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Chapter 2

of

SUMS, SUMMITS and IN SUM

Adding Things Up, and Getting Things Down

 

THE PROVISION, INSTALLATION, PROCLAMATION AND CONSUMMATION OF SALVATION

Luke 2:29-32

"Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace,

According to Your word,

For my eyes have seen Your salvation

Which You have prepared before the face of all peoples,

A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles."

What  is more important among summits, than the summit of salvation, and there what better than finding in sum its security, certainty and source, its meaning application and personal relevance! We for this current exercise, will not move to a concentration on contemporary events, but to a happening of old,  in the very day of the Messiah: and as to that, to One at its centre. It came when He was in bodily format personally having a rite, that of circumcision as a mere babe.

GOD KNOWS what it is LIKE to experience the pangs and troubles of the flesh, not only in survey as a biological engineer, a physiological artist and a psychic Creator, but as a participant. Never forget that! You are not dealing with some Communist Party boss, born into superiority, a blight to the masses, carefully ensuring that the regime, unelected, is unopposed, or if opposed, is never deposed; or with one who, having experienced trials for a time, is never forgetting number one, the survival of the PARTY, and with it the means for it, not least his very own self.

God on the contrary, ensured that number one, the survival of the righteous Lord over all, on this earth, which after all, is where the action and the experience is, would NOT occur. That is, right to His death, non-survival was a crucial and indispensable aim. It could only come later, after death do us part,  as a supernatural act, as real as that now to come for every Christian, and this now not only based on faith, but also on the sight of Him who arose in order to direct, dynamise and deliver those who are His. But how are they His ? Not one by force, manipulation, self-service on the part of Him who calls, but as fulfilment of a love which eschews impurity, declaring it more blessed to give than to get.

It is One who, as it were, by His election in their hearts, is accredited; and if by sin, this is wrought beyond the power of man, yet by love, it is not beyond the purity that knowing what is sought, puts love where ultimatedly it is received, before this sphere began its revolutions. Thus it is always true to say, that in the last analysis, we come freely, not by something or for something other than the love of God, and not where this is not desired, but where in His foreknowledge of all, in a way without basis in attainments, finds His own place; for the Lord knows who are His own, before sin made its entry, or history its debut. When it comes to God, it is always good to remember that infinitude is not the finite, omniscience is not the shallow and understanding is not in degrees.

Not then by imperious rite or might does God love; though His judgments at various times, as in the flood, rock the earth. Yet even there, it is to this author utterly and entirely amazing, in the most salutary way, HOW PATIENT He is. Still, when in view is the fate and destiny of billions in this globe, on course astronomically but awry morally and spiritually, then such vast patience in such vast realms with such vast consequences for so many, and so much, is attractive to the uttermost. How great is the God whom we Christians, His children, adore!

In the interim, known as natural life, there would be for our Leader and Lord, our Dear Leader who is dear indeed, every species of NON nicety, for He had to secure what He gave in the most intimate of fashions, and meeting justice with truth, dispense mercy by grace, not a wave of an indifferent hand.

To Him, therefore, on the way to this form of governance that you see in Isaiah 53-55, there came not survival on this earth as His natural life, but its disposal, and this not in reverence, but in ridicule.

It was foretold ridicule (Psalm 22), reaching as in that very foreseen deposition from the mouth of God Himself, to foretold desolation, for that is what sin brings, and if He were to bear it, then this is where it would bear His human psyche as He was so born, a sacrificial victim as free in His own acceptance (Psalm 40), as are Christians in theirs of Him.

What then was the deference accorded to Him, and what public service kind of superannuation program was at work in His natural life on this earth, in human format ? It was one capsized, a NON sating with power and authority, NON elevation to the heights. Instead there would be scorn, spoliation of personal equipment, such as head by thorns, back by scourging, face by blows, dignity by spitting, of spiritual eminence as far as human hand could make it so. There would be molestation of majesty by systematic mockery allied with pangs and pains both repeated and riotous, degradation and slander, attended by pain and thirst, agony in diverse depths and dimensions,  and verbal torment in the process.

It would lead to death by derision and incision jointly, sustained exposure in the act of reducing physical power by degrees amid gloating, taunting to secure psychic satisfaction on the part of foxes and wolves, in the very area where duty and nobility called, namely that of NOT retreating from the Cross and intractably accepting NO deliverance, till this His work was done in death, and this even as this, His fidelity was itself made a topic of the songs of scorn. Impotence was the direction of that scorn, when potency was displayed, and rejection by God was its thrust, while rejection of sin was its reality, as He bore it and became, as Paul is used to declare in II Corinthians 5, sin for us who believe and hence receive Him.

Want that, or anything remotely like it ?

Would your average Communist or follower of

the surge to suppress and rule, which has characterised so much of Islamic history

with its endeavours to subject and subjugate for the sake of what has

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no basis in the Bible,

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or in Christ,

whom it sought to subjugate by reconstruction some 600 years after He did it all, a delayed case of mockery:

would such welcome the overthrow of the highest officer in such terms!

Would he stay to be so treated! Would he die in agony rather than accept deliverance ? or live without sin in order to become sin, both in reputation and in exposure by fraud, and do so knowingly and willingly without resisting ? As to such a one, he  would not because, apart from all else, he could not. Sin damns without Christ, the sin-bearer, and when this is deposed from the mind, blurred in the heart, by reconstruction in arrogant disdain or mere manipulation, then there is no mercy left. Spit on mercy by misnaming it, misrepresenting it, miscalling it, bypassing it and - when it comes to that of God Himself for the soul itself - you are cutting your own lifeline. You CAN do that; but it is well to know what you do.

Here then,  as we trace the early part of the incarnate God, God the eternal Word, the express and definitive exhibit, God the Expression, for God is never alone, we see a sudden exposure. It is from the lips of one who has for long been waiting for the Consolation of Israel, that blighted nation, that captive people at the hand of Rome, that roaming and  seduced nation, as it then was, caught in intrigues even at the very heart of its religion. Indeed, this was so vast, that when the LORD whom they thought to worship came, they killed Him, slowly, irreverently, to inherit a national blight not to be cleared till that foretold day when they will look upon ME whom they have pierced, as God declared (Zechariah 12:10-13:1) through one of the prophets who wrote in that nation, and so by the power of the Holy Spirit, repent.

At that time, there was despite all the corruption, a phalanx in Israel, not to force, but in faith, who recognised Christ, followed Him, and were later to be used to bring fashion to His passion, this in the form of the Christian Church. Thus the Jewish apostles it was, who brought through this very Church, by the power of the Holy Spirit, this same Christ to the Gentiles. Never forget that: despise Israel, then despise the testimony to Christ handed down by their prophets (whom Muhammad disingenuously attested, while removing the sacrificial centre from the testimony of these VERY same prophets - cf. SMR pp.1080ff.), and despise the Christ of their attestation, and the Messianic basis from their hope, ignoring the date of His death who, in the flesh, was one of them. Indeed, you may even tilt to ignore the very sacrificial death of the Lord incarnate as a Jew, without which only hell yaws for the flight path of man! Yet you may say: No, this is not so. I will despise Israel because, as a nation it despised Him!

What then ? Is it for you to despise the sinner ? and the nation from whom the only relief for sin is to be found ? and if it fell, is it not that it will arise, as is expressly taught by these same prophets (as most dramatically in Micah 7 and most searchingly in Deuteronomy 32);  and if it will arise, is this not to be essentialised in its very return to Him whom they smote, even the judge of Israel (Micah 5) ? and is it well to despise what was the human source-bed for so much, and what has endured in and for its sins, so much, rather than to seek their spiritual restoration, which as Romans 11 repeatedly affirms, will not only come, but come in a sudden, dramatic and cardinal fashion as God pouring out His Spirit, accomplishes it, so that Christian Jew and Christian Gentile merging, become a paean of praise, renewed together in this same Christ as basis, exhibit of the wisdom and vast counsel of Almighty God!

Let us ponder from Micah 7, what God has in mind.

Do not rejoice over me, my enemy;
When I fall, I will arise;
When I sit in darkness,
The Lord will be a light to me.
9     I will bear the indignation of the Lord,
Because I have sinned against Him,
Until He pleads my case
And executes justice for me.
He will bring me forth to the light;
I will see His righteousness.
10     Then she who is my enemy will see,
And shame will cover her who said to me,
“Where is the Lord your God?”
My eyes will see her;
Now she will be trampled down
Like mud in the streets.
11     In the day when your walls are to be built,
In that day the decree shall go far and wide.
12     In that day they shall come to you
From Assyria and the fortified cities,
From the fortress to the River,
From sea to sea,
And mountain to mountain.
13     Yet the land shall be desolate
Because of those who dwell in it,
And for the fruit of their deeds.
14     Shepherd Your people with Your staff,
The flock of Your heritage,
Who dwell solitarily in a woodland,
In the midst of Carmel;
Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead,
As in days of old.
15     “As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt,
I will show them wonders.”
16     The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might;
They shall put their hand over their mouth;
Their ears shall be deaf.
17     They shall lick the dust like a serpent;
They shall crawl from their holes like snakes of the earth.
They shall be afraid of the Lord our God,
And shall fear because of You.
18     Who is a God like You,
Pardoning iniquity
And passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage?
He does not retain His anger forever,
Because He delights in mercy.
19     He will again have compassion on us,
And will subdue our iniquities.
You will cast all our sins
Into the depths of the sea.
20     You will give truth to Jacob
And mercy to Abraham,
Which You have sworn to our fathers
From days of old.
The New King James Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers., 1982, S. Mic 7:8

 

Let us then return to the first days of the babe, Jesus, in this Christmas season (indeed, today is Christmas Day, 2009), and watch ... and consider and see something of the sum and summit of salvation.

 

PROVISION

Recently, I was trying to make sure of my new file-saving and securing device, so that indeed, as I typed, the back-up would also be saved. In this way, no more would things created disappear, through some occasional breach, so losing what came after the last time the text was automatically saved, nor would all of it go, when it had not been saved at all. The supervisor, evidently not too accustomed to English, but trying, would point me  to  a page and ask me to sight a tab that did not appear. This was difficult for both of us. The intention was there, but the result, for whatever reason,  sometimes did not appear. In the end, he had to simulate the situation on his own computer, and this helped, till at  last the desired test could be made.

It appeared that he had to come to terms with what I was in fact  seeing, not what he thought that I ought to see. So this illustrates salvation and its provision. God did not simply fling a few words at us and tell us to  see. What if someone did NOT see! and reasons for this,  in our case as sinners,  are very numerous. Firstly, there is sophistry and philosophy and bad will, and false intention both in the hearts of those who imagine themselves pure and are not (Jeremiah 17:9), and in the hearts of those who are under-shepherds, some being indubitably Judases (II Peter 2:1ff.). Thirdly, there is the occlusion of sight coming from cultural smog, which is also very acid. For many reasons, man may not see.

God took further action. He forecast the date of the death of the Messiah, the words in outline that He would speak, the power in some detail that He would show, where He would be born, the mode of His death, the reason for it,  and how this related to  salvation, indicating that the Jewish nation  would reject and even abominate Him, and that many Gentiles would come to Him, since from God and as God, He was provided now in human form (Isaiah 48:16, 40:1-10, Psalm 45, 72).

He was for all, sufficient for all,  directed to all, however many would prefer His death, defeat or distortion. When people cannot beat someone or show them  false, are false, and do not want the truth they give, I have found in country after country, the standard technique is betrayal as with Judas. You sell the person, whether attacking their name, person or productions. That is easier than impossibly defeating the truth. It is almost routine: just as they say, 'boys will be boys', so here, liars will be liars, and slanderers slanderers,  and fraud is the method of avoiding truth, take it this way or that.

In taking further action, as with the computer case above, God ensured that He would be in our midst with similar equipment, and we would be able to relate directly, not by means of mere programs but by His speaking word for word to our very ears in answer to direct questions, by showing openly under numerous circumstances just how and why He acted, by evidencing interest and concern, and power to match. God became man that man might the more obviously find the path to God. Here was the provision of salvation (Hebrews 2).

Nor did it come in one of those tortuous documents which require you to fill in from a list, this or that fact about yourself, when NONE of the options is right, or apt. It came in flesh. HE came as a child, facing hunger as in His fasting, rather than use His power, that His intimacy of empathy might be most real, and His own test, self-imposed, the more actual (Hebrews 2).

 

INSTALLATION

Thus when Simeon, a just person, devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel (what a consolation, Christ as man to bring individuals in Israel to know God direct and simply, assuredly and without mere symbol!) found Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit directing him, "He took Him up in his arms and blessed God" (Luke 2:28). This was not a form, like the words of a theologian preferred as the heretical Niebuhr is said to be preferred by Obama, one not even believing in the virgin birth by WHICH God became man,  and so excluding the whole point.

It was nothing of that kind;  for instead, Simeon took Him as He was, in his arms. No change, no theologian, just Christ. There is nothing wrong with being a theologian provided what you provide in presentation is what God provided in fact; otherwise there is everything wrong with it.

Have YOU taken Him not only in the arms of your mind, but into the heart of your life  ? Nothing less is relevant. That is the nature of this provision: He came in empathy, and must be received  with nothing less; and as He came, God as man, His word must be applied with zeal, nothing less (John 14:21-23); and with heart, nothing other, and in love, not abstractedly,  but as  people who can  love, DO love. Love cannot be invented, and if you have not loved Christ, you have not met Him as your God, the God of creation and salvation,  more necessary to man than any antibiotic to a  suppurating infection.

Simeon was waiting, expecting, knew what he was looking for and when he found Him, the babe filled with promise for man, he took him in his arms. If you download a program in computing, what is that! To meet Christ, in itself, what is that ? In the case of the rich young ruler who came running in urgency to meet Him, and then showed in his conversation an eminently direct approach to God and His commands, he was even loved by Christ (Mark 10:21).  Yet he had a disease, a distemper, an infection of the heart. His money was great, his possessions vast, his authority considerable: all this COULD not (of course ...) be sacrificed, and Christ,  seeing the problem of heart,  prescribed this individual solution to it. In his case, he had to give it up.

It appeared that God, for the young ruler,  was not in heaven but in the haven of his possessions;  and so he lost eternal life, though he longed for it so much he would have thought nothing else mattered; but it did. He came running, he went away sorrowing. How many similarly sorrow and get themselves into endless seeming conflicts and diversions, so that in the end their whole lives have no coherent meaning (except as devotees of some 'god'), and though love was extended to them, they walked away. How many mental cases arise because of such tensions and wrong turning. It is not necessary to generalise; there are many ways to disease, but this is a path most common.

For man's salvation, it is not sufficient that the salvation be provided as it has been these 2000 years, and forecast another millenia before that, while indicated several more before that. That was and is marvellous, and many programs of man may be fine; yet for personal salvation, it is not enough. It must be installed into your system, imbibed by your heart, received by your spirit, embraced by your life. It must be that Christ IN YOU, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27) is not a mere supposition, theological rite, but a reality so intense that it is HE who as Lord makes manifest His life in you; and be assured, this will never be if you want to cut off His mouth, or impede its words.

"IF anyone loves Me, said He, he will keep My words", He declared (John 14:23),
"and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him."

Again, He asseverated,

"He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me," John 14: 21.

For this installation, you need to de-install all that competes or relates differently. Repentance to life is what is required (Acts 11:18). It has, the divergent approach, way of life, to be deleted, removed, de-installed, devoted to destruction, or as Paul denotes it, your 'old man' has to be put off and your 'new man' put on (Ephesians 4:22ff., Colossians 3:9ff.); or again, you must be crucified with Christ, planted with Christ, and arise from that de-installation, that death, to life in His risen presence (Romans 6, 8, Galatians 2).

 

PROCLAMATION

How simple are some of the greatest things of all! Paul in Romans 10:9 tells us that if you confess (not merely profess) with your lips the Lord Jesus (not some variant invented by man, II Corinthians 10-11), and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead (not invented some spectre - Luke 24:36ff., Acts 2:29-37), you will be  saved. The core is Christ; the foundation is Christ (I Corinthians 3:11), the expiation is His death (Colossians 1:21-22), the application is your reception, your eyes opened by the Holy Spirit, and your coming in faith, just as Simeon did.

When you so confess Christ, and when you indeed confess Him openly before mankind (Luke 9:26), not hiding Him, your light under your fears, and carry this out, then even your feet become 'beautiful' (Isaiah 52:7), gaining a derivative comeliness from the message of Christ that you bear, so that even your least attractive part becomes a thing of beauty because of its message! The great commission (Matthew 28) is a testimony to truth, its reality and reception and its obedience as in any truth; for who but a liar, knowing what has to be done, thinks otherwise or does otherwise and so speaks or acts!

Yet you say, Who is perfect ? Christ is perfect, and if you are in the habit of betraying your best friend by letting his name be put in the dust or agreeing with fraud concerning him, then you may find this difficult to understand. Of course no one is perfect, but God the Trinity;  but even Peter, that valiant, but once so confused disciple after Gethsemane, though he DID deny Christ once for a few minutes,  was so smitten by this that he wept bitterly and arose for a life-time of godly service. A slip is not a slither to hell, neither is a heart a nothing, nor love to be denied in life's ultimate practice - though some error may slip in. If its fire is in the hearth, that cannot be; for is too warm.

CONSUMMATION

So Simeon could go in peace.

It is a great thing so to live in Christ that when this earth spins its last under your feet, the heavens open. His eyes had SEEN the salvation of the Lord, prepared for all peoples, openly, with nothing hidden, "a light to bring salvation to the Gentiles" so that whole empires or nations would give at least lip service, and millions become His children, though being early smitten to death, He had none of His own on this earth (Isaiah 53:8). Indeed, He was not this only, a light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6), but He would also be "the glory of Your people, Israel"; for though that nation slew Him by its authorities (Rome adding its own betrayal through Pilate as well), this no more relates to reality in salvation than does running away from an operation relate to its performance. In the end, Israel has to have it, and it has already, as a nation, operated on Christ.

The next phase is this, that He operates on them, to the heart (Zechariah 12:10-13:1). And if He so insists on a vast swath to come in Israel, to love and adore Him, the Messiah indeed, He does so no less for the Gentiles; but it is no idle coming, some re-formatting of essential religious desire in man, far less in humanist man bent on self-worship through a person of pride, representing the race (II Thessalonians 2) or in any other such way. It is coming to the consolation for man, the desire of the nations, to Him whose resting place is glorious (Isaiah 11:10, Haggai 2:6-7), even as He shakes the earth one more time, as that prophet shows (resonated through Hebrews 12:26).  It is coming to His rest because you rest in Him who has done the works which make rest realistic, and His presence compatible with truth through His practical mercy and historic love (Matthew 11:25-30).

THAT, it is the rest, for one and for all; not the arms of the psychiatrist, the political feist-focus, the power of one's works, the self-assurance of one's own goodness; for self-evaluation, far less self-elevation to acceptability is mere arrogance and pride (II Corinthians 10:13, Romans 10:2-4), whether of Jew or of Gentile, for we are all at the outset, but one race.

As to Israel, with hideous vehemence, it has been slain and murdered, mutilated and slandered, its good deeds misrepresented and its efforts ignored. It is rammed by the United Nations, a subject of rampage by the ignorant, and while far from Christian, it yet has much of Old Testament ethics still lingering.

Having so treated its Lord (and ours), it has itself been so treated most sadly, in its unbelief, yielding its Shield, Jesus Christ, its own Saviour, born as Simeon saw, into its very midst. Slaughtered and slandered, it has learnt what it did. It is time for it to return (Zechariah 12:10-13:1), as God has prescribed (cf. Ezekiel 36-37) for a large part of it to become the spiritual remnant: and HOW He will act on the nations when the crisis comes (Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, Ezekiel 38-39)! They will become like snakes seeking to hide in holes, we read.

This, it is all part of the consummation of salvation; for when all who are His from the Gentile people come, and His remnant in Israel at last comes in that final flush (Romans 11:25ff.), then this earth will see a disjoining as His 'bride', not in parts but as one (Romans 11:28ff.), is given the sudden thrust home. It is removed abruptly to heaven (Matthew 24:30ff., I Thessalonians 4),  from a turmoiled and slandering world, which having seen His salvation, unlike Simeon, has attacked it with arms, rather than receiving it into its arms.

Then comes that end of the test, as in a great examination of many days, the end of the pilgrimage, as in a long desert journey, with beautiful dawns and blistering heat, of a tour of service, when one is removed from some distant land and brought 'home' to be with the Lord. It is here that eternal life shows its glory in consummation, and the peace which passes all understanding has its substantial emplacement, where His people see Him face to face, whom  Simeon took in His arms. Then all His people, Jew or Gentile, come back home to heaven. The knowledge of God, who made us, becomes not only indispensable and available,  as on this earth (John 17:1-3), but brilliantly and spectacularly fulfilled.

May God add to His people, day by day. The night is coming when no man can work (John 9:4). Let us then who are of the day, His day, His light, with Him resident within by His Spirit, realise the ruin to come after His earthly reign vindicates the truth and illuminates gloriously His mercy (Isaiah 11, Micah 4, Isaiah 2, 32, 59, Revelation 20). That end comes to this earth amid the universe itself, a terminus discerned in such dramatic dynamic in II Peter 3 and descried by Christ as seen in Matthew 24:35. As to 'heaven and earth', then there will be found 'no place for them' (Revelation 20:11), nor will there be any place to stand, but His mercy wrought in the Cross, bought by Christ that in truth, His tenderness might find its proper outcome. Let none look fearlessly at judgment due, in his own blighted sight, but let many rather receive Him, the dew of His youth upon His resurrected beauty (Psalm 110), born to be King, and achieving it in a way consistent only with Him, a way just like Him, whom to know, Father and Son, as the Spirit of God shows in John 17:3, is life eternal.