We have already noticed God's estimation of His own precious revelation, and His care that it should be kept pure. But in connection with this, I would for a moment look at 1 Kings 13.
The kingdom of the ten tribes under Jeroboam was at this time an unclean place. The calves of gold set up at Bethel and at Dan were the confidence of the people, obedient to this word of their king: "Behold thy gods, 0 Israel, which brought thee up out of... Egypt."
The Lord sends a missionary into that land with words of judgment. His commission, his ministry, and his conduct in his ministry, were all specially ordered by "the word of the Lord." He comes out of Judah to Bethel "by the word of the Lord" (v. 1); he cries against the altar there "in the word of the Lord" (v. 2); and his behavior, while in that place and doing that service, is prescribed to him "by the word of the Lord" (v. 9). And thus, as we said, his commission, his ministry, and his conduct-all are under the light and authority of God's word. This provided for everything; he had only to observe it.
This is most particularly marked by the Spirit of God in this narrative. And at the beginning, the Lord's missionary, "the man of God," acts accordingly. He pleads "the word" as the warrant for his ministry of judgment upon the altar at Bethel, and also against the offers and invitations of Jeroboam, making it the only light and guide of his path while in his country. And this was all safe and happy. The Lord had given him a very simple directory, and in the observing of it his path was maintained in security and peace.
But that old serpent who in the Garden of Eden made "the word of the Lord" the object of his attack, and has ever since been seducing the heart of man from it, tries with this man of God something further, since the offers and invitations of a king are resisted.
There was "an old prophet" in Israel at that time-another man of God, I doubt not, like Lot, found in a place where he could not act in character as a prophet; for how could he reprove the darkness with which he was more or less in fellowship?
Such a one is easily used by the enemy, and so it proves here. The father of lies employs him to do his work, and he tempts the Lord's missionary to eat and drink with him, contrary to "the word" which he had received, under the pretense that "an angel" from the Lord had spoken to him. And the temptation prevails; the path of simple obedience to "the word of the Lord" is deserted, and the servant of God dies under the judgment of God-a kind of pillar of salt-a kind of abiding witness and warning to us all, that our souls may ever hold to this, "Let God be true, but every man a liar."
Deep and serious and, for the present evil day, well-timed is the instruction of this little narrative. The man who withstood the invitations of a king, and had determined on cleaving to "the word of the Lord," though against the offers of a man in power, falls under the pretenses of a man of religion. The religious "old prophet" causes one to fall whom the splendors of a court had tempted in vain. And so it is still and will increasingly be. The devil is deceiving souls by what the world judges to be religion, and he succeeds, if he can but withdraw from subjection to "the word of the Lord." Concerning those who are not subject to the Word, God says "If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." Isa. 8:2020To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. (Isaiah 8:20).
Clearly do we trace in the Scriptures God's value for His Word or revelation, and the believer's title to it. If God's Word be deserted, He Himself is given up, for He can be known only by the revelation of it. When the Word is deserted, there is no light in the soul, for to leave the Word is to leave "the key of knowledge" and our Lord joins desertion with not entering into the kingdom of God (Luke 11).
A second error is taking the key of knowledge and using it to one's own destruction. The untaught and unstable do this (2 Pet. 3:1616As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16)). The mere human or intellectual man, in the confidence of his own strength, takes this key and injures, all he can, the door of the treasury of wisdom and knowledge through his awkwardness or violence. The danger is lest, being offended by this wresting of Scripture, the saint follows the former error and lets the key of knowledge be taken away and deposited in some religious hand. But one error is not to be corrected by another; the key is neither to be taken away nor used unskillfully.
I, however, fully allow, and it is to be deeply remembered by our souls in a day of intellectual pretense like the present, and of much activity of human thought and wisdom, that the Book of God is not to be subjected to the mere acuteness of man's mind. Far otherwise indeed! It demands, in the name of God, our full subjection to itself. Nor is it written, as one has said, for critics, for scholars, or for judges, but for sinners. "It is not an interesting exercise for our faculties that we are to expect in it. And it is by laying aside malice and envy and hypocrisies, and by simple desire after the living God Himself, that we are really to grow by its sincere milk or strong meat (1 Pet. 2:1, 21Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, 2As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: (1 Peter 2:1‑2))." I would indeed add this to what I have said on the value of the Scriptures. The Lord forbid that we should say anything that would appear to treat it as only one of the many books of the schools. For the Son of God is not the mere master of a new school, but the living Head of the Church to minister nourishment through joints and bands to the whole body. And let me add the striking and seasonable language of one of other days: "Wouldst thou know that the matters contained in the Word of Christ are real things? Then never read them for the sake of mere knowledge. Look for some beams of Christ's glory and power in every verse. Account nothing knowledge but as it is seasoned with some revelation of the glorious presence of Christ and His quickening Spirit. Don't converse about spiritual truths for conversation's sake, but speak for edification's sake.
This would help to put the soul into a right attitude when purposing to learn the secrets of God's most precious oracles. And when the Apostle prays for the saints (as in Eph. 1 and Col. 1), that they may grow in knowledge, he does this after he has sought for them that they might have a spiritual understanding; and this tells us, or intimates to us, that mere acquaintance with or information about Scripture, would all be divinely worth nothing, and that we should be careful not to pursue inquiry into revealed truth by the light or skill of the human mind, but by the exercise of the understanding given to us in Christ Jesus.
Surely I would uphold all this before my own conscience at all times. But it leaves untouched the great truth we have been mainly considering- the value of the written Word with God and to us, and that it is the one great standard for the testing of all our thoughts, and is the common inheritance of all the children. It is even the delight and commendation of an inspired Apostle, that Timothy, the child of a child of God, from his childhood had known that Word. So surely has God bound it about the heart and soul of His people. Therefore, again we say, let no authority divorce them or put them asunder; neither let anyone use it but in that holy obedient mind that is due to a gift of God.
The Spirit, in a very large sense, gives the Scriptures to all. For in the inspired penman of The Acts, the Holy Spirit commends the Bereans for their candor, their nobleness, in searching the Scriptures, whether what even an apostle was teaching was according to them. It was pleasing to the mind of the Holy Spirit to have His Word thus used and honored by these poor private Jews. Bereans they were, of the synagogue of that city; and the Spirit rejoices at seeing the Scriptures in their hands, making them the standard, even though an apostle was preaching unto them. This surely puts the written Word in high places. And so the same Apostle reasoned with the Jews out of the Scriptures, from "morning till evening," as Jesus Himself restored the hearts of the two disciples by leading them through all the Scriptures. Peter also commends the disciples to the light of the prophetic word, and by his own word would ever have them bear in mind all that was needful for them, whether for past, present, or future truth, and never (as another has observed) thinks of commending them to any official or apostolic successor of his, but to that Word which the Holy Ghost by him was then delivering. Even teachers, feeders of God's flock-as spiritual elders set over them- are commended to God and His Word, and not to anything else, in order that they might be kept and edified. (Acts 20; Luke 24 Pet. 1.)
This, and more than this, which we have, is more than enough to make our souls prize this precious, precious gift of God-much more precious to our souls by the attempt there has been made to take it from us, as not belonging to us, and to deposit it in some dark and distant corner. Some have sought to put asunder what God has joined together-the heart of His wayfaring saint and the light of His Word.
God's Word may be given up by the infidel who rejects it; but it may be given up, though in another way, by him who would join other words with it.
Traditional Christianity is real infidelity, for it denies the Scriptures which assert their own sufficiency, and makes itself the standard. "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." Isa. 8:2020To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. (Isaiah 8:20). And again, "The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?" Jer. 8:99The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them? (Jeremiah 8:9). A betrayer of the Book, in purer days, was judged to be as wicked a one as the denier of the faith. But the one is profane infidelity, the other is religious infidelity, and man by much chooses the latter. It enables him to keep God at a distance, which is the desire of man, or the flesh, and at the same time to keep a conscience at peace with religion still, which is equally his desire.
In closing I would just say that we need the whole of it, but nothing supplemental to it. This is intimated both by the Lord and Moses: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." (Deut. 8; Matt. 4.) This testimony is strong. These words tell us that nothing less, nothing more, is needed as food for the sustaining and strengthening of divine life in our souls, the Spirit alone being most surely able to make it effectual. The soul does not know what portion of the precious Word, in its conflict with various darknesses and subtleties of Satan, it may need, but it can live by that Word. Its life will need nothing beside. These two thoughts are clearly intimated in these words. And thus, for our blessing as for the Divine Giver's praise, we are not to add thereto or diminish there from. We may and shall attain different measures in the knowledge of it, according as there is gift of God and the exercise of the spiritual senses; but we are to make it the common standard in the camp of God. And the standard-bearer of the Lord must not faint in the day of battle. A firm hand and a broken heart are to give character to us.