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Chapter Ten
When Moses, Samuel, Noah, Daniel and Job Cannot Help,
GOD CAN
Ezekiel 14-16 with Jeremiah 14-15, A Grand Sweep
THE CONFIGURATION OF DISASTER
So vast was the consolidated alienation of Israel in the day of Jeremiah, that even his plea of 14:14-22 is met in 15:1 by this divine rejection: "Even if Moses and Samuel stood before Me, My mind would not be favourable toward this people." Jeremiah, full of heart, makes his appeal and is rewarded with a provision for the remnant, 15:11.
There always is. This is so, whether IN Adam and Eve, alive and stricken but undeleted, or THROUGH Noah and the seven with him, the world destroyed; or DESPITE Babel, the peoples dispersed with dividing languages, sign of their separation from each other because separated from their God; or indeed IN TERMS OF a remnant, removed from the land for 70 years, but by the word of God coming back (Jeremiah 25, Daniel 9:2ff., Ezra and Nehemiah). Again removed (Isaiah 11:10-11) and again to be restored when the day of the returned Messiah comes near (as in Isaiah 11), so that not a smidgeon as now, itself a fulfilment of Ezekiel 36-37, but the place divinely assigned will be theirs.
Even then there is a new remnant, those of Israel who will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (foretold before Christ died, in Zechariah 12:10), a spiritual remnant, those "grafted in again," as in Romans 11, to the original tree of faith, now in flower. These will be joined to another remnant, those of the Gentiles who in the interim or at that time, believe in the same Messiah who died once only in the same place, Jerusalem, by the same means, crucifixion, with the same immediate restoration of His body seen by many as foretold (Psalms 16,22). Then there is the same long period before His return as shown by II Peter 3:9. As to this, it is lengthened, as Peter there also shows, so that the entire body of Christ can be sifted and found, as planned for the Age of grace before His return (II Peter 3:9).
There is, then, a number of remnants in man's varied history before the Lord, and the one today in mind is that when Ezekiel following Jeremiah, spoke of a people to be devastated, just before their impending exile from which SOME would return after the 70 year exile, foretold by Jeremiah.
The day then, as is that of the Gentiles now, was a heavy one, a time of a steely dawn because of manifold, manifest and multiplying sin. Thus, when Ezekiel wrote, a little later than Jeremiah, there was an added list of those great past names of those who had been near the Lord, names, persons indeed who COULD NOT alter the judgment about to occur in ancient Israel, though they were actually living in it. The two noted in Jeremiah are now found as three in Ezekiel.
"Even though Noah, Daniel and Job were in it,
as I live, says the Lord God,
they would deliver neither son nor daughter;
for they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness."
Note three things about this divine statement. Firstly, the number of great performers from the past who are noted, who would in vain be present, delivering only their very own selves, has increased. What was impossible is expanded in intensity. Secondly, the three noted as incapable to help, were all at one time in disaster situations, and all were delivered. Each in his own day, had a great escape from disaster, in the midst of judgment; but even jointly, they would secure none for any in the land, at the day impending at the time of Ezekiel, so gross and unyielding was the offence. Like Bertrand Russell's "unyielding despair", it brought about by not yielding to the light of divine deliverance attested ineradicably through the Gospel.
Noah escaped drowning by miraculous means, a specially prepared ark, not magically, but by faith prepared at the counsel of God, just as many now escape, not by magic, but by a vessel of and for faith, Jesus Christ the Righteous, the Just One, who died the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God (I Peter 3:18). Daniel escaped by two means: first he was before the destruction, chosen by the enemy occupying power as a wise-man cadet and placed in Babylon. Then, irrespective of the pressures put on him, including a shady trick to trap him, so that ONLY God COULD deliver him, he stayed upon his God and would yield to nothing adverse to Him and the faith in Him. He WAS delivered, for God had a mind for it that nothing could alter. Provoking God at such a time is counter-productive...
GOD saw fit to maintain his cause, the King of Kings, and indeed more than one King came to realise through the mission of Daniel, that there is indeed the God who made heaven and earth, whether positively in understanding, or negatively in doom. Job, the third, was ruined in successive and impressive strokes of acute misfortune, engineered through the devil's desire to show him only one more hypocrite, the Lord willing to put it to the test.
He did so, Job upheld by the Lord, so that though he was nearly distracted, he endured and was at length restored in great felicity. On the way, the glory of Job 19 became part of the heritage of the human race, for he KNEW in the midst of maelstroms, that his Redeemer lived whom on this earth, he himself personally would see with his own eyes from his own body.
These notable escape persons would do not nothing, even jointly for Israel, since God had determined the matter. Thirdly, note that even THEIR children, should they at that time be living in the land, would not be delivered. This reminds us that the present ploy by many in Government, to denude the Australian liberty and character, so that saucy religious prescriptions of the new morals and the new geometric style identity-units called human, denatured, disallowed from the normal scope of human discourse, taught by prescription, is potentially deadly. So does it move, as the seduction continues with variable provision for tightly controlled religions, where free purposes do not direct, and the universalisation of humanity becomes the rule beyond, the standard of application, the idol for worship and the man-made model for control, as in the days of earlier spiritual barbarism, such as that of Nebuchadnezzar, who proclaimed - even in his case only for 30 days, none to be worshipped but himself. Party however or emperor, it is the move that counts!
Such things, if they have here not already done so, can reach the point of no return. In Israel, both Jeremiah and Ezekiel naming together the five who could not help, showed this to be so.
The children then become so molested by culture (that is, practical atheism taught with authority, though not in name as such) for years of discriminatory schooling, by social workings, engineered liberties to do this and that in terms of the new morals, that it can lead, even for many, to paralysis for parents in many things, lest they attempt something different. Laws of the new religion, come not only to destroy biblical morals, but to intimidate those who insist (like Daniel) on adhering to them. It is for God to choose His elect, but the situation is fast approaching the guillotine stage of godlessness. Luck is not the point; looseness and loss, deliberate and humanistically driven, this is.
One is reminded at this point of the noted radio broadcaster, Paul Harvey who, in his career gained access to some 1200 radio stations, and around 1967 made a statement in the US about what he would do if he were the devil.
In an available declaration (http://stg.do/9LDc), he sounded out the steps in education, the judicial realm, morals, churches, government which he would follow, to bring about a devilish design, and how in this way he would plan to ruin the creation in a marvellous degree.
If, he indicated, the devil he was, then he would continue JUST AS THAT SPIRIT WAS DOING! It is worth listening to this, since what he indicated, in terms of growing trends, has come in much the way described, nearly half a century later. It is good to hear this as it shows the type of overall planning strategy in more completeness than is often done; and man not being stupid, even if the heart should be desperately wicked and deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9), that such a plan, with various increments, exists in devil and man is scarcely a matter of any doubt.
After all, the NATURE of what is to come is clear in the Bible, and this is the direction of the dynamic now being exhibited, as the ruin of the race, averted for a time in the day of the flood and of Babel, is zealously forwarded by those deluded (as in II Thessalonians 2:10). With the crucifixion past, there is nothing more to come but judgment, and where it occurs, salvation; and degradation of this ruins the only divine medicine, for those who mock, snarl, innovate, substitute for God, clothing with nothing within, personas without the peace of reality or the hope of life.
NOT receiving the love of the truth, of the God who alone COULD have truth at the outset and in the onset, is cited as the ground of such delusion, in the Bible, by Paul not only in II Thess. 2, but in Romans 1:17, moving on to 1:28ff..
Reverting to Ezekiel 14-16, we find once more despite the ruinous parallel in those days, to those of the present, there was assigned a REMNANT for deliverance (Ezekiel 14:22-23); and this is given in a comforting message to Ezekiel. Ezra and Jeremiah would one day supervise much of its re-establishment.
What did we learn from the five notable saints named ? No saint or congregation of saints could help them at all, and even if they were indeed present, they would merely spoil their own families if they were to come! Saints are saved people, and all such are saints (cf. Sermon, Saints and Children of God): the Saviour who saves, it is God only (Isaiah 43:10-11). If you want to save humanity, be God; and since you cannot do this (too late, and not equipped), BE saved instead, and contribute as a channel of divine grace, a person who knows the truth and lives it, where love is the medium and faith the equipment, and Christ is the Lord.
The nation did not take any steps in this direction in the day of Ezekiel, just as this nation has yet to do so. Let us see more of what developed with the prophet in his own day, moving to Ezekiel 15.
THE FIGURE OF THE VINE
In pursuit of the virtual X-ray of the situation in Israel at that day, the Lord used, as did His only begotten Son, Jesus the Christ, parable. Old and New Testament, they do not lack these.
In this case, Israel as shown in Ezekiel 15, is compared to a vine. If it bears fruit, well; but if not, what is it ? Is it shapely ? is it good for wood ? attractive in style ? It is ONLY in fruit-bearing that the vine's gift and greatness appears, What then is its knobbly kinkiness of form good for, when it is perverted to other use than what is its norm ? If it forbears to deliver grapes, what then ? It is good only for burning, and not much even for that! Burnt however, it will be. Such was the message to Israel of that day. So is it with man - exalting his desires for what he is not made, his barren scantiness is fit then only for burning, small though the value of that may be!
THE REEK OF UNFAITHFULNESS
Another cover of history in an image that bursts into parable, proceeds in Ezekiel 16. The Israel of that day is now compared to a stray and unclean soul found in the wilderness, adopted, cleansed, comforted, allowed to grow, adorned, beautified, maturing, but who for all that repaid by turning into an insatiable harlot. In point, this means a choice of empty gods, vain productions of the mind of man, who himself cannot save, and the religious use of the same false gods, empty idols (Ezekiel 14:7).
To what did it lead ? even to dependence on, and seeking help from nations. In a figure, the Lord shows here, it is like fornicators, people using her, while unlike the normal harlot, she was not paid, but herself paid for the services so provided! (Ezekiel 16:28-34). Egypt was one, Babylon another, Assyria a third (cf. Isaiah 31:1-3). Why seek such slender help when God Almighty is available! "How degenerate is your heart!" the Lord declares in the midst of these things (Ezekiel 16:30). In Isaiah He counsels,
"Now the Egyptians are men and not God, and their horses are flesh and not spirit."
he cries to them.
"Return to Him against whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted," Isaiah 31:6.
There is no mystery here, as for all the world: God would have all reconciled (Colossians 1:19ff., Psalm 96:7-13), and has taken measures to enable it and procure all things necessary; nor has He ceased to appeal to those who are moved to receive Him, to them applying the remedy. It is this which causes relief and restoration; but to those with unyielding faithlessness, those who seeing yet reject (John 15:21ff.), and indeed to those whom He has foreknown*1 as NOT preferring light to darkness even in His own mind, even before life came to this earth (Ephesians 1:4), there is no forced consignment to heaven! Not at all: to such as these, this would be like a kind of hell anyway, just as on this earth there may at times be discerned in many, a certain satanic atmosphere accompanying the sneer. Light abhors this, and it abhors the light (John 3:20-21).
FROM RUIN TO RESTORATION AND THE EVERLASTING COVENANT
In sum, in view of this
procrastination, preference and continuity of dereliction of duty, God declared:
"I will deal with you as you have done."
The mercy is this, that it was not eternal for that people, for there is always a remnant. There is thus hope and against this, there is continuing provocation and procrastination, as dim desire leads to anguish.
This comes as light amid the shade (Ezekiel 16:60): "Nevertheless I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish with you an everlasting covenant," the Lord of all grace and mercy declares. "I will provide atonement for all you have done."
Notice the parallel of the form of words used for the JUDGMENT first, at the beginning of this section, and then for the atonement. There is measure; measure against measure; the cost provided; and whether it be derided or not, it is free for the payment is that of another (Romans 3:23-27,Ephesians 2:7-10, Isaiah 55).
As to pride, then ? Never "open your mouth any more!" (cf. Ezekiel 36:22-31). Self-advertisement can be hard to take, but when one's life is redeemed, and it is God whom it is one's aim to proclaim, it is on realisation, a good antidote to devilish striving, and makes those sincere, far more delightful to live with, work with, or govern with ... as many find by the absence of this very thing, amid hell-borne diseases of the soul! (cf. II Cor. 2:11, Acts 13:10). Christ is their sufficiency, This, Paul shows of himself (II Cor. 3:5, 5:17ff.); and so say all of us, for it is He, the Lord, who is the normal, necessary, effectual Prince of Peace, eternal, thrust straight from the heart of divine glory, to reveal our God.
It is He and reliance on Him, as Saviour, Lord of glory and counsellor which is the King's Counsel.
Not believing alters HIM not at all; but it does relay a different destiny.
NOTE
Mystery is a grand subject in the word of God. Christ uttered mysteries of the kingdom, and in showing these, there was clarity, for as He said, many kings and prophets had desired to see what His disciples were then seeing, and to hear what they heard; but as to His disciples, through Him, they actually did find them! (Luke 10:24 with Mark 4:11). Indeed, to the disciples He said this: "To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God ...".
Even prophets are named as seeking to know what the disciples now both heard and saw! There ARE deep things, but the Spirit searches out even these (I Cor. 2:10), and further, He even teaches them in words given by God, we read! Marvellous indeed is the revelation of God.
To be sure, much is yet to be revealed, but not any of the essentials, on this earth. Philip was actively discouraged from waiting for something categorically BEYOND Christ, in terms of knowing God. Indeed, this is a touchstone of Christianity. Grand was the opening in Eden; grand was the culmination on the Cross for salvation; wonderful is it to have the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him (Ephesians 1:17), so that you may know what is the "hope of your calling," together with "the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints." It is precisely this that Paul prays they should receive.
This is already in the field of what is granted; but the time for moving from the dimmer discernment of a mirror as in I Cor. 13, (though mirrors can be very accurate) to the glorious reality of seeing His face, His name written on their foreheads, as in Revelation 22:4, indeed seeing Him face to face (Job 19) is not yet. The time for having all shrouded in mysteries equally, it is not now. Indeed, the kingdom of heaven is already for the Christian, in our midst.
More is to come but even the depths of the divine nature are already revealed, and He who IS God has shown Him as He is, to be sure in a human format, but then, that was made in His image in the first place, and is a vehicle able to be moulded to His mind, both to know it and to express it as through an express image (Hebrews 1). We do not have to wait for God to come; He has come. We do need to wait to grow up to the point of culmination in Christ, consummation in body, fit for eternity, and sinless clarity in resurrection in His very presence.
Meanwhile, however, Christ declared this (Matthew17:20ff.):
"The kingdom of God cometh not witha observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
It is not a matter of the outward structure but the inward reality, the preposition for 'within' in the Greek allowing either meaning, as Thayer points out in his dictionary; and both apply: it is both in your heart, and in your midst. It is an inner thing as in Matthew 23:25. The OUTSIDE of the cup they cleansed, but not the inside of it. The kingdom of heaven is INSIDE.
There is NO MYSTERY as to the outward moving, vital love of God who SO loved even the world, even that it might not perish, even that it might be saved, that He SO acted in such colossal magnitude of zest and planning, sacrificial mercy and intent, such awesome purpose so brilliantly set beyond mere form (cf. Philippians 2). In this, He acted, came, was crucified, was resurrected even to the individual body which was His, a portent and demonstration of what is to come for the believers in Him (and not in idols bearing the same name - cf. I Corinthians 10-11). THROUGH this He STATES that He would have all to be reconciled, that it is BY HIM (twice running in Col. 1:19ff.), that this applies whether to heaven or to earth, such is the latitude of this love. On its characterisable latitude, this is the case. On the consequences of this love, sent to man made in His image, there is a very different case; but that does not alter what the CASE IS for His love as it moves out toward man (Titus 2-3).
Results flow and overflow, both of His grace, and of the stated and defined ground of condemnation. This can come NOTWITHSTANDING this stated love, shown in its depth, breadth and character. What is that ground of condemnation even in the environment of such love, such desire for this world which He had made (as in John 1:1-3), there being but two categories, the Maker and the made.
It is that this light having come, in Person, and gone as far as was the glorious position, and when THAT had not only happened but faith was not forthcoming (as in John 15:22ff.), then THIS is the condemnation. As in John 15, it was only when the works and words of Christ were seen and heard that sin in the category of final condemnation arrived for display. If they had not seen and heard these things, then they had had "no sin," that is, terminal and final.
The scope of the outgoing love of God is NOT a mystery; it is stated and re-stated (I Tim. 2, John 3, Col. 1) in terms so categorical, that if these were to be stripped, heaven AND earth were to be given some new meaning, then words would cease to have any meaning at all.
What then ? It is not a strange quirk in the divine character, an unaccountable feature. As to God, HE SO LOVED with such breadth, re-affirmed in categorical and embracive terms impossible to crush, both in I Timothy 2 and Colossians 1:19ff., Jeremiah 48, Ezekiel 33; and how He mourns, whether seen in the New or the Old Testament, for those irreparably lost through misuse of liberty, as foreknown and often demonstrated as well on earth; for what is foreknown is a FACT and a feature, not a fiction, and its nature is not seldom seen in the souls that in historical times show.
As to God, Himself, He so loved that He came and acted, with the stated purposes, but when despite this there is preference for darkness, THAT (not something else like some mystery) is the condemnation. Little could be more unmysterious than that.
When God speaks why then do some want to contradict Him and speak on other topics as if they were the same, mixing results and causes, confusing what they deem impossible when God does NOT act with what happens when differentially He does. If the natural man cannot do this and that, does this mean that the supernatural God cannot deal with Him as He will, in the dynamic of deliverance! Shall we limit God! If the natural eye, to be physical, cannot see, does this mean that it cannot yet when Christ acts, on application. Can the Spirit of God not so convict that the penetration brings the very taste of the kingdom to the heart, and the sight of the supernatural to the eyes! Hebrews 6 affirms that it can, even for those who will never be saved! It is like a savour which is treated as if dissavour in the lost.
To be sure, the whole thing is not a mere matter of psychic episodes, but it has deep moorings in the foreknowledge of God, who before all time had already chosen His own; but this in such a manner that His stated purpose was IN THIS foreknowledge of how things were, fulfilled. In the WAY it came, these principles were all in entire attendence, even the most delicate mourning and the most profound grief of Jesus Christ as in Luke 19 and Matthew 23, have their counterpart in the depth of seeking.
TO be sure, this foreknowledge is expressly divorced from later performance (Romans 9) or works, but is a penetration of souls before they are involved in sinning, before indeed even they are born (Ephesians 1:4). It is this knowledge which is applied in history, and it is this which will be fulfilled to the uttermost point: to use His imagery of inclusiveness, not a sparrow falling to the ground.
On this earth, the human will is not as if autonomous, capable of making the decision in itself (John 1:13); but when God acts as He foreknew, it is in terms of the very purposes which enlightened His foreknowledge, since God does not change, and showed the truth in His Son on earth, for "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14), and in Him dwells the fulness of the Godhead in bodily form (Colossians 2:9). ANY movement from ANY principle formulated by Christ at once indicates the flaw in anyone's theology, whether that of Calvin or Arminius indifferently. What the Lord in His word choses to say, and says, it is so; what He denies, it is not so, even to the jot and the tittle. How simple it is, and how clear for clearing up invented mysteries.
There are wonderful mysteries about God, and when we are no more children in this world, but grown to the culmination of redemption, even that of the body as in Romans 8, we shall know as we are known (that is comprehensively). Now we can glory in the wonderful depth of God as to how and when and by what procedures and in what circumstances He will save each individual soul, that is to be saved; as by what disproportionate and inordinate grace He will intervene where there is precisely NO HOPE in a person, and grant the salvation which his heart denies him. Here is the mystery: His depth and His perseverance, His knowledge and His everlasting sight, time no barrier.
But it is not a provocative mystery, rather an evocative one.
Fancy His doing all this, how strangely wonderful and wonderfully strange, and how frankly glorious! That such a Being should exist and be over all, it is a mystery in the sense that a great mountain range evokes wonder, being so far above anything one could even begin to do oneself. Yet it has no rebuke to thought, but rather stimulates both it and us. There is no excuse for making mystery out of what God has made clear, just because His name is wonderful (cf. Question and Answer 7, Westminster, Repent or Perish Ch. 1, *1, *2, response).
It is all of grace: it is gracious to make man, to give him his liberty, not to exterminate him forthwith in immediate multi-layer death, or even doom. It is gracious to want to redeem ANY person who has sinned, more so to act to secure this in exceedingly painful and grievous deeds, let alone to humble Himself to enter our God-given form, in order to do it, and all this, far before even thinking of the heinous horror in forbearance for love, taking the verbal spew of condemned sinners, and letting it lodge on His dying form, and even this, WHILE dying for them, such is His love, let alone so that He should cry, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing," and find in such as Stephen, the person who would echo this even while being stoned.
Indeed, it is gracious not only to have made man free, but to USE this freedom in foreknowing and ensuring by predestination that this foreknowledge is implemented; and of what is it foreknowledge but of man before the world or its sin had even come, or thus of the sinners both those of inveterate preference for darkness, and those no so moved. In what context is it, this foreknowledge, this reality ? It is in that of the God who would have none perish (II Peter 3:9), but seek that all might be reconciled to Himself, even through the blood of Christ (Col. 1:19ff.), even those in heaven and on earth.
How gracious moreover, to so do this, that neither is man's affliction the determinant, as if all were hopeless, nor is God's desire the unbending force, but in love, as is the case with the loving heart, it is not force but reality that is sought, truth, not appearance, for the kingdom of God is indeed within, and lodges where, with all the restraint of love, it may (cf. Matthew 22:1-14). Many are indeed called, but few chosen. Preference, says Christ, for darkness - in the very context of His saving light - this is the condemnation.
How re-assuring to those who seek is this, that so far from stonily having no heart for what does not interest Him, God would have all, and hence there is not a calamitous mismatch that forces folly, but a glorious wind that stirs and a sight that draws (John 12:32), so that one may readily call upon the name of God, who is most willing to find the findable, redeem the repentant and grant grace with all His heart; though not to schemers, spiritual adventurers, to those who for all that, want only to make use of God in order to have their own way. We who are His are soldiers (II Tim. 2:1-5), and there is no distraint against enlistment; indeed He is calling to all the world, which He would have saved, and now is the time to come (II Cor. 6:1-2). By all means doubt your own heart; but never doubt the heart of God.