W W W World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page Contents Page for Volume What is New
CHAPTER 3
CALLED to be SAINTS
NOT RECONSTRUCTED to be ROBOTS
PSALM 16
BODIES AND SOULS, MATRIX AND MYSTICISM -
and CHRIST, WHERE GLORY RESTS
We turn now to the matter once more of resurrection, that of individuals in their individuality, of sinners saved by grace in their redemptive reality, that of persons, made by God and restored to His image (Colossians 3:10), lovers of liberty who have found it where alone it is, in their Maker and His marvels of compassion and the felicity of fellowship with Him.
Here is the alternative to becoming robots to flesh, one's own or that of others, organised in systems of irrational thought or mere whims and whiffs of desire. In so doing, our focus is on Psalm 16, that prophecy amid the wealth of detail provided in advance concerning Jesus Christ which He both HAD to fulfil (cf. Matthew 26:52-54) and did; for His authority was embedded in the Book of the millenia, the Bible. Just as the universe was placed by Him before incarnation (I Peter 1:10ff.), as He with the Father and His Spirit, having composed it, so He in the same kind of way, composed the instruction manual for man within it. So man was made IN the world, FOR God, with His instructions in his flesh, that he might become zygote, embryo and man, and in the Bible*1, to his mind, that he might mind the mentality of his Maker and in Him find his peace.
Let us look then in the word of this our God, for such is He, whether He be acknowledged or not, whether in guilt man prefer the gilt of pretence and pomposity, or the humility of reality.
THE ANTEROOM TO HOPE
David seeks preservation through the power of God: it is not that HE David, WILL survive, but that as a creation and redeemed soul of God, he seeks that God preserve him, keep him for what He made him.
How different the tone, how realistic the appeal, how un-gross after all the nations and rulers of lands increasingly exhibiting themselves as seekers of power, privilege and rule, with morals that are as clear as tar, leading nations where very often they want to go, or worse yet, where the rulers find it best to take them! "My goodness," David muses, "is nothing apart from You."
He is under no illusions. True, his principles could not be brighter, for they come from God. Equally true, he has from his youth sought to serve God, even if at times he erred profoundly; and he has taken from God as Father, all the correction and teaching with a ready mind. He has sought for his entire life, to be present with God, and past all corruption of mind or soul or body, to rest at last in Him, so that "when I awake I shall be satisfied in Your likeness." This could be rendered, "satisfied with your likeness", but either way, it means that David looks by faith to be so structured and sustained in heaven, that he will be able to recognise God and be in a form enabling inter-relations, that of worshipper and worshipped, a man before his God, translated into eternal form.
I John 3 has just this message, that when He comes for us, we shall like Him, who by that time, has both come to earth as man and been resurrected after vicariously bearing death. How can we then "know Him as He is", as John affirms ? It is, John declares, because we shall be like Him who (as in I John 1:1-4), staggeringly Himself took on the format of man to break the deformations of man, not in reformation but in pardon, regeneration and then, as for Himself, resurrection of the body.
THE HIGHWAY OF PROPHECY AND THE REVELLING OF REVELATION
But, you may say, is this not going a bit far ? After all, you may wish to urge, what did David even know of the incarnation, far less crucifixion of the Messiah, and far less still of His resurrection! This is incorrect; for In fact (Psalm 2), David knew well of the coming incarnation as in Psalm 45, 110 and 2, where the Lord's Messiah is seen as the One in whom man MUST TRUST, who would put down the infidelities of man and rule, even One addressed as GOD! In Psalm 22, another of the Psalms of David, we see the crucifixion with a detail not only adequate, but chilling, uninhibited, excruciating with various attendant events, such as the drawing lots to take His garments.
In Psalm 16, our present focus, we see this time, not the arrival from heaven, not the murder by man of the Messiah, but His resurrection. It is not on his own goodness that David is basing his relationship to this glory and triumph of God through the Saviour, and there is NONE BUT GOD who is the Saviour (Isaiah 43:10-11). My goodness is nothing apart from You! he not only admits, but this he acknowledges with worshipful awe (cf. Psalm 71:15-16). It is to the saints on earth that his own relationships come, for he sees in himself no exaltation whatever (as with Paul, Romans 7:18, where he declares "in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing"). ONLY the presence, empowering and protection of God makes him act as a saint, and the work is from the goodness of that God to whom he seeks.
How grievous therefore is the life of those who seek another god, mere masquerading by people who do not know their way around the prism that is man's soul, and become prisoners of their own delusions! (16:4).
David then thrills to the recollection that it is God who is the author of his life, provider of his mission and meaning, to whom alone he makes sacrifices. He rejoices that it is God that despite his own inadequacies, he has taken with joy, and who has taken him in covenant. How good is his inheritance; for in this life is test, and with God it is assured in result, so that "I have a good inheritance". Based like Paul, on the Messiah as in Psalm 2, 23, 40,45, 49, 72, 110, his assurance is like that of the apostle who declared: "In Him we have obtained an inheritance" (Ephesians 1:11).
As he rejoices in the presence of the Lord, David realises how much understanding God has given him, what a marvel it is that he, a mere man, should be present in the counsel of the everlasting God, who has instructed his heart with wisdom and allied him by grace through faith, to truth (v. 7).
Not only so, but just as the wisdom and understanding that fixes his heart with a profound and delightful admiration, adoration and felicity on the Lord was given, so it becomes in him a well of water springing up, both plenteous and bubbling, again, in line with the New Testament, where Christ told the Samaritan woman, "He whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; but the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life."
It is one of my joys that the Bible always provides the precision and beauty combined, so that it fits as do the petals of a flower, a dahlia, in a marvellous concentricity and felicity. Thus, in the Greek, Christ does not say this, "Whoever drinks and keeps on drinking" but whoever on an occasion drinks of this will not thirst again. (The tense is aorist, not present.) The contrast with the woman is obvious, intentional and dramatic. She comes and gets her little bit of water, but if anyone should come to Christ and drink of the water that He gives, then the laborious littleness of these daily journeys is no more the condition for having water. To the contrary even more specifically, the water so received will become an internal spring, and it will even go on in its abundance into eternal life! The 'little' will become not only much, but attached to a fountain, part of its exuberance, and this eternally!
Thus the grammar and the situation alike make the unified picture, just as in John 10:9 (again the aorist tense), where it is not the one who keeps on entering the door who is saved (though he may go in and out and find pasture), but as far as status is concerned, it is far otherwise. Anyone who once enters is always Christ's (John 10:27-28). Once you enter by Him, you are His responsibility, HE looks after you and in His sight you, as now accepted in the beloved (Ephesians 1:6), engraced by the kindness of His face and the acknowledgement of His heart, have already your inheritance assured (Ephesians 1:11), sitting indeed in "heavenly places" (Ephesians 2:5-6).
THE
SHEER GLORY OF EVERLASTING FELLOWSHIP,
NOT NAKED AND STRIPPED,
BUT AWAKENED IN
BODY, AND RESTORED
TO THE IMAGE OF CREATION
In fact, Paul is utterly parallel to David: the former after the physical resurrection of Christ, with the one who foresaw it and much more! I do not wish to be stripped naked, said Paul but overcoated with the body kept eternal in the heavens (II Corinthians 5). What ignores this is another religion, so that when the PC in New Zealand made their Resurrection Statement of 1966, they ceased to be a Christian Church, denying the central affirmation of a central apostle on a central occasion (the formal birthday of the Christian Church), as I told them in Assembly. Other churches had done similar things, the PC of Australia before that making hideous assaults on the Bible, which occasioned my leaving the denomination, as I had next to leave the PC of NZ, to join a Reformed Presbyterian Church in the USA in 1967. This alas after some 15 years was swallowed up without residue by a declining Church
Truth is becoming more and more limited in the larger denominations as foretold (II Thessalonians 2), but it was not hard to find in David. YOU WILL NOT LET MY BODY ROT! such was his faith, and according to this biblical faith, so it has been, is and will be. Peter in speaking at Pentecost was highly specific here. Citing the Psalmist, he spoke frankly: the body of David is gone, buried, but in this Psalm he spoke of the body of Christ, that IT WOULD NOT ROT. THIS, said Peter, is what has happened, and this was the proclamation. Christ's soul, said Peter, it was this that David declared would not be left in hell, and His body, he proceeded, it was this that would not be allowed to rot. THIS he declared for one and all and to one and all: so establishing the Church and what leaves it is confounded, in the end worshipping another Jesus and having another Gospel which is no Gospel at all (Galatians 1, II Corinthians 11).
Now to return to David, we read this: "My heart instructs me in the night seasons." As he ponders in his heart, he sees this truth, that "I have set the LORD always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." He will not totter, lurch and fall. Even when he committed the sheer folly of gross sin at ONE part of his life, and his being was subjected to a torrent of grief and shame, guilt and horror, yet (as in Psalm 51), God forgave the iniquity of this, his sin; and indeed He taught him in many ways the meaning of such lurches, so building character in David as Paul shows more generally in Romans 5:1-5. To him is no robotic surreality, no casuistical deception, no reconstruction to dimness of desire, where man rules man and seeks to make him a mere slave to his own pomposity, an adjunct to his own arrogance, as in socialistic and more vilely communist systems, where man rules and finds in himself his resource, recourse and morals, his mandates and his manacles, his pseudo-regal rebellion in its rottenness and impious plausibility.
It is to this that he turns.
It is instead to the God whom he loves, the liberty of heart in which he freely rejoices, the splendour of his inheritance among the saints, the sanctity of the redeemed life that he has illimitable joy, in the unsearchable riches of Christ. Not in man but in God is his hope; and in God there is no fear but that which is clean (Psalm 19:9), no end to life and abundance of delight, since we are FOR Him, who came for us. That, it was not to liberate us from liberty, but in love to provide for the fellowship of faith in Him who created us, and then, for all who become His, in Him who re-created us and redeemed (II Corinthians 5:17ff., Titus 3:3-7, Ephesians 1), so that friendship with God as Lord becomes the fulness of favour: what we are made for and now by grace, receive.
Indeed, David is moved spiritually to rejoice, there is a stirring of praise in him towards this most blessed and faithful, caring and preparing God. This exalted awareness is moved by the Lord to the conclusion to which Psalm 22 later comes. That ? As the Messiah of that Psalm is marred, mocked, derided, murdered by degrees, and suffering is tormented by man, yet we find in that same song that He arises from death and speaks to the brethren in glorious victory (Psalm 22:21-31), just as in fact happened with that Messiah, Jesus Christ, who after His resurrection spoke on that same Sunday to the disciples, as on the next with Thomas and indeed over forty days.
As in Psalm 22, so here in Psalm 16, the Man of Affairs in view, the One whose flesh will not be allowed to rot, the maestro and marvel is the same, that One in whom to trust of Psalm 2, that Son as there, to be kissed in reverence, lest wrath arise, that One who came willingly into the casement of flesh through a virgin (Isaiah 7, 9, Psalm 40, Matthew 1 cf. SMR pp. 770ff.), that Judge over all the earth as in Psalm 2 and 110, that One fairer than the children of men as in Psalm 45, whose throne is the throne of God: it is He who is the Operator.
It is He who is the Deity who makes the difference by acting in man as man for man. It is therefore HIS flesh that will not rot, and as to David, incorporated by faith in advance of his time, in Him of whom he spoke so freely and so often by predictive inspiration in so many Psalms, it is in that same One that he trusts. This, his trust, it is not ephemeral but practical, not poetic but transformational; for here lies the path for man, which David trod so far in advance of the coming of this Messiah, the Saviour, on that path of faith which the Lord provided.
Here we find testimony of his faith, the breach of death by life, by the life of God in Christ, in his acceptance of the man with the mandate, the Messiah with the breach of death through the method of murder, the solemn sacrifice wrought by hatred, provided in love (as in Psalm 69, 109, 22), that even in hatred man might be made contemptible before the love of God, and repenting seize Him who is provided, and find peace (cf. Hebrews 2:1ff., Ephesians 2:14-22).
David is not emoting. He is a practical man who had slain in youth, both lion and bear, while looking after his flock. He is not being mystical but historical. "My flesh shall rest in hope." He already knew more than did the PC of New Zealand in 1966, when one had the opportunity and avenue of access to TELL them that their Resurrection Statement, which ignored the necessity of the bodily arising of Christ, was a foolish farce, a fiasco, a nonsense of un-faith, a fraud, addressing them both orally in the Assembly itself, and in writing by formal arrangement and privilege, after the Assembly, duly sent to them.
David, filled with praise and feeling, zest and delight, is NOT at all beguiled into thinking thoughts of dream, as did the prophets in the day of Jeremiah, who declared this (23:28ff.): the prophet who had a dream, let him tell it, and the prophet that had the word of the Lord, let HIM TELL THAT! After all, said Jeremiah, what is the chaff to the wheat! It is the word of God that breaks rock. It also created the universe, formed man, founded the Church of Jesus Christ, and built it on Him as foundation, arisen from the dead; for as David in Psalm 16 goes on to tell us, as in Psalm 22, there is a work of the Messiah which will bring His saints into its glory.
What is that work ? We find its basis in Psalm 16:9-10. His FLESH is going to rest in hope. It is no matter of being reposed with dignity, impounded as propounded, a memory in a spot of earth. No, it is simple, practical and profound: "MY FLESH SHALL REST IN HOPE."
Tied by faith to the Messiah, he has the testimony from that provision, that portmanteau supply of space for all who by faith receive Him as He is, and not as He is made to be by the maddened mind of straying man who will often not limit his wickedness to sin against himself and his neighbour, against commandments, but even will reach to seeking a new christ to his favour and to his savour and flavour, only to find this innovation of presumption is mere poetry of desire, impractical and desolatory (cf. II Corinthians 11, II Peter 2).
Why then is there this rest of his flesh in hope ? It is because David has certain knowledge that through this same saving Messiah, his soul will not be left in hell (destiny of the unsaved wicked as in Psalm 9). Known to him from his youth, active in his life at every turn, the vitality of his vigour, the desire of his heart, the splendour of his understanding, the God of his life, the King of the Covenant, the protector from his foes, the deliverer even from his own sins, it is He by whom he lives and acts and finds grace and wisdom. Here is his ground, foundation, former, founder, Creator and in Him does he look for consummation when he awakes in glory to be with Him who for so long was with him, here (Psalm 17).
There is no fiery future or flaming tribulation to come for him; for HOPE is allied to rest. But why is this so ? It is because God simply will not ALLOW His flesh to rot ('see corruption'), who came to save, and hence that of those to be saved through Him; but instead, He will show to him the path of life, what life has been all about, its destiny as designed, its culmination where glory dwells.
Indeed, David adds, "in Your presence is fulness of joy", so that there is not mere resurrection, magnificent as this is, but this to LIFE with the intense benediction that is the consummation of the fellowship on this earth. To come is an eternal life together with the Lord that has its own beauty of holiness, joy of communion for ever. Resurrection is a confirmation, channel, testimony to power, truth and perpetuity of knowledge in the Most High.
What Christ accomplished in the icy headwinds of confrontation with sin, purgation by purity and offering of Himself, this is transferable by faith, intimated to trust, provided for persons receptive to and indeed, actually receiving Him. And whom do they receive ? It is this same Messiah, Jesus Christ, the gift of gifts, and it is received with the glory that surpasses, that of a love of such dimension that what man had owing, He paid, where man was derelict and irresponsible, He responded, where man left his moorings and went to the swallowing depths of death, there He who came swallowed up the doom and delivered to the dry land of eternal life (cf. Hosea 13:14, I Corinthians 15).
The resurrection is no emblem. It is a death accomplished (as in Luke 9, seen in the transfiguration), it is a glory made manifest, it is a laboratory test passed in triumph, it is the way for man, as many as receive Him; and there is no other way, since THIS is the ratified revelation, the triumphant truth, and exactingly precise performance, provided to piety, delivered in pity, shown to all, urged on all, able to deliver to the utter most, even from death to life, judgment to joy through justice (I John 1:7ff.).
It is how God said He would act, how He acted, and this Gospel, it is that which God said would come, and it has come, and it is that which Israel rejected, as a nation, as God said it would, but that which was to be received by many of the Gentiles including kings, and it has been*2. In flesh was the work done, and that flesh did not rot. Reality supervened, and thus to as many as confess with their lips the Lord Jesus, and believe in their hearts that God has raised Him from the dead, for each as for David, there is this splendour of the finale, initiated by Christ, to be consummated in His own, when "your dead shall live. My dead body they shall arise" (Isaiah 26:19). Each such one will be saved (Romans 10:9), not in rhetoric, but in reality.
Indeed, as Isaiah proceeds to reveal, the message is this: "Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust; for your dew is like the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead."
As in the creation, it was said and it was done; as in the trial of man, it was enunciated and it foundered through sin; as in the flood, it was brought on and man but for a few, was carried off; as in the Abrahamic covenant, it was concluded with one, and provided for many: so here in the Messiah, it is announced, and it is done, His whole work; it is provided and it is received, this time by as many as come to Him in faith, as He is, and not as He is imagined to be by erratic minds and rebellious spirits, inventing christs as if they were comics or books, or adding man or men in whom to trust, as if they were God (cf. Matthew 23:8-10).
So in Him likewise, His resurrection is announced and wrought, it is provided for those who have sought Him and found Him who provides, and these, in this new Ark, that of Christ, will be delivered from the rising waters of judgment. That judgment, it is not this time nautical however, but transformed not in figure but in fact, to the yet more devastating medium of fire (cf. II Peter 3).
His flesh did not rot; the rot is in the woodwork of fabricated christs who do not save; and the performance is for the poor in spirit, who rely not on some internal miracle, but on what God who in creation, redemption, salvation, resurrection and restoration being One, and of one mind, has done. Believing Him and receiving this, they through this ONE sacrifice ONCE made are for EVER made sure (Hebrews 9:12-10:14, John 4:14, 5:24, Ephesians 1:11, 2:1-12). It is not problematic or probational: there ARE tests, but He in whom His own people trust, it is HE who has passed them and what remains is not to institute, but to realise the wonders of His salvation (cf. Titus 3:3-7, Ephesians 2:1ff., 3:14ff., Philippians 1:6, 3:12-21, I Peter 1:1-8, Romans 5:1-12, Job 19:23-27, Psalm 17).
Theology ? It is simply finding out what God has to say and presenting exposition of it. It is false when it turns from it, true when it keeps to it, neither crimping nor cramping the divine words, nor contradicting nor innovating with the words of flesh, as did those false prophets excoriated through Jeremiah (23). These were like those false religionists so treated by Christ with some of the most scorchingly just rhetoric of all time (Matthew 23, Luke 11). The Church, said Paul (Ephesians 2), has been built on the prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ the cornerstone; and again in I Corinthians 3:11, it is He who is the foundation, and He does not change while the apostles in their true teaching remain as 12 pillars (Revelation 21:14).
The work has been done, foundation immutable, structure immovable. HE does not change (Heb. 13:8), nor does the Gospel (that already preached by Paul, as in Gal. 1:8-9, unchangeable even by him! incorruptible, irreformable, unmalleable, irreducible, eternal). Just as the Gospel is such, so is the grace and the glory of God which imparts everlasting life as in I Peter 1:3-8, where he speaks precisely with that adoring delight that is found also in Psalm 16, in the heart of David. Indeed, compare this by that same Spirit that worked in David (I Peter 1:10ff.), “the Spirit of Christ,” as found in I Peter 1:3ff..
Compare this from Peter, by that same Spirit that worked in David (I Peter 1:10ff.), “the Spirit of Christ, ”as found in I Peter 1:3ff..
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again
to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, toan inheritance incorruptible and undefiled
and that does not fade away,
reserved in heaven for you,
who are kept by the power of God
through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. {Cf. Romans 23.}
"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while,
if need be, you have been grieved by various trials,
that the genuineness of your faith,
being much more precious than gold that perishes,
though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory
at the revelation of Jesus Christ,
whom having not seen you love."Though now you do not see Him,
yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory."Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully,
who prophesied of the grace that would come to you,
searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them
was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ
and the glories that would follow."To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us
they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you
through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven - things which angels desire to look into."
There is no difference; for what the one was shown in prediction (David), the other rejoices to find in practice (Peter); and what the one finds in spiritual communion through faith, granting foreknowledge of the wonders of the Messiah, the other has found in His practical demonstration, and this, not only in the life of Jesus, but in the death prescribed for man's salvation, His resurrection as testimony of truth and evidence of the power of the deity and the intentions of His heart.
For millenia, God foretold; for millenia now the point has been finished, "It is finished!" said Christ.
Now the return of this same Jesus (Acts 1:7ff.) draws near as has been outlined in SMR Chs. 8 -9 . Now we can rejoice both with David and Paul by that same Spirit, in a Lord vicarious in love, victorious in power, virtuous in disposition, invigorating in thrust, inviolable in life ("I am He who was dead and behold, I am alive for evermore" - Revelation 1:18. It is to HIM that the keys to hell and death are given, and in Him is the key to life, and to NO OTHER MASTER is man permitted to give spiritual obeisance (Matthew 23:8-10), nor is there any like this triune God in heaven or on earth (Psalm 89), who has given Himself that through the blood of Christ all, all in heaven and in earth might be reconciled.
This world is irreconcilable; but many in it have come, do come and will come to Him who came to us, that He might bring us back to God. Rejoice with us, for here is the key to life, the door through which to enter, the delight in whom to dwell, our God and Creator, made near through the blood of Jesus Christ, offered to all, covering all who come to Him (I John 2:1-2, Romans 8:32ff., Isaiah 53:3-6), imparting life by His Spirit according to His Gospel (Titus 3:3-7), that does not age, eternal, vernal. Nestling in the beauty of His love, propounded in the fires of judgment, it is not lightly taken (Luke 14:27ff.), but eternally effectual for all who by faith freely receive Him. Here is the path where glory dwells.
NOTES
See *1 if the preceding Chapter.
For detail, see SMR Ch. 9, especially at the first.