"WILD GOURDS", OR, MAKING THE WORD OF GOD OF NONE EFFECT

“WILD GOURDS”, OR, MAKING THE WORD OF GOD OF NONE EFFECT

When christianity, an entirely new thing, and of the utmost importance to man, was introduced among men; when habits of thought and modes of communication were already established, one of two things must occur; either that there would be the attempt to class this new thing among the great studies of the day, or that it should be left in its own isolated novelty and importance to speak for itself, and to be learned by the means which it would enjoin, and which it considered as alone adequate and competent to explain or to inculcate it.

At first then when christianity had made little way, it was left to its apparent insignificance, but as it took root and came into prominence, the enemy encouraged and used even its true friends, to give it expansion in a natural way. If it had been left to its own singularity, it would of course as it advanced have instilled its own ideas, and thus have preserved its new and peculiar type. Christianity was planted by God in this hostile land, and there was no way of checking or hindering its growth, but by making it like the institutions or sciences in the world. To reduce it to this level was the aim and work of Satan. The attempt or effort at first was to prevent its taking root, and this is the nature of Satan’s opposition to this hour; but once it takes root, and that this his first opposition is ineffectual, then a new mode is adopted, in order to spoil and circumscribe its influence. Unless we are prepared for this second opposition we shall be often deceived and carried away by it, even though through grace we have escaped the first. The man of God has in each step he takes for the Lord to encounter this double opposition. First there is an effort to prevent his taking the right step, and after he has taken it, a force is brought to bear upon him in order to nullify or neutralise ^[p. 198] the effect of it; and many a one who has overcome the first, has been over-borne by the second.

The attempt to hinder the first step is generally ineffectual, because it is so direct, the object is so apparent. Abram when he was called to come out from his country, and his kindred, and his father’s house, was hindered by his father, and when his father was dead, he came into the land of Canaan. The first step is taken, then every effort is used to turn him from it, the famine succeeds for a little. Eventually he returns to the land; but then in Lot the enemy succeeds, not by causing him to retire from the land, but by inducing him to resemble the people of the land, to live there as they do, to choose the best of it, and be on equal, easy terms of social life with the inhabitants. The stranger character is lost, the peculiarity which ought to have marked these new corners, these men called of God to leave everything here, and be pilgrims here, is entirely surrendered and dissipated, by sinking down to the level of the populace. The direct opposition eventually failed, but the subtle device by which Lot is induced to accommodate himself to the people of the land is, alas, but too successful.

Thus again with the children of Israel in the land. They had to encounter great and terrible opposition, in order to enter and take possession of it; the direct opposition is successfully overcome; but before long, they succumb to the ways and habits of the people of the land. They drop down to their level, having first surrendered the idea of exterminating them. Of this they are warned. “Else if ye do in any wise go back, and cleave unto the remnant of these nations, even these that remain among you, and shall make marriages with them, and go in unto them, and they to you: know for a certainty that the Lord your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the Lord your God hath given you”.

^[p. 199] Joshua 23: 12, 13. The successful artifice of Satan is to induce the saint to drop down to the level of man. Sad and bitter to the uttermost is the declension of Israel, descending step by step, until at last they are captives in Babylon, which was systematized independence of God, and all from this small beginning, even that they would be popular and on easy social terms with the inhabitants of the land. The principle is very simple. If God’s calling and people are unique, and the light and truth superior to the man of the earth, surely we cannot reduce what is of Him to the level of man without blunting its moral effect.

The truth of God and the people of God must be of a nature and order infinitely above man, so that we cannot reduce the one to the level of a human science, or the other to a joint equality, without losing the great moral weight and claim which, because of their origin, attach to them.

Now when Christ came He instituted and maintained fully in Himself the supreme distinction between the truth of God and man’s wisdom, as well as His own moral separation from man here. And yet no one could have enunciated more plainly or forcibly the duties of man, and none was ever so tenderly interested about man; no one was ever better acquainted with his need, and the nature of his trials, or more devotedly set upon removing them. The great ones of the earth made out that He was but a mere man, and that neither He nor His doctrine was of God, and they rejected Him as a blasphemer. Satan tried to tempt Him as if He were altogether like man here, and then afterwards he attempts to crush Him as if He were but a man. The great point which our blessed Lord maintained and never swerved from was that He was come from God. “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do”. “I receive not honour from men”. John 5: 19, 41. “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me”. John 7: 16. It was a wonderful sight on the earth to see a man ^[p. 200] entirely for God, and maintaining everything here according to God, so enlightened that the Jews marvelled, saying, “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?”

The Lord never for a moment adopted man’s mind or principle for doing anything. He came to lend, not to borrow; He descended to the lowest toil and duties of man, but ever maintained the moral height and dignity from which He descended. Eventually He stooped as a victim to the terrible distance from God in which sin had placed the children of Adam; but never to be on their level; nay, on the contrary, to extricate them from the ruin under which they lay, in order that He might raise them up to His own height. “For which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren”, Hebrews 2: 11.

Satan was entirely baffled by our Lord, and a new centre was established for God on the earth. The last Adam could say, “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do”. And during His absence the saints are left here, to represent Him where He is not. To defeat this is the great aim of Satan. Every circle and force of men was brought against Christ. He was disallowed of men. But the Holy Spirit is sent from heaven the witness of the perfect acceptance of Christ’s work before God. He is the promise of the Father, and as Satan could not prevent His coming, he tries every device to circumscribe and neutralize His influence. Satan knows very well that the saints are still in the old Adam nature; and that the bait most likely to succeed even with those who have received grace from Christ, is to make man the object, and not Christ. If he can get the saint or the professor to trust to his own powers and not to the Spirit of God, he has succeeded in diverting from the power of the Spirit of God, and the effect of His presence here. Ananias and Sapphira, whether believers or not, practically disbelieved in the presence or government of the Spirit of God, and considered that they could gain a reputation among the Lord’s people by false means, without being detected. Peter is careful to say to Ananias, “Why has Satan filled thy heart that thou shouldest lie to the Holy Spirit?” Acts 5: 3. Again, Simon Magus offers the apostle money, saying, “Give to me also this power, in order that on whomsoever I may lay hands he may receive the Holy Spirit”. One can easily see in these first essays by recognized converts, the modes of damaging the truth which Satan would use.

We get another form in Acts 16. At Philippi when a woman possessed with a spirit of divination cried saying, “These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation”, Satan actually offers to countenance the servants of Christ; with what motive can we for a moment doubt, but to reduce them from divine ground to his own? Am I to purchase Satan’s cooperation at such a price - namely, to admit that I am under obligation to him for aiding me in the work of Christ, who was here rejected and cast out? Am I thus virtually to give up Christ in order to carry out the benefits of the gospel of Christ’s grace to perishing souls? because this is the question at issue.

Now when I come to the close of Paul’s service in 2 Timothy, I read that not only will Jannes and Jambres seek to hinder the truth by imitation when there will be the form of godliness without the power thereof, but that “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine... and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” or myths. And in Revelation 2 in the history of the church, there is first the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication; that is, mixing with the men of the world, dropping down to man’s level. Next it is, “Thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols”. Thus we have the descending ^[p. 202] scale marked enough. The meal was expanded, but it was all by the leaven; the mustard grew great branches, but the fowls of the air lodged in them; the word of God made of none effect by additions. The truth has been spread out in a popular form, in a form to satisfy human reason, and to accommodate itself to man, which is quite a different thing from expressing the truth in the plainest language; and the final snare, the crowning effort of Satan, follows, which is to make man the sole object of consideration; and this in the assembly does not lead to the improvement of man in a worldly and rationalistic way, but in applying all the benefits of the gospel to man for his gain, as if he only were to be thought of; as if it were quite immaterial whether there is any testimony for Christ: just as one would appropriate and turn to one’s own account the benefits derived from some great benefactor, without ever thinking it necessary or obligatory to do homage to the source of them. The benefits are appropriated, but Christ, the Benefactor, is unhonoured.

The assembly of the Laodiceans boasts of being rich and increased with goods, and having need of nothing when Christ is outside. Now they could not speak in this manner unless they had partaken of the benefits of the gospel light, etc.; but though they have received from Christ the safety which man’s ruined state required, yet the abandonment of the old man for Christ is neither seen nor admitted, but the contrary, and thus the greatest and fullest expansion of the truth results in such a deterioration of the testimony, that the assembly, the organ of testimony, becomes so abhorrent to the Lord, that it will be spued out of His mouth, and will no longer be the sphere of privilege and blessing upon the earth. The wild gourds have brought death into the pot (2 Kings 4: 40).