A Lesson for the Times. (John 2:13-22.)
The world is growing old. The dark shadow of the future seems already falling over it. Christianity, God’s latest revelation to man, once seen in all its freshness and power in the first age of the Church, has been sadly corrupted. Large numbers, calling themselves Christians, appear to be such only in name. Infidelity is again boldly rearing its head, and forcing itself into prominence as the only rational position for creatures endowed with reason.
In such a time of acknowledged failure, what is the resource of God’s people — what are the means they should use — what the plan they should carry out, to keep alive the spirit of devotion, and to keep hearts true to Christ? An answer to tins question has been given by some, and is forced more and more on the attention of all; and we conclude there are but few of the readers of “Things New and Old” who have not met with it in some form or other. For what with a literature especially occupied with this subject, new books of devotion for children and adults, handbills advertising lectures for or against it, public discussions and sermons, the open advocacy of incense and recurrence to obsolete vestments, the exaltation of a human priesthood, and the doctrine of the real presence in the eucharistic elements; we are reminded that its advocates profess to be in the possession of the unfailing recipe for laying hold of the hearts of the multitude, christianizing the world, and reviving practical godliness. To any intelligent observer, such a movement naturally suggests the thought, Is it of God? Is this His way of advancing His kingdom, and giving new energy to those who own Jesus as Lord?
Where shall we turn to discover this, but to God’s word — the unfailing guide of His people in all ages, and the repository of His thoughts, so far as He has seen fit to unfold them? And scripture in this wall not fail us: for it furnishes us, from the history of Israel and their spiritual condition at the time of the Lord’s first passover after He commenced His ministry, with an example of what effects a ritual, divinely ordered and carried out with scrupulous exactness, has on the natural heart of man.
Brought out of Egypt, led through the wilderness, carried into Canaan, the nations subdued, then inheritance secured to them, they had witnessed, as no other people ever did, the power of God and the goodness of God. Separated from all the nations by ordinances delivered by God to Moses, with festivals of annual occurrence, sacrifices repeated each day, and facilities for voluntary offerings as often as they would: here was an opportunity to show to all the world how much a religion interwoven with ceremonies, each rite of which was the subject of divine revelation, could do for man in the flesh.
Did it keep alive in their hearts the knowledge of the living and true God? Before they reached the land of Canaan “they joined themselves unto Baal; yea, and ate the sacrifices of the dead.” “Have ye offered unto me,” says God, by Amos 5:25, “sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, Ο house of Israel? But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.” Was this an isolated case of departure from God? For more than seven hundred years before the captivity of Israel the sacrifices, appointed by the law, had been offered up with little intermission in the land of their inheritance; yet, for near three hundred years before their captivity, the ten tribes had openly renounced the worship of Jehovah, and sacrificed to their calves and the abominations of the heathen. (See 2 Kings 17:17, 18.) And Judah, where the temple of God was, and His altar likewise, at last followed the iniquity of Israel, and even surpassed them in erecting idolatrous altars in the house of the Lord, and carrying on abominable rites hard by that temple which Solomon had dedicated to the Lord of all the earth. Brought back from captivity, and the worship of God restored at Jerusalem, “ as it is written in the book of Moses” (Ezra 6:18), idolatry was put away. But in what condition were the people? Malachi attests their neglect of God’s house and want of regard for Him; and the work of the Lord in the temple, recorded in the passage before us, shows forth their forgetfulness of His character and His holiness.
It was not so much on this occasion Messiah presenting Himself to the people, that He did afterward more fully, but Jesus surveying the spiritual condition of the Jews, and exercising authority in God’s house, as His Son. He reproves them. For what? Laxity in legal observances? Of that there was no evidence. Want of scrupulous regard to the teaching of the elders? None could justly charge them with this. Of the washing of cups, and platters, brazen vessels, and of tables, there was no lack. Water for purification after the manner of the Jews was at hand in abundance. Their zeal for the sabbath was notorious. The mere suspicion of a Gentile having entered the court of the Jews was sufficient to sot the city in an uproar. They would refrain, too, from entering into Pilate’s judgment-hall that they might be undefiled in order to eat of the passover. But with all this professed reverence for the things of God, where was the sense of God’s presence in His sanctuary? It was lost. They had the ritual, they kept most punctiliously the outward observances of the law, and yet remained regardless of what befitted the sacred character of God’s house. What an exposure this was of religiousness without religion! Religion means the rebinding of the soul to God. Could that be said to characterize those who made the Father’s house a house of merchandize? What excuses could be offered for such conduct? Many, perhaps, if they thought only of their convenience; hut none, if they thought for one moment of God. One word from the Lord settles the whole matter, and puts it in a clear light. And this took place at the passover, the feast which of all others was connected with the display of Jehovah’s power. Pentecost told of goodness annually vouchsafed them in the land. Tabernacles recalled their dwelling in booths in the wilderness, contrasted with their enjoyment of all the fruits of Canaan. Passover commemorated power exerted to deliver them from the slavery of Egypt. To this feast Jesus went up; and at that season finds the Jews destitute of a right conception of the sanctity of Jehovah’s house. And in Jerusalem, the metropolis of Judaism, where the teachers and lawyers congregated, and in the temple where the high priest officiated, the Lord had thus publicly to rebuke them, and not one of the chief priests or scribes, that we read of, expressed his approval of His act.
Was this insensibility the result of long habit, which needed only to be pointed out to be corrected? See these same people three years afterward, when the Lord Jehovah visits His temple. The chief priests and scribes heard His rebuke a second time administered, saw Him act with authority again, and sought — but what? — how they might destroy Him. (Matt. 11:18.) Fifteen centuries (speaking in round numbers) of nearly uninterrupted ritual observance finds this people, at its close, destitute practically of a right knowledge of God; and ready, on the first opportunity, to crucify the Messiah, the only hope and deliverer of the nation.
But another startling fact is made apparent: whilst burning with zeal for Moses, they were incapable of understanding the words and actions of the Prophet, to whom Moses had commanded them to hearken. They asked for a sign as the law authorized (Deut. 18:20-22): He gave them a sign, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” They understood this of the building before them; He spake of His body. Misunderstanding His words then, they afterward perverted what He had said. He said, “Destroy;” He was accused of saying, “I will destroy.” Before the high priest two false witnesses averred this. At the cross, the chief priests taunted Him with it. Would God’s Son destroy God’s temple? They might, and did. Little knew they to whom they spoke, as He hung on that cross. Little knew they of what He had spoken.
What then, it is pertinent to ask, did a ritual, surpassed by none in splendor, do for Israel? It did not keep them from idolatry. It did not succeed in impressing them with a right sense of the holiness of their God. It did not preserve them from crucifying the Son of God. Then history shows, as clearly as any can, that the observance of ceremonies, however minute, of sacrificial rites, however varied, with priestly robes, however rich and elaborate, has no power to allay the enmity of man’s heart, or lead it a willing captive to the feet of Jesus. Never can there be a better opening for its success than Israel afforded. Never can there be a more decided failure than in their history is recorded. Yet God will establish again, at Jerusalem, a ritual similar to what He gave them at Sinai. But when? Let the reader mark this, and learn its significance and its bearing on the movement around us. When Israel shall be converted, with a new heart and right spirit, and God’s law written upon their hearts. See Ezekiel 36:26; 40-48; Jer. 31:21.
Till then what is to be done? How will God carry on His work? How does He keep the hearts of His people in a day of increasing apostasy, and in the midst of a mass of profession, very similar to what existed in Israel when the Lord was on the earth? He acts now as then. What rites and ceremonies cannot affect, His word can. By that He would instruct. By that He would guide. We get tins beautifully illustrated in the history before us.
Whilst the Jews were preparing to ask by what authority He acted, unauthorized by the high priest, unsanctioned by the Scribes and Pharisees, “the disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” What more appropriate sentence in the whole volume could they have found than this? Doubtless, the Holy Ghost brought it to their remembrance. It was just the key to the whole matter. It told of one who would be consumed by zeal for God’s house; and His action in the temple that day illustrates the words of the psalmist, written centuries before. What the doctors, who had disputed with the child Jesus eighteen years previous to this, in that same house, well versed as they were, surely, in all the wisdom of the elders, did not remember, a few poor Galilean fishermen did. But observe, they were disciples before they remembered tins. Is there not instruction for us here? In a day of abounding profession these disciples of the Lord were reminded, not by any of the authorized teachers in Israel, not by any of all those that were present of that word which would explain the new character in which their Master then appeared. God had His eye on those few and insignificant men, and though the Lord vouchsafed a sign when asked, before the Jews got their sign, or even, it would seem, had asked for it, the disciples had that from God which answered any question that might arise in their mind. God’s word they found that day suited for the occasion.
Further, we must remember, that there is a timely use of that word. We may misapply it, and so fall into great mistakes. We may misinterpret it, and so disseminate grievous errors. This was just what the chief priests and scribes did. This was just what the disciples, kept by God, did not. The chief priests made use of His words at a wrong time, and applied them in a wrong way. They remembered them before His death; but the disciples, after. For we read, “When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them, and they believed the scriptures and the words which Jesus had said.” So again we find in this narrative the position of the Jews and disciples contrasted. And of whom were they disciples? — not of Moses: that the Jews called themselves, not merely of God: that the Jews laid claim to be equally with them — but of Jesus, God’s Son. To them, and them only, were the words in both cases recalled: the right words and at the right time; and enlightenment came to them by the word. Is it not the same now? We want a recurrence to the word, not a recurrence to ceremonies. We need to be reminded of what God has revealed, not a clearer apprehension of what man has invented.
Such has ever been God’s way. David owned it when he wrote, “Concerning the works of men, by the word of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer.” (Psalm 17:4.) We see it was God’s way in the days of Paul, when, warning the Ephesians elders of the errors that would spring up in their midst, he commends them to God, and to the word of His grace, which was able to build them up, and give them an inheritance among them that are sanctified. Years after, just before he closed his earthly career, he exhorts Timothy to preach the word, to be instant in season, out of season; adding the significant warning, “for the time will come, when they will not endure sound doctrine.” (2 Tim. 4:2, 3.) Paul had personally experienced, and Timothy probably, what a religion of ordinances, appointed even by God, could do. They had given it up, had cast away the shadow for the substance; the sacrifices continually offered up under the law for the one sacrifice once for all offered up on the cross; the fragrance of incense for the merits of Christ; the earthly high priest for the heavenly High Priest; the priesthood of the house of Aaron for the common priesthood of all believers.
Shall we go back to what they had renounced? Should we seek to set up what they had abandoned? A religion of ordinances is a religion for an earthly people. It is a going back in worship, as too many have, in heart, gone back in doctrine, to the position of Israel under the law. We would remind such that the only ritual God ever sanctioned is thus described by His Spirit, “a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” (Col. 2:17.) Our part now is to imitate those Galilean fishermen in following Christ — and we shall surely find, as they did, God’s word will be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.