THIS month’s study brings us to the close of another year, the third year of such study together as we have been enabled to do. When we started first, with somewhat of a flourish of trumpets, students in multitudes appeared, but like Gideon’s army their numbers soon thinned, and a few persevering students alone have continued to send in answers and studies.
But I think we have most of us learned something. God have mercy upon those who have learned nothing during these three years. Perhaps we have learned most―I have―from our own mistakes. We have found out in a fresh way that the Word of God lives and abides forever. That it is not a book of which we may set to work to master the contents intellectually, but that through it the authority of God must find its way to the entire mastery of us. True knowledge of the Scriptures consists in having been brought under their power.
We have also found out, too, during the past three years, at least in a dim sort of way, that we who are younger must have to do with God personally for ourselves, both by His Word and in the experience of the various paths into which God has put us. Some of us may have found out that many things which we thought as fixed as the everlasting hills have cracked and crumbled under our feet, but the removing of the things which can be shaken only proves what cannot be shaken. We have found, gradually perhaps, but with an increasing and thrilling conviction, that God remains. He cannot be shaken. Our business is to obey Him, let things crack and crumble as they may. He has Christ’s interests in His keeping, and through all the ways in which the Spirit of God has wrought or may yet work in the Church, He holds fast to His purpose, “to head up all things in Christ.” So that we need not fear, the things that cannot be shaken will remain without the assistance of our feeble hands.
To sum up briefly the ingathering of the past three years, it is the discovery that God rules, and has been ruling from the throne from the beginning, that has influenced many lives more profoundly than any previous spiritual experience. Nor is this experience confined to the small circle of the readers of these pages. It is plain to the watchers, to those who look for the signs of the times, that God has been bringing this lesson home to all classes of His children, in all countries, in all the various divisions of the Church. Now God never works in vain, and the crying need of the time is for surrender to Him, for waiting upon Him, for quiet and patient prayer that we may be ready for Him.
It is time to clear the decks. Party strife, ecclesiasticism such as thwarted our blessed Lord’s pathway in doing His Father’s will on earth, envies, jealousies, and many a bitter fruit of man’s will―all such hideous, unlovely, and un-christlike forms of evil must disappear before God’s presence in power. The restlessness, too, and impatience, that, feeling the presence of these things, would fain put forth eager hands to remove them, are stilled and quieted when the reality of God’s rule, His progress to the sanctuary, as in Psalm 68, is known.
May God then give us younger ones, to whom I speak, for the coming year, a fresh sense of His government and its reality; may He enable us to go on quietly in the paths in which He has put us, each doing His will, waiting His time, serving Christ as He pleases and not as we please, seeking for a knowledge of His mind and His light upon the state of things in the Church and in the world, loving all saints and caring for them according to the love of Christ. Then we shall not be ashamed before Him at His coming.
As for the Bible Study, it may be that it has served its purpose in its present form. Hence we shall close this year with an outline of the remaining portion of Leviticus. Whatever may take the place of this Bible Study will, if the Lord permit, be announced in the January number of the Christian’s Library for 1909.
Leviticus 17-27 — The contrast between the portion of Leviticus which comes before the 16th chapter and that which follows it, is very interesting. Up to the 16th chapter the great question is of the manner of approach to God in the place where He dwells. Hence what suits Him, what is of sweet savor to Him, is dealt with first, then the question of all the things that hinder approach to God, and the way in which their defiling effects may be removed, is dealt with. Then, when the great question of how God can continue to dwell at all among such a people has been settled in the most wonderful way, in the 16th chapter, the question of the maintenance of God’s authority and the display of His character in His people among whom He dwells, is taken up. Where God dwells two simple things must follow; first He will be obeyed, then His people must be like Him. Where these conditions are fulfilled the result is joy and divine order, “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Where these conditions are not fulfilled the result is disaster. God’s government is a reality. These are the subjects of the last ten chapters of Leviticus. The outline of them is as follows:
1. c. 17. ―Here, when the fact of God’s dwelling among His people has been established, we have first the assertion of God’s supremacy. In Genesis 9, “every moving thing that liveth” had been given by God into man’s hands for food. Now, the source of that authority is owned. They are to bring all their sacrifices to the place where God dwells that God may have His portion. It is a decision between God, their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and the demons (ver. 7) after whom they had wandered in their lust.
Secondly, they had been forbidden to eat blood in Genesis 9:4. Now, they are told that it is the blood that has been given to them upon the altar, to make atonement for their souls. It is the whole ground of the relationship between God and His people. It may not be eaten, but must be poured out. These two great principles follow directly from 100:16, and form the link with the remainder of the book.
2. cc. 18.-22.―We might say that these chapters are the counterpart, at this period of God’s ways, of Matthew 5-7. Their great principle is that God will have His people like Himself. He has chosen them, and has caused His Name to dwell among them, in order that they may display His character, show forth His praise (Isa. 43:21). This, the keynote of these five chapters, is struck in 19:2, and appears in the refrain, “I am Jehovah your God.” They were not to be like Egypt, they were not to be like Canaan, but like Jehovah. This principle is applied first to individuals, then to the assembly, and then to the priests.
3. c. 23.―Here we find that God’s object in making us partakers of His holiness is to bring us into His rest. But the rest being broken, we have, in the seven feasts―Passover, unleavened bread, wave sheaf, Pentecost, trumpets, atonement, and tabernacles―a wonderful picture of the way in which God triumphantly rises above the effects of the fall, sin, and death, and through Christ brings in the joy and blessing of a new creation, and the eternal rest of God.
4. c. 24.―Here we have a picture of the order and government following on the accomplishment of God’s purposes in c. 23. So we find in Zechariah first the removal of iniquity in c. 3., then the golden lampstand and the government of the Lord of the whole earth in the hands of Zerubbabel (c. 4.); and lastly, the curse that cuts off the evil-doer without mercy (c. 5.).
5. cc. 25.-27.―We have in the closing chapters the great principle, upon which alone hope and confidence can rest, reasserted. First the jubilee proclaims God’s right by redemption. The land is His, and the people are His. They may not do what they like with the land, nor with one another, because they and their land alike belong to Him. Then the long history of the jubilee is gone over prophetically. The blessing of obedience, then the curse of disobedience, and the discipline of God (26:23) with its solemn results. But the end is hope, because God is God. There is an appointed end. “If they accept the punishment of their iniquity” ―striking and significant words― “I will remember My covenant.”
Finally, the question of God’s title to everything is taken up in c. 27. (cf. Isa. 44:5). We find man hallowing what he possesses to God, and the recognition: of God’s claim and sovereign title to all.
May God give us to learn in His own way these lessons, and to know what that means― “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”
B. S. ED.