Feb 14
8
FUTURE UNFOLDINGS -John MacDuff.
“This is the resting place, let the weary rest; and this is the place of repose”—
“You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” John 13:7
A gracious ‘whisper’ into the ear of an ardent and loving but impetuous apostle, from Him who was Himself the Heavenly Palm. An assurance well calculated to relieve needless anxiety; and impart confidence, trust, and strength to His people, at all times, and under all circumstances.
Here in this present world, we have only a partial view of God’s dealings, His half-completed, half-developed plan; but all will stand out in fair and graceful proportions in the great finished Temple of Eternity!
Go, in the reign of Israel’s greatest King, to the heights of Lebanon. See that noble Cedar, the pride of its peers, an old wrestler with northern blasts! Summer loves to smile upon it—night spangles its feathery foliage with dewdrops—the birds nestle on its branches, the weary pilgrim, or wandering shepherd rest under its shadow from the midday heat or from the furious storm; but, all at once, it is marked out to fall! The aged inhabitant of the forest is doomed to succumb to the woodman’s stroke! As we see the axe making its first gash on its gnarled trunk, then the noble limbs stripped of their branches, and at last the “Tree of God,” as was its distinctive epithet, coming with a crash to the ground, we exclaim against the uncalled-for destruction, the demolition of this proud pillar in the temple of nature. We are tempted to cry with the prophet, as if inviting the sympathy of every lowlier stem—invoking inanimate things to resent the affront—“Howl, fir-tree, for the cedar has fallen!”
But wait a little. Follow that gigantic trunk as the workmen of Hiram launch it down the mountainside; thence conveyed in rafts along the blue waters of the Mediterranean; and last of all, behold it set a glorious polished beam in the Temple of God. As you see its destination, placed in the very Holy of Holies, in the diadem of the Great King—say, can you grudge that ‘the crown of Lebanon’ was ravaged, in order that this jewel might have so noble a setting? That cedar stood as a stately prop in Nature’s sanctuary, but the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former.
How many of our souls are like these cedars of old! God’s axes of trial have stripped and bared them. We see no reason for dealings so dark and mysterious. But He has a noble end and object in view; to set them as everlasting pillars and rafters in His Heavenly Zion; to make them “a crown of splendor in the Lord’s hand, and a royal diadem in the hand of our God.”
Jehovah, had He seen fit, might, by miracle or otherwise, have studded the march of the Israelites all the way to Canaan with Elim groves. At each fresh encampment, as the guiding cloud gave the sign of rest, an improvised oasis, fringed with trees and musical with springs, might have risen in the midst of the barren sands. The beautiful promise of the evangelical prophet might have had a literal fulfillment—”The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon” (Isa. 35:1, 2).
We know how different was their experience! Take one of the many similar entries in the inspired record—”Then the Israelites set out from the Desert of Sinai and traveled from place to place until the cloud came to rest in the Desert of Paran” (Num. 10:12). Their route lay through barren wastes and waterless valleys and under brazen skies—the way infested with serpents and scorpions, their steps tracked by predatory tribes. So also in the case of His people still. Had He seen fit He might have ordained that their pathway was to be without gloom or darkness, trial or tear; no cross, no “deep calling to deep,” nothing but seas undisturbed by a ripple; sunny slopes and verdant valleys, and bright clusters of palm, with sunlit fronds of love and faithfulness!
But to keep them humble, to teach them their dependence on Himself, to make their present existence a state of discipline and probation, He has ordered it otherwise. Their journey, as travelers, is at times through mist and cloudland. Their voyage, as seamen, through alternate calm and storm. They are like the vessel being built in the dockyard. The unskilled and uninitiated can hear nothing but clanging hammers; they can see nothing but unshapely timbers and glare of torches. It is a scene of din and noise, dust and confusion. But all will at last be acknowledged as needed portions in the spiritual workmanship, when the soul, released from its earthly fastenings, is launched on the summer seas of eternity.
“Give to the winds your fears;
Hope, and be undismayed;
God hears your sighs and counts your tears,
God shall lift up your head.
Through waves and clouds and storms
He gently clears your way
O wait His time—so shall this night
Soon end in joyous day!”
“THEN shall we know,” to use the words of an earnest thinker, “that the dark scenes were dark with light too bright for mortal eye; the sorrow turning into dearest joys when seen to be the filling up of Christ’s; who withholds not from us His own crown, bidding us drink of His cup and be baptized with His baptism; and saying to our reluctant hearts, ‘What I do you know not now, but you shall know hereafter‘”
(Hinton). “I do not ask, O Lord, that life may be A pleasant road;
I do not ask that Thou wouldst take from me
Aught of its load.
“I do not ask that flowers should always spring
Beneath my feet;
I know too well the poison and the sting
Of things too sweet.
“For one thing only, Lord, dear Lord, I plead,
Lead me aright—
Though strength should falter, and though heart should bleed,
Through peace to light.
“I do not ask my cross to understand,
My way to see—
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand,
And follow Thee.”
“When evening comes, there will be light.”
A DIVINE CHALLENGE
“How precious also are Your thoughts unto me, O God!”
This is what the Lord says: ‘If you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night, so that day and night no longer come at their appointed time, then My covenant with David My servant—and My covenant with the Levites who are priests ministering before Me—can be broken.’ Jeremiah 33:20-21
It is remarkable how often God’s revealed thoughts have for their theme the immutability of His covenant; as if the contemplation of His own inviolable faithfulness formed the mightiest of all topics of comfort and consolation for His believing people. Here He makes a solemn appeal to the constancy of the natural world, as a pledge and guarantee of His unchanging fidelity in spiritual things. Nothing seems so undeviating as the succession of day and night—the revolution of the seasons. The sun sinking at eventide in the golden west, and rising again like a giant refreshed. “While the earth remains,” said the Great Creator over His own world, as it emerged of old from the waters of the Deluge, “seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
In our motto-verse, using human language as a vehicle of Divine thought, He makes the challenge—’If you can forbid that sun to rise—if you can put drags on his burning chariot wheels, and prevent him from setting—if you can forbid the moon to hang her silver lamp from the vault of night, or pluck the stars from their silent thrones—if you can transpose summer’s heat and winter’s cold—if you can make seed-time belie its promise to expecting autumn—then, but not until then, shall I break My covenant with My chosen servants.’ “Just as the heavens cannot be measured and the foundation of the earth cannot be explored, so I will not consider casting them away forever for their sins. I, the Lord, have spoken!”
It is delightful thus to look around us on the steadfast and unvarying sequences in the material universe, and to regard them as sacraments of grace—silent witnesses for the inviolability of God’s word and promise. Nature, in her majestic constancy, becomes a temple filled with monuments, each bearing the inscription—”God who cannot lie.” The God of nature and the God of grace are one—and He who for the last six thousand years has given such proof of unswerving faithfulness in the one economy—(for “they continue this day according to Your ordinances”)—will be equally faithful in fulfilling the more permanent provisions of the other. “Look up to the skies above, and gaze down on the earth beneath. For the skies will disappear like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a piece of clothing. The people of the earth will die like flies, but My salvation lasts forever. My righteous rule will never end!”
It is an “everlasting covenant, well ordered in all things, and sure.” How can it be otherwise, seeing it is founded on the work and righteousness of Jehovah-Jesus, Immanuel—God with us. Before one provision of that covenant can fail, immutability must first become mutable, and God himself cease to be God! Standing on this “sure foundation,” we can boldly utter the challenge—”Who is he that condemns?”—not God the Father, for “He has justified;”—not Christ, for “He has died;”—not angels in the heights above, not devils in the depths beneath.
Universal nature, in the ceaseless hymn of her own constancy, proclaims and celebrates our covenant security and safety. Her four great evangelists, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, endorse the utterances of the inspired volume. In the mouth of the two witnesses—”Day and Night,” every word is established. Thus, with reference not only to the glory and wisdom and power of God, but to His purpose and promise of salvation for His people, “Day unto day utters speech; and night unto night shows knowledge.”
But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of His heart through all generations. Psalm 33:11