Vol. 10, No. 2, Mar. - Apr. 1981

EDITOR: Mr. Harry Foster

CONTENTS	[page]
The Light That Comes From Heaven	21
In The Beginning (1)	24
The Rest And The Courage Of Faith	28
The Transfiguration	31
Notes On 2 Corinthians (3)	33
The Grace Of God For An Angry Prophet	35
Surprised By The Spirit (1)	39

[ifc/21]
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THE LIGHT THAT COMES FROM HEAVEN

Poul Madsen

"Where there is no vision the people perish;
but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."
Proverbs 29:18

THERE are visions and visions. We must not be carried away by ideas or intrusions into the unseen (Colossians 2:18) but should seek the revelation which God will give us through His Word. It is true that without vision the people are led astray but the vision which rescues God's people from such perils must come from Him, and that is why the verse continues by stressing the importance of knowing and keeping the law. It is usually through the Word that God reveals His mysteries for, as the psalmist explains: "The unfolding (revelation) of thy word gives light" (Psalm 119:130). The greatest need of God's people, therefore, is not visions which provide sensations for men but that the Scriptures should be expounded with the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.

When the Bible deals with the transcendent, it often uses the word "mystery". That which men can never find out for themselves is a mystery which must be revealed to them if ever they are to establish contact with it.

Christ, the Mystery of God

Christ is the fixed centre of existence, its Alpha and Omega, beginning and ending, and yet He is a mystery. He has created everything and everything is held together by Him, and yet He is a mystery to His creation. He is the goal of life, one day everything is to be summed up in Him and subjected to Him; and yet He continues to be a mystery, so that His creation does not know, and never can by its own efforts learn to know, what its goal is.

There were many who saw Him when He walked the earth, and they thought that they knew who He was, but they were mistaken. Even His disciples could not understand who He was by their own efforts. But when it finally dawned upon Simon Peter that Christ is the Son of the living God, Jesus commented that it had been revealed to him by the Father in heaven. The same is true today, and it will always be like this. All human efforts to 'explain', 'prove' or 'define' Christ are in vain, for He simply does not belong to the realm of mere human understanding. It takes revelation from the Father -- usually through the preaching of the Word in the power of the Spirit -- for a man really to meet the Saviour and to know Him as Lord.

The Mystery of "Christ in You"

Paul tells us that "Christ in you" is a glorious mystery (Colossians 1:27). That the exalted Lord and Saviour should dwell in every born-again believer is entirely beyond our understanding. We can perhaps accept that He dwells in the high and holy places, but that He also dwells in the least of His children -- that they are in Him and He in them -- this exceeds anything that man can imagine or discover. Yet it is one of the greatest realities of the Christian life.

Without revelation, that is, unless God makes us see this reality, none of us can conceive of it. It is absolutely beyond the thoughts of natural man. It is not a question of mysticism, for mysticism can never bring anyone into the transcendent. What people experience in mysticism is no more than their own visions or ideas, whereas revelation embraces that which no man can discover or produce for himself; it lies entirely beyond man's reach and comes from God alone. So when a man claims that by meditation or introspection he has gained contact with God in an extraordinary way, he must be mistaken, for the knowledge of God comes by revelation.

It is characteristic that the Word emphasises that God wishes to reveal His mystery to the Gentiles. The Gentiles are those who were regarded religiously as being despised outsiders. It was to such that God chose to reveal His mystery, for Christ in you is an unmerited gift, an aspect of divine grace. It is not an advanced stage of experience for those who have shown themselves worthy of it, as some who are specially striving after holiness may think, for the moment a Gentile humbles himself in shame and confession to his Lord and Saviour, he is given a share in this mystery of "Christ in you". He is entirely unworthy of it, but is there any feature of the gospel of which any of us is worthy? [21/22]

The Mystery of the Church

Paul was also particularly entrusted with the work of giving light on the mystery of the Church (see Ephesians 3). The Church belongs to the transcendent, that is to say it is unattainable for the natural man and far exceeds all human thoughts or ideas. Societies and organisations are not like this. Men can start them and run them; for them no special revelation is needed, for they can be devised and understood by men. The Church, on the other hand, is incomprehensible; it lies quite beyond anything which men can devise or create. When Paul says that there is neither Jew nor Greek, man nor woman, slave nor free, but we are all one in Christ Jesus; when he says that Christ is given to the Church as Head over all things and that it is His body which fills all things -- when he reveals the true nature of the Church -- we are gripped by something which exceeds all our understanding.

Progressive Revelation

We might think that once secrets have been revealed to us, then they cease to be mysteries, but this is not so. It was once a mystery that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre of the universe, and that the earth revolves around the sun. Once the mystery was revealed, it ceased to be a mystery. The theory of relativity was a mystery hidden from everyone until Einstein revealed it. Now it is no longer a mystery but familiar to every high school pupil. It is quite different, however, with God's mysteries. They remain mysteries even after they have been revealed, for those who have the revelation never accept them as truisms but find that they are ever unfolding in new ways. A Christian never feels that he has mastered God's mysteries; he always knows himself to be one who has not yet fully apprehended the truth but rather has been apprehended by it.

Christ, the mystery of God, remains too great, too incomprehensible, too glorious, even for those who have lived with Him longest and know Him best. A Christian will never stop learning to know Christ. The love of Christ will never become a matter of course to him, nor His work of salvation a commonplace.

The great mystery "Christ in you" will never cease to be a mystery; it remains an incomprehensible and inexplicable mystery even though it is an enjoyed reality. The same is true of the Church. He who has had his eyes opened to see something of God's secret counsels in His plan of salvation will never cease to wonder at the Church as the body of Christ, even though his whole procedure will be governed by that revelation so that he continually asks himself whether, on the foundation of Christ, he is building the house of God with gold, silver and precious stones or with the world's materials which are cheaper and inflammable.

That two plus two are four is a reality which any man can find out for himself. That God has revealed Himself in Christ is a truth which belongs to another realm altogether and is something which man can never understand by his own reasoning. Nowadays people speak of transcendental meditation. It is a deception, for man can never reach beyond the immanent by meditation. He meditates in his own religious world -- his own inner feelings and raptures. This has nothing at all to do with the really transcendental truths of God which He alone can reveal in Christ. Such meditation can, of course, open the door to spiritual powers of darkness, whereas light can only come through God's Word.

Revelation by Faith

God's mysteries can only be received by faith, and they can only be held by a living faith which is renewed day by day. The transcendent, reality of Christ must be apprehended by faith, and faith involves a firm conviction that the things seen are passing away while the unseen are the real lasting things which endure for eternity. On this basis faith does not seek to support eternal realities by means of what is seen and passing. For instance, in the matter of the 'mystery' of Christ, why should people spend their time seeking to prove that He really is the Son of God? They do not seem to realise that in this way they are allowing people to sit in judgement upon the Lord, offering them 'proofs' in the hope that they will condescend to approve of Him. This makes Christ to fit into human thinking and to conform with human ideas; it has the effect of giving undue importance to the people who are asked to decide whether they will accept the fact, and of reducing Christ to be one who is forced to await their verdict. If faith must be dependent upon what 'proofs' it can find in the realm of human ideas, it is a very poor kind of faith. If faith is so to be watered down and made acceptable to human reasoning [22/23] it would be more honest not to call it faith, but rather common sense.

Preaching the Truth in a Mystery

True preaching brings revelation: it opens a world which would otherwise be closed to every man. It cannot be effective if it operates by arguments with "persuasive words of man's wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:1-4). In proclaiming Him who "had no comeliness" it does not have to use aesthetic aids to make Him more attractive and acceptable to man's understanding. Revelation does not come in a manner chosen by men -- it comes with the conviction and power of the Holy Spirit, with the overwhelming touch of the truth on man's conscience.

Nor does the preacher seek to make an impression on his hearers by using the attractiveness of his own personality. He does not aim to display how clever, well-spoken and pious he is, but wants to reveal Christ in a way which leaves the speaker hidden as much as possible. Preaching is not just saying something that is biblically correct and true. A man who speaks about eternal things as though dealing with a subject on which he can lecture and perhaps lecture well and eloquently is not preaching in the Biblical sense. He will kill revelation if he drags it down to the level of a theme among others to be fitted into a lecture syllabus. It is true that preaching is sometimes called 'teaching', but this does not alter the fact that it is teaching about things which lie beyond man's ability to grasp by natural reasoning -- it is a teaching which makes men's hearts burn, unless they harden their hearts against Christ. Only the quickening power of God's Spirit can convey such a message, and therefore he who is teaching must himself be anointed by the Holy Spirit. Any other kind of teaching is liable to make people even more deaf, although objectively it may be correct according to the letter.

It is characteristic of Him who is the truth and who revealed God, that when He was on earth He did not engage in 'dialogues' with people. He did not need men to tell him their opinions, for He knew what they were and how far they were from the truth. He made it His business to tell them what He had heard from His heavenly Father; He spoke out from a world that by nature they knew nothing of. Those who had ears to hear were blessed. The same applies today.

The Great Mystery of the Church

This great mystery (Ephesians 5:32) is by no means revealed to all those who know Christ as their Saviour, though it should be. Many Christians seem to think in terms of man-made traditions or institutions which could go on indefinitely even without the Holy Spirit. Although the Church is in this world, it does not belong to it. Its nature and work lies quite outside of what man can appreciate. In the Church God's thoughts, not man's, apply and God's methods, not man's, govern.

Because the Church is thus like its Saviour and Lord, every individual member is made responsible for its existence and testimony. The term 'Members of His body' reminds us that we are each limbs which have a vital part to play in the life of the whole. Our responsibility can never be discharged by occasional attendance at meetings and making some financial contribution. That sort of help is all right in connection with earthly causes or societies, but it is quite another matter to be a member of the Church. That means that we live for the Church, being ready to fill up that which is lacking of the sufferings of Christ for it and willing to make sacrifices of any and every kind, spiritual, financial, time and effort, so that the Church can grow up to maturity and rescue as many as possible from their lost condition. If the Lord has really revealed to you His thoughts concerning His blood-bought Church, then you must give yourself to it with all your might, regarding it not as an occasional filling-station but as your spiritual home, your spiritual responsibility and joy. This should be clear to all who observe you.

Paul tells us that the plan of the mystery was "from all ages" hidden in God (Ephesians 3:9). The Danish version reads: "from eternity". This shows that God's mystery is not only a reality which lies outside of man's discovery but also that it lies outside of time. It is a reality without a beginning or end in time, for it is from eternity. By faith -- which is not to say that we understand it -- we accept that Christ is eternal. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). That the Church is also without beginning or end in time, is such a great mystery that even faith can hardly grasp it. We are assured, though, that "He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him ..." (Ephesians 1:4). The Church was not [23/24] inaugurated by man and can never be established by man's hands or according to man's thoughts; it is the body of Christ and as such is the pivot which is central to God's plan of salvation. So great is the honour of being called in our generation (which only lasts for a time) to serve God's plan of salvation which is from eternity, that he who receives this revelation of the divine mystery, cannot do less than commit himself to it with all his heart and soul.

Light to be Seen in His Light

To see light in His light is a Biblical expression for seeing God's mystery and then preserving it by the Spirit. The mystery is so great that we must pray for grace to see it in His light and not in our own. There is always a danger of our seeing God's light (that is, His thought and purposes) and then drawing that truth into our human light of understanding or opinion. That has happened time and again through the centuries. Christ and His Church have been accommodated to human thought and the gospel has become man's enterprise for God instead of God's work through man.

What did the risen Lord do when He went and joined the two on the way to Emmaus? He did not say: 'Here I am -- you can see for yourselves that I am risen from the dead. What more do you want?' No, "He interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). That was when their hearts began to burn. He gave them insight through the Word, true spiritual vision. It is surely our job to do as He did.

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IN THE BEGINNING

(Some studies in Genesis)

Harry Foster

1. GOD'S WORD

I did not begin my Christian life with the book of Genesis. I began it by finding salvation through Jesus Christ as revealed to me in the Gospels. I had not known the Lord Jesus long, however, before I found that He was constantly referring back to the Scriptures, which I took to be the Old Testament. What is more, by about the middle of the first Gospel I found Him alluding to what is said about the beginning and the work of the Creator (Matthew 19:4). What more natural, then, than to open my Bible at the beginning and read Genesis 1 and 2?

To my delight, I found that my Creator had taken the trouble to explain to me how it all began. Appreciating that I -- like most other Christians -- am no scientist, He avoided technical terms which He knows I would never understand, and has presented the account with masterly simplicity. He knows, too, that I am no astronomer, so He has made no reference to galaxies and light years, but kept strictly to a simple story of days, which is just how I live my own life. As a Christian, my greatest desire is to be a better man, so I have no great interest in time periods, as such, and no desire to get bogged down with unprofitable allusions to them. So far as my limited apprehension is concerned, the difference between a few thousand years and many millions of them is quite unreal and could be rather muddling. Since my Creator is eternal, I can't see that such matters are of interest, except perhaps that they make Him all the greater in my eyes, for He assures me that He was there before the beginning. That is something which even I can grasp.

Clearly this is not the introductory chapter of a students' textbook on cosmology, but rather the opening chapter of a Book which aims to lead men into godly living. The book of Genesis has much to teach us if we approach it in this attitude, and I propose to offer a series of articles with this in mind. The series will carry the overall title of 'In the Beginning' and commences with this present consideration of the Word of God.

The Creative Word

It is amazing how much this chapter has to tell us. God says that the formation of everything in our world arose from careful consideration on His part. "Brooding" is the word which He uses (v.2) and this is a word which helps me to realise how much thought He gave to this world of ours right from the very beginning. This seems particularly to have been the case [24/25] when the time came for the creation of the human race, for He says that He took counsel with Himself in a special way at this point (v.26). Indeed it seems that the Creator took a great personal interest at every stage of the process: He observed and commented, He gave His blessing to His work and He found deep satisfaction in it. He describes Himself as saying, "Good" and "Good" and "Good" at almost each new step, and finally looked it all over and pronounced it "Very good".

And seemingly it was all so easy. When I realise how much trouble God has to make me a better man and when I consider the infinite costliness of my redemption through the blood of the cross, I marvel at the impressive ease with which these great cosmic events were accomplished. God tells me that He only had to speak the necessary words, and the whole universe came into being. If we take Genesis 1 and read it quietly, not allowing questioning thoughts to send us off at a tangent, we will surely agree that the governing thrust of the story is the repetition of the words, "God said". Chapter 2 mentions several other activities of God but again continues: "The Lord God commanded" (2:16), "The Lord God said" (2:18).

It is surely significant that God's people keep coming back to the original act of creation. The most famous of the many Old Testament references is the psalmist's assertion that "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast" (Psalm 33:9), but also in the New Testament we find that Christians reverted to it almost spontaneously. The first recorded church prayer begins on this note (Acts 4:24) and the first recorded worship of heaven maintains it (Revelation 4:11). It was part of the apostolic preaching (Acts 14:15 and 17:24-26), and the Genesis story is quoted in support of the spiritual instruction of God's people (2 Corinthians 4:6 and Hebrews 4:3-4). It mattered to those early Christians that their God was the Creator of all.

What is more, they associated the eternal Son with the Father in the work of creation. Genesis 1 mentions the Holy Spirit, but in ages past it was not yet time to reveal the 'mystery' of the creative Word who was eternally with the Father. The New Testament makes this very plain (John 1:3, Colossians 1:16 and Hebrews 1:2). Every Christian should therefore return to Genesis 1 and 2 with eager and reverent attention to its every statement, for it deals not just with spoken words but with the eternal Word of life. The threshhold statement of the great chapter which treats of vital faith is that: "By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath been made out of things which do not appear" (Hebrews 11:3), as though instructing that the man of faith should begin at Genesis, and not only at Genesis 4 (Abel) but at Genesis 1. The Bible offers no answer to the question, 'When?' It gives a limited reply to the question, 'How?', leaving us with an all-inclusive assurance that it was because "God said".

The Rejected Word

Here, then, is a scene of earthly environment and human life which even Almighty God could commend as "very good". We are left in no doubt as to its basis, it is founded on the speaking of God. The rest of the book -- and indeed most of the rest of the Bible -- has to deal with a very different scene, the one with which we are all too familiar. Genesis 3 tells us of a curse, Genesis 4 describes a murder and Genesis 5 presents us with the grim reality of death. The next chapter tells us that "The Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart" (6:6). There is a great deal in human history which amply justifies this divine disappointment. What has gone wrong? What is the cause of this cosmic tragedy? The answer is almost as simple as the original introduction. There it was, "God said", and all was well; now it is, 'Hath God said?' and nothing is well.

The question was satanic, but it was accepted and acted upon by our first parents. Their action represented a deliberate and insulting refusal to accept God's Word, casting doubts on His authority and so on His wisdom and love. There can be no question as to the factual historicity of this racial action, for everyone of us has to confess to an inborn distrust of God. All of us, at some time or another, has yielded to the Devil's temptation to question God's Word. 'Really, is that the truth?' we ask ourselves, or 'Has God said that? I don't believe it'.

It would be easy, but not very profitable, to enlarge on this innate distrust of God by considering examples from the world's rebels. It may be more surprising and perhaps salutary for us to consider illustrations from the most godly people which our race has produced. I invite you, therefore, to consider the case-history of [25/26] three of God's greatest saints, Abraham, Moses and David. In the careers of each of these there came a moment when the governing authority of God's Word was set aside, and with tragic results.

i. Abraham

The emergence of this great father of all the faithful marks a new and more hopeful era in the history of man's relationship with God. The Lord often spoke to Abraham and found that His words were received with such faith and obedience that in the end their ties became those of real friendship: "He was called the friend of God" (James 2:23). Can a man achieve any greater honour than that?

The fact remains, though, that even Abraham had his moments when he nursed a doubt about the reliability of God's promise and so took matters into his own hands. He had been promised a son. He had believed that promise. When ten years went by, though, and there was no implementation of the promise, he became so doubtful about its reliability that he accepted Satan's suggestion that he should use Hagar to make up for God's lack. It was as though Eden's serpent had again whispered into Sarai's ear: 'Yea, hath God said?' and she had communicated her unbelief to her despondent husband.

It may have seemed a reasonable matter for doubt. Sarai concluded that the Lord had no intention of fulfilling His promise through her, so that she actually charged Him with being responsible for her barrenness: "Behold now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing" (Genesis 16:2). The natural alternative (later accepted in the case of Jacob and Rachael) was that the slave-girl should become a substitute mother. On the face of it this may be regarded as self-sacrificial advice on the part of Sarai, born of a desire to bring comfort to her disappointed husband. Such an assumption, however, cannot be justified, since her words reveal that her motive was far from unselfish: "It may be that I shall be builded by her" (v.2 margin). Probably her motives were mixed. She wanted to help Abraham; she wanted to help God; and she wanted to gain advantage for herself.

What concerns us in it all is that the underlying reason for her advice and for Abram's acceptance of it was a question about God's pledged word. "Hath God said?", they asked, and then allowed their actions to express their doubt. It is not my purpose to enlarge upon the consequent suffering to all concerned, nor to comment on the delay of thirteen years before God again was on speaking terms with His servant. These are the human consequences of disobedience or even half-disobedience to what God has said. As for God's side, there is nothing more wounding than to be mistrusted by one's friends, so the Lord must have felt very deeply this culpable unwillingness to rely on His promises.

Most of us have erred in similar ways. The ever-active serpent has repeated to us his tempting question: 'Hath God said?', with the result that impatience, self-interest, even natural logic, have led us into schemes and manoeuvres which betray our underlying lack of trust in God. We deplore the treacherous betrayal of faith in Adam and Eve, and even perhaps in Abram and Sarai, while we ourselves offend in the very same way when we disregard or act independently of the promises of God's Word. In the end, and after considerable suffering, Sarai and Abram came to believe and prove how trustworthy those promises are. The change was reflected in their names, since they became Sarah and Abraham after that. By the strange miracle of divine grace, their failure led them into an even closer intimacy with their heavenly Friend. Happily the same may be true in our case.

ii. Moses

It may be rightly argued that Abram's fault was partly due to immaturity, and that his later life was blameless, but this cannot be said of Moses. There was one -- only one -- great glaring disregard of God's Word in his years of service, but it came almost at the end when we have become so accustomed to the refrain, "As the Lord commanded Moses", that we begin to wonder if the failure in Eden had not been completely overcome in at least one man. "Moses indeed was faithful in all God's house as a servant" (Hebrews 3:5). Yet the moment came when even he brushed aside God's clear words and gave way to anger and self-will. It cost him dearly. It produced an irrevocable decision from God that he should be excluded from the land. Is it possible that such a spiritual giant, who received and communicated so much of God's Word, should himself eventually succumb to the sin of rejecting what God had said? Let the story speak for itself. [26/27]

Unbelief was in the very atmosphere. All the people were questioning God's reliability. As a result, Moses was commissioned once more to go out to the rock for water, only on this occasion he was told simply to speak to the rock. He was too angry and impulsive to do that. He shouted out to the people: "Hear now, ye rebels; shall we bring you forth water out of this rock?" (Numbers 20:10). He then lifted up the rod of God -- not his old shepherd's rod but the rod which was "kept before the Lord" (Numbers 17:10) -- and struck the rock twice. God had said, "Speak": Moses decided to strike. It had worked before, so reason argued that it would work again. Just to make sure, he struck not once but twice. He had been told only to speak this time, for that previous striking had been a picture of Christ crucified and that was a once-for-all event.

Moses might not have understood the full significance of the type, but he knew very well what God had said and he had regarded the command as being of little importance. Once again the tempter was near, whispering, "Yea, hath God said?" in Moses' ear. He allowed his own feelings of resentment to set aside God's orders; he spoke no longer as a servant but as a master and he dishonoured the name of the Master in heaven both by his words and his actions.

iii. David

Like Moses, David was responsible for part of the Scriptures, and some of his psalms stress the supreme importance of God's Word, extolling its greatness, stating that in keeping of God's commandments "there is great reward" (Psalm 19:11). Even so, David became a distressing example of how one of God's most honoured servants was seduced by the tempter to flout His laws.

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife", said God, but David paid no attention to the divine Word. "Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill" -- commandment after commandment was defied by the man who should have honoured God but finished up by defying Him (2 Samuel 12:9). As he lusted after Bath-sheba and acted so disgracefully to get and keep her, we can almost hear him casting scorn on what God had revealed and muttering, 'Yea, hath God said?'.

Someone will point out to me that David is described as a man after God's heart. True enough. The fact, then, seems to be established that distrust of God and rejection of His Word is native to our race. If these great men failed, what hope could there be for the rank and file of God's people? And what hope, then, of recovery of those first days of man's existence when all was beauty and joy and there was no death. Could there ever be a man who would never harbour the faintest doubt about God's speaking and always give Him perfect and loving obedience?

The Vindicated Word

There could! God Himself became Man and recovered all that Adam had lost. He did more than that. He realised all that Adam never attained to. And the real battle was fought out not in a garden but in the waste wilderness when the Spirit-anointed Man refused every subtle temptation to question or contradict what God had said. Luke graphically describes that three-fold attack as "every temptation" (Luke 4:13) and reports that the Son of Man achieved a total victory over Satan at that time. They were only the opening stages of the great conflict, but they laid the foundations for all the further triumphs over temptation which the Lord achieved and which culminated in the full and final victory of the cross. By that triumphant death the Lord Jesus has brought into being a redeemed humanity to constitute the new creation in which old things have passed away and all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). The blood of the new covenant not only means the removal of all past guilt, but also that Christ's righteous obedience becomes so truly ours that our Creator can look upon us in Christ and find that it is possible for Him to say as He never could at the time of Genesis that everything He has made is "very good". Happily this time the verdict is final: it can never be reversed. By redemption the Lord Jesus has ensured that the Father will never again be disappointed.

The comprehensive temptations in the wilderness were of supreme importance, for they prove that in His own Person the Lord Jesus was building a new creation in which the word and will of God will never again be questioned. That was God's reason for allowing the Devil so to attack His beloved Son. It is true that in some ways we may feel that Satan took the initiative in tempting God's Son, but this is not the whole truth. It was the Holy Spirit who took the initiative, [27/28] for He led Jesus into the temptation situation, and He did so for the specific purpose of establishing in the Son of Man the basis for the new creation. It may be true that in the temptation Satan was trying to cast doubts on the sonship of Jesus. If so, he failed. It may also be the case that in the three temptations Satan offered his suggestions as to how Christ could pursue and fulfil His ministry for men without needing to go to the cross. In this, also, he completely failed. We do not understand the scope and subtlety of the temptations, but it does seem clear that the Lord accepted this opportunity of establishing at the outset that He -- as Man -- was totally committed to the Word of God, and determined to provide for the Father a new humanity which would never for a moment harbour that satanic question as to the reliability of His Word.

His direct response to each temptation was prefaced by the words: "It is written". We who love to argue must feel rebuked by the fact that Jesus did nothing of the kind. He did not enter into any discussion with the Tempter. He did not need to do so. For Him the straightforward statements of the Word of God provided an end to all argument. If "it is written", then man's wisdom is to listen and obey. According to Luke's Gospel, in the third temptation Satan made use of the Scriptures in order to take advantage for his own ends of that phrase, "It is written". The Lord's response to this faulty quotation was simply: "It is said ..." (Luke 4:12), showing that true Man does not regard the Word as merely a written book, but also as the personal speaking of God. So it was that as Man, Jesus met and totally defeated the enemy of God's creation purposes. By His death and resurrection He then went on to bring into being the new creation which is produced and maintained on the simple basis of "the word of truth" of the Father of lights (James 1:18). In this new creation there will never arise that treacherous question, "Yea, hath God said?" Faith will always triumph, for Jesus is both the Pioneer and the Perfecter of faith.

Christ is the Amen as well as "the beginning of the creation of God". It is most striking that when here on earth, He introduced so many of His saving statements with the word "Amen", often saying it twice. To us the significance of the word 'Amen' is that it is used as a concluding utterance, but the Lord used it at the beginning. He begins with finality. It is rather a pity that the translators so often mask the word by using some phrase or words which give the rendering of 'Verily' or 'in truth'. This tends to blunt the forcefulness of what He said. 'Amen' is not a Greek word which needed translation; indeed it has become an untranslatable word in all languages. Its force is to express the total reliability of Him who is "the God of the Amen" (Isaiah 65:16 m.). The oft repeated "Amen, amen, I say unto you ..." of the Gospels points us on to His message to the seventh Asian church: "These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true, the beginning of the creation of God " (Revelation 3:14). The new creation begins with the "Amen".

So the wheel turns full circle from Genesis to Revelation. The humble believer delights to read Genesis 1 and dwell on the implications of the words, "And God said ...". In the sequence of that original story, he notes that the blissful seventh day of God's rest had no evening (Genesis 2:3). In the spiritual counterpart, the new creation, there will happily be no evening and no night. Ours is indeed "a faithful Creator" (1 Peter 4:19) and His Word an eternal Rock.

(To be continued)
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THE REST AND THE COURAGE OF FAITH

[T. Austin-Sparks]

(Ten years ago, on the 13th of April, Mr. T. Austin-Sparks went to be with Christ. We have felt it right to re-print one of his last messages, hoping that it will stir the memories of those who knew him and provide a spiritual challenge to us all. -- Editor)

THE very door into true Christianity is the door of rest, the rest of faith. The very simple way in which the Lord put it in His appeal was: "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). The words are rightly used in messages to the unsaved, but in Hebrews it is given a very much deeper and fuller meaning [28/29] than is generally recognised: "There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God" (Hebrews 4:9).

A PRESENT ENTERING INTO REST

If you look at the context, you will find that the meaning is something into which the people of God had not entered. "They were not able to enter in because of unbelief" (Hebrews 3:19). They could not enter in. And who were they? They were the people of God. It is the people of God for whom the rest remaineth. Do not restrict this to the future. It does not mean that when we get Home to glory we shall arrive at the sabbath rest. It is not something for the tombstone -- 'He (or she) entered into rest'. It is something which remains now, as a present thing for the people of God -- not in death but in life.

One of the things which is lacking in so many of us is this rest, or, to put it the other way, the things which characterise us are fret, anxiety and all those things which are just the opposite of calm assurance and quiet confidence. One thing our enemy is always trying to do is to rob us of divine rest by churning us up and harassing us.

God's rest is the rest of faith, not just the rest of passivity or indifference. There is all the difference between carelessness and carefreeness. We have no right to go to the unsaved and bid them to come to Christ and find rest until and unless we ourselves know that rest. Our testimony and our ministry are jeopardised and discredited if we are not ourselves in rest; and the object of the enemy's activity in this matter is to discredit us by taking from us that very birthright of our union with Him who is never perturbed or in doubt because He is the One who reigns. He is Lord, and the very lordship of Christ is contradicted by the unrest of the people of God.

The rest of faith must be our position; first in the great matter of justification, for if we are not settled there, we will not be settled anywhere. The enemy is ever seeking to raise again the question of our right standing with God, that is, with Christ on the ground of what He is. So there must be the rest of faith in that, but also in a hundred and one other ways, in the practical things of everyday life, things which are not in our power to arrange or secure. Every day brings many ways in which there is the opportunity to stand into the rest of faith, into that faith in the Lord which brings rest. So subtle are the enemy's ways that he will even tell us that some things are too small with which to trouble the Lord. However small a matter may be, if in it our testimony is preserved in rest, then it is a big thing to the Lord and not a little thing. If in any matter the Lord's glory stands to suffer, then it is a very big thing, even though it may be only an incident in our daily life.

THE NECESSITY OF FAITH

'We see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief.' Not able because of paralysing, incapacitating unbelief. That means that the sooner we face this whole question and, as far as possible, get it settled, the better. For thirty-eight years Israel was held up and went round and round on this one question as to whether they were going to believe God. It arose on all kinds of matters. It arose on physical matters, for life in that wilderness was a great proposition physically. The Lord did not change the physical conditions, but called first for a change in the people themselves. The physical conditions were settled when He had got the change inside them. When the matter of faith in Him was settled, then the Lord dealt with physical needs. The question arose in the emotional and intellectual realms, and the challenge was made along all those lines in numerous ways. The Lord never changed it, never prevented it, but He always focused on one point. The thing that matters is the inner man, and not until the issue was settled there did the Lord deal with the other things.

We say: 'If only the Lord would deal with this physical matter, or these circumstances, or this something else!' That is our way of reasoning, but the Lord's thought is deeper down than that, and it is simply a matter of believing in God, or resolute faith and confidence in God. The Lord is trying to get us out of our variable soul life, where we are at the mercy of our feelings and reasonings, into a realm where in spirit we are steadfast: "Their heart was not steadfast with him" (Psalm 78:37), and around that the whole of the forty years of Israel in the wilderness is gathered. The key to this is spiritual; to be strengthened with might by His Spirit is the [29/30] answer to it all. The other may then give way or, at least, we shall gain ascendancy over the other, even if it is not removed.

FAITH IN GOD THE SECRET OF COURAGE

The message in Hebrews turns us back to the Scripture in Joshua 14:6-24. Of that first generation only two men got out of that soul realm -- Joshua and Caleb. They triumphed in that realm first and then the Lord brought them out, but the fact that it was the rest of faith which was the secret of their triumph is brought out so beautifully in this episode described in Joshua 14.

Caleb, one of the two, comes to Joshua. He is an old man now, but he is still living by faith in the position which he took up with the Lord years before. The spies who brought the evil report looked at God through their circumstances, but these two men looked at their circumstances through God, and it made all the difference. Now as an old man Caleb comes to Joshua and, while all the other people are being given their inheritance in nice easy, prosperous positions, Caleb says: "Give me this mountain where the giants are; this hilly country where the cities are great and walled up".

This brings a challenge to all our hearts. What are we looking for? An easy inheritance, something that will give immediate satisfaction? Are we looking for the flourishing land? The faith which brought Joshua and Caleb into rest of heart before they came into the rest of the land was this kind of faith: 'Give me a tough proposition! Here is a situation full of difficulties, full of threatening, full of adversaries. It is almost an appalling prospect, yet give me a chance there!' 'It may be that the Lord ... as the Lord spake.' It is a case of looking at the mountain through the Lord, and not at the Lord through the mountain.

I think that this is the kind of faith that we need to bring us into rest. Yes, there is a mountain right enough, a physical mountain, a circumstantial mountain, a mountain of difficulty in our work, and naturally we would do the wise and commonsense thing if we said: 'No, we are not going to touch that'. But faith says: 'I am not going to skirt that mountain. I am not going to turn my back on it and run away. Give me this mountain!'

It is not just a question of natural courage or pugnacity. We know that if we are left to ourselves we have nothing and had better quit. But the Lord is challenging us, and uses this example of Caleb to do so. At the end of a long life, when we might think that now is the time for us to be given an easy allocation and a place of restful contemplation, we must be ready, with Caleb, to say, 'No! Give me this mountain wherein are the giants and the walled cities!'

The choice was a difficulty for him but it was an opportunity for the Lord. As we move into the future we will have to face similar choices and they will not be easy. We may have to face what seem to us appalling difficulties, within and without, things which could easily take the heart out of us, but may God give us the quiet, restful assurance and confidence in Him which says: 'Give me this mountain as an opportunity for proving the Lord!'

And Caleb got it! It turned out to be Hebron, a name full of spiritual significance. Hebron had a wonderful place in the purposes of God. David was crowned in Hebron before he was ever crowned in Jerusalem. The word 'Hebron' means 'fellowship', which emphasises the great inheritance which comes to men and women of faith, people who declare that they are not wanting to escape from their difficulties and avoid the hardness of the way of God's will, but are ready to trust Him. Let us be among them, taking what faces us in the Lord's strength and seeking always to give Him an opportunity to do for us what is naturally impossible.

"There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God." Such a rest takes no account of what we can or cannot do in ourselves. It is a sharing of the complete rest which God enjoys in His own finished work. To have it is not only to experience calm but also to show courage. May the Lord give us that faith!

Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake

   To guide the future as He has the past.

Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake;

   All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know

   His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below. [30/31]

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THE TRANSFIGURATION

J. Alec Motyer

Readings: Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36

IN a certain sense we enjoy a privilege which the Lord Jesus never had. We have our own copy of the Bible -- often a prized one -- whereas the Word of God was not printed in pocket form in His day, but was much too bulky and too expensive for most people. On the other hand, in the mystery of God becoming Man, He grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52) and knew the Word of God with such accuracy and aptitude that as a child of twelve He surprised learned professors by His understanding and His answers. How magnificent was His knowledge of the Bible! He had a reply for every temptation drawn out of the Word of God. He took care to honour the Word of God when men came to Him with their questions. "What is written in the law? How readest thou?" He asked a lawyer, so displaying His confidence that it was all there in the Scriptures. When He spoke of always doing the things that pleased the Father, He was not mainly speaking of any intuition as to the will of God but of the will of God as stated in the written Scriptures of which the Lord Jesus was Master. Oh, if we would be like Jesus, let us covet to be like Him in our knowledge of the Word of God!!

The knowledge which the Lord Jesus had of the Word of God not only allowed Him to quote the Scriptures but enabled Him to use them in a special way. There were times when He reached back into the past, into Scriptural events which had happened earlier, and then reproduced those events in His own experience so that the Old Testament acted as a commentary upon Himself. It was this that He was doing when He took His three disciples up into the mountain for what we call His transfiguration. It would seem that He deliberately reached back into the past and plucked events out of the earlier Scriptures so that we might learn more of Himself.

IN the first of our two passages we read that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai "he did not know that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him" (Exodus 34:29). Bible translators try to help us by sorting that one out and some say that Moses' shining face was by reason of the Lord speaking with him and others that it was by reason of his speaking with the Lord. The Hebrew simply says, as we have read, "by reason of his speaking with him". Who was speaking with whom? I don't know; you don't know; nobody knows! Usually when a Scripture has two possible meanings, I like to suggest that we take them both. What we do know is that as the result of that mountain-top fellowship, something of the divine glory was imparted to Moses so that the skin of his face shone.

Jesus went up to enjoy mountain-top fellowship with the Father and while He was praying, the fashion of His countenance was altered, and His raiment became white and dazzling. The glory that Moses had was on the skin of his face; it was imposed from the outside. It was a glory that rubbed off from God and rubbed on to Moses. The glory of Moses was partial; it touched his face only. The glory of Moses could be hidden; he wore a veil upon his face because the people were understandably scared by this sight of glory. The glory of Jesus, however, was the glory of His whole person; the glory of Jesus could not be hidden so that even His clothes became white and glistening. Out from His whole person there shone a radiance which penetrated even the opaque veil of His clothing. The lesson is plain and thrilling. It is that the glory of Jesus transcends any glory that preceded it. Here on earth those three disciples had an inkling of the surpassing glory of Jesus which fills the heavens.

The passage in the Gospel tells us that "Jesus took with him Peter and John and James" (Luke 9:28), while in the Old Testament we read: "Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel" (Exodus 24:9). Jesus went up with three named individuals; Moses went up with three named individuals; and they saw the God of Israel. As they went up that mountain did Christ's three disciples remember the incident in history and did their knowledge of the Bible prompt them to realise that Jesus was taking them up into the place of revelation? They knew that both Moses and [31/32] Elijah in their day had gone to the mountain top and held communion with God, so did their glimpse of the two heavenly visitors heighten their expectancy that they too were to have this supreme privilege?

We do not know. Surely, however, the divine record has been assembled in this way so that we might appreciate the facts. Certainly when the three went with Jesus to the top of the mountain and saw the cloud approaching, they knew very well what that meant. The cloud was the presence of God Himself. On Mount Sinai the cloud came down because God was there, and Moses is said to have gone into the cloud where God was. No wonder that these three were afraid then, for they were being introduced into the very presence of God. When the cloud lifted, though, they saw no man but Jesus only. In other words they did see the God of Israel, for the glory of Jesus is the glory of God.

IN another Old Testament passage there are again three men whom God met in the cloud of His glory: "Moses and Aaron among his priests, Samuel among them that call upon his name. They called upon the Lord and he answered them. He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud. They kept his testimonies and the statutes that he gave them" (Psalm 99:6-7). The psalm tells us that "He used to speak to them in the pillar of cloud; they kept his testimonies ...". What wonderful days they must have been when God's people walked with Him in those wilderness ways, accompanied by the towering pillar of cloud! When the blackness of the desert night fell, they were able to appreciate better that the cloud was just a gracious veil thrown around them by the glorious presence of God in light and fire. God was there! The whole camp of Israel was lit up with the radiance of a God who had come down to dwell with His people. He was not there just as an ornament, and not only as a protection, but He was there to reveal Himself, to speak His word and to be obeyed. Moses an Aaron were the greatest men of their day, but when God used to speak to them, they kept His statutes. Great as they were, they were under the Word of God. They had to obey what was said.

When the cloud came on the mount of transfiguration, God was again present in the midst of His people and again He spoke from the glory. This time, though, the Voice from the cloud said: "This is my beloved Son, hear him". The Lord Jesus is not under the Word of God: He IS the Word of God and the One who must be obeyed. He is the One of greater glory, divine glory, and He is the supreme authority. And every part of that divine acknowledgement of the Son reaches back into the past.

"This is my Son" -- that points back to the promise inherent in the line of David, that a king would be born who would be the Son of the Most High God: "You are my Son, this day have I begotten you" (Psalm 2:7). "This is my chosen" -- that goes back to the Servant of the Lord prophecies in Isaiah chapters 42 and 53. The Servant was the One who would bear His people's sins and perform the work of atonement, so in this way the Father nominates Him as the promised priest who would be responsible for the atoning work of redemption. "Hear ye him " -- that looks back to the prediction given by Moses that the Lord would raise up a prophet like unto him. "Him shall ye hear", he said, "in all things that he will declare unto you" (Deuteronomy 18:18). The mountain-top utterance, then, declares the Lord Jesus to be the King, the Priest and the Prophet of the people of God.

IT is striking to look back into Luke 9 and discover there that the question keeps arising as to the identity of Jesus. That wicked man, Herod, said: "John I beheaded, but who is this?" (v.9). When Jesus had been praying and the disciples were with Him, He asked them: "Who do the multitudes say that I am?" (v.18), and later on He asked them directly: "Who do you say that I am?" (v.20). Who? Who? Who? Who is this Jesus? Who is He to you? Is He to you the One of greater glory than any who have ever preceded Him? Is He to you the One of the very divine glory, God Himself? Is He to you the One who exercises authority through His word, the One to be heard and obeyed? Is He your Prophet, Priest and King? Who is He to you?

And never let us think that this is an unpractical exercise in Bible study and nothing more. The transfiguration of the Lord Jesus comes to us with a date, and the date is "about eight days after these things" (v.28). He had already spoken before He unveiled His glory. And what did He say? He called the Twelve together and, sending them out on a mission, He said: "As many as receive you not ..." (v.5). Your [32/33] mission will not be a push-over. You will find that often you will not be received; there is discouragement ahead. In the midst of a hungry crowd, Jesus said to His disciples: "Give ye them to eat" (v.13). They had to face clamant demands which completely outran their resources. After Peter's confession that He was the Christ of God, the Lord seriously charged and commanded them to tell this to no-one, saying that "the Son of Man must suffer and be rejected and be killed" (vv.20-21). He then added His solemn words: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross" (v.23), going on further to warn them that "Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and my words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed" (v.26). It was eight days after these sayings that He showed them His glory. He warned His disciples that they would suffer discouragement, face demands which outran their resources, endure many disappointments and shocks, have to face the costliness of discipleship and be ready for the challenge of His Coming again as Lord, and then He seemed to say to them: 'For all this you will need to know who I am. You need to see My glory. That vision and knowledge can alone suffice to carry you triumphantly through'.

If we do not see the glory of Jesus, how can we live for Jesus? The two go together. It is of supreme importance to have a spiritual revelation of Him. Inner renewal always comes by a fresh awareness of the great glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. In all life's setbacks, He is King. In all life's failures, He is the Saviour Priest. In all life's demands, He is our mighty Prophet. At every moment we must hear the Father's voice from the glory: "This is my Son, my chosen; hear ye him!"

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NOTES ON 2 CORINTHIANS

Poul Madsen

3. THE FRAGRANCE OF CHRIST
2:14-17

PAUL was not able to evangelise in Troas. Nevertheless he had no sense of defeat there but rather of triumph in Christ. The apostle does not say: 'Unfortunately I didn't accomplish anything in Troas', but instead he thanks God for what happened there. Something had been accomplished in Troas, and accomplished through him. He was not like an employee whose value could be measured by man-hours of work. His whole life was active, because everywhere and always it was a testimony to Christ. He was able to affirm that God always leads us in triumph in Christ, and spreads the fragrance of His knowledge everywhere (even in Troas).

The main emphasis is clear enough, though it is not easy to interpret the pictorial language in detail. Does the passage mean that we share in the triumphal procession as victorious generals who have conquered, or as captured prisoners who have been conquered? Both interpretations make sense. The former points to the fact that we share Christ's triumph even when, as at Troas, that triumph is not evident. The latter, however, stresses the fact that, since we have been conquered by Christ, we are no longer our own, a truth on which Paul enlarges in 4:10 and the following verses.

In the triumphal procession the knowledge of Christ is diffused everywhere as a fragrance. The choice of words is typically evangelical, for the apostle does not say that through him God imparts the knowledge of Christ everywhere, for the knowledge of Christ cannot be likened to any other knowledge which can be communicated merely by human words. The knowledge of Christ must be revealed; no man is capable of knowing or understanding Christ who is the mystery of God unless revelation is given to him from above.

The apostle compares the revelation of Christ to a "fragrance", and then goes on to expand this idea with his explanation that "we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing" (v.15). It was an aroma of Christ to God -- [33/34] notice that! As he travelled around, Paul was always being given over to death for Christ's sake, and in this way the life of Christ was being manifested in his mortal flesh" (4:11).

Presumably Paul took this idea of fragrance from the offerings under the old covenant where it is said of the sacrifices that they were "a sweet savour for the Lord" (Leviticus 1:9). This means that the Lord was pleased by them. The Old Testament altar always directs us to the cross, and Paul's claim that it was no longer he but Christ living in him (Galatians 2:20) was based upon the fact that the death and resurrection of Christ were actively operative in him. In this way -- and only in this way -- was it possible for the knowledge of Christ to be communicated through Paul everywhere as a sweet fragrance.

This fragrance is not stated to be directed primarily to men, for it is described as a perfume to God among men, both among those who were being saved and those who were perishing. For the latter it was anything but a fragrance; it was rather the foul smell of death to death. This suggests that such men despised Paul's smallness, the working of death in him; they had no awareness of the treasure in the earthen vessel (4:7) but were rather irked and offended by him. They must have been affected in some way, for they could not avoid the touch of what was pure and holy. They were, in fact, brought face to face with Christ through the apostle, but the spirit and word of the cross was foolishness to them and consequently unacceptable. For those in the way of salvation, however, there was a fragrance of life unto life. They breathed in new life in all its sweetness as they accepted his message.

It is hardly accidental that Paul mentions first this matter of fragrance of death to death and afterwards that of fragrance of life unto life, for the whole gospel springs from Him who died. That which is offered to people as a testimony to the love of God is Christ crucified. It is the message of His death, and it becomes death for those who are offended by it. For those who receive and understand the message, though, it is Christ's death which brings them life, and His resurrection life which gives life to them. He who died is alive today. He is risen! It is startling that the same testimony can bring either life or death, eternal life or eternal death.

When Paul speaks of "those who are being saved" and "those who are perishing" he reminds us that it is God who alone decides whether a person passes into life or remains under judgement. Perhaps that is why he exclaims: "Who is sufficient for these things?" No doubt this question embraces the whole matter of spiritual sufficiency in general, especially as the Christians in Corinth were inclined to think themselves superior to the apostle in this respect, but it refers particularly to sufficiency in always manifesting the knowledge of Christ as a sweet fragrance everywhere. Paul's answer is quite clear and it is that no-one in himself is sufficient for this.

And yet it happens! How can that be? The apostle later explains that spiritual sufficiency comes from God alone (3:5). His immediate words, though, give a clearer description of how that divine sufficiency operates in the matter of preaching. "We are not as the many, making merchandise of the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ" (v.17). While his whole life was a testimony to Christ, a sweet fragrance to God, Paul's main calling was to minister the Word as a preacher. He therefore concentrates on this feature of his ministry, fully aware of the fact that although the knowledge of Christ cannot be intellectually imparted but must come by revelation, such revelation is given through the spoken words of preaching.

Here indeed a man is cast upon the Spirit's aid, for much that is spoken about Christ can be right without there being any vital impartation of the fragrance of spiritual revelation. If the preacher seeks prominence for himself, he will hardly reveal Christ. He may talk about Him, but he will only succeed in exposing himself. Such a self-seeking man is bent on saving his own life, whereas the central feature of the knowledge of Christ is that He refused to do this, but chose the death of the cross. A preacher who is not himself marked by the cross but rather one who seeks to avoid its operation in himself, or even seeks to use its message for his own aggrandisement, is quite incapable of conveying spiritual revelation to others. Such a one waters down the cross and robs it of its power.

Paul could claim to be quite unlike so many others -- even in Corinth -- who sought personal gain by means of God's Word. He was able to write of his "sincerity ... as of God, in the [34/35] sight of God, ... in Christ" (v.17). His motives were pure; he spoke as commissioned by God, the God whose love is the very opposite of man's self-love and self-seeking. He claims to speak "in the sight of God ... in Christ". This means that as he spoke it was with the conviction that God was near and listening to every word. He also says that he himself was abiding in Christ as he spoke. In this way Paul found his sufficiency in God. As his words were spoken "as in the sight of God", so his life and ministry diffused the fragrance of Christ among men.

It is instructive to notice the strong contrasts which he makes in these first two chapters:

NOT	BUT
Self Confidence	Trust in God (1:9)
Earthly wisdom	Grace of God (1:12)
Yes and No	Yes and Amen (1:20)
Lord over your faith	Helper of your joy (1:24)
Peddlars of God's Word	Directly commissioned by God (2:17)

These five contrasts clearly express the difference between what the Lord disowns and what He acknowledges. The left hand side has nothing to do with true evangelical Christianity.

(To be continued)
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THE GRACE OF GOD FOR AN ANGRY PROPHET

Harry Foster

"Salvation is of the Lord" Jonah 2:9

THE true Christian has no problems about the story of Jonah. The Lord Jesus settled those once and for all. It is a noteworthy fact that our Lord, without any systematic teaching on the inspiration of the Bible, made it plain that some of the most disputed passages of the Old Testament are wholly reliable. These include the Creation (Matthew 19:4), the Flood (Matthew 24:37), the prophet Daniel (Matthew 24:15) and this story of Jonah when He authenticated not only the prophet's successful mission to Nineveh, but also his strange experience inside the huge fish (Matthew 12:40-41).

We therefore do not question the facts, but we may well ask why this book is given a place among the prophets since -- unlike the rest -- he has no words of correction or exhortation for us. Clearly it is the story itself which is meant to convey God's message to us, and perhaps that message is best summed up in Jonah's own words, spoken from the depths: "Salvation is of the Lord". His deliverance was so wonderful that Christ chose it as an illustration of His own death and resurrection, and it was so undeserved that the worst of us, in the most hopeless circumstances, can take heart of grace from its message.

I suggest four obvious truths which emerge from this little book:

1. However unlovely a man may be, God still loves him.

One of the simplest items of evidence that this book is inspired is found in the fact that it is not allowed to end with chapter three. What a dramatic climax that would have made! What a success story for God's servant! The first three chapters tell of the prophet's deliverance, his recovered ministry and the mass turning to God of those who heard him preach. If this had been written by human skill, it would have ended on that high note. But it does not do so. We go straight on into chapter four and find the whole chapter devoted to the anticlimax of Jonah's sulky petulance. 'Is this a man of God?', we ask. 'Can a preacher so mightily used by the Spirit of God be such a mean complainer, such an unchristlike character?' The answer is here for us all to see. He can. And since the Bible acts as a mirror, we may have to confess that we see something of the corruption in our own natural hearts as we read this sad disclosure of unexpected depths of meanness and ingratitude in the prophet.

We know that he resisted God's original call to go to Nineveh, but we also know why he did so. A man may perhaps be forgiven for unbelief in such a situation, so if Jonah had argued that the Ninevites were so corrupt that they would not pay any attention to his call to repentance, [35/36] we might have felt some sympathy with him, even though this proved not to be the case. Not that he could be justified in such an assumption, for we are told to despair of no man; but at least his disobedience might be a little more excusable.

Or if he feared for his own life, we would not feel so critical of him, since most of us shrink from activities which expose us to mortal danger. If Jonah had run away from God's will because he was afraid of being martyred, who of us could blame him for that? The reason, however, was quite different from this. He later freely admitted that his reluctance to obey was not due to either of these emotions but simply and solely to the fact that he did not want God to spare the city: "Was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I hasted to flee into Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and full of compassion" (4:2). Grace for me, but condemnation for them!

Quite possibly, as a true patriot, Jonah might have been apprehensive that this heathen power would overthrow the kingdom of Israel. It may be that he presented to God arguments -- and very good arguments -- as to why it would be risky to spare Nineveh and much safer to destroy it. We usually have pious arguments when we try to reason ourselves out of obedience to God's demands on us. The blunt truth was, however, that Jonah was a man of mean and selfish character, a most unlovable type.

We may perhaps attribute better things to him when we read of his advice to the frightened sailors, for this seems unselfish enough, and we are ready to forgive his original reluctance when we find him accepting the second chance of obeying God, setting out on his mission and faithfully delivering his message to the city ripe for judgment. His subsequent outburst, though, confirms our worst fears as to the baseness of his character; he is "exceedingly displeased" (4:1), not because his mission had failed, but because it had succeeded beyond any human expectation. Four times over we are told that he was angry, angry with God, when he saw a mass repentance and a sensational demonstration of the very words he had earlier uttered about himself: "Salvation is of the Lord". How nasty can a man be! Even a believing man!

Jonah forgot the grace that had delivered him and even told God to His face that it would have been better to have left him in the fish: "Therefore now, O Lord, take I beseech thee, my life from me ..." (v.3). We are aghast that any man, above all a most successful preacher, should talk to God like that. We find ourselves in sudden agreement with the last part of his outburst: "it is better for me to die than to live!" Amen, Jonah! We quite agree. You really are not fit to be allowed to cumber God's earth!

Yet God loved him. Our heading reminds us that even the most unlovely man of the covenant is loved by our faithful Jehovah. We are therefore not surprised that God did not lose patience with him but took the trouble to remonstrate with this sulky servant of His, trying to teach him a lesson of Godlike compassion. What condescending grace was this! The great God of creation, Maker and Sustainer of the universe, took the trouble to order the sun and an east wind and to prepare a shady bush and a destructive worm, in a patient effort to teach Jonah a spiritual lesson. In that lesson He gave the complaining prophet an indication of His own compassion towards His needy and ignorant creatures. How much Jonah profited from that lesson we are not told. So far as we know his last words on the subject were: "I do well to be angry, even unto death" (v.9). What an unattractive character! Yes, but he was loved. That is miracle of divine grace. Salvation is indeed of the Lord.

2. However distant a man may be from God he can still pray.

We pass over the first chapter and move into the prayer which "Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly" (2:1). This is poetry, so one imagines that it was composed after he was safely back on dry land, but it is clearly his painstaking and elaborate effort to record for us what were his thoughts and words as he found himself "in the belly of hell" (v.2).

Possibly the prophet used poetry as his medium because he felt that anything less would be inadequate to describe the horror and hopelessness of his situation. For the moment we focus on his realisation of how far he now was from God. In his original folly he was trying to get as far away from God as possible, as he himself confessed to the sailors (1:10). For their part they were horrified at his madness. Let us not regard him as an ignorant fellow who [36/37] imagined that Jehovah was a mere tribal god, limited to his own circumscribed territory. Oh no, Jonah's creed was correct enough, as he himself confessed: "I am a Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven which hath made the sea and the dry land" (v.9). Unbelief, however, is the most illogical of mentalities; it induced him to imagine that he could hide from God by travelling as far West as possible. Geographically he never got very far -- God saw to that -- but spiritually he became as remote as a living man can be.

See how he describes his predicament: "Cast out from before thine eyes", "I went down to the bottoms of the mountains, the earth with her bars closed upon me for ever". With the weeds wrapped around his head and with all God's waves and billows passing over him, he made the confession that "they that regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy" (v.8), which he had certainly done. With his life in "the pit" and his soul fainting within him (vv.6-7) he must have felt that no living human being could be farther away from God than he was.

But God is infinitely gracious. He made Jonah aware that he could still pray, even if it was from that most unlikely prayer chamber. And God could still hear, for Jonah reports: "Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice" (v.2). Hope was not altogether extinguished, for he tells us: "I said, I am cast out from before thine eyes; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple" (v.4). Even in those dark depths he was able to remember the Lord and to seek again the mercy which he had so foolishly forsaken when he regarded the lying vanity of his own self-will. "And my prayer came in unto thee" he thankfully exclaimed, "into thy holy temple" (v.7). The subsequent arrival safe on dry land was proof positive that God had answered his prayer but, even before that happened, he appears to have had the inner comfort of knowing that God had not rejected his appeal for mercy.

The message is for us all. In the darkest hour or the most hopeless circumstances, even when the matter has been aggravated by our own folly, we can still look towards the holy home of God in heaven and still be confident that our prayers are accepted there through Jesus Christ and will be answered. It only needed a word: "the Lord spoke to the fish ..." (v.10). That is the one verse in the chapter which is not poetry. It is plain fact. God spoke the word of salvation. And why did He do it? He did it in answer to a sinner's penitent prayer. So whether we are in fact distant from God or whether it is only that we feel remote and downcast, we learn from Jonah's story that our prayer will be accepted and will receive a swift and effective reply. Salvation is of the Lord.

3. However deep a man may be, God can still lift him.

As we have seen, the language used by Jonah was alarmingly desperate. He had gone down into the depths; "the waters compassed me about even to the soul" (v.5). Not only was he in trouble, but the trouble was in him. He was down as low as a man could possibly be. What made it worse was that he knew that he was there by his own fault. It was his sin which had taken him down "to the bottoms of the mountains".

We cannot but marvel that the Lord Jesus deliberately chose this story as an illustration of the depths which He Himself would plumb. As He considered this chapter, He must have been greatly troubled as His holy soul registered the horror of a man who had been cast away from the presence of God because of his sin. In the Gospel passage the Lord identified Himself with the prophet's experience: "as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a sea-monster; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40).

In the same passage Christ describes Himself as "a greater than Jonah". The surface meaning of the passage must be at once rejected, for the same could be said of any of the other prophets. They were all greater than Jonah, so that there could be no point in the Lord's claim to be greater than this individual. I conclude, therefore, that what the Lord did mean was that His deliverance from the depth, His resurrection, was greater even than the miracle which happened to Jonah. It certainly was! The Lord Jesus went down into deeper depths than all these verses can describe and, like Jonah, He went down under the load of great sins. Unlike Jonah, though, it was not His own sins which separated Him from the Father, for He was sinless, but He was submerged under the indescribable [37/38] weight of the sin of the world. No wonder He sweat as it were great drops of blood at the grim prospect!

But the Word of God offers comfort, even in the darkest hour, and to the Lord Jesus the story of Jonah spoke of lifting from the depths, of a power which is able to raise a man even from the deepest grave. If the Lord Jesus was greater than Jonah in His sufferings, He was infinitely greater in His experience of God's lifting power. He had to wait the full three days, and He was fully committed to do so, but when God's moment came He was raised by the glory of the Father. And it is He who offers that same power to every believer. Jonah illustrates the fact; the Lord Jesus confirms it and makes it real; that however deep a man may be, God can lift him. Salvation is of the Lord.

We remember that Paul longed to know more of "the power of His resurrection" (Philippians 3:10). This suggests to us that Jonah's story speaks of something more than the first deliverance which comes to the repentant sinner when he first believes -- though it includes that. The unfolding of the Christian life involves ever fresh experiences of fellowship with Christ in His death, experiences which provide God with opportunities of demonstrating in us the might of His resurrection power. By all means let us allow Jonah's story to tell the sinner that salvation is full and free, and by all means let the faulty saint be encouraged to look to God for restoration, but the full message of Jonah to Christians is surely what Paul meant when he claimed: "we are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh" (2 Corinthians 4:11). Every day, however low we may be brought, the Word of God assures us that there is a lifting from the depths for us. Salvation is of the Lord.

4. However much a man may have failed, God can still restore him.

"The word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time ..." (3:1). These simple words have so often been used by the Holy Spirit to console and inspire believers who are conscious of having failed in the matter of obedience. It may be that the apostle Peter derived comfort from them. He certainly is an excellent example of how the Lord can not only forgive our failure but renew our call to service. I would imagine that there are few of us who can claim to have given prompt and immediate response to God's first call to us. Our flight from His will may not have been as blatant as Jonah's but, like him, we have been all too ready to seize on apparent guidance -- a suitable ship, a provision of passage money -- to justify our moving off in the opposite direction from the revealed will of God. Jonah is not such an unusual character after all, but a rather typical specimen of the average believer who has not learned the discipline of prompt obedience.

It may sound romantic, but it is seldom easy to give such obedience. Many centuries later, in this same seaside town of Joppa, the apostle Peter received a call to carry the gospel to those whom he regarded as unsuitable outsiders. He was in a similar predicament to that of Jonah. For a time he argued with Christ, saying: "Not so, Lord" (Acts 10:14). Happily he capitulated to the Lord's sovereignty and went to Caesarea, with results almost as startling as Jonah's mission to Nineveh. But it was not easy, and it was not uncontested, as every obedient servant of Christ discovers.

The special message here, though, is for those who have been running away from the will of God, have regretted it and found forgiveness, and yet are tempted to feel that they are now disqualified from further service. To them Jonah's story brings the heartening message that however much a man may have failed, God still has work for him to do. It may be that, like Jonah, he can be entrusted with the very task he formerly rejected. It often happens like that. Or it may be that the second call has different features. That is God's business.

One amazing truth emerges, though, and this is that somehow God is able to make use of our past failures to further His own purposes. Here is a new factor in what we now do or Him. This is typical of sovereign grace; it not only pardons the failure but incorporates values from it into the new mission. Can anyone doubt that Jonah's ordeal, and quite possibly even his physical appearance occasioned by it, gave powerful re-inforcement to his message? Let us be under no misapprehension. It does matter whether we are obedient or not. It matters to us, for refusal to obey God's will always brings loss. In addition to his harrowing experiences, Jonah forfeited the passage money he had paid [38/39] and may even have lost his luggage. The point is, though, that God did not lose. He gained. He was able to send as a messenger a man so clearly owing everything to grace that the message had an even more powerful impact on its hearers than it may have done otherwise,

These, however, are the secret things of God which belong to Him alone. The clear and simple message which is for us all is that however much we may have failed -- or feel that we have -- God can take us up and use us if we newly commit ourselves to Him.

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SURPRISED BY THE SPIRIT (1)

John H. Paterson

THE New Testament tells the story of a lot of surprised people. The evidence is there in the use of words which express their surprise: the New Testament is studded with "amazement", "astonishment", and reports of "wonder" and "marvelling". From the time when the coming of the Lord Jesus was first announced to the time when the narrative ends in Acts 28, nearly everyone connected with Christ and His Church received a surprise at one moment or another! Friend or foe, committed or indifferent, they all seem to have been astonished at the way the story unfolded -- all but the Lord Jesus Himself and an old man who had gone up into the Temple to pray, and had no difficulty at all in recognising the Messiah, however astonishing His outward form.

The coming of the Messiah was one circumstance, we might feel, by which no Jew ought to have been surprised. On the contrary, it was the single great event to which they had all been looking forward for centuries. Their surprise, not to say their failure to respond, arose from the fact that, when the Messiah came, He did not look or act in the way they had expected He would. So His birth was a surprise; His choice of career or public role was a surprise; and His death was a surprise -- only that is far too weak a word for a situation in which they themselves brought about the death of the One they had so long expected. It was a case of lacking discernment or understanding: "Which none of the princes of this world knew, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Corinthians 2:8).

What I want to draw your attention to at present, however, is the way in which the surprise continued after the Lord Jesus had returned to His glory, and left the task of witness to His Church. Not all the surprises by any means were pleasant ones -- we need only to recall the astonishing events that surrounded the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5): great fear, we are told, came upon all who heard about them. The world in general seemed surprised by the vigour and the powers of the early believers, and the believers themselves were surprised by the direction in which they found themselves moving.

If we follow the narrative of Acts and ask the question, 'What were the greatest surprises of those early days?' then it seems to me that the answer is clear. For the onlookers, the most surprising thing was the transformation of the disciples from a timid, divided and, frankly, rather witless band of men into a team endowed with courage, clarity of thought and miraculous power. For the believers, the greatest surprise was the replacement of a Jewish tradition and Messianic hope by a universal message of God's grace to all who would believe and receive.

Why the Surprises?

Why should God's actions in His Church have so greatly astonished people? It seems to me important to attempt some kind of explanation, and I think that there are three answers.

1. The first is that we must remember that what we have in Acts is the record of the work of the Spirit. Essentially, it was He who provided the surprises, for to human beings He must always appear mysterious in His ways. And this is so, I think, not simply because we lack a sufficient understanding of those ways to foresee what He will do, but also because the Spirit will not be tied down or commanded to act in a particular way. One thing which emerges very clearly from the study of Acts is that, on different occasions, the Spirit acted in different ways. [39/40] As a result, it is dangerous to try to build doctrines of the Spirit's work on individual incidents (a rich source of confusion, alas, among God's people!) As soon as they become convinced that they have fathomed the secret of the Spirit's ways, Christians seem to succumb to the dual temptations of thinking that they can command Him for the future and of writing a book to pass on their formula to others!

We shall return later to what might be called the certainties of the Spirit's activities. The point, as we shall see, is that these are few in number and that the Spirit always retains freedom of action in individual cases. What we learn from Acts is that there is no universal formula of His working. Pentecost was different from, say, Samaria (Acts 8:14-17), and Samaria from Caesarea (Acts 10:44), and Caesarea from Ephesus (Acts 19:2-6). We may certainly gain experience of the work of the Spirit, and profit by it, but we may never treat Him as predictable; never take for granted that we know what He will do next.

2. The second explanation of those many surprises in the early days was that people were constantly underestimating the Spirit's capacity to change lives. And here we must be sympathetic. God had done many wonderful things for Israel in the old days, but the only known examples of lives changed for the better lay far back in their history -- and some of them had unhappy endings to their tale. These Jews had certainly read of the transformation of Jacob after he met with God, and they knew how God had given Saul "another heart" (1 Samuel 10:9), to fit him to be Israel's king. But the transformation in Saul's case did not last, and the more common occurrence in the history of their kings (as with, say, Solomon or Uzziah) was that a change took place only for the worse.

Small wonder, then, that the conversion of that notorious persecutor, Saul of Tarsus, found the believers not merely surprised but extremely suspicious (Acts 9:26)! Small wonder, too, that these spectacular transformations were interpreted by men like Simon the sorcerer (Acts 8:18-19) as some kind of magic -- a trick that could be learnt and practised by anyone. Nothing in their previous experience had prepared people for this kind of transformation in the lives of individuals.

3. The third explanation is of a different character. But I think that the main reason for the surprise at the Spirit's working arose out of the simple human tendency to dislike or resist change, and so to be unprepared for it when it happens. If that sounds like a highly subjective assessment of the situation on my part, I can at least claim some excellent supporting evidence. For when Stephen was given the opportunity of defending himself before the council (Acts 7), it was resistance to change which he took as his theme! What his apparently rambling historical review was intended to do is summed up in his last sentences, and the reaction of the Jews to his statement made it clear (7:51-54) that they, at least, had understood the point: "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye".

We are all caught out by change because, fundamentally, we are hoping that it will not happen. Change scares us, and threatens us. And in the early Church the principle threat to its original members was clear: that the special, God-given status and privileges of the Jewish people -- and they were all Jews -- might have to be shared with Gentiles. That this came as a surprise to them is readily understood, for it was a reversal of everything which their early history had taught them -- no mixing with heathen peoples; a God apparently exclusively their own. The surprise was reasonable enough. But the reaction was not -- not if they gave any heed at all to the gospel message, and not if they had listened to the Lord Jesus proclaiming a new, universal kingdom. Their reaction was defensive; they wanted to keep their Christ Jewish, not share Him with the world.

We know from the epistles that these Judaizers were present from the start within the Church, and that they caused endless trouble. And if we are honest with ourselves we have to recognise that their descendants are with us today; indeed, that we all are guilty at times of wanting to possess an exclusive Christ. Is it not tragically easy to find ourselves reassuring ourselves that, because we have more light on the Scriptures than some other group of Christians, or more evidence of the Spirit's work in our midst, therefore we have a special status as believers, or greater claim upon Christ than they? [40/ibc]

There are plenty of modern equivalents to the scene in the house of Cornelius, described in Acts 10. Picture it, if you will. Here are a group of Gentiles, headed by a Roman soldier, untutored in the Christian faith and, until this very moment, unlinked with the movement that is sweeping the land. Upon this group, whose members have made no profession of faith so far, and who have been prepared by only the sketchiest of sermons from Peter (and actually the sermon was not even finished yet!), the Holy Spirit chose to fall. Do you not imagine, as I do, that there were some Christians present whose reaction was an astonished: 'Lord, how could You?' And that they then set off hotfoot for Jerusalem to report that Holy Spirit's breach of protocol, and blame Peter for allowing it?

There are lessons there for us all but, for the moment, let us concentrate on the positive, the happy side: that there was one man present -- Peter -- who was probably just as surprised as the rest but who responded splendidly to this shattering revelation of the Spirit's sovereign ways. So much depended on Peter at that moment -- so much that God had taken the very special precaution of preparing him by a dream (Acts 10:9-16); that is, of giving Peter what we should now call a 'dry run' so that, when the reality burst upon the company in Caesarea, Peter recognised the principle and accepted this dramatic change of direction. You may care to speculate on what would have become of us all -- of us Gentile Christians -- if Peter that day had come down on the side of tradition; if, throwing the weight of his own authority into the scales, he had announced that this could not be Pentecost all over again because God would never do such a thing for Gentiles.

So the scene of action shifts in Acts 11 back to Jerusalem. It seems to me that, in the Book of Acts as a whole, Jerusalem generally meant trouble. But on this occasion we can thank God that there were men there willing to do one of the hardest things that man can do -- admit that they had changed their minds! They began by reproaching Peter, as though he himself had in some way commanded the Spirit to appear. But in the end the New Testament reports, in one of its happiest verses: "When they heard these things they held their peace and glorified God" (11:18). They might well be surprised by the Spirit's ways, but they didn't have to be stubborn!

This particular battle had to be fought many times over, and similar battles are ours today, but at Caesarea the principle, at least, was established of the Spirit's sovereign right to do as He pleases; to bless whom He will; to lead while His people follow. There were longstanding prejudices to be overthrown, but how important for us that they were overthrown! It is not so much the unexpected in the Christian life as our reaction to the unexpected that counts.

But this, of course, leads us on to the problem: how do we identify the work of the Spirit? Is every unexpected thing in our lives one of His surprises? In these chapters of Acts which we have been using as a background, there are reports of many false spirits, and much confusion between sham and reality. And so we must ask what guidance there is, what safeguards there are, in our 'discerning' the spirits. How do we know when we are discarding mere prejudice, or when we are throwing away some vital principle? We shall try to answer this question next time.

(To be continued)

[The text of this article ran onto the inside back cover.]
[There was no "Inspired Parentheses" in this issue.]
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[Back cover]

"BUT HE SAID: YEA RATHER, BLESSED ARE THEY
THAT HEAR THE WORD OF GOD AND KEEP IT."
Luke 11:28
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