The Paralysis of a Blinded Mind and a Darkened Understanding (continued)
It is in the latter case that Jonah is particularly a sign. In him we see a type of such as have had revelation and truth, but have taken hold of it and limited it to their own ends, prejudices, and interests. They have held it instead of it mastering them. It has become formal, static, traditional, and systematized.
Instead of being its servants they have made it serve them. Natural elements have risen up and the judgment of man has been put upon the truths of God. Thus the religious-natural man has appended himself to the revelation, and the revelation has ceased to be a living testimony. This gives place to the carnal elements which are at enmity with God (Romans 8:7), and "to be carnally-minded is death" (Romans 8:6). Enmity and death - that is Jonah; that is Israel; that is very largely Christendom.
Pride is back of it all. Personal interests are somewhere lurking. "Leaning to (their) own understanding" is inherent. Jonah reasoned along these lines, or along one line with an unacceptable issue. "I know God to be merciful and forgiving. If I tell Nineveh that in forty days it will be overthrown and it repents, God will forgive and save. That means that they could easily say that what I said had nothing in it. Then if Nineveh is saved, we stand to lose because they are our sworn foes. Moreover, this will be an innovation. Jehovah is the God of Israel, and why should our enemies get out blessings. This is taking the children's bread and giving it to the doges." Such was the frame of mind and the state of temper. Exclusiveness, jealousy, self-interest - these and many such like elements are always the perils of those who have received much enlightenment; and the book of Jonah thunders against them. Christ is exceedingly strong in His denunciation of them. Now of the two issues the first is this: to such there shall no sign be given, save the sign of Jonah.
We cannot deal with the latter until we have dwelt a little on the former.
Withdrawing Signs
Some have thought that the presence or absence of signs or miracles is dispensational. (We are referring to public miraculous demonstrations to the world.) We shall not enter into the controversial, but seek to maintain spiritual ground. God is very thorough, and when He saves He saves to the uttermost; but when He condemns He leaves no loophole of escape. In condemning Israel, He attested Jesus as Christ by many mighty works and miracles, but these were all as nothing to them and they still sought a sign, as though none had been given. Of all the multitudes who saw the miracles very few indeed came right through. Now these signs and wonders are characteristics of beginnings, of the kindergarten stages, the accompaniments of immaturity. True faith is not that which rests upon anything objective or sentient (perceptive). When virgin soil is being broken in heathen lands, such things are common, as seen in missionary records, and such works as "Pastor Hsi." But these records make it perfectly clear that when Christ becomes known and a certain stage of enlightenment is reached these miracles on the outward become less frequent. The miracle has become of another sort, it is the one supreme and all inclusive miracle upon which alone faith stands. God is going to bring all true believers to one common footing of faith. The Risen Christ is going to be the ultimate criterion, not miracles as such.
"The Jews seek after signs, and the Greeks wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified ... the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:22).
The absence of miraculous workings in the realm of the senses where the matter of knowing the Lord is in question is two sided: it is condemnation to those who have had the light and not followed it; and it is spiritual advancement in the case of those who are in the way of knowing the Lord more deeply. The great apostasy of the last days will have as its ground an absence of genuine love for the truth for its own sake; a craving for the demonstrations, sensations, manifestations; and then the satanic production of an imitation apostolicalism "with power, and signs and lying wonders" (2 Thess. 2:9); " a strong delusion" (2 Thess. 2:11), so that "if it were possible even the elect would be deceived" (Matt. 24:24).
The object which "the deceived" has in view is to turn from Christ to antichrist (2 John 7:7).
So the Lord Jesus would make things safe for His own by putting things upon a much higher plane than objective aids to faith. The further we go on with the Lord, the more inward things become, and the more He Himself becomes the transcendent reality and center of all things.
Before we can speak more fully of "the sign," we must come back and gather up everything into one crisis. The condemnation brought upon a race by the Lord Jesus in His use of Jonah was, and is, because of the blindness, enmity, carnality, pride, self-interest, exclusiveness, formalism, prejudice, jealousy, which mark the natural man as he presses into the realm of Divine things, or holds the oracles of God. This is the natural-religious or the religious-natural man.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 3 - "This Man Must Go Overboard")
No comments:
Post a Comment