Then we come to the last part of the book, the third part. I have already gone over it, and only speak of it in connection with our main theme here. You know that the idolatry, the introduction of idolatry, as we saw, was the failure of the people to accept Christ as the Image of the Invisible God, and seeking to make some other image out of their own minds, some partial conception, it might be, of God; but not God as He is revealed to us in the Person of our Lord. Then when God is corrupted, when idolatry is set up, how quickly man is corrupted too. And we saw in that awful corruption at Gibeah, and the subsequent dealing with it, how when God is forsaken, when man has set Christ aside as the Image and Representative of God, how he sets aside his fellow man, how he despises and treats him with all the wretched abominations with which the people of Sodom treated one another.
What an awful picture you have of the human heart; and when Israel comes in righteousness,-might I not add in self-righteousness too?-to deal with this awful wickedness that has been allowed by the tribe of Benjamin, in which it had been committed, how we find the helplessness of human vengeance to effect the righteousness of God. We find discipline now going completely to the extreme, almost, of annihilating a whole tribe. You see how utterly ineffectual is the arm of flesh, and God has to humble them, to break them down, and teach them over again and still again, this lesson, that is emphasized throughout the book, the lesson of human weakness.
history, "In those days there was no king in Israel." How the yearning that appeals throughout the whole book comes to one point, and shows that the desire of the heart of God's peole, the desire that is put there by the Spirit of God, is the only remedy for all evil amongst us, and that is the coming of Christ Himself.
But here at the close of our studies, I would press upon us all the enormous weight of responsibility that rests upon those whose eyes have been opened to the realities upon which we have been dwelling. Where are Gideon, Jephthah, Barak now? Where are the apostles, martyrs, and confessors of the Church? They have gone. No longer can they stand in the breach, or uphold the standard of Christ. They rest from their labors, waiting to be rewarded for their faithful service.
But the enemy is still here, as we have been abundantly seeing; and the Church of Christ is still here with the testimony to the truth of God to be preserved in the face of abounding evil. Yea, alas, the spiritual bondages are a present fact-but who and where are the deliverers?
Do you look about, near or far off? Do you think of some one across the sea, or in distant land, whose name and work you have heard? Ah, beloved, look nearer home. Do you sigh and cry over the desolations? Do you hunger for the Word of God? Are you absolutely broken and helpless? Then why not you? Why may not God use you, in complete weakness, as an instrument for help and deliverance for His people?
Oh, the honor, the dignity, the joy of being permitted to stand for Christ, for His Church and His truth in a day of rebuke and ruin! To stand, to confess, yea to die if need be, for Him. Have the mass succumbed? Have principles been abandoned, or has godly care relaxed? Then in Christ's name, if there be but one to stand to the truth, let him stand. One mightier than the mightiest stands with him.
Thus, dear brethren, you will find that you can begin with the beginning, and as you go through the entire book, you find the one great lack is—Christ is absent, Christ is not here, the Blessed Son of God is not paramount; His rule, His control, His power, is lacking, is wanting throughout. Only a glimpse of Him is all that you have-simply a flash, as it were, a glimpse of Christ that passes into blacker night, because Christ Himself is not there.
There is no reformation for the Church of Christ, there is no improvement for the people of God, there is no such thing as getting right, or being right, there is no such thing as obedience to the Word of God, that does not have one controlling Person before the soul. Beloved brethren, you can be coldly exact, theologically accurate, you may be ecclesiastically correct, you may point out wrong in this and in that system, the inconsistencies of professing Christians, you may get to be quite Pharisees in your conduct, but you are nothing unless you have this one commanding fact throughout,-Christ in His blessed Person, Christ in His all-sufficiency, the Lord Jesus in the fullness of His love and the attractiveness of His Person, is the only One who can control and lead and deliver His people, the One whom we long to see.
There is a joy in conflict, there is a joy in getting the truth of God; a joy in meeting the enemy even, if we meet him in faith. a joy in getting down and learning our own weakness; but ah, all these joys after all are only but foretastes of that one great joy for which our hearts are waiting, waiting with Him, and that is to behold Him. And when we behold Him, and His Church beholds Him, when we are caught up to be with Him, we will then, and not till then, be conformed to His image. If we are to represent Him here, the measure in which He Himself controls thought, motive, desire, everything in our lives, so that we can say with Paul, "To me, to live is Christ," beloved, in that measure we will have practical likeness to Him, and be a practical testimony for Him.
How blessedly simple, how blessedly satisfying. In the midst of all the confusion in which we live, in the midst of all the desolation which man's pride and selfishness has brought in, in the midst of Satan's malignity and the world's allurements, to be able to say:
"I have hear the voice of Jesus,
Tell me not of aught beside,
I have seen the face of Jesus,
All my soul is satisfied.”
Are we satisfied with Him, beloved? Does He fill the soul? Does He take possession of us, do we walk in fellowship with Him? If we do, in spite of all the ruin that is about us, and in the face of all the heavy load of our responsibility, we will have a power that will enable us to meet them every one,—Christ and Christ alone. Not one thing but Christ Jesus; not one thing but Himself; Himself, His Word, His will, His headship, His authority, His honor; everything centering in Him, radiating from Him, and the link between Him and every one of His blood-bought people recognized, and we ourselves seeking to be simply the reflection of Christ. Christ reflected out of a broken life, a broken self. Do you crave the honor of representing Christ, of being filled with Christ?
“To me, to live is Christ.”
“Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus.”
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