It has been said lately “that the study of it has a withering effect upon the soul.” Let us try this by the light of the wisdom of God, as we get that light (where alone we can get it) in the Word of God.
In the Epistle to the Romans, the saints of God are largely instructed in this character of truth. Chapters 9-11 is a very full writing on divine dispensations. But I grant that this is after they have been settled and established in personal truth-truth, I mean, that concerns themselves in their relation to God, as chapters 1-8 show us.
Now this would let us know, that there is a condition of soul, in which it would be unhealthy or unseasonable for it to make the ways or dispensations of God its study. And, therefore, if the person who has thus spoken be intellectually inquiring into such matters, divine and precious as they are, before the question of his own relation to God is settled, I can suppose that he has found this study to be withering of the soul.
And again, in 1 Corinthians, I see the Apostle refusing to feed those saints of God with such knowledge as we are now speaking of. In the stores given him of the Spirit, he had “hidden wisdom,” or “the wisdom of God in a mystery,” and he would bring it out to the “perfect.” But the Corinthians were in a bad moral condition; and he would, therefore, attend to them personally, rather than feed or entertain them with knowledge of God and His ways. And very much in this same way, I may say, the Lord Himself had already dealt with Nicodemus, the Rabbi, as we see in John 3.
So that again, I grant, there is a condition of soul, in which it would be unhealthy for it, nay, unwarranted of the Spirit of God, to make dispensational truth its study. And, therefore, if the person who has thus spoken be walking carelessly, I do not wonder at the soul withering if it be thus occupied.
But further, not only is the condition of the soul to be thus considered, as we make these things our study, there is also a mode of studying them which the word of God suggests, and which is to be considered also. I would instance what I mean. The Apostle, in tracing the dispensations of God, as I have already observed he does in Romans 9-11, interrupts his progress through that great subject, and takes up for a time something that is strongly personal in its character, or in its bearing upon us individually. I mean in chapter 10 of that wonderful Scripture. For there we listen, each one for himself, sinners as we are, to the voice of law and to the voice of faith, with suited admonitions, and encouragements and teachings.
Just, I may say, as in 1 Corinthians 12-14, where the same Apostle is unfolding ecclesiastical truth, as he is here unfolding dispensational truth; for there in like manner he interrupts himself by something deeply and solemnly personal and practical, as we see in chapter 13 of that Scripture.