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Witness Inc. Home Page Contents Page for Volume What is New
Chapter
9
Delay,
Discipline and Transformation
Task of
Love and Office within Predestination
cf. I
Peter 1:2
In this Chapter, drawing first upon Ch. 10 of Spiritual
Refreshings … we shall seek to add further
considerations of the joy of pain in this, that if you are a child of the light,
of God, walking in His way (cf. Isaiah 35:8-9), and so on the highway of
holiness, it is like that from a good dentists. For my part, I can all but go
to sleep despite dental pain, BECAUSE it is so joyous to know that a BAD or
even DANGEROUS thing is being COMPETENTLY and faithfully rectified.
The small pain for the moment is almost relief already, for
it presages a long joy for an enduring time, and not only so, a remedy at least
in part, of a design spoilt by error, in this case decay, so that the task is
for the better, for good, for progress, and for restoration. What then is a
little pain when THAT is the outcome! Consider what it would be like if there
WERE NO RECTIFICATION, and the joy when one should first find that remedy was
in fact available, not merely meets all LOGICAL considerations as nothing else
does in this field, but transcends them, as a million dollars transcends some
need of say, 1000. Thus when one is provided with remedy, eternity in a life
that is brimming with vitality, close to its source, who
has come out to restore us to Himself: there is a joy which no pain can injure.
So pain is not a
generic in this, that SOME pain is that of chaff being blown away by the wind,
ex-seed, where the life of God is despised in practice. Other pain however is
that of the analogy of the dentist, since all things work together for good for
those who A)
love God and B) are the called according to His purpose
(Romans 8:28 - that is, meet His call by coming where He is as in Isaiah 55,
where He MAY be found, and not to some mirage, which quenches nothing but
curiosity and mocks real thirst), and so find His way for them and pursue it
with relief, rest and joy of heart.
As His word declares in a way empirically verifiable, at the
personal level, for God is faithful:
v
“You meet him who rejoices and works
righteousness,
those who remember You in Your ways …” (Isaiah 64:5).
Faith finds these
things, because it is looking, like a child, at its Father’s face, and can find
there the content of His assurances, re-assurances and fashionings
of the heart, as a sculptor marking the stone, yet makes it beautiful in
composition, according to artistic inspiration and plan! Predestinated, one is
called; called justified; justified glorified; and in the process sanctified
(Romans
Where faith in the divine Gospel is present, in the Christ
Himself, so that the transformation has occurred (Titus 2-3), then in the
presence of God (cf. Matthew 28:19-20, Colossians 1:27, John 14:21-23), there
is a moulding that may be major, even after that renewal which is to total
that it is rebirth into a format of spirit and mind apt to God, not alienated
and so defective and more also, deficient. This glorious process, which may be
acutely humiliating (as for David in his slide into infamy for one short period
and his repentance from it as seen in Psalm 51), or ennobling direct (as with
Isaiah 6, which nevertheless was far from being an initial congratulation, for
the prophet’s lips had first to be touched, with a live coal in a vision, to
obliterate their evil), is not some mere episode. On the contrary, it is
foreseen, comprehended in advance, by Him who is wonderful in His working
(Isaiah 28:29).
If you want to use the word ‘mystery’ then here it is
intensely and immensely applicable. It is not in any sense a logical defect in
understanding (see Pain, Suffering and Evil),
but a depth of divine wisdom in dealing with His saints which is stunning (cf.
Psalm 73:22) in its magnificence and glorious in its majesty (cf. Psalm
73:18-25). Thus He leads one on in the midst of such acute, directive,
protective and illuminative work of God in the midst of one’s own spirit, life
and history that one must rejoice in Him whose counsel is wonderful.
Accordingly, in II Peter 1:2-3, we have these
evocative words (bold added):
“To the pilgrims of the Dispersion in
v
elect
v
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,
v
in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience
v
and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ…”
Notice
that the election or predestination or divine choice, of the soul who is to
become a child of God, is exactly as in Romans 8:29ff.,
“according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father”.
This, already seen in this volume, is here ratified. However our chief current
interest to the point is this. The election (according to foreknowledge past
all history and before it) is IN SANCTIFICATION. In other words, it is a pure
abstraction to try to deal with justification as if it were an item, a dead
insect, sitting ready for the formaldehyde.
It
is not. There is a natural, necessary and assured progression into what HAPPENS
IN a born again, a regenerated spirit of man, who is justified because Christ
has died for him whose sins by faith have come to rest on the crucified Saviour and not in himself. There is a WORK of
sanctification which is inviolable, undeterrable. It
does not sit about, any more than a new-born babe sits
about. Things happen where life is!
As
well seek to avoid being brought up in a well run house where the father is
daily at the head of the table and involved in every decision, as imagine these
things are isolated beads, and not a beauty intact and integral, though we can
assuredly, and indeed should, see the
facets, each one in its wonder.
In this case, the father is not merely sitting at the head of the
table: He is sitting in the heart (John 14:21ff.), and the Lord is active in
the very spirit of the man. Notice the Lord’s actual dealing with David when on
that one supremely aweful occasion, he fell (II
Samuel 12, and compare it with Psalm 51, which followed in sequence of life).
This sanctification is FOR obedience. That is, you work on
your high jump technique and labour and are moulded as you are coached and more experienced, SO THAT
you may jump well. The thing is prepared and then goes; is made lake-like into
a large conservation, and then applied in the sending of streams of water.
However
our sanctification is not perfect, for perfection though a strenuous aim, is
not an attainable result in this current world. What is attainable is
deliverance from known operative sin; but even then, “Search me, O God, and
know my heart; try me and know my
thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way
everlasting!”
(Psalm 139:23-24).
Thus
the sanctification is NOT ONLY to obedience, but to the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, as typified or symbolised in the yearly bringing of the blood to the
divinely patterned altar, between the cherubim, with their wings stretched out
to the extremities of the Holy of Holies, signifying the mercy of God flying
down to man, in determinate certainty, at the sight of the blood. So does faith
purge sin and wrest from its dominion the life that must grow in sanctity, and
being redeemed, be constantly made clean as table clothes through the wash (cf.
I John 1:7- 2:2).
Thus
does the Lord in His predestinative, in His elective
security, have the life of each one of His people before Him (Ephesians 1:4).
The
Lord does not impel the sin, but the contrition; He does however impel
aspiration and confer illumination, and constantly teaches all His saints this
lesson, SEEK and you will FIND (cf. Ephesians 1:17ff.,
Matthew 7:7ff.). It is necessary to realise as
children of God (those who are in this blessed estate) that action is part of
faith, for faith without works is dead, and the knowledge of God is in the
heart as well as in the mind, in the spirit and in the interstices of one’s
being, so that all things are conducted: not as in “chance”, left for the wind
to blow.
It
is that condition which leads some philosophers to talk inadvisedly,
as if their own severance in spirit from the Maker of man, and hence from His
blessed mercies systematically present, and hence again their own sense of the
meaningless, were to be extrapolated to those who know that Purposive Being who
invented spirit for us, with its purposes, so making the debtor the cleared,
and the desolate the healed (Isaiah 61:1-3).
Actually,
it is not so. As some cars lie ‘meaningless’ on the scrap heap (some quite
recent, but all smashed), so others lesser in calibre,
still run, though old, being useful to their drivers. All cars do not lack
meaning because some lie smashed into an automotive insensibility. Certainly it
may seem so, since the purpose which made our bodies and minds and spirits, and
sowed them into one intricate and phenomenal, one prodigious and unique whole,
is willfully excluded from the current life of such a man. Wilful
exclusion however, does not constitute a dictation to others, who being in the
grip of the Driver, love His ways, and find His purposes both generic and
intimate, in principle in the Bible, and in practice as in accord with its
promises, He leads them.
This,
it is not merely meaningful, but majestic; and not at all a source of pride,
for humiliation is one of its sure steps; but it is a wonder, as when one meets
some highly endowed friend, kind and loving, cherishing and contrite; yet with God, there being neither limit nor
sin, it is far, far better.
Thus
divine discipline, purgation may be very vigorous at times, so that one is
almost stunned; very apt always and very graciously delayed on other occasions.
God knows what He is doing, but alas, so many do not seem to realise, that when things are painful or grievous, and this
or that apparent calamity happens, the One to whom you go in response, HE KNOWS
THE WAY (Psalm 142):
“When my spirit was overwhelmed within me,
Then You knew my path.
“In the way in which I walk
They have secretly set a snare for me.
Look on my right hand and see,
For there is no one who acknowledges me;
Refuge has failed me;
No one cares for my soul.
“I cried out to You, O Lord:
I said, ‘You are my refuge,
My portion in the land of the living.
Attend to my cry,
For I am brought very low;
Deliver me from my persecutors,
For they are stronger than I.
Bring my soul out of prison,
That I may praise Your name;
The righteous shall surround me,
For You shall
deal bountifully with me.’ ”
Hence, for the spirit who is not in prison,
whatever the imprisonings of mere man, there is the
fresh liberty of
walking in the Spirit as one of the children of light (cf. I
Thessalonians 5):
“For you yourselves
know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For
when they say, ‘Peace and safety!’ then sudden destruction comes upon them, as
labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape.
”But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you
as a thief. You are all children of light and children of the day. We are not
of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let
us watch and be sober.”
Thus we find again in the Psalms (143), the aspiration correlative to such
privileges from the Spirit of God in the name of Jesus Christ the only Saviour (Acts
v
“Teach me to do Your will,
v
For You are my God;
v
Your Spirit is good.
v
Lead me in the land of uprightness.
v
Revive me, O Lord, for Your name’s sake!
v
For Your righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble.”
This
is the principial procedure and the empirical fact
for the children of the light. Light is not darkness, and leading is not the
abyss. Life is not death, and effusion is not confusion; for the light in its
effusiveness is clarity. Thus are the children of God led, and this is the way
(cf. Isaiah 30:21, Romans
On
the other hand, where the life of the Creator and its terms (in salvation and
repentance and faith in the only Mediator, Jesus Christ) are disregarded, or
rejected (the result is not dissimilar!), then rather we find this, both in principle
and empirically IN THE END (Isaiah 30:15)
·
“ ‘In returning and rest
you shall be saved;
·
In quietness and
confidence shall be your strength.’
“But you would not,
And you said, ‘No, for we will flee on horses’—
Therefore you shall flee!
And, ‘We will ride on swift horses’—
Therefore those who pursue you shall be swift!”
A - EXCERPT from Ancient
Words, Modern Deeds
CHAPTER 10
SEQUEL to
GOD'S LOVE IS AS
REFRESHING
AS
OCEANS,
WATERFALLS
AND
AND
FAR MORE SO
THE MATTERS OF DISCIPLINE, CONSECRATION AND CALLING
LOVE is a very
broad and beautiful thing. It is not mere affection, sentiment, nearness,
intimacy of thought, correlation of action, sympathetic interactive responses
with a flair of jointness, a savour
of mutual joy and a comradeship of aim. This is all wonderful, but love is
broader than all of that.
It - when it is the LOVE OF GOD, has
the dignity and depth which is the Lord's. A dog's love can be a splendid and
noble thing, leading to self-sacrifice and immense devotion; but it is not the
same as human love. A child's love is likewise a thing of delicacy and
kindliness, can be tender-hearted and admirable, so that some children can love
their parents with a concern, in weakness and difficulty, which is moving and
exceedingly sweet.
GOD however is Himself. We have heard
of 'originals' (see Questions and Answers 4); and they have appeal at times.
There is something of the lively about those whom culture does not bind, tradition
cannot control and normal idols like money or prestige do not touch. God is
MORE THAN any original. NOTHING can touch Him, to draw Him astray, make mean
His splendour or limit His greatness.
When one is a friend of God, as may be
now and should be and was with Abraham, it is a thing of preciousness (Abraham
found its wonder particularly in the incident noted in Genesis 18:16ff.).
Abraham could actually, even intercede with the Lord concerning His intentions.
He did not alter them, but he could understand them in the principles involved,
and put the case. Jesus said, You are My friends if you do whatever I command you
(John
What then if a command is broken ? Then you repent. It is impossible to over-stress the
necessities of repentance. The old fashioned would stress the need for fresh
air and breathing (and not the worse for being old-fashioned! Oh the beauty of
fresh ocean air, inhaling in the
There may however be lessons. The love
of God is deeper than ocean or sea, higher than mountain, more embracive
than waterfall, and of more energy. He is not slack, being moved with pity, in
His return, and will come, delaying while all may come to REPENTANCE (II Peter
3:9). NOR is He slack when it comes to discipline. I for one am GLAD that He is
not. Whether with my own children or with myself, it is not good for things to
be awry, amiss and uncorrected. True, love can be patient, not jumping on each
small thing; can watch, not invading in each observable enterprise; but there
IS a time when omission is connivance! One MUST act.
If this is so in our little spirits,
what is it when it is the LOVE OF GOD which is in operation!
DISCIPLINE
1) DAVID the KING
David made more than a mistake; sinned
more than in an odd impulse (and if you do that, then repent at once, and
acknowledge your lack of self-control or depth and patience, or whatever the
cause was, for it is necessary to be CLEAN, neither amusingly imagining oneself
near perfect, nor slackly allowing oneself liberties as if sin were not an
enemy to be overcome with the power of God as a consistent nor). He sinned in
PLAN! To be sure, he may have been so infatuated that his mind was in abeyance;
but even the most tender-hearted approach to his willing enabling of the death
of Uriah so that he could have his wife, cannot
forget... URIAH!
Discipline was coming. It had many
dimensions. God is deep; His discipline may be deep.
David was delightful; but is it not
true that delightful though someone may be (David was a man after God's own
heart, we read), IF there is no discipline, the charm becomes manipulation or
self-assurance, or the strength becomes directing, or the tenderness becomes
cloyed with self-will, and so on. There has to be a tune-up. When there is a
gross offence, it may be an overhaul of the deepest kind. It may even involve
service of an unusual degree and kind.
Thus
·
1) David was rebuked by
the prophet Nathan.
·
2) He was told a parable
to awake his conscience.
·
3) Not knowing it was a
parable, he reacted at the story, declaring that the oppressor appearing in it
deserved the death penalty.
·
4) Nathan told him : YOU
ARE THE MAN! The story was really a picturesque presentation of what David
himself had just done, and he himself had advocated the death penalty, when it
was in fact a LESSER thing that the party in the story had done.
·
5) Discipline would not
depart from his household affairs. Thus one son murdered another, one had
incest with a half-sister, leading to the murder. One son lead an army against
his father, to take over his role. David tenderly loved that son (and perhaps
not wisely but too well), so that he came back after the murder without sure
repentance, and in fact with rebellion lodged in his aspiring heart. His
cunning in seeking to win the hearts of the men of
·
6) Hence David faced
duplicity and the misuse of mercy, just as he had used duplicity in having his
military commander withdraw from the man he wanted dead, leaving him likely to
be killed.
·
7) David was exhorted by
his army commander when his favourite son was killed,
and he mourned greatly, by being told that if he did not show his concern of
the army which had overcome the son's rebellion, he would not answer for the
result.
·
8) David was actually
cursed by Shimei as he left
Now all this is better than death. It is a refinement of
life. It is a reminder, and it means that the loss of sensitivity is being
corrected amply and repeatedly. What David did was SO out of character, that
that character was given no mellow treatment in its restoration. For my own
part, I should far rather have a character so blessed with the devoted
purification of the Lord, than become a slob or a slothful person, with the
dirt of declension untouched on the unclean heart. Cholesterol for the
arteries, and insensitivity for the spiritual heart: they have points in
common! It is best to be rid of clogging in both cases.
2) PETER THE APOSTLE
Peter was disciplined differently. One
can see his position. A man of action, a fisherman used to taking matters in
hand, a leader, a man of practical intention and straightforward disposition,
he was NOT impressed when Christ (Matthew 16) indicated that He would die and
be the butt of the contemptible conduct of the spiritually blind, even if He
would rise again after that.
Taking Christ aside, it seems, he told
him that this was not the way. Like a pope before his time, he would invent
doctrine, direct the Lord in ways contrary to His own finding, and become the
instructor of the Almighty, even to the point of contradiction of what had been
directly said (as, for the pope's own case, in Matthew 23:8-10 - no
substitutes, only brethren).
GET BEHIND ME SATAN!
was Christ's reply. This is what Christ said TO PETER (
This was NOT SO with Christ, who set
His face like a flint to fulfil His OWN MISSION AS MESSIAH,
leaving nothing out (Matthew 26:52-56). Christ
DELIBERATELY TOOK NO ACTION to secure His own deliverance, because His being
offered up was a major chapter in the book of His mission. Survival is cheap:
who would not rather be a murdered angel than a living rat! What is the good of
survival if what survives is filthy, disgusting, immoral self-centred riot of self-esteem or some other drab rag of ruin!
The current pre-occupation with this disreputable substitute for living and its
reason is founded on NO FAITH in God, and contrary to observation, expectation
of strength and continuity in some unknown way creating something better in the
long run. The run is rather longer than the evidence. What it does create is
spiritual filth, which like other garbage, reeks to high heaven! and does not
speak to it...
THIS THEN TO PETER WAS DISCIPLINE.
THIS WAS NOT ALL.
Later, this same endearing quality (and
what goes astray, like a beautiful motor-car on a lamp-post, may do it by VIRTUE
of a good thing, misdirected), again arose, when Peter cut off the ear of the
high priest's servant, when he presumed to come to arrest Christ. Now the calibre of courage, the initiative and the defensive desire
to protect Christ are far better than cowardice, more admirable than indolence
and more splendid than self-preservation. They were however ONCE AGAIN in the
direct flight path of the will of God, announced and clear and sure.
There is perhaps some more excuse for
Peter in this case: after all, the onset is sudden, the deceit of Judas is
appalling, the night parade of the temple guard is morally offensive, the thing
is subversive, showing contempt of law while seeming to enforce it: it is
horrible. His response has vigour and devotion in it.
However it is not right. "Put your sword in
its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword!" said
the Christ (Matthew 26:52).
Deprived of his natural response, it seems,
Peter could think of no other, and not being allowed to protect, he ran and
soon coming to the temple, when questioned about his membership (or otherwise)
in the company of the disciples of Christ, he not only DENIED the comradeship
of Christ, but began, as if to be the more convincing in his lie, to swear
perhaps with the oaths or curses long learned in his former role as fisherman.
The Lord's discipline ? A LOOK! (Luke
22:61). "And the Lord turned and looked at
Peter."
·
There is the beauty
of the love of God. It is not a tirade, a spit of contempt, a hard turning of
the heart at the betrayal by his friend. It is what it takes, and in this case,
the tenderness of conception which understands the underlying motives, and sees
past appearance to reality (as predicted would be the case, cf. Isaiah 11); it
knows what is needed. It gives that, like an astute and acute doctor, a doctor
of love. The love of God is present in discipline. The LORD LOVES THOSE WHOM HE
CHASTENS (Hebrews 13:5-11).
Here then is one of the more subtle
exemplifications of the prophetic perfection of Christ. In quality and depth He
is what He ought to be, not judging after the sight of His eyes or the hearing
of His ears, but giving righteous judgment.
There is no
recrimination, no execration, no contempt. A zealous friend had been miscarried
in his admirable desire to help, and then overwhelmed in his confusion, had
been misled. What it took to bring him back was not great, when the correction
came from One about to be - for His own part - crucified!
·
The LORD "does
not afflict willingly,
Nor
grieve the children of men" - Lamentations
·
Indeed,
"Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed.
Because
His compassions fail not,
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness..."
- Lamentations
Thus when the time
came, and Christ, risen from the dead, showed the insuperability of the
Almighty, even when in vulnerable human form, and through this, His
infallibility in overcoming ANY problem for His people, DEATH ITSELF not
excluded, as is fitting for the one who made death a penalty for sin, and in
love made a way out of it, just as in justice He had made a way into it, a
fitting devastation for the delinquencies of sin: THEN MORE HAPPENED TO PETER.
Again, it was exceptionally
tender-hearted. It was quite amazing that the one who had SO FAILED and in THAT
WAY, augmenting the case by repeated denials of Christ (but in ONLY ONE
OCCASION, however repetitive in its internal structure on that evening), should
then be COMMISSIONED in a tender atmosphere of TRUST, to look after the lambs
and the sheep, and that, on the basis of the LOVE he had for Christ. DO YOU
LOVE ME! came the repeated question. YES, was the repeated answer in effect,
but the three questions mirrored the three denials, and there was a gentleness
of reproof which yet did NOT dismiss the man from his role, about this. No
tirade, just questions... and FROM the answers, as One who knew the heart, did
NOT come, "ARE YOU SURE!" or "CAN I REALLY TRUST YOU THIS
TIME!"
Such demeanings were neither
needed nor performed. It is all in John 21.
VERIFICATION BY VIRTUE
This brings up an important
point: that of verification. IN THIS LOVE, not a whit less than in His power,
Christ showed what He had to show, as Messiah, the depth of God.
Not only in raising the dead, as with
the son of the widow of Nain or Lazarus; not only in
meeting the hypocritical questions of the Pharisees or scribes, with withering
wit and able expertise, to leave them without hope of tricking or trapping Him,
though they were many and 'educated' while He was one and without the festoonings of privileged; not merely in meeting every
hardship without sin, every challenge without faltering, every question of
knowledge or understanding with precision and power; but in the quality of His
LOVE, He showed also, WHO HE WAS. He was the One He claimed to be; and in love
He was it; and in love, quintessentially, He was it.
His love never tattered, never
flattered, never wilted, never was caught in the hollow of the recesses of time
and occasion. Always real, strong and pure, it was present with the power, as
an inseparable intimacy. It still is. The love of God is the instruction of
heart of every Christian. It is found in want, in need, in trial in distress,
in chastening, in discipline; and it is more than the source of our own, the
criterion, the paragon and exemplar. It is ORIGINAL, His own; and in its
dimensions, it is in keeping with His infinitude (Ephesians
Its dwelling place is heaven, and its
site the heart of God; and as it is HIS HEART, so it is HIS LOVE. If it
chastens, it is well; if it rebukes (Revelation 3:19), it is good, for "as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten" and "if you endure chastening, God deals with you as with
sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten?" (Hebrews
12:7). The peaceable fruit of righteousness is the yield when the love of God
chastens a son or daughter. Better a chastened child than a swollen child of
shame.
·
Thus Peter was
COMMISSIONED just after his shame, for in His love, God does not need
convincing. He is aware of all the interstices of affairs, and His mind is not
subject to tantrums of frustration or chilly frigidities of egotism (John
21:15ff.). That He is not, is most refreshing. Away the gaunt gallows of self,
State and spiritual pride, touchiness and temperament; here is light, and life,
and in His light we see light.
Accordingly, Christ asks Peter, Do you love Me (have
spiritual love, as religious in its depth and intensity), and Peter affirmed it.
He asked again in the same terms, and Peter affirmed again. He was given the
sheep, the lambs to look after. He asked again, this time in terms of the
affection or friendship that Peter had affirmed in his own answers to the
question, and Peter expostulated, Lord you know all things, you know that I
love you. Even as Christ spoke, the commission came; even as Peter's heart was
searched the call was there. His was to be not a rejection slip, but a recommissioning to service with all the others. God is personal.
PERSON TO PERSON,
CREATOR TO CREATURE,
INVISIBLE
TO VISIBLE,
KEEPER
TO KEPT,
MAGNIFICENCE
TO MIDGET,
FRIEND
TO FRIEND
Personalism
makes it a matter of man's personality; but man's personality is a DERIVATIVE of
God, who is personal. The Person of Christ expresses God definitively (Hebrews
1). Depersonalisation is part of the garbage
situation. Persons meet persons and are personally accountable to God.
Principles apply, for God has them (cf. Psalm 89:6-7,14). The power of love
replaces the love of power, found in the pathological persons who so often
invest the earth, and would pollute the heavens if they could (cf. Revelation
12: 7ff.: for power belongs to God, and what is a house to One who always has
it; is it to be pined after or gloried in! He uses it in love, in mercy, in
answer to those who call upon Him by faith, according to His word, in the name
of His Son (Psalm 57:1-2, 34:17ff., 57:11). In the end, its use in judgment has
no further stay. Meanwhile, the hospital of the soul is strongly at work,
before the site departs (Matthew 25:1-10).
How wonderful is that construction of
man, that creation God made. There is not only the whole concatenation of
marvels, gloriously intricate in their interwoven integrity, and unification of
function (cf. Repent or Perish Ch.7,
End-notes 1, 2) .
There is not merely the co-ordination of all this integrated systematics with the world, and its own integrated systematics. There is also that all but inconceivable
masterpiece of wedding the brain to the mind, so that the implement works for
it, the mind to the spirit, so that the implement - this time invisible - works
for it; and the spirit to God, so that this person relates to Him. Almost like
never ending, ascending peaks on the way to the glory of light, is this
phenomenal collaboration, in which the vulnerable and the material, serves the
vulnerable and the spiritual, and the spiritual is allowed to call to the Lord,
who is invulnerable, though in form He MADE Himself so, in order to deliver
those who are by nature vulnerable, and by sin bedevilled,
except for His work.
The invisible! Is it mere wilfulness of heart, recalcitrance of spirit, or animosity
of mind which makes mankind so nearly completely blind. What must be the
percentage of materialistic reductionists in this
generation. It is fed in the TV, imparted in major Universities, assumed in
irrationality and applied in devastating murders unlimited, in mind, morals,
body and spirit. Self-inflicted wounds of the spirit are the catastrophic
self-crucifixion of the race in enormous numbers, in this folly.
WHY do they do it ? Because an atom of
sodium is this or that size ? Because their will is one mile long, or their
ideals are short-circuited, or is it because, perchance, their spirits cannot
function, their minds cannot operate ? There ARE in fact none so blind as those
who will not see. Is it blindness that MAKES blind, when the eyes see straight
? Is it deadness that induces death, when the spirit still teems with ideas
?
Does matter err ? Do atoms make
mistakes ? Does substance plan ? Are their purposes available for the
disposition of molecules ? Do nerve cells plot ? Alas the questions are as
absurd as the answers, when the evidence is discounted for the sake of
materialistic passion. No matter does not purpose or plan, but is planned; and
blindness does not MAKE your eyes blind when they see, but makes them
irrelevant whatever they see, when your INVISIBLE vision, your seeing of what
your purposes and ways are, is dead.
Was it matter of the love of freedom
which drove European scientists to help consummate the atomic bomb ? Was it
explosion of bombs or spirit, which led to its construction ? Was it ideal or
the waltz of atoms which make freedom precious ? Is matter, bound in its suit
of form and format, the source of freedom ? Is law the father of liberty ? Is
nothing the source of law ?
Alas, the sheer spiritual insanity
which infects the race in this 20th century, in so much of its absurd glamour,
is its death knell. It will not continue long without the second advent of the
murdered Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:7, Acts
The pianist, however, you, that is
another thing. Hard to play without a piano it may be; but without a pianist,
the piano is but matter. Its design is then a mere misdirection of energy. We,
who have designs in our hearts, desires and purposes, morals and values,
aspiration and perspectives, which are in some cases wrong, in some right, and
right only when subject to the Lord: we use the designs of His mind, and in
this, we shown in the world of His design what we design, and all our designs
are under His countenance, subject to assessment, and since imperfect, not fit
for that perfect place, heaven, that end of tour, end of pilgrimage association
with God without the limits of the land any more.
These designs may err; and they err
very culpably; but the love of God is rich, and pure, and able to subdue with a
look, to endue with His Spirit. So was Peter called in his spirit, despite the
follies committed in the flesh, to execute the good design of the Lord, to preach,
teach the Gospel, to care for sheep, for lambs. The love of God could reach
into His own design, in which liberty was a feature, where friendship is a
focus, and Peter, comrade of God, was commissioned, consecrated to his task.
Isaiah was called too, in the midst of
known sin - not in its sovereignty, God forbid, but in awareness of his lack of
the sort of incandescent purity which belongs to God (Isaiah 6). His commission
came when the power of God to remove the controlling, limiting dynamic of sin
from subduing the mind, and infusing the heart was shown by the angel taking a
live coal from the altar and putting it on Isaiah's visionary lips. Your
iniquity is purged! was the message. That fire was in the love of Christ when
the just for the unjust, He brought His people to God. It burns in the life, it
covers the sin, it enlightens the eyes, it brings warmth to the depths.
Your calling, consecration, discipline,
reception of the love of God, it is all part of the wonder of being His, which
is the prodigality of Christianity.
·
Repentance, call, commission and the
love of God in the cross and resurrection of the body of Christ: these are
critical in the coming to the labour of the Lord; and
in His labour, love is the impulsion, was His
enticement, is our milieu.
·
Justice is not offended, since it is
met (Psalm 85:10) in and through the practical love in which Christ achieved
the atonement for as many as receive Him by faith (Romans 5:1-11, John 1:1-3,
12-14, II Cor. 5:17-21), sent from the mercy and pity of God His Father, that great philanthropist
(that is the literal Greek term used in Titus), whose coin
is not gold, but goodness.
END
OF EXTRACT
B - Further Examples in
Hezekiah and Jonah.
1) Hezekiah
In Isaiah 37-38, one finds a fascinating example of the
sanctification following election, or predestination, noted at the outset of
this Chapter, from I Peter 1.
Here you appear to see a trial that confronts
complacency.
Hezekiah is one of
the outstanding Kings of Judah, filled
with mercy, thougtfulness, resolution and good works,
his reforms a joy to consider. It is delightful to read of his actions, his
depth and his discernment in II Kings 18-20, II Chronicles 29-32.
However, trouble
came after many wonderful happenings, including the king’s spreading before the
Lord of an arrogant letter from the king of Assyria, seeking Him whose counsels are always
sufficient when taken, and finding from the prophet Isaiah (who was SOUGHT at
that time, by the king – II Kings 19:2), a majestic rebuttal of the contempt
and blasphemies of Sennacherib. The ensuing devastation of the forces of the
king of
With this, there
could come such a sanctification of faith to Hezekiah, in such a way divinely
delivered, indeed there could come such a glorious assurance, that we might
hope for a simple journey of faith till the King had finished his episodes and
rule on this earth, and rested at the end of his days in his generation. This
however was far from the case.
When you are
blessed with mighty works from God, and these are far less uncommon than many
seem to realise, as one has found in many situations
of divine blessing, there is always the tendency or at least vulnerability of
taking things too much for granted. Look at
IF on the other
hand, Britain after the war was over, had kept Churchill, then in 1948 or so,
it appears from later records, he might have
exterminated the Russian nuclear program and with it, the Cold War, at a
time before Russia could retaliate: a
sort of Iraqi disarmament program 55 or so years earlier!
The Cold War ? that
might have eliminated oppression of one of the most hideous and murderous
regimes of all time, cruel, heartless and possessed (cf. Communism in indexes
and Solzhenitsyn).
What then happened
to Hezekiah ? The King became sick. How he mourned,
lamented, how deep was his grief, how profound his desperation. He sought the
Lord, who heard him, after delivering a rebuke to put his house in order, and
in compassion and grace, He heeded the lament and restored him via the prophet
Isaiah. God was very faithful and kind.
Now as you read in
Isaiah 38 about these things, you might think that perhaps a little bit of
self-confidence had come to this great King, and since God is the living God
(as Jonah, our next character to watch, found out in very practical terms!),
this sin of the king had been quenched in the midst of divine mercy: the king
alerted to his needs, his errors adjusted, would find his life now adapted to
new measures of personal holiness. Yes, he would pursue this most actively in
all realms.
Yet it seems that
this was not the most obvious outcome at all! At all events, the King grew
careless in a crucial realm.
Instead, in Isaiah
39, we read with something like astonishment, and certainly with a profound
disappointment, of the King’s receiving ambassadors from
Strong was the word
of condemnation from Isaiah, for this blind action! The prophet indicated that
this (in conjunction with the utter wickedness which in Manasseh and others
like Ahaz had preceded Hezekiah’s rule) would lead
now to a high degree of
ruin for
Our present
interest is this. What a burden of sanctification was here, that even after
such humiliation and shock, indeed, as Hezekiah suffered in the days of his
almost lethal sickness and ardent seeking of the Lord, followed by a divine
prescription and healing, he was yet to grow self-confident or careless or both
in the time to follow this deliverance. In this, he did not regard the force
the word of God to Asa long before (II Chronicles
16):
v
“Because you have relied on
the king of
v
“For the eyes of the LORD run to and from throughout the whole
earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose
heart is loyal to Him. In this you have done foolishly, therefore form now on
you shall have wars.”
·
In this case of
Hezekiah, you see also a component relevant from the day of that great and
zealous King Jehoshaphat, Asa’s
successor, who was warring in company with pagans, against the divine requirement
to trust ONLY in Him, and to depart from those in whom words of wisdom are not
found (II Chronicles 19):
·
”Should you help the
wicked and love those who hate the LORD ? Therefore
the wrath of the LORD is upon you.”
The whole concept of
communing with, collaborating with, sharing life’s day with the forces against
God is always abhorrent to God (cf. Romans
Abhorrence of other
religions with their forsaken follies was one of the key points of the entire
Promised Land proceedings! (Joshua 24:15-26, Deuteronomy 4-6, 7:4ff.!). It was to be an example to others, replacing some of
the most debauched and debased peoples, that Israel was brought into the land,
and the covenants were sharp, sure and decisively clear.
Hezekiah should
have known, but evidently had become great in power and success, to some extent
becoming forgetful of the zeal he should have kept to the end. Hence this
mistake with the ambassadors from
In all this, one
can see what might be exceedingly difficult to see, if one were Hezekiah, at
the time of his earlier sickness! He NEEDED the humbling and the difficulty in
order to preclude tendencies to laxity or assimilation with cultural landmarks
in the world. It helped him when a character defect might have ensued, and not
merely a tendency to joining the great, in the midst of his own greatness! Thus
can even sickness and dire distress bring a relief, not to the complacency of
one’s heart, not to the grandeur which may creep into mundane insurgencies into
life, or indifference to the flaming purity of life as it should be lived – “He
makes His servants a flame of fire” - but to a sense of too complacent
continuity with the ways of this world, or even acceptance of some of its
norms. If this is what Hezekiah did with those from
His mercy is shown
in its grandeur, for all that, with that magnificent healing of Hezekiah, who
had been staring at death, and was relieved of it only by direct divine action
through the prophet Isaiah. This brought his thoughts into direct line with the
mercy and pity of the glorious God, like oxygen in the midst of a heart attack!
So is the Lord’s dealing very deep, and His spiritual oversight is not linked
or lassoed by the considerations of the loves of this world.
What then was the
impact on Hezekiah of the Lord’s discipline, for in HIS CASE, it was DIRECTLY
linked, the sickness at the earlier stage to PUTTING HIS HOUSE IN ORDER: what
was the trend of it, the value ? Better this by shock
and trouble by far than that
a squalid counterfeit quietus should enter into his heart! The sanctification proceeded, and a flood of
gratitude with a light of joyous zest in the Lord acted in his heart, lifting
it away from what the Lord may have seen as a most dangerous tendency in this
so great King; and so should pastors realise that
they cannot please God and shut the eye to all too evident events, any more
than be rough in handling them. There are times when heresy must be faced and
confronted (Titus
If not, if duty
fails, then another phase of rebuke can occur, like multiplied disease, and the
purging may then need to be a vigorous and somewhat protracted one! It is not a
question of straining in fear, but of operating in integrity, and the first
component of THIS integrity, is love which seeks righteousness as a ferret
seeks its prey!
If then these
things can happen to the great, famous and mighty in spiritual works, should
not you and I, fellow Christian, be careful to the end! Though the end is sure
(Ephesians
It is not some
apprehensive worry, to abide in His peace and presence, but a zealous joy in
keeping clean before the Lord, and pure in love; for after all, HE IS lovable!
Thus does sanctification
act in outcome of justification which is a phase from predestination, all of
which ends in glorification. It is a living dynamic, not
a mere pronouncement of phrases, though these be
glorious also.
2) Jonah
Jonah’s rebuke is historically lively. It is found in Jonah
4.
First however let us peer into the proximity of the event.
Jonah both knew and loved the Lord, was His servant. Met with
a command to move into a famed capital city of a fierce and cruel nation, into
God was willing to act, about to act: and the impending doom
of
Jonah however, servant of God though he was, did not like the
act, and fled, took a ticket and started on what appears a Mediterranean cruise
of sorts. However, when a Christian cruises FROM the Lord, he/she should first
consider Psalm 139. Though I flee to the
uttermost parts of the earth, YOU are there!
God raised a storm, Jonah had evidently told crew members of
his plight, and when the ship’s life was threatened, or the life of its people
with its integrity, they found him as culprit by lot; but it was already known
what he was doing: fleeing from duty. Despite all this, the men were
exceedingly friendly, and sought hard to deliver him, rowing hard. It failed.
It was with extreme reluctance, and at Jonah’s blessed and godly request, then decided to throw him overboard. This as the prophet
indicated, would bring peace. It did. But not for Jonah!
Yet LORD is both merciful and just, and having been just
towards Jonah, now He was merciful and kept the prophet through the
intervention of a large fish which, like some more recently reported, perhaps a
whale shark with a large air cavity for refuse before it is expelled (nice to
be in a kind of vomit and garbage combined ?). Imbibed this
sudden deposit into the sea. As for Jonah, this provided him with
colossal terror, so that in his guilt from fleeing, he felt as if he actually
were in HELL! (Jonah 2). Until the fish expelled him
and he lived, he was in terminal anguish; and if his case was like one of the
other cases heard, this final ejection would leave him with gastric or similar
markings and marrings of the skin. This could have
been useful in
God then asked him if he would like to go to
That, precisely, he indicated, is why I did not want to go in
the first place. I knew You to be merciful and could
just see this happening, and now (it was humiliating, he felt), I prefer to
die.
God raised up, in those torridly hot circumstances (in every
sense) a fast growing desert gourd or vine of some sort, which provided
protection for Jonah while in the dumps and in oppression of spirit. This gave
him shelter in the scorching, arid climate, as he sat disconsolate in the
desert; and he found it nice. Then a worm killed it, and the wind all but
killed Jonah.
A lesson was forthcoming. God spoke to him. YOU are sorry to
see the demise of a short-lived plant; and should you then expect God to want
to ruin and remove a vast city of multiplied thousands of beast, men and women,
children ?
Is not the love of God seen where mercy MAY be shown (as in
Isaiah 55).
·
Jonah in this way suffered a whole series of reverses, if you
want to look at it in terms of a mere sequence of happenings; but it was in
kind, a whole series of spiritually medical techniques, designed to purify,
·
to expose evils and correct them,
·
to cleanse,
·
to
make this servant of God less obstinate,
less pompous ? or less officious ?
·
or
in any case, more loving, more like his Lord!
Once again we find that the great and the illustrious, when
in the presence of the Lord,
are not in some aristocratic class of their own: for they may
suffer considerable sanctifying pangs with the cleansing of the blood of Christ
(whether as in the Old Testament, depicted in advance via the prophets and the
sacrificial system, or in the New, seen in the Cross’s vast cancellation of
guilt vicariously to those who receive Christ in His Gospel).
There is a sanctification for
purpose-built people, living before the Lord. Of course, many like Judas are not so treated, and in
the book of Hebrews (12) are seen as like illegitmates,
spiritually gutter-snipes if you will, outside the paternal influence (but not
the power of God), bearing a name, but having no family connection.
In these cases however, it is not a pathetic deprivation, but
rather a willful work of rejection, despising mercy and disdaining grace.
WILFULLY! That, it is the real desolation, to use your own
will to negate your own need. The quirks and perks of will appeal to many, who
insist on paddling their own canoe (former cultural term) or on “fulfilling
themselves” (more recent), or “having a buzz”, slightly outmoded lingo, or
whatever other substitute for spirituality may be devised by the fashion
designers for the soul of man, to precipitate his ruin (as in some supercharged
sports model), to induce it, and to give it a particular form and format for
its wayward perversity.
What appears in Jonah in all of this ?
From his own words in Ch. 4, he appears to have had a FEAR OF LOVE (that of God
in His pity and mercy), a FEAR OF RIDICULE (no small thing to tell a city what
is coming to it, especially if you have to go on living afterwards and it
repents), and FEAR OF MAN. You may question the last in Jonah’s case, but it is
only by implication. After all, WHY WORRY if God does NOT judge because of
repentance and faith (the former as seen in Jonah’s mission field in Jonah
3:8-9, and the latter seemingly implied in view of their reference to the ways
of THE LORD!).
Is success so horrible ? What then
of the commitment to mission ?
If their thoughts are not the main thing, those of the
people about YOU, then why worry ? But if you do worry
about this, is not the flesh entering into your equations, and are you not
becoming unduly sensitive of it, or fearful for it ?
Further, it would seem that Jonah went into this work with
some reservations, for as he showed in Ch. 4, he was afraid of this very outcome,
that of mercy. No doubt the manner in which the order to go to
Such an approach as this would not help a wholehearted
living, and loving of the Lord with all the heart and soul, mind and
strength. The prophet’s duty would
therefore seem to have been slightly compromised in its mode of performance, or
at least in the spirit of its performance.
Indeed, the dying plant episode became a kind of parable of himself, running away from mercy, both for himself and for
them!
For all that, the fact is that Jonah was a courageous
prophet, one greatly blessed, enormously, even prodigiously successful and
vigorously disciplined. Thus does sanctification flow into obedience, and thus
do both work into the sprinkling of the blood of Christ. It is a need to cover
the deficiencies that accrue as well as the alienation with which the life
began (Psalm 51, Ephesians 2, 4).
In all this, the predestinative
certainties of God, based on His divine foreknowledge of the person (not on the
performance of his works – Romans
What is to be feared ? That (to use
a tennis analogy), one with labour (Philippians
Things cannot molest, but only fulfil
counsel, for “all things work together for good for those who
love God, the called according to His purpose”
(Romans 8:29ff.); and the point about Jonah is this, that in the performance of
this kindness, he suffered entire humiliation, severe but kindly correction,
amazing help while vast and even epochal results flowed on, as from a
mountain stream when at last it comes bringing life-giving waters to the plain.
Predestinated from the first, the soul is loved to the last
(John 13:1), and where faith abounds, grace abounds; where sin seeks control,
reproof can lead to discipline which shapes once more the straying members of
the saint’s life; and so he is brought up, just as Psalm 73 describes. At
times, he or she may feel the impact of such constant upbringing, as there; but
the Lord can open the eyes to the PURPOSE. For my part, it is better to be
better if it must cause some pain, than be worse in contentment! Why be deluded ? there is only one way to
work and walk with God, and that is in love, which loves not only His nature,
but His words! (cf. John 14:21-23).
Besides, just as these things are foreknown from the first,
so they are benevolent to the last. The result can be thrilling: that someone
cares to polish, and to mould the better the work in hand, to make the statue,
the life, to become more life-like.
Results ? are they not delightful, then, that the One who does nothing
without reason, and makes no mistakes, works in sanctification, as He laboured in predestination, always knowing what He is
doing, and always doing it well. He can prepare a Joseph with prevenient hardening when he was in prison, and prevenient prevention of arrogance through sensitising of the spirit, where this seems hardly
necessary. He however sees the whole life and not merely a phase; and the
spirit of man, and not only the appearance. Moreover, He can use humiliation in
order to encourage others, test faith as was the deliberate work with Hezekiah,
polish to shining gleaming the steel of the soul. In
all this, it is well, for what saint of God desires less than the best, the most godly outcome!
This meets the case to perfection; while the alilenated operatives in their deemed world of disorder can
proceed with the pitiful impoverishment of spirit which, though it be rich, has
already sacrificed itself to mere creations, impelled soon to their end. After
all, when “the eyes of the Lord run to and from throughout
the whole earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal
towards Him” (II Chronicles 16:9), why be concerned at
the momentary elevation of the godless (as in Psalm 73), or the fire-breathing
of the temporary puff-balls of coloured toad-stools
on long stalks ? They perish in a moment, but the ways of the Lord are eternal.
How pleasant to be in their realm, attended by such incisive meaning, a
pastoral care which surpasses man, is fit for man, because it comes from God
who made him!
(For further on this theme, the reader may
wish to consult Great Execrations Ch. 8.)