DELIVERANCE.
There is, however, another point and a most important one, and that is deliverance, or, as it is generally called, salvation. I prefer the former word, as bringing out more clearly what is meant. How often, dear souls, in whom there has been a work of God, have doubts and fears; sometimes going so far as to question if they have ever been converted. It is because they have not really got deliverance; for God's way of deliverance being once known is never lost; though there may not be the joy flowing therefrom if the individual is not going on with God. Scripture makes a distinction between " sins!'
(the naughty things done, the bad fruit produced) and " sin " (the nature, the tree that produces the bad fruit). Now, forgiveness has to do with the former, deliverance with the latter. Where there is a condition of spiritual slothfulness and a lack of exercise in the soul, God may withhold the knowledge of deliverance. Again, where there is not a bowing to God's verdict of what we are (not what we've done), deliverance cannot be known.
The poet may write (and men applaud),
"O, wad some power the gittie gie us,
To see oursels as ithers see us."
There' is something however immeasurably beyond. that, viz.: To see ourselves as God sees us.
Dear reader, has the word of God ever come home with such power to your conscience as to bring you really into the presence of God? There eau be but one result, if such has been the case. Now, Job was not a bad man by any means, and he could talk quite eloquently about God, and knew a great many things about Him, and yet had not seen himself as God saw him. In Job 42:5 he says: " I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee." What was the result? " Wherefore abhor myself;" not abhor what I hive done, out " myself." Dear reader, has there ever been a moment in your history when you have thus stood face to face with God? Nothing betokens moral distance from God like good opinion of self. When we stand at the judgment of Christ, will any of us have a good opinion of self? Surely not I Then why so now? How many earnest souls go on trying to improve themselves! How many societies and associations (and religious ones, and with the name of " Christian " attached to them, too) there are for the improvement of man, as such l It may be ignorantly so, but all this is a denial of the t rocs of the Lord Jesus Christ. The rejection of Jesus-God manifest in the flesh-proved that there was nothing in the heart of man that answered to anything in the heart of God; for the deepest and fullest expression of love on God's part only brought out the terrible state of the heart of man. The cross of Jesus, on man's side, proved not only was man a sinner, and a law breaker, but a God-hater, and as Rom. 8:7 says " The mind of the flesh is enmity against God ". (margin).
Now let us turn to our chapter and see how the: truth comes out in it, and let us remember that the animal there was a type of Christ on the cross,. when He who knew no sin was made sin (not only " bear our sins") for us, that we might he made the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). And, as Rom. 8:3 tells us, " What the law could not do.... God sending His own on in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." If you read verses 11 and 12 you will see how the truth comes out in type,-most vividly. Ver. 11 takes up the different parts of the animal, and remember this is the body of the animal itself-not the blood, as previously. " And the sin of the bullock." The skin stands for the external beauty of the animal. In 1 Sam. 16:6, 7, when the eldest son of Jesse came in, Samuel seeing a fine, tall, handsome young man said,
“Surely the Lord's anointed is before Him.' What was the Lord's answer? " Look not on his countenance nor on the height of his stature,..... for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, hut the Lord looketh on the heart." Read Mark 10:17-22 in the same connection. There, a young ruler comes to Jesus with everything outwardly lovely-lint when God's one test was put: What think' ye of Christ?"-he turned his back on the Lord and went away. There was nothing there for God.' And so in the type, the skin was carried forth without the camp and burnt on the wood with fire. In other words it was fit only for the judgment of God. "Our God is a consuming fire " (Heb. 12:29. Jesus on Calvary's cross bore the judgment' for every one who believes the record that God Was given of His Son (1 John 5:10-12; John 3:36), but for all others " the second death, the lake Of fire " (Rev. 20:15) is their portion, however nice they may appear in the eyes of men.
Next comes " his flesh." There we get below the surface, but the same result-nothing for God; and so taken outside the camp and burnt.
Now let us go to the end of the verse and work backwards. " His dung" (the offal).- Of course-everyone would agree as to that- there was nothing there for God.
" His inwards," the seat of the affections. Well,' the rejection of Jesus, the deepest expression of God's love to man, proved there was nothing, as we have seen (p. 70).
" His legs" represent his walk, his general life. Look what Paul says of himself, Acts 20 iii. i: " I have lived before God in all good conscience to this day." And yet before he was converted he was murdering the Lord's people, thinking he was doing God service (see John 16:2). No, there is nothing really for God in the natural man, such is the awful havoc that sin has made.
" But now we come to " his head." Oh! how different is man's verdict from God's on this point. The great panacea now-a-days is education. If we turn to the word of God, what does He say? Corinth was one of the chief cities of Greece, the leading country at the time for literature and the arts and sciences, and of course learning, etc., was much thought of there. In the, first epistle to the church at that place, the Holy Ghost says " I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the, understanding of the prudent; Where is the wise? where is the scribe (the, educated man of the day)? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" And again: " The world by wisdom knew not God," and " God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise." In the Epistle to the Romans, chap. 1., when the Holy Ghost is referring to man's having got away from God after the flood, He says: " Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (ver. 21"). And is not history repeating itself in this very end of this self-lauding nineteenth century Who are the leaders in giving up the Bible-turning their backs on the word of God-with fine sounding- words of " higher criticism," etc.?
Professing themselves to ne wise," they are really " blind leaders of the blind." No., there is nothing more for God in man's head than the other parts, and, with the offal, is only fit for the judgment of God.
But some one may say, " It will not do to be so very particular in details-take man as a whole there is some good in him." Ver. 12, answers that. Ver. 11 looks at man in detail, but ver. 12 looks at him as a whole, " Even the whole bullock," but with just the same verdict-to be carried forth without the camp and burnt; it was only fit for judgment-God's judgment against sin.
Turn now to Rom. 7, where we get one who has learned his lesson and bowed to God's verdict; for the expression, "when we were in the flesh" (ver. 5), shows that he was not there when he wrote. The law is the measure of man's responsibility as a child of Adam, and so we find the one in that chapter, doing his very best to meet its claims. What was the result?
In ver. 14, he has found out that he is a slave, "sold under sin."
In ver. 18, he has learned two lessons: 1St, "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing." He has now learned experimentally in his own soul what came out at the cross, and which we have just seen, in type, in Lev. 4:11, 12.
But there is a second lesson in Rom. 7:18, viz, that he has no strength, " To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not." He is lost. Now one is lost when the strength is all gone and the person is utterly unable to extricate himself from the position he is in.
But that is not saying another person may not pull him out. Now in vs. 7-24 (Rom. 7) "
" My," " Me " occur between forty and fifty times, i. e., he is looking at himself striving to extricate himself. In the last named verse he gives up the struggle, just ready to despair, " 0 wretched man that I am! (not " who shall forgive me " but) " who shall deliver me from the body of this death." He is just where God's Deliverer meets, him.
In ver. 25 he looks outside of himself, for the-first time, and sees it (with the eve of faith) all done by another, " I thank God through Jesus. Christ our Lord."
DEAR READER, HAVE YOU GOT THAT FAR?
(Continued from page 47.)
( To be continued, D. V.