AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH July 4, 2010
A
Presbyterian Church following the Bible without Qualification
and the Lord Jesus Christ without
Compromise by Faith
THE CURSE CAUSELESS WILL NOT COME
PART II Proverbs 26:2, Galatians 3:13
HISTORY COMES WITHOUT PAUSE
Last Sunday, we were pondering Isaiah 44, and the Lord's delicious exposure of the farces that men make, when they try to outwit Him. HE makes what HE says happen, and there is the prime difference. Man EXPERIENCES what God says; and God in love, has experienced what it took to redeem those who repent.
In Isaiah 44, you see the creation, astronomical and terrestrial, the power of that sole Creator to intervene in the works of free-willing man, He being in entire control, able as in the Egyptian saga, to make kings look foolish, and the wise, in their vaunted powers, ignoramuses (cf. I Corinthians 1, Isaiah 29:13-14). These strategies and determinations, so abundantly fulfilled in so many cases of philosophy and seduced political systems for so long in so many, are a part of His instruction to man, already in possession of His word in the book, the Bible. These are practical demonstrations to assist, exposing fraud and not diminishing at all, the insistence on His word.
It is rather like some great aircraft firm, like Boeing, having an argument with a child of 5 years, in the field of differential calculus, in this, that the disparity of knowledge is so great. Thus the sheer effrontery of misled man in his captious cups of self-assertion, is in need of exposure, even if out of kindness!
Instead of merely resting in this series of sanctions against riot, the Lord acts positively as well. Indeed, so positive is His action and choice, that He has determined that even for a city as lush in evil as Jerusalem, before long, at that time, to be destroyed, there is to be a rebuilding. This you see in Jeremiah 51:3-4, where the Lord forecasts the devastating slaughter to come in judgment on Babylon, when its day of power is done, comforting Jerusalem, about to be destroyed, with these words:
"For
Israel is not forsaken nor Judah,
By his God, the Lord of hosts,
Though their land was filled with sin
against the Holy One of Israel."
Light follows darkness in this mercy.
As we have just seen, the further to speak to the distorting minds of many, the Lord identifies in advance the coming ruler, after the destroying, rampaging Babylon has done its dreadful but ordained work (Isaiah 13), naming him Cyrus. More predictions about his life and career follow in the next Chapter (Isaiah 45) as we see God prospering this same ruler, appointed for the restoration of Israel to its own land.
The point is this, the destruction of the city, causeless, does not come. But then, its rebuilding causeless does not come, either; for God has not only determined that this is to be so, and anyone who can may seek to contradict it, but so arranged history that it too will not be contradict Him, as in fact it did not; for the city and the temple WERE first destroyed in judgment and then rebuilt in mercy.
It WAS mercy, and when God shows mercy, the diligent fails in his debased devices, and God prevails! It is just the same in this our generation, for God has determined on mercy to Israel in the end as in Zechariah 12-14, Micah 7 and Psalm ;72, Romans 11, Isaiah 11 through to the end, and nothing any can do will alter this His speech, whether it be theological manipulation (cf. SMR Appendix A), military intimidation, or lustful hate, as from Iran.
In particularisation of the program, God gives in His word (Isaiah 13:17, cf. Daniel 8:16ff.), the name of the power to be used in their deliverance. In that day, He so used the Medes and the Persians, who would in fact initiate with authority, that very rebuilding of Jerusalem which He had promised. Here, in addition, let it be stressed, it is even the name of that particular Ruler, confirmed in the Cyrus cylinder archeologically, who would do it. Moreover, the manner of his coming to power likewise predicted, as seen in Isaiah 45. As foretold, so it was.
This sort of knowledge is induplicable (cf. Isaiah 44, Daniel 2:27-28, Isaiah 14:27, 41:21ff., 48:6-15), and becomes a signature of the Lord, as was the death date for the Lord, through Daniel 9 (cf. Christ the Citadel Ch. 2).
Thus whether it be the rain bane as in Amos 4, or the kingdoms or the false predictions of idolatrous humanists, secularists or seduced pseudo-prophets, they have their 'go' and what God says is still what goes.
Nothing causeless comes, universe, or powers of thought in man, or the power of intellectual formulation in man to find the precise parallel, the mirror image for the creation, as its laws and workings, modes and manners, come into that very domain which man's mind can AS mind, construct. In the mind of man, he can see in terms of laws of this kind or that, modes and procedures alignable to understanding, conceivable to ideational construction, concepts captured, the force of thought. But how could it be captured unless it were there in just such a reality and moulded in just such a format! It is mindless not to mind the mind of God, or the sphere of His operations (Psalm 53:1).
Minds mind minds. Creation causeless did not come. Then man can see for himself, if he will, in law and construction, brilliant, laid out, organised, elements of the working of God's mind, as He made it all and then stopped, leaving it all, now in full working order. It is always beyond man, always beckoning, always coming in, becoming availability as man progresses in knowledge, nearer and nearer to comprehension, always having comprehensibility, in principle, as tireless divine workings are discovered and aptly appreciated, at least by some. God made both the creation by thought and man for catching it.
If others cannot stand to see their own minds outdistanced, preceded, thinking that minds causeless in mankind can come, and spirits to deploy them, then their magical preconception and misconstruction is progressively made into a mockery, just as God did to preceding generations of the bemused, the uplifted and the ungodly, as in Isaiah 44:24ff..
The curse, even the quasi-comedy, the exposure of fraud, it comes from the Lord as He simply continues with His program, policy and determination, knowing in love the outcome of the liberty of man, the results of His divine input of freedom, assessing all things with knowledge, and bringing creation to its intended consummation, both that which is for good, and for evil.
As to that evil, one may rest in joy to consider this, that in the end it is to be DETACHED. As man detached from God is futile, so evil detached from good, after the trial of millenia, and the mystery of divine mercy in its glorious scope and rich oversight, drawing, drawing what is foreknown so that in truth it may be saved, leaves the long sought kingdom of heaven without adulteration. The predicted fires for chaff and granary for grain coming into operation, divide what was divided, the Lord appointing all where it belongs. Small wonder we have the songs of the regenerate in Revelation 5, at the action of the Lamb, in at last bringing all history to its pure and glorious conclusion, these giving worship for ever to the Lord and the Lamb! (Rev. 5:13).
BLESSING
COMES WITH GOOD CAUSE
but its ground is not found within the bosom of man
Such is the rationale of the ridicule to which so many nations might divinely be subjected, as indeed were some in times past: nations such as Babylon and Nineveh, in its Assyrian pit of horror (cf. Isaiah 37ff., Jeremiah 50-51); and their end, though sure, is nevertheless an affliction, a sadness for the Lord, as pointed out earlier. Often we find it is He who weeps and laments, and yet does not sacrifice reality to leave only a universal ruin; but instead, He sent His Son to redeem such as are His and therefore come to Him. Thus doe He rescue many from their intolerable plight. The beauty of it is this: Just as the curse causeless does not come, neither does salvation come without cause. The lament of God is shown in practical terms in the woe of Christ on the Cross, bearing the sin which severs fellowship, so that He cried out,
"My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!" as Psalm 22 a thousand years before, predicted He would say, and Isaiah 59:2with 53:5, helps us to see why.
The divine foreknowledge, whether of this or anything else, does not dull the pain, or reduce the reality when the time comes: nothing could reduce Christ's anguish on the cross. As with a book one has read several times before, if it be good, deep and well-written, it can elicit the same or similar pangs when one comes to the grievous passage, the sad tragedy. In fact, recently, I did not quite finish one book since I did not wish to find an odious outcome. Such is the ability of emotion to rove. Such was the agony on the cross, though long foreknown. It is always something impactive to find the actual in oneself when the time comes, however well one understood and even saw the certainty of a thing, beforehand.
God is real and practical, and time does not bleach the colour of His beauty or the intensity of His feeling as you see in so many scriptures on so many topics, when He foretells what is to be, or as in the Book of Lamentations, enables an inspired prophet to express the lamentation. Truth does not vary or wobble; and God knows it and IS it. His word is its exhibition, and His Son is its incarnation (John 14:6), just as before that, the Lord in heaven (as in Isaiah 48:16ff.), already knew what would be for Himself in His earth mission and result, as the One to be sent (Isaiah 50, 52-53).
Blessing causeless does not come. Here we must be careful. It is MERELY GRATUITOUS for any one of us to receive specific divine blessing, since hell is our just desert without redemption; but God does in mercy bring it into sight, ready to pardon, to act honourably and graciously. from the heart (Isaiah 55). Then His blessings are better than dew on the mown grass, Spring breezes and mountain-scapes erupting into the atmosphere, without a sound, a sight spectacular. He may bless with the awakening of a stout heart set against Him, in the bleaching of strong colours of spiritual sedition, with restoration and return. From Him comes the actualisation of a potential long lost; and He blesses above all, and has blessed, in PROVIDING the free way home to all of this, in the plan of salvation of infinite blessing toward all (cf. Romans 5:12-20), waiting to be picked up.
The CAUSE of the blessing lies in His heart, so that He should so desire. Therefore, in His action in history, in long preparation and inculcation, He prepared mankind for His coming, as in His direct entrance into history, culminating in the first and final incarnation in Jesus Christ, dated, described in advance, inscribed in the Bible, prescribed for salvation. It rests in the conquest of the cross, that complete and final work of redemption (Hebrews 9:12-10:14), and the triumph of the resurrection. He came ONCE, He died ONCE, He rose ONCE and He brought forth completed redemption ONCE, and goes no farther. Though history stretch into the foothills of the end and then comes to its climax, there is no other outcome or way or deliverance but this.
CAUSTIC WORDS BRING COMFORT
FROM THIS SPIRITUAL SURGEON
The blessing accordingly lies both in His heart and in His corresponding action, for what is in HIS lips is ALSO in His heart, shown in forbearance that man did not first perish, as he almost did in the world-wide flood. This has left its mark on this earth like the tooth-prints around the neck of a deer which escaped a lion, by a mere margin*2. Moreover, He has left His note, in II Peter 3, that as the culmination of history as a door to judgment comes, the false prophets and blighted hearts among men will decry this fact of the flood, and so they do. They cannot stand even such a vast judgment in the past, lest they lose heart and their minds waver and they become vulnerable to grace for the present, and be saved. Now as then, they have closed their eyes (Matthew 13:14ff., cf. Isaiah 6), But as to God, His are ever open, He does not sleep (Psalm 11, 121:4).
HE has done all things well. Many among men can see the judgments, now increasing in tempo and scope, and this much is clear as they either curse God or seek to replace Him who made them with the thoughts, awry and askew, of their own hearts.
What they do NOT see, because they WILL not see, because their eyes they have closed, is this, that their own iniquities are ABOUNDING as Christ said would be the case (Matthew 24:12; 13:14ff.), for disorder will become an ultimate epidemic, slaughter will become a pastime (Revelation 6) and killing an occupation among men. The psyche increasingly will become a sink for every evil thing, while false prophets, bearing the devil's standard, will vie for supremacy, delusion like a deluge, becoming almost a norm.
In all this, the forbearance of the Lord is vast as is His patience (II Peter 3:9), and His saints do well to copy this, as they cope; for the hinges of history are turning, and the door of opportunity is swinging shut. The virgins with their lamps are sleeping (Matthew 25:1ff.), the flame dead, while some still remain, endued with grace, governed by God, regenerate among the degenerate. Their state is safe, their sufferings sure (II Timothy 3:12) , their deliverance coming apace.
The blessing causeless does not come since God has prepared and produced and consummated the application of this cause in the cross and resurrection, in the sealing and protection of the souls of His saints, for whom grace is not a fine addition to their virtues, but the very basis of their being able to live at all (Ephesians 2). Indeed, its active basis in the heart and work of Christ, is not the option for the good, but the rescue of His grace, foreknown before all time, but rushed like an ambulance for the soul, WITHIN time; and NOW is the time for this salvation (II Corinthians 6). Eternity is a long stretch for reflection, one way or the other...
Many may prefer to pick at it; but this salvation is inviolable (Ephesians 1:1-1, II Timothy 1:1-9), though mesmeric substitutes are often crafted by foxes (cf. II Corinthians 11, Galatians 1), or by wolves (cf. Acts 20:28-29). The menagerie of mimicry can make its cry like a cooing, and its yapping like ornate speech.
It is He who calls them by the title in Acts 20, "savage wolves", and the life they attack is vulnerable, unless it is the Lord's own child that is in view, when as Stephen (Acts 7), he may die, but for all that, not a hair of the spiritual head is harmed. Perhaps the worst of wolves is the wolf in sheep's clothing, odious ornament to many seduced churches (Matthew 7:15), of which many refuse to beware. The mongoose, the man or woman of God, like a mongoose, should attack the wolf become snake, the serpentine foe, and not as if a bird, become fascinated with its sly fictions and false amours. Don't serve lambs to wolves!
There is a cause for everything (cf. Causes). Sometimes, indeed, it is the withdrawal of active divine intervention (cf. Hosea 5:15) which can be caused by so acute a rebelliousness, so sustained an indifference on the part of man, that his best tutor is the divine absence, in any apparent sense! It is then as in Psalm 1:5, and the chaff-character of man without God can be allowed to manifest itself, as if man might then realise and understand and seek the Lord with ALL of his heart, and finding Him freely available through redemption, repent and find life eternal.
The word of God from Paul, as in II Timothy, sets perspective as the jaws of history bring much to confusion; for the clarity of heaven does not alter. Bold is added.
"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come;
for men shall be lovers of
their own selves,
covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers,
disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
without natural affection,
trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce,
despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded,
lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
having a form of godliness, but denying its power:
from such turn away.
Draw near to God and HE will draw near to you (James 4:1-8). He has paid the price; He is able to make it fully applicable to you; let there be no cause for separation from Him who has come so near, even to this earth, even to display His deity, His love, His grace: and rejoice! Let His compassion call to greater and better things for Him.
NOTE
See News 1.