The Jew’s Standard as Men Alive on Earth Compared With the New Testament
In the second chapter we have the conclusion of the first strain of the prophecy. “Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage” (vss. 1-2). Surely all this would be strange as addressed to the Christian. We never find such a style of warning in the New Testament. The reason is plain. The law was the rule of the Jew. Now the law claims in natural righteousness, and deals with the want of it. What therefore they failed in was the practical answer to natural righteousness. But the Christian, even supposing he were ever so righteous in natural duties, is far from rising up to the standard which becomes a Christian. We have to walk according to Christ in spiritual things as well as in natural. Consequently, we need the light as it shone in Him, and the truth of the New Testament as the rule and guide of our walk, not merely the moral law that deals with man in the flesh.
Manifestly, then, our position is not in the flesh before God, as we are carefully told in Romans 8, where walking in the Spirit is insisted on. Of course, nobody denies that the flesh is in us; but as Christians we are not in it. Such is the doctrine of the Apostle Paul; and only unbelief would think of explaining away or even essaying to correct his language. It is not for believers so richly blessed either to dispute his accuracy or to forsake their own mercies. The Apostle Paul says positively of all Christians, “Ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that God’s Spirit dwell in you.” Such then is the distinctive standing of every Christian man. What is the meaning of it? Clearly this, that it belongs to me characteristically as a Christian that I am in Christ; that, instead of being defined as part of the race by fallen Adam, I have in Christ a new life and a new place. In short there is a new standing before God in Christ. This is as true now as it ever can be: the better resurrection will not confer but display its blessedness. When we go to heaven, we shall not be simply in Christ, we shall be with Christ; but we are in Christ while we are on earth.
The Distinctions of Scripture
It is needful to heed the distinctions made and given in scripture. Fear not to believe the Word. Cavilers may and do say that these are fine-drawn distinctions. If God has so revealed His truth to us (and scripture alone decides that He has), they may be exquisitely fine, but they are according to Him in whose wisdom and goodness we confide. We are bound to distinguish where and as God does; and if we fail to follow, we shall find out too late our loss. The truth is that there is a great deal of latent unbelief in those who cavil at the distinctions of the word of God. For all progress in real knowledge is tested by, as growth in true wisdom largely consists in, distinguishing things that differ. When a man is learning a new language, the sounds seem much alike to his ear; the characters too wear a sort of sameness of appearance which he fails at first properly to discriminate. Thus, he who begins to hear the Hebrew language, or who looks at the written words, is struck with their monotony, and sees a set of strange square letters, many of them so similar as to create for his eyes no small embarrassment.
Before We Have Peace, All Is Apt to Be Tortured to This; Afterward We Learn
Such is more or less exactly the case with a person reading the Bible at first and seeking to grow in the truth. The ignorant are apt to fancy that it is all merely the way to be forgiven of God and our duty. Everything is tortured to this, because it is the thought of their own minds. But when justified by faith, we have peace with God. Then we begin to distinguish the truths of scripture, and we learn that some passages treat chiefly of the divine nature, others of redemption; some of priesthood, others of justification; some of the riches of grace, others of the horrors of antichrist; some of salvation, others of the walk, and others again of the hope. The Jews, the Gentiles, the church, all have their place. Then the distinctions begin to crowd upon us, when wants are met, conscience is exercised but cleansed, and the heart set upon Christ. Yet it is plainly not in the nature of things to be spiritually fit for understanding the scriptures with fullness before we have found rest in Christ; but when this is known by the new man, do not yield to the selfishness which would stop there, but let us use the peace and rest of faith to increase by the knowledge of God—to “grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:1818But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen. (2 Peter 3:18)).
General Moral Principles Abide, With Special Instruction Given for Special Purposes
Thus, we shall soon learn the broad distinction, that to the Jew the evil denounced is of a much more external nature—oppression, covetousness, idolatry. These are the great iniquities with which they were charged. These are not our characteristic perils, though of course we may fall into any of them. But in the New Testament we find another class of evil; namely, bad and false doctrine, which destroys communion and undermines and corrupts the walk. Such uncleanness of spirit does not seem spoken of in the Old Testament. Why? Because we stand in a new and peculiar place. We have doubtless all the benefit of the ancient oracles, but we have the special instruction, help, and joy of the New Testament, which those of old had not; and our calling, being a peculiar thing, requires therefore peculiar scriptures to give us the light that is wanted for the glory of God. I make this remark by the way. Hence the upshot of what I am saying is this, that there are certain moral immutable principles, and that they always abide. Consequently, what is true from the first of Genesis remains true to the end of Revelation; but then we have our own peculiar words and exhortations given us. We must distinguish between old things and new. The general truths of God which direct the Jew or the Gentile are surely for the Christian, besides that calling of God in Christ Jesus which we now know in His name and by the Spirit of our God.
As Israel has the prominent place in Amos, so the converse is seen in Micah, who does not omit the kingdom of Samaria, but has Judah and Jerusalem as the prime objects of his expostulation. They pre-eminently are warned of those natural offenses against the moral ways of God, which the false prophets bore with and even cherished. But they learn that their prophets shall be taken away from them. The prophets had flattered the people, prophesying smooth things and deceits. Of course, they were not really servants of God, but from the mere school of prophets. When prophesying became traditional, it soon became corrupt. Those that God raised up extraordinarily dispensed the true light of God on the earth, and “Therefore thou shalt have none that shall cast a cord by lot in the congregation of Jehovah. Prophesy ye not, say they to them that prophesy: they shall not prophesy to them, that they shall not take shame” (vss. 5-6). What they had misused they should lose.
Then comes a most animated appeal in the latter part of this chapter. “O thou that art named the house of Jacob, is the Spirit of Jehovah straitened? are these His doings? do not My words do good to him that walketh uprightly?” (vs. 7). So we have a solemn call to them. “Arise and depart, for this is not your rest; it is polluted” (vs. 10). Here is a grave and precious principle. The people of God are never to rest in that which does not suit Him. Jehovah decides that the only rest which He can sanction for them is the rest that is worthy of Himself. Hence from the beginning we see, graven even on the time which fleets away, that God, when He sanctified the seventh day as the sabbath of rest, gave a sure pledge that remains for His people to the end of the world. The sabbath consequently has a most important place in the order of God for man on the earth, as we learn from His Word. But the Jew was always prone to be premature in looking for his rest. The same fault repeats itself in Christendom. But it is not so. Whatever we may have before God in Christ, we are still in scenes of war and labor. Our rest is not here; nor is it now. What do men flatter themselves they are going to bring about by discoveries and inventions? They hope that they may turn the moral wilderness of the world into a paradise, and thus find a present rest here. Is not this what they yearn after? Unconverted men, as the rule, are full of vaunt and vain glory: and I am afraid that too many of the converted yield to these fleshly dreams of the world. All will come to naught. The truth is that God means to effect rest; yet it will not be the fruit of man’s work but of His own. It was after the six days in which He made heaven and earth that God sanctified His rest at first, and, as our Lord, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:1717But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. (John 5:17)). He is still active, carrying forward the work of grace, the new creation; and after this is done, the true and final rest of God will come, and the people of God shall share it—the heavenly ones above, the earthly below. It is the earthly people who are addressed by Micah and warned not to look for a rest before the Lord’s time.
Now Is the Time for Labor
So no less but more shall Christians rest by and by. Our business is to work, meanwhile. Now is the time for labor; now we must be sedulously beware of making a rest of our own. By and by we shall enjoy to the full the rest of God, when the true Captain of salvation shall lead us in, not anticipatively as now, but in actual and complete possession for the body as well as soul and spirit.
In order to bring in this rest the breaker must come up—He who brings to naught every spurious rest. So in prophetic vision Micah sees. “The breaker has come up before them” (vs. 13). “I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel” (vs. 12). There will be none of the people left out when it is a question of introducing the rest of God. But the breaker must come before them. “They have broken up, and have passed through the gate, and are gone out by it: and their king shall pass before them, and Jehovah on the head of them” (vs. 13). It will be the rest of God when He shall have dispelled all substitutes for it, and evidently set aside every hindrance and repaired all breaches, Himself joining His people and bringing them in, whether to the earthly or to the heavenly rest. For long war against God will have closed, and all the universe of God shall rest above and below. Such is the bright millennial day according to scripture.