, this flair of fleering will: it is desecration, not liberty. The freedom that God gives is for what we are, not for what we are not; but the liberty to become children of God (John 1:12), in His splendour of truth and magnificence of grace, this is enough, except for unbridled lust and the folly of a feckless spirit, that will have no bounds, and wants to make itself god, or some object of its own appointment, a palpable lie, so making man the author of gods that are not there.
It is where truth lies that lie scatters; it is where light is that love breeds; it is where mercy is found that pardon meets sin and guilt is deleted, in Jesus Christ.
As Christ put it, "My yoke is easy and My burden is light," (Matthew 11), and as I John declares, "His commandments are not grievous," (I John 5:4).The troubles that come from disregard of the truth are like self-induced tsunamis or typhoons. If you do that, like Samson, then you import complexity; but as you abide, the Lord provides rest for your soul, the destiny of His own eternal life and the peace which passes all understanding, in the very original of love, in the very depths of lovingkindness and the heights of compassion. HE never leaves nor forsakes His people ... not even Jonah!
Make sure :
That your love does not grow cold (if you are His, it will not do so, but your heart may need some treatment from time to time!) … Matthew 24:12;
That your delight in the Lord does not become aged (it will not do so if you are His, but it may need some spiritual rejuvenation) … Psalm 37:3-5;
That your trust in Him is altogether and not slippery; for to slide on take-off is bad, on landing worse; but to be faithful, steadfast, abiding in His Spirit and obeying His call in all things, this is not only no novelty, but a thing to be sought as the very oldest in the very newest, ever refreshed by His streams of living water (Isaiah 33:6).
That your love of the new life in the Same Lord Jesus Christ, is elemental and pure, and not polluted by known sin: it is in Him, the Lord of glory, to whom every knee will bow, as in Isaiah 45 and Philippians 2, the SAME LORD in both Old and New Testament, the eternal word of God: for there is only one God and this is the only Mediator and Saviour. The Father sent; Christ paid (Philippians 1:9); the Spirit applies.
NOTE
*1 See Highway of Holiness Ch. 4.
