Scripture Imagery: 96. The Lamp and Shewbread

95.—THE LAMP AND SHEWBREAD.
The whole diapason of the Levitical harmony closes in a double chord of promise, which is expressed by the perpetual renewal of the Lamp and Shewbread. The light of the testimony is to be always maintained through the darkest and longest nights, and the shewbread to be forever supported on the holy table, covered with fragrant incense in the divine presence,—the whole twelve loaves: “everyone of them in Zion appeareth before God.” Thus whatever comes, we have this gracious assurance, “The Light Thy love has kindled Shall never be put out.” —this assurance that the Lord is continually looking on His people in their brightest and most favorable aspects, and regarding them as a shining light by the power of the Holy Ghost, and as the nourishment of life resting on Christ (the table of wood and gold), surrounded by the border” with its “golden crown” and covered with the frankincense,—"complete in Him.”
I pray you take notice of this. For to whomsoever else the light of the testimony has been extinguished, it has never been extinguished for God, and never will be. “Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen.”
This assurance is proved to be greatly needed, for the first thing we read of is that one of the Israelites does what lies in his individual power by contention and blasphemy to upset the whole organization. The evil is so grave that by divine command the people put him to death. There is usually a Thersites, —or spirit of Thersites—to be found at hand in every enterprise, to discredit it by his conduct, to discourage and disparage his comrades, and blaspheme his leaders. Sometimes he will assume a charitable tone; but you will find all his charity is directed to the enemy, and all his hatred to his brethren. You fancy what a fine candid and liberal nature this is, when you hear him speaking of the Trojans: but when he speaks of his fellow Greeks, of the great leaders especially, the heroic Agamemnon and Odysseus who are giving up their homes and lives to the cause which he is supposed to advocate, then you find what foul misrepresentation and vituperation can co-exist with unctuous but spurious liberality.
It is always difficult to understand why Thersites does not go over to the Trojans, if he likes them so much better than his companions. He often does go finally; and ah, what a relief it is! But his wretched work lives after him unhappily. What crops of doubts and contentions spring up from the seeds which he has sown! So that, when we contemplate them, we can at last get to understand how it was that one of the most gracious men who ever lived said with grief, “I would they were even cut off which trouble you!” As to arguing with Thersites and endeavoring to persuade, one may as well argue with a sewer and persuade a pestilence. That much-experienced, much-afflicted man Odysseus, the crafty, strong, and valiant Odysseus, used very short arguments with him: “Except detraction, what hast thou bestowed?” he demanded of the slanderer, as he smote him down to the dust with rough and ruthless blows.
Though perhaps after all David chose the more excellent way when he said to Abishai, “Let him alone, let him curse.”
On the whole, Rabshakeh is preferable to Thersites; Rabshakeh was coarse and abusive, but he was an open enemy and kept outside the wall. But let us be assured of this, that neither Shimei, Thersites, nor Rabshakeh, have breath enough, albeit they speak great swelling words, to blow out the light that God's love has kindled. It shall continue to burn—though perhaps feebly—through all the dark long night, till the dawn shall appear and the bright and morning star shall arise. We oscillate between optimism and pessimism. Truth is neither the one nor the other. It is neither true that “whatever is is right” nor that “whatever is is wrong.” There is much that exists that is right, and much that is wrong; and bright above all, “White-handed Hope, the hovering angel, girt with golden wings.”
The Comprachicos used to cut the facial nerves of children, so that the poor little creatures were disfigured by a perpetual laughter or a perpetual weeping. It was all ghastly and unnatural, but not more so than the ancient laughing and weeping philosophers, or modern optimism and pessimism. The Herr Professor has looked so long through the microscope that he has become myopic, he cannot see White-handed Hope hovering above, nor the ring of light round nature's last eclipse, though he can see the myriads of microbes better than we others. For him the bottom of Pandora's box is eaten away by them. He thinks the ancients were mistaken when they saw hope there—and I think so too.
It is a strange statement of scripture that experience leads to hope. If we listen to the man of the world, we hear that experience leads to caution, to distrust and hopeless cynicism: and yet truly experience leads distinctly to hope. One who for the first time saw the sun go down behind the ocean would despair of ever seeing it again; but we, who have seen it thus descend many times before, are emboldened by our experience to hope that in a few hours it will rise again at the other side of the universe to “flatter the mountain tops with sovereign dye.” He who for the first time beheld the melancholy autumn deepening into winter, would surely think all things were sinking into chaos and old night; but experience leads us to an assured expectation of the resurrection of all things in the coming springtide.
And though many beautiful qualities are seen even in the darkness of despair, yet few great achievements are accomplished without hope; and those who have the most completely conquered the world, whether physically or spiritually, have been those who were distinguished by this faculty. “If you thus give everything away,” said Perdiccas to Alexander, “what will you have for yourself?” To which the world-conqueror replied, “Hope “: and a greater man than he, the founder of an infinitely greater dynasty, wrote to his fellow-disciples—a handful of common workpeople who were trying to convert the world whilst being persecuted by all the powers of earth,—wrote to them about “rejoicing in hope.”
Scripture Queries and Answers
Q.—What think you of Dr. Bullinger's “Sprits in Prison” (Second edition revised, 1891)? A.B.
A.—The greater part of this pamphlet prepares the way for the simple truth as set forth by Leighton, Pearson, and many more; quite as much as for Dr. B.'s notion that the “spirits in prison” are angels whom God cast down to Tartarus, and committed to chains or pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment (2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6). It may have force against the anile superstition, popularized in our day, whether for a broadchurch purgatory or the vulgar Popish one. He seems to have overlooked Heb. 12:9 (a reference probably to Num. 16:22; 27:16). Besides, “spirits” we find here qualified doubly, by their present imprisonment, and by their past disobedience in the days of Noah, the cause of that safe keeping. But the language pointedly differs, both in connection and in strength of phrase, from that which describes the doom of those angels so singularly contrasted with the actual freedom of the dragon and his angels. The connection of 1 Peter 3:19, 20, is clearly with 2 Peter 2:5. For Noah, a preacher of righteousness, was the instrument by which the Spirit of Christ wrought in that day of divine long-suffering; the now imprisoned spirits were then the world of the ungodly on whom God brought the deluge, because they stumbled at the word, being disobedient. Dr. B., though he claims especial credit for it, fails to catch the touching force of the “For,” or rather “Because,” with which chap. 3:18 opens. “It is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing; because Christ also once suffered for sins, Just for unjust,” &c. He suffered once for sins. Let this suffice. Ours it is to suffer for righteousness and for Him. What has this to do with angels that kept not their own first estate, sinning atrociously and unnaturally? What had they to do with “disobedience” only? And why here baptism?
All is most appropriate to the unbelieving world which rejected Noah preaching in Christ's Spirit; for it is not said that He went into the prison and preached there, but to the imprisoned spirits. The apostle is combating such objections to Christianity as present suffering, spiritual power only through the word, comparatively small numbers, absence of Christ, &c. This he does effectually by laying down Christ's unique suffering for sins, leaving us to suffer as He did also for righteousness. To this he adds the most solemn judgment that befell the world of old, which our Lord also compared to the coming day of His appearing, when His word and Spirit (cf. Gen. 6) were despised. None need wonder if few be saved now or by-and-by, seeing that eight only passed safely through the flood. In connection with this he speaks of baptism as the standing sign, not of new birth as men say, but of salvation, the request or demand of a good conscience Godward by Christ's resurrection. The water, through which Noah and his family were saved, was the power of death for all outside the ark. Christ's resurrection was not only God's honor on Him and His work, but peace to the believer; and if Christ be not yet come in power and glory, He is at God's right hand, which in itself is higher still, gone into heaven, angels, authorities, and powers being subjected to Him, whatever the unbelievers scoff at on earth.
Dr. B.'s reasoning is valid against “the larger hope” as well as purgatory. But his own application is quite irrelevant. For the revealed use of the guilty and apostate angels in 2 Peter 2 and Jude differs totally from the scope of 1 Peter 3, and is a warning to false teachers of licentious life or even apostate from Christianity, not an encouragement to Christians who shrank from suffering, and were tried by the paucity of their brethren, and did not adequately stay their souls, conscious of salvation, on Christ's exaltation on high, the pledge of His sure appearing in glory. He is right, as we have long pointed out, as to the difference of ἐκήρ. in chap. 3. and εὐηγ. in chap. 4. But his notion of “spirits” has exposed him to a heterodox view of “the seven Spirits of God” in the Revelation, as some unreliable men had taught before him. Think of “grace and peace” from angels, no matter how high their rank! So he errs as to Acts 8. where the “Spirit” stands in contradistinction to “the angel.” Compare Acts 12. and 13. Each is appropriate. But this is a trifle compared with misinterpreting Rev. 1:4, 4:5, &c., or even “sojourners of the dispersion” which Dean Alford mistook, and thereby the true bearing of the Epistle.
Scripture Queries and Answers
Q.—Do Matt. 18:20, Luke 24:32, John 14:23, teach that the Lord leaves the right hand of God to come down in the midst of believers gathered to His name? E. J. L.
A.—We may not rightly set scripture against scripture, but are to believe all. The Holy Spirit is now come, as Christ went on high to send Him to abide forever with us and in us. But this is not the same as Christ's presence, promised conditionally on the obedience of the assembly or the individual saint, which is in no way to leave God's right hand. He is there bodily, but deigns to vouchsafe His presence here also, which we by faith enjoy in the Spirit. Precious as is the truth of the Holy Spirit's presence, faith does not forego these comforting assurances. Prayer and discipline are only special cases of the more general truth, that Christ may be counted on to be in the midst where two or three are gathered to His name. So, even when the Lord appeared extraordinarily to the apostle, and more than once, He did not leave heaven; yet it was all real. Mystery is no less true than material fact, far more momentous, and inseparable from Christ, as Christians know Him at any rate. We walk by faith, and own scripture as absolutely authoritative.
Q.—Does 1 Cor. 15:47, imply manhood morally before the Son took human form? B.
A.—The assertion that the Word was in any real sense man, before He was made flesh, derives no authority from this text or any other. It is a dreamy fable. There was purpose of course, but more seems here meant and without warrant. The divine nature which was His eternally could of course connect itself with human nature, as in fact it did to form the person of Christ, Who could therefore be characterized as of, or out of, heaven. But this sure truth is very different from an unmeaning jargon unless it have a false meaning. Even to babble about the Son's person is eminently perilous and profane.
Q.—Rom. 5:11, Heb. 2:17. Are these texts correctly rendered in the A. V.? AMERICAN.
A.—Not so, but in the R. V. The late Abp Trench (Synonyms of the N. T., seventh ed. 276) owns that the word “atonement,” by which our (A.) Translators have once rendered καταλλαγή (Rom. 5:11), has little by little shifted its meaning, and confesses that, were the translation now for the first time made, “atonement” would plainly be “a much fitter rendering of ἱλασμός,” as “reconciliation” of the term in Rom. 5:11. Indeed no Christian scholar can doubt it. It is therefore astounding confusion for anyone, not merely to go back to “atonement,” which the present force of our language forbids, but to imagine this to be its primary meaning and according to its Biblical usage, if we mean the original, which of course alone is authoritative. The simple and certain fact is that our A. V., now at least, is doubly incorrect; it gives “atonement” in Romans, where “reconciliation” is the sole right rendering; as “making atonement for,” or expiating, is requisite in Hebrews. A similar blunder pervades the Ο.Τ. rendering of the corresponding Hebrew term. To reproduce that error is strange, especially with a view to clearness and accuracy of statement, which it destroys. Wiclif and the Rhemish were right as to Rom. 5:11; which fact goes far to convict of error the others from Tyndale, notwithstanding the amiable prelate's desire to excuse it on the ground of the language shifting. On the other hand, Wiclif's “merciful to” is very inadequate in Heb. 2:17, as Tyndale's “to pourge” is incorrect and rather the effect, which has its own proper expression, though followed by all the older English save the Rhemish (here as usual servile to the very odd “repropitiaret” of the Vulgate). In the R. V. of this text to make “atonement” takes the place of “reconciliation” very properly. Καταλλαγή in the N. T. sense is unknown to the Septuagint. Trench's doctrine of “reconciliation” is well meant, but, like that of theologians in general, infirm and clouded. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Such was His aspect in the incarnate Word. But man, ungodly and implacably hostile, rejected Christ even to the death of the cross; wherein God made Him sin for us, and raised Him from the dead for our justification. Therefore, justified by faith, as being reconciled by His death even when enemies, we shall much more be saved by His life. To be reconciled to God supposes more than atonement, redemption from the enemy, and justification; it comprehends, besides, ourselves set in relationship with God righteously, according to the purpose of His grace. It means, neither changing God's mind from alienation into love, nor merely man brought out of his enmity to God, but the God of love and holiness having so wrought in the sacrifice of Christ, that He can righteously send the gospel of grace to every creature, and establish every believer in a new and steadfast relationship of favor with Himself.
Scripture Queries and Answers
Q.—1. Is there any difference between “carnally” and “of the flesh” in Rom. 8:5, 6, 13, &c.?
W. J. F.
2. What is “fleshy” in 2 Cor. 3:3? AL.
A. 1, 2. It is the same word and sense in Horn. viii., the mind of that flesh which is enmity to God, and came into man's moral constitution through Adam's sin. But “fleshy” means the different fact of the physical material, consisting of flesh, in contrast with stone; and the critics prefer it in Rom. 7:14 to the received reading which only differs by one letter. So do the oldest copies in 1 Cor. 3:1, though they give the form “fleshly” or “carnal” in ver 3. In Heb. 7:16 they prefer “fleshy” or at any rate the Greek form for the material. Yet in Rom. 15:27 the word for “fleshly” or “carnal,” is read; so that this would seem capable of both applications, whereas the other is confined to the material sense.