SOLEMN as the subject is, it is healthful to the soul to remember that God is a God of discernment-of evil, as well as of good; and that it is His way to express His thoughts and estimate-as of the good-so likewise of the evil.
Let us look at some of the more salient proofs of this in the "Word as to evil.
God placed man, whom He had created, in a certain position and relationship to Himself in Eden, the paradise of man. When the condition upon which man was to continue there had been broken by him, Adam's evil and wicked violation of that condition is brought out to light; arraigned and convicted, he is expelled forever from his paradise, though mercy, by introducing the woman's seed, blots not the rebel from of the face of the earth; nor lets judgment take its full final course then and here. The last Adam is brought in, in promise, just before the first Adam is driven out. Adam's primeval position and relationship were lost, lost forever: this was the righteous expression of divine displeasure against Adam's unfaithfulness to the duties of his position: God's introduction of the last Adam in the seed of the woman was the merciful expression of His delight in the last Adam; in whom there was salvation for time and salvation for eternity open to the condemned rebel; and so the first Adam passed out of his paradise, under the displeasure of God, though, for the sake of the last Adam, he is left on earth, for time, and might through Him win a place in the paradise of God for eternity. His position was lost, his first relationship was broken-the second death. in -eternity was before him, the punishment in full of a creature's independency of its Creator. But these he had not yet come to.
2. The antediluvian world. " And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. And the Lord God said, I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air; for it repented' Me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord" (Gen. 6:5-8).
The utterance of His thoughts, about the fullness of the wickedness of-and of His righteous unqualified displeasure with-that world is solemn and awful.
" The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them, and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth" (11-13),
Peter gives us the concise account of the execution of this sentence and its awful completeness; and also its typical character; and how Noah passed through the fearful expression of divine wrath (2 Peter 3:5,6,)... " by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:"-all perished, heavens and earth that then were; it was a type of the coming destruction of the heavens and earth that now are by fire,-" the heavens being on fire, shall he dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat" (2 Peter 3). God "spared not the old world, but saved Noah,. the eighth, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly" ( 2. 5; and Gen. 6, 7. And 8.); Noah passed through the desolating judgment.
3. The displeasure of God at the conduct of Ham-when Noah, into, whose hand the-present-earth, and the government of it (in the power of life and death) were put, had been drunk.
" Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren;" Gen. 9:25; and compare Deut 32:8.
4. The Tower of Babel. All were scattered.
"So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth" ( 11. 3, 9).
5. When God took up Abram, of the family of Shem (chap. 11. and 12.; compare Josh. 24:14,15), he left the idolatrous world where it stood.
6. 2 Peter 2:6-we read of His "turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes, condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that should after live ungodly; and delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked; (for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;) the Lord knoweth how to, deliver the ungodly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished " (6-9). Awful overthrow and bare escape (as of, one saved so as by fire) have we here, as also in Gen. 18 and 19.
7. We see the same nearness of God to each of the three, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in their individual walks, and to their families; and to the twelve patriarchs and Joseph;-and a constant notice of chastening, more or less severe, for practical heedlessness of walk.
8. Job, as an individual and the head of a family, may be noticed here, and the kingdom of Israel taken up by God in Egypt and His sore plagues on Egypt, and passing of Israel out of Egypt.
9. All. His judgments too, as each successive part of His people, failed.
The people and Aaron as to the calf.
Nadab and Abihu with the strange fire.
The sabbath day and the sticks picked up thereon.
The Israelitish woman's son who blasphemed the name of the Lord and cursed.
Aaron and Miriam.
, The murmuring at Taberah.
The lustings of the mixed multitude.
The failure of the spies, with their discouraging the people.
The failure of the Levites and Kore, etc., etc., etc.
The judges, the prophets, the kings-all provoked the Lord; and the judgment of the Lord was upon them-proof of His displeasure at their sin.
But all these sins were theirs according to positions and relationships which were in time and on earth, in the which He had placed them. As providing for man and as ruling over man down here, God expected honor to be paid to Himself; and when, instead of honor He found contempt,-His displeasure was expressed and acted upon. But in none of these cases did He act upon the great position and relationship of the Eternal God, the Creator, on the one side, and man as His creature and as sustained in being by Him, on the other. All the longsuffering patience of God, too, was possible because of the presence of the Son with Him; that Son who, before the question of the creature in rebellion with its Creator should be tried, was to die upon the cross as Son of man under the hidings from Him of the light of God's countenance. He, the power and the wisdom of God, bare that wrath once, and bare it in, a fullness and in a way that none other ever could bear it. He became the gauge, the mark, whereby the power of that wrath could be measured in its immeasurableness. That the saint of God never can know,-that the un- believer will know and will learn (what never can be fully taught to man, save through an eternity) what the agony is of hatred and defiance of the living God, full of goodness, in a creature such as man is.
As a believer, I might possibly suffer with the world" around me, under any of God's sore judgments in time: the plague, the sword, famine, and the noisome beasts.
But that is not the wrath of the Creator God expressing itself, as from His own sphere and place, against the state and condition of a rebel creature.
As a believer, judgments of God, in time and 'as Ruler upon earth might surround me; providential judgments of various kinds too; the chastening of God as the head of a family, which should be holy, even as He is holy; or the same upon myself for individual failure:-but I pass through it all, if with humbled heart, yet with confidence. The condition upon which blessing now hangs, in this position or that, in this relationship or that, may have been violated by me; and I may have to bear the consequences thereof at the hand of God,-this is part of His governmental order and ways; but it is quite distinct from the settlement by the eternal God of heaven of that abruption between my soul as a creature, and Himself as Creator. That is settled; His love gave His Son to be the propitiation of my sins. In His death there was the expression of more than the wrath of God in government, down here, in time; that, for man -must be in time and on earth. And this Son is now my life; eternal life in heaven and in. God.