CHAPTER 9
ON DEVICES OF THE DEVIL and their
IMPUDENT IMPOTENCE in the End
These can be shriveled in the Christian Pilgrimage
by the Power and Wisdom of the LORD
A New Look at Old Wiles ... since the Creation!
with a Supplement Germane Added at the End
Psalm 23 is rather comprehensive in outlook. The SUPERVISION of the Lord is there, the PROVISION of the Lord, the PROVIDENTIAL leading of the Lord, His REFRESHING of the inmost sources of one's life, with His specific leading in RIGHTEOUS PATHS in covenantal certainty, His GIFT OF REST in heart, all is there. So too is His munificence in the midst of difficulty, not merely supplying but defying the dynamics of this world and its prince, the devil with his stoodges; and in particular, how comfortably in His presence does He wield His ROD AND STAFF, His PROTECTION against all the wiles and devices of the devil, by HIS OWN POWER.
What shepherd would lack the means appropriate, and with God, it is not UNDER the circumstances, but IN them, to protect. Is it an electric fence nowadays, or a mesh netting, or worm medicine ? What it takes, is to be done.
With us however, the wilds are still present, for the devil is always wild (cf. Revelation 12:10,12, 20:10 being in prospect). Cast out of heaven, his lust is to take over the place. It has been that for time immemorial, and was that before man's downfall.
This insane, insanitary and unspiritual lust is found in many of his chief devotees, many of whom, in view of the fact that their principal is given to and gifted in lies, do not know whom they serve! As Christ put it,
"If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God;
nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me.
"Why do you not understand My speech?
Because you are not able to listen to My word.
"You are of your father the devil,
and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning,
and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie,
he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.
"But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. Which of you convicts Me of sin?
And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears God’s words;
therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God."
( This is found in John 8:42ff. and it is scarcely a presentation for a beauty contest or a
curriculum vitae. This time the part for our current emphasis is put in blue).
He would not be the leader of evil if he were not gifted enough to make it hurt!
Profoundly sad is it to see so many so deluded by this evil one, whose ways are not merely to deceive the world against Christ, against God, against truth, but against peace, since he wants what he quite simply not only does not have, but CANNOT get, the place of God. They deceive his followers also, in whom his unsublime hatred may present itself in the almost (but not quite ...) infinite subtleties which he has learned since his own fall (cf. Isaiah 14:12, Ezekiel 28:11).
As to the Ezekiel reference: The king of Tyre was not in Eden, nor was he the anointed cherub who covers, nor was he perfect in his ways from the day he was created; but his boss was. This is partly the irony: in exalting themselves to the heights (and Hussein for example was no mere paranoid case, for his intelligence was considerable and his methods, although the depth of abomination, were crafty and crafted very often), they imagine they actually ascend.
What is it like ? It resembles someone on a para-glider, floating gloriously off a cliff-top, and wafting in the most satisfying and apparently satisfactory manner about the countryside, with an excellent view, it may be, of the ocean. All seems most elevated. Only a little later, when the jagged rocks loom 10 feet away, and the oceanaut perceives his plight, does he take his abstracted gaze from the skies, which in fact STILL do reach sublimely upwards, to realise that he has in reality been moving on a downward path. Still sky ? still in the air ? of course. Still floating ? observably. It is just that the movement not detected in the drama of the occasion, was the downwards one. The clouds were still SO picturesque, stretching - more and more, actually - above!
So do they float in their ONE WORLD,
their ONE RELIGION (unification of religions ? you prefer that
tag ? it is more wafting ? very well). Again, ORGANIC EVOLUTION (the name for the
actual descent, in the clouds of the mind, upward cf. Secular Myths and
Sacred Truth Chs. 7 and 8, with Earth Spasm ... Chs.
1, 7, Wake Up World ... Ch. 5, Spiritual Refreshings...
Ch. 6,
16, Barbs, Arrows and Balms
29) wafts most inanely without any
power of its own, forced by gravity to the rocks. Pasion gloats over them as
they cry, decry, stigmatise truth, align themselves with the pragmatically
obsessive, empirically absent caterwauling of deception. Many are self-deceived,
and the whole gamut of graceless pretence has as its President, the infernal
strategist whose depths still aspires to toying with man, in the hope of making something
really VIOLENT as well as VILE his overlord, by WILE and GUILE!
In the process, there are many LITTLE THINGS to observe. Just as birds could be preoccupied in the sheer beauty*1 of their flight, so the descending para-glider, on his way to soft destruction, soon finds the rocks to be sharper than his wits were.
Such things are no less than the gloatingly vainglorious, devilish devices. Let us look at some of them.
1) Gloating over Trial and Tribulation/Test
In this case, we shall trace out with the particular, some general issues which will be useful also in the later cases listed.
You see a case of this in Job 2:9-10. Job is under test. The reason for this test of course, as is the case with many tests, is simple. It is however not known to Job. It is not some metaphysical marvel which clouds its purpose from his eyes: it is far simpler than that. The reason why it could not be known (as for a Chemistry exam) is this. In this case of Job, IF he knew, it COULD not be a test, for then he would have known that the devil was challenging God to let him, the so-righteous saint, be soundly tested. Then, the devil declared, Job would crack, and revealed would be his true nature of mere, hideous self-love.
Such was the devil's design, which God allowed him to test.
In passing, one might note many who are fallen LOVE to see others join them, and so aspire greatly to produce a good 'downfall for the moment' and one sometimes wonders whether the case of the current Governor-General in Australia is at least in substantial part, of this kind. The sparsity of facts and the volumes of cartoons and quips, this certainly rather suggests it. Gratifying to many long fallen, is to see another now join them, and at times, the desire for it can appear as a ravening lust.
Returning, however, to Job, assuredly if there was ONE THING in this conversation with the Lord that showed itself, from the infernal one's position, it was an acute and rugged DESIRE that Job should be SHOWN up as really, not so much different from the devil himself, in his selfish ambition, his self-seeking devices and his moral barrenness. It is SO much easier, some seem to feel, to kid yourself that you are pretty good when it is hard to show anyone else better! In the case of Noah, of course, he had FAITH and so BUILT an ark in a way which was so obviously insane, from this world's viewpoint, since it had failed in the main to consider the reality and therefore the judgments of God at all: which were coming!
THAT simple act of nautical construction on the part of Noah, it could not be overcome, so perhaps they just called him a preacher of righteousness with a sneer, and marvelled he had the funds for the job. However, as you see with Abraham, those with riches in those days, could really have them; and for that matter, the case is not so far different today, is it!
Now as the test developed, the devil, finding that Job sounded like an outstanding Sunday School boy delivering his saintliness in a way quite intolerable to the squirming fauna and flora of wholly corrupted dwellers in Sinland as their home, and that he had taken his losses with continuing grace and trust in the Lord, wanted to 'up the ante' as some put it: that is, he felt driven to ask for a sorer trial. Job got it. This time it was to include the point that his health, though not his life, could be harmed (if you die, it is harder to test you, and in this world, rather a demanding feat to perform!).
Now when Job was reduced to a scratching, humbled resultant by disease, with wealth gone, then his wife was possessed by what to her might have seemed rather a fine idea.
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"Do you still hold fast to your integrity ? Curse God and die!" (Job 2:9) - |
this was her feminine thought on this occasion. Job justly rebuked her. Curse God! far from him was such folly.
She had fallen into the tongue massage of the foolish women. There was no point in this. His integrity ? it stayed, though he was really tried. He strayed at moments of acute grief, but did not collapse. Overall, he sustained faith in God, though he sought to find out, to understand, and at times lapsed into passig moments of bitterness. That is, for him, his preferred principles are kept irrespective of their rewards, pains or sorrows, because they are right, and his suffering does not defile them, merely tests him.
For our present purpose, then, let us summarily abstract the relevant point. JOB was TEMPTED by being TAUNTED. The wrong path was suggested, in gross caricature of ANY wisdom, in a cool way which could make it seem even thinkable. HIS WIFE suggested it! It was short. It would fit in with the possible mood for this mode of test! When you think of Solzhenitsyn enduring his decade of imprisonment for daring in private conversation to criticise Stalin, or something such, you can see that he had a test. What could he have done ? Instead of smuggling out work to become famous in the West, and indeed providing an exposé and exposition of some of the unmitigated horrors of the godless stupidity which ruled USSR at that time, with the devil smirking and waiting, and God expressly having been TOLD to GO!
Solzhenitsyn, as someone enduring suffering, the devil seemingly flicking his fingers with energy and unconcern, could have decided to curse God. He declined the opportunity in order to glorify the Lord. He observed, he wrote, he collected facts, conserved them, relayed them. He made his contribution to the case against what Reagan was to call the 'evil empire'!
How often the 'unbearable' becomes the most lustrous contribution, and the 'impossible' the fascinating opportunity to serve God really well! However, not all who engage in this solution to a test see it that way. They may simply give ... vent to volcanic eruptions of words against God. In the Solzhenitsyn case, courage mixed with wisdom, and he was able to threaten or imply the threat that if he were harmed, then the West by secret signal could be free to PUBLISH what he had already sent.
In the mercy and providence of God, Solzhenitsyn was eventually freed. In THIS test, he seemed to have won over the very devil; and indeed, the Lord extracted much for His kingdom from it, reinforcing the perception of gross darkness in the USSR, with the play of light on that abyss. Faith and courage are always relevant in ANY test, but especially when the temptation is to CURSE GOD and die! It may come in lectures from the godless, in a temptation not to divulge that they are wrong when the topic comes to this point in examination time, as of course it does in organic evolution, deterministic psychology and the ridiculous like (cf. Spiritual Refreshings ...Ch. 9, *1).
For oneself, whether in sermon where a seminary did not like the biblical emphasis, or in a paper where the secular professor was an atheist, in lectures and challenge in liberal theological classroom, in debate or in duly ordered controversy, one has sought to give what it took. There was no question. Truth must be stated frankly and clearly. Too bad if it robbed honours. This did not seem in the least courageous; for it would be OUTRAGEOUS not to be willing to do this. There are some things which are minimal duty, as when a wife cooks a meal. Is it marvellous if she does it! Does the husband faint with surprise ? When, as Christ put it in a parable, you have done all, you have but done your duty.
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"And which of you,
having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come
in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? |
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"But will he not
rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and
serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. "So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do’ " (Luke 17:7-11). |
To be faithful is NOT an option. It is normal, natural and proper in the Christian life. To be sure, you may then become PROUD of your obedience; but then, does a wife not cook a meal in case she should become proud of such an accomplishment! It is necessary to preserve some reasonable perspective for one's LORD! (Luke 6:46).
Is God so meanly to be served that his truth is suspended pending operations! Did Christ, for example - and let us be very frank here - decide that ONLY FOR THE DURATION of the intemperate Sadducaic attack and assault on Him in Jerusalem, would He shut His mouth ? Not at all. He could have done so, but He did not. He replied in answer to the trick question, ARE YOU THE CHRIST, as Mark shows, with the words, I AM. Not only so, He further told them of the day of His coming judgment as well, and linked this to the prophecy of Daniel.
What then follows from this in dealing with the wiles of the devil in his taunts and tests ? This: Do not be abashed by his sheer impudence, audacity and lèse-majesté against the Lord. This is his WAY. Simply keep to your course in Christ. Do they gloat who would torment you ? Do not glower back. Instead, trust in the POWER OF GOD, and proceed. If you love the Divine Redeemer, love duty for Him! Is He to be loved, but not with the back put into the labour ? Is He to be worshipped, but not when He speaks!
Such duty is also highly adventurous, for His power is far more wonderful than is the atomic bombs devastation. That spoils; but this foils the devil, a most desirable outcome. Incidentally, notice how MOSES not once, not twice, was troubled by the ironies of the people whom he was leading out of the slavery of Egypt (just as pastor may be treated abusively while seeking to help people along the road to Zion, to heaven, out of the unsavoury slaveries of sin).
As to Moses, it started before he so much as left the land of Egypt, despite an array of miracles to make the modern world's weapons of destruction look miserably ineffective by comparison. These divine devices, these plagues on Egypt were ironic, they were religiously devastating, openly laughing at the gods of this and that, whose names were soiled in the dirt as plagues showed their ineptitude, whether of cattle, frogs or flies. Still the people failed to believe, and openly criticised Moses as if he were inept! He did not yield but TRUSTED in the name of the Lord, and in patience proceeded, though it cost him much! and took them out of the land.
As to HOW much it cost him, consider this passage from Numbers 11. Here a body of millions of Hebrews is on the way to the promised land, and their impatient impenitence is growing. What is the situation in the popular mind, then, on their way to the promised land ? They want MEAT, and they want it NOW! - not this manna stuff which the Lord had graciously provided to meet their needs.
They did not ABIDE, and as Hebrews 4 puts it, their work not being mixed with FAITH. Hence flesh made its outbursts. One of these was a massive complaint about Moses for giving them such a tough time! Moses laboured and pitied and surrendered his life for his work in the Lord, prominently at work, having given up his Egyptian prominence earlier, in his strong concern for his own people. He persisted in the thrust for rescue and deliverance of his brethren, once slaves in Egypt! Instructive therefore is this passage, which gives the exact feeling and sense, so that the test and the trial of Moses (in the exact sense, of an assaying!) can be realised and applied to other cases, perhaps including one's own ?
"Now the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving; so the children of Israel also wept again and said: 'Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!' Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its color like the color of bdellium. The people went about and gathered it, ground it on millstones or beat it in the mortar, cooked it in pans, and made cakes of it; and its taste was like the taste of pastry prepared with oil. And when the dew fell on the camp in the night, the manna fell on it.
"Then Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, everyone at the door of his tent; and the anger of the Lord was greatly aroused; Moses also was displeased. So Moses said to the Lord,
"Why have You afflicted Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all these people on me?
"Did I conceive all these people? Did I beget them, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a guardian carries a nursing child,’ to the land which You swore to their fathers? Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? For they weep all over me, saying, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’ I am not able to bear all these people alone, because the burden is too heavy for me. If You treat me like this, please kill me here and now—if I have found favor in Your sight—and do not let me see my wretchedness!"
"So the Lord said to Moses: 'Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tabernacle of meeting, that they may stand there with you. Then I will come down and talk with you there. I will take of the Spirit that is upon you and will put the same upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you may not bear it yourself alone.
"Then you shall say to the people,
'Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the hearing of the Lord, saying, "Who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt."'Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat.
'You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have despised the Lord who is among you, and have wept before Him, saying, 'Why did we ever come up out of Egypt?' "
"And Moses said, 'The people whom I am among are six hundred thousand men on foot; yet You have said, "I will give them meat, that they may eat for a whole month." Shall flocks and herds be slaughtered for them, to provide enough for them? Or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to provide enough for them?'
"And the Lord said to Moses, 'Has the Lord’s arm been shortened? Now you shall see whether what I say will happen to you or not.' "
In this biblical citation, the crucial words, for our present purpose, are in red, and another aspect of current importance is in bold blue. You see first of all the ungrateful and unrealistic attitude of the people.
Is it moaning and forgetting the mercy and the sheer prodigality of divine intervention in their favour ? Is it confusion of the merely circumstantial, the nature of the feeding, with the far more important point, if there is discipline and desire: the gift of an adequate diet at all ? Is it careless use of Moses' time and talent, already heavily taxed for what could almost literally be called 'belly-aching' ? Was it indeed not a further development in the lack of faith shown as recorded in Exodus 14:11ff., when, in the very midst of a staggering deliverance, following that from the great plagues, even on their actual exit march from Egypt, the people pertinaciously rounded on Moses, complaining in this way:
"Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness ?"
Thus the people at this late time noted in Numbers, received their correction, and meat, flesh indeed, they got and in great amounts from quail. In fact, they gobbled it and found its attraction all but irresistible, until they found it diseased and that their lust cost. Thus, as has happened to so many others for so long, can lust for some comparatively small thing (that might not seem so at the time, but still was so), lead to a crisis or even catastrophe in some great thing.
However, even if the people in general failed THEIR test (though not all were characterisable as in this category), what of Moses himself ? Their failure is instructive negatively, to remind one to keep a perspective in true gratitude based on reality. Moses' success in this instance, in his test, lies in his patient dealing with the detail in the very presence of the Lord, to enquire what He wanted. He did not pretend that it was some kind of magic. The matter of food needed reasonable investigation, so that Moses enquired about the way in which the Lord would provide the food needed. However, when told that it was so, that God did INDEED mean to deal in a large and remarkable manner, then MOSES ACCEPTED THIS. He received it! Communication to clarify is not at all the same as that to query or rebel! Faith is ready to accept; perversity queries in order to flail and fail, not to prevail.
This teaches us the need in the PILGRIM WALK to ACT in terms of the faith. If you do not, it is irrelevant in terms of Christian Apologetics. If you do, it is relevant, and it is consistent.
Thus, GOD decides what HE will do with matters concerning His intentions and name and power and ways. He is SOUGHT, not told. He is REASONED with, not treated as if some kind of telecom buzz word producer. It is a PERSONAL and reasonable relationship, but one based on the fact that GOD IS INFINITE in power, as well as reasonable and kind. It is therefore not put in the group of limited power products of man, to ponder, but where God alone CAN act to the point in view; and in this instance as often, that is the case. Further, it is GOD who chooses His way, as a Field Marshall might do in a campaign, but without limit, in His truth and in His mercy, His goodness and His wisdom. In Christian Pilgrimage, this needs to be remembered, so that it becomes sheer joy to follow, not drudging grudging.
Psalm 78 makes the point that the children of Israel, the nation from Egypt by God's appointment, LIMITED God in their lack of faith. Their minds baulked at His grace, His power, His presence, His presidency over the whole universe... For HIS kind of action, they were not ready. For HIS kind of call, they were not attuned.
Some were; most were not.
All this is just as one would expect where God is concerned. You HAVE to act in accord with Him, with a faith which does not pre-empt His power by your refusal to expect it. This is seen in Mark 11:22ff., in terms of 'moving mountains'. They will not move with steam-shovels normally; though they could: yet they will MOVE, where they constitute some prevention of godly living, by faith.
This is what one finds, without exception. Pain may come; trouble; penalties of man; persecutions aplenty (as predicted - cf. II Timothy 3:12, "All who desire to live in a godly manner in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution"). However what is ALWAYS removed by faith, is any obstruction to godly living. In this author's own case, it involved an amazing 'finding' of a volume in a very aged gentleman's library, which led to my new seminary in the USA, to preaching in the Maritimes in Canada, in New Zealand in both North and South Islands, in the USA in Cleveland, Indianapolis, in Chicago, in a site near Los Angeles, in Denver, to teaching in various Australian States, to conflict in Assembly in New Zealand on behalf of the resurrection of Christ's body, apostately not there affirmed, to challenge in the Australian Assembly and so on. God provided, the testimony was given, the warning, the reasoning, the glory of the Lord held high.
I did not die. It cost. I still live. Indeed, it has indirectly led to all these writings, as the Lord has directed. Historically, one of the most notable exhibits of the power of God in prayer intimacy is shown in George Mueller of England, whose mission work over decades was a very inventory of specific needs and equally specific answers, for the cost of his mission, so that he became a kind of parable of being literal about the thing: if you need it, ask for it, and specify (Philippians 4:6). Naturally, it is appropriate to make sure of one thing, that you are DOING the will of God (Matthew 7:21). Since having some other life in view is an exclusion zone from Christ, if you are NOT doing it, such a case is not systematically relevant, however grievous and sad may be the result!
Another work may be noted. It is one of great texture in explicitly and expressly presenting not just one prayer or even one series of a given sort, as with Mueller, but one life-paralleling total in the mission requirements, family needs in correlation with this, and physical needs for service comes from Rosalind Goforth, whose Moody-published classic, "How I Know God Answers Prayer" is discerningly presented to meet the verification criteria, with great aptitude and acuity. The emphasis here is empirical: life is not lived in little bits. There is a texture, a continuity, and inter-relationship of parts, a growing discernment, a continued use of principles, an application of divine promises, a continuity of divine action, not always of one type, miraculous, providential, suffering one to suffer, delivering before it is too much, allowing it to soar, intervening in the process. Always there, is the power of God, always there is the love which must show its depth by suffering. Comprehensive in coverage for His children, His presence is in the heart of life, and His work is original, unconfoundable, making the mind expectant, while He is delivering dynamic, willing for quiescence in peace, able to deliver in war.
The situations she covers, included massive, multiple onslaughts during the Boxer Rebellion, in which her husband's neck was in serious condition from a sword blow. While they and their children sought to escape from the mounting fury of the anti-foreigner campaign forwarded by decree from the Empress, over weeks of journeying, we find a constant coverage in events. These are of the utmost interest and scope, bathed in continuity that did not omit sorrow but did prevent obstruction of their task. All these things did not prevent the noble pair's continuance BY FAITH (as merely one of numerous correlative incidents in the total life occupancy of this role in China and later back in Canada).
While deaf people may not hear music, and blind people may not see visions of beauty in front of them, so similarly is it that unspiritual people, non-Christians who by definition do not know God (John 17:3, 14:6), in terms of biblical Christianity, these do not see the matters in view. Yet the empirical facts can be construed and considered. Some, who worship pleasure minus pain, may be unimpressed; but this too is irrelevant, since the work of God, the ways of the pilgrimage in His purity donated in Christ, are not even ABOUT pleasure, but about God, His service and His care, His directions and His power. It is like someone in the Stock Exchange, whose only interest is money, who cannot understand how a colleague not nearly so rich, not nearly so able to imbibe pleasures through monetary power, yet seems to feel a vast content which he does not.
Why is it so ? It is because the pleasure from money is one kind of thing, enabling visible satisfactions to the desires of flesh; while the service of God enables the meeting of His criteria of love, peace, joy in service, power to prevail in His work and deliverance for and in their tasks, of the people who receive His gifts.
Consider such people. IF that is what you want, then in receiving it, naturally you are content. Pleasure is not your desire. It is not able to cover the case of the human spirit, any more than endless fairy floss confection covers the gastric needs of children. Pleasure is mere consequence. Vision and purpose may lead to it, or not; but they are of a different mould, model and thrust altogether. The objective of the Christian is GOD HIMSELF (cf. Genesis 15:1, Philippians 1:20-21, 3:7-13, 20-21).
Let us look at these.
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"...according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing
I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. |
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"But what things
were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also
count all "Not that I have already
attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of
"Brethren, I do
not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those
things |
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"For our
citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior,
the
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Are you however SEEKING CONTENT ? If a Christian, then is not true of you, by definition any more than empirically. That is a self-centred thing; you are seeking to know and serve God. IF this produces love, and joy and peace and content, so be it; it also produces pain and sorrows and stricken result of persecution in large amounts. Though no Christian is perfect, this is the mode, the model and the character of the thing.
As to the pains and pangs, these are borne for the purposes of love (cf. Colossians 1:24), which seeks others to find Him, their OWN Creator and the ONLY Redeemer, even if it hurts to bring it, or rather contribute to helping to bring it about. Content, like the bloom on peaches, is NOT the object of the exercise. It is the result. That is the difference. This verifies the peace presentation process from God; but it does so only where the OBJECTIVE is God. You get it if you do not seek it, but seek the Lord. What would you expect ? That God would enable hypocrisy to find contentment in His presence! It all fits as do the five fingers of one's hand. All matches, correlates, is covered with a unity and a purpose that is manifest. It works moreover!
Some may say, with Satan, Is it not all for yourself ? Hardly: for oneself, there is the money that would have been retained if one had not sold land to finance things; the place one could have commanded if one had not refused to sell Christ or His word for various 'church' bodies. There are the friends one might have retained had one preferred them to Christ. But someone may say, Is it not that you prefer Christ to all this and so merely serve your own preference, as selfishly as anyone else does the same thing in his or her own way ?
Of course not. Unless Christ had opened my eyes, I COULD not have preferred Him in PRACTICE to all things, whatever I felt, for He was not the first. WHEN He opened my eyes, it was to truth, not my preference but His. Since He is the truth, His preference became mine, and since He is God His mercy became mine, to receive it as He gave it. He was not there to meet my criteria. I was changed to meet His. Truth does not bend to will, and where it is God who is in view, truth IS His will, for HE IS the way, the life and the truth. Will may see the truth, but its modelling power on it is NIL. It is received as such, or not at all.
Old ways were replaced, not for my pleasure, but for His. When you capitulate, surrender, it is not in order to make your terms, when God is concerned! You receive His.
Is pleasure the objective ? Far from it. It is not even relevant. Truth is not pleasure and pleasure is not truth. But one may say, If your pleasure is in the truth, then is it not pleasure still, to choose it even if it costs you in various dimensions ? But my pleasure was not the truth until it took me over; and further, I had to provide myself for its purposes, in fact for His, since Christ IS the Truth, irrespective of outcomes, costs and results. This was done because nothing compares in truth, actuality, mercy and goodness with God; and it is His right. Yet you may still urge, Did not the love and mercy of God cause you more pleasure than anything else ?
This is like asking an athlete bent on running a marathon, if the pleasure*2 of the grind is what moves him. It is not. But what of the pleasure of the reward ? Some may find this worth it: it would not be so for myself. The expenditures would be too deep in SUCH A SPHERE, and too demanding coincidentally in others, to be worth such an action for athletics. But what of God ? He is worth it, not as some extraneous reward, but because His truth is necessary to life. To live in a lie, in a diseased estrangement from the truth is not even a matter of pleasure at all. It is a matter of horror on the one hand, and its opposite, reality, on the other. Did you take me out for pleasure for dinner ? asks a young person of her young friend. If he says, Yes! I do not care about you but about the sensation of pleasure which I gain when with you: then she would know he loved himself passionately, and perhaps did not even understand love of another, and certainly did not have it for her. You do not USE people for your pleasure, if you love them. On the contrary, you endure pain for their sakes, gladly.
The very use of such a category regarding friendship and love debases what it is, ignores what its functions are and distorts the reality. There is such a thing as pleasure and as love. They often move as far apart as poles. Thus someone for pleasure dumps a 'partner', since more pleasure is gained in another, while someone else, very different, lays down his life for his wife, amid crucial agony for extended periods, and considers the pain IRRELEVANT to the issue of faithfulness, to the equations of love.
Love disdains pain and laughs at pleasure. It is its own category. It shows it by what it does. There may be pleasure in someone, but its loss is not the end of the love: as when a father loses the son's good name and good work, through some folly of the boy, but still brings out amid his grief, all manner of effort and endeavour to deliver the son he loves. Pleasure does not motivate; pain does not move. For the Chrtistian pilgrim, it is God who is loved for His authentic, intrinsic truth, mercy, kindness and faithfulness, the actuality that He is there, and thus He is present irrespective of all human desire, thought and hope, folly or pettishness; and for this, that He, being like this, is not only a marvel, but is God. In Him, therefore, there is supplied all good in one, with Himself over it as the clouds over the earth, eminent, prevailing, beautiful, as irrepressible as irreproachable; and goodness itself gains its name from Him!
This then is the case of Job. Although the EXTREME nature of his sufferings UNDER TEST made him creak and groan at times, as you see in Job 19 there is in the end a FAITH that he places in his Redeemer whom he believes will one day come upon the earth (as He did, and as He will), whom he would see face to face.
Such, in the midst of Job's multiple and acute sufferings was his declaration, and such was his faith.
Job does realise his limitations (9:21), sees his own failings as those of his friends (9:30 - he does despise 'washing' his life), but it is to God that he looks past all pleasure (Job 13, 19), amid all pain, longing for more understanding, often tempted, sometimes falling, but in the end standing. The pilgrimage for the Christian serving the Lord, then, is not without test, in which to all the world the result is shown; and some of it to spiritual powers only, for the man may not disclose some things. SATAN moreover may try to show up what is fraudulent, and often does; and he may distort any small crack, and often does, as if it were an abyss. He is committed to evil, and lies are one of his methods.
The answer, then, in terms of the love of and faith in the Lord, come as these qualities, supported and endued from the Lord, function and the power of God operates for the deliverance, either through more strength and patience, through a "way of escape" (I Corinthians 10:13), or some combination.
Not all students pass all tests at all times, and if the Christian falls in some matter at some time, then the forgiveness of the Lord is sought, the matter covered, the discipline received, while the overcoming power of the Lord then resumes its normal course, wisdom having increased in the more experienced saint.
However the Christian has the power of God which raised Christ from the dead to aid him or her (and young or old, for that matter - Ephesians 1:19), and one finds that this is perfectly adequate! Suffering, yes; loss of non-essentials (like, for analogy, losing weight as you climb Mt Everest), yes; sever testing ? yes. But opportunity to serve God meaningfully and functionally with the removal of EVERY STUMBLING BLOCK ? Yes and yes again.
So great is the power of God, that you see cases like David who made one and only one massive fall in his reign, corrected VERY carefully by the Lord, with trials to show him and sensitise him in the very area where he hurt others in his fall, over and over again. So does the wisdom of the Lord shine. How marvellous to be able to BOTH correct and discipline (as a Principal may discipline a student of much value, but with a dangerous weakness), and yet maintain purity and power overall in a person, for the Lord. In this way, neither is the correction inadequate nor is the result poor! Such is the power of the Lord!
Discipline for its own part has value. SEEING the answer to a confusion, or the strength for a weakness, or the structural grounds - to use an engineering metaphor - for the weakness, all this is enlightening, a surge into more truth and adds to the relish of development where no lies are, where only truth rules, and pretence finds no place. Thus, truth is loved not for the pleasure it gives (to some!) but for WHAT it is. If it incites pleasure, so may a difficult task in accounting in your books, when you solve something seemingly intractable. Yet to be very sure, it was not for that pleasure that you toiled! You wanted it right because rightness matters and is inviolable.
Satan, then, in his various wiles and tricks may try firstly, to assail, to taunt, to subdue and to dismiss the unwary from the scene. Failing this, he may try deviously to make the soul proud of its success - which in fact, is wrought through the power of the Lord, and the strength of His moulding; failing this, he may try simply to discourage in the midst of the rigours of the tests; and failing that again, he may try to break patience, so that the time element is simply too much.
However, the point in Christian Apologetics is twofold. Firstly, for EVERY trick, there is a remedy which is found ONLY by trusting God in His word and finding the power from His person. THAT is more than merely therapeutic, since it means this, that the person becomes more practised, and hence, other things equal, more usable and more mature in truth, more like a growing oak, a thing of beauty, but also able to stand winds. Secondly, for every lapse, there is a DISCIPLINE, and so great is the mind of the Lord that He is able not only to discipline a member of His team, but still despite all of that (but ultimately in part because of the good done in it!) to USE the person as well, against a VITAL and crafty enemy. OPne reason for this is simply that the earnest disciple of Christ is KEEN to improve, to be corrected if need by, to learn if he may first, to grow. Enthusiasm, in such a case, breeds humility before God, and correction more skill.
Finally, lapses in concentration, can be met by increased realisation of one's drift, which can mean that failure begets knowledge, knowledge hope, hope faith, faith power, and power from God, the victory (Romans 5:17-18).
What John says in I John 5:4 is truth indeed: "For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world - our faith." SO is it, so it has to be, for without faith you cannot please God (Hebrews 11:6), and without pleasing Him how can you co-operate! While with it, there are no limits, but the plan of God unfolding, as does an embryo unfold ...as birth approaches. There are standards and there are ways! Thus does the power and principle, the word and the work of the living God overcome Satan in this test, and the WAY He does it, attests Him in His entire consistency with His written word, the Bible, and with His loving nature as one finds it.
Biblical Christianity, focussed on Christ, featuring His word, empowered by His Spirit, alert to the history of what God has done, aware in His word of what is His plan, is a great laboratory. As He says, so one finds. It does not age; it is never out of date; science in philosophic bondage at times challenges, but the 'wisdom' of the day becomes infantile in a little while, while the enduring factual, objective, historical truth of the word of God smiles at the touching adolescence of the misplaced enthusiasms of the flesh, vaunting themselves always to fall. Cover-ups do not remove that fact. The laboratory loves such Christianity. They are friends for life (cf. SMR pp. 208ff., 140ff.). Indeed, God claims it to be so, not once, not twice (cf. Isaiah 41, 43, 48).
2) Glowing with Spurious Light
Here now is another of the methods of Satan. While satanism is folly, to KNOW the wiles of the devil is wise (cf. II Corinthians 2:11).
This is the case of II Corinthians 11, where it is pointed out that false ministers with another lord and another Gospel who nevertheless use Christ's name are mere artificiality, and though they may have appeal, this is nothing strange since SATAN HIMSELF can transform himself into the very appearance of an angel of light!
How often does the young man become the young monster, as in a case coming to one's attention some years ago. One young man of another race told us that he had been dearly loved by a particular family, an Aunt, and had been brought up virtually as a son; and that there would be virtually no limit to their provisions for him. In spite of this, he dealt evilly with them, failing to pay something for them from money supplied, from memory, so that this led in due course and many steps, to their losing the home they had.
How many fathers' hearts have been broken by young people, brought up for hope, and with much sacrifice, but achieving merely their own pleasure, in drugs, in complete dissociation, in betrayals, in common degradations innumerable! What takes them ? Some young face, some new thrill of drug, some pride of philosophy, some laziness that has the varnish of self-fulfilment. You have corrupted yourself by reason of your brightness, God chides one of the evil kings, and through him, the devil! (cf. Ezekiel 28:17). Brightness which is only the sheen of reflected light can dazzle, both the one concerned and those who see that person; but how often is the rind unlike the bacon, hard, tough, in need of immediate expectoration, before one should choke.
The spurious like the furious, these are marks of deceit from the devil; the pseudo-authentic, as in many churches, where in recent years, ever more specious pretences for the gospel are waved in the light of 'love' and without truth, before the afflicted people.
The remedy ? It is simple. Keep your eyes on the Lord, follow His word and pray, and the idle glamour of the spurious will seem worse than horrible, and so lacking in all attraction. Keep your eyes on the road, and not in the clouds, if you want to drive. There is time to admire the clouds, when one is free from pressing duty. Seek the Lord so that He send FORTH His light and His truth, to lead you; and do not supinely wait for the seduction of indolence! (Psalm 43:3). Remember, "Light is sown for the righteous" (Psalm 97), so reap. Act as if you meant business, if you do; and if you do not, then the due result is an ulterior commission from an ulterior source, for without the wisdom of God, the devil's astute work is without barrier.
As to the LORD, as are His words written, they cohere beyond components of any nucleus: for as they are in principle, so are they in practice; and so it works itself, the Lord taking care of His own, and the fraudulent, albeit rich and popular, come to their sterile ends. The suffering is often confused with the consequence! It may hurt to build a sky-scraper, but the building remains.
The test is often in the motivation which leads some to admire what is palpably false in logic, in psyche, in spirit, because their motives are divided and their minds accordingly unclear. Let not, says James, the man of double mind think he will get anything. Secular psychology is full of such things. It lacks power because it lacks reality, because it lacks God, so that psychologies multiply, as do biological secular theories; but they merely conflict with each other in ways at once instructive and educational. One sees not only the flaws, each asserting this or that of the other, but the frustration, the intemperance, and from a philosophic aspect, the disingenuous sterility as barriers break, and irrationality holds hands with intemperance in grand displays of anti-scientific method in the midst of ungoverned imagination.
This is, in itself, this failure
amid contest and frustration, with mounting unreason, and laughable divergence
from scientific method, like government employes in some corrupted regime, where
the rules are the form, and connivance with other things is the fact. (Cf. SMR
pp. 140ff.,
Secular Myths and Sacred
Truth Chs.
7 and 8, with Earth Spasm ... Chs.
1, 7, Wake Up World ...
Ch. 5, Spiritual Refreshings...
Ch. 6,
16, Barbs, Arrows and Balms
29)
Without God there is no verification; and with Him, there is nothing else.
The power however of deception is very great; so that things of all but incredible confusion and corruption proliferate like SARS! So they are written to do, and so it would be expected, when powers beyond man help his pride to dig his pit, with automated equipment which man invents.
3) Causing Bitterness and Not Peace -
after an upset.
Here is a further diabolical device.
You see the principle of this in II Corinthians 2:9-11. If the people of the church had forgiven someone for a truly outrageous sin, and he had repented, so then did Paul also forgive. He did not want the person who slipped into this sin, to be "swallowed up with too much sorrow." The purpose is health, not death.
Otherwise, Satan might have acted to bring down what was fallen, into his pit. This is not to be; the test is not greater than the power to meet it, for nothing is permitted to try you beyond your power to meet it. You may be strengthened, or the way of escape as for the Exodus, may come. What is sure is this, that GOD WILL NOT FAIL YOU (I Corinthians 10:13).
How wise the pastor who knows when to stop; how wise the one who knows that there has to be beginning in such case, BEFORE it can stop. Purity and compassion join hands, link arms, and good is done. As to Satan, he would have excess, but says Paul, "we are not ignorant of his devices."
In a way, it is like defensive driving on the road: you KNOW what some drivers, with drugs, with emotions, with vying, with aggression repressed now expanded, in the guise of anonymity, may do. Hence you prepare as you might expect!
4) Accusing Blatantly, Brassily, Belligerently
The "accuser of the brethren" Satan, has many who love to follow his ways. He was cast out of heaven. It is Christ who has access (Hebrews 6:19-20, 7:25), so why fear what that feckless spirit contrives ? In himself he is assuredly mighty; in comparison with Christ, he does not even register on the scale. This is an empirical fact in the laboratory of experience. When you are falsely accused, or some prodigy of caricature of the failing or fault of which you might indeed be guilty, is casuistically prepared in false action against you, you do not need to fear the favour of the crowd, but committing your spirit to God who made you, to your Saviour who keeps you, you KEEP ON doing His will, admittedly imperfect. Yet his children never fall where He cannot reach.
Look at Peter ? HE RECOVERED QUICKLY. If you are a spring, then rebound. If not, find in Him the power to do so, and delight in doing so, for this has the bounce of His blessing, God who works in you both to will and to do (Philippians 2:12).
In so doing, however, have genuine fear, clean and loving fear, delighted and radiant fear of God, not presuming into your own strength or name. HIS is the glory; HIS is the power; and of course, HIS is the word to follow. Do not LEAN TO YOUR OWN UNDERSTANDING (cf. I Chronicles 21); for that is singularly unblessed (Proverbs 3:3-5). Remember that it was Satan who stirred up David, the Lord suffering it, permitting it as a test.
Meet tests. At school, college or university, do you expect no tests ? Therefore be ready, and rejoice in Him who can conduct you through, with far more security than those who run the bungee jumps. Be exhilarated in the Lord, as you trust, and delight as you fear; for in Him is power inimitable, purity immiscible and love that is tender. He hears that cry because He has the heart that listens (Psalm 145:14).
There is nothing comparable in practice or in theory. God is the Lord and the rest is pretension.
5) Stealthy and Covert Suggestion
The devil is nothing if not subtle
How beautifully Genesis 3 shows this process! There is Eve, told not to use the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, on pain of death. In ANY test, there are implements in this world, for there is a physical aspect to it. Even in thought, the thought has a physical realm to consider. Here it was in the MIDST of natural beauty and competence and peace, a POSSIBILITY which was waived in front of Eve's nostrils, like meat before the snout of a dog.
Some dogs, yes it is known in detail of one, CAN stand to be in FRONT of a DELICIOUS morsel, and sit at table, or by it, until it is indicated that it is time to receive it. Not many ... It is enough that it can be done. In the case known, the dog was intelligent, loved, serviceable to an amazing degree, part of the company, appreciated and capable of remarkable adaptations when need arose (it was on a farm).
Eve had the opportunity to avoid such things as those above - of one translates them into human terms with the obviously vast scope for expansion into whole new dimensions. What would she do, when tempted ? Of course, it applied to Adam also, but the INITIAL phase of the test was allowed to reach her first.
So far, before her fall, everything is OBVIOUS, OPEN and in the midst of the most gracious circumstances. Now enter the devil in terms of a beast's body, in fact that of a serpent, something glossy, exciting in a subtle sort of way, looking deep. The test comes with the devilish probe:
|
|
"Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden ?" |
What a ridiculous exaggeration, one designed doubtless to encourage resentment in its vast sweep! Eve corrected this, indicating that they could eat the garden fruit, that there was not a total prohibition, but merely a small exclusion zone. However, in conversing with such a beast with his arbitrary and unjust aspersions, she was starting her straying, as many often do, slowly, slowly. The devil for his part, though in serpentine form, in functional reality, was starting his baying. It was a slithery baying, and an asinine braying, wrought with desire, expressed with subdued fire.
What was this exclusion zone of which Eve spoke ? It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as shown in Genesis 2:16. Eve however, perhaps stirred by the sense of revolt and 'free-thinking', so that as is usual in such a case, the truth of God and this alone is arbitrarily excluded, here becomes openly derogatory in distortion of the facts. She exaggerated in her own way, in response to the initial exaggeration of the devil. She added that not only could they not eat of this tree; they could not touch it: lest they die. How oppressive this is made to sound, already! She is on track for a fall, which will thrust her far from the track altogether. But there is more action yet to come.
Eve, in her exaggeration in response to the insinuation of the devil, perhaps intended to gain sympathy, or merely to echo the grandiose sweep of the sense of resentment that the devil was angling to create, though its basis was not true.
Let us sense the development now, graphically.
In a milieu increasingly one of subtle sympathies and evocative hubris, the devil then imparts in his own way, a stealthy and covert suggestion. You will not REALLY die ... (Genesis 3:4).
There is the first DIRECT tilt at God. It is a little swervingly put, You will not surely die! Notice the surely. The devil does not quite voice a direct contradiction, in this, that not ALL of the divine pronouncement is flatly disavowed, merely that it is not SURELY so.
The devil now sows that intimate and succulent sort of thing that so many people seem to like in manufacturing slanders, to which the Christian must surely become accustomed! 'God knows,' the infernal spirit declares, so making himself able to read the mind of God, which philosophy normatively seems to make its own terrain as well, except seeking to ignore the 'God' part of it, or to use the term without the reality, so verbalising ignorance on the basis of nothing at all. Indeed, 'all unknown' nowadays becomes a model, with its parameters and ways ready for declaration, except that IF it were ALL unknown, then it could not be known that it was unknown, for then THAT knowledge would be of a most comprehensive kind! Let it rest however in its normal moribundity, contradicting God and itself with equal verbosity, as school clashes in vain with school, in a kind of coronary occlusion of the mind, distant from God, and loving to declare without truth available on its model, the truths it desires to impart.
How little we have moved! 'God knows,' said the serpent in its formatted provision for the devil; for in BEING as it were an animal, it had NO right to give wisdom to its divinely declared mentors, man! Already Eve was failing the test.
What did God know, in the opinion,
or rather in the declaration of that lord not of lives, but of lies,
the devil ?
God knows, it slithered its words into the glorious environment, that when you eat, your eyes will be opened and you will be ... One could here imagine the glinting eyes of the savvy serpent, or if you prefer, that enchanted vehicle of supernatural but debased power, the devil, as it continued ... "YOU WILL BE LIKE GOD, KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL." How ironic it all was! "Your eyes will be opened," said the serpent. That much was true. But what would they see when they were opened ? It would be this: that they would know good and evil not in some lordly fashion, above it all, divine in aspect almost, but as WRONG DOERS, as EVIL PEOPLE: as fallen into the bog, they would know what mud meant. The promise far surpassed the reality; but it has just that little element of truth which Satan loves to use as bait.
Eve, however, though clearly entering into the spirit of rebellion, and thus forfeiting wisdom, did not know this. On this advertisement module, she now saw a certain attractiveness about the fruit. This means that the sort of knowledge in view became an enticing thing, like the meat for the dog mentioned above.
Would she 'snap' at it, thus breaching the social, domestic and delightful relationship with her Master ? Yes, she would and she did.
The results were, and have for millenia, been painful. Now we have to seek to RETURN to the Lord, for we are not born in and with Him, but outside. Hence the Gospel provides the way back. There has been a long outing for the race. Some of it has returned; always not a large percentage, yet in some cases in the 19th century, there were amazing scenes and larger than usual proportions in the USA, at certain periods, during revivals, nor has this been confined to that once relatively godly nation.
The GIFT of the Gospel, in the very midst of these painful results, shows the FRANK STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS of God in contrast to the stealthy slither of the serpent. It is even pre-announced in the protevangelion*3 in Genesis 3:15
CAN THIS BE OVERCOME ? Certainly. If Eve had not first LISTENED to the SORT of creature, the serpent, as was her due, the test would have been successfully aborted, yes and simply too, at the outset.
Yet she listened.
If she had not exaggerated in apparent response to the devil vastly distorted suggestion, she might then have seen the delicious dangling 'meat' he provided, in his negation of the divine word, as wormy and not at all appetising.
Yet she did exaggerate.
If she had not done so, again, the devil might have had to be more circumspect in his stealthy insinuations, intended to show that Eve could join the high levels, rather than run an obviously soon to be aborted campaign of rebellion against her Creator. But she did it; and the devil proceeded. THAT was the difference.
Thus not to START the environmental work for evil, is the first rebuttal. If you are alcoholic, not to PASS a pub is relevant as an aim. Not to exaggerate is next. If you are oppressed, down-trodden, dismayed: then do not exaggerate because of feeling. Let the facts be neither more nor less than they are, and bring THESE to God in the CONTINUATION of serving Him, and then, like healthy rain in dry seasons, the necessary wisdom is systematically provided. In answer to faith only ? But of course. This is, to change the figure, the necessary connection between you (the fighter plane) and the Lord (the tanker flying to replenish your fuel). You have to fly near... What does James 4:8 tell us ? It includes this:
"Draw near to God and He will draw near to you."
Never start an evil mood, or suffer it to begin; even mentally it can produce compromising physiological stimuli; and why should it not, if you decide to allow a folly to move. Do you let elephants from the Zoo into your own back yard ? Then neither let moods dominate your thought. Joy is a strength (the joy of the Lord shall be your strength, Nehemiah 8:10 declares); and when you are at peace in the work of the Lord, this joy is like a raincoat in a shower. It stops things from penetrating. God has His own means; and the devil's circuitous provisions and procedures are not able to participate where his means are excluded.
If in the plan of God, as in the temptation of Christ, you are allowed to face the devil, then in Christ and not in yourself, you have to face him down: for this is humility, to know what you are and what you are not! (I John 4:4). It is because He who is IN the Christian life BY the Holy Spirit, is GREATER than the devil, that the devil is beaten for sure, as you wait on the Lord. Do not give PLACE to the devil! says Paul (Ephesians 4:26-27), and so do not let the sun go down on your wrath.
How many have inherited arthritis because of such lurking smouldering ... rubbish! A medical work, "None of These Diseases" covers this point in excellent detail (authored by Dr S.E. McMillen).
In other words, if you are to be angry, it may indeed be fitting to display righteous indignation, and even Christ could show this (Mark 3:5); but do not sustain it, as a boil within. You seize the evil, but are not seized by it, as when dealing with a serpent! Why ? God is able to deal with the issue. Respond, relay and proceed. Don't leave the cursed thing in your hand: despatch it sharply, as the Lord acts for you. Handle this, as all things by faith; and again why not, this IS the medium of exchange with Him who is invisible to the naked eye, just as He is visible in naked truth.
Such a procedure works because it is truth. In general, millions regard God's provision in words, His directions, as poetical licence, or needless care; but it is simple. You do it or you do not. If you do not, there is trouble, perhaps depression, guilt, need for cleansing.
It is rather like driving your car through thick mud. There are results. You do not need to do it; but if you do it, there are MANY lessons to be learned. That too is good, for the discipline resulting helps a sense of the realities too much neglected earlier, for test and character building, aiding correction; and so development proceeds. It is divinely simple and simply divine: it brings closer to Christ, and teaches the willing spirit more care at the same time. Correction ? is it because of sin that so many so often construe this as merely painful. When my French in Matriculation, was painstakingly corrected by the Vice-Principal, did the red ink bring sorrow or joy ? I think rather the latter. NOW one could SEE what was correct!
On this topic, however, let us end with one feature. WHY was Christ angry as shown in Mark 3:5 ? It was because of a group of issues. First there was a man who was afflicted with a withered hand. Now the author once had a 'frozen' shoulder to a large extent. It was utterly appalling. One could still use it, but a whole heap of movements were compromised. How could this be ? It felt so stifling, so weak. An enthusiastic and gifted physiotherapist decided to use a painful technique she would employ, she said, only on some of her clients. It was at times intensely painful; but what is pain, when function is available! She persevered until one day, after weeks, one could actually hear a sort of 'plop', internal yet audible in character. Something, apparently an illicit attachment, was now broken. I was liberated. It was wonderful: praise the Lord.
Thus when a poor man with a withered hand was present before Christ on a Sabbath, the powers that were decided to test HIM! Imagine that, test God! How does man fail to change, for that is precisely what Adam and Eve did, when they ate... It is a foolishly dangerous and a dangerously foolish action. Christ seeing their hardness of heart, more interested in their own exaggerated conception of the point of the Sabbath, than in the underlying love, was angry.
Fancy ABUSING the rest graciously provided on the Sabbath which God gave as a present to man, by making it seem to EXCLUDE help, unplanned in character, to someone who had opportunity for his whole life to be altered for the good, in a great way! Was it possible that the good, the provision of rest, was not realised in its intent, while another good was to be suppressed, so breaking the essence of two commands ? Was it not the WORK which one normally did for a living which was excluded ?
Did not priests also labour on the Sabbath ? Did one, as Christ later pointed out, not take an ox fallen into a pit, out on a Sunday ? It is unplanned ? Certainly, but if it happens, that is what you do.
He healed. The anger was a divine response. The healing was a divine initiative. The resentment of the blind religionists was a human accentuation of sin. This very issue was one of those most bringing wrath from foolish and misled religionists, against whom ? It was against God Himself!
He did not cover Himself with anger. He did not ignore the issue. He resolved the issue, at once after the anger; and the anger was for righteousness' sake, NOT FOR HIS OWN personal sake...
So does it all work out in its classic beauty and simplicity: when you follow the rules, and the rules ? these are to be understood, not in crimped and blind fashion, but with due respect to their environment in the God of love, and the general rules which over-rule, to love GOD with ALL your heart and mind and soul and strength, and THEN your neighbour as yourself. This is found in Leviticus 19:18 and in Deuteronomy 6:5. It is there. It was there. It is to be done. It was to be done. Christ did it.
The whole household of divine graces and wisdom, example and direction is beautiful in its elegance, ample in its coverage, challenging in its searching of the heart and of its motives. All this is as it should be, for the development of disciples being one divine intention, this ministers to that, while equally testing. Tests in turn have one great feature: they reveal to YOU where you are. This is important if you care ... where you are GOING!
6) The Engineering of Blights to Incite to Impatient Excess
This can aid fast action.
Job 2:3-7 is the classic illustration. Distressed at Job's MOST correct response to the initial testing disasters, probing his integrity or corruption of motivation, his true love or mere self-serving conformity to divine directions, Satan indicates that health is no small boon. Go a step further in the test, he requests of God, and then we shall see where the heart lies. Of course, it was his wish that this bodily trouble would so hurt Job, that any veneer (which he professed to believe was all that was there) would almost literally be ripped off! Such was his leering desire, his sneering intimation, his feckless jeering leaking out like petrol from a rusted fuel-tank.
Job trembled, Job's mind erred, but he stood fast over all, as we have just seen; for a moment he seemed almost cynical, but then his surmises dropped in the face of faith in the righteousness of God, past all problems and probes; for he was sure that when all was done, HE would be KEPT by the POWER of God through the intervention of his own PERSONAL REDEEMER as in Job 19. This was true, and divine love indeed covered a multitude of sins. Job's famous utterance comes out like a missile from its in-ground silo, traversing the skies of time to bring its not destructive, but dynamic message of uplift in truth, to the nations. Does pain evacuate truth ? Does God cease to be true because we are tested ? Is trial the same as denial ?
Temptation will suggest positive answers to the negative thrust of such questions; but truth does not blush at rush, is not crushed by psychic pressures, or the apparent complexity of simple plans, which like bits of jig-saw puzzle only seem impenetrable because they have not been put together. What IS put together is the divine certainty (SMR 1, 3, 5, 10), and so far from trembling because we may suffer some blight, the latter is merely the occasion for the attestation that the One who called, keeps, and the One who created, contains the suffering and brings blessings out of cursings, divine good out of human evil. You may need to 'hang on' as Joseph did in Egypt, but the result is the more delightful in the end.
While faith has indomitable reason back of it, reason does not replace the LIVING of the faith; it merely supports it. Faith in one sense is its own reward, for the divine blessings of the spirit, enabling of the heart, reinforcement of the mind, stability for the soul, rock for the excursions and home for the habitat of holiness is made available to it. If one loves one's country, how much more one's Creator. Is some trial the 'end' ? Not at all. It is the beginning of the blessed work of attestation and construction which exhibits the reality in which one lives.
Further, patience under provocation is a stirring of strength, a beautifying of hope, a lustre for delight for those who have the privilege of dealing with those now so endued. This is athletic work, and the result is apparent, pleasing and functional. Love also has then its opportunity, for it does not hasten to declare itself too superficially; but in the treks for truth which may need to be endured, it has outlet and scope, expression and field for its desire to bring blessing where it may. Patience is a trial (for faith - to show it), but an avenue to exhiit the glory of the purpose of God.
Look at Moses, Joseph, Job ("you have heard of the perseverance of Job," says James), Daniel, David, what colossal patience each showed (despite the failing in this or that, with one or another). Daniel always, with Joseph especially appeals in this, but all of them are monuments, not in green and yellow melancholy smiling at grief, but in red and blue dignity, rejoicing in faith. How they waited! How they worked as they waited!
With what divinely inspired exuberance they continued, continued, continued ... not in the rut of resignation, but in the vision of the holy purposes of God! Consider John Bunyan, and what he produced in his 12 years - yes and more - in prison, years of injustice, oppression: for there was f eat in faith that ennobled the world, feeding good later, to millions, while receiving evil without acceptance, its power its only place, his perseverance his own contribution. What results! What wisdom in the Almighty, so blazingly to show such a case, with its fruits!
The term in James, as above, can be translated, 'steadfastness, constancy, patient endurance.' With faith as enlivening, hope as burnishing, heart as vigour, spiritual blessing poured out as vision and victory, what things have been so wrought by God. It is not mere power; it is purity: it is not mere performance, it is what is lastingly beautiful, attuned to reality, contributing in vision to truth, as manifested to man. If the examples are not all perfect, this but the more by the contrast with the evil possibilities thus emphasises the virtue (we are not dealing with angels).
Such things are not the realm of Satan, though HOW he lusts, HOW he seeks to dim, to diminish, to damage. How delightful that he be entirely frustrated; and how wonderful that there is NO WAY for this, but in the power of God through faith in HIM according to HIS promises, HIS Messiah and HIS merciful faithfulness. Thus does strength (in achievement) lead to strength (in stirring faith to burn brightly in others), and this to more strength (in the faith of those so led). God is most wise, and His ways are exceedingly sufficient.
7) Misdirecting Innocent Thoughts of Service for God to Self-Praise, Self-Confidence
I Chronicles 21:1-4, the famous foolish census of David which apparently showed pre-occupation with power instead of occupation with divine duties, as a trend, illustrates this. Remarkably, many suffered, but perhaps there was a NATIONAL trend to glory in one's own nation, as seems to have seized Germany in World War I; just as for RESTORATION OF GLORY as may have contributed to World War II. Certainly leadership was astray, but who is led that wants the opposite, and how quickly is softness revealed in the under-belly of desire, when opportunity for the grandiose is provided!
King David, then, erred. Plague broke out. But what did David then think, and more than that, DO!
How beautiful, in the wisdom of God, is the compassion of David for his people, after his own error, when he said to the Lord:
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"Was it not I who commanded the people to be numbered ? I am the one
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After this protestation, David was commanded to erect an altar, sacrifice was made, and then the plague was stayed, which rebuked national pride. Here came to be used, the famous temple site. Here was compassion, altruism, unselfishness, realism, sacrifice, love, deliverance in the midst of dire evils. It spoke of the coming compassion of Christ, of HIS coming sacrifice.
This, it was not in the holy of holies, for He was refused His place, but outside the city, His concern for the sheep who had indeed sinned, but whose sin He DESIRED. The differences ? David was man as man, Christ God as man; David had sinned, Christ had not. The similarity ? the compassion and the desire to bear sin that others might go free. With David, it was to bear his OWN, with Christ, to bear that of others. For both, there was the pity that loved to deliver.
So can Satan's wiles (for it was he who had stirred David to this foolishness) can be turned to God's glory, and the evil overcome with the good. This, it is biblical wisdom, and wisdom it is testimony of God.
8) Consummating a Seduction by Snapping Resistance
Judas then is the outstanding case. First he was 'offended' by the prodigal seeming contribution to Christ's love made by a woman who poured out precious fragrances on Him. It in this case 'the disciples' who protested at the waste and the 'competitive' needs of the poor; but presumably Judas was one of them, in view at least of what followed. Now here note that seemingly all of them felt the sense of waste, as one may at first ingenuously react to something unusual, without perhaps due thought.
Six days before the Passover, then, in a flurry of signals and devotion as the awe-inspiring event drew near, like light snow on the ground as Spring passing, Autumn begins its bite, at Bethany there was an anointing by Mary, on the feet of Jesus which she wiped with her hair. It is here that Judas stands out as the protester, and he is rebuked by Christ who declared, "Let her alone; she has kept this for the day of My burial: for the poor you always have with you, but Me you do not have always" (John 12).
However it is Judas who made a feature of the thing (Matthew 26:14), perhaps unwilling to learn of the significance of this action. This action was two days only before the Passover (Matthew 26:2ff.), where Christ at last took over officially from the pile of dead animals, by becoming the due and fitting, the adequate and pure, the human and yet divine sacrifice HIMSELF! Indeed, so great is Judas' offence at the whole business of the cross, fragrant oils and coming sacrifice that he even betrayed Christ, in the very shadow of that anointing event and its interpretation by Christ. The horror of it is worse, for not only did Judas betray in the light of the devotional reality and the sacrificial act, but he was willing to receive money, enough to buy a field, a block, for it; and then he schemed, to find a way to do it (Mark 14:9-11).
How would he seek this way ? It would be one which would occur 'conveniently'!
There is more. We read of a woman pouring precious oil on Christ's head in the house of Simon the Leper at Bethany. Here it is Judas, perhaps as chief spokesperson, or even leader of thought, who protests. At all events, he is in strong focus in the event. Certain it is that one such event occurred two days before the passover, at the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany, and another six days before, the former occurring when the flask of oil was broken and the contents poured on Christ's head (Mark 14:2, Matthew 26), while latter came when Mary of Bethany herself poured the oil on His feet (John 11). In the later case, as Calvary came close, like the bomber which was flying with the atomic bomb for Hiroshima, it is Judas who vocally complains and explodes, even amidst the considerable exposition which Christ gave, and Christ declares briefly the point, whereas in the six day occurrence, the explanation was briefer as recorded.
Judas would not learn, take the point, not even when the event loomed near, not even when the depiction was made extensive, refusing correction, but instead, aggravating his verbal persistence in derogation of the infinite value of what Christ did and the devotional expression of appreciation for this in the oil pouring, he pursued the point and took action, as they say, and in his case, it was to the odium of Christ's detractors that he took it, taking money for crime, and participating in judicial murder, indeed facilitating it crucially.
Thus can Satan seduce a spirit in steps. First he learned to steal from the disciples' money bag; then to resist instruction; then to persist vocally, then in action, then in desperately degraded action, then to do this for personal advantage. So is the matter being wrought in stealthy steps, in outbursts, in progression!
The worst is yet to come. We read in John 13 of one who was not clean, whose heart had not related to the symbolic cleansing which Jesus performed in washing the disciples' feet. This was the action of preparation which reminded one of Exodus 40:31, where Moses and Aaron and his sons would wash their feet and hands, whenever they came into the tabernacle. Thus Christ declared that hands and feet were enough that they be all clean. In other words, there is no need to pretend that the literal washing is the point: it is a spiritual phenomenon, and slavish desire to imitate in flesh the wholeness of it can merely detract. But washing IS needed, for the symbolic meaning is cleansing in heart. So Christ not ONLY washed their hands and feet only, but REFUSED on vigorous pain, to wash Peter's face!
After all, sprinkling was the routine, and this also is highly partial in format, and is not only a feature with leprosy cleansing, but with many routines as noted in Hebrews 9, under 'baptisms'; and it was this which crucially was performed on the great day of atonement (Leviticus16:15), when the blood was actually sprinkled on the mercy seat, that vastly significant moment (cf. Hebrews 8-10 exposition of it, and the personal Christian application in 10:21), while the same was done in the classic case recorded in Exodus 24 when Moses sprinkled blood on the altar, the book and the people, in their solemn covenanting with the Lord. Peter also is vast in his distancing of any relationship in the nature of symbol and reality, as if the ceremony in itself signified anything except its referent, so that it had no intrinsic power at all, in I Peter 3:21.
Thus there was this continuation of the preparation in symbolic form for the coming of Calvary. Christ washes the feet of the disciples, as if they were preparing for a better priesthood for a better sacrifice, being spiritual Levites sent in spiritual terms, not ceremonial constraint. Mary washes His feet with fragrant oil and tears, preparing for the burial. Judas cannot stand all this.
Christ knows this and points out that one is not clean. He has long known it (John 6:70), and observed earlier that ONE OF YOU IS A DEVIL! It was indeed predicted in many of the psalms (cf. Joyful Jottings 25).
Now comes the crucial point. The disciples, learning of this betrayal at Christ's lips (John 13:18, 21), and finding this in infinite divergence from their own sending (13:19-20), seeing indeed the vigour of His utterance mounting as the spiritual power of revelation moves in their midst, ask: IS IT I ? Each considers the awful possibility, a priori. A posteriori however it is empty. Vigorous as was their enquiry, vigorous is the removal of doubt. It is but one who is responsible. John, a youngster loving the Lord, leans back on Him and asks, WHO IS IT ? Christ indicates that it is the one to whom He will give a piece of the feast, as if a token of hope and a symbol of love; for love does not fail.
What happens to Judas then ? This: "Now after the piece of bread, Satan entered him. Then Jesus said, "What you are doing, do quickly!" How speed loves to reduce the significance of things by mere scurrying! Satan entered into him. The romance of betrayal became the catastrophe of devil possession. He was no more his own. A superior power now invested him with infernal duplicity. He was gone. Judas went to the priests, got his mercenary reward in order, made them happy, and then went about seeking a convenient time, as Satan did when he approached Eve long before.
The appalling degradation of reality in all of this, the use of means for ends, the prostitution of religion for gain, the inward reaction to beauty of holiness, it is there. It is there from earlier days, from the devotional pouring out of most precious fragrant oil on Christ. In this, we do not find the disciples unwilling to follow Christ when all of this is so dramatically brought to them, whatever their initial reaction, or sense of misplaced values. They learned, if slowly. Judas did not. He went from symmbol to sacrifice, not to receive it, but to IMPLEMENT IT!
What then do we see ? There was the PREPARATION over time for this act of execration. Now we have come to the relevant point in its setting, the consummation of the rebellion by snapping Judas' resistance. Like a polluted piece of flesh ready for bacteria, here come those unpleasant microbes in spiritual form!
How can such things be avoided ? It is not frightening to those who consider in the Lord. HOW OFTEN did Judas have opportunity to repent ? When Christ declared that one would betray Him, as shown way back in John 6, he could have taken the hint. When the 6 day event occurred, before Passover, he could have reflected. In the two day event, he could have considered rather than leading evil superficiality. Even in the Supper, he could have said, Lord, I perceive you have seen the shadow in my heart, and I bitterly repent (and he could have wept, as Peter did, later, as recorded in Luke 22:60-62), and he might have been recommissioned as Peter was, as seen in John 21. Indeed, consider what PETER DID (Mark 14:66-72).
Not only did he deny knowledge of Christ, but he repeatedly did so on one night and further cursed and swore to help establish his 'case'! It was not the failure which counted, but persistence in it, growing with it, heedless of advice, ignoring opportunities. Peter not only first used his sword in Christ's defence (foolishly and with rebuke, but not without courage and spirit), but even after running off, confused since he was not allowed to follow that path (and would that millions of others had realised this in the last two thousand years), he did not persist. One part of one night was enough. When the LORD LOOKED ON PETER in the very midst of His trial, to lead to the crucifixion as sacrifice for sin, this was enough. Peter not only repented, he not only wept: he wept BITTERLY.
There is the open arm of Christ, the glorious sufficiency of His power, the wonderful grace of His compassion. If it is ignored and people play about with Christ as a means, then you have the Hebrews situation as in Chs. 6 and 10. Having defiled the only sacrifice, and trodden it under foot, they have no more. It is not a question of falling away and coming back and so on: ONCE they mess the reality, it is all over. The seed which comes into the ground that is shallow, or full of thorns, dies. The word of God is no more effective. Mercifully, GOD IS JUDGE, and this great thing He judges, that WHEN you come to Jesus the Christ for salvation, HE DOES NOT REJECT YOU. The fatal thing is to refuse to come. Peter came in the midst of failure, and was recommissioned. Judas proceeded and proceeded, in the very midst of the Gospel, not really accepting it, never a Christian but STATEDLY A DEVIL, way back in John 6.
The heart becomes scarred and scarified. The anchor (Hebrews 6) which is sure and steadfast within the veil was not for him. He never received the sacrifice, for all his proximation to it, all his hearing of words: he was a devil and constantly acted like it, whatever the forms and norms to which he exposed himself over years. He was like those who DREW back, not having faith, of which Hebrews gives the model in 4:2. It is NOT ACTUALLY coming which is the evil, playing about, testing and wondering and betraying and idling. It is necessary to come in faith, not founded on one's own will, but founded on God's mercy. HE deals with the depths; YOU come. On the other hand, IF you come, HE does not cast out, and further, HIS sheep, who are those who by Him enter, WILL BE SAVED.
Thus there is not only the absolute guarantee, but the mercy and tenderness of eliciting and seeking the lost on the way; and then again there is the colossal merciful beauty of His attitude that all might be reconciled, and His slowness to anger. All these barriers are expressive of His love, and of His power. If however someone wants to gallop about and gambol, gambling indeed with life, then there is an end. Freedom is not fancy; and liberty is not licence. It is beautiful in all its parts; and the evil one is inveterate in hatred, in ambition, in confusion. He is, in short to be avoided. So is the midst of a blazing fire. There are things to avoid...
9) Waylaying a Saint through Mere Ferocity
You see this picture in I Peter 5:8-9. The devil seeks to intimidate, as first of the beasts, as that once so glorious creation of God, and in this ferocity, this uplift of the head, this shaking of the mane, this roar as if a king of the beast in the jungle of writhing souls, serpentine situations, he acts in gross and outrageous power. Yet it needs resistance. If Christ is INFINITELY more powerful than the devil, as God is above to that degree, all His creations, then what is there to fear ? Greater is he who is in you than the prince of this world, whose pathetic little dramas for a day are mere preludes to the pit. Fear that ? Why ? It is mere flurry. RESIST him is the message. Call on the Lord to MEET him and displace and disgrace him, foiling all his plans. He is well able. It tests faith and enables its exercise to increase strength and by experience, aid further penetration into the realm of the evil one, in order to rescue the fallen, the forsaken, those who feel hopeless.
10) Securing Glory to his own name, by misdirecting what is Due to God
The devil's lust here is shown both in Revelation 12, where he even sought to fight in heaven, though naturally without success - but it shows the inveterate crazed lust in that being, and in Matthew 4, where with equal pertinacity and absurd hope he sought to waylay Christ Himself. It is one of the glories of God that HE EXPOSES His own being to such assaults, in the form of a servant. HE SHOWS the way, as when Christ simply by the written word, the Bible, nailed Satan to the mast of his own pirate vessel, and left him for dead! He is decisive, biblical, dismissive, and apt in his dealing with the satanic force. It lusted for him as for a pearl; He dismissed it as a serpent, poisonous, pretentious and vain, clearly and visibly counter t