29 Our Lord and the Bible
XXIX OUR LORD AND THE BIBLE
Family Bibles were as universal in Israel as ever they were in Scotland. The time was when no new household was ever set up in Scotland without a family Bible being found among its marriage presents. And Joseph and Mary, you may depend upon it, did not start on their married life without having the Word of God laid out at the head of their most highly-prized marriage possessions. And even if a complete and costly scribe-written Bible was not to be seen in every young carpenter’s house in Nazareth, Mary would be of the mind of her first-born Son who said long afterwards to His disciples :--"But now," He said, "he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip; and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one." It was of their family Bible that the God of Israel spake to His covenant people, and said, "And those words of Mine shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children, and thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates." And was there a house in all Israel, from first to last, high or low, rich or poor, learned or simple, where that commandment concerning the family Bible, and concerning family worship, was so sure to be observed, as just in that house into which God sent His Son Jesus Christ to be born and brought up? To this day, when Almighty God has any future servant of His to be born and brought up among ourselves, He selects, as a rule, a house where there is a sanctified Sabbath, and a family Bible, and family worship. "And thou shalt show thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt, that the Lord’s law may be in thy mouth." And in this way this Evangelist who had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, might with perfect propriety and with entire safety have said to us that the Book of God, His Heavenly Father, was delivered to the Holy Child Jesus as soon as He was able to hold it in His hand. And then to borrow His own words our Lord "searched the Scriptures" from the days of His earliest youth till He discovered that they testified of Himself Coleridge was wont to say that the Scriptures so "found" him that he was compelled to confess their divinity. And Halyburton has a memorable confession in his Memoirs to the same effect. And may it not be said with the most perfect truth that our Lord both found Himself in the Holy Scriptures and that they found Him? For never before nor since were the Scriptures searched as they were searched by the Child Jesus; both Child and Man. And never did such discoveries reward any other searcher as His discoveries rewarded Him. For He discovered Himself in the Scriptures, and then He discovered Himself by means of them. Holy Scripture was the golden key by means of which Jesus of Nazareth entered into, and took possession of, that mystery of godliness, which was Himself. He saw Himself as in a glass in every page of Holy Scripture. As He said Himself, Moses and all the prophets testified of Him; and He came to the full knowledge of Himself by hearkening to their testimony, by searching into their testimony, and by receiving their testimony. "I have no books," said a poor, but princely-minded servant of His, "but I have myself." And Jesus of Nazareth had no books beyond His Bible and Himself; but He read in those two great books of God till they became one Book in His hand. David had searched the Scriptures in a wonderful way and to a wonderful enjoyment. But David’s Son excelled David and all other Scripture searchers who had gone before Him. With far greater depth and strength and thankfulness than David ever attained to, David’s Son took David’s words out of His father’s mouth, and made them all His own. "Thou, through Thy commandments, hast made me wiser than mine enemies, for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers; for Thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep Thy precepts." For never did Moses, nor David, nor Isaiah, nor any other psalmist or prophet in all the house of Israel, search into and meditate on Holy Scripture as did Jesus of Nazareth; and never were its precepts kept to such an illumination, to such a revelation, and to such a glorious reward. With what an unfathomable depth of awe and wonder did Jesus search into the Scriptures concerning Himself! And with what boundless adoration and praise did He more and more discover and find Himself in them! "O how I love Thy law!" He exclaimed. "It is my meditation all the day. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb."
Now, my brethren, that very same Book has been delivered to you and to me from our youth up. And along with it a fuller a clearer and a much richer Book. The complete and finished Book of God, Old Testament and New, has been delivered to us to see what we will make of it. To see how we will search it, and what we will find in it, and in ourselves by means of it, and then all that will infallibly decide what we are and what we will make of ourselves, and where we will find ourselves at last. All the other books in this wide world taken together do not for one moment concern us in comparison with this Book. For the whole meaning and purpose and true end and design of our whole existence, as of our Lord’s existence; all our Maker’s purpose and intention in our creation, preservation, and redemption; our chief end on earth, and our endless enjoyment of God in heaven; all that is here, and is nowhere else. "In Cicero, and Plato, and other such writers," says St. Augustine, "I meet with many things acutely said, and things that excite a certain warmth of emotion, but in none of them do I find such words as these--Come unto Me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." When the Book was delivered that day to our Lord He soon found the place in the prophet Esaias where it was written of Him. Now, you have all had that same prophet delivered to you all your days. Well, have you up to this day found any of the places where Esaias has written of you? For example, have you found for yourself these two places about yourself? First this--"The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in you, but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores." And then this: "We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags." Esaias had found all that in himself long before he wrote it down about himself, and about Israel, and about us. If he had not found all that, and all that every day in himself, he would never have had the boldness to set it clown first about Israel and then about us. And then it was his continual finding of all that in himself that led him on to find Christ crucified in Moses and in the prophets till he became wiser than all his teachers in his famous fifty-third chapter. It was because Esaias was such a woeful man to himself that he became such an evangelical minister to us. Woe is me! for I am undone, he cried in the Temple. But that moment the live coal from off the altar touched his lips, till he was sent to preach Christ as Christ was never preached before nor since till Paul also found himself in the same Scripture, and cried out, O wretched man that I am! And exactly so was it with Thomas Halyburton, that spiritual genius, first of Ceres and then of St. Andrews. "All discoveries of guilt were conveyed by the Scriptures. God spake by the Scriptures in mine ear of sins which God alone could know; God who searches the heart. By the Scriptures the secrets of my heart were made manifest; and hereon I could not but fall down and own that God was in His word of a truth. And now I was ready to say--Come, and see a Book that has told me all that ever I did in my life; is not this the Book of God? And it was by the same Book that He let in upon my soul His whole will as to my salvation by Jesus Christ. Herein it was that He declared His name---The Lord God, merciful and gracious unto sinners in Christ."
"Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself," till their hearts burned within them. And that is the true way still. We preachers also, will make men’s hearts to burn within them when we expound to them the Scriptures concerning ourselves. Experience is the true exegete in Holy Scripture, said Luther. Weep yourself, said the old Roman instructor, and you will soon make me weep in sympathy with you. Yes; all you who are candidates to be expounders of the Scriptures, search the Scriptures till you find yourselves in them as nowhere else. You have doubts and difficulties about this and that in Holy Scripture. Or rather, less about things in the Scriptures than about things that lie outside of and round about the Scriptures. Doubts and difficulties about the paper the Scriptures are printed on, about the ink with which they are printed, about their binding, and about who bound them up in the way they are bound up. Read Halyburton, and then search the Scriptures as he searched them, and your salad doubts and difficulties will soon disappear.
"O fools!" their Master said to those disciples of His who had failed to search the Scriptures for the things concerning their Master and themselves, so fools ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory. They had neglected that search, and thus it was that both His sufferings and theirs took them unawares and found them slow of heart to believe. Whereas He had searched the Scriptures from His manger to His cross, and from His cross to His throne, till He was able to meet all these things well prepared and waiting for them all. Let us be like Him. We have the same Scriptures; let us have the same mind. And if we search the Scriptures with His same mind. We also shall find written there all our intervening sufferings and all our future glory. And till we shall like Him be able now to rebuke and now to console those who weep over us, and those who charge God foolishly. And to say to them that all this is but what we foresaw from the beginning, that the trial of our faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, may be bound unto praise, and honor, and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. Let us search the Scriptures, like our Lord, for all our appointed sufferings till we are able to say--along with our Forerunner--Ought I not to endure all these things and then to enter into my promised rest?
O my brethren, since all these things are so, what a day that is for you and for him when you deliver to your son his first Bible! What a treasure-house of unsearchable riches you that day put into his hand! What a life-long search he has before him from that day! And a deeper and deeper search every day he lives. Till that day when, like Thomas Boston’s dying elder, he will lay his hand on his greatest earthly possession and will say to it as he forever parts with it --Farewell the Bible! And, then, the written word will immediately be exchanged by him for the Living and the Eternal Word. And till the earthly sanctuary, where you and he searched the Scriptures together with your minister will hear his Farewell! as he comes in sight of the heavenly sanctuary. Where the city shall have no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God shall lighten it, and the Lamb shall be the light thereof. And where all who searched the Scriptures with Him and for Him on earth, shall see His face, and His name shall be in their foreheads.