GOD'S PURPOSE AND HOW OPPOSED

GOD’S PURPOSE AND HOW OPPOSED

At every time God has had a definite purpose. The man in His fear had His secret; and the more he was devoted to God’s purpose for the time being, the more did the enemy oppose him; even as an angel of light, when other weapons or forces failed. The effort of the enemy has ever been to frustrate the purpose of God. It is helpful to learn from Scripture the various ways in which the opposition is carried on. When man was set in the garden of Eden, the one thing required was that while he had everything that he could use, he should be dependent on God. Hence it is against this one thing that Satan directs all his attack. It is as a serpent he comes; he would have been detected and shunned had he ^[p. 233] come as a fallen angel; and he addresses the woman and not the man; he first tampers with and deteriorates the word of God, then he allures by false representation, and succeeds. Consequent on the fall the purpose of God was that man should find the way of return to Him. Cain attempted to defeat it. The false thing had the start. Abel, on the other hand, set forth God’s purpose for the time, and was cut off; while Enoch, the seventh from Adam, maintained it, and was translated that he should not see death. It is cheering to be assured that God’s purpose, however opposed, will be maintained in spite of every opposition. In Noah’s time it was to awaken man to the impending judgment. Only eight persons, however, entered the ark. The rest were entirely indifferent; “They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all”, Luke 17: 27. There was a general and widespread disregard of God’s purpose, though Noah was proclaiming it for many years; a painful instance of man’s inveterate opposition to God. After the flood it was that man should occupy a new position on the earth, introduced by the altar. “And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord... and the Lord smelled a sweet savour” (Genesis 8: 20 - 22.) This was a beautiful beginning, but man failed to maintain it. “Noah ... planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, and was drunken”. He turned the favours of God to his own loss; he failed to rule himself, and therefore he could not maintain the new place to which he was called. When God’s purpose was not maintained by Noah, we can hardly be surprised that there was general and entire disregard of it; and the building of the tower of Babel was man’s perversion of God’s new favours to him on the earth. How utterly the mind of man is opposed to the desire of God to bless him, and how the ways in which he acts for himself, while proposing to secure great advantages for himself, really end in his forfeiture of all!

^[p. 234] Then God calls out Abram. His purpose now is that he should, in dependence on Him, be a living testimony against the builders of Babel. It is cheering to see Abram answering to the word of God. But see how opposition arises; first, no doubt, from his father Terah who delayed his entrance into the land; and next from the famine in the land, which beguiles him into leaving it. We need not pursue his history here: but no one can read it without seeing the varied and unrelenting opposition to which he and his were exposed. Indeed God told him in a vision that his seed would be in bondage 400 years. And as we read the histories of Isaac and Jacob we cannot fail to be impressed with the undeviating aim of the opposition to drive them from the land, and from simple dependence on God. At length they left Canaan, and into the land of Egypt they came. The enemy has for the moment appeared successful, yet it is to be noted that the frustration of the divine purpose is only temporary; and when apparently there seems to have been defeat, it is only that it should be propounded and effected in a better way. The purpose of God comes out in a greater way when He says to Moses, “I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites”, Exodus 3: 8. Now the opposition is increased tenfold. God brings out His people with signs and mighty wonders. The power of the enemy is fully overcome; but the people, after they are brought out, are led by the same enmity to provoke God in the wilderness. In their hearts they turned back into Egypt. They despised the pleasant land. Can any one read the account of their journeyings, and not be astonished at their perversity, and suicidal conduct? It would seem impossible, if one did not know the incorrigible opposition that there is in the human heart to every object of God’s ^[p. 235] heart. At any rate as we ponder it, we must be impressed with the conviction that the opposition is a more inveterate thing than is ordinarily supposed; and that it is not from the avowed enemies that we meet with the greatest opposition, but it is from those who are fighting against their own interests — the people of God themselves. This is really the worst part of it. As long as the opposition is confined to the avowed enemies, God always makes His people more than conquerors: but when we lend a hand to the enemy ourselves, which is Satan’s great object, then the Lord does not support us, and we are left to taste the evil of our ways.

At length Israel in a new generation was brought into the land. The purpose of God then was that they should possess it, and dwell therein, and have a dwelling-place for Himself there. What a history of failure follows! First when they had no king — when God was their immediate support, they were subjugated over and over again. They never would learn what an evil thing it is to depart from the living God. They might have alleged the opposition was too strong for them; but over and over again the gracious God sent judges, and delivered them out of the hands of those who ruled over them; notwithstanding they soon forgot Him, and turned to their own lusts. Then came the times of the kings, and the temple in Jerusalem. God’s purpose was still more unfolded, but only to be more opposed, and as far as man could, frustrated. At length Israelis carried in captivity to Babylon — the very power that in Abram they were called out to testify against in the beginning. To that power they are now in captivity. Prophet after prophet is sent to awaken them to a sense of the blessing they had forfeited by their unbelief and rebellion; and, after a while, a remnant is restored to the land. God had not abandoned His purpose to have a people there under the king after His own heart, and a house in Jerusalem. The Jews are in the land when Christ is born. He is now par excellence God’s object, the centre of all His purposes. The nature of their opposition to God’s purpose declared by His Son was novel and wicked to a degree. It was the assertion and assumption of extreme righteousness according to the law. It was Pharisaism; Satan transforming himself into an angel of light — the worst form of opposition, because the simple and unsuspecting are liable to be deceived and drawn aside by it. It would not be easy for any pen to convey the range of the opposition arrayed against our blessed Lord, accumulating in force and bitterness according as He disclosed the purpose of His heart not only to die for that nation, but to gather together in one the children of God which are scattered abroad. Eventually, by wicked hands He was crucified and slain. The Jews had delivered Him to the gentiles. Now being rejected from the earth, and received up into glory, the blessed Lord divulges the secret hid from the foundation of the world, that His body is here on the earth, formed of those whom He loved and had given Himself for, united together by the Holy Spirit. This is God’s object on earth now — the church, Christ’s body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. Amongst the multitude of believers how few they are who are steadily standing up for the church — the body of Christ! It was revealed to Paul, and it was made known to the apostles and prophets, as well as more generally by the writings of the prophets of that day; and though none of the apostles writes of the body of Christ except Paul, their writings prepare souls for that truth. Though John does not touch on the church as the body of Christ, he does so write of “his own”, that it is conclusive that none else but the members of His body could hold in nature and nearness such a place. “His own” of Israel had rejected Him. No doubt there was continued and earnest labour to lead the Jews to Christ, which was the first step; but it was not all. The opposition was violent and determined enough against this first step. Paul says he persecuted the church of God, because he slaughtered the disciples of the Lord. They ^[p. 237] were the materials for His body, and therefore the Lord says to Saul of Tarsus, “Why persecutest thou me?” And Paul himself admits that he wasted the church of God, though at the time there was no revelation of the mystery. Every one who wins a soul to Christ is sub-serving, though it may be ignorantly, to the object of God, though, alas! often with christians in the present day, there is an opposition to “the mystery of the gospel”, because they are blinded by religious prejudices against it. Before the truth of the mystery had been revealed, we are prepared to find even the apostles unaffected by it in their work. It had not come. But it does surprise us to find James in Jerusalem using as a plea the thousands of the converted Jews, all zealous of the law, for Paul to retire from the great platform on which the mystery had placed us, when the middle wall of partition was broken down; and when both Jew and gentile had been reconciled in one body to God by the cross. We cannot but be impressed at the slow and casual way in which the great object of God in this period was accepted by the saints. It seems every opposition was thrown in the way of the one who was devoted to it. It is, however, to be borne in mind that there is a state of soul which fits one for the reception of the mystery. Evidently the Corinthians were not advanced enough. “I ... could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto ... babes in Christ”; and yet they were instructed in the one body, as to their responsibility in the assembly. The truth of the mystery is alluded to, but not explained, as to its magnitude, until we come to Ephesians. There we get the body as a whole, and what it is because of its Head. This is the mystery, and the present object of God on earth. And the apostle writes, “After I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints”, I “cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him ...”.

^[p. 238] They were in the state for this great knowledge. It is interesting and encouraging to see the great desire of the apostle to lead them into this knowledge. He tells them his prayer for them as in Colossians 2, “I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you”, and all that they might be led to apprehend this great truth. He evidently had more hope for the Ephesians among whom he had laboured, and to whom he had not shrunk to declare the whole counsel of God, than he had for those whom he had not seen in the flesh. At all events the great object of God was his object. And mark how he was opposed on every hand; not only imprisoned himself, but “all they which are in Asia”, where he had worked chiefly, had turned away from him. In turning away from Paul, the appointed minister of the mystery, they had surrendered it. It is quite possible to slip away from the great thought of God’s heart, that Christ’s body is here on earth, and He the Head in heaven, without giving up the grace of God to sinners, or denying that He is their Saviour. When I only see Him as my Saviour, I can only see Him on the earth where He suffered for me; but when I see Him as Head of His body, the church, I must see Him in heaven in His own place. The apostle, though so opposed on all sides, and deserted by the saints, has unfailing confidence in God, because he is devoted to His purpose and object; and therefore encourages Timothy, in the face of all this opposition, to commit “the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses ... to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also”. He knows, God grant that we may know it, that where the heart of God is, all His power, with all the blessedness of Himself, is available. Where God is most, there is most of God.

Finally, though the Spirit may be hindered and thwarted by the power of evil, He cannot be prevented eventually from carrying out the purpose of God, which no opposition can frustrate. That shall stand, and happy is the one who is in the line of it.