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Chapter 3
PAIN HAS POINT
Isaiah speaks of ‘lying children,’ a people who will not hear the law of the Lord, who say to the seers,
‘Do not see,’ and to the prophets,
‘Do not prophesy to us right things:
speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits.
Get out of the way,
turn aside from the path,
cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.’ ”
When people say, therefore, “I do not like the way God allows this and that to happen,” and “I will not accept any God who does so and so”, citing pet peeves or fundamental objections as the case may be, they are really asking for a religion where the Holy God of the Bible is ‘caused to cease’ from being before them. This is precisely parallel to the motivation for the crucifixion of Christ. ANY God who wanted to run things differently was NOT acceptable, and if in the form of man, would be dispensed with, cruelty the exclamation mark to GET OUT! So they killed Him.
That time, having opportunity to kill, they killed Him, the resurrection the last word in frustration for them, leading to the slaughter of James, imprisonment of Peter, removal of rights of speech and so on, in the last almost like a befuddled modern democracy moving towards totalitarianism. The resurrection also led to the confirmation of the reality that even they could be pardoned, if they came to the resurrected Christ (Romans 10:9). Like the incensed, the seedy and the unspiritual, they could not repent, were like furious fox-terriers at a rabbit-hole. For all that, some of the priests DID repent (Acts 6) in the profound divine mercies of the God of pity and of grace.
In other words, to pursue the initial point: Making objections to what God says, and the way He gives a divine perspective is virtually tantamount to wanting Him dead and another alive, if need be. The other is called ‘the prince of this world’ (John 14:30), who has a mind of his own, and mankind is his mine where he digs for products to be possessed.
Take, again, the issue of ‘cruelty’. People who object to the EXISTENCE of cruelty MUST in consistency also object to the existence of liberty, since this is one of its options. If you want a people pre-selected, so that all are altogether and only good, then you reject the divine provision of TESTS and EXPOSURE to options, and hence of verifiable love and the capacity to love in practical reality, of friendship and the allowance of challenge, and hence of love of Him or one another.
It is some sacrifice. Those pre-selected would not have to choose – there would be no real test, nothing would be exposed to reality, and the rush of events would pose no problem. You could predict what would happen and need nothing more than mere conformity to patterns. To all eternity, what is real would be undetectable, being merely authorised, and the wondrous openness of God would be set aside for a closed campus, where law and not light was paramount.
God made something far better, and it sinned and cruelty is a result. It can occur in families, from drunken husbands to little children, from wolves or pigs among men, to the sheep: certainly it can, and often has done so. ONLY if you think this world is the end, and so dismiss the God of creation and salvation, however, is there any thought of justice. If you INSIST that all be put right now, then freedom is out and tests are extraneous, character need not be formed and personality is a push-over. You thereby make a superficial world, no depth, no expression in practicality of what it is all about, a mere display dependent on the One who presents it, like a play.
In fact, with the fall of man, there is not even such an option in existence. Fallen from his base, basis and living resource, man has placed himself in the crunch of necessity. Drowning, he is in no position to make a new ocean with new land in different places. Rather, separated from where he belongs and hence in the sin of separation continually, he exists on what God has made, but does so without knowledge, wisdom or faithfulness. He is out of place, like a dislocated shoulder. It is painful and takes a special knowledge and skill to restore. When the soul is out, it takes life in sacrifice to restore it.
Truth does not wink, or blink for that matter; it just is. Sacrifice cancels guilt, and when that of God, prevents any impugning of what is so covered. “Who shall lay charge against God’s elect?” is the resultant! (Romans 8:33). HIS elect are by no means the select (I Corinthians 1:26ff.), but those who have come to His calling (Matthew 23:37), through His knowledge, who knows His sheep, and is confused, stunned, charmed or made to dither by NONE. It is so restful, believing in God, in the Lord, whose charity is warm, whose heart is sincere and whose words are more sure than any mathematical (systems of men), oceanic (ways of water and wind) or psychological entity (mind of man in his own interstices).
What then ? Seeking therefore to avoid the misuse of liberty, inventing a world of ‘the good’ only, you end with the removal both of the USE of liberty by those who have it, so that all is increasingly as programmed for them, and the POINT of it, so that those who tested, found to be relying on themselves or their world, are not seen for what they are, for in such a world they do not occur.
Love that has no test, indeed, is like a car that need not actually go … The very nature of love, as of virtue, is this, that it is willing to rise to meet with resolution at cost, whatever checks, seeks control or blights it. It is a displacement dynamic, effective election of ways to go, a summit in truth with the sunshine of blessedness playing upon it, like light on the wings of a butterfly. Omit the realities, however, and you manufacture but a farce, a fiasco, a thing of no consequence, an aircraft without air and a personality without challenge.
God did otherwise. While He DOES limit various devilries, He permits others, as the passionate seed of man makes its growth into all the nether regions of the earth, the immoralities and obscenities, the ruthlessnesses, pride and arrogance, such as would CHANGE GOD, if it could, in order to replace Him, or work together with Him, perhaps as Mugabe would appear to have some willing to work with him … and under whose control!
Where such self-elevating wisdom is taken on board by anyone, from his or her own heart, then this becomes the instructor and critic of God; though for all that, it is merely made by Him, a prodigy indeed, surpassing to its own little and limited mind, the absolute creator of all the love, liberty, power, mind, discernment, discretion to be found in it or elsewhere! Hence some would go further and delete Him (even to delete created kidneys would constitute problem enough, without seeking to touch their engineer, while using His products).
When such nonsense is left, what remains ? It is this: if the word and will of God is deemed foolish, then by reflection from the One who surpasses us in everything, the one who says so is witlessly wandering from God, judging instead of learning.
IF in other words, you want another universe, and another book, neither the Creator, nor the Bible, nor the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, friend of sinners, then what ?
Then you are as Isaiah here declares, asking for THE HOLY ONE, the God of Israel and now of the Church, kindly to disappear, to CEASE from before you. Remember when God cited the type of desire, that the prophets would follow the requirements of the people, and so …
Get out of the way,
turn aside from the path,
cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.’ ”
The next point: HE, being eternal, will not cease. What WILL cease is peace for the presumption of judging Him, and any ground for imagining that your own evaluation is the source of value, your own wisdom the criterion of understanding and your own wit the light to determine all. That being presumptuous imposition and inglorious invention, will assuredly cease.
That, really, is what is needed if you want to judge God, who working all things after the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11), decided to run it the way it is. The wicked will not escape the day of judgment, except they be redeemed. This too is of the Lord, who would see those who DO fall, yet allowed to seek Him, not just to be relegated in advance. There is to be nothing of the Commissar about it; it is all clear and above board. God is LOVE AND God is LIGHT! (John 9:4, I John 1:5, 4:7ff.). Thus NOTHING that is inconsonant with light or love will ever be detected in Him, whose light is such that any imperious desire, effrontery or abuttal will find He dwells in light unapproachable (I Timothy 6:16), the Saviour of all men (in His offers and opportunities), but especially of those who believe (in the application of the scope of the redemption to its effectual site for impact, His people) as in I Timothy 4:9-10.
God knows how to redeem the lives that are bullied, and to find whatever is His own, known from before time (Ephesians 1:4). He misses nothing (cf. John 13). He has before time was, known the result with His own wisdom and working, since time is a creation, where one must wait for this and that, whereas NOTHING stands in the way of God’s will, time itself no boundary to His thought. In chasteness, He does not dictate love; and in patience He even waits for those who seek Him, to leave their own witness to their own wisdom that they may find Him, whose love works like a wind, just as He is.
Putting paid to ALL sin brought in faith to Him, in impact of salvation, and making sure the very personal payment in view is ENTIRELY HIS OWN, at Calvary (Hebrews 7, 9-10), He knows His own, loses none from whom He would become Saviour, and leaves … the husks. That is the nature of husks; they are really not needed. There is no life in them.