So that I fully grant that the condition of the soul, and the mode of pursuing this study, have to be considered, while we are engaged in it. But, with these and kindred admonitions and jealousies, I find the wisdom of God does set us down carefully and continually to the meditations of His counsels and ways in His different dispensations; and that He has been doing so from the beginning.
Have we not proof of this? Surely the very earliest divine records, the patriarchal stories of the book of Genesis, teem with notices of God’s counseled ways. In them He is issuing and telling out the end at the beginning. They are all of them true narrations-surely they are-and we are to acquaint ourselves with them as such. But is that all? Is it merely to tell me what happened so many thousand years ago that they are written for me? Or, do I expect to find in them, disclosures of divine secrets, good for the use of edifying one in the knowledge of God and His ways? I have no doubt how I am to answer this. Sarah and Hagar are not merely a domestic tale, but an allegory. And I am full sure, the same book of Genesis, where I read that allegory, teems with kindred ones-some more, some less, rich and profound in communications of the Divine Mind in eternal counsels.
And then Mosaic ordinances take up the same wondrous tale. The Jewish year as Leviticus 23 would tell us, measures, as in a miniature and in a mystery, the way of God from the day of the Exodus out of Egypt, to the day of entering and dwelling in the kingdom, the millennial glory of Christ and the creation.
Afterward, the prophets were instructed in those ways of God, and ordained to be the witnesses of them to all generations. I admit, there was another purpose of God in calling them out; and that was, to bring back Israel to their allegiance to Jehovah, if so be they would turn and repent. But the grander, and still more characteristic purpose of their ministry was this-to declare the ways of God, according to His counseled wisdom in dealing with this world of ours.
And when we come to the New Testament writings, we find the same. Not only do certain parts of those writings make such truth their subject (such as Romans 9-11, as we have already said), but such truth will be seen through parts and passages, which are more immediately dealing with other things. Dispensational truth is there called with other things. Dispensational truth is there called by the high titles of “wisdom” and “mystery,” and well it surely may bear such dignities. And the Apostle prays that we may have spiritual understandings, to entertain and reach such themes. He tells us, that he speaks of such among the “perfect;” and he intimates that it was the shame and loss of the Corinthians, that they were not prepared for truth of that high quality. And in all this, great honor is surely put on such truth itself, and encouragement of a peculiar kind given to the study of it. And if we are in company with that Spirit, who wrote the whole volume, we cannot but be acquainting ourselves with it, as we go from Genesis to Revelation, throughout Scripture from first to last.