“But Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee” (ver. 9).
The verse now before us presents one ground of exception taken against the Epistle by men who trust themselves. This introduction of Michael the archangel seems to them altogether inexplicable as, they consider, a mere tradition of the Jews reproduced by Jude or at any rate by one who wrote the Epistle bearing his name; for they really don't know or care who wrote it. Only nobody must believe that Jude wrote it. Such talk consists simply of the objections of unbelief, which, doubting all that is inspired of God, sets itself to shake the confidence of those who believe.
Although it is a fact presented in no other part of God's word, what solid reason is there in that to object? There is ground for thankfulness that He makes it known here.
Not a few statements may be traced in Scripture that have been given but a single mention; but they are just as certain as any others which are repeatedly named. The apostle Paul, in 1 Cor. 6:3, declares that the saints shall judge angels. It is not only that they shall judge the world, which no doubt is a truth revealed elsewhere; but it is here expressly said that they are to judge angels. I am not aware of any other scripture which intimates a destiny which most would consider strange if not incredible. We do find that the world to come is not to be put under angels; but that is a different thing. It does assure us that the habitable earth is to be put under the Lord Jesus in that day; and the saints are to reign with Him. To the risen saints will be given to share His royal authority; for that is the meaning here of “judging.” It has nothing at all to do with Christ's final award of man. It is not a small mistake to suppose that the saints will exercise the final judgment over men or angels. All such judgment is exclusively given to the Son of man (John 5:22, 27; Rev. 20).
When it is said that we shall judge the world, the meaning is plain whether men believe or not. Such judging is to exercise the highest power and authority over the world by the will of God and for the glory of the Lord Jesus. But there is no warrant for the notion that saints shall take part in the great white throne judgment. On that throne sits only One. He that knows every secret, that searches the veins and hearts, and is the sole Judge when it is a question of judging man in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to Paul's gospel. No man was ever given to fathom the lives of others; nor am I aware that we shall ever be called to share that knowledge so essential to the Judge of quick and dead.
In fact the notion that we are to sit in judgment on people for eternity is a gross and groundless blunder, for which there is no shadow of proof in any part of scripture. But we shall judge the world when the world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ is come. He will reign forever; and so shall we, as His word assures; but there is a special display of this joint reign, and this is during the thousand years. This, of course, is no question of eternal judgment, but of the kingdom; whereas, when the earth and the heaven flee, and no place is found for them, eternal judgment follows, and none but the Lord judges. All judgment is given to Him, when the works of man, who despised Him throughout the sad annals of time, come up for His eternal sentence. No assessors are associated with Him; He is the Judge.
There remains, however, the plain revelation that we shall judge angels. If this is confined to that one scripture, be it so; one clear word of God is as sure as a thousand. If we have to do with the witness of man, the word of a thousand, if they are decent people, must naturally have a weight beyond one man's. But here it is no question of men at all. What we stand upon, and the only thing that gives us firmness of ground and elevation above all mist, the only thing that gives us faith, reverence, simplicity, and humility is God's word. It is indeed a wonderful mercy, in a world of unbelief, truly to say, I believe God; to bow before, and rest in the testimony of, God; to have perfect confidence in what God has not only said but written expressly to arrest, exercise and inform our hearts.
Assuredly, if God says a thing once unmistakably, it is as certain as if it had pleased Him to say it many times. Indeed, as it appears to me, it will be found that God hardly ever repeats the same thing. There is a shade of difference in the different forms that God takes for communicating truth. Such is one of its great beauties, though quite lost to unbelievers, because they listen to His words in a vague and uncertain manner. As they never appropriate, so they never hear God in it. They may think of Paul or Peter, John or James, and flatter themselves to be quite as good or perhaps better. What is there in all this but man's exalting himself to his own debasement? He sinks morally every time that he lifts himself up proudly against God and His word.
Here then we have a fact about the unseen world communicated, not in the days of Moses or Joshua, when the burial of Moses is brought before us. Here Jude writes many years after Christ, and first mentions it. Why should this appear strange? The right moment was come for God's good pleasure to communicate it.
Did not the apostle Paul first give us in his last Epistle the names of the Egyptian magicians who opposed Moses before Pharaoh? No doubt we were told of such magicians; but we did not know their names till the Second Epistle to Timothy was written. Scripture can only be resolved into the will of God. It pleases God to exercise His entire sovereignty in this, and He would therein show Paul given to write of a thing reserved for him to bring out alone. So here we have the Holy Ghost proving His power and wisdom in recalling a mysterious fact at the close of Moses' life. Why should men doubt what is so easy for God to make known?
Is there anything too wonderful in His grace? Is not He who works in revealing, God's eternal Spirit? And why should not He, if He see fit, reserve the names for that day when Paul wrote? The occasion was the growth of deceivers in Christendom—a thing that many seem disposed to entirely overlook. They yield to the amiable fancy that such an evil is impossible, especially among the brethren! But why so? Surely such impressions are not only stupid in the highest degree but unbelieving too. It ought to be evident that, if anywhere on the face of the earth Satan would work mischief, it is exactly among such as stand for God's word and Spirit. Where superstition is tolerated, and rationalism reigns, he has already gained ruinous advantage over the religious and the profane. If any on the face of the earth at the present time refute both these hateful yet imposing errors, his spite must be against them. The reason is plain. We have no confidence in the flesh, but in the Lord; and to that one Name we are gathered for all we boast, leaning only on the word and the Spirit of God.
Let these then be our Jachin and Boaz, the two pillars of God's house, even in a day of ruin and scattering. Let us rejoice to be despised for the truth's sake. How can we expect to have any other feelings excited towards us? Do we not tell everybody that the church is a wreck outwardly? and do they not say on the contrary that the church bids fair for reunion? That the classes and the masses are alike won by grand buildings, rites, ceremonies, music, and the like? That there is on the one side inflexible antiquity for those who venerate the past, but on the other side the device of development to flatter the hopeful and self-confident? Then think of the modern influx of gold and silver, of which the apostolic church was so short. Is it not God now giving it to His church that they may in time buy up the world? And if any tell them that all such vaunts are only among the proofs of the church's utter ruin, what can they be but hateful and obnoxious in their eyes? Christ has always a path for the saints, a way of truth, love, and holiness for the darkest day of ruin, as much as for any other. It is for the eye single to Him and the ear that heeds His word to find the path, narrow as it is, but its lines fallen in pleasant places and a goodly heritage. But if we, hankering after earthly things, entangle ourselves with man's thoughts or the world's ways in religion, what can this issue be but that we help on the ruin? Disturbed, uneasy, and unhappy we become, like Samson with his hair cut, weak as water, and blind to boot.
Nor is it at all unaccountable that men are busy against an epistle which is one of the loudest and clearest in the trumpet blast that is blown against Christendom. For it expressly lays down that departure from the truth, and turning God's grace to licentiousness, are to go on till judgment thereon. Not that there may not be such as are faithful and true, keeping themselves in the love of God, and building themselves up on that most holy faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. What can be conceived more remote from men's new inventions? from the vain restlessness which is ever in quest of some fresh effort? From anything of the sort we are bound to keep clear as being deadly. It is not only from all tampering with bad ways, or false doctrine, but from humanizing on what is divine. To this we are bound by the very nature of Christianity, which calls us to entire dependence upon the word and Spirit of God. It is not for us, then, to be asking what is the wrong of this? or what harm is there in that? For the believer the true question is, What saith the Scripture? How is it written?
It is written here: “But Michael the archangel, when, contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee” (ver. 9). Here, then, is a grand truth, taught in a striking and powerful manner. The apostle Peter, in the 2nd chapter of his second Epistle, is said to give exactly the same thing as Jude, but he says not one word about it. He makes no allusion to Michael the archangel. He speaks in verse 4 of angels that sinned, whom God did not spare. But Jude presents it as the angels that kept not their first estate. This clearly has nothing to do with Michael. The reference to the archangel is entirely peculiar to Jude; and the object is to exhibit the spirit that becomes one who acts for God, even in dealing with His worst enemy, that there be no meeting evil with evil, nor reviling with reviling, but on the contrary immediate and confessed reference to God.
What makes it all the more surprising is the power vouchsafed to Michael. He is the angel whom God will employ to overthrow the devil from his evil eminence by-and-by (Rev. 12). But here the historical intimation given is entirely in character with the future. You may tell me that Rev. 12 was not revealed to Jude, who wrote this. Be it so, yet the same God that wrought by Jude wrought also by John. It is evident from the two scriptures that the antagonism between Michael and the devil is not a truth foreign to God's word. There we have it in the written word. It is the truth of God. Jude was given to tell us what God moved Jude to write, which has not only great moral value for any time, but gives us the fact, full of interest, that the antagonism between Michael the archangel and the devil is not merely of the future. Here the proof lies before us that it wrought also in the past. Thus we can look back fifteen hundred years, and there behold the evidence of this contention between the devil and the archangel. Do you say that it was about the body of Moses, and what is that to anyone? Can we not readily enter into the importance of that dispute? Can we not understand the bearing of that question, when we hold in mind all the history of Israel in the wilderness, as given in Exodus and Numbers?
There is nothing more common among the prophets than this, that while during their lifetime they were hated, after they were dead and gone they became objects of the highest honor; and, what is so remarkable, the highest honor to the same class of people that hated them—not objects of honor so much to other people, but honored by the same unbelieving class that could not endure the prophets' words when they were alive. They are ready to kill the prophetic messenger when living, and all but worship him when he is dead. Well, it is the same unbelief that acts in both ways; which, when he was alive, scouted the word of God come through him, and condemned and hated him, but when he was dead, and no longer, therefore, a living character to puncture their conscience, the very people who had war with the prophet would build a fine monument to his memory; and so, getting the character of being men who had a great regard for the prophet, men, therefore, that were doing their best for religion, they gave their money and have erected a fine monument, or perhaps had a fine statue made, or as grand a picture as they could pay for! So true it is, the flesh is quite remarkable for being ready to honor a man when he is dead and gone, whom it could not endure when alive. Our Lord drew attention to that very characteristic. It is not an idea of mine at all, it is the truth of God. Our Lord lays that down most strongly against the Jewish people; and it is not at all confined to the Jewish people. If you go now to the town of Bedford—to take an instance from our own country—there you will find a fine monument to John Bunyan, who, when alive, was scouted, imprisoned, and regarded as a presumptuous, bad man. The very same class of people now buy his book, and at any rate are not sorry that the children should read it along with the “Arabian Nights Entertainments” in the nursery. So there they have the “Pilgrim's Progress” and the “Arabian Nights” tales, and they are all considered equally entertaining for the children. They thereby show that they think the imprisoned tinker was a genius—for that is their way of looking at it; and therefore they gain for themselves credit in all sorts of ways, both as being men of taste, and also as men not at all averse to religion when it does not touch their conscience. The thing, therefore, that I am speaking of is always true, and always will be true till the Lord come, and then there will be no such thing as “the vile person called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful,” nor, on the other hand, the unjust treated as righteous. Then there will be righteousness reigning and everything and everyone will find their level according to God.
(To be continued.)