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CHAPTER THREE
THE HEARTLAND OF THE HOLY ONE
JEREMIAH 5, 31, I
Timothy 2, Colossians 1, Ezekiel 33,
Jeremiah 48, II Peter 3:9, Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42ff..
Often would the Lord Jesus Christ, author of creation as the Word which called it into being, saviour of any, offering to all ( Acts 4:1`1-12, I John 2:1ff., Isaiah 53:1-6) have called from Jerusalem its children to Himself: His heart was there, but as in Luke 19:42ff., theirs was not. The daughter of Jerusalem as so often used in a figure*1, shook her head imperiously and would not turn, for that generation, which the term signifies, were of a heart so adamantine in hardness, that the most tender, repeated, opportune and lively call they would not hear, like deaf chicks. He like the mother hen, they would confidently ignore!
Recently, I was watching by the sea shore, a large emu with a band of youngish chicks. These were slightly tall, athletic looking, though smaller than most I have ever seen, perhaps 18 inches tall. Lean, lively and without the slightest lassitude, they advanced as they worked their way, looking here, there, pursuing this mini-detour and that, the mother always in front. In a few seconds one might lag in its little epics of discovery, and become as much as perhaps 4 to 5 yards, from the mother, and then, with a resolution commendable, an aptitude both strenuous and diligent, that chick would come as if in a race, swiftly to the vicinity of the mother, as they went, a group of lively sprites, energised, active, alert, watchful, but for all that, learning and active with great zest.
It was a lovely sight, the sea beyond them, and one of us captured it on a video. There we could ponder it later. Speak of a call ? In that case, one did not notice any, though it may have sounded. If it had, one can scarcely imagine with what diligence the response would have come! What a team! what a group of vigour and diligence, discipline and liberty. They were highly diverse in their ways, but utterly one in their concord for operation.
With Jerusalem, Christ uses the hen and chickens analogy (Matthew 23:37). In this case, there was evidently very much cause for calls, so that the errant if not erratic chicks could come to order and attention, in the face of perils and dangers numerous enough. That brings us to the second difference from the emu case. The chicks in Christ's stated case, they did not come. Once they did not come, a subject for concern; twice, a matter of strange impetuosity; a third time, almost denatured, they were a wonder. But it was OFTEN that He called and they did not come. What then is to be expected ? It is nothing less than a denial of the whole structure, teamwork, diligent application of safety rules, is unnatural, brimming with potential tragedy! And so it was.
In this case, leaving the analogy, they were "not willing".
That is the depiction which Christ gives, and unwise is the one who does not follow it, like a recalcitrant chick at the theological level! It is as in John 3:16ff., God was willing, God acted, God treated things with concern, compassion, diligence and application, strenuously, victoriously, grandly in giving, great in heart, nothing lacking in His desire that the world be saved, nothing intended of judgment in this saving mode; and God assigns the ground of condemnation, which assuredly comes, to the preference for darkness over light. He excluded the slightest thought of some unnatural lack, includes to the uttermost all thought of the vivid and vast desire on His part, and utters His assigned estimate of the situation, vis a vis, Himself and the said world: men preferred darkness, but He preferred their salvation, one and all, as Colossians 1:19ff. makes so dramatically, repetitively and incandescently clear.
THERE is the love of God, and not in its slack-chick denial. God has spoken, and it is, as in Luke 19:42ff. where the statement is even more direct, time to listen.
Often has this been brought to the attention of the hyper-orthodox*2, who frequently appearto defend in their confusion, a sovereignty which does not have behind it the heart which God repeatedly depicts of Himself. In fact, the divine sovereignty is not one of mere power, assertive will as in much of the Gentiles (Matthew 20:25), but one of willing service, that of a personal Being who has a heart of love (I John 4:7ff.) with the world in His eye, though in His foreknowledge, He has no illusions as to the outcome of His love, and in His wisdom has assigned salvation where He knows His own to be. Yet the desire for it, the provision for it, the intensity of feeling for it could not be surpassed, as here in John 3, in I Timothy 2, in Matthew 23 and Luke 19, in Ezekiel 33, as in such a parade of biblical cases in history and in detail, in broad coverage as in II Chronicles 36, in Jeremiah and in Isaiah 48, in Jeremiah 48 as in Colossians 1. To cut down motivation or its height, to its outcome because of a slanted misconception of divine sovereignty distorts the word of God, and shows a failure to appreciate His unique holiness.
It is not a weirdly distorted sovereignty which stems from a different kind of heart. The sovereignty of the God of pity, grace, compassion and love, is what exhibits the qualities of love, and here it is repetitively shown in the very face of the prophetic messages throughout the Bible, and in the face of Jesus Christ, in which the glory of God has been shown (II Corinthians 4:6). Nothing changes the word of God, and its self-interpretation does not a linger when the text is compressed into the ruinous runnels and funnels of philosophy, as if some new thing could be composed by such interference. The text is clear, the concept luxuriantly repeated, like Spring crops, each blade a part of a waving mass of grain of one type, with the theme clear as when the wind sways it as one mass, the wind of the Lord's inspiration.
What is man that he should seek to substitute his own breath for that of God (II Timothy 3:16), or in any case, do it despite the non-mutant genes of the Lord's disposition of His word, like a crop!
He has commanded His word (John 12:48-50, II Peter 1:19ff.), and who is this who would countermand it, even in His name!
There is the simplicity of the thing for all to see. There is the exuberant beauty, the splendid majesty of creation, with its glory of seascape, landscape, cloudscape, mountainscape, as serried ranges mount in ascending order to the skies, and reflect heaven's glory. There is the utter ingenuity of the exceedingly miniaturised DNA, the if possible excessively complex technical provisions for variation about a norm, allowing fidelity of kind of creation along with variation of its individuality, so making the wonder of the rose not of one, but of many, and of man, like that of stories in a volume of short stories, each one similar in theme, each diverse in detail. Brilliance is its name, conceptualisation is its mode, implementation by code is its method, language is its generic name, power is its correlative, creation is its consequence, maintenance is its implicit, and degeneration is its liability, when sin divorces it from its source. With all this, there is the very spirit of man in the image of God, so giving to him an essential liberty in love, in hatred, in caricature and in confession, however much marred he may become, and whatever heights the Lord uses to bring reality and fidelity to the outcomes for this, His creation!
Thus is the brilliance and the beneficence, the provision and the power, the love and the lavishness. Equally, there is the devastation, there the lamentable, there the cruel, there the imposition, there the derangement, itself brilliant, and there the curse on this garden of paradise, extending to the whole world (Romans 8:17ff., 5:1-12, Genesis 3), just as it did in particular, in an intensive form, in the case of Pharaoh's land, in the day of the Exodus, a day to be repeated in power when God again delivers Israel from ranting, rampant bullies (Micah 7:14ff.).
There is creation and there is curse on that creation, set forth, in both lines, with a genuine sovereignty.
If that were all, where would the love be ?
But that is not all.
There is the provision for repentance which God assigns where applicable, knowing the depths of the soul before it was ever formed, or light and time came to the earth, or indeed, existence at all (Ephesians 1:4).
The impact is potentially horrendous, and its ramifications ruinous. But the divine application of His love is beyond all this, as the sea-shore is beyond the wreckage, and wisdom provides al life-boat in Jesus Christ, to get there. It was not built without appalling anguish, for to rescue in these seas, it is more than difficult: it involves virtually a fresh creation, that they even enter the boat, and with this, the annulment of the asininity of the old, with the guilt which divides man from God, covered in the construction, paid for liberally.
Into this grinding of greatness and grandeur, then, comes blood of Christ. It is the work of God. In all their suffering, we read, He suffered (Isaiah 63:9), in their affliction He was afflicted. In Isaiah 52-53, we see even a beauty in feet when they bring this good news. God has poured Himself out into a human form and format via a virgin (Jeremiah 31:15-22,Micah 5:1-3, Isaiah 7 with 9 and 11, Matthew 1, Philippians 2*3), and this form grew to manhood's realm. There the pressure between creation and curse, those edges made jagged through sin and its consequences, was unleashed and drew blood from the babe, now grown to man, crying, If you had known, even you, in this the day of your visitation! ... to Jerusalem, centre of His manifestation of salvation for millenia!
He did not only cry. He was crucified as those edges rammed into Him, where beauty and curse met, ruining Him (Isaiah 24, 52-53), as man's sin became treachery against truth, law, wisdom and love, exactly like that in the image so often used, of an adulterous woman, yes one one wholly given up to it, despite many a warning and a plea from her husband! as in the prophetic images so often used and epitomised in the entire book of Hosea.
There on the predicted place of crucifixion, the blood flowed, yes dripped to make an eventual equivalent to a flow, for it was, as in much torture, a slow thing, though in the end, in a matter of hours of anguish and agony, the despatch was fast enough.
So does this salvation of substitution succeed, the so-called substitutionary atonement, this emplacement of God in human form to receive the cutting edges not of technology, but of the infamy of mankind, where these rasped against each other, the glory of creation and the shame of sin, so that man's sin could be covered in atonement, and the horrendous impact on each other of the clashing surfaces, like vast mountainous interfaces, could be overpowered by an escape for their clangour in a death most pitilessly imparted, most lovingly given.
Yet what is its outcome ? Does God invade with spiritual panzer divisions ? Not at all, He pleads, He calls, but as we find in Jeremiah 5:3, epitomising the matter:
"O Lord, are not Your eyes on the truth ?
You have stricken them,
But they have not grieved;
You have consumed them,
But they have refused to receive correction.
They have made their faces harder than rock:
They have refused to return."
In Jeremiah 5 you see the prophet in heart turn to the "great men" of the city and speak to them, seeking some truning from the spiritual and moral follies which were eating away the nation, like rats never quieted. But (5:5), these too have broken the yoke and burst the bonds, refusing to be anything but gods in heart, blatant in rampage even before the word of God, which wrought havoc now in their bodies, now in their minds and now in their hearts and spirits. This sin is likened variously to that of silly doves and lusty stallions (Jeremiah 5:8, Hosea 7:11). It is that of the impervious heart, the inflamed will, of the riotous rebellion and the imperious mind and will (Ezekiel 16:30), yes complete and replete with vanity (Isaiah 3).
Gods who do not need to heed their Maker, the brilliant artificer of their bodies, the institutor of life! these quasi-gods, these ludicrous lords, they strut as men! In His sublime and divine irony, the Lord deals with this in Psalm 82: Having exposed their folly, He declared, "I have said, 'You are gods!' but you shall die like men." Here is the mordancy of compassion, where grief becomes exposed like veins in the rock, subject to erosion till there is no ground cover of earth left.
Gods! ah yes, let us have some such exaltation and distortion! but that it IS distortion exposed in irony, consider: for if being gods means ANYTHING, it means a certain security, power, dimension of immunity at least for a time, it means something above mere mortality, a dimension apart. Does it then ? and you are of this kind, to be jeeringly exposed in your self-made drapings! It is as if a mother, in her disgust, said to her vagrant son, dressed with her money in arrogant self-exultation, "I have said, 'You are a prince', but you will die a pauper!"
Die like men! Forget the illusion in this allusion and end the confusion in this profusion of profane folly! That is the challenge. Come to reality and live, repent and find truth as in Proverbs 1! This is the divine message to the recalcitrant, like Jerusalem, twice doomed to destruction, and now replaced as the centre for dissemination in its own rebellion (cf. Isaiah 30). It is however by no means disposed of as a centre for dissemination of truth by the Lord's continued dealings with it as a centre for prophetic instruction for the eyes of the world, as it watches what He does with it to this hour! A harbour for return in that divine, implacable mercy, which is His, which stops only where there is no more scope (cf. Isaiah 57:15-17), has He made Jerusalem, Israel, and nothing will deter Him (cf. Jeremiah 33). Even to the advent of the Messiah as King will He so act, bringing back the once faithful, then faithless people to Himself, as in Hosea, as in Ezekiel 36-37*4.
He, the Lord, is like that: He has all and loves to give, has no self-interest, Himself being love (I John 4:7ff.), having the need of His creation, man, at heart, that he might rise to his construction-contract, but freely; and inherit the kingdom of heaven, but as an entrant in repentant mode, made new in regeneration no less. So does freedom find its culmination, distortion its correction and objectivity its zenith.
Foreknown as such, these who are His, are recreated in this mode, not by mysterious oblivion of principle, but in this, that He would have all to come back, and in this very perspective and passion, KNOWS HIS OWN, who in the face of the penetration of His eternal knowledge, are in Him found willing above and prior to the domain of sin, so to do. As in the case of the first creation, He knows us better than we know ourselves, thus preserving liberty, appointing blame (John 3:19) and being a fountain of munificence available without detriment or prejudice, to man. In the first case, He knew us before He so much as created us, and in the second, before we were soaked in the invidious solution of sin.
There are vast results. Let us take one. He accordingly WILL BRING BACK ISRAEL, as He has already done both physically and politically, and in the coming days will do spiritually, this time to the same Messiah from whom the nation catastrophically disjoined (It Bubbles ... Ch. 10, The Biblical Workman Ch. 1, *3, Ch. 3,as marked, and *1A. Here is the very type of mercy, and the glory beyond man, available to him.
You could disrupt the astronomical composure and the heavens, before disrupting this! Cancel that if you can, then try to move God from His word that not only will a newly covenanted Israel (Jeremiah 31:31ff.), be found and bound, where repentance comes (Zechariah 12:10ff.), but it will be one where the cities are repopulated (Jeremiah 33:13), and the Royal Monarch, the Messiah will rule (Jeremiah 33:15ff.). It is not some specially glorified Israel (cf. Isaiah 19), nor is it some non-Israel which has a non-return, but it is BOTH of these things. How long will it be before theologians in major numbers have to fight out inelegant, inadequate and misleading cases for this or that, when the word of God in delightful discipline, indicates something more than either, but not less than what it actually states concerning most prosaically clear components! But let us return to the love shown in all this, for God is o faithful (cf. Genesis 17), that it is pure delight to contemplate His grandeur, when so many so often are so unfaithful, as alas, His word so righteously records.
What then of Christ, meeting the curse, ground between the interfaces of curse and beauty, as the incision appears!
HE has already been seen and found ground between the brilliance of creation (taking the format of the height of its physical format, in man) and the folly of sin and its curse (becoming a curse for us, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but be saved for time and through eternity, as in John 190:9, 27-28, 6:50ff., II Timothy 1, I John 5, Romans 8:29ff.). What more ? If He can and will divert the guilt of sin to Himself, catching in His own being the impact of the horror of it, and swallowing it up (as in Isaiah 25:8, following the indictment, as in Isaiah 28:14-22 where you see the edges grinding, curse and cure!), without deleting holiness, deploying force, grinding what man is along with his sin, then He will.
Let us go back to the agonising choice as it is confronted before the impact is taken by Christ. Consider once more the task, as well as the task force.
Is He interested in ALL the creation ? in this way! Yes as in Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2, I John 2, Ezekiel 33:11, Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 19:42ff., very definitely He is. Is HIS HEART in it then ? Of course, as in Jeremiah 48:29ff., and the affair is such that He makes such declarations in the form, "As I live!..." (Ezekiel 3:11). TO the heart, FROM the heart, WITH heart toward all He acts.
There is no room for doubt. This IS God, God IS love. But yet, if there be such a shut-eyed, tight-fisted, sin-encrusted, heart- infested PREFERENCE for darkness in the presence of such a mellow and moving light (John 3:19), and there is; and if this is as known to God before time first moved its hands on the earth, or the light of the expanse found its way into the darkness, or force and matter, mind amid the creation and investment with spirit which made man, occurred, and in Him is perfect truth: what then!
Then alas there is the CAUSE and the REASON for the grief which prophetically and empathetically*5, and in Christ, directly and personally led to such a cry and such tears, that it remains more salient then the Statue of Liberty, for this is now the overshadowing Exhibit of Love: Calvary! It has been erected before man, for all the death of mindless wars and meddling greed, these two millenia, with the preliminaries before that for more millenia in the Bible! The Statue of Liberty may lose its liberty, which seems now a grave danger as social and personal liberties are being legally re-examined in the USA, so that what is deemed best for all may become an ingredient in what is permitted in free speech for any, truth included (cf. legal survey in Israel, My Glory September-October 2010, p. 9). Yet the Cross of Calvary will never lose its love, and its loosing is not a losing but a lavish grace and gift from God Himself, whom nothing can subvert, invert or divert. He IS love, as I John 4:7ff. declares, and history attests, however man may wander into the zones of horror, even the brilliant made hacks of sin.
This love, to such works as that of Dawkins, is immune. It does not see, with contrary imaginations set before love and ít ignores the text to which it is directed, allegedly to interpret it, despite the fact of the contrariness of light-obscuring obfuscation. It ignores the divine and diligent desire, what has been both said and done, so often, in such depth, with such profundity in the Bible; but instead, it disparages grace, oblivious of the cross and the love and universally adequate and relevant provision which the Bible embraces, and Christ implements. This is total in scope (I John 2:1ff., Colossians 1:19ff.) however much this is finally made inapplicable to man by his use of his image-bearing facility of freedom, by his choosing to avoid it.
Thus you have the sin of man to defy God, but then the later one to defile the testimony of God. This is but one modern expression of the pathology of non-peace with God, non-perception of the centre, as if to see a house in the air, and not notice that it has no foundations, and to criticise the house which is on the ground, confusing the two.
Thus from Paul we have this in Galatians 6:14, concerning centrality in kind, impact and significance:
"God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ,by whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world."
NOTES
Consider briefly the matter of the children of Jerusalem whom the Lord Jesus Christ would have gathered under His wings, though they were not willing.
See for example, II Kings 19:21, Isaiah 37:22, 52:2, Jeremiah 4:11, Lamentations 2:10. In the last, you see the phrasing, "the elders of the daughter of Jerusalem", which carries the point and the portent of the thing to the uttermost: for if it be the daughter in any diminutive or youthful sense, how does it include elders! You see this perennial mode of address to the current generation of Jerusalem again in Micah 4:8, where reference is made to the "stronghold of the daughter of Jerusalem," to whom the first dominion, the kingdom will return, or Malachi 2:11 where "an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem, for Judah has profaned the holiness of the Lord whom he loved, and has married the daughter of a strange god." Again the maturity of the participants is guaranteed, whether in the format of marriage or of war. It is simply an idiom, correlative to the adultery figure as in Ezekiel 20:13 and Ch. 23.
Jesus in Matthew 23:37, likewise, is certainly not saying that because the literal children of Jerusalem did not heed Him, therefore the adults will perish. That would contravene Jeremiah Ezekiel 18, as well as the testimony of usage. On the contrary, the literal 'children' DID respond marvellously on Palm Sunday, and in any case, the soul that sins will die, and there is no palpable question of some area in the arena of Jerusalem failing so that another age group receives punishment, for let it be stressed, this would be contrary to the express and manifestly just provisions of Ezekiel 18:18ff., where the son will not bear the guilt of the father, nor vice versa.
It is Jerusalem to whom the Lord speaks in Matthew 23:37ff., just as expressly in Luke 19:42ff..
How OFTEN would He have called that fortunate and providentially blessed generation of Jerusalem, city of God for tutelary and manifestation purposes, to Himself. Again and again His heart stirred, sympathy lunged, desire longed; but they were unwilling. THEREFORE HE WEPT! God as man wept for them, blind and heedless chicks, who wilfully and wantonly did not know the day of their opportunity, as He indicates in Luke 19..
When God speaks, it is well to listen and learn, not lecture from some philosophic podium, as in this matter, many do, who truncate the love of God for purposes confused at best, obscurely depreciative at worst.
See for fuller exposition SMR Appendix B.
Hyper-Calvinism seems to be a term used in two senses. Sense 1: it is a Calvinism which has been permitted to go too far, beyond its source. Sense 2: Calvinism itself has gone beyond its biblical source, and so may be called hyper-Calvinism, as a critical ascription.
Since Calvin did embrace the unfortunate feature which distorts in this realm, here it is used in the second sense. On this, see Repent or Perish Ch. 1, with The Christian Pilgrimage Ch. 3, Christ's Ineffable Peace and Grace ... Ch. 2, with the endnote *1 of Tender Times... Ch. 2.
See SMR pp. 770ff..
See for example, concerning Ezekiel and much more in this dimension of prophecy:
It Bubbles ... Ch. 10,
His Time is Near! Ch. 4,
SMR Appendix A,
The Biblical Workman Ch. 1, *3 and Ch. 3, *1A.
See Possess Your Possessions Volume 7, Ch. 3.