Leaves From the
Book
Trial Under
Law
WE have seen already that at the very commencement of its
history the people failed under the law; and this is the one unvarying lesson
of all these ages. Under law it was only more plainly marked, as was indeed to
be expected of that which was emphatically the "ministration of condemnation."
Still the extent of the failure seems after all amazing. I do not even refer to
the worship of the golden calf, although it might seem nothing could more show
the desperate wickedness of man's heart than this. The very mount which had
flamed and quaked in witness to the divine presence bore witness also to this
rapid descent into the abominations of the heathen round about, who "changed
the image of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man,
and to birds, and to fourfooted beasts, and creeping things." Judgment being
executed, God took up the people the second time; not, as we know, under the
same strictly legal system, which it had been proved they could not endure, but
under a mingled system of law and mercy.
It was in this. way that the
tabernacle with its sacrifices and priesthood was added to the law, although
God, in the display of perfect omniscience which could not be taken unawares,
had instructed Moses as to it before the sin of the people (Ex. xxv.-_xxxi.)
And here faith found its provision, and a convicted conscience its pledged
forgiveness. These - at least, it would be thought, would be prized and
welcomed in view of the constant failure which the vigilance of the law
detected and condemned. How surpassingly strange, then, that these should have
fallen into such utter disuse as God by the mouth of Amos declares they did (v.
25-27). "Have ye offered Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty
years, 0 house of Israel? But ye have borne the tabernacle of Moloch and Chiun,
your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." Thus even
Moloch's dreadful altar was preferred to God's and the gracious provisions of
His tabernacle dropped into a forgetfulness hard to realise. The failure of the
dispensation was already fixed: "Therefore will I cause you to go into
captivity beyond Damascus, saith the Lord."
Incredible almost would this
neglect indeed seem, did not the Word of God itself announce it. And there are
testimonies in the history itself which show in a still more striking way the
extent of it. Especially is the statement of the book of Joshua (V. 2-7)
remarkable as showing the complete breach of the covenant with Jehovah on the
part of the people. Nothing was more fundamental to this than the ordinance of
circumcision. The uncircumcised man-child was to be cut off from his people
(Gen. xvii. 14); and none such could eat of the passover at all (Ex. xii. 48.)
Either these laws must have been disregarded or the passover must have been
almost entirely omitted toward the close of the wilderness journey, when no one
under forty could have been circumcised at all. For the express statement is,
"All the people that came out of Egypt that were males, even all the men of
war, died in the wilderness by the way, after they came out of Egypt. Now all
the people that came out were circumcised; but all the people that were born in
the wilderness by the way as they come out of Egypt, them they had not
circumcised." How the patience of the Lord with the people is manifest! but how
evident that priesthood and Levitical service must almost have come to an end?
If these, as all other of the things that happened to Israel, happened unto
them for types (i Cor. x. i i), what admonition would this convey to us!
Moses, even, dies in the land of Moab for his sin; and of all that came as men
out of the land of Egypt, Joshua and Caleb alone remained. An entire new
generation enter into the land of Canaan, and here a new order of things
begins.
For, let us notice, with all the patient goodness manifested toward
the people, and which God had declared when He took them up at Sinai the second
time, He does not simply continue the trial of them in one form throughout. On
the contrary, He varies it in many ways. This, on the one hand, makes it a more
perfect trial, as is plain; on the other, it repeats again and again the
admonition of a watchful holiness which never lapsed into indifference, while
mercy warned of the time of long-suffering, however slowly, still surely
running out. As we, upon whom the ends of the ages have come, look back upon
them, it is blessed to see how, in the various forms of this trial, God
presents to us in changing aspects typically His one unchanging theme,- Christ
as the justification of His long-suffering patience as of His fullest grace.
This, faith might even in those days in measure see, though not in the detailed
glories in which we see it. For the voice of prophecy, even in the law itself,
spoke of a Prophet to be raised up, a High-Priest of good things to come,- yea,
a priestly King greater than Abraham, in whom Levi had once paid tithes. And we
can rejoice in thinking how God thus could linger over the picture of Him to
whom when at last come He would give outspoken witness: "This is My beloved
Son, in whom I have found My delight.".
In the land, then, as I have said,
a new order of things begins. Moses had been in the wilderness the
represent-ative of the Lord, the channel of the divine communications. In the
land. Joshua stands before Eleazar the priest, and the priest it is who
communicates to him the word of the Lord. He who is confessedly the leader of
the people, and standing in Moses' place, is nevertheless not in the same place
of nearness with God. Departure has brought in distance, while intercession
based on sacrifice is that on which all depends. The link between God and the
people is now the priesthood.
Before they pass over Jordan, all their
wilderness history is rehearsed to them, that it may be practical wisdom for
their new position, and then they are to take possession of the land which God
had promised to Abraham; although not yet do they possess it according to the
terms of the covenant with their fathers. They are on the footing of law, and
must make good their title to the land by actual victory over the inhabitants
of it. "Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I
given unto you, as I said unto Moses." (Josh. i.) Thus the extent of the land,
as the Lord describes it to them, they never actually acquire. Only in David
and Solomon's time does their dominion extend to the Euphrates, the Abrahamic
boundary, while they never properly possess thus far; Philistines, Phcenicians,
Hittites, confine them in fact within much narrower limits. Two and a half
tribes they leave on the other side of Jordan, defeated by their own success;
just as in Christian times the church has gained by its victories a possession
the wrong side of death.
In the land, the Lord delivers their enemies into
their hands. But failure is everywhere apparent. The sin of Achan, the defeat
at Ai, the snare of Gibeon, follow one another in quick succession. They do not
drive out the inhabitants of the land, but make gain of their sin by holding
them as tributaries, then go after their gods, as the Lord had warned them, and
are soon captive. in the hands of those they had conquered. If Gilgal
characterizes the book of Joshua, and there the reproach of Egypt - of their
slavery there - is rolled away; Bochim (weeping) characterizes the book of
Judges, where they return to a more shameful one. The history shows now their
broken unity, the inroad of foreign enemies, the uprising of domestic ones.
Again and again they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivers them
out of their distress. A judge is raised up, and is the instrument of their
deliverance; and as long as he judges, maintaining the authority and holiness
of God among the people, the deliverance lasts. But their weakness (which is
only their willfulness,) is fully apparent: the judge dies, and once more they
wander; there is a new captivity, followed at length (because the mercy of God
does not forsake them,) by a new deliverance.
These revivals become,
however, more and more feeble and less decisive. At last, the priesthood itself
fails utterly, and that when the judge and high-priest are one. Eli's sons make
themselves vile, and he restrains them not. The Lord swears that this iniquity
shall not be purged with sacrifice and offering forever. And though He raise up
for Himself a faithful priest, as He declares, and will build him a sure house,
yet the order is again changed: Joshua stood before Eleazar, but now the priest
is to walk before God's anointed (i Sam. ii. 35; iii. 14).
In the
meanwhile, ruin is complete. The Philistines come up against Israel, and smite
them; they superstitiously send for the ark of God to deliver them - the ark of
the covenant so often broken! They are again smitten, Hophni and Phinehas
slain, the ark is taken; Eli falls backward at the news and breaks His neck,
and Phinehas' wife, expiring, gives to her son a name expressive of the
people's terrible condition. "And she named the child 'Ichabod,' saying, 'The
glory is departed from Israel.'" The priesthood, as the link between God and
Israel, had come to its final end.
Twenty years pass, and all the house of
Israel are found lamenting after the Lord. The ark had not indeed remained long
in the Philistines' hand, but had wrought its own deliverance apart from the
people. It had returned, but not to Shiloh, its former abode, nor to the
tabernacle, no more to receive it. Beth-shemesh - a city of priests - to which
it had first come, smitten for its irreverence, had had to yield it up to
Kirjath-jearim, where it remained in retirement, kept by Eleazar "in the fields
of the wood" (Ps. cxxxii. 6) until David brought it out (2 Sam. vi. 2). All
this time was marked thus as a time of disorder and disturbed relation between
God and Israel.
This gap of time between Eli and David is bridged by the
prophet Samuel, the real link between God and the people even during the reign
of Saul. The prominence of the prophets was always a sign of disorder and
decline among the people. It was an extraordinary agency, with no provision for
succession or permanence at all; in this case, from the first, a note of
preparation for the king (i Sam. ii. 10), whom at last it anoints and makes way
for. Before the priesthood is set aside, Samuel is established as the prophet
of the Lord; but through the unbelief of the people, twenty years pass, after
the return of the ark, before the value of God's gift is realized. Then Israel
gather for confession and prayer to God at Mizpeh, and Samuel judges them
there. This brings up the Philistines; but the battle is now the Lord's, and
Israel has but to pursue a smitten foe. The Philistine yoke is broken, and
Samuel becomes the judge of Israel. We see the prophet here, as never before
under the law, building his altars and offering to the Lord, the priesthood
quite unrecognized.
But Samuel grows old, and his sons, whom he has
associated with himself in the judgeship, walk not in his ways. The enemies of
Israel begin again to gather strength. The unbelief of the people becomes
manifest. They desire a king, explicitly to be like the nations, from whom God
had separated them. Now, He intended they should have a king. Moses had spoken
of it, anticipating indeed their desire as expressed here (Deut. Xvii. 14-20).
Hannah had spoken of God's king to whom He would give strength. And to Eli, God
had told, by His prophet, of His anointed one, before whom the faithful priest
should walk (i Sam. ii. 5). Self-will might here find its excuse, hut nothing
more. In fact, as they are forewarned by God through Samuel, the rule of a king
among them, while it would bring them into a bondage hitherto unknown, would be
the sign of God being further removed from them - another step downward in the
long descent they had been making. It does not affect this that under David and
Solomon they were in fact freed from their enemies, and attained a wbrldly
eminence such as they had not enjoyed till then. The characters of the kingdom
as Samuel depicts them were none the less fully illustrated in these reigns;
and the more the grandeur of the monarchy, the more even might the yoke press,
the more the distance between king and subject. But above all, God Himself,
rejected as their King, dealt now with the people, not on the old familiar
terms, but at a distance, through the king himself. Let David be rejected, and
the show-bread, even if just sanctified, is but common bread (i Sam. xxi.)
That the king was here also the shadow of the King of God's kingdom in a coming
day is true, but neither does it alter the significance of the fact literally.
Faith here as elsewhere may find tokens of the coming day, and see also the
justification of God's long-suffering then. None the less the links between God
and His people were more and more being strained. And if this last endured
longest of all, it was surely because it was the last: there was no other, and
God's patience lingered.
Saul, the first king, though chosen by God, is
given them as one after their own heart, as his name providentially signifies,-
"the Asked." After being fully tested, he is set aside for the man after God's
heart, David. And Saul, though the anointed of the Lord, is never recognized as
the true link between the people and God. He is throughout dependent upon
Samuel, who, as he anoints him to his office, announces also his rejection, and
before his own death anoints his successor.
David is thus the first king
fully owned,- with Solomon, the double type of Christ, the Sufferer - Conqueror
and the Prince of Peace. He brings the ark to Jerusalem, appoints the courses
of the priests and the service of the Lord's house, for which he provides
abundantly the material, and receives the pattern. His kingdom is greatly
extended and his enemies are subdued, and Solomon builds and consecrates the
house, with "neither adversary nor evil occurrent."
But "man being in
honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish." And all this glory is
like the flower of grass; it has scarcely blossomed before it begins to fade.
The first love passes, and there is no indistinct threatening that the
candlestick is under sentence to be removed. Solomon loves many strange women,
and his heart is drawn after their idols. Adversaries are stirred up against
him. He passes away, and a sudden rent tears ten out of the twelve tribes out
of the hand of his son; and in the fifth year only of his reign, Shishak sweeps
down upon and spoils Jerusalem and the house of the Lord. Henceforth, in
Israel, with the worship of the golden calves, it is one monotonous story of
evil ever growing worse; in Judah, the descent stopped, indeed, again and
again, by the intervention of divine grace acting in an Asa, a Jehoshaphat, a
Hezekiah, a Josiah, but still with no recovery really. Blow after blow falls
upon them; prophet after prophet warns and threatens in vain: at last,
disintegration fully begins. The ten tribes are carried captive into Assyria;
Judah, spared for a hundred and thirty years longer, is at last carried into
Babylon. The glory has before this departed from the temple, which the king of
Babylon plunders and destroys. The people are now (though not forever) disowned
of God. The legal covenant, in fact, is over, although the dispensation of law
cannot be said to have ceased. "The law and the prophets were until John." But
the history of the people as such is closed, although a feeble remnant return
from Babylon. But they return only to await in Messiah their Deliverer, amid
the tokens of the ruin in which they have involved themselves. The glory does
not return. The ark of the covenant, Jehovah's throne in the midst, is gone
from their new temple. The Urim and Thummim, by which the Lord had communicated
regularly with them in the past, is also gone. Prophets His mercy raises up to
them for a brief time, and every one of them is a witness that the moral and
spiritual condition is unchanged. This voice soon passes. The history of the
favoured people ends in blank and total, most significant silence. The throne
of the earth is in the hands of the Gentiles. Israel's dominion is passed away;
and those "times of the Gentiles" have begun in which we still are, and which
continue until the kingdom of the Son of Man is introduced by His coming in the
clouds of heaven. But the significance of this change we must consider more at
length
The Times of the Gentiles
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