"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Luke 24:27."
The Lord's wisdom in dealing with the Sadducees of His day, may well be our pattern in dealing with a like generation in this day. " Ye do err," said He to them, " not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God" (Matt. 22). They presented a difficulty, as they judged it to be, an insurmountable difficulty; but it was no such thing to Him. Scripture He bowed to, and the power of God He asserted. Scripture was His rule of thought and judgment; and He could rest in the power of God as that which would make every jot and tittle of it good.
This was His answer to them at once, His immediate rebuke of them. And it was enough. His Spirit afterward in the apostle would commend the saints to God, and to the word of His grace; so now, would He Himself lean on God and His word. It was enough for Him that God had spoken (see Acts 20:32).
But after this, He shows these Sadducees, that the difficulty they suggested was simply an imagination of their own, and not a part of the Scripture, or the revelation of God. And then, in closing with them, He exposes their unbelief by the light of Scripture, rebuking their denial of resurrection by a passage taken from Ex. 3-thus again honoring Scripture as the authoritative rule of all our thoughts.
But this only as I pass on to my present subject, the fact that quotations from the Old Testament are largely found in the New. These quotations from the Old Testament, cited, as they are, in all parts of the New, with many and many a glance, or tacit unexpressed reference, link all the parts of the sacred volume together, giving it a character of unity and completeness. The contents of the volume do the same-they also give unity and completeness to it; for they constitute a history (with incidental matters by the way), a series of events which stretch from the beginning to the end, from the creation to the kingdom. And prophecies in the Old Testament of events in the New act in the same way as quotations in the New of passages in the Old. And thus, as in the mouth of several witnesses of the highest dignity, we have the oneness and the consistency, the unity and completeness of the Book from first to last fully set forth and established.
But this simple fact tells us, further, that all the parts of this wondrous volume are the breathing of one and the same Spirit; and again, the contents themselves speak the same. The moral glories which so brightly, so abundantly and so variously, shine in them witness that God is their source. This constitutes the "self-evidencing light and power of the Holy Scriptures," as another has expressed it. And thus the divine Original of the book, as well as its divine Unity and consistency is established; and we hold these truths in the face of all the insult that is put upon them by unreasonable and wicked men. Oppositions of criticism, falsely so called, like angry waves on the seashore. God Himself has set the bounds—and they only return upon themselves, foaming out their own shame.
In the progress of the New Testament Scriptures, the Lord and the Holy Ghost, each in His several way and season, use the Scriptures of the Old.
As to the Lord, we may find Him doing this in various ways.
1. He observes them obediently, ordering His life and behavior, and forming His character (if I may so speak), by them, and according to them.
2. He uses them as His weapons of war or shield of defense, when assailed by the Tempter, or by the men of the world.
3. He avers and avows their divine authority and original, and their indestructible character, and that too, in every jot and tittle of them.
4. He treats them as authoritative and commanding, when He teaches His disciples, or reasons with gainsayers.
5. He fulfills them.
In such ways as these, the Lord honors the Scriptures of the Old Testament. What a sight! What a precious fact! How blessed to see Him in such relationship to the word of God; for that word is to ourselves the warrant and witness of all the confidence and liberty and peace we know before God!
We read the 119th Psalm with delight, there tracing a saint's relation to Scripture; and we know it to be edifying to mark the breathings of the soul under the drawings and teachings and inspirings of the Holy Ghost. But it is a still more affecting, a more edifying thing, to trace and mark, through the four Evangelists, the relations to the same Scriptures into which the Lord Jesus puts Himself.
Then, when the ministry of the Lord is over, when the Son has returned to heaven, and the Spirit comes down, He is seen (as in the apostles whom He fills to write the Epistles) to do the same service for us; and in His way to put Himself in connection with the Old Testament Scriptures, as the Lord had just been doing. For in all the Epistles, as I may say, we get quotations from them.
And here let me add, there is no limit to this. These quotations are found in every part of the New Testament, and are taken from every part of the Old. They are found in Matthew, and on to the Apocalypse, and are taken from Genesis to Malachi. And this is done very largely; so that in the structure of the divine volume, we have nothing less than the closest, fullest and most intricate interweaving of all parts of it together, to the end, too, returning to the beginning, and the beginning anticipating the end. So that, in a sense, we are in all parts of it, when we are in any part of it, though the variety of its communications is infinite. It reminds me of the figure of the body and its members, used by the apostle to set forth Christ (1 Cor. 12.). There are many members, but one body. There are many books, but one Scripture, one volume. All are equally divine workmanship, though all may not be of equal value to the soul. The foot is not the hand, nor the ear the eye. But God has set them together in one body-as in the heavens, He has set stars and constellations together, though one may differ from another in glory.
But to pursue the same figure of the body and the members, we do boldly say, one part of the volume cannot be touched without all feeling it and resenting it. " Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; " God has so tempered it all together. If Moses be insulted, Paul feels it; if Daniel or Zechariah be questioned, John and Peter will resent it. Yea, and I may go further in the same analogy, and say, the uncomely parts have been given more abundant honor. The shortest piece in the whole volume is made to be heard in the conclusion of the finest, and most elaborate and most weighty argument we find in it. Psa. 117, is brought forth as a special witness in Rom. 15 And the book of Proverbs, dealing as it does with common, practical, every day life, is honored by being made as rich and blessed a witness to the Christ of God in His mysterious glories, as we get in any part of the whole Scripture (Chapter 8).
Yea and I will take on me to say this further. As all other parts of the volume, like members of one body, will resent trespass and wrong done to any part, so will the Spirit say of God and of the Scriptures, as He says of God and of His people, He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of His eye." The Scripture is His handiwork; and God will make a quarrel of Scripture His own quarrel. If He will awake in due time, to the controversy of His temple or His covenant, or His Zion, so will He most assuredly to the controversy of His word. He has magnified His word above all His name (Psa. 138:2). " He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words," says the Lord Jesus, " hath one that judgeth him" (John 12:48).
And again let me speak, as I stand in presence of God and His oracles; Scripture links itself with Eternity in ways that are divine, like everything else in it. If we have quotations in the New Testament of passages in the Old, so have we, in both Old and New, references to the eternity that is past. And if we have foretellings in the Old Testament of events in the New, so have we, in both Old and New, the foretelling of the eternity that is to come. Scripture, as I may speak, retires behind the borders of time, and discloses the secrets and counsels of the past Eternity, unsealing "the volume of the book," and disclosing predestinations formed and settled in Christ ere worlds began and Scripture passes beyond the borders of time, and is in the scenes and glories of the Eternity that is to come, giving us to hear every tongue. confessing "JESUS to be Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:11), and many many kindred voices, and to see many many kindred glories. And happy for us, that it links itself with time as well as with Eternity. It goes before us to skew us the way all through the confusion and corruption that is abroad, to the last moment of the dispensation. All is anticipated; so that we need not be stumbled by anything, however saddened and ashamed we may be. "Great peace have all they that love Thy law, and nothing shall offend them" (Psa. 119:165). We need not be afraid with any amazement since we have it. The confusion and corruption may be infinite, strange indeed in their changeful forms, and deep in their insolent wickedness; but Scripture has prepared us for all, superstitious vanities and infidel insolence. The tare-field was spread out on the page of Scripture ere it stretched itself out in the defiled plains of Christendom. The unmerciful fellow-servant is seen in Matt. 18, ere he is seen in the wars and controversies of Christendom. God in His word has not forecast the shadow of uncertain evils.
It is indeed marvelous, and yet not marvelous because it is divine. The Spirit of Him who knows the end from the beginning can account for it, but nothing else can. The Book itself, as another has said, is a greater miracle than any which it records.
And I would now end with a word about quotations, as it was with them I began.
These citations out of His own writings by God Himself, first in the Person of the Son, and then in the Person of the Holy Ghost, are beautiful in this character; God is sealing what once He wrote: at the beginning He sent forth those writings as from Himself, being the source of them; so now, after they have come forth, and been embodied in human forms as in all languages of the nations, and been seated in the midst of the human family, He comes forth to accredit them there Himself as with His own sign manual. God has both written them and sealed them; and we receive them as from Him, and in our way of responsive faith and worship, " set to our seal that God is true" (John 3:33). "Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage forever; for they are the rejoicing of my heart" (Psa. 119:111). Surely these things are so.
To notice, with some care, the quotations themselves, as they meet us while we pursue our way from Matthew to the Apocalypse, is an edifying exercise of the soul. It helps directly to let us into fuller light as to the Old Testament oracles, giving us nothing less than God's own key for unlocking the treasures that are there. And this exercise has also another direct effect-it binds all. the parts, however distant, of the one volume together under our eye, and it serves to present the whole as one complete and perfect piece of workmanship in full consistency with itself throughout. The light is one, though it may be that of the Patriarchal dawn, of the Levitical or Mosaic morning, of the prophetic fore-noon, of the Gospel Meridian or noontide, and then of the Apocalyptic-evening hour with its shadows, just before the solemn night of judgment which is to precede the second morning, the morning of millenial Glory. But this indeed it is. In Scripture, from beginning to end, we are in the light of God, from the first morning of creation to the second morning of the' kingdom; having passed our own noon and evening hours, and also the season of the world's midnight.