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CHAPTER TWO
THE ENCOMPASSING ROCK OF SALVATION
His way is perfect. Whose way ? It is the way of the One to whom we are to ascribe greatness, the Rock. Sometimes I see cloud formations which stretch far above all competition, and these may remind me of the sight of the Rocky Mountains. However, they are in fact nowadays, normally just cloud formations. If of rock, they would be prodigious. But they merely seem that way, and are literally vapours.
Founding your life on vapours is progressive, in terms of the welter of imagination involved, the originality of your conception for a particular case; but it is no foundation. For that, imagination is not enough, and no progress in stability or wisdom or knowledge will be gained in this way. Indeed, it becomes mere regress, a dabbling back into infantile conceptions, where the basics of understanding being missing, one could romance away of many things, imaginative or not, with no intrusive guiding line, if one so desired.
Now if you visited the world's greatest mountain, it would require movement. But it would be real.
So with God. Regression is not another name for progress. Living by imagination under the guise of WILL, of having what you want, of not being enslaved by nature (very easy to be done when you are a naturalist, victim of the forty-wink wisdom of naturalism), except morbidly pre-occupied with your own, can be fascinating to many political parties, right back to Hitler. Duped by some vision of a racial kind which would be kind to soaring genes in the interest of more geniuses and less dim-witted specimens. He acted. He worked; He killed by the million, not only Jew but with gene-losses in his sights. But this was just a part of nature, with perhaps a mystique of madness never shown in practice, in a romantic hope that the clouds of thought, using race as a lever to progress of some kind never found in kind, might break and reveal some sun of profundity.
When the clouds break, whether in philosophy or in fact, they reveal only what was there before. There is no profundity in nature ready to break out of the clouds; only the regression in the genome, as Professor Sanders of Cornell University points out (normal to a design in this world - Waiting for Wonder Appendix). The Second Law of Thermodynamics does have a place in this world; and denying it and inventing the opposite in naturalistic imagination can only be regress, a romancing defiant of reality (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!). Since this is the normal teaching of youth, in this disoriented world (it rather looks like it now, doesn't it, constantly reeling in response to a certain dizziness without any natural resolution, which happens if for long enough your feet refuse sound footing and are air-borne for no sound reason, with no reasonable expectation), it becomes more and more obviously, at a loss.
It is in real danger of becoming emphatic in negative testimony, an illustration of what happens when you build on a 'truth' which even your own philosophic base does not allow to exist (immersion in a series of intertwining reactions of whatever for whatever, whenever, does not yield perspective for its overall reality, or announcements concerning it, providing merely a whiz patch for the dizzy-desirers, while it surreptitiously imports truth literally from nowhere). Delusion upon delusion then infects politics, stimulates inane wars, and ensures life is belittled in reality by pathological dreams of grandeur.
Regression to perplexed futility is not to be desired, with whatever dreams set as an attachment; but such are the deceptions of the devil (cf. Revelation 20:3) that men pursue it, and have pursued it with a grandeur of passion, from the millions lost in WW I to those in WW II, to those enslaved hideously in interims. It is almost as if civilisation were increasingly adapting itself to being run by red-backed spiders - showy, poisonous, penetrating and ready for no good thing. It moves from one pretended luminary to another, shedding blood the while; and a massive religion, Islam, is now beginning in open face and multiplied media to specialise in terror and claims for acknowledgement with something of its former style on onrush, in terms of which in the 8th century, it threatened the very liberty of Europe. These are developments to mix force with faith, as if an unvalidated faith could intimidate into untruth, by shaking its atomic fist at the world (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4, Divine Agenda Ch. 6).
Such things are common; they are becoming more so, even from a nation reputedly close to starvation (for some); and this mêlée, increasingly now, is from multiple sources, some mixing, some immiscible.
This is progress in pollution, war-mongering and ideational malingering, woven myths, amid pain specialists or spirit-controllers of many kinds, set against Christians now in Egypt, now in Pakistan, Saudi-Arabia, and many Islamic countries; and it is not only in blood that it is wrought. Prison, say 15 years for becoming a Christian convert when you were Islamic as reported in Egypt, shows a certain versatility in dooming by violence, what does not yield to pressure. It is just like the earlier days of Christianity in the Roman Empire, with Nero a template for others.
Fighting it out without finding the truth is by definition, futile.
The solution has not changed for millenia. It is the murdered Messiah, slain as and when predicted, demonstrating what no other could or would, and offering what only God is able to place freely in the hand. This is progress into purity and truth for which no war is necessary, but that to be waged in spirit, where the realities are acknowledged, and instead of the blinding dust of killer waves from the secular or the misled religions of this world, you have the actual issues faced.
In the Bible, we find traced the concept of the ROCK, one higher than oneself, immovable in foundation, fitting for faith, invariant in nature, and it stands for the LORD, who came to be a man and in rock-like steadfastness to act as truth, where it was lacking, healer where it was a testimony for faith, an untutored scholar of prodigious penetration, where knowledge was needed, who left all other models dead, while as He raised others, so His own body arose, a fitting testimony for One who had Himself not only raised the dead, but engaged in vast programs of healing of all diseases brought to Him.
God had long prepared for this unique, foretold, detailed scenario. It was only when He had used Israel for pre-publication of these then coming events, and testimony, that He then sent His own Expression, Eternal and Divine, the Word made flesh, to earth as man. Thus would man have access to reality even more, not in the clouds of vapid philosophy but in the shrouds of death ruptured, where his Maker could be seen and followed. The murder of this Messiah so sent, did not make for peace; for to kill the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6-7) is not peaceable nor is it productive of serenity. Nor has His subsequent abandonment by many, as His foretold return awaits (Acts 1:7ff., Matthew 24:26-31), made for happiness. If this world were a child, overall it would be more than unhappy. Grief and the grievous prosper and progress, lacking foundation, the vision of faith, its object and His work and will, wilfully set aside by swerving or closed eyes.
In view of this development, this regression, this cultural self-worship growing in popularity amid mankind, it is good to consider the biblical teaching on God as the Rock, the only One safe, secure, enduring, adequate, unchanging, brim-full with blessed remedy, and without limit to resource. That
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He loves (I Timothy 2, John 3, Colossians 1:19ff.) ALL, and
would like |
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ALL to be reconciled to Himself, and
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ALL to be saved
and to come to a
knowledge of the truth, |
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There is the famous three from the infinite Trinity, the three ALLs. Similarly, it is all or nothing. Half an anti-biotic may be worse than none; and half a life does not work. You are launched or not. |
Some are; many are not. This lostness (Luke 15), now large in portrait in so-called post-Christian humanism and various devilries seeking to remould the truth and abuse its name, increasingly resembles lost particles circulating about in space, their place disjoined from any mission. This Age as in a simple laboratory experiment, in what is called HISTORY, experiences its own vivisection, as it operates on itself, for itself, with clouded vision, vitiating delusion and wavering hand.
Take a look, then at the biblical ROCK (cf. SMR Ch. 1 including pp. 97-100).
DV over time, oral presentations concerning these verses may become available and be added here.
For the
first 7 citations below, use this link for the oral presentation
May 19, 2013
.
1 THE NATURE OF THE ROCK
The Living, the Only and the All-Sufficient Rock
None saved are omitted from its cover
None rejecting it fail to receives its crushing.
It is not biddable, but it will answer to faith.
The salvation is singular in kind, not repeatable in basis.
It is strong, has no
spurious space,
but does have a viewing cleft! as Moses learnt.
Consider now what
this all-sufficient Rock is ready to give,
and what is to be found there!
2 THE PROVISIONS OF THE ROCK
30 Aspects
1. ROCK of REFUGE Psalm 71:3
"to which I may resort continually".
Not only is this a perpetual access, but part of a
"commandment to save me." Salvation for the children of God IS not only
donated but directed, commanded. First eternal life has been promised (Titus
1:2, "before time began". Secondly, it is no mere
additive (Ephesians 1:4, II Cor. 4:4, Romans 8:29ff., II Timothy 1:8-12,
Luke 12:32, Acts 14:22, I Cor. 15:52, Philippians 3:20-21). Thirdly,
continuation is its nature (John 10:9,27-28), and certainty is its element
(Ephesians 1:11).
2. ROCK AS EVERLASTING FOUNDATION Proverbs 10:25
3. ROCK AS UNIQUE FOUNDATION I Corinthians 3:11
4. A TRIED AND PRECIOUS, A SURE FOUNDATION STONE Isaiah 28:16
His restfulness is sensational, exclusive of hastiness, sure (cf. Isaiah 30:15).
"In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and confidence shall be your strength."
5. A ROCK FOR BUILDING Matthew 7:24-25
6. A MIGHTY ROCK Isaiah 32:3.
When He is received
as hiding place, shadow of relish, then,
the Spirit poured out with understanding (32:15),
"the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness,
quietness and assurance forever." It is eternal, for all nations (Isaiah
49:6),
and brings peace with God, incomparable, divine.
7. THE ROCK -
"He is THE ROCK."
"Ascribe greatness to our God, the Rock," is the
phrasing of it.
He is not a rock, but THE Rock. There is definition. His work is perfect
Deuteronomy 32:3-4. In this case, we read,
"All His ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice,
righteous and upright is He."
Incomparable and exclusive of competition,
inclusive of every good thing is He, and its source. HENCE in 32:17,
"they sacrificed to demons, not to God."
Indeed, in 32:21, such things are grouped in the hyphenated term, NOT-GOD.
The term here used to indicate the alternative to God is one indicating
vanity, worthlessness, futility; and in Jeremiah 2:5, what follows such
invented entities becomes as futile as they are! (cf. Harris, Archer and Waitke,
Theological Word Book of the Old Testament). The statement is this:
following futilities (noun), they become futile (verb).
Not only are these empty things, but cracked wells, bringing emptiness and
futility
(Jeremiah. 2:13).
As
they witlessly provoke the only God with not-God substitutes,
He then will provoke them with a contemptible people, a NOT-PEOPLE.
How be low except without the God who made them,
fathered and founded them! So they too will fall. Faith in fiction is no faith
at all.
If
some of mankind seem inhuman in reckless and racked heart,
then these optional choices for the spirit of man
represent a grab at an abased remnant of mere thought, an imagination,
an idol: instead of being invested with God, they become infested with NOT-GOD.
At least the fallen peoples are there, whose invasion they invite (Deuteronomy
32:25);
but unfounded, they are foolish.
Fathered by the Father of spirits (32:18), His people yet forgot and indulged in
fantasies. They are so very modern! a very prototype of the foundering without
foundation found today.
8. AN
INCOMPARABLE ROCK
Deuteronomy 32:31, Even enemies can see in action, that
"their rock is not as our Rock!". It is objectively true and evidentially
shown.
9.
THE ROCK FROM WHICH YOU ARE HEWN
Isaiah
51:1, with Romans 2:29
10. THE ROCK WHO SPOKE (to me)
II Samuel 23:3 cf. I Corinthians 2:9-13
11. THE EXCLUSIVE ROCK
"For who is God, except the LORD ?
and who is a rock except our God!" II Samuel 22:32, Psalm 18:31, cf.
Matthew 23:8-10
12. THE ENCYCLOPEDICALLY SINGULAR ROCK
"Besides Me, there is no God, and who can proclaim as I do!"
"There is no other Rock, I know not one!". These are two categorical statements. Chant the texts, observe the data, who can begin to compare: it is because there is not any! There is emptiness and zest about zero; and "besides Me there is no Saviour," Isaiah 43:11. Indeed, "Before me was no god formed, nor shall there be after Me." It is categorical, inclusive, exhaustive, and exhibits the idle options chosen instead, delusive (cf. II Thessalonians 2:4ff.).
i) God also asks and answers the simple question: "Is there a God besides Me ? Indeed, there is no other Rock," Isaiah 44:8.
ii) No other God, Rock, reliability is there. "No one is holy like the LORD, for there is none besides You, nor is there any Rock like our God," I Samuel 2:2.
iii) There are no other gods, no other strengths to heart and soul, able to found without foundering, function as the base while from the heights! To follow such nonentities as these, as one's strength or basis, we find, it is substitution of falsehood for God, indeed (Isaiah 28:16ff.), take to a "refuge of lies"(Isaiah 28:17): these, they do not mix. Take zeros without a quantitative number in front, and you still have only zeros.
Yours then is an inglorious substitution, a vanity, an exercise in mere emptiness,
an ineptitude in ardour.iv) Indeed, it is a matter of "agreement with hell" or with God (Isaiah 28:18).
A "covenant with death" is its mortal and mortifying status.
The exquisite divine features, on the other hand, unique to Him, in creation,
salvation, power and provision, are the constant focus for faith in the Lord,
and he who has it makes no haste when so founded (Isaiah 28:16), since the God of eternity is its wisdom source, resource and Rock (Isaiah 40:28-31).
Vacancy here with philosophic quiddities, baseless propositions, eclectic nostrums,
provides merely a vacancy, like an open wound, making a ground
for infestation of the soul, and dispersion of the life.
As to the only God, the Rock: HE will act (Isaiah 40:10-11) as only God can. This constant message towers over the earth, echoes throughout the Bible, first for His coming to save, then to rule and to judge (Deuteronomy 32:36-47, Psalm 16, 22, 40, 67-68, 72, Isaiah 66:5-16, Micah 7, Zechariah 12-14 - as in Ezekiel 36ff., Revelation 19, I Thessalonians 3:113, II Thessalonians 1 - these giving various elements of these events, many already come, some looming). In Him, nothing is missing; over all there is none but He, the triune God (Isaiah 48:15ff.).
13. ROCK OF AGES
-
chronometrically
alone, to be trusted forever Isaiah 26:4
(The preceding verse: "You will keep him in perfect
peace whose mind is stayed on You,
because he trusts in You.")
Trust forever since He is everlasting Rock, Rock of Ages, author of all times, repose for all rest, assurance for all action, immovable in truth, with that caressing niche within, as for Moses, which protects even amid majesty..
14. The ROCK THAT IS HIGHER THAN I, Psalm 61:2.
Hence not only
foundation, rigorous strength but encompassing defence is provided. Towering
with strength, the Rock is an unimpugnable foundation.
15. The ROCK AS FOUNDATIONAL FOR FAITH Matthew 16.
He is faith's object, whoever may - like Peter at that time, a sad episode - object! (Matthew 16:22-23). Peter's lordly advice, in contradicting Christ, was rejected as devilishly sourced, far from faith or faithfulness alike. It was not only error; it was fundamental error. The issue was this: WHO is Christ ? The answer was shown: Jesus, the Christ, is the Rock for the Church, discerned by God-given faith. God gave that faith to discern to Peter, and Peter the pebble (the kind of Greek contrast in the pun) figured only in rebuke and rebuttal of his false expansions from his first correct answer. It was this, approved by Christ, which would remain. Personal authority to contest with Christ or add, was null, evanescent, evil, worthy of major rebuke. It got it.
16. MY ROCK AND FORTRESS
Psalm 31:3;
AND MY DELIVERER
II SAMUEL
22:2..
The names and the actions agree: what He is, is what He does, as
a basis, a perpetual warrant, received in wisdom, the one as the other.
17. A ROCK OF OFFENCE
Isaiah 8:14,
cf. I Peter 2:8
He is also
a stone of stumbling, on whom one falling will be broken,
who, if falling on anyone, crushes to pieces - Matthew 21:44.
Notice that the place then current for Israel, of presenting the Lord to the
peoples,
was for a time, taken away (as in Romans 11);
but that the same CONSIDERATION applies to any other nation which,
drawing near, then drifts, for example with its President intrusively
declaring this
"We are not a Christian nation!"
18. THE ROCK OF MY STRENGTH
Psalm 62:7 -
The Energising Rock (cf. the application through the Spirit in Ephesians 3:16).
19. MY GOD AND THE ROCK OF YOUR SALVATION
Psalm 89:26
Salvation has this one Rock, and it is not a pocket rock, such as pebbles or
stones like Peter (in
comparison
in the Matthew 16 pun), which may be flung here or there. As to our "my Rock,"
His is singularity in appointment for this purpose, for ever and for all peoples
as in 89:27ff.. This is the Psalm of the singular, whose scope is universal, as
far as life shall reach; though alas, many declining from His offer (John 3:36)
"will not see life."
20. THE ROCK OF YOUR STRONGHOLD -
The Distinctive Rock Isaiah 17:10 becoming in this context, The Forgotten Rock.
Not MINDFUL of Him, the mind not full of Him, the memory not coded with His words, the spirit not subjected in joy to His glorious rule, as Maker and sustainer, Redeemer and donor of immortality: in multitudes, man lapses from Him. . For many, He is the forgotten Rock, as if a man were to omit his own heart, in counting his powers.
21. THE SMITTEN ROCK Numbers 20:11 - twice!
Because
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once suffices for the baneful splendour of the sacrifice of Christ (Hebrews 9), |
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His singularity,
salvation and voluntary sacrifice to death (John 10) once, |
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whereas Moses struck
the rock twice in pursuit of water, |
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and Christ set in
symbol here,
therefore this
same Moses was excluded |
God would have none of that style of conduct, either the repetition of the smiting of the Rock, signifying the sacrifice of Christ (Isaiah 53: 4, I Cor. 10:4), or the self-assertion. No such leadership will He suffer. The singularity of His salvation has a singularity of performance on His part, and requires a singular realisation on ours (John 20:25-28). It is all of God and nothing of man. Neither Rome nor any other can do what only Christ could do, and the work of eternal redemption is done but once (Hebrews 9:12-28), incapable of duplication or restoration, or substitution, being that of the sinless deity Himself, as Himself, by Himself, as His due (John 10:18, Hebrews 7-10)
Indeed, you need neither to grope and just hope, nor to indulge in a repetitive thud hammering the Rock. Once smitten, as written, He has the real singularity to bear sin and break death, both actual and required for man, both enemies, sin and death, defeated: this wrought by God. Here is the infinite singularity of deity.
Adding to the sacrifice is as biblically horrid as subtracting from His glory. It is as such as He is (cf. II Corinthians 10:12-11:15) and as He has done, that Christ must be received. Likewise once risen, not a mist, but in a singular body, He has acted through an event which makes the unique human destructiveness of the atomic bomb look small, as well as horrendously negative by comparison. The work there of man is a revolting additive to the earth. The work of God, however, in the resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ (I Cor. 15, Luke 24). It is an epochal epic, His alone, supernal, supernatural, deliberate, dynamic, deep and eternally effective, as was His unrepeatably redemptive death (Hebrews 9:12-28).
Applying this, He
works through the power of the Holy Spirit, in His own gracious
administration (Titus 2-3, Acts 1:1ff.). Sent by Christ, the Spirit and not
man is the activating authority in the name of Christ (John 14:16-18,
16:5-15); and even He does not speak of Himself (John 14:13-14).There is a
sacerdotal purity in Christ and a deity at work in the Holy Spirit (Hebrews
7:28, 8:1-6,13, John 6:62-63, Titus 3:5-6), whether in conviction or cleansing through
the blood of the stricken Saviour, now in heaven till the reconstitution of
all things (Acts 3:19ff.). THIS Rock, this ONE God, it is He who having come
as Saviour once, being smitten once, rose once and will return once.
22. THE ROCK OF GUSHING WATERS
Psalm 78:20.
This verse also evokes the time (Numbers 11:1-3), when having been given water
by miraculous divine appointment (Exodus 17:1-4), they wondered, Can He give
food also!
It was a grievous error.
Omnipotence should not be mocked, nor history forgotten, nor kindness ignored,
nor character mangled by mischief, let alone the character of God! He is
all-sufficient (II Corinthians 3:4-6).
Once risen, the
magnificent Messiah
is always able, and enables (Ephesians 1:19).
As the bread of life
and the Lamb of God (John 1:29, 6:48), it is because He is given from
heaven to His people (John 6:57-58), and broken and so received for life, and
again, like the sacrificial lamb, once killed, and so sacrificially stricken
(Hebrews 9:12): it is because of this that the Spirit, symbolised by the water
gushing, is given as He declares (John 16:7). Without that, not this (I
Corinthians 3:11-12).
23. THE LIVING ROCK, THE BLESSED ROCK
AND THE ROCK OF MY SALVATION
II Samuel 22:47. His ROCK is GOD! (as in 12 above).
24. THE SOLE LORD ROCK Psalm 18:31 The Alone but Not Lonely Rock.
The LORD is the only God and
God is the only Rock.
25. THE NOT SILENT ROCK
(Psalm 28:1)
The Communicative Rock, The Apostrophised Rock
26. THE ROCK TO BE REMEMBERED
Psalm 18:46-49
"Therefore I will give thanks ..."
(bold added).
27. THE UPRIGHT ROCK
Psalm 92:15
28. THE ROCK FOR HIDING
Song of
Solomon 2:14, Isaiah 32:2
The Rock with a Cleft from which to speak
29. THE ROCK THAT FOLLOWED THE PEOPLE
BEING LED I Corinthians 10:4
The Rock for the Thirsty
The 31st focus is different.
3
THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE ROCK
THE ROCK NOT BITTER BUT BETTER
DEFINITION BY NEGATION
It is NOT the
STAR
which fell from heaven
as in Revelation 8:10, that brings shiny-eyed joy and romance to the heart of
man.
The divine Rock is
NOT the STAR which fell from heaven
as in Revelation 8:10, nor is it one that brings shiny-eyed joy and romance
to the heart of man.
It is entirely
different. In that case, it is more incendiary,
and if packed with meteorological rock, or an asteroid, it can savour of
bombardment,
such as earlier evidences attest to have hit the moon.
That is past; this is to come. It is amid the announcements of judgments
in stock, that comes the impactive object of Revelation 8:10!
It is in horror, not
happiness that this arrives.
The Celestial Rock, however,
presented as alternative to judgment: THAT IS sublime.
As to
Revelation 8:10, that is named Wormwood, that makes bitter.
You face options: better than man, or bitter for man; remedy or ruin.
The Lord when He came to earth, made better,
with a better covenant and a better ministry and a better sacrifice
and the blessed Resurrection (Hebrews 8:6).
The Lord's promises
are pure, and not of promiscuous origin.
His path is peace, and it is His hammer, His word which breaks
any illusory rock on which man may ruinously rest (Jeremiah 23:28-29,
Micah 2:10), so that there may be peace, not fragile foundations.
"Arise
and depart,"
He says of any other way,
"for
this is not your rest."
Why ? It is because
it is defiled.
It is deity, not
defilement, Rock not ruin, reality not surrealism,
spirituality, not spiritism that is needed... and provided (Matthew 11:25ff.).
