03. The High Level of the Word of God
The High Level of the Word of God
Chapter 2
Whatever has to do with God is, of necessity and in the nature of things, supernatural and superhuman, extraordinary and unique. It belongs on a level of its own, standing alone and apart, by itself, unapproachable, defying alike competition and comparison. We should therefore expect both sublimity and originality, elevation and isolation, much that transcends all the limits of human thought, involving more or less the element of the inscrutable: and the presence of such characteristics instead of an obstacle to faith is rather an argument for it. The workman is known by his work, and the more perfect the product the fuller the exhibition of the producer. The Bible, being God’s workmanship, will, like the heavens, declare His Glory and show forth His handiwork (Psalms 19).
He expressly declares: “My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways, My ways; for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). This states a pervasive principle of the entire Scripture: “thoughts”—literally, “weavings”—include the whole fabric of Scripture conceptions, contrivances, devices, imaginations (compare Psalms 33:10; Psalms 40:5; Psalms 92:5; Psalms 94:11). In the last reference—“The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man that they are vanity”—there is a designed contrast between man’s devices and God’s, man’s being compared in the same prophecy of Isaiah (Isaiah 59:5-6), to cobwebs which never become garments.
God’s “thoughts” and “ways” are by no means equivalent. His ideas or ways of thinking are as far above the level of man’s as the heavens are above the earth—a distance illimitable and immeasurable. And so of His ways of doing, as of His ways of thinking—the distance and difference is infinite. Human notions all fall immeasurably short of God’s, as when the Jews conceived of Messiah as a temporal monarch and His kingdom as an earthly one, and had no thought of that new man to be made of twain, in the union of Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:15). His way was to make the gospel a highway for all nations, and the whole earth, even the dark places and habitations of cruelty, a fruitful field and garden of the Lord. But, even after the gospel era had begun, how slow was Peter himself to apprehend it (Acts 9, 11).
We must be ready to meet, at every point in Bible study, the evidences that we are communing with an infinite Being and, as Coleridge discriminatingly said, consent to apprehend much that we cannot comprehend.
God has, to begin with, His own unique constitution of Being. He is the eternal God, and therefore independent of all time limits, as the Persians defined Him—Zeruane Akerene—Time without bounds. He is the “I AM”—to whom past, present and future are equally today, who is alike without beginning and without end, without succession of days or change of conditions. He is the Omniscient One, to whom all things are so absolutely known that there can neither be anything hidden from Him nor any increase of knowledge or intelligence. He is the Omnipresent One, so pervading all space and time with His presence that it is only in an accommodated sense that He can be said to be at any point of time or place any more than any other. He is the Immutable One, who changes not. His absolute perfection at once forbids change for the worse which would be declension and degeneration, or for the better which would be improvement and imply previous imperfection, since perfection cannot be improved. Such a unique and solitary Being must have His own ways, both of thinking and doing. We shall find evidence that He has His own lexicon, using language in a unique sense and defining His own terms; that He has His own arithmetic and mathematics, not limited to man’s addition and multiplication tables; His own calendar, reckoning time in His own fashion, and dividing all duration into ages and dispensations, to suit His eternal plan; that He has His own annals and chronicles, writing up history according to methods of His own, leaving great gaps of silence, chasms of oblivion, where He deems nothing worthy of record; that He has His own grammar, using all the nice distinctions of conjugation and declension, voice and mood, tense and person, gender and number, with discrimination and design. In a word, everything about God and His methods shows that He lives on a different plane from man and cannot be either restricted to man’s notions or judged by man’s standards.
We shall meet in the study of Scripture many original and peculiar divine devices. Certain features appear prominent, as connected with unique patterns, models and standards. These, designed to arrest attention and embodying permanent lessons, should be grouped by themselves, as both related to one another and contributing to one common, ultimate end. They are divine ideals, expressing divine ideas; concrete forms for abstract truths, making them easier of apprehension and more lasting in impression.
Examples will readily recur to the Bible student. First, there are three pictorial parables of higher truths, all needing higher explanation: the Tabernacle, the one house which God planned and built, the Temple being essentially on the same model; the Ceremonial, the one order of worship and service in connection with His house, which He decreed and directed; and again the Calendar, the one series of fasts, feasts and festivals which He arranged and ordained.
These three parables He meant to be the constant study of His devout people, and to be illustrated and illuminated by the subsequent events and teachings of all history. About each of these there seems to be a sevenfold completeness. In the Tabernacle the conspicuous features were the brazen and golden altars, the lampstand and show-bread table, the laver, ark and mercy seat. In the Ceremonial, the five offerings—sin and trespass, meal, peace, and burnt—then the red heifer, first fruits and tithes. In the Calendar, a sacred seventh day, week, month, year, a seven times seventh year, and a seventy times seventh, or four hundred and ninetieth, with a dimly forecast final millennium or sabbatical thousand years.
Three standards of measurement are also suggested, as indexes of His divine Power, Wisdom and Love.
1. The wonders connected with the Exodus from Egypt, referred to hundreds of times (Micah 7:15).
2. The miracle promised in the Regathering of the scattered tribes of Israel, a second time out of all lands (Jeremiah 16:14-15).
3. The supreme marvel, of the Raising of Christ from the Dead and exalting Him to His own Right Hand (Ephesians 1:19-23; Php 2:9-11). The phrase, “according to,” so often used suggests that His design is to give His people a standard by which to estimate both His ability and willingness to do great things for them. To the wonders of the Exodus He perpetually appeals in the Old Testament. “I am Jehovah who brought you forth out of the Land of Egypt, out of the House of Bondage.” By this He perpetually rebuked their unbelief and stimulated faith and fearlessness in the presence of foes.
There are indications that the second return or restoration of scattered Israel will be attended by events so stupendous and supernatural as to more than equal those of the Exodus, and having absolutely no parallel in ordinary human history. And as to the Resurrection and exaltation of our Lord, that went far beyond all dreams of even divine power, defying death and the devil, invading the uniformity of natural law and annulling the power of gravitation—the miracle of all ages, all wonders in one.
These three Standards of Power all have to do with an Exodus: the first from Egypt as the land of Bondage; the second from all lands of exile and dispersion; the third our Lord’s Exodus from the realms of Death and the grave—and as such referred to in the converse on the Mount of Transfiguration by Moses and Elijah.
Many minor points of resemblance are suggested, particularly between the deliverance from Egypt and the Resurrection and ascension of the Son of God. In the former, four wonders were very conspicuous: the passing by the blood-stained portals; the crossing of the Red Sea; the overwhelming of the pursuing foes; and the covenant guidance by the Pillar of Cloud. In our Lord’s Exodus, how correspondent the fourfold marvel: the divine passing over of the blood-sprinkled sinner; the emergence of Christ and with Him His believing people from the place of death and judgment; the overthrow of Satanic foes by that same Resurrection and ascension; and the bestowment of the new Pillar of Cloud in the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit. As God has thus His own scales for weight, and standards for measure, some things which to man are small, to Him are great; what man accounts long is to Him short and conversely. To attempt to crowd divine things into human compass is both to misapprehend God and to belittle Him. We must accustom ourselves to His standards, so far as possible to adopt them, or adapt ourselves to them; or, if no more, recognize them as far above our own. We need a sense of Proportion. The Time element must be kept in its proper relations to Scripture and the plans of God. “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day;” that is, with the Eternal One, human time measurements count nothing—a prolonged interval is but as a moment. The High priest, on the great Day of Atonement, went from the altar of sacrifice into the Holiest and shortly returned to bless the people. These few moments which elapsed between his disappearance within the veil, and his reappearance in the court, typify the whole interval between our Lord’s ascension and Second Advent, already protracted over nearly nineteen centuries. God’s “little while” often proves man’s long while, and especially when events are seen in perspective as in prophetic vision. We must not stumble over the difficulty of delay. “Long” and “short” are relative terms: everything depends upon the scale. At a time of political panic, due to local issues, the Earl of Salisbury counseled alarmists to quiet their fears and get a wider view of events by procuring larger maps. Students of prophecy and of Scripture, generally, need to understand God’s larger maps and eternal plans—His worldwide campaign and age long battle—to get some glimpse of the magnitude and magnificence of the whole scheme of Redemption which takes in two eternities. All time is but an instant in eternal movements. Delay is so far recognized in the Scripture as possible that the duty of persistent faith, persevering hope and patient waiting is based upon such deferment (Habakkuk 2:3).
Much of the mystery of Scripture is inseparable from its exalted level. What is eternal cannot be expressed or explained in terms of the temporal, and what is celestial must essentially differ from what is terrestrial. If all that is divine could be comprehended by what is human it would cease to be divine. Perfect understanding implies equality of intellect and intelligence: the tiny cup of a flower might as well attempt to contain the ocean as a man’s mind to grasp the infinite. A man, passing a church with Daniel Webster, asked him how he could reconcile the doctrine of the Trinity with reason; and the great statesman of giant intellect replied by another question: “Do you expect to understand the arithmetic of Heaven?”
Such expressions as “God said”, “the Lord spake, saying”, “the Lord commanded”, “the word of the Lord came unto me, saying”, etc., occur in the Pentateuch alone 680 times. How strange it would be if in all these nearly seven hundred communications from Jehovah, there was nothing too high for man to comprehend? Sin was born of presumptuous intelligence: Milton’s Satan is the portrait of intellect without God, and the first temptation was an act of human revolt against the mystery of a divine command and an attempt to break through into the realm of the unknown. All rationalism is the worship of human reason and a denial of any higher level in divine truth than man can reach or any deeper abyss in divine mystery than man can sound: it is in effect a claim to man’s equality with God and a virtual denial of any God at all. Francis Bacon, who was called the “wisest and brightest of mankind”, said, “I do much condemn that interpretation of Scripture which is only after the manner of men, as they use to interpret a profane book.”
It is because the Word of God belongs to a superhuman level that man’s investigation of it never reaches its limit of new discovery. Every new study of it brings new unveiling. As a distinguished author says: “In the Divine Word, the letter is stationary; the meaning progressive.”