Index
And
he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once:
Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it
for ten's sake. --Genesis 18:32
God
is at least as merciful to the world in the age of Jesus Christ as He was in
the days of the patriarchs. If there
had been ten righteous souls in Sodom, God would have saved the city. As it was, there seemed to be only one
righteous soul, Lot, and God took him and his wife and daughters out of the
city before the fire and brimstone fell.
The
God who preserved Nineveh because of sixty thousand infants or fools (Jonah
4:11) will surely regard His people in modern nations. He has appointed sufferings for those who
believe in Christ, but His yoke is easy and His burden is light. The lot of the wicked is a hard one, but the
death of the righteous is precious in the eyes of the Lord.
Just
as a cluster is not destroyed because there is new wine in it (Isaiah 65:8), so
the Lord preserves whole nations for the sake of the new wine within them. Although the servants wished to root up the
tares, the Lord said that the angels would make the separation at the end of
the world, and they must grow up together until then. (Matthew 13).
The
entire human race, the descendants of Adam, was preserved because God had
promised to save His people by sending His Only Begotten Son to die for their
sins. His first work is mercy and
grace. Judgment will come in God’s
time, but He is not in a hurry about it.
He has works of mercy to do.
Therefore
God’s people must not be discouraged, though their number be small and though
wolves ravish the sheep. Their witness
is not in vain if their salt has not lost its saltiness.
“In
transgressing and lying against the Lord, and departing away from our God,
speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of
falsehood. And judgment is turned away
backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and
equity cannot enter.” --Isaiah
59:14,15.
The
courts did not seem to be in touch.
Innocent people were victims of violent crime. Often the courts were corrupt and allowed the guilty to go free. Government officials were corrupt and lining
their own pockets. The courts were
filled with empty arguments and lying tongues.
Lawlessness was everywhere.
This
was Israel in the days of Isaiah, who diagnosed the problem: the carcass of truth blocked the street, so equity
could not pass.
I. The root meaning of “Equity” is
“straightforwardness,” or “integrity.” Another form of the word
describes the walk of a righteous man (Isaiah 57:2). In Proverbs 8:9 the words of wisdom are “plain” to those with
understanding. When Israel no longer
wanted to hear the truth, they wished the prophets to prophesy smooth things of
deceit, not “right,” straightforward things (Isaiah 30:10).
The
Bible teaches that there is a “plain” way: a simple, right, and honest way for
a man to treat his God and his neighbor.
This simple, right way is written in the hearts of every man, in his
very nature, so that he is without excuse.
The Apostle Paul said that this law is even written on the hearts of
those who have never heard of the Bible (Romans 2:13-16). In their wickedness, men are able to corrupt
this law, and some may even succeed in “searing their conscience as with a hot
iron” (I Timothy 4:2), but they can never entirely erase it, and it will rise
up to judge them in the last day. The
pure form of this “law of nature” was given in the Ten Commandments (Exodus
20), and its summary is true love for God and our neighbor (Matthew
22:37-40). This law shows that man is a
moral being and is accountable to God and to his neighbor for his actions. The humanist must deny this law of God.
II. In Christian nations, the legal system
reflected this law of equity. In England,
equity courts originated in the legal system established after 1066 by William
of Normandy. They were “courts of
conscience,” administered by the king’s chancellor, a clergyman. (Smith,
Chester H., Smith’s Review of Equity,” West Publishing Co., St. Paul,
Minn., 1958. p. 9) Until this century,
courts of equity were part of the American judicial system. Webster defines equity:
“Justice according to nature law of right,” or “a
system of law originating in the English chancery and comprising a settle and
formal body of legal of procedural rules and doctrines that supplement, aid, or
override common and statue law and are designed to protect rights and enforce
duties fixed by substantive law.”
A “substantive” right or duty is one that exists for its own sake and
rests in natural law. For instance, a
man has no right to endanger life by shooting a gun at a passing train, even if
there is no specific statute forbidding it, or a decision in common law to
cover that case. He is expected to know
that such actions are wrong. Such an
expectation is becoming rarer and rarer in schools, in public, and in
government. Naughty impudent children
become naughty impudent and brazen men and women.
Reasonable men want their courts to be upright, to dispense honest and
fair decisions. Equity courts held a
man responsible to behave in a right way toward his neighbor’s life, property,
and reputation and were an attempt toward responsible, fair judicatories. The very existence of these courts testified
to rights and law that were above the statute and common law, and tended to
affect decisions in the other courts.
Jefferson’s allusion to the “laws of nature,” and of “nature’s God” in
the Declaration of Independence is within the scope of this Christian
heritage.
A number of years ago courts of equity were abolished in America, and
combined with the regular system of courts.
The result is that equity is usually ignored in modern courts. One lawyer told me that judges do not want
to stick their necks out; they want to base their decisions on statute law or
common-law decisions. This is
understandable in present law theory where there is no recognition of natural
law proceeding from the God who created us all. Understandable, but irresponsible, and something very precious
was lost in our courts when courts of equity were abolished. An exception to this was Brown,
which ended segregation in public schools, the most famous equity decision in
the history of America. No remedy could
be found in common or statute law, so recourse was made to the idea that it was
essentially unfair to deny basic rights to any of our citizens on the basis of
race. One problem in this decision,
however, was that it was based on the subjectivism of the judges, not on
natural law. It was widely supported,
and rightly so, because the decision met the approval of the consciences of the
majority of the American people.
III. Natural law presupposes a
Creator, and that’s the rub, in Hamlet’s phrase. Modern man hates God and His law. He wants to live in a relativistic world, so that he can justify
abortion, sodomy, confiscatory taxation, fornication, pornography, and reap the
income that comes from them. He sees
himself as a victim in an impersonal world; not as a responsible man
under God.
In spite of this God is the Creator and Judge of the earth. This is the truth that lies in the street
and blocks equity’s way. The Christians
who compromised with atheistic evolution in the public schools did not realize
that this undermined a court system based on equity and natural law, turning
loose a flood of lawlessness, criminal government and viciousness. But they did know what the Bible said, so
they were without excuse, just as we are if we do not work to have the general
law of equity, created by God,
recognized as the basis for our law.
This general law recognizes that all men are to live at peace with one
another and seek the good of all men.
This is not an emotion, but objectified in the Ten Commandments.
It was so bad in Israel that God “wondered” that there was no man, no
intercessor, to plead Israel’s case 9Isaiah 59:15-17). It displeased Him that there was no
justice. So He took charge
Himself. He “put on righteousness as a
breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon his head…” vengeance for
clothing, …and zeal as a cloke” (Isaiah
59:17. When Jesus Christ, the Son of
God appeared, He put things to right,
and the wicked will not escape His righteous and holy government. The wicked do not like nor approve of God’s
intervention, but they are scattered like the chaff before the wind.
That’s the Truth
Beloved,
believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because
many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in
the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have
heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. I John 4:1-3
Presumably, the Holy Spirit was saying something meaningful when he had
John pen the words, “Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come
in the flesh is not of God.”
Do words mean something? Is it
possible to convey truth by means of words?
John (and the Holy Spirit) evidently thought so, for they call the
church to examine spirits by means of the words.
Satan resists confession, for he uses words differently from God. Satan hates the wisdom and truth of God and
denies that words confess truth. “God
didn’t mean you will die,” he told Eve.
Satan uses words to manipulate people away from the truth of God. God told Adam and Eve one time that if they
ate the Tree in the midst of the Garden, they would die.
Nowadays the devil tells folks that the story of Adam and Eve is a
“literary device” – that the whole first chapter of Genesis was a literary
device, and that the days of creation did not happen that way. This would have been too transparent for
Adam and Eve, and the devil was too subtle and clever to get caught in a lie
like that in those days. Adam and Eve knew better—they knew that they were real
and that God had spoken to them. So the
devil did not question THAT God had spoken, he simply tried to twist God’s
words and deny the truth of them. In
fact, he accused God of using words to manipulate, just as the devil does.
(Gen. 3:5)
The test by which the prophets of God are known and evil prophets are
revealed is in the phrase written by John:
“Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh
is not of God.”
I. There are evil spirits, and
they try to turn people away from the truth.
They use people to spread their message. “There are many false prophets gone out into the world,” is the
way John puts it. There is a real and
present danger to people because of these false prophets. They do not come from God, but from another
spirit, the devil, who is also called Appolyon, or the Destroyer, according to
Rev. 9:10. Those who listen to them do
not follow God or Jesus Christ and do not have salvation, but are destroyed.
II. These false prophets are
not willing to confess the truth concerning Jesus Christ. They may speak of Christ. They may profess to love Jesus, but they
deny the truth concerning Him. They
imagine another sort of Jesus Christ than the One who is revealed by the
Apostles, including Paul. Every word of
the statement concerning Jesus Christ is important in John’s test of
orthodoxy. They are just as important
for us today as they were in the day John wrote them.
III. What are the words that
John uses? What is the doctrine that
false prophets reject and show themselves to be Antichrist? “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” is the
formula. To reject the meaning of these
words is to be lost and alienated from God.
These are the words, with their meaning:
A.
“Jesus.” A name is used to identify a particular
person. The person that John is
speaking of is Jesus of Nazarus, who was born of Mary in Bethlehem, according
to the Gospels. If this is not the
meaning of what John wrote, then words mean nothing at all.
B.
“Christ” This name was rich in the hopes and
expectation of the Old Testament. The
word “Christ” is the Greek word for “anointed” and corresponds to the Hebrew
word for “Messiah.” John is simply
affirming that Jesus of Nazarus was the Messiah promised to Adam, to Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and throughout the Old Testament.
C.
“Is
come.” Come from where? One cannot “Come” unless He existed
elsewhere, and this is simply the truth that John teaches throughout his
writings. He is saying that the Christ,
who is Jesus of Nazarus, is the pre-existent Wisdom and Word of God, the Son of
God, who was with God and who was God in the beginning, as John affirms in
Chapter One of his Gospel. Saint Paul
said that He is the “Lord of Glory” (I Cor. 2:8). Jesus Himself speaks of the glory that He had with the Father
before the world was (John 17:5).
D. “In the Flesh,” simply means that the Son, who was with the Father before the world was, really became a true man in history. It is not a parable, nor an allegory, but a wonderful, incomprehensible mystery. God Himself came in the flesh, in the Person of the Son of God, to fulfill the covenant that God had made with Abraham.
God had promised Abraham that He, God, would fulfill
the covenant Himself. In accordance
with the way covenants were made in old times, animals were divided and the
parties passed between the parts. But
in the case with the covenant with Abraham, only God passed between the parts,
signifying that He alone would be surety for the covenant. (See Genesis 15 and Isaiah 59).
Through faith Abraham became the heir of the world (Rom. 4:13), receiving through the Promise that which Adam had lost by his sin. This Promise is fulfilled in Christ (Galatians 3:29). The essence of the Promise was that God would take His elect unto Himself and be their God, would freely forgive their sins, would give them His Spirit, would write His law upon the hearts of His people, preserve them through the sufferings of this present life, and take them to eternal glory and blessing when their sufferings are past. The zeal of God Himself would accomplish these things.
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I
live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh
I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
--Galatians 2:20
Paul
is speaking historically, with a subjective application. It was a historical fact that Christ’s death
was in the place of every one of His people.
This is the very heart of the Gospel, the power of God unto
salvation. To be saved a person must
agree with the verdict of God the Father at the Cross. Sin is an outrageous offense against the
righteousness of God, deserving of the wrath of God. This is the beginning of faith, the fear of the Lord, and the
vindication of His word.
Because
saving faith is the work of the Holy Spirit, we are united to Jesus Christ in
His resurrected life. Being united with
Jesus Christ, we live in Him in two ways:
He governs us by the Spirit and makes us partakers of His
righteousness. The latter is
justification; the first is regeneration.
The new life that we have in Christ is one of faith, according to the
Apostle. Because faith is by the word
of God and not of the flesh, this life is a “secret hidden from the senses of
man,” according to Calvin.
The
touchstone of faith is the Scriptures.
Our faith is not validated by experience, by emotion, by answers to
prayers, by providences, or by any human reasoning or philosophies. The operative question is, “Is what I call
faith that which is described in the Bible?”
“Search the
scriptures,” Jesus said, “for in them
ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” --John
5:39 The men of Israel thought they had
eternal life because they read the Scriptures, but they read for the wrong
reasons and did not know that the Scriptures are about Jesus Christ. It is interesting that Jesus did not direct
them away from the Scriptures to some experience or some drum beating, but to
the Scriptures which they misused and corrupted.
He that
believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not
God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of
his Son. And this is the record, that
God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and
he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.
I John 5:10-12
The
life is in Jesus Christ and it is not optional whether we believe the record
that God has given of His Son. We do
not believe in Jesus Christ if we do not believe the record that God gave of
His Son. What? Is God a liar when He says that He makes His
Son an offering for sin? What? Is God a deceiver when He tells us that our
righteousnesses are as filthy rags and that we must be clothed in the
righteousness of Christ? Does the way
to salvation begin with making God a liar?
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