No readings are appointed for today in the Bible Companion on account of the peculiar position of the day in the calendar. In the absence of an appointed reading, we have had a special selection (Prov. 1 and John 14): in this we suffer no detriment. It is one of the privileges that come with a knowledge of the truth that we are at home in any part of the word. In our orthodox days, we found large portions of the bible unuseful: the history heavy and effete; the Mosaic law cumbersome and dead; the prophets unintelligible and yielding no particular profit where they could be understood. A theology that fixed our attention on the death state and the sky, naturally robbed of its interest a book that mainly deals with life and the earth. We are emancipated, and “mixing trembling with our mirth,” we rejoice to be able to turn to profitable account whatever portion of Scripture may be brought under our notice.

The book of Proverbs is particularly easy of digestion and rich in its nourishment of the new man. It is a book possessing a higher character than is usually allowed for it in our day. It is common to think of it as a book of moral maxims owing their excellence to Solomon’s natural sagacity. It is a book of moral maxims truly, but it is much more: it is a book of revelation-it is a book in which the mind of God is unveiled, in a correct and authoritative declaration of truth not accessible to man in nature. We learn this from the frequent quotation of it by the apostles as an authority in divine matters, and from the information that what superiority of wisdom Solomon may have displayed in its composition was a direct gift from God (1 Kings 4:29). Its position in the compiled Scriptures of which Jesus says, “they cannot be broken,” is alone conclusive on this point.

When we compare the wisdom embodied in the Proverbs with the “morals” of Gentile philosophy, of whatsoever school, we discover a great contrast and a further evidence of divinity. The difference may be said to be this, that one has God in it and the other has not. Perhaps this needs further explanation. The explanation is simple. If you study the moral maxims of the schools, you will find they are recommended and inculcated for their own sakes just as the bath and exercise in the open air would be recommended as good for health. The idea of God may be recognised in the abstract, but not as the moving spring of philosophic morality. The practice of virtue “for its own sake,” and “virtue its own reward,” are phrases that express the philosophic view. In this view, the mental eye is turned on our own mechanism, so to speak, or the mechanism of the universe, and not the power and wisdom in which that mechanism had its origin. This is cold and unsatisfying for many reasons, but chiefly because of our inability to understand things as they exist. Bible wisdom is a complete contrast to this. God, not man: the Creator, not His work: His revealed will, not human guesses, are constantly pressed upon our notice. The history of God’s work on earth, is the illustration of this feature in its fulness. Abraham leaves his native Ur of the Chaldees: why? Because Yahweh commanded him. His posterity leave Egypt: why? Because God appeared to Moses and strengthened his hand for their deliverance. They receive a law by the hand of that wonderful and faithful servant: and what are its characteristics? The exhibition of God to the national and individual mind by every method and in every variety of aspect. The first command was:

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.”

The first announcement of the tables of the covenant was:

The first feature of the national economy was the selection of a place where Yahweh should place His name. The first duty of every Israelite in every experience of life had to do with this centre of the nation’s existence in some way or other. His first-born was Yahweh’s, and (until the adoption of the Levites) had to be redeemed by the offering of sacrifice in recollection of the fact that God smote the first-born of Egypt in the day that Israel was redeemed by the observance of the Passover. The first operation to which he had to subject his male children was to circumcise them, in token of the covenant that made the nation God’s nation. The first-fruits of his harvest were to be presented formally to God, at the feast of ingathering. Three times a year, his whole family had to appear before God in the place appointed, to rejoice and give thanks in connection with some special form of divine indebtedness. His private life was similarly bent towards God. He was to speak of Yahweh and His doings, and his laws, to his children continually. He was to write the leading statutes of the law against his door posts, that his eye and his heart might be continually in contact with them and not forget them. He was for the same purpose to wear a border of blue on his garment, that looking upon it, he might remember Yahweh and His statutes. He was to avoid certain articles of food in obedience to Yahweh’s commandment, that he might be holy to Yahweh. He was for the same reason to avoid certain objects as causes of defilement: such as the dead body of any creature, or any piece of furniture with which a defiled person had been in contact. In every transgression he was to repair to the priest in confession with the appointed sacrifice.

At every turn and corner, God was kept under Israel’s notice. God was the pivot of the national existence-the regulating power of individual life: not that this was realised in fact. Israel forgot God and turned aside from His commandments, and were dispersed among the nations as at this day; but the aim and purpose of the Mosaic economy was to keep Yahweh before Israel’s mind as prominently and constantly as He was before the mind of David and all the righteous men of Israel’s generations. Moses was himself an exemplification of the right thing in the case. He was no speculating philosopher or babbler about abstractions. He was a robust, strong-minded receiver of facts, and the fact of facts pressed home upon his notice was the Creator’s existence, and His power, volition and requirements.

So it was written of Israel’s early generations under the law: but late in Israel’s history, we are permitted to see a greater than Moses-the prophet like unto Moses, of whom Moses testified beforehand:

This prophet like unto Moses, but exceeding the greatness of Moses in all points, appeared at “the end of the (Mosaic) world,” yet as part and parcel of it, in a sense, for-

“God sent forth his Son . . . made under the law.”

Both historically and spiritually he was “the end of the law.” Moses at the beginning, Christ at the end: Israel’s subjection to the law between-the fabric of righteousness resting on two glorious pillars, and the first feature of that righteousness being Yahweh’s existence, service, and fear, ignored by Gentile philosophy.

The lesson of this history is the maxim written by Solomon as the key note of his Proverbs (1:7):

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”

Morality without this “fear of the Lord” is an indeterminate colourless thing. It is a husk without the kernel, flesh without blood, a form of wisdom minus the life-giving power. Some may take refuge in the idea that as Christ is “the end of the law for righteousness,” he is the end of it in all senses, and therefore an end to that urgent ascendancy of Yahweh which the law sought to establish in all relations of life in the midst of Israel. Some would call this “the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free”-liberty to withdraw our thoughts from God! Such an idea must disappear before a close acquaintance with what is revealed to us concerning Christ. Let us take what is brought before us in the selection from John this morning.

Here we have Christ in close and living intercourse with his disciples. What is the theme of his discourse? Does he indulge in abstract moralisings of the modern “philosophic” order? Far from it. He goes to the root of the matter, of all matters, in exhibiting the Father to their attention. God is the centre of all he has to say. His tuition of the disciples is best described in his own words, as used in prayer to the Father:

“I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me” (John 17:6).

Instead of the appearance of Christ having lessened the force of the mosaic lesson, it has illustrated and brought it home more powerfully. We cannot look at Christ scripturally without seeing God, for the scriptural exhibition of Christ is this:

“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.”  (2 Cor. 5:19)

Jesus gives powerful testimony to this aspect of the case in the chapter read from John. He says,

“He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”

Let us trace this saying from its rise in the beginning of the conversation so as to realise all its force. He was seeking to comfort the disciples in prospect of his approaching separation from them. He said,

“I go to prepare a place for you,” adding, “whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.”

Had he said no more, we might have supposed he meant his ascension-the way to the Father’s presence through space; but Thomas, feeling a lack of understanding, said,

“Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?”

In answer to which, Jesus said, “I am the way,” which shows that the “whither” of Christ’s then impending separation and the way thereto, had relation to what was to be accomplished in his own person (by death and resurrection) in opening the way to the Father: for he immediately added,

Why should Jesus assume that his disciples knew the way, saying to them “the way ye know”? Because he had frequently informed them that he would be delivered into the hands of the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem, and be by them condemned to death, and killed, but raised again the third day (Luke 18:31). But they did not understand: consequently, when Jesus spoke of going to prepare a place for them, they felt he was speaking parables, which, no doubt, he was to a certain extent (John 17:25), though parables not so utterly dark as the disciples felt them to be. Their undiscernment evoked from him a rebuke which must have hit hard: “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also,” which was as much as to say that they had not yet discerned him in his true relation. This was doubtless true, for though they confessed him as the Christ, they had not yet risen to a scriptural apprehension of all that the Christship involved. They knew the Messiah as the King of Israel in the Davidic succession, but there was something much greater than that, leading David to address his son as “Lord.” Jesus added the astounding statement:

“From henceforth ye know him (the Father) and have seen him.”

What could this mean? The disciples were at a loss. Nothing was more in harmony with their desires and aspirations than to know the Father. As men of the divinely approved stamp though not yet apprehending their Lord and Master, they shared the sentiment of Moses when he said, “Lord, show me thy glory,” and the saying of David,

But what could Jesus mean by saying they had seen the Father? Philip gave expression to their general mind:

“Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.”

This was their highest desire. What a rejoinder this drew forth:

Well might the disciples exclaim as they did on another occasion:

“What manner of man is this?”

He was the manner of man defined in the prophetic delineation:

He was the word made flesh-God manifest in the flesh-the character of God exhibited in a Son begotten of God by the Spirit, of the seed of David according to the flesh; and the power and presence of God manifested to Israel, after the anointing of this Son begotten with the Holy Spirit without measure on his attaining maturity. Those looking discerningly on Jesus, looked on the Father in human manifestation. But did Jesus mean he was the father in the primary sense? His own words preclude such a meaning. Having saddened his disciples by the intimation that he was about to leave them for the presence of the Father, he said,

“If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I” (14:28).

Although, therefore, he said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” he did not mean there was no Father separate from him dwelling in unapproachable light. He explained himself in the words immediately following those we are considering:

The scriptural teaching concerning God enables us to understand this. When we realise that Yahweh dwells in the heavens (Psa. 123:1) yet fills the universe (Jer. 23:23-24) by the invincible energy of His Spirit (Psa. 139:7-12), and that thus, though in far distant heaven (Eccl. 5:2), He is not far from every one of us, for in Him we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17:27-8), we are enabled in a small measure to understand how the special manifestation of His wisdom, character and power in “the man Christ Jesus,” constituted that man Christ Jesus an exhibition of the Father to all who intelligently discern him, without, at the same time, interfering with that subordinate aspect in which the Lord presented himself as the Son who did nothing of himself.

We are not privileged as the disciples were when this conversation took place. We have not the Lord in our midst. We are assembled to obey the same Lord: to call him to our remembrance in the way appointed by himself, and to fan the flame of that love for him which the gospel has enkindled in our hearts. And while enjoying this present privilege, we are permitted to contemplate the hour that will certainly arrive when we shall look upon him as they looked upon him, and hear his voice as they heard, and rejoice in his love as they did. Greater indeed will be our privilege than that of the disciples in the days that are past; for if the Lord do us the unspeakable honour of counting us among his friends in that day, we shall see him in his beauty instead of in his weakness, and we shall share in his joy instead of his suffering, and rejoice in the promised change from this corruptible instead of toiling in a service in which we groan being burdened. And every joy of salvation will be intensified by the immensity and completeness of the multitude of the saints of every age who will sit down to that feast of glory together, ascribing all thanksgiving and praise to him that sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever.

Taken from: - “Seasons of Comfort” Vol. 1

Pages 438-443

By Bro. Robert Roberts

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