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EPILOGUE

The MAJESTY OF GOD,

EXHIBITED IN JESUS CHRIST,
HIS ETERNAL WORD and ONLY BEGOTTEN SON

High in the heights of the empyrean is a picturesque and sovereign majesty, as if to declare to man that though God became man that man  might become, as many as received Him, one by one, the adopted child of God, yet is His loftiness beyond all lordship of men, since it is prodigious in grandeur, inimitable in power, glorious in holiness and separate from sinners.

Low in the depths of the oceans is a delicate and sometimes harsh base, as if to remind us that the structural simplicities are such that nothing breeds nothing, and all needs basis, to carry the weight of being brought into existence, structured, informed, formulated, accessible to reaction, coherent in language where programmatic, intensive in mutuality, supported by a foundation.

Delicate in the atmosphere, in the sunset and dawn, in the glancing blows of light on surging wave and gentle ripple, on glowing meadow and massive uplift of mountain giants, there is much to be found. There is that match of the aesthetic complexity and artful impact which is like speech unverbalised, romance unrehearsed, beauty unbegotten, declaring God an artist, who paints in all colours with a canvas as broad as the earth.

In the ferocities of creatures, in their determination and decisive instincts, we remind ourselves of the decisions of God, of His judgments, in this, that He has statedly subjected the creation to a lowering, a declination from its former wonder, so that in the very midst of glory, is pain, in the summit of splendour is reminiscence of the base, or at least the basis, and in the anguish of creation in which man may with joy construe and thrust things into existence, there is a pain which has much of this world in throes, either of frustration and depression, heights of inanity or with the blight of burdens, to many seeming insufferable. Sin has its come-uppance, and since man is in the thick of it, and is not sick of it, the pangs of incomprehension breed cursing and bravado, false prophets without profit, power or grace. Judgment is to sit, and already its place is to be seen. 

In the enduements from on high,

in the power to heal, still seen in sincerity and reality in various sites without any marked reduction from the power of Christ, amidst the false glamour of the endless imitations of Satan,

in the friendship of Christ ministered by the Holy Spirit,

in the unchanged testimony of the Cross, that banishment of guilt, meeting place of glory and agony, of love and shame, of the vicarious suffering with the veritable Victor,

in the cherishing of the saints,

in the abiding in His presence,

in the shepherding of His sheep,

in the sweat of service of His regality, out of love of His purity and His wonder:

this world, stunned but not into submission, sees what it lacks, while it lacks what it sees.

And what does it do with its lacks ?  it seizes what is not its own, and lampooning love, slighting solace, grasping for a power which is not that of God, it has its endless nostrums and panaceas. Dead at arrival, moribund at birth, morbid in life, these verbal seizures merely accentuate the changeless and invariant truth of the Bible, sovereign, majestic, simple as a child, deeper than any genius, teaching the ABC of spiritual things, tutoring its meaning, delivering its depth, illuminating with joy the people of God.

It is not merely eternal: nor is it cyclic. History has come like a wind, its direction to TEST, the result sin, the direction to sacrifice, the result repentless, heedless inanities, leading to judgment; leading on to salvation, attested for millenia, invested in a moment, its features crushed, the face of Christ, its focus compassion and power, dying and dynamic, dripping and arising, leading to the CHALLENGE and opportunity for this world, while the curtain is held back in love - that last curtain of hope, till it drops with His return to deal direct.

Majesty is His name, Lord of Lords, who "sat down at the right hand of majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:3), but not until the majestic spirituality had shown its massive hand, the crucified palms despised, the breath of life dismissed, the sacrifice slighted. Majesty was terrible in His words, which directed wind and death at will; but depth of power was impactive in its release, for He could tell indeed that "virtue has gone out from Me" when a woman was healed by touching the hem of His garment.

What majesty is more majestic in this world, than this! Here is the acme of what is noble in enterprise, self-sacrificial in demeanour, understanding in heart, the direct deployment of God as man, manifest in love, tender in leading, relentless in truth, objective in discernment, the very finger of truth, yes its body, intractable to the fist of  assault, immiscible with sin, able to weep in sadness for sin's strangle-hold, while bringing a liberty from it which is His OWN WORK.

	Here then is majesty, and when He is, as now,
	seated at the right hand of majesty on high,
	because being in the form of God He took the form of man to do His divine work, and
	lifted many with His going,
	coming soon to receive more with His coming,  and ready to
	rule all in His regality,
	whether sundered in shame or secured in salvation:
	yet the pure strength of His deity does not surpass the pure wonder of His gift.

What He is, He has given, not that man become God, for He is infinite and eternal, whereas man merely began: but that man should know from the mercy of His Majesty, the might of His purity, indissoluble, from the gleam of His truth, intractable, from the sweat of His brow, inexorable in duty, immovable in mission, such things as these ...  the peace of His pardon and the place of His love.

Such is majesty and the polluted puny powers of the surrogates of sovereignty, the clowns of imitation and the false prophets of sacrilege are but the glitter to enhance the sight of the glory; while the glory has its heart expressed in the unsolaced submission to the Cross, by the One least deserving it, that glory might find access, mercy its place and this race, where not in madness' mode, delinquent in spirit, rebellious in heart, but in obedience to death, God consummated His majesty in mercy, and His goodness in grace.