AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH - August   24, 2008

A CONTINUATION OF THE ORIGINAL THRUST AND BASE OF
THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA,  ON CHANGELESS BIBLICAL LINES …  

The COUNSEL THROUGH HISTORY, CONQUEST THROUGH FAITH :
FAITH IN HIM WHO IS FAITHFUL  (continued and expanded)

1. PRELUDE FOR CONTRAST

Before we proceed today, having stopped short of our third heading last week, to the counsel to faith through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, it may serve to consider some example of trials finding weaknesses, reminiscent of minute fractures in airplane tails, through metal fatigue.

While the imagery is merely suggestive, the point is this: how did history find a use in showing before all, both participants and observers, the danger of weaknesses, of indulging little flecks of opinionatedness, obstinacy, self-regard and the like, with possible alerting outcomes ? In fact, if the eyes be focussed, in this work of trials, actual cases of things perhaps subtle and spiritual, receiving the equivalent of high power microscopic enlargement, we are enabled to see how history can act like a laboratory aid.

It can  stir thought, challenge the heart and  enliven the spirit with enlarged perspective. An initial case initially arrives for us, to examine in more detail in its implications. 

Simon Magnus, as seen in Acts 8, showed some sign of faith in Christ, but so impressed was he as a magician, aspirant of some spiritual power, by the dynamic of God at the hands of Peter and John, that he asked if he could buy such a power. To set about buying something of God (for His power is His own), a precious work for something He has made! What a fiasco! Peter said something to him which J. B. Phillips loosely but interestingly translates as "to hell with you and your money", or something such. Urgent repentance was needed lest divine mercy should not arrive in his way, to prevent calamity. A tender heart was  urgently recommended, before such wickedness in a heart "poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity" should have its due end!

That Gospel was first proclaimed in Samaria at that time by Philip, apostles coming later, and this purchase solemnised at the Cross of Calvary could not be found elsewhere or seduced by any other source or motive, nor could the power found by drawing near to  God by redemption. ONLY there, in repentance as he receives the work of God made available in pardon, the curse taken, the faith not mistaken, can man find the power of God. Moreover, it is not usable for manoeuvre or manipulation of anything or by anyone. It is God's own power and provided for the purposes of HIS love, purity and truth with peace, and can no more be bestowed extraneously, as if divorced from its basis and purpose, than can a flower be constructed of paper and yet grow (cf. II Corinthians 11). Just as teaching without power is predicted for the fallen end of our Age, so its abuse! (II Peter 2, II Timothy 3). The sink has large appetite!

The very drama of these things, by contrast for all time TAUGHT the integrity, purity, incalculable holiness of God, and the folly of ANY who claim the power to get money from you, in order to operate in God's name, or to use His power in their own appointed ways, whether in illicitly manipulated tongues (cf. A Question of Gifts) , 'masses'^* (Hebrews 2, Acts 3:19ff., Matthew 24:26), imaginary angels (v. Colossians 2:8, Revelation 22:18-19, Isaiah 43:10-11) and would-be gods as in Mormonism (Isaiah 43:10-11, Colossians 2:8), or any other biblically unwarranted procedure.

Such is a common affliction in sects, some of which become inordinately rich, in seeming to preach Him who had no place to lay His head, in a way disturbingly blatant, but once for all exposed in this case of history. The word of God reveals the errors, and so the flight crashes.

With Christ, there was no need of heavy campaign funds, for His election was not to a wealthy political position, but to the Cross. There was no need of contrived publicity, for His was election to degradation, His elevation to the pit. Yet His mission exceeded that of all kings and counsellors, being not for a moment but eternity, and those who followed Him in faith, these inhabit not the place of security on earth, but a place in the kingdom of heaven, which this earth neither can nor will imitate, until at last He returns to exhibit what He declared, not only in power, but in appearance! Then it will show what His saints already know, and His Sermon on the Mount has declared, better than self-service, national pride, or international delusions: the way for man.

Into history Christ was poured like molten metal, glowing with incandescent wonder, yet like zephyrs He came, giving rest. Whether in power or purity, in strength or in vulnerability used to secure victory, He used time as as template and space as a pen, to inscribe His name as the truth beyond the stars and for all time. Without Him, history would not only be impoverished, but meaningless; God would be a liar; truth would be forfeit and hope for man would be zero. But what is impossible, is not to be found, and what is certain, is to be discovered in history as it flowed to Him through the prophets of His coming, by Him in the Cross, and He flowed over it like a vast breath of oxygen, to stir its dying embers, if by any means any flaming, might be taken and kept, turned into eternal flame when the hearth was gone (Psalm 104:4).

In history is the experience of truth under contest, the expression of truth under rejection, the impact of truth by counsel, amid aliens, the assault on truth by militants; and it stands while all else falls, the Cross in its weakness outdistancing the flurry of arms and pride while force collapses and pride wilts (cf. I Cor. 1).

2. THE POINT OF HISTORY FOR REALISATION

As God put man into history,

	to test and to shatter deceit in spiritual realms and impressionable hearts,
	to teach and display,
	to prove and to demonstrate,
	to remonstrate and to reveal,
	to give to experience under fire the reality of life,
	to expose the weakness of human might even when it seems insuperable,
	to prove in passing time the woeful falsities of the self-appointed 'wise',
	to exhibit truth that none could falsify, the very light of eternity in the phase of what is temporary,
	to manifest that it is more than power which rules, for it is wisdom not fools,
	to put to death the slanders of the faithless by the endurance of faith,
	to show purity and love in contrast with devilish insinuations, as in Job,
	to show that it is not power and privilege which prevails, as if 'nature' were king, but love in life, since God is king,

so did He come Himself into history, to leave the ultimate in practicality in His own Person as Messiah.

Murder could not subdue Him, nor any word, disease could only yield to His command and death was subject to Him. He even made a new day of rest, in His resurrection^*5 and His rest is what this world can never match, meet or even understand.

Man who would excommunicate history as too foul, does not understand that it is to exhibit

	that sin is foul and truth is glorious;
	that peace is illusory without God and patience is required, not the erratic solecisms of self-will;
	that sin MEANS suffering and its exposure and remedy cannot remove it, but
	that God bore more than all and offered restoration of life to all, removing sin’s guilt in Christ’s own removal (I Peter 2:22-24), His resurrection our warrant; and
	that He loses none, having foreknown His own.

AS THE REMEDY IN HISTORY, He Himself delivers from a depth that is bottomless to rebellion to a height that is wonderful, where faith believes Him (Hosea 13:14, 14:1ff.). The only problem is this: the absence of faith. No orphan except by willfulness (John 14:18), it is man who is the alien, not from space, but through severance from God (Ephesians 4:17-19). Alienation needs reconciliation and for this, offence must be covered by Christ’s blood (Romans 3:23ff.).  Righteous wrath is propitiated by due payment, the Cross the site (Romans 1-3).

Why is this so dire ? It is because God has DONE the works of creation and redemption: we no more create our salvation than the earth! It is faith in Him, allied to a personal repentance not least for thinking little or ill of Him who is our Head and beginning, the ground of destiny, which is needed, not nostrums and philosophies of proud presumption and empty assumption! 

Man has sinned, God has rebuked him, entered this world and demonstrated the basis of the Gospel with power, and exhibited the results of sin with the loathsomeness of its depiction on Himself, as sin-bearer on the Cross. Man has made history and God has shown man in this same history, the rewards of folly and the way home. ALL responsibility is that of man, and if man does not come to receive the living Christ, and His word which is His, the depths are not for the burial of his sins, but the burial of his ‘sacred self’, too rich to become poor and repenting, be saved.

As to the depth of it, for everyone who receives Him, He has that covered no less than the breadth and the height (Colossians 1:19ff., Ephesians 1:4, 3:10). The name upon Him is Faithful and True.

3. CHRIST SHOWS THE SUBLIMITY OF DIVINE FAITHFULNESS -

A short look at the Divine Faithfulness of Christ,

who as God showed God

How faithful was He who outfaced the confronting devil himself, met him decisively and incisively with the covenantal word of God, in the temptation (Matthew 4), who when confronted with the educated wits of unbelieving religious savants, confounded them with His answers till they did not dare to query Him any more (Matthew 22:46). In this case, He had just asked THEM a question: How is it, was the thrust, that IF the Christ is simply a descendant of David (that is, not God as man but mere man), that David in the predictive Psalm 110 concerning Him, calls Him Lord! What father does this to his son! The point: Christ is the LORD of all, and using the seed of man for incarnation, requires faith in Him by all, not as some man, but as God definitive in flesh.

He is no mere image, but the very light of God is His. Not consultant-philosopher, but the word of God is He. Not some arrival, but Eternal is He (John 8:58). No mere oration but declaration with demonstration is His.

‘Faithful and true’ is His name in Rev. 19, and such it is! Rely on HIM! Thus having loved His own, we read in John 13, He loved them to the end. Judas only was lost, foretold devil and deceiver, as in John 6:70, known to Christ long before the betrayal, and indeed shown in Zechariah 500 years before. You see this not only in Zechariah11:12 -13, where the sale of God, incarnate, is noted before it happens with due divine splendour of wisdom and exposure of man’s futile works. Even the sum of money for the sale is there predicted half a millenium in advance! This with Psalms 41, 69, 109, the last cited in Acts 1, when a replacement for Judas was in view, shows the treachery of man summed up and brought to culmination in that of the traitor who gave this ‘fine price’ for his Lord.

It is very beautiful how in Psalm 69 you not only find the anguish of the crucifixion, but the judgment on those who, unrepentant, must face reality at last. When Christ was there, His prayer was for their pardon, but when there is no more mercy, then only due destiny remains. In Psalm 109, the final curse on the besotted Judas is seen in its strength; but in Psalm 69, you have the curse on Christ as Redeemer in its impact for all who received its transference by faith (Romans 5:1, 8:32):

¨   “Reproach has broken My heart, and I am full of heaviness.
I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.
They also gave me gall for My food, and for My thirst, they gave Me vinegar to drink.”

Coming to those depths, He could have groaned and failed; but He did not. Some still want to blame God for not just announcing the ‘winners’, but this neglects the life that shows the mind its diseases, the discoveries of the laboratory of life! His is not some authoritarian ensemble but a display of what are not assumptions but actions, not simply verbalised but actualised as on the Cross.

Nor in the searching flame of life, did Jesus Christ grow too disgusted to serve and to save, when betrayed for a little time even by Peter, nor did He waste time haranguing that disciple, but just LOOKED at him (Luke 23:61). As good Shepherd (foretold in Ezekiel 34), He did not merely talk about laying down His life for the sheep, or go only so far, but went to the Cross, on the way, well able to have denied that He was the Son of God (Mark 14:61ff.), so saving Himself. Yet keen to the end to be true to His people, to His godly vocation as Saviour, His work as Shepherd, His sacrificial act of atonement, providing redemption freely by Himself being bound (Titus 2-3, Romans 3:23ff., Galatians 3), He lived it through to the end.

It is godly endurance, not simple survival which matters!

“Mercy shall be built up for ever: Your faithfulness You will establish in the very heavens,” (Psalm 89). God never fails (Zephaniah 3:5)  Part of this may involve cherishing as discipline. If judgment must begin at the house of God (I Peter 4:17), let us be ready like Hezekiah and cleansed, that we may serve instead of being spiritual hospital cases!

There is work to be done, for the night is coming when no man can work! (John 9:4). Let us rejoice and exalt the Lord, let HIM be worshipped, His word followed and no other! Let God be God, and the Lord be Lord, and no other! “For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12) and as to those who refuse to receive Him, the wrath of God looms over them (John 3:36).

This world crumbles under its own spiritual weight; but there is no other name.

	Its resources are polluted, rifled, wars erupt to spoil them further; but there is no other name.
	Its civilisation exalts itself, while millions fall, but there is no other name.
	Its philosophies destroy themselves in ambiguities, equivocations, contradictions; but there is no other name.

It laughs at life, but cannot make it.

It distorts life and cannot correct  its own mischiefs.

It soars to the skies, and falls to the pit:
for there is no other name but One, Jesus Christ
who foreseeing all, foretold what was to be,
and now that it is, is soon to return,
the conditions fulfilled.
 

It is as if an aircraft coming closer to a city, passed first this, and then that of many landmarks, making the situation clear.  History makes it clear, chained in its flow to the word of God, that His return is near (Luke 21:24 - cf. Answers to Questions  Ch. 5).
 

In this case, for the unbeliever, it is appallingly near, so that eyes must be closed; but for the believer, refreshingly clear, so that the heart must be kept open, keeping ourselves in the love of God (Jude 21), looking with faith to eternal life (Philippians 3:20-21), and seeking the lost to the end.

What is the good of seeing the Titanic sink, with partying and gladness, even if the band is playing Near my God to Thee! It is better to be airlifted to deliverance, and transferred into the heavenly places (Colossians 1:13); for deliverance from the wreck of ages is at hand. Man needs however to be lifted from the deck, before he also is confounded with the wreck (Hebrews 2:1-3).  

A short look of faith at the Lord of heaven who brought salvation freely to earth will suffice, to the Lord's Christ and to not another, if it be mixed with faith; for then a very long look can proceed, for as Isaiah 40 put it, "Say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God!"

It is He, as the prophet stated in that Chapter, and history showed, who would take the lambs in His arms! "This is the will of Him who sent Me," cried the Christ,

	"that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
	"Look to Me and be saved, all you ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other"

said that same God before the incarnation.
 

There is neither separation, nor division, neither alteration nor revision. The God of eternity, the Lord of creation, the maker of history, Him lifted up on the Cross has come: if you see Him (not some illusion industriously given His name), and believe in Him, then everlasting life is yours. If this does not appeal, then scarcely could you know Him. For me, eternity is great time to know God, most fitting, eminently desirable and intensively felicitous. HE made us all!