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Chapter 7

 

The Illimitable Grace of God,
amid the Limited World of Man:
the case of the Wise Men and What they Convey

For Relationship to Church Decline see Let God be God Ch. 8, including *1A, News 121, 122,
and for the field of Hebrews 6 and 10, see

Divine Agenda Ch.  9; LIGHT... Ch.  5,
Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Chs.    5,   6;
Scaling the Heights ... Chs.    2,  6,
Gratitude for His Glorious Grace Ch.   7

 

THE WISE MEN and the UNWISE EXEMPLARS

 

Who were the wise men from the East ? Were they scholars, potentates, philosophers, astrologers, astronomers ? Were they the recipients of divine revelation ? Were they pagans notwithstanding, for after all, even Balaam could receive a specific and a specialised piece of paramountly important information and pass it on, so that it was selected for report in the Bible, in Numbers 24:17ff., to be precise.

To be sure, that false prophet was as base in perspective, where money, power and position were concerned, despite his initial protestations, as one could wish, being cited in II Peter 2:15 and Jude 11 as an arch-enemy of the faithful. Indeed, as is pointed out, it took a donkey to give him wisdom, in the supreme and superb irony of God, who just as he deployed a serpent for the devil's permitted test of man, here deployed a donkey, to secure the apt rebuke to the false prophet.

What a strange combination was there in this Balaam. He would not speak ONE WORD but at the mouth of God, he would not, at first, even go with those who sought to USE his spiritual prowess, as it was imagined to be, for their own ends. In the case of the king of Moab, the end in view was the destruction of Israel, or at least the removal of that nation as a palpable threat to his security.

It appears that having given faithfully the word of God to the king of Moab in the various places set for religious action by the devious monarch, and having thus blessed Israel, in strict contradiction to the king's desire, a feat showing a measure of courage, he then circuitously advised him to undermine Israel by bringing in sexual lust through his people. By thus estranging them from the Lord, in such action, he thereby secured their rebuke and thus their weakening. It is the very prototype of those churches which, having for some time sought to be faithful to the Lord and to the Bible, then allow themselves to be seduced by intellectual potentates, or gurus, according to preference, predilection and traditional bent of their way, so seeking to combine this world's desires with their own, to secure greater acceptance, power or priorities, socially or religiously in the swim this world loves to make, across the Sea of Sedition.

How many churches have accepted this or that theological (and eventually with it, moral) alternative to truth, in order to assuage, charm, embrace, embroil this or that worldly set of guests or privileges or reputations for their delectation! It may start with dabbling, as in the case of the PC in America (cf. Let God be God Ch. 12), or with sudden, vile vehemence, as in the PC of Australia in the mid-thirties, when it began to sink into the Welhausen well without water, that broken cistern of philosophical sedition and archeological nonsense (cf. SMR pp. 67ff. ).

When such coups occur, people look and stare and do not act. They are assured by the apparently or ostensibly knowledgeable that of course it is all right; and they move along "with the times", with various concoctions, which from a propaganda point of view may be partly true and partly false, to secure the swallow, in order to see what great thing Moab may gain: Moab in this case being the victim church, whatever its name.  Soon such churches may be seen, for a period at least, littering the littoral, beached on the beaches like drift-wood, for drift they do. When you drift from your place in the ocean of truth, on the bark of belief, and trifle with the contemporary currents, alas, rocks other than the Rock, are ready to pierce the buoyant hopes of the misled autocracy which so often misleads the churches.

The wise men, then, were not necessarily godly, even if they had received a special divine revelation, as after all, that Balaam did. Nor for that matter were they necessarily ungodly. The fact is that the presence of the special revelation,  in terms both of the accuracy of their perception and the blessing on their voyage, as to its objective, not to mention the astronomical power assist provided, expose: all of this does not determine their own personal, spiritual condition. It DOES show a certain receptivity, and certainty the text indicates a strong longing; and in their long prepared gifts and worship - whether social obeisance to the Great King or actual religious worship - and the time spent on the trip and return, we see what appears no small sincerity.

Thus while through the case of Balaam we preclude generalisations about any special sanctity, yet this in no way excludes it altogether from the wise men. We are left to draw conclusions from other details, to some extent. Thus their soliciting help from the King shows a certain official standing, an enormous certainty; and this, when combined with their conferment of time on the task, the wealth both in time and in objects, and the precision of their result, indicates a divine revelation, by whatever means, direct or indirect, but certainly convincing, specific and remarkable.

Their very act of worship of this babe, in fact the Lord as formatted in man, were it sure that it was a religious worship, rather than the demonstration of enormous respect and acknowledgement of an epochally important person, would indicate belief in Him whom they beheld, as the Son of God. This, while it cannot be excluded from the Greek words in the text, is not so stylised as to make it a certainty. One can allow one's imagination to follow such a possibility with certain relish; but one cannot for that reason attribute to it a certainty which to a degree, is lacking.

 

THE PLACE OF WISDOM (cf. Job 28)

 

How then COULD people who were not necessarily actual believers, have such a revelation and be directed in such a way, to such a Child as this ? If their hearts were, as in Ephesians 4:17-19, and Ephesians 2 for example, it is indicated of man in general, how could there be room for such providential impulse and obvious desire to adore or express devoted acknowledgement ? Further, being warned about their departure from the kingdom to which they had come, in a dream, they were once more made wiser than serpents! Herod was a rank killer  and his slaughter of the innocents - as it is traditionally called, of the babes en bloc to block the life of the King whom the wise men acknowledged, whom he could not find - shows the extent of this murderous inclination!

The wise men, like Joseph and Mary when these were sent to Egypt, were protected, by the same God who ensured that they made history by signalising the Christ before even His boyhood showed the wonder of His power and the glory of His position (Luke  2:41ff.).

Here it is  well, in pondering the stark  contrast between the Joseph and Mary pilgrimage to Egypt, as divinely led, and the return journey of the wise men to their place, as warned in a dream, and the fate of those others, young or old, whom Herod with such exhaustive thoroughness expunged from life, like blots from a page, to see what the Lord does.

If He desires safety for His plans and people in order to astonish the world with love, mercy and peace, as in the birth and manhood to come of the Christ, then nothing can interfere.  Satan (as illustrated in Revelation 12), can roar and rave away; but it is but the work of a chained dog. If on the other hand, men trust in some king or kingdom, how readily it turns to the shadow of death, even when it seemed to promise security. There is no security but in the Lord, a fact that Jonah in the midst of the tempestuous upheavals of his maritime sub-career, was only too keen to announce! (Jonah 2:9); and it was in his own awareness, the very deliverance from the bars of hell, which shouted this message first to him.

It was, in Jonah's case, moreover, intensely personal. He had known and still did know, God; but he was estranged through fear. When the Lord placed him in peril, by having his escape cruise turned into the storms of death, he came true. Readily confessing that he was fleeing from God, he invited the men to throw him overboard, to secure their own lives; for his being there was the cause of their peril. With great and highly commendable reluctance, they did so, and so peace again was restored to the craft.

Salvation, said Jonah, is of the Lord! but not before the Lord had further stressed the point by having a large fish, most probably a whale-shark of enormous length and great capacity, with an air chamber for ... refuse, pick him up (cf. Matthew 12:39ff., where the historically soon to be ruined Judah was given warning in terms of the nearly ruined Jonah!). It is so strange that people tend to dismiss the quite simple actions of the Lord as impossible, which are daily occurrences somewhere. The Lord in fact, one finds as one lives the Christian life, and indeed reads of others as well, not only CAN work a miracle of timing or information (as with the wise men), but makes a point of it as the case seems to Him, to require it. After all, if the whole universe has its presence, history and destiny in His hands as inventor and Creator, it is not so very difficult to intrude His power, whether obtrusively or quietly, into any situation.

It is not that pleasure rather than pain for man is the objective, for life is far deeper than mere feelings, and covers facts of all kinds, of every dimension, of every detail in terms of the divine message, meaning and program. It is rather that workability of what makes for ultimate mercy and present kindness, even including tests and demonstration lessons as with Job*1, is something the Lord orders just as He ordered the information for the construction of man in the first place*2. When He wishes to act, who can hinder Him ? When He wishes on the other hand, to depress or delete a situation, it is the same. Patience recognising this, is prepared to WAIT on the Lord, who at times acts with breathtaking speed, and at other times, has one wait, as He did Moses, for 40 years!

Having then considered what must be learned from the situation of the wise men, we return to the consideration of who they were, and what was their spiritual condition.

God was evidently using multiple means to propel them to the Babe, and multiple means to remove them safely, when their journey was done. It was no part of His plan to have them impaled by Herod, but to expose that tyrant as powerless when it came to His ultimate mercy for man, something these wise men had by then successfully heralded for all time, so that even 2000 years or so later, we see over this world, exceedingly numerous testimonies to their act, at Christmas tide.

 

MEANS AND MIGHT

 

It was the same with the Cross (Luke 4, cf. Galatians 6:14). When Jesus returned to the place of His youth, Nazareth, and announced Himself the Messiah, by declaring in the synagogue, that the scripture of Isaiah 61 was that day fulfilled, the people did not like the idea. They thought it fitting to kill Him, tossing Him over a cliff evidently.

This however was:

bullet 1) NOT the time, before His great works exhibiting His identity, as in John 14, were done;
 
bullet 2) NOT the place, since it was to be in Jerusalem, where the Temple of symbolism was,
that the death was to occur, the living replacing in His death, the structure which would be demolished and not be restored to such a usage, as millenia passed,
thus showing that the living God has now a living way to Himself,
and that symbolism has yielded to reality with finality.

Thus, in what to this author appears the chief danger of destroying the redemption, there was a failure even when a despotic king desperately wanted to destroy a mere babe in the midst of his land, the town of whose birth was known to him. Redemption went on its chosen path until all being fulfilled in the correct manner, and each prophecy being sated with fact, the time came. Indeed, there is a third reason, why God did not allow, amongst any others, the death of Christ in the early part of His ministry, at Nazareth, something impending and close indeed!

It was

bullet 3) not the date, for Daniel had predicted a time around AD 30,
and it was not then that date! (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4).

It is not merely that God is very methodical, as some of His works, such as the arrangements for child-birth and growth with due seasons for every change from the zygote on, so evidently show, but that when His WILL is set on a result, nothing can intervene, and all that He SAYS is unremittingly done.

Thus, the wise men not being material to slaughter, were warned and left.

In all this, there is certainly a considerable degree of divine intervention. It is not possible that mere philosophy could have led them with this specific conviction of the King of the Jews, one so IMPORTANT, despite the subsidiary character of Israel at that time, under the foot of Rome, one to be given such obeisance and perhaps actual worship in advance, to Christ without revelation. It is not necessary that this should have come to the wise men as actual children of God. Such cannot be ruled out entirely, but there is no certain evidence for it, but inference which, in this case, as shown above, is not in a conclusive position.

 

 

LOOKING UP OR BEING TAKEN ALOFT (Ephesians 2:6)

 

Can or does God, then, sometimes illuminate those not His ? Certainly, as also shown above, in the case of Balaam, made notoriously evil in New Testament writings, this happened, and that to a remarkable degree. Yet in a situation so consistently blessed and for a group so insistently cared for, is there not at least a prima facie case for their being children of God ?

If there is one, it is not conclusive by any means. Thus in Acts 17:26-27, we find that God has set times and seasons for the nations, if by any means they might seek and find Him. His language is exceedingly apt for our case, that of the wise men, for this he declares: that God

"is not worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed anything,
since He gives to all, life and breath and all things."

The direction of traffic is from God to man, and it is not because of man that God is gracious, but rather His grace is the more expanded because of man's need, to meet it in application.

Moreover, says Paul, there is one vast race of man, unified in this, that it has one beginning, and amid this rambling race there is set a system. It is one of times and seasons, or more precisely "pre-appointed times" as well as designations for placement. Why ? It is so that "they should seek the Lord in the hope that they mighty grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us."

GROPE for Him and FIND Him: these are exceedingly relevant terms for our conception of the place of the wise men. They were ushered in, found the babe through a combination of astral events, kingly rule, prophetic prediction in the Bible and those who knew enough of it to relay the same to them, so enabling Bethlehem by this divinely organised Global Positioning Device, to be discovered as the location of the King.

Thus divine peace and grace can indeed obtrude into a life before conversion, the preliminary before the pre-emptive; and conviction of sin and of righteousness, and of judgment indeed (as in John 16), can certainly move with force, even violence, into the life of those being sought by the Lord. This can precede by years any coming conversion.

This requires thought, as we ponder the scriptures. Grope ? this means that despite the paralysing and polluting properties of sin in control (whether as personal pride or personal vice), man is capable of being aware of a summons from the Lord, and may resist it as they explicitly are said to have done in Acts 7, in the excoriating lashings of Stephen's address as there recorded! The heart can mirror one's sin or reflect the light of the Lord, before its admission; and many are the thoughts accusing else excusing one another, as Paul tells us in Romans 2, of those who do not know the Lord.

They may even begin to seek the Lord, and with considerable force and vigour address themselves to this task, and with the Lord stirring their hearts as by a wind on the waters, they may be moved in various depths and in certain dimensions until they become very much aware of His presence, though not with the clarity of conversion, or its total and unremitting surrender. It is the final control which is not yet; and even that deceitful organ, the unredeemed human heart, can become receptive to impression and impact, hope and desire inculcated and resounding, without reaching either the knowledge of the Lord in its clarity and precision, its secured reliability and its strength, or the results of covenant.

You see something of this in Hebrews 6 and 10, where there are those who have TASTED but not swallowed the powers of the world to come. Indeed, it is this spurious and superficial failure to proceed which makes such run the risk of final loss.

When it comes to the ONLY spiritual antibiotic (John 14:6, Acts 4:11-12 - in which imagery, sin is the pathological unit), it is important not to become inured to its wonders, or to play with its powers! There is a certain fearful and fiery looking forward reserved for corrupted cases, we learn in Hebrews 10. Fondling faith instead of grasping it, delectating spiritual things instead of yielding to the Lord, these are great causeways found in that vast trek, the highway to hell!

On the other hand, how often are people convicted long, before actually converted; and how much of the divine peace beckons, before it is received by the contra-sin specifics of the New Covenant in the Cross of Christ! In the end, moreover, it is the divine action which is decisive, as predestinated in love, when the pathos and compassion of Luke 19:42ff., would be seen in the same unchanged heart of the Lord Jesus Christ (Hebrews 13:8), in predestination as in proclamation in Jerusalem!

Thus Paul declares this of the Galatians 4:8-9:


"Nevertheless, then, when you did not now God, you did service
to those which by nature are no gods.

"But now after you have known God,
or rather are known by God,
how do you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements
to which you desire again to be in bondage!"

In other words, it is God who does the crucial knowing, and when the heart follows in His gracious knowledge, then those know Him also, who prior to that at most have sought after Him, minds detained by sin, spirits stained by surrogates. It is the divine action which determines, wrought in predestination, but it is not determined in some impersonal sense, since neither God nor man is impersonal, the One as He is, the other in His image. It is in the divine knowledge of seeking all and finding where love reaches in His grace, which scripturally is the ultimate, as Romans 8:29ff. shows us.

What then follows ? The foothills of grace may become either the plateaux of pardon, or mere early steps leading on to waywardness in its very sum. It is not evil to be upon them; it is wise, however, when so blessed, to be active and not to linger in dither, but to come and to act. It is not everyone who contemplates the door of faith into the New Covenant in Christ, who is saved, but those who enter it (John 10:9).

As to these, they are His sheep, and CANNOT PERISH (John 10:27-28), because that same divine power which scheduled the coming and going of the wise men, and the arrival and survival of the babe, and the escape of the young man, Jesus Christ, from untimely murder at Nazareth, secures what He pardons with unremitting care, implicit in that life for death exchange which is salvation (II Corinthians 5:17-21, I Thessalonians 5:9-10).

It is in this context, then, of groping and seeking the Lord, if by any means they might find them, and of nations having pre-appointed the times when with effect they may find the Lord, that we see the wise men.

Did they realise more, in the company of those godly Jews whom they met at the time of their coming to the babe ? Possibly. Did they in any case have a copy of the Old Testament or of any part of it ? It is possible, since after all, even Alexander the Great, over 3 centuries earlier, according to Josephus, had not only had dealings with the Jewish Temple and its rulers, but had spared them for religious reasons, and been received by them with the information that his career was divinely prophesied by Daniel, which of course it was (Daniel 7-8 cf.  The Glow of Predestinative Power Ch. 8, Highway of Holiness Ch. 10 and Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 10).

At all events, they very probably had some knowledge of such a book, and possibly of some of the contents, setting forth divinely delineation on the deity Himself.

 

SEASONABLE TIMES AND TIMELY SEASONS
IN SPIRITUAL AFFAIRS

 

Fascinating as all these possibilities are, and the elements behind them, what is important is that God has set for man and for nation, times and seasons, openings for grace quite specific. Thus Isabel Kuhn, in such works as "Ascent to the Tribes," has shown what marvels of divine solicitude were present as these people such as the Lisu, in "Lisuland" were given the Gospel, while Grenfell of Labrador gives another highly specialised case and the China Inland Mission at one time with some 600 missionaries had an effusion of grace spurting into China.

The opium war did nothing to help, a profound error from Britain, but not of course the fault of the missionaries. The drastic persecution from the nationalistic Empress that saw many have to flee in some appalling circumstances, and mob violence like a prelude to the Red Guard, but with different grounds, brought a sobering flush to the approaching virtual sunset of missionary activity. On the other hand, the Underground Church in China is evidently exceedingly strong, and the 'changing of the guard' into the indigenous way has had its own advantages. As so often, foul and even hypocritical persecution, including attacks by dishonest means on the reputation of victims, can spread strength like a fertiliser, from the bones of the saints!

In these and many ways, China in particular has had its time and its season, and with Chiang
Kai-Shek, fighter of valour against Japan, and his wife, there came amazing opportunities, soon to be swallowed in the baneful follies of anti-personal, State-lusting Communism, strong in their relatively slight war contribution, poised for the sort of grossly opportunistic take-over in the time of strangulation of the nation, a good parallel to Russia in 1917. So do the crows, the cormorants, the vultures, as Christ said in the last case, hover over the carcass (Matthew 24:28). The nations, the powers, the potentates of ideology, false prophecy, the carnal devisers, the well-equipped seducers, these come and draw many, confused by lies, netted by liers-in-wait, and they strike, whether with oil riches, or when a nation is weak, or when there is a slowing of fidelity as happened in England and the USA, in biblical terms, so drastically in the last century.

Now England is in no small danger of being white-anted from within, by Islamic fascism, elements which seek to intimidate, defoliate the tree of British history, impose their own ideas while eliminating the testimony that has been an OFFICIAL part of Britain for centuries; and this ? It is because of the weakness of the nation for so long, living to a large extent on spiritual capital and taking enormous liberties with the faith, making postures towards Rome*3, so distant from its constitutional requirements*4, and allowing the EU to dictate immorality*5 as if it were some god, who having taken over Europe, will take England by Chunnel or other funnel of commercial convenience, or cultural declivity.

What a a time and a season that great nation, Britain, has had, and what an amazing use it  has made of it, in sending out the Gospel; but now, alas, its Autumn comes*5A, and prevailing when others have sought to destroy or subjugate it, it now is subjugating itself to alien cultures and concepts, tending to be prone before the merest folly; and indeed some seem to speak of it as intensely meaningless, and seek vehement 'faiths' as an alternative option, as they seek to destroy her*6.

Such vehement violence indeed was the explicit testimony of one of the neo-Fascists from Islam in the land, who sought something ... more, even if to be found in mere ignorant devastation of what took wisdom to create! By power (blow up anyone, anywhere), by oil (try doing without it while taking it easy!), by fear (where will you be when you are gone!), such act as those seeking to extort from the land something of the little left.

No nation will be able to exalt itself when the time comes (cf. Isaiah 2 and 24), when the Lord Himself devotes His energy to judgment, and history to the critical examination at the last, of its pages. Some nations, in spiritual terms, have done better than others, and some have risen higher in these realms, before falling, through dissidence and follies, not unlike those of ancient Israel. In this way, we see the extremely explicit point of Paul in Romans 11. Using the figure of an olive tree for Israel, and then focussing on it as a branch, Paul shows it was torn out because of unbelief (woeful after all the privileges and testimony earlier given); and proceeds to WARN the Gentile nations that Israel is not alone in this thing.

If Gentiles have, in a figure, been grafted into the tree (notice that it is the SAME tree, nothing transmuted!), upon the pruning out of Israel, let there be no confusion as if they are intrinsically better people. If they too, in any part, should turn from the faith, then the same result comes! It is coming, has come and may be seen coming to this nation and that; and as vile laws are passed in the USA and Britain regarding sexuality, for a mere example, in biblical terms, does this not invite the very treatment accorded to Israel ? Does anyone have to be a pundit to perceive it! Is the rottenness of Sodom and its ways not sufficiently indicted in the Bible, and is not the case adequately depicted!

Does one not recall the incisive assault on shame which the Lord made on that nation, Israel,  when he called its leaders "rulers of Sodom"! As to Sodom, its history and the cause of it is exceedingly clear in Genesis, II Peter 2:4-11 and Jude 7; and to have its name accorded is like seeing a spreading mushroom cloud, and wondering when the radiation will hit! (Isaiah 1:10).

There God in that vast spiritual panorama, starting with the degradation of Israel, continuing in the call of Isaiah (1, 6), moving onto judgment, and to the interspersing with the coming salvation of the Messiah (4,7, 9, 11, 2, 24, 27, 29,  32, 33, 35, 40-55, 60-61), and the eventual restoration of Israel, amid the Gentiles, in one body with one faith (Isaiah 66 with Deuteronomy 32, Jeremiah 16:10), at the outset announced this designation of their condition: RULERS OF SODOM. That is the name accorded to rulers in Israel at that time!

What a slap! Yet if you do not subject yourself to the divine designations and ask for pardon, seeking regeneration for restoration, where it may be found (Isaiah 55), what is the point! Even in cricket it is an offence to disregard the umpire or in the slightest harass him, and when it comes to God who knows all, know-alls in the making have even less opportunity than some who are harlots! Such is the clear intimation of Christ (Matthew 21:31-32).

But let us hear the divine sketch concerning Israel, part of which was soon to be swept aside, and even repopulated with other races, in the coming day of Nebuchadnezzar's assault.

Before we regard this, however, it is timely to reflect that it is useless to seek to chop off the financial hands or freedom of those who expose such things, as is being done even in some parts of Australia at this time, and in many other places with more violence. It is in vain to seek to silence the loving voice which, in the Lord's name,  calls back to reason, reality and revelation from the God of creation, in the only verified religious book which can possibly be accepted in any scientific mode, or logical constraint*7..

This merely adds to the sins, the disciplines and the default to come, in Gentile parallel with the time when the those in Israel might kill this or that prophet.

Silencing the doctor does nothing to remove the disease; and bringing silence to the words of the Lord through His servants (if it were possible, so to produce it!), this is merely a cosmetic substitute for the operation required; and its blood, financial, in reputation defiled, in false accusation, will be required of those who make intimidatory laws, not founded on truth *7A.

If SA is to join Victoria in works of this kind*8, or even in this direction, what can be expected! Judgment waits till the end for its fulness; but even now there is a sword in the hand of the Lord. He can use infidels as readily as others (cf. Isaiah  44-45, in the case of Cyrus, and in judgment, that of Nebuchadnezzar, Ezekiel 29:18ff.); and since Christians do not physically fight to impose their religion (John 18:36) - though the spurious and furious may try to do so  - many may be those who will arise to harass the rebellious nations which defile the strength that came from the God they now bypass.

Let history then talk to us awhile, and we shall follow Ezekiel 16 in the classic case of Israel.

"You erected your shrine at the head of every road,
and built your high place in every street.

"Yet you were not like a harlot, because you scorned payment. You are an adulterous wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband. Men make payment to all harlots, but you made your payments to all your lovers, and hired them to come to you from all around for your harlotry. You are the opposite of other women in your harlotry,
because no one solicited you to be a harlot.
In that you gave payment but no payment was given you,
therefore you are the opposite."

"Now then, O harlot, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord God:

'Because your filthiness was poured out and your nakedness uncovered
in your harlotry with your lovers, and with all your abominable idols,
and because of the blood of your children which you gave to them, surely, therefore, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure,
all those you loved, and all those you hated;
I will gather them from all around against you and
will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness.

'And I will judge you as women who break wedlock or shed blood are judged;
I will bring blood upon you in fury and jealousy.
I will also give you into their hand, and they shall throw down your shrines and break down your high places. They shall also strip you of your clothes,
take your beautiful jewelry, and leave you naked and bare.

'They shall also bring up an assembly against you,
and they shall stone you with stones and thrust you through with their swords.

'They shall burn your houses with fire, and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women; and I will make you cease playing the harlot, and you shall no longer hire lovers.

"So I will lay to rest My fury toward you, and My jealousy shall depart from you.
I will be quiet, and be angry no more.

'Because you did not remember the days of your youth, but agitated Me with all these things, surely I will also recompense your deeds on your own head," says the Lord God. "And you shall not commit lewdness in addition to all your abominations.

'Indeed everyone who quotes proverbs will use this proverb against you: ‘Like mother, like daughter!’

'You are your mother’s daughter, loathing husband and children;
and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and children; your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite.

'Your elder sister is Samaria, who dwells with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who dwells to the south of you,
is Sodom and her daughters.

'You did not walk in their ways nor act according to their abominations;
but, as if that were too little, you became more corrupt than they in all your ways.

"As I live," says the Lord God, "neither your sister Sodom nor her daughters have done
as you and your daughters have done. Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

"And they were haughty and committed abomination before Me;
therefore I took them away as I saw fit.

"Samaria did not commit half of your sins; but you have multiplied your abominations more than they, and have justified your sisters by all the abominations
which you have done.

"You who judged your sisters, bear your own shame also,
because the sins which you committed were more abominable than theirs;
they are more righteous than you. Yes, be disgraced also, and bear your own shame, because you justified your sisters.

"When I bring back their captives, the captives of Sodom and her daughters, and the captives of Samaria and her daughters, then I will also bring back the captives of your captivity among them, that you may bear your own shame and be disgraced by all that you did when you comforted them."

How intensely poignant the case of Israel, known to all the world, though some stuff their ears!

How pathetic for those Gentile peoples who, in full view of this extraordinary and complex case*8A, pursue the same failure, let alone for the same reason!

Here you see in detail with the spiritual dynamic and the levelling line of judgment, the Lord's warning in Israel's day, made applicable to the Gentile nations by Paul, in terms of becoming proud of their apparently preferential position, one in fact dependent, just as Israel's was, on having FAITH IN GOD, in terms of the revelation given.

To the Jew, it was at that earlier time, in the Old Covenant that they moved, falling from this; to the Gentile (and eventually now to all, when Israel returns, as in Galatians 4, Romans 11), it is in terms of the New Covenant.

Whether, however,  it be the agreement in the bud, or the bloom, in the Old or the New, in preparation or in consummation, it is one God who does not change His ways, for they are everlasting (Habakkuk 3:6). Falling from His word, way, wit and wisdom, expressly revealed, it is one, one way, down, with one destiny, fitting to decline and its negative consummation!

So now we see in a fuller canvas the whole time of seeking, of groping on the part of the nations,  if by any means they might find the Lord, and being brought to focus on the Way, find the Door and so many might enter. With nations, equally, they may turn in the new generation from that Lord, and with the addition of hypocrisy, weakness, wandering accumulations of gods, such as in nature worship*8B, with its evolutionary format for modern times of that ancient phenomenon, as ludicrous now as always: with all of this,  they ask no less than did Judah and Israel of old, for judgment.

To ASK for judgment: is it not a strange and a popular phenomenon ? Its wastages are an archeology of their own upon the earth.

Is it so surprising that such judgments now teem like acid rain on the nations, many of whom come very close to such a history!

As some decline, others advance. There is the same Gospel, the same necessity of faith in the Lord whose it is, and whether it be expansion or decline, the wheel turns on the axis of this reality.

Thus, again, there is the famous case of the 5 slain American missionaries in Ecuador, as so thrust on the public notice not only by their loving and disciplined actions, but by the wife of one of them, Elisabeth Elliot, who went AFTER the murder, to tell of the pardon of Christ.

In this, she staggered the native people, and tended to illustrate as well as declare elements of the Gospel: that is, that love sacrifices. Well-known works on this epic include "Shadow of the Almighty" and "Through Gates of Splendour", by Elisabeth Elliot, and "Jungle Pilot," by Nate Saint.

Sometimes people become more willing to believe the Gospel of divine grace in Jesus Christ, when they see mere sinners among men, or women, convicted, converted and consecrated to His service, at work with loss readily borne, to bring that Gospel to them!

So too the wise men may have come  close to definitive, personal divine grace, and were assuredly being directed in it.

 

THE ILLUMINATING CASE OF THE WISE MEN
and the CHANGELESS DIVINE WISDOM

What then of these men, and what may we learn in this Christmas season, 2006, of them and through them ?

By all of these very means, the interlocking of astronomical events, contact with Israel, of which they seem to have been in any case very much aware, for they were seeking its coming 'King', and exposure to the Bible, which after all was the clearly defined MEANS which LED them to the Lord (and it was not unavailable to them, at least on their arrival in Israel!), together with whatever elements of truth had been disseminated, in whatever degree or form, to their land beforehand: they may have found the Lord.

Indeed, they did so physically in the format of the babe of Bethlehem, the Star of Balaam to whom the star of astronomy led, and with the sure knowledge of Micah made available from their interview time with the King of Judah, and in that very act, they may have become aware of far more. By that time, they were acting within a covenant people, in the midst of zealous persons, children of God, and came to the nest of the Nativity, made necessary by the befoulment of human sin.

Thus their worship may have become religious by that time, and they may WELL have become convinced by all these pathways to the Lord, of whom as the King of the Jews they had not the slightest doubt, and with whom they conducted interview - though He was there as a mere babe.

They may have been fully converted and even become missionaries. In fact, their experience, though not actually so traumatic as that of Jonah, was most perilous, the warning in the dream to bypass King Herod,  impressing this on them.

Such triumph amid peril, such divine organisation of their coming and going, and of the consummation at which they knelt,  would be most unlikely to inhibit faith, but could have led to their progressive realisation of who the Christ really was. Thus,  in the midst of following what they did have, "groping" and probing, they may indeed have become an example not only of divine protective providence, but of divine guidance into life eternal.

Thus, seeing all these facets or features, we realise afresh that the illimitable power of God, the divine majesty of His being, moving in ways of His own choosing to intrude, introduce, obtrude, or in secret places of the heart instil, is mixed with the decisive word of His mouth. As the former disposes, the latter is definitive, directive, as He moves man from the delirium of the mind to the delight of the find.

To find gold, it is something; jewels, yes an event of some import; but to find God, this can be done paramountly when it is a seeking that opens the doors (cf. Jeremiah 29:13); and as to that, is to be done only when one comes to the right place, and that is only in Christ Jesus. God's grace is not limited in its actuating scope (Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2), and thus this to one, is to all. While there are  specific features in this or that case, the generic of grace is salvation and eternal life, so let us hear Jeremiah.

"Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

"I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive."

 

God has spoken, and made man; man has spoken and made sin; and God has uttered His disclaimer and burden both, to distance Himself from these human delusions, on the one hand, and to cure them on the other. In this, the magnitude of His grace, the wisdom of His ways, the illimitable splendour of His divine initiatives and resources, moves like a backdrop in a play; but it is the words of the text which count, the imprimatur of the Gospel which opens. To these and to this, men turn; and many turn from them. To their core, millions turn, and that is the Cross; to their power, some come, and that is crucially found in the resurrection of the very body first donated to the Babe (Romans 10:9, I Cor. 15:1-4, Luke 24).

It is very precise, each nail-print being a memorable event in the agony of the Cross. It is very practical, dying being no poetry.

It is however very great, for death voluntarily, is wonderful for a good cause; death bearing the penalty of another is splendid for love. Yet as to death in which the thing which is the very sting of sin occluding the spiritual beauty of experience with its horrid hollowness and brazen surface, reaching the Son of God, innocent as a sacrifice: this is better than all poetry, more masterful than any mountain, more fluent for faith than any river, more profound than any ocean, more extensive than space, more multiple than the stars.

It is, moreover, the fact.  People talk of believing this or that, as if this made the situation in its very authenticity, for man. Far is this from being so. THE FACT is the situation for man, the fact of God, the face of God, the illimitable majesty of this same God, and the inevitable force of the truth concerning Him, this is what matters.

From this there is no escape (as if one should wish to escape from a beautiful lake to a prison!). To this all must come, if not in faith, then in judgment (John 3:17-19,36). Believing makes all the difference to the individual, not because it was so good of him or her, but because this relates to the fact. Escape is through a fact, to a fact (cf. Hebrews 6:19, Hebrews 2:1-3).

What statistics of social inclination may reveal is only for sorrow or gladness, shame or hope, for the human race. How what is believed relates to the fact, this is what matters. Believing in this or that antibiotic is not so important; having the one which acts, the fact, and being willing THEN and subsequently for that, to take it, this is to the point. Where there is only one, then it is crucial not to be flippant and facetious, ignoring the disease and despising the remedy.

The wise men went where sent, gathered what was needed, pursued the task to the end, finished their search at the Saviour, found Him, and went as directed thereafter.

In these particulars, they give a useful lead.

It is not their feeling about what to do and where to go which matters, except to the point they know or do not know God; it is whether they go where the fact is*9, in this case the Babe who on the Cross when grown to His maturity, would show in awful splendour, the beauty of being right, of practical action, not mere mouthings of feeling.

In nothing else is mere subjectivity to the point, except it be right; nor is it otherwise here. Subjective aspects are important; the objective result is crucial. Christ is the objective result. In realising Him, there is redemption, because He made it simple, practical and obtainable with the means at man's disposal, namely, a receiving freely of the same. It has no possible additives (Romans 3:23ff., Isaiah 55).

It works only as directed (Galatians 1). You may misuse your own mind and body, or spirit and soul, and there may be some tolerance; but if you misuse the knowledge of God, then you endanger an alienation of the very Remedy, which is the Redeemer. This, it is as one might expect, for God being so absolute in wonder, power and wisdom, and so prodigious in love and patience, men might well seek to exploit, and in so doing, find that the love is not laxity, nor the wisdom gullibility. Thus can depravity act to drag down rescue into the mire, and be left only with the flood of the mud.

To the contrary, the wise men give an example of following each lead with zeal, with sacrifice and with prudence. In this it is well, for wisdom is prepared to learn, even that salvation is its necessity, and worship is its life (Acts 4:11-12, Psalm 96, 27).

Whether for a man, woman, child or nation, an epoch or a domain, it is not wise to be tardy and fanciful in considering the author of fact, but to use faith at the outset, in accepting the divine grant of pardon, mercy and power for living the life He desires, will direct and assigns. Nor is He like Communism, promising heaven and providing hell (as some found as shown in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago),  or rather its nearest available earthly prelude!

Than His company, there is no greater pleasure, and not least of its beauties is this, that it is impossible to gain it, when pleasure is its aim. It is always so with love*10.

 

NOTES

 

*1 See on Job: TRIALS, TESTS and TRIUMPHS in TEMPTATION.

 

*2   See: The gods of naturalism have no go!

*3 Reference to this is to be found in Section 2 of  A Question of Gifts.

*4  See Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 3.

*5 Consult Wake Up World! ... Ch. 3.

*5A See The Other News 13, Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 3.

*6 Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 9.

*7

See:

REASON, REVELATION and the REDEEMER

SCIENTIFIC METHOD, SATANIC METHOD

AND THE MODEL OF SALVATION

CELESTIAL HARMONY FOR THE TERRESTRIAL HOST and

Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 9

 

*7A

Consult Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 9,   *2, Barbs  6   -7; see also *8B below.
  .

*8

See NEWS 156,  Galloping Events Ch. 7, End-Note *2.

 

*8A

See Gracious Goodness ... Epilogue with Of the Earth, Earthy ... Ch. 10, Ch. 11, His Wounds ... Ch.3.

 

*8B

See ...

History, Review and Overview Ch.    5,  4  with The Glow of Predestinative Power Ch.   7
(on material expressions of super-natural qualities in creation), cf. Life, what is it  ?
 

Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch.   3 (shrieking for their idols, but in vain),    7  ,

The Bright Light and the Uncomprehending Darkness Ch.    5, (myths and 'nature', and religion),

 Earth Spasm ... Chs.     7; 1,;   3 ; 

Of the Earth, Earthy ... Ch.     4 esp. *1 and *2; 

Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch.    8, News 57, 59,  Sparkling Life ... Ch.   8, 
(and principles),

Secular Myths Ch. 3 (and post-naturalism),

Beauty for Ashes Ch.     3,  SMST    7, 

SMR 172ff., 419ff. (Myths and Smugglers) ;


Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch.   4 (and Darwin dead); News 84 (broad setting, as in Spiritual Refreshings Ch.   13).

See also Indexes, with Creation, Evolution, Naturalism, Ideology.

 

*9

See concerning,

THE NECESSITY OF THE LOCATION

OF THE DIVINE REMEDY

FOR MAN, in the following work:

The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy

 

*10

Ezekiel 29:12-14 has this:

"Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, says the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, says the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place from which I caused you to be carried away captive."

There is a need to seek with all the heart, which to be sure can be wrought only by the power of the God who heals; but it must be there for all that, and surely none does He commandeer as if to blight the image of God in man and make man mere merchandise. Knowing all from the first (Romans 8:29ff.), He effects it in fidelity to truth in the infinity of His power. It is His desire that all be saved (Colossians 1:19ff.), and it is neither for imposition nor for lack of opportunity that any is gained or lost. God knows precisely what He is doing - and one could wish the same of some contra-biblical theologues - and it is a simple contradiction in terms to imagine that having such a desire as He definitively expounds, ANY circumstance could prevent its fulfilment.

On the other hand, having the restraint which love has (as exemplified continually in the prophets and cardinally in Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42ff.), it is equally inconceivable that He would short-circuit His long lamentations and clear expositions, by simple overpowering the stricken soul. He who knows all things does not find it at all too hard to fulfil all the specifications of spiritually such as He Himself defines, and theological efforts to help Him, merely abort the truth (cf. Predestination and Freewill, The Glow ... Ch. 8, and Great Execrations Ch. 7 and 9).

It is of the very nature of love that it does not seek its own (I Corinthians 13:5); that its own advantage or self-fulfilment is not cardinal. Love it the outward movement of the sustained heart, and its income is from the Lord, not from results. It loves to help and thus to be helpful; but even if the vine and the olive fail and the cattle do not come, yet it acts in its integrity (cf. Habakkuk 3:17ff.). God Himself, having invented time (Romans 8:36ff.), is not subject to its vagaries. What He is, He is, and needs nothing from man (cf. Psalm 50:9-11), though He delights to show mercy (Micah 7:19ff.).