Can a man be of nothing

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CHAPTER 8

THERE IS NOTHING TO IT!

There is something to that! Consider it...

How to come to nothing! and

How to have your sins' glower overcome by divine power

How to come to nothing!

"Hereafter I will not talk much with you:
for the prince of this world is coming,
and has nothing in me," John 14:30

We will come back to these words of Jesus Christ.

Can a man be of nothing ? Can he really come to nothing ? Sometimes someone will preach. You are nothing! Seek the Lord.

Let us consider what the biblical position is on this matter, be examining the Bible, and things it says to this point and to this issue.

Isaiah 40:17

"All nations before Him are as nothing; |
and they are counted to Him less than nothing, and vanity."

The term 'vanity' here means of no account, misled, confined to illusion, useless, done for, deceived as by idols.

That is: upstart nations, with notions of their own greatness, grandeur or might, in collision with the mercy, purposes and wisdom of God, are as good as nothing, for there is nothing good in them. What is power is misused; what is imagination, is abused; what is their purpose is missed and they are from the womb of creation, now grown amiss, to become like a thing of nothing: vain, empty, wilful, arbitrary, unwise, like a scattery colt.

As Ecclesiastes 7:29 puts it: "Truly I have found: that God made man upright,
but they have sought out many schemes."

But look now at Isaiah.

Isaiah 40:23

"He brings the princes to nothing; He makes the judges of the earth useless."

Isaiah 41:11-12

"Behold, all they whose who strive with you shall perish.

You will seek them, and not find them, even those who contended with you:
those who war against you will be as nothing, and as a thing of nought."

In other words, God has it in His power to appoint and to disappoint, to raise and lower. Even the highest posts on this earth, however, so far from guaranteeing grandeur, even goodness and wisdom, if their incumbents do not seek and know the Lord, merely misdirect both themselves and others, neither knowing justice nor understanding life; and their words become mishatched, like ducks' eggs among those of the hens, like marshes where there should be gardens. Thus they proceed, based on false perspective, without the knowledge of God, HIS will, morals, ways, guidance and words. Man simply CANNOT contend successfully with God, and the higher his self-notion as an individual, potentate or race, the worse is the combination of both pride and illusion. Start with the letters and build words; don't put centipede eggs as points or dots for making your own letters: be instructed by God and THEN wisdom about what you and the human race are, will be given. Until then, illusion rules, mistakes are mandatory and destiny is jangling.

On the other hand, if you DO trust in the Lord and DO rely on His word because it is His, and find yourself confronted by many who detest the living God, then God is He who will deliver you, though you may indeed, and MUST suffer if you will, in this world, live in a godly manner (II Timothy 3:12). Titus 2:12 tells us that nevertheless, should set about living in just such a godly style, in this present world. James 4 shows that if you LOVE this world, then you become an enemy of God. It is dedicated to what is without God, in its final wisdom, counsel and international might, as a glance at the ways of the United Nations, without God, Christ or true worship, making up its morals without foundation, logical or spiritual, shows all too well.

As noted in The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet, Ch. 5:

Shirley Hazzard books on the topic, People in Glass Houses and Defeat of an Ideal, are of keen interest, from an inmate of the UN, or should one rather deem it, a participant, and in the end, a horrified one at the pettiness, power seekings, unwieldly and anomalous classifications that impel, the combination of lavish words and mini-deeds within itself!

That is one of many statements of disillusion in that unwieldly and ill-founded international body which presumes to govern and direct men without God, without Christ, on its own two legs as an idealistic icon, whose ideals become notorious in practice, as painful in enunciation, like a moral-Moses without God, a ludicrous in mis-match, an almost comic imitation.

Isaiah 41:24

"Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought:
an abomination is he who chooses you."

Through the prophet Isaiah, God has been reviewing the endless seeming efforts of ancient Israel to marry Him to a stone, an idol, an image, another way, some work of the imagination, to the thoughts of mankind, as if the LAST thing on earth to do would be to follow, listen to, obey and be built into a life fit for eternity by His grace. No, they must add from culture, from desire, what they will, and still perhaps treat the Bible, the word of God, as ceremonially significant, nominally necessary, or even formally functional, in an endless seeming parade of emptiness of heart and wildness of head.

In this endless antagonism, what is the result ? the work becomes ill-founded, like a 50 tower building on a heavily slanted base. It looks good but has only one end. To be impressed with this sort of life-architecture, to judge this a good thing, is the work of a dumb judge. Hence anyone chooses to congratulate such a nation WHEN it is in such a state, merely perverts justice. It is not that the rest of the nations, without God, or misaligned against Him, are better. It is that this is the bar, and what does not reach it does not pass; but it does at last pass out in a passing out parade which it would be better not to inhabit. God is judge and if His mercy is neglected, then nothing good follows.

Isaiah 41:29

"Behold, they are all vanity; their works are nothing:
their molten images are wind and confusion."

Here we see that WHEN and IF a people set themselves, in the full light of the revelation of God, to contest, reject, encrypt and ignore the Lord, putting the finger to the nose, if not the fingers to the ears, then from their stubborn refusal to be redeemed, to be treated realistically as in the image of God and needing reconciliation with Him so that they might both know Him and labour together with Him purposefully on this earth: there are results.

Like a car that would (if it could) refuse all mechanics, however glorious it may have seemed when first made, so it comes to nothing. That is the end of the matter. WHILE it wishes to go in that way, it is cutting out its future, making of itself a nonentity, grovelling to its pride and interring its hope. There is no longer anything healthy, sound, according to truth left in it; and IN ITS REBELLION in the face of all offers of care and restoration, it becomes self-appointed junk. Its hope is junked. Its duty is junked. Its powers are misapplied; it is a fountain pen being used as a plough. It is ridiculous from the point of view of its PURPOSE, its POSITION and its FUTURE.

That is the sense in which a people can be called "of nothing". In the same sense, their works being mere misuse of what they are meant for, are an extravagance of imagination, a vulgar or even vicious misuse of responsibility, lacking light of understanding and response to the Divine Maker. They have become extraneous to the life of the Lord, though they still have a kind of severed quasi-life of their own. In this sense, "their works are nothing."

Indeed, when a person severs or insists on remaining free from God, from His word, from His covenant of mercy and grace in the blood of Christ, the Redeemer to bring us back to God (II Peter 3:18, Matthew 20:28, John 8:44ff.), it is not as if he or she is merely in the void. There are alternates in the way of 'shepherds'. If you want to trust in matter, the first building blocks in the construction of man, to be moulded by life formats into his body, then this is an idol. It is a mere material, constructed, constrained, subject to law, used by God. Worship that, put your imagination into that as your source, and your total and final reliance is on matter, your idol.

In parallel with this: if you want to trust in a Church, then even if it be a sound one, IT did not die for you, IT was not raised for you. IT is a congregation of saved sinners, but it cannot save: there is ONLY ONE name that God gives for restoring a people at the first made in His image and then defiled by sin or even by defiance with it, and that it that of Jesus Christ (Acts 4:11-12). There is none other under heaven, says Peter.

It is not even enough to trust in the Bible. It IS the word of God and wholly true as originally given, and DOES show exactly what God wants, and it is therefore wholly and completely trustworthy. Yet just as you do not trust in a prescription, however well chosen, from your doctor, but must have it made up and then take it, SO you must trust in the Lord who does the speaking in the Bible, and when He commands, Repent! (Luke 13:1-3) then do it, and seek His name, face and receive His Gospel, so that He, the Just One, is received as your Saviour, covering your sin with His own life given to death to bear your judgment. Rely on Him in terms of His promises and live for Him (Romans 12:1-2, Proverbs 3:4-5, I Peter 1:1-8).

Christ puts the point this way:

"You search the scriptures, and for in them you think that you have eternal life;
and these are they which testify of Me:
but you will not come to Me that you might have life!"

It is rather like seeing a beautiful road sign, pointing to the distant Rocky Mountains and being so thrilled with that sign, that it never occurs to you to FOLLOW it, not only with your eyes, but with your feet, and GET THERE! If one does not go for the right destination, how does one expect to get there! Mercifully, trusting in the mercy of the Lord, procured freely for every person to be received by faith, trusting in Him who made us, to restore us, and in His redemption, where He has taken sin the just on behalf of the unjust to bring us to God: this brings to God by the appointed path.

In this way, casting one's sin and guilt on Him and receiving peace with pardon and becoming a child of God (Micah 7:19ff., I Peter 1:1-21, Acts 3:19ff.), one is PLACED on the right path, GIVEN (Ephesians 1:11) an inheritance amidst the saints of light (Ephesians 1:17-19) and becomes a receiver of eternal life (I John 5:11ff.).

Rejecting this, is rejecting not only mercy but the way of it, paid for by God, achieved on the Cross of Jesus Christ, confirmed in the resurrection, attested by the Holy Spirit and exhibited in the Bible. God has NOT left us blind amid the bushes, but in the piercing narrow light which sharply shows up the path, the peace and the pardon we need (Matthew 7:15ff.). Rejecting mercy is asking for judgment and deserving it DOUBLY- for the sin first, and the rejection second. No wonder, then, that in such circumstances, a person makes himself/herself a thing of nothing. There is nothing beyond God to have, and relying on a star that is not there, as if to bypass the Maker and Redeemer, one but falls into an empty confusion.

Thus when something made for good, is misused for its own wilful and arbitrary desires, it is divorced from its meaning, alienated from its Maker, using its imagination to fulfil its own desires, and nothing to the point, destined for no good thing, defiled and divorced from God and His purposes: and since HE is the beginning and the end, source and meaning, in that case, it is as if the tag 'thing of nothing' is tied to the neck. It is not trusting in what lives, and hence in the end, if it persists in this way, it becomes just like old cars, there, certainly, but nothing! just parts. The identity is gone.

Jeremiah puts it in a personal way as he seeks the Lord, to FIND His will and DO IT
(Jeremiah 10:23-24 - bold added):

"O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself;
it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
O Lord, correct me, but with justice, not in Your anger,
lest You bring me to nothing."

What Jeremiah knew, Christ reviews and His power stretches through all time (Ephesians 1:4).

The prophet was restored and renewed, and from this he is categorically disjoined.

"O Lord, the hope of Israel,
All who forsake You shall be ashamed.

"Those who depart from Me
Shall be written in the earth,
Because they have forsaken the Lord,
The fountain of living waters.

"Heal me O Lord, and I shall be healed."

So did he rest anew in Him whose is "a glorious high throne from the beginning" - Jeremiah 17:12.

IN THIS WORLD, there is a leadership model, a way that has a passing form, unsustainable by its very nature, ungodly, self-assured, without God (as in I Corinthians 7:31). Thus as He prepared to pay the price for sin's release for those who receive Him, He dismissed this whole brine of belligerence, like a hot and fuming acid indeed, this industrious confusion that is the misled way of this world, as having NO PART in Him. For look! this world ? it is killing as it cures, and most inventive in both contrary paths, in terms first of sin against God, and then of its ultimate leader, the devil (John 8:44ff.), as he is subtle inspiration for what rejects the Maker. Christ noted in simple solemnity that the prince, leader, of this world relates to Himself in one way only. That leader is one, and He is the Lord; and the leader of this world has NO PART IN HIM, the Lord. The relationship is a TOTAL NEGATIVITY just as the devil and his pawns in this world, totally negates God.

They are mutually exclusive, and what follows THAT leader comes to nothing, judgment, disillusion, devastation and everlasting shame (Daniel 12:1ff., Matthew 13:47-52, 24:31), while what is bought, redeemed, ransomed by the Lord, being His (Ephesians 1:11-13), is both kept by Him and for Him, and for such He comes ( I Corinthians 15:20-28,50ff.).

How to have your sins' glower

overcome by divine power

What is his, of that fallacious leader, that futile prince, that spirit of this world, of vainglory, that has nothing to offer, but achieves far more negativity than nothing, comes to nothing and is lost, losing what it had, being evacuees from hope, engineers of disaster. What, however, is of the Lord, is as Romans 8:32 informs us, susceptible not to spiritual squalor or divine choler, but filled with the gifts of the Lord's own grace, to form a new race, a "special people" marked both by and for Him (Ephesians 1:1`ff., I Peter 2) :

"He who did not spare His own Son. but delivered Him up for us all,
how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things ?
Who shall bring a charge against God's elect ? It is God who justifies us.
Who is he who condemns ?
It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who also makes intercession for us."

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE THING THAT CAN COME TO NOTHING

Isaiah 35:9

"No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon,
it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there:..."

Thus on the "highway of holiness" (Isaiah 35:8) will be a rest which the greatest tempest cannot arrest; and a liberty which the utmost cruelty cannot destroy. Life is not a matter of pleasure and pain, mere aspects of response and reaction, but right and wrong, moaning and song, blessing and cursing, the spiritually vital and the asthenic, living in the light of the Creator, the Lord, saved, secured, enabled, governed by God, or on the other hand, something very different: moving outside His domain, NOT in His kingdom, where what matters most and gives meaning to all, is wantonly, recklessly slung far away, or even ridiculed.

But what of His divine way ? It is a gift for reception (Romans 6:23, 3:23ff.), dependent not on one's own works, but on His ? Here is what is unique to God, for only He has the place, power and understanding to achieve it; and He has done so.

What then for anyone bent on His way ?

If one sins, there is an advocate (I John 2); if one repents, there is a clearance (Psalm 51, I John 1:7ff.), if one is regenerated, then one is subject to the opposite and divine application that preserves from degeneration: for then that for which one was generated, created, becomes the very environment of spirit in which one operates. As music appeals to the artist, so the divine voice appeals to the Christian, in the word of God, in the enlivening of duty, in the availability of power for His service, in the disciplines of grace, in the peace which passes all understanding, in the joy that nothing can take from you (John 16), in the confirmation of the Spirit (as in Romans 8:16) and in the enrichment of His tutelage (Ephesians 2). There is, moreover, always a right way, though death on this earth, as with Peter, should be required, or instead, patient and long years of toil, as with John, both apostles, examples to us all.

What is justified becomes what is glorified (Romans 8:28ff.): accepted by pardon, given reception free from all contrary claims through His substitution in death, and His reception of sin's curse. Thus is supplied the basis for blessing, the conferment on the contrite who live and walk by faith in Him. Then whatever befalls, all things work together for good for such, who love God, who are those called according to His regenerative purpose and so children of God, objects of His desire, as in a father's heart (Romans 8:28): and He, He is the Father of us all, the Father of spirits, who now and for those who receive this, His salvation, Father not only as Creator, but as Regenerator, Saviour, Counsellor and Lord.

He sent His only begotten Son, in our very own format and form, yet without sin, the Lord of glory (I Corinthians 2:7-8) whom evil powers misused. They were, however, outwitted by the wisdom of God, who turned their evil to His sacrificial glory, making for us who are sinners, a way to salvation, sanctification and adoption as children of God. Murder become method, marring became judicial, His whipping became our peace (Isaiah 53). Thus do those who make of His life an offering for sin (as in Isaiah 53:10, as in Matthew 20:28, as in II Corinthians 5:17ff., as in Romans 3:23ff.) , and rest their case in His capable hands, knowing His achievement of death's rupture, life's structure amid its potential ruin (I Corinthians 15:42-58), become through His life children of eternity, for this mortal puts on immortality, first in acceptance and then as resurrected when He comes again, as He first came, so to achieve what then is made manifest even in body.

But now ?

Greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world (I John 4:4), so that the rumbustious, rambunctious, ruinous spirit of antagonism and evil is overcome; for He HAS overcome, and we are in Him, who lives for ever, and has so lived, from eternity to eternity, the very Word of God who became flesh (John 1:12ff.), rebuilt the bridge to the highway of holiness, and crossed for us who receive Him, the waters of death, bringing " life and immortality to light" (Titus 1:1-3). For my part, I should rather not live at all than not live for ever, not exist at all than have to exist without the point and purpose of existence, the God and Father of my life, the Saviour and splendour alike of His donation. It would be unnatural, like a an oak balancing on a pin, ludicrous, an apparition of vainglory, almost comic, actually catastrophic.

Thus does the deleterious, the injurious, the rupture of reality subside, and come to nothing. Instead, freedom returns where love reigns, and power is part of life.

Then again we find even more that thankfully can come to nothing.

Above we find ruin of life able to be brought to nothing, its ravagements and deformities. Now we also see the guilt of sin brought to nothing, not that it IS nothing, but when it is covered, as a wound is covered by expert skin graft, but better, when it has regrown in its exquisite flesh-craft, all programmed for the body, but now offered for the spirit in its parallel blessing, then comes wonder. Then ? Then is gone another dynamic of evil.

What now comes to nothing ? It is this: detachment from God, judgment on the state and sequences of sin, its overwhelming power and its insidious subtlety. It is not to be found. It is like a debt from which one is released, a slavery which ceases, a balance reconciled, a subversion overthrown, a city rebuilt, with gardens of grace where the craters were.

So we find it in ...

Jeremiah 50:20

"In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD,
the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none;
and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found;
for I will pardon them whom I reserve."

Statedly, it is pardon which produces this bringing to nothing of the guilt of sin, its ingloriousness; and thus is substituted the gracious interchange: peace for pollution, through pardon:, even in the life of Him who rebuilding, restores, reclaiming, adopts, death to defamation, life to the soul.