Yet this the Bible shows is God’s love to sinners, especially in the New Testament. But the man that does not believe the Old Testament is not to be trustee about the New. If a soul cavils about Genesis, I should not trust him about Romans. I know there are men who say that the New Testament is a grand book, and will confess that the first chapter of John is more sublime than anything Plato or Aristotle ever wrote. To be sure it is, infinitely so. But the man that pretends to exalt John and depreciate Moses I would not trust for a moment, because that which Moses was the instrument of revealing lays the foundation for all that John gives us. You cannot understand the blessing of the Second man—the last Adam—unless you have seen the creation and fall of the first man, Adam. There is, therefore, between the Old and New Testaments an organic unity. Nothing more remarkable than this, however much one may differ from the other.
When you see a tree, you do not require a philosopher to tell you that, when it is complete, it has all its parts with striking appropriateness—that the deep root, which penetrates the soil and gathers the materials of nourishment for the trunk and its offshoots, is as necessary for its growth as the branches and the leaves—that what is unseen is as thoroughly ordered by One who perfectly knew, as that which is visible; and that from the tree man reaps benefit, and even the cattle, for God takes in everything. Not a little tiny insect, not the greatest of quadrupeds, not a human being, that does not in some way or another reap all suited good from God; and even those things that might seem to be obnoxious in themselves form part of a vast scheme of God’s contrivance, of His forethought, of His abundant provision for the wants of men or beasts here below. There is no stinginess, if I may say so, about God. He does not merely give us the things we absolutely need. This is not the way God treats man or any creature. You have only to look when the sun shines, you have but to think of the rich beauty of the earth around you—though it be a groaning creation—to see what pleasure God takes in goodness abounding. He did not make things to die, but to live in endless variety. He declares that He is not the God of the dead but of the living—this no doubt said in the highest sense is in every other way true. You see a blighted earth now; but even the blighted earth everywhere bears its testimony to the beneficent wisdom of its Maker.
But earth and sea and sky just as plainly afford traces of some dreadful evil that has passed over all —of an enemy’s hand that has been there and sown evil. There is not a tempest that rages, there is not a volcano that pours out its destructive lava, there is not a blast of lightning, but tells that there is, above, below, around, disorder in this once untainted universe. And how much more, when you come down to the moral evil under which groans every town, and every hamlet; ay, perhaps every home, even the happiest hearth, has had its blight. And whence comes this? From God? Never. A being of perfect goodness and power, who would make the world and man as they are, is morally an impossible thought. But God never made the world as it now is; He did make it, but He made it good. God did not create anything unworthy of Himself.
And just here is where the value of the word of God comes in. The Bible hears witness of the grace of God meeting the ruin that man and Satan have wrought between them. It is not merely goodness in natural things, but in holy love, which, recognizing and judging the evil fully, nevertheless comes down to get rid of it, and this at His own expense, and, let me add, by suffering beyond all measure. What is all that the men who ever lived have had to endure compared to the sufferings of Christ? I do not speak of what man did against Christ, but above all of what God did in His cross. You do not believe it! Then you must settle this with Christ Himself. What was there so bitter or awful in the cup He had to drink as God’s making Him sin for us, when He forsook Him? How do we know? He who is “the truth” declares it—said so on the cross—said so with His dying lips, when even false men will sometimes speak the truth: how much more He who never said aught else but the truth, who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life!” Yet for our sins He died, and tasted death as none other ever did. He tasted not merely death upon the cross, but therein the judgment of God. And there is the ground on which God can be a God of all grace, the basis of grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. For He who thus died is risen—risen to be the Savior, as He is if rejected the Judge.
Accordingly the foundation principle of this—the first germ of this weightiest of truths in the Bible—is given in the same chapter which shows us man departing from God—man forsaking God, and not God forsaking man. God forsook His Son on the cross, that He might not forsake the poorest of sinners that looks to Him. In that chapter (Gen. 3) you have a Savior revealed to hope; and such is the allusion of the “everlasting gospel” in the Revelation. Does not this show you what a wonderful book the Bible is? It stretches over many centuries. It was written, parts of it, by kings, and by shepherd-boys, by priests, by soldiers, by civilians; by what one might call comprehensively men of every class, from the fishers of the Galilaean Sea to the learned Jew of Tarsus, one of the most famous seats of philosophers at that time in the world, the rival of Athens. And yet in all the vast scope of its variety, Scripture stretching in its penmen from the days of Moses to those of the last apostle, in its themes from eternity to eternity, there is under all honest tests the most perfect harmony.
Beware, then, of those who would have you give up Moses. Listen not to the siren voices that would seek to charm you away from the truth of God, and more if they dare to tell you that they are not undermining the Bible, but only denying Moses. Alas! my good friends, to deny Moses is to undermine Christ; for Christ says that Moses wrote of Him. Christ had no question; and this is what satisfies a plain man that believes in Him. People may talk about evidences; and, of course, it is all very fine to do so with those who are not familiar with the subject, and have scanty knowledge of the original tongues. Of one thing let me remind all whether knowing these languages or not—and it is this. Many a one knows a little Greek and some less Hebrew; but what of that? You know English; but it does not follow that you have at all a mastery of the language. Remember then that most of the young men who learn Hebrew and Greek at college are very far from having a mastery of these languages. Most have a smattering, and this is all. They are then turned off to their parishes and pulpits, where they have no time to become real scholars, as they ought not to pretend to it. This is not said out of the slightest disrespect; but simply to show you the folly of supposing that merely cunning through a grammar and a few works in a foreign tongue makes it really known. Not at all. Most graduates (no matter what the degree or where) would find it hard to translate unseen Hebrew or Greek. They do not know either of these languages in the least as you all know English; and yet for all that would any of you set up to be great English scholars? Even ordinarily fair and easy translation (to which few are equal without effort and preparation) is but a small step in learning. Enough however on that point.
But I press this upon you—that God has in Christ’s testimony given the believer incomparably better proof than all evidences put together. Do you believe in Him the Son of God? I am now speaking to such. Some might appeal to persons who have no living faith but a mere creed, to those who talk about the Lord Jesus Christ, as others would of Socrates or Gautama Buddha, who are yet perfectly certain that the facts are true, and that His recorded words are substantially authentic. This is coming down low enough. Yet on the lowest of all grounds, on that of creed, men have still some respect for the authority of the Word made flesh of Him who is perfect Man and true God. Now, not only is He spoken of in this word, but He speaks of God’s word authoritatively and unmistakably.
There is no use to try and shirk the truth by mustering difficulties and saying, “Ah! we don’t know that.” Here is a book unlike all other books, bearing the stamp of truth and holiness upon it as no other book ever written. Here you have testimony borne to the blessed One, by His apostles, whose lives and works, miraculous or not, were a bright evidence of His divine truth, grace, and power. What totally different men they became, from what they were! They used to be prejudiced, narrow-minded Jews, utterly indifferent to souls, wholly wrapt up in their own dry traditions. See how in a short time, amazingly short indeed, all was changed, and changed in virtue of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ applied to their souls by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. They gave it as their testimony—sealed not merely by blood but by a course of such lowly yet faithful devotedness as the world had never seen—that the Lord Jesus uniformly treated the Bible (that is, of course, the Old Testament) as beyond question the word of God; that Moses wrote the law; that it was not Moses’ talk, which later authors wrote—not merely traditions and legends strung together partly by himself, partly by people who lived after him: the Pentateuch was written by himself. And thus in all sorts of questions you find not only His authority coming in, but the man Moses himself, as the inspired servant. of God, appealed to by the Lord. “He [Moses] wrote of me.”
How happy it is that a plain man or woman, or even a child, can feel the force of this testimony Every one of you will stand before the Lord Jesus, who is the Judge both of the dead and of the living; and He has pronounced judgment upon this question. Ought it not to be fairly faced? Do you believe men—perhaps young daring men who have studied Hebrew, but with the most superficial knowledge of the Bible? or do you believe the Lord God in the person of Christ?
Look at the position of the world when the Son of God came down and gave this testimony. He stands between the two Testaments, as it were—at the end of the Old, at the beginning of the New. He pronounces upon the Old. He divides it into its parts—the three divisions with which every Jew was acquainted—the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets: the Psalms taking in the poetical books, the Prophets comprehending more than we call prophetical, the Law embracing the books of Moses. There you have substantially the Scriptures called the Old Testament. The Lord, when risen from the dead, bore testimony to the authority of these books (Luke 24). Surely you do not think that even an ordinary man carries his prejudices into the life beyond the grave!
In this world men may make mistakes, but not in the next: all illusion is then over. Just think of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. You find the rich man there waking up to the reality of things. Then he cries “Father Abraham!” Then he feels what sin is, and its immediate torment, although there be not the final sentence, but the separate state. That rich man then feels how blessed is the once wretched beggar—wretched in this world—but blessed in the next, where angels carried him to Abraham’s bosom. Blessed picture of God’s goodness at length to a long despised sufferer, who clung in faith to His truth. In vain the rich man prays for his five brethren, that some one would go and warn them lest they should have his portion in torment. What does Scripture say? “They have Moses and the prophets.” Moses—not some prophet in the days of King Josiah who wrote a religious romance for the Bible in Moses’ name. Do you ask, Who speaks so wickedly? Possibly the voice of a faithless Jew or a blaspheming Gentile? I grieve to say it is too common a voice in Christendom, echoed in Scotland.
Is it not a portentous thing that men should come to such a pass? To deny the genuineness of the books of Moses is a daring insult, not only to the Scriptures, but to the Son of God Himself. It is giving the lie to the Savior, and the Judge of all. Yet men are to be found who deny to Moses the Books of the Law—most audaciously of all, the last one that professes to come most directly from his mouth. Nevertheless if there is the least trustworthiness in Deuteronomy, it is what Moses said himself. It is not merely what he collected, or what he caused to be written, but what he uttered also.
Of course by this nobody means—except Jews perhaps—that Moses wrote the last chapter about his death and burial. I do not say it is impossible, and that God might not have revealed these things to him. But there is no need to assume any such anticipation. There is an evident break after the closing and crowning song of Moses; and the last chapter is clearly, in my judgment, added by an inspired person who took up and thus continued the record of the enlarging and developing purposes of God. No need therefore, for any bit of superstition—as I conceive it is—in supposing that Moses necessarily wrote the account of his own death. There are in Scripture evident traces of the hand of an inspired editor—of one raised up by God to put the books of the Bible together. You must remember they came out separately. Not only have they been combined —since, but there are, here and there, what one may call inspired insertions. God can give an inspired editor as well as an inspired writer. Every Scripture is inspired, and so was the person who edited it and added these joints and hands when the time came to close the canon of Scripture. It is only unbelief that makes difficulties out of that which is plain enough.
But what shocks every spiritual and even moral sensibility is that any person bearing the name of a Christian—nay, of a Christian minister—should couple fiction with the books of Moses, as if they were only a religious novel founded on traditional facts and documents—on what it was conceived Moses might have said—put together ever so many hundreds of years after the legislator died. Divine wisdom has taken particular pains on this point. Christ says, Moses wrote so and so; it is not somebody else imputing it to him, but Himself vouching for Moses in a way that He does rarely for any other. “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” And so it has been. Those who hear not Christ in the Gospels, reject His resurrection.
We ought to feel thankful that Scripture is so written; because it is the fatality of unbelief to degrade man as well as God—not really to exalt either. Unbelief, too, is blind enough to attack the very thing that is strongest, requiring therefore no support by arguments drawn from other passages. Take a quite different illustration. There are those that idolize the virgin Mary to the depression of the Lord Jesus; yet how remarkably Scripture contradicts the notion, and protests against it by anticipation! It is left for our instruction in the Gospels that the virgin Mary never asked the Lord anything but what the Lord, instead of granting at once, modified at the least. Again see how God guards against unduly exalting Peter as the head (practically as a foundation-stone if you please) of the Christian church. In the very chapter from which men deduce the idea that he is the rock of the church, the Lord calls him Satan. Strange rock he to be sure! Peter was a very honored servant of God, but even such an one may at times say or do something utterly reprehensible. Therefore it is we cannot trust ourselves. The Christian is a fool who trusts himself; and therefore the Lord rebuked Peter for our profit, as well as for his own. The very God who was going to use and to honor Peter still proves what Peter was in himself. The moment he looked away from the Lord, he was as liable as any other to be turned aside into some evil snare of the devil.
Apart from the Lord, you are nothing and can do nothing.
(Continued from page 19)
(To be continued)