"They knew not... the voices of the
prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).
Two
Realms of Glorying
"Thus saith the
Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither
let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich
man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory
in this, that he understandeth, and knoweth me, that I am
the Lord" (Jeremiah 9:23-24).
Of all the contrasts
which gave occasion to the ministry of Jeremiah it is
difficult to say which was the most significant. But the
more we consider the one with which we now have to deal,
the more we are impressed with both its range and its
ultimate import. The Prophets certainly spoke with fuller
meaning than they knew, but the Spirit of God who
spoke through them knew it all, backward and forward. If
they spoke to their own time and conditions, our
foundation statement in Acts 13, at least, declares that
they spoke to all following generations. But spiritual
discernment and insight will see even more than that in
their utterances. This is so very true of the passage now
under consideration. Very much has been written on the
place and significance of Israel in history, and no doubt
much more will unfold with the unfolding of world
history. There are two aspects of this which we must
point to in order to understand the Prophets. Those two
sides are two aspects of one thing, the right and the
wrong. The one thing is
Israel's
Representation in History
Has it been
sufficiently recognized that God chose the Hebrew nation
to be a representation in history of His eternal and
heavenly thought for mankind and the world? This lay
behind that nation's election or selection. That explains
His mighty sovereign acts and ways in securing that
nation. That explains His infinite pains and patience in
bearing with that people. That explains His grace and
love toward a nation which tested Him to an extreme
degree. In the constituting and formation of that nation's life God introduced all the spiritual features of His Son in a symbolic way. Frorn their father, Abraham, with his history and experience, into the redemption, separation, provisioning, discipline, ritual, laws, priests, sacrifices, tabernacle (in all its parts), conquests, inheritance, and much more, God had His Son ever and always in mind.
This all means that
everything of principle and basis intended for mankind in
God's full and final economy was represented and inherent
in an Israel according to the mind of God. If Israel
failed God and their own vocation, the failure would be
nothing less than a repetition of Adam's failure, and a
repetition of both the reasons for that "Fall"
and the consequences.
So we come to the
Prophets, whose business it was to re-express God's
thoughts for Israel and the world; to show how those
thoughts were violated; what the nature of the apostasy
was; and what the terrible consequences would be. They
were activated by God's jealous love for His eternal
concept, and, seeing that the concept was not a mere
abstract idea, but a human embodiment and expression, the
love and jealousy were for a people chosen to represent
it.
By this so-much-wider
view we are able to see the implications and significance
of our present Scripture, Jeremiah 9:23-24. Here the Lord
puts His disapproval and veto upon a primal principle
working in a threefold direction. Let it be understood
that when God says "Not" in connection with
"wisdom", "might" and
"riches", He is not condemning those things.
Elsewhere He has put His blessing upon all the three
things and has never said that, in themselves, they are
wrong. One of Satan's clever devices has ever been to
make good things bad, and bad things good. In this
threefold "Not" God is speaking of the
'glorying' in these things; that is, giving to them the
glory of life. It is the old original subtlety of the
serpent at work again to rob God of the glory; the one
age-long jealousy and envy of Lucifer. It is the
assertion of man's selfhood, his ego, to know, to
dominate, to possess without reference or deference to
God; the independence of egoism. Hold on to that last
word, as it is the key to everything against God.
We come, therefore, to
the threefold outworking of the principle.
1.
The Cult of Intellectualism
An 'ism' is a cult. It
means that the thing to which it refers has exceeded
itself, gone beyond itself, its value and purpose, and
become an object in itself, an ultimate and end; a
purpose, a passion, a domination, an absorbing interest.
As soon as you add 'ism' to a thing you resolve the thing
into something which is an end in itself. It will sooner
or later take the form of a religion, that is, an object
of worship, the thing to which the 'worthship' is
given, and so the glory.
How true this is of
intellectualism! No sooner does a young man set
out on the course of intellectualism and make
intellectual knowledge his main business than the battle
of faith in God begins. He becomes intellectually
superior to faith in God.
It is at this point
that we must indicate the ultimate and consummate
development of that primal bid for knowledge with God
ignored or repudiated. It is a law in this universe that
a simple seed sown has in it the potentiality of filling
the world if it is not frustrated or destroyed. The seed
of an independent, egoistical bid for knowledge sown in a
'garden' is now at the point of development where a
terrible reaping is imminent. Why is it that knowledge -
not essentially evil in itself - has reached a
dimension which threatens any day to devastate this
creation and all mankind? Why is it that man's ranging
into outer space and mastery of nuclear forces finds him
totally unable to cope with the landslide and complete
breakaway of moral laws and ideals? Why is it that in an
age more advanced scientifically than any before, a new
barbarism and inhumanity, cruelty, lust and destruction
marks the life of the world?
Today the leaders of
scientific research and discovery are having to warn the
world of the unspeakable holocaust which can follow those
researches. Why is it? Is it not patent to any observer
that there is more ungodliness in the world than has been
before?
God is given small
public place in the politics, industry, society of
countries formerly known as 'Christian'; and secularism,
atheism and God-denying ideologies creep over more and
more of the world. The point is that this all goes on
while the cult of intellectualism and rationalism goes
alongside of moral and religious decline.
If Israel's sorry
plight for so many centuries makes Israel the world's
representation of the reverse of God's intention, is not
the world in the way of that pathetic misdirection?
The Bible begins with
chaos; proceeds to cosmos; reverts to chaos; and ends
with cosmos - "a new heaven and a new earth";
but the end will only be reached when God has His
rightful place in the minds of men. There was an
intellect nearly two thousand years ago which has kept
intellectuals on full stretch through all the centuries
since, and is still doing so. It might be a good thing to
give more serious consideration to what that one said
about the wisdom of this world; what its limits are; what
it is capable of doing; and what God's verdict upon it
is. It can be found in the First Letter to the
Corinthians, chapter 1:18-2.
2.
The Cult of Power
"Let
not the mighty man glory in his might."
Having traced the cult
of intellectualism, the inordinate bid for knowledge,
back to the beginning of man's declension, it is not
difficult to see that the bid for power in independence
upon God is all of a piece with that. Adam is on record
as having projected his will as well as his reason toward
self-exaltation. He was, as the Bible says, 'made to have
dominion', but with a Head. He forsook his Head, violated
Divine headship in order to be his own master, and lost
the dominion intended by God. But he forced himself
forward in independent self-sovereignty, and the world is
what it is today as the result.
He never lost the sense
that he was made for dominion, but alongside of it runs
an innate sense that something has been lost,
and he is driven by a sense of inferiority to try to
recover that. That sense of loss lies behind all his
strivings, wars, and straining after superiority.
Sometimes defensive, sometimes offensive, sometimes the
despair and suicide of frustration, often in
make-believe, pretence, show, ostentation, noise. This
will to power has destroyed peace and security which,
like a phantom, lures him on to ever deeper frustration
and defeat. It has invaded politics, industry, social
life, national and international ambitions. It has not
stopped short at religion, and shows its hand in the
rivalries, jealousies, factions, and strivings in
organized Christianity. The fabric of life is shot
through and through with the expansion of the original,
initial, primal assertion of the will to power, the ego
or selfhood. This dislocated lust for power is working
itself out to universal destruction, and 'wars to end
wars' is a fallacy, a delusion, a mockery. The one thing
that man feels the need of mostly is a super-man, for he
despairs of the world under its puppets. Surely history
is evidencing the fatal mistake made at some time, and
irrefutably testifying to man's need of a Head. The bid
for power as vested in man was, and is, a revolt against
God and Divine authority; the result is anarchy.
The hopeful elements in
all this are that a climax is so much nearer, and that
God's appointed Head over all, Heir of all, will the
sooner come because the cup of this iniquity is near to
being full.
3.
The Cult of Riches
"Let
not the rich man glory in his riches."
Is it necessary to
spend time in arguing or pointing to the fact that
possessiveness in the matter of goods, money, and 'have
all' has become something worshipped by man beyond all
limits? We will not extend this discussion to its full
range, but bring this "Voice of the Prophets"
to the place where it was specifically addressed. The
primal error included this feature. It can be summed up
in three words:
"I
saw." "I coveted." "I took."
But it was to the
Lord's people that the Prophets spoke in the first
instance.
The writer of these
messages, over a long period of years, has travelled in
many parts of the world with one object: that is, the
increase and strengthening of the spiritual life of the
people of God. He has been repeatedly impressed with the
fact that where the greater concern for, and engrossment
with, business life to make money dominates, there it is
so much more difficult to speak about the things of the
Spirit. This impression has been confirmed by the equally
evident fact that where life is simpler or even
difficult, there the outreach of heart to the fuller
knowledge of the Lord is stronger and purer.
This other 'ism' has
strongly invaded Christianity, namely, 'commercialism',
and is sapping and draining the spiritual life. Indeed,
it is a definite menace to spirituality. We are not
speaking critically about the heavy weight of
responsibility in business realms, or the great problems
and demands on Christian men in business. We keep close
to Jeremiah's warning as to commercialism becoming a
snare to pride, ambition, and 'glorying' in riches. It
was the Lord who made Jeremiah warn so strongly against
the commercial snare. So much could be said regarding the
subtlety of the serpent as he moves with his fascination
and hypnotism toward his prey - the spiritual life of the
people of God. As "the serpent beguiled" to
possess without consideration for, or reference to,
fellowship with God, so it has ever been, and the world -
and the Church - is too busy today to give
adequate attention to spiritual principles and
essentials. Many a great work initiated and used by God
because of its spiritual character and purity has later
lost its place in that realm by becoming big, with its
organization, business, and commercial involvements and
methods. "How is the fine gold become dim!" If
that were a question instead of an exclamation the answer
would largely be "commercialism".
With so much on these
three warnings having to be left unsaid, we have to pass
to God's "But".
"But let him that
glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth, and
knoweth me, that I am the Lord."
On the knowing and
understanding of the Lord volumes could be written, but
we can do no more here than note the ultimate implication
of this alternative.
If knowledge, power,
and riches bulk so large and mean so much in this world -
and they do, immensely so - the Lord says here that it is
going by history and destiny to be incontrovertibly
proved that to know and understand the Lord in His
estimate of values (see text) outweighs by far these
transient glories.
The Apostle Paul said
"Knowledge shall cease"; and he could and would
have said the same of earthly might and riches, but the
knowledge of the Lord outlives and outmeasures all.