Sound Words for Pilgrims

Jul 21, 2007 at 18:07 o\clock

Fulfillment of God's Plan

by: soundwords

The Lord’s Sufferings Predicted

All things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me.—Luke 24:44

Since the sacrifice of God’s Son was settled in the councils of the Godhead before the world began, the Old Testament is full of predictions of it. In the above words, the risen Lord is simply confirming His own teaching during His earthly ministry. Nothing which the Lord ever said had to be corrected or modified or changed. But He did have to open the minds of His disciples to understand Old Testament prediction (Lk. 24:45).
The sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus should not have taken the disciples by surprise since they were somewhat familiar with Old Testament scriptures. Indeed, they should have expected His passion. The pages of the Old Testament sparkle with the jewels of predicted redemption. They stand as a rich tree laden with the promises of God regarding it. We can stand there as on a God-given height of revelation, and from it view all that our Lord was to suffer.
The Lord Jesus is the theme of all Scripture. He is the luster of every page. To read the Old Testament aright is a sunlight walk with Him. To read it aright surely opens redemption’s plan. But the Jews did not read the Old Testament rightly. They read of His coming kingdom and glory, and understood that! They understood, for instance, Daniel 7:14, “And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.”
They expected that! But they were blind to the Lord’s humiliation, as in Isaiah 53:5, “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” They could not see it.
After His resurrection, the Lord stressed this point: “All things must be fulfilled.” There was a Saviour to be given; thus a Saviour to be born; a Saviour who would make adequate sacrifice for sins, the only sacrifice that God would ever accept and call men to bring; a sacrifice that God would never refuse. Thus the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus are never spoken of in Scripture as a tragic mistake or an unforeseen accident. It was all God’s own wise plan to rescue man from Satan’s power, and it is all so clearly spelled out in the Old Testament.
True, there was man’s side to the cross. Psalm 22 tells us that He would be compassed about with “bulls,” the Jewish rulers; “dogs,” the Gentile forces of Rome; “lions,” the ferocious hosts of hell. There, too, is depicted man’s ribald mockery, derisive laughter, universal scorn. But behind all this there is “the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). The crucifying of Christ expresses all the inherent hatred in man’s heart against God. But the purposeful laying down of His life was the manifestation of God’s utter and complete love for fallen man. There was a divine necessity for the cross; God had no other way of dealing with human sin. It was clear from the beginning.

Old Testament Predictions Spoken by Our Lord
When at Caesarea, our Lord said that “He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed” (Mt. 16:21). Then, in Mark 9:12, He said, “It is written of the Son of man, that He must suffer many things, and be set at nought.” Again, in Luke 18:31, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.”
Also, when Peter tried to stand in the way for our Lord’s defense in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus rebuked him with the words: “Put up…thy sword into his place…How then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” (Mt. 26:52, 54) In His walk to Emmaus with the two journeying there in post-resurrection days, the Lord Jesus said, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?” (Lk. 24:25-26)
Thus the Saviour’s sacrifice was written in letters of gold in the Old Testament. God’s redemption plan shines forth telling the story that God’s beloved Son would come and bear the sinner’s sins. All such scriptures spring from the eternal Spirit of God, and display the sacrifice of God the Son in skillfully constructed symbols and forms.

Old Testament Predictions by the Apostles
Look at Peter’s declaration in Acts 3:18, “But those things, which God before had showed by the mouth of all His prophets, that Christ should suffer, He hath so fulfilled.” When Paul is chosen and appointed, there is this remarkable statement by him in Acts 13:27, “For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew Him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning Him.”
Do we fully understand what that means? It means that the Old Testament books were read in synagogues every sabbath through centuries of time. The prophets cried of a death which would save from death, of a stream of blood which would cleanse away all sin, of a Messiah who would shelter them, hide them, and redeem them.
But they did not get the message! When He came to earth, their vile corruptions raised their heads. Unbelief blinded them. So they “killed the Prince of life” and, in doing so, fulfilled what the prophets said they would do: pierce His hands and feet, and make Him a curse by hanging Him on a tree. It was all written—even the minutest detail of His sufferings and death—in the pages and predictions of the Old Testament.

Now I have found the ground wherein
Sure my soul’s anchor may remain;
The wounds of Jesus for my sin,
Before the world’s foundation slain;
Whose mercy shall unshaken stay,
When heaven and earth are fled away.

O Love, Thou bottomless abyss,
My sins are swallowed up in Thee;
Covered is my unrighteousness,
Nor spot of guilt remains on me;
While Jesus’ blood, through earth and skies,
Mercy, free, boundless mercy, cries.
—Charles Wesley

Jul 14, 2007 at 17:19 o\clock

Name Above Every Name

by: soundwords

The Name Above Every Name

A new movement in the world always has to frame new words and phrases in which to express itself. This law of human nature is operative today. Physical inventions and discoveries have created a host of strange terms to correspond. We were compelled to coin fresh words which our ancestors never heard of, before we could discourse about automobiles and submarines and airplanes. For new wine demands new bottles; and whenever the vintage ripens and the winepress fills, the bottles are not lacking.
The same thing occurs, still more conspicuously, in times of revival. Pentecost has this sure sign and sequel, that men began to speak with new tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. They employ old phrases in a fresh sense, they take common words and put them to nobler uses and transfigure them with holier meaning….
As soon as Christian faith spread abroad and rooted itself in heathen soil, its genius borrowed and adapted the language of its new home. The early Gentile converts did what the converts in our modern mission fields are constantly doing. They converted secular words to Christian uses….
This may be illustrated by two examples of the use of words not, in a technical sense, theological. In the Acts of the Apostles we find that the earliest Christians often spoke of their faith simply as “the Way.” Our Lord had set them an example when He said, “Narrow is the Way.” He Himself was a new and living Way. And so we read of the Way of God, the Way of truth, the Way of salvation, until this term becomes a kind of synonym for Christianity. The Pharisee Saul’s commission said that if he found “any of the Way” he should bring them bound to Jerusalem, and in after years he confessed, “I persecuted this Way unto the death”….
Yet another and more striking example of primitive Christian dialect appears in the habit which the early Christian disciples acquired of referring to “the Name” as though that word stood for the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. The New Testament commonly designates our Lord either as Jesus, the Saviour, or as Christ, the Sent of God. After the resurrection these were often combined into one appellation.
But again and again we read how they preached concerning the Name. They were forbidden to speak to any man in this Name. Yet speak they must, for “there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Many believed on His Name and had life through His Name and were baptized in His Name. They gathered together for worship in His Name, and therefore with His Presence among them. When they offered a prayer, or gave a cup of cold water, or received a little child, it was in the Lord’s Name. Whatsoever they did, in word or deed, they did all in the Name of the Lord Jesus. To name that Name was to depart from iniquity.
This characteristic formula of the early Church was more than an accident. Some, indeed, would ascribe it to the influence of ancient magic, which held that a god or demon was present whenever his name was duly uttered in an invocation. But no student of Scripture can fail to recognize in this primitive Christian usage the imitation of a far earlier Jewish habit of speech.
In the Old Testament the Name of the Lord is mentioned almost as often as the Lord Himself. For an overpowering reverence had gathered round the sacred Hebrew name of Almighty God. The Jews came to treat it as a mystery, too awful to be spoken aloud. It was so high above every name that the rabbis shrank from pronouncing its syllables. They substituted a feebler word in its place. In ordinary Jewish speech “the Name” came to be used as an equivalent for Jehovah.
Thus it was not by accident that the Christians fell into the custom of treating the Name of Jesus the Messiah in the same fashion as their fathers had treated the ineffable, unutterable Name of Jehovah. It bears witness to the way in which those early disciples instinctively thought of Him. For them, His Name is above every name because they beheld heaven opened and Jesus in the midst of the throne of God....
All generations of believers have proven its strange, unearthly attraction, its enduring permanence, its mighty and miraculous power. For such disciples as these, their faith is expressed in the Name of Jesus Christ, their love is centered upon Him. In every age there are multitudes of simple-hearted folk, the aged and little children, the humble and heavy-laden and the poor, to whom science is dumb and nature is dark and criticism is foolishness, who find in the Lord Jesus Himself all and more than all they need.
Not in empty words do such Christians testify to the sufficiency of their Saviour and the supremacy of His Name. They tell us that He is far better than even His own promises. They declare that they know Him as they cannot know their dearest earthly friends. In Him all the longings of the soul find their fruition, all losses have their compensation, all the ills and griefs of life have their cure.
To the worshippers of Jesus Christ His Name is far above every name that is named in this world or in that which is to come. Because His Life is above every life, and His Love above every love, and His Passion above every passion. Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto His Sorrow. His Sacrifice is above every sacrifice, His Victory above every victory. Therefore “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow...and...every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11).

T. H. Darlow

Jul 4, 2007 at 17:37 o\clock

God's Amazing Plan

by: soundwords

The Seeming Audacity of His Plan

If it were any merely human plan, we should call it audacity. This audacity is observable, first of all, in the fact that the plan is originally proposed to the world with what might appear to us to be such hazardous completeness. The idea of the kingdom of God issues fully developed from the thought of Christ. Put together the Sermon on the Mount, the Charge to the Twelve Apostles, the Parables of the Kingdom, the Discourse in the Supper-room, and the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and the plan of our Saviour is before you, enunciated with an accent of calm, unfaltering conviction that it will be realized in human history.
This is a phenomenon which we can only appreciate by contrasting it with the law to which it is an exception. Generally speaking, an ambitious idea appears at first as a mere outline, and it challenges attention in a tentative way. It is put forward inquiringly, timidly, that it may be completed by the suggestions of friends or modified by the criticism of opponents. The highest genius knows with what difficulty a promising project is launched safely out of the domain of abstract speculation into the region of practical human life.
Social reformers tell us despondingly that facts make sad havoc of their fairest theories, and that schemes which were designed to brighten and to beautify the life of nations are either forgotten altogether, or, like the Republic of Plato, are remembered only as famous samples of the impracticable. For whenever a great idea affecting the well-being of society is permitted to force its way into the world of facts, it is liable to be thrust hither and thither, to be compressed, exaggerated, disfigured, mutilated, caricatured. In the first French Revolution some of the most humane sociological projects were distorted into becoming the very animating principles of extraordinary barbarities. In England we are fond of repeating the political maxim that “constitutions are not made, but grow.”
Now Jesus Christ our Lord was in the true and very highest sense of the term a social reformer; yet He fully proclaimed the whole of His social plan before He began to realize it. Had He been merely a “great Man” He would have been more prudent. He would have conditioned His design; He would have tested it; He would have developed it gradually; He would have made trial of its working power, and then He would have refashioned it before finally proposing it to the consideration of the world. But His actual course must have seemed one of utter and reckless folly unless the event had shown it to be the dictate of a more than human wisdom.
He speaks as One who is sure of the faultlessness of His design; He is certain that no human obstacle can balk its realization. He produces it simply without effort, without reserve, without exaggeration. He is calm because He is in possession of the future, and sees His way clearly through its tangled maze. There is no intimation of need for change or modification of His plan. He did not, for instance, first aim at a political success and then cover His failure by giving a religious turn or interpretation to His previous manifestoes; He did not begin as a religious teacher and afterwards aspire to convert His increasing religious influence into political capital.
He develops with majestic assurance, with decisive rapidity, the integral features of His work; His teaching centers more and more upon Himself as its central subject, but He nowhere retracts, or modifies, or speaks or acts as would one who feels that he is dependent upon events or agencies which he cannot control.
A poor woman pays Him respect at a feast, and He simply announces that the act will be told as a memorial of her throughout the world (Mt. 26:13); He bids His apostles do all things whatever He had commanded them; He promises them His Spirit as a guide into all necessary truth, but He invests them with no such discretionary powers as might imply that His design would need revision under other circumstances, or could be capable of improvement. He calmly turns the glance of His thought on the long and checkered future which lies clearly displayed before Him, in the immediate foreground of which is His own humiliating death. He speaks as One who sees beyond the most distant possibilities, and who knows full well that His work is indestructible. “The gates of hell,” He calmly observes, “shall not prevail against it” (Mt. 16:18); “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.”
But has the plan of Jesus Christ been carried out? The Church of Christ is a living answer to that question. Glance for a moment at the history of the Christian Church from the days of the apostles until now. What is it but a history of gradual, unceasing self-expansion. Compare the Church which sought refuge and which prayed in the upper chamber at Jerusalem with the Church of which Paul is the pioneer and champion in the latter portion of the Acts of the Apostles, or with the Church to which he refers, as already making its way throughout the world in his apostolic epistles.
But you will say, this representation of the history of the Church may suffice for an ideal picture, but it is not history. Is not the verdict of history a different and a less encouraging one? First of all, do Church annals present this spectacle of an ever-widening extension? What is to be said of the spread of great and vital heresies? Of divisions in the Church? Of the rising tide of Islam? Of rationalism and atheism firmly rooted in lands once dominated by the gospel?
We Christians know full well what we have to expect from the human heart in its natural state; while on the other hand we have been told that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church of the Redeemer. But, in speculating on the future destinies of the Church, this hopeful confidence of a sound faith may be seconded by the calm estimate of the reflective reason.
Modern unbelief may be deemed less formidable when we steadily observe its moral impotence for all constructive purposes. Its strength and genius lie only in the direction of destruction. It has shown no sort of power to build up any spiritual fabric or system which, as a shelter and a discipline for the hearts and lives of men, can take the place of that which it seeks to destroy. Leaving some of the deepest, most legitimate, and most ineradicable needs of the human soul utterly unsatisfied, modern unbelief can never really hope permanently to establish a popular “religion of humanity.”
For this reason modern unbelief, although formidable, will not be deemed so full of menace to the future of the kingdom of our Lord as may sometimes be apprehended by the nervous timidity of Christian piety.
This will appear more certain if from considering the extent of Christ’s realm we turn to the intensive side of His work among men. For indeed the depth of our Lord’s work in the soul of man has always been more wonderful than its breadth. The moral intensity of the life of a sincere Christian is a more signal illustration of the reality of the reign of Christ, and of the success of His plan, than is the territorial range of any Christian empire. “The King’s daughter is all glorious within.” It is this hidden work that tells the true story.
Christianity may have conferred a new sanction upon civil and domestic relationships among men, and it certainly infused a new life into the most degraded society that the world has yet seen. Still this was not its primary aim; its primary efforts were directed not to this world, but to the next. How complete at this moment is the reign of Christ in the soul of a sincere Christian! Christ is not a limited ruler; He is emphatically an absolute Monarch. Yet His rule is welcomed by His subjects. High above the claims of human teachers the tremendous self-assertion of Jesus Christ echoes on from age to age: “I am the Truth.” And from age to age the Christian mind responds by a life-long endeavor “to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” But if Jesus Christ is Lord of the Christian’s thought, He is also Lord of the Christian’s affections.
Beauty provokes love, and Christ is the highest moral beauty. He does not merely rank as an exponent of the purest morality. He is absolute virtue embodied in a human life, and vividly, energetically set forth before our eyes in the story of the Gospels. As such, He claims to reign over the inmost affections of men. As such, He secures the first place in the heart of every true Christian. To have taken the measure of His beauty and yet not to love Him is, in a Christian’s judgment, to be self-condemned. “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.”
Ruling the affections of the Christian, Christ is also Master of the Christian will. When He has tamed its native stubbornness He teaches it day by day a more and more pliant accuracy of movement in obedience to Himself. In fact, He is not merely its rule of action but its very motive power; each act of devotion and self-sacrifice of which it is capable is but an extension of the energy of Christ’s own moral life. “Without Me,” He says to His servants, “ye can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5); and with Paul His servants reply, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
This may be expressed in other terms by saying that, both intellectually and morally, Christ is Christianity. Detach Christianity from Christ and it vanishes before your eyes into intellectual vapor. For it is of the essence of Christianity that, hour by hour, the Christian should live in conscious, felt, sustained relationship to the ever-living Author of his creed and life. Christianity is non-existent apart from Christ ; it centers in Christ ; it radiates, now as at the first, from Christ. He is indissolubly associated with every movement of the Christian’s deepest life. “I live,” exclaims the Apostle, “yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
The time approaches when it will be seen that the purposes of Christ have triumphed. Then in that day the whole universe shall see that the plan He revealed when He appeared to be a common laborer from Nazareth was in fact the plan of God Himself. And in that day “…at the name of Jesus every knee [shall] bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and…every tongue [shall] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11).
—H. P. Liddon