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The Voices of the Prophets

by T. Austin-Sparks

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines, 1965-67

Contents

Chapter 1 - Introductory

Chapter 2 - The Voice of Jeremiah

Chapter 3 - The Voice of Jeremiah (continued)

Chapter 4 - The Voice of Jeremiah (continued)

Chapter 5 - The Voice of Jeremiah (continued)

Chapter 6 - The Voice of Jeremiah (continued)

Chapter 7 - The Voice of Jeremiah (concluded)

Chapter 8 - The Voice of Isaiah

Chapter 9 - The Voice of Isaiah (Continued)

Chapter 10 - The Voice of Ezekiel

Chapter 11 - The Voice of Ezekiel (Continued)

Chapter 12 - The Voice of Ezekiel (continued)

Chapter 13 - The Voice of Jonah

Chapter 14 - The Voice of Micaiah

Chapter 1 - Introductory

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

"God having... spoken... in the prophets... in divers manners" (Hebrews 1:1).

Our object in these chapters will be to see what those divers voices and manners of God's speaking mean for us in our time and our lives: not a fullscale study of the Prophets, but just the salient message for our instruction, comfort, guidance and - perhaps - warning.

The statement made by the Apostle Paul in the first quotation above is a very astonishing and arresting one, and itself becomes a message and a warning from the Prophets. It says precisely that on every Sabbath day, over a long period of years, the Prophets were read in the hearing of a people, in a great centre like Jerusalem, and in numerous synagogues far and wide, and, while the words were read and heard, and while the Prophets were speaking through the mouths of priests and synagogue-rulers, the people and their rulers "knew not the voices of the prophets". Words, Scriptures, sounds, times without number, but the 'Voice' undiscerned and undetected; that inner meaning, that vital message, that one inclusive Object unrecognized. But not only so. The tragic result of all the hearing was a violent, positive and grievous contradiction; a doing indeed, but a doing of just the opposite of what the Prophets meant for the people concerned. They should have profited by the 'voices', but they were condemned.

Thus, at the very outset, we are challenged as to the result, of all our hearing and the value of all that has come to us. What will the verdict be when the 'voices' are no longer to be heard? It is, however, important that we are aware of the issue upon which the final judgment and verdict will rest. From many Scriptures, and focused in Hebrews 1:1, that issue is clearly stated to be the place and measure given to Jesus Christ, God's Son. This is the consummate issue in our basic quotation of Acts 13:27: "They knew him not". Jesus said that all the Prophets spoke of Him. The Prophets had much to say about many things: idolatry, bad moral conditions, formal and merely external religion, etc., but Jesus saw and pointed to Himself in all the Prophets, and at last made the significance of the Prophets a personal one as to Himself. All judgment ultimately will turn, not upon sins, more or less, few or numerous, but upon the place and measure given to Christ. Thus the issue bound up with hearing the Prophets, i.e. the Scriptures, is: how much of Christ is resultant in us. Not one or many of the things which comprise Christianity, but the degree of Himself in us. In the Old Testament Prophets it is the place of Christ. In the New Testament it is firstly the place, and then the measure.

All the New Testament Letters (Epistles) are primarily concerned with the measure of Christ in believers, individually and corporately. This final outcome is, according to Acts 13:27 and other Scriptures (such as Isaiah 6:9,10, and Revelation 2:7,11,17,29, etc.), a matter of spiritual hearing, or "an ear to hear what the Spirit saith". How many, like those referred to above, hear the Scriptures as such, maybe "every sabbath", but fail to hear 'the voice'. It is with the object of catching the voice of the Prophets that we essay to consider them and their message. This preliminary word is important so that it will not be just and only 'the letter of the Word'.

Let us note that the failure and its consequences on the part of the people referred to was not because the Prophets were not faithful. While it may be true in many cases that the people are in a tragic or pathetic position because their teachers and leaders are not faithful, this is not always the case. That a child at school does not pass the examinations cannot always be honestly blamed upon the teacher. The child may be lazy, indolent, careless, or rebellious. The best and most painstaking teacher has his - or her - failures. The Prophets gave all that they had, but still the terrible verdict of Acts 13:27 was true. The blame rested upon the hearers.

1. The Voice of Jeremiah

It will be seen that in our commencing with the Prophet Jeremiah we are not in the biblical order. We are not here concerned with the history, geography, nor the chronology of the Prophets, but primarily with the spiritual message. The change in order is simply because, at the moment, we are pressed with the sense that Jeremiah comes nearer to the heart of personal spiritual need. Here it is the man himself, in his own suffering, that dominates the book. Isaiah and Ezekiel have nations, rulers, the making of history (for a long time to come) and the predictive and Messianic vision so much in view, while Jeremiah has less of these features, and is so very largely burdened with the present and immediate course of things. This is not by any means the whole truth, but is comparative. The thing which impresses the reader above all else is the personal distress of the Prophet, whatever he may say about nations in chapters 40 to 51.

The message comes really out of the Prophet himself. This is true of all Prophets, as we shall see. The personality of Jeremiah is more in view than is the case of any of the other Major Prophets and many of the - so-called - Minor. Through his personality great truths were converted in spiritual life. While much may be said of the same nature regarding the other Prophets, of Jeremiah, perhaps it is true to say that no man was ever more - if as much - integrated with his message than was Jeremiah. It was literally wrung out of him like the juice crushed out in the wine-press.

Let it be here remembered that the function of the Prophets was pre-eminently to keep clearly and powerfully before men what God is like. If we keep this in mind we shall have the key to each Prophet. God is vari-sided. It has been said that "There are grounds for believing that the Figure of the Suffering Servant of the Lord, raised by the Great Prophet of the Exile, and the idea of the atoning and redemptive value of His sufferings were, in part at least, the results of meditation upon the spiritual loneliness on the one side, and upon the passionate identification of himself with the sorrows of his sinful people on the other side, of this the likest to Christ of all the Prophets." Certainly Jeremiah foreshadowed the Greater than he Who was "A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief". We have said that God is varisided. Perhaps it would be better to say that God is love, and love - especially God's love - is many-sided. There is the sorrow of love; the jealousy of love; the wrath of love; the insight and understanding of love; yes, and the hatred of love; etc. Jeremiah was the embodiment of the sorrows of love - God's love.

Before we go further into the causes and reasons for God's sorrow, we will look at the man himself, his call, and his vocation. There is so much here to help any servant of the Lord who has to take an unpopular way, plough a lonely furrow, stand against a strong adverse current, and bear an unwelcome testimony. Jeremiah can be a great inspiration to all such.

We cannot do better than give some extracts from a most helpful "Introduction" to Jeremiah by the late Dr. Alexander Stewart. Dr. Stewart wrote:

"Jeremiah would have inherited the tradition of an illustrious ancestry, and his early life would have been moulded by the distinctive religious influences of the community to which he belonged. God, however, had 'provided some better thing' for him than to spend his days in serving at the altars of a proscribed and degenerate priesthood. The young son of Hilkiah had been appointed to the tremendous destiny of being a prophet of the Lord in one of the most testing hours in the history of His chosen people....

"That word (of the Lord) made known to him, first of all, that he had been chosen by God for the prophetic ministry before he ever saw the light of this world (Jer. 1:5). The word which constituted his ordination to office revealed to him at the same time his foreordination to that high honour. Nor was this all. The Divine disclosure also made mention of a preparation for the tasks which were to engage his strength, a preparation which stretched away into the mysterious past, till, in its starting-point at least, it bore the seal of eternity, and included gifts of... spiritual consecration which preceded the discipline of his conscious experience.... His work was to be unusually extensive in its activities, and for the most part intensely painful in its character... his commission was 'to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and to plant'. The two closing terms indicate a generative purpose... but by far the greater part of his work was to be of a destructive nature. Both these ends were, of course, to be achieved by Jeremiah as the instrument of the resistless energies of the Lord.

"A second outstanding fact in connection with Jeremiah's call is his own shrinking from the task with which he was faced. 'Ah, Lord God!' he cried, 'behold I cannot speak, for I am a child' (1:6). He was, of course, no mere child in the literal sense, for he must have been more than twenty years of age; but he felt himself a child in knowledge and experience, and he was specially apprehensive of unfitness for the prophetic office on the ground of a conscious lack of the gift of utterance....

"It is a striking illustration of the mysterious working of the sovereign will of God that He should have chosen as 'a prophet unto the nations' a man so apparently unfitted by temperament and aptitude for that tremendous task.

"A third feature of vital significance in Jeremiah's call is the special equipment which he received for his life work. This equipment was symbolised by the touch of the Divine hand on his mouth, an action which was accompanied by the explanatory assurance, 'Behold I have put my words in thy mouth' (1:9)....

"Jeremiah's equipment included also a message from the Lord which was particularly adapted to his need. It consisted, first of all, of a word of command in answer to his protestation of unfitness (1:7). The twice repeated 'Thou shalt', of this solemn charge - 'Thou shalt go', and 'Thou shalt speak' - swept aside the young prophet's objections, and made it plain to him that he must subject himself unreservedly to the authority of his Divine Master, with respect alike to the sphere of his labour and to the character of his message. But the word of command was followed by a word of gracious encouragement: 'Be not afraid of their faces; for I am with thee, to deliver thee.' Hostile faces there certainly would be in plenty - brows lowered in resentment, eyes flashing in hatred, and lips curled in scorn or clamorous in denunciation; but here was a promise of the Lord's own presence throughout all the days, and in that fact there lay for Jeremiah a guarantee of strength and protection amid all the difficulties and dangers of his future ministry. The prophet certainly needed a full share of courage, for few men have ever been confronted with a more formidable task."

If we give some attention to the times in which our Prophet had to fulfil his ministry we shall better understand its difficulties, and perhaps we shall not fail to recognize some similarities to our own times, thus giving stronger point to the "Voice".

The features of Jeremiah's time (also true as to all the Prophets) were:

1. Spiritual declension

The lowering and lessening of truly spiritual standards and values. The loss of the inner and heavenly meaning of Divine things.

2. Religious formalism

Religion, yes. All the externals, forms and techniques were there. The Scriptures had been lost, but a tradition - of sorts and in measure - still obtained. But the religion went in one pocket and vital application to life went through the hole in the other. Jeremiah - speaking as God - said: "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have hewn them out cisterns, broken cisterns, which can hold no water." (Italics ours.)

3. Moral degeneration

There was a perfect landslide of moral standards in the nation. The vehemence of the hatred demonstrated against the Prophet was largely due to his high standard of spiritual and moral purity, and that vehemence showed how far the nation had gone in this moral degeneration.

4. Commercial obsession

The criterion of success had become that of material and commercial gain. Here there had taken place a satanic twist and distortion. Whereas material prosperity and advancement were a mark of the blessing of God in that old dispensation, as the token of Divine approval of faithfulness to His covenant and word, now the gain had become divorced from holy living. Thus, the world and its business had become the enemy of the spiritual life and sapped it away. The cunning lie of the great deceiver was that if you had means, money, possessions, etc., you could serve God with it. But the Prophets said "No, never!" God said "Away with it; I will take no sheep from your flock nor ox from your stall. Your gold and silver are polluted."

"Big business", commercial engrossment, can become a fascination, an obsession, and the thief of spiritual increase.

5. Pending disaster

There were ominous signs all around. Nations were warring and restless. One after another kingdoms were falling. New powers rose on the ashes of old. The air was full of threats. The only resort for any survival was greater fierceness and violence. Disaster was no stranger to consciousness. No one had any sense of security or assurance of an indefinite tenure of life. This condition, being specially focused upon Jerusalem, was reacted to by a false and bolstered-up "courage", foolhardiness and presumption. Thus Jeremiah, who kept the pending judgment in view, was charged with being a traitor and thrown into a dungeon to silence him. His warnings had been met with faces harder than a rock (2:23,35; 7:28). Guilt was repudiated, and correction rejected.

There, for the present, we must leave the matter, and come back to consider more fully the ministry of the Prophet. This "Voice" surely has something - even thus far - to say to any hard-pressed witness for Christ and servant of the Lord. The value will - of course - only be derived by such as are sometimes tempted - like Jeremiah - to lose heart and feel the impossibility of the situation.

Chapter 2 - The Voice of Jeremiah

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

"It shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the Lord, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it desolate for ever" (Jeremiah 25:12).

"Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom..." (2 Chronicles 36:22, Ezra 1:1 onwards: see also Isaiah 45:1-8).

Here then is the vindication of Jeremiah. But he never lived to see it. Therein lies one of the most testing things that a faithful and greatly opposed servant of the Lord can have to accept. Jeremiah had to fulfil his ministry knowing that, so far as his own time and the people thereof were concerned, it would be an apparent failure; he would not live to see that part of his commission fulfilled - "To build and to plant" (Jeremiah 1:10). How many of the servants of the Lord have been called upon to follow Him in this so searching and testing path! They, as He, have had to do their work for a time to come. We observe the seeming failure of the Lord's own earthly life and labours when "He was crucified through weakness". We see the desertion, forsaking, discrediting, and discounting which marked the closing days of the Apostle Paul's earthly course. What a galaxy of lonely heroes of the faith compose the noble army of the "despised and rejected of men", upon whose costly ministry men passed the verdict 'It was to no purpose'! But if their ministry and labours had anything of God in them, that element is eternal and immortal, and it will live again: God will vindicate, and "the men of Anathoth" (Jeremiah 11:21,23) will be the ones upon whom history and eternity will heap the shame. The tears of the Jeremiahs will - as the Psalmist says - be kept in God's bottle. This is one of "the voices of the prophets" which, although not heard by dull spiritual ears, will be shouted for all to hear by the events of history. Ezra and Nehemiah, and Daniel's visions in fulfilment, will be the answer to Jeremiah's rejected ministry.

Cyrus may be a pagan, having no personal knowledge of the Lord, but his irreligious solicitude for God's interests will declare for all time that, while Jeremiah may be ignored or discounted, the God who called and appointed him cannot be so dismissed. If there is one voice that shouts from the book of Jeremiah it is the voice of Divine Sovereignty. The whole book is contracted in the Lord's words to His servant in the Potter's House: "Cannot I do with you...?" (Jeremiah 18:1-11). The Sovereignty of God is a difficult thing to be against. Ask Jerusalem and the Jewish nation about that in the year A.D. 70 when the sovereign words of Jesus Christ as recorded in Luke 19:41-44 were so literally fulfilled.

So much, then, for the inclusive 'voice' of Jeremiah. But what were some of the things that our Prophet had specifically to encounter and cry against? We can put these into a phrase. He cried concerning certain basic and fundamental contrasts. We point to three:

1. The Fountain and the Cisterns

This is a contrast that the Lord vehemently called an "evil" - "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13). Let us be duly impressed - before we pass on - with the Lord's judgment upon this alternative procedure, it is Evil! The Lord says that it is a fundamental evil.

There are several features of these alternatives.

(a) The feature of the One and the many: the one Fountain; the many cisterns.

Here we have a voice of the Prophet which, having been missed, has resulted in - not only Israel's undoing - but, largely in that of organized Christianity, and is not absent from evangelical Christianity. It is a matter to which the Bible gives the most serious attention, and upon which the New Testament is very largely built. It is no less a question than that of the all-sufficiency of God or - alternatively - the many devices of men. It is just the exclusive and final fulness of God or the independent or plus resource of human effort. This is the inherent principle of the One Fountain or of the many hewn out cisterns. Into what a lot of Christian work and activity this issue has become real! From the dawn of man's active relationship with God there has been this incorrigible propensity of man to "put forth his hand" and lay it possessively or controllingly upon God's things. Probably this is Satan's (Lucifer's) sin which led to his fall, and was the very nature of his 'tempting' and deceiving Adam. That is why God calls this 'evil'. It is the evil of dividing God's place; of insinuating man's independence, and implying man's ability. It is at the heart of humanism, of autocracy, of dictatorship. It is the essence of that so oft-referred to symbolic term in the New Testament - "the flesh". It is the principle of the 'uncircumcised heart', which - like the 'uncircumcised Philistines' - insinuates itself in the things of God. It is full of significance that it was not until David came fully and pre-eminently to the throne that the Philistines were finally subdued. Theirs was a hand against the throne. Not until Christ is absolutely Lord will this tendency to self-assertion be overruled.

What the many "cisterns" represent in their form and nature is just legion; too many things produced by human strength, intelligence, and ingenuity to tabulate or catalogue.

There is a very serious and solemn precautionary reason why, after having given the command and commission to His Apostles to go into all the world, He added "But, tarry ye... until ye be clothed with power from on high" (Luke 24:49); "He charged them not to depart... but to wait for the promise of the Father" (Acts 1:4). The world-commission must never be taken upon any kind of natural energy. The Holy Spirit alone, and that as a definite bit of personal history, is to be the source of God's work.

(b) Another difference is indicated in our text.

The cisterns of religious man's hewing can "hold no water". Perhaps the emphasis should be upon the word "hold". They are 'empty' because they are leaky. They have to be repeatedly and continually filled artificially. Their hewers are involved in the arduous task of finding and replenishing the resources. They get something and it leaks away, and dryness demands more and more human effort to defeat it. What a true description of all that comes from man putting his hand upon God's work! His are indeed leaky cisterns. On the other hand there is the Fountain. Full, final, inexhaustible, and ever fresh, never stagnant.

"The water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life" (John 4:14).

"Out of him shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38).

What a thing it is to have an opened Heaven, and never to have to hew out a message, a discourse, a ministry, an enterprise! It was against this weary, disappointing, laborious life that Jeremiah testified, and his "Voice" must be listened for in this matter today for an evil thing has limited the life of the Lord. Fulness is always a mark of the good pleasure of the Lord.

2. The Wheat and the Chaff

"What is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord" (Jeremiah 23:28 AV).

The first contrast which gave point to Jeremiah's ministry had to do with the source of the life of God's people; the second had to do with the ministry to them and the teaching. This challenge and interrogation direct from "the Lord of Hosts", as the context shows, was directed to the false Prophets. "I have heard what the prophets have said", etc. (verse 25 onwards). The Prophets claimed to have a vision, a dream, a revelation from the Lord, but it was as empty and unreal as chaff.

What are the characteristics of chaff? The answer to the question will prove whether the ministry is of man or of God; whether it is false or true. Note that the immediate connection here is that of the Word of God, and what is indicated by the whole paragraph is that there is much that claims to be, and is affirmed to be the Word of God which is not so. Between that which is offered as God's Word and the true Word there is all the difference, as between chaff and wheat.

(a) Chaff is so light and unsubstantial as to be carried away by any wind and not found again. Spiritual weight is in minus quantity. It is the ministry (?) to please itching ears. It is wholly superficial, without depth. There is nothing solid about it and there is no 'body' in it. Pretty, clever, and wordy, with facility of speech, diffuse but powerless.

Jeremiah was very strong against the men who offered such light stuff to a needy people.

(b) Together with this aspect goes the fact that chaff deceives. It has an appearance of wheat and is associated with it, but it is not it. It may be a pretence and not the reality. It has the language, the phraseology, the terms, but it is different, it misleads. It is something on the outside and will not stand up to reality.

(c) Chaff is not food. It will never satisfy. It will not nourish. Spiritual malnutrition will result from such a diet. There is no nourishment and building property in it. Hungry souls look up and are not fed. They are famished for bread. The kind of people, as to their spiritual measure will show what they have been fed on.

The real Word of God is different from chaff in all the above respects. It is effective. Note what immediately follows our text. A series of other contrasts is implied.

"Is not my word like as fire? saith the Lord." It burns, it melts, it purifies, it tests.

"And like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?" Sooner or later the word truly given by God will undo all resistance and self-assurance. Jesus said: "The word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day" (John 12:48). True ministry of the Lord builds, satisfies, abides, and - in time or eternity - determines.

The final admonition in ministry as in the "voice" of this Prophet is "faithfully" - "Let him speak my word faithfully".

Jeremiah was himself as great an example of this as any man before or since. It cost him dearly. Rejection, ostracism, smiting, the muddy dungeon, shame, reproach, loneliness, and much more; but God vindicated him in history, and, say what you will about his 'melancholy', his pessimism, he is - as we have said - as near to the Lord Jesus as a "suffering servant" as any man has been. His sufferings had their fruit in 'the remnant that returned', and he has an honoured place in the New Testament. (See our next 'Contrast'.)

3. The Two Covenants

"Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel..., not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers... which my covenant they brake" (Jeremiah 31:31-32).

The immensity of this "Voice" of the Prophet can be detected, if not comprehended, in that Christianity and the whole dispensation from the first to the second advents of Christ are built upon and constituted thereby. The Letter to the Hebrews is a comprehensive delineation of the nature of this dispensation, and at the heart of that Letter lies this very quotation from Jeremiah. (See Hebrews 8:6, 9:15, 12:24.)

Moreover, it was to this that Jesus referred when He said "This is the new covenant in my blood." Surely Jeremiah is vindicated! The context of Jeremiah 31:31 is that of "the Branch" and that "Branch" is called "Jehovah-Tsidkenu" - the Lord our Righteousness (Jeremiah 23:6, 33:16). Upon this all our salvation - in Christ - rests. It is too vast to even approach here.

What we are immediately concerned with is the contrast of the two covenants. For the Old we have but to read the Letters to the Romans and Galatians, and to see the deplorable situation that the Jews were in in the days of Christ's earthly life. One word covers a many-sided condition which was just terrible; that word is 'bondage'. That is how the Old Covenant resulted in life - or existence. Why? Because it was all on the outside! It was a structure built upon the sinking sand of human weakness and depravity. Its demands only exposed the helplessness of human nature. In its presence the convicted cry of one man was the cry of all men: "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" (Romans 7:24). It is a long and heart-breaking story of man's failure because of man's nature. Righteousness is the big issue. Which means God having all that He has a right to in man as to character. And man just cannot rise to it. But he has got to! and that is the trouble. God has got to be satisfied or man is condemned. Well, that firstly is the whole case for justification and glory.

Here, then, enters the New Covenant, the terms of which are forecast by Jeremiah. There are two aspects of this: one the nature, the other the Means.

Jeremiah 31:33 - quoted by the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews: "I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it." We supply the italics - "inward parts... their heart". In this dispensation everything is inward. This determines whether the Christianity is true or false. This is the great terminal point represented by the Letter to the Galatians. As to the Means - note the capital M - the Apostle Paul has two great words: "God... who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ"; and note, the context of that statement is the Old Covenant - 2 Corinthians 4:6: and "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).

The Means is Christ within by the Holy Spirit.

This was a saving revelation to Jeremiah. The book bearing his name is just about as hopeless a revelation of man's miserable state as could be. Well might the Prophet weep and cry out in mortal distress! But it is not eternally hopeless. The "Branch of Righteousness" will be 'raised up' - "The Lord our Righteousness". What a 'voice' of a Prophet! 'Every Sabbath, but they knew Him not.' Hopelessness doubled and confirmed because of hardness of heart, pride, prejudice.

God uncover our inner ears!

Chapter 3 - The Voice of Jeremiah (continued)

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

The Quest For A Man

"Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man... that seeketh the truth" (Jeremiah 5:1).

There are two preliminary words necessary to a consideration of this so terrible implication. One is that it can hardly be taken in its utter and final suggestion. It seems to imply that there was no such single man in Jerusalem. But we do know that Jeremiah was not absolutely alone in his quest for truth. There were, at least, a few who remained true in heart and desire, although the landslide to declension was so great. The other thing is that, appropriate as the challenge to our own time may be, we are not suggesting that there is in our day such a general state of positive rejection of, and rebellion against God and alliance with heathen gods as was the case amongst God's people in Jeremiah's time.

Having said that, we still feel that there is the occasion and the need for this part of the 'Voice' to be heeded. It is the quest for a man, and the emphasis has to be put on "a man". God is revealed to us in the Bible as ever and always being in quest of a man. In creation and throughout history the Bible shows how God's heart is set upon a man after His heart. One question raised by the Psalmist spans the ages - "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" (Psalm 8:4).

With Jeremiah this quest becomes a challenge. It is the challenge as to where there is manhood according to God's mind. It may be that there are exceedingly few who could answer that challenge utterly, but there are certain features which with God weigh heavily in constituting the man of His quest. Not all of the things which the world regard as making a man to be admired describe the man that God so characterizes. When Pilate brought forth Jesus and cried "Behold the man", there was everything present with Jesus as to His position, His success, His associates, His physique, His apparent impotence, His inability to "save Himself", His prospects, etc., which put Him at an utter discount with the world and men. Paul was right when he said: "Unto the Jews a scandal, and unto Greeks foolishness." The world, and worldly-mindedness, demand for the ideal man success, prestige, means, reputation, and natural ability of one kind or another, such as social, physical, intellectual. Without these as obvious things the man is "despised and rejected of men".

Over against the world's estimate and standard stands God's assessment of a man's values. What was it that Jeremiah challenged his hearers to find? Look at the description and you look straight into the eyes of God. There you will see that with God the features which characterize the man of God's quest are spiritual and moral values.

One word or virtue covers a very great range. It is the word "Truth". Truth is elemental. That is, it is not manufactured or compounded. It is of first principles and in the very nature. What is made can be unmade. Truth is an essence. It is fundamental and indestructible. If anything can be destroyed, annihilated and brought to an end, it is not true. Truth is eternal. God will not countenance or commit Himself to anything that will ultimately be exposed to be a lie. Truth is a spiritual element.

There is the profoundest reason why God is so intensely jealous in His regard for truth. The entire history of the wreck and ruin, the sin and all its consequences in this world, is due to an initial and fundamental lie. It was a lie about God. It was a lie about man. It was a lie about human destiny. The lie was a deception, a misrepresentation, a trick and snare, a distortion, an invention and fabrication, a perversion, a myth, a subterfuge, a disguise, a counterfeit; it was hypocrisy and pretence. It was in nature a 'snake in the grass', a 'wolf in sheep's clothing', a Satan 'as an angel of light'. Like the venom of the serpent's bite, it has entered the very blood of humanity and it has impregnated the very constitution of the world's system. Its beginning appeared simple but its end will be so complex, so unmitigated and blatant that men will "believe a lie instead of the truth" because thereby they more easily obtain their object. We are now living in the time when systems and ideologies reign which have repudiated the existence of such a thing as truth, and the idea of it is ridiculed or fought. Hence the world and society are disintegrating. There is no security or assurance anywhere.

No wonder that God hates every semblance of untruth, and that His hatred thereof was so fiercely demonstrated against the hypocrites, the pretenders of His time.

Thus it is that God puts such high value upon a man who "speaks the truth to his own hurt"; a man who not only speaks true things but is true. Truth is something of "the inward parts". The framework, the instrumentalities, the means employed and blessed by God may pass away, but the inward spiritual value which is God Himself will abide for ever and never be destroyed.

Of all that may be said about the Prophets it is this "Voice" that is the loudest and most challenging. They stood solidly against all forms of falsehood, and when Satan sought to discredit them by means of "False Prophets" they withstood them and eventually God vindicated the true.

We must abide in the truth, for Satan's downfall and all its devastating results are attributed to his not "abiding in the truth".

Hand-in-hand with the stand for truth is another virtue upon which God places very much value. The Bible makes so much of this in relation to the Man of God. This is more than the voice of words from the Prophets, it is characteristic of the Prophets themselves. I refer to spiritual courage.

This, as we know, was a very real feature of Christ, and it was one of the evident fruits of the Holy Spirit in the Apostles and others on, and after, the Day of Pentecost. We repeat: the Prophets were outstanding in the matter. As with truth, so with courage, a very great deal of ground is covered by it. A great modern soldier has ranked courage as supreme among the virtues. If we really analysed and defined courage and noted all its aspects we would go a long way toward agreeing with that estimate.

There are other words and other ways of saying the same thing. For instance, there is no word in this category that shows God's estimate of this value more than the word faithfulness. Faithfulness is the very essence and embodiment of courage. God has linked the crown of life with that.

"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." Faithful to God. Faithful to the truth. Faithful to what God has shown. Faithful to our trust. Faithful to our brother. A word which carries the same meaning and may bring us closer to the practical aspect is the word loyalty. It takes courage to be loyal. The opposite is cowardice, compromise, policy, diplomacy; and anything that sacrifices principle for personal gain, advantage, convenience. Disloyalty is a most contemptible feature.

It costs to be loyal, courageous, and faithful, and it sometimes means that it puts our popularity and acceptance in jeopardy. To sponsor an unpopular but valuable cause, ministry, and instrument of the Lord may cause real hesitation if policy and personal advantage have weight with us. Paul said to Timothy: "Be not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner." It may have been costly in those times to stand with the testimony of Jesus, but it went right to the soul to show allegiance with that man of world-wide ostracism and now in prison. It was a great triumph in a young man that he stuck loyally to Paul to the end. He has ever since shared Paul's vindication.

We now laud the Prophets and Apostles and Martyrs, but we must remember that in their time they were the sponsors of the most unpopular, and - apparently - the most forlorn causes, and they had to show a supreme courage in great aloneness and dislike.

Look and listen again to them and their "Voice" as the embodiment of courage in the presence of every conceivable aspect of 'conformity to the death of Jesus'.

Chapter 4 - The Voice of Jeremiah (continued)

"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. From 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 [through to the end of chapter 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.

Chapter 5 - The Voice of Jeremiah (continued)

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

The Two Rolls (Jeremiah 36)

When the Apostle Paul made this reference to the Prophets, he was bringing their ministry right up to date some seven hundred years after the days of the Prophets. Thus he showed that those "Voices" were of enduring meaning. The context also shows that there is a voice in the Scriptures which is more than the words. The words could - and can - be heard "every Sabbath", but the voice unheard. This is an indictment, a condemnation, a warning.

We have taken note of several of the double messages of Jeremiah; that is, two contrasting things set over against each other. In what we are now going to consider it is not a matter of contrast, but of duplication: the two rolls. It is the story of the king's penknife with which he cut up the roll of prophecy and cast it to the flames.

This incident has - as far as our knowledge goes - been invariably fastened upon in relation to destructive criticism and the battle between conservative and liberal theologians or Bible interpreters. It certainly does provide a first-class instrument for such a controversy as to the authority of the Scriptures, but it is not our intention so to use it here. If we shut it up exclusively to such a connection we may miss a "voice" which has a spiritual meaning and message of - at least - equally important significance. This is connected more with the second roll than with the first.

The seriousness of this message is found in the judgment of God upon that offender. In fulfilment of the prophecy the body of Jehoiakim was thrown over the wall to the invaders by the very people who had not repudiated his action. That, however, is going a long way ahead in order to show that an action such as his does eventually issue in disaster and calamity; in shame and retribution, however long it may tarry.

What then is the message or "Voice" of the two rolls? The first was ruthlessly destroyed and cast away. No copy of it was kept by Jeremiah or Baruch, his scribe. There were no carbon copies of documents in those days. The reproduction had to be like the first, a direct inspiration by God. God had to speak the same thing a second time (although in the second there were additions). The point is that God did speak again in the same terms. Do what we may in repudiation of anything that God has revealed, either to neglect, brush aside, or - as in this case - vehemently throw to the flames, that which God has spoken will appear again, undiminished, and destiny will be determined thereby. This fact appears again and again in the Bible. Two outstanding instances are Jesus Christ, and the churches in Asia. It is quite evident that, whether or not Saul of Tarsus was actually a participant in the crucifixion of Jesus, he was spiritually so, and having believed that the Leader had been well got rid of, he was going to send the followers also to their death. No doubt, when Jesus was killed, Saul's idea was that He was for ever out of the way and had come to His deserved end. All that remained to be done was to wipe out all that remained in connection with Him. We can never, with the most vivid imagination, enter into the surprise, devastation, and shattering bewilderment of the man Saul when Jesus of Nazareth met him with the announcement of who He was on the road to Damascus: "I am Jesus." The second roll, so to speak, had turned up and confronted him. He - Saul - had used his penknife and cast Jesus of Nazareth to the flames. He had extended that work to Stephen. Now the encounter with Jesus Himself, but with additions. We cannot imagine what calamity would have befallen Saul of Tarsus if he had persisted like Jehoiakim in rebellion.

Paul wrote - perhaps with a sob - from his prison: "All that are in Asia turned away from me" (2 Timothy 1:15). Under God they owed everything to Paul. Now, at length, they have turned from him and perhaps repudiated his ministry of "the whole counsel of God". Well, is that all that there is to it? No, only thirty or so years later and we have that matchless presentation and description of Paul's Master given in the first chapter of the Revelation. That description and presentation needs to be considered in the light of what took place in the forsaking of Paul, and the development of the subsequent thirty years. With that detailed, symbolic presentation the churches in Asia are challenged, interrogated, and judged, with their destiny in the balances, as to their reaction to Jesus - yes - and to Paul's "Voice". The second roll came up, and it was decisive.

These instances are such as to give very forceful argument to this principle: we can never ultimately get away from anything that God has shown, whatever may be our present attitude. It will come back again, and our eternal position will be hanging upon it. This, of course, is of many-sided application.

In Acts 13 Paul is showing that Israel's tragedy - which has lasted for these many centuries - was because they thought that their neglect, or violence, would not return upon them in judgment. But they are under the aegis of the Second Roll. "Today, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart."

Chapter 6 - The Voice of Jeremiah (continued)

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

The Peril of Self-interest

"Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not" (Jeremiah 45:5).

When the Apostle Paul used the words of our title to the "Brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and God-fearers" in Antioch in Pisidia, as the context shows, he was relating the "Voices of the Prophets" particularly to Israel's attitude and actions to Jesus of Nazareth: "A Saviour, Jesus". In these chapters we have, so far, widened the application of the statement, but, we feel, not illegitimately. The voices of the Prophets do speak to many needs and situations, but it will be understood that we are all the time keeping in mind the possibility of a discrepancy between hearing words and hearing the "voice". Jeremiah had definitely said something like this. "To whom shall I speak and testify, that they may hear? behold their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken..." (Jeremiah 6:10).

Jesus Himself said something with the same meaning. "Why do ye not understand my speech? because ye cannot hear my word" (John 8:43). This gap between hearing all the words of teaching and hearing the voice in it, as we have said, can account for the lack of life and power even where there is much knowledge of the truth. It can also account for violent contradictions, as in the case of Israel.

We proceed to our next "Voice" - the peril of self-interest.

The story of Baruch's association with the Prophet Jeremiah is a very touching one. Baruch was younger than Jeremiah. His relationship with the Prophet was more than an association: it was a friendship; it was no empty attachment, but his loyalty to his older friend cost him almost everything. From the first time that Baruch appeared on the scene he never seemed to have been far from the Prophet's side. When Jeremiah was shut up in prison, Baruch was a constant visitor and helper; and when Jerusalem was at last captured, he refused the option of release and stayed alongside his worn-out old friend. When, finally, Jeremiah was carried off into Egypt, Baruch follows in his train. Baruch goes down in history, and in immortal records, as "a friend that sticketh closer than a brother". Oh, for more Baruchs!

This friendship survived one of the greatest tests that any man, and especially a young man, could be put to. The Roll had been written by him at Jeremiah's dictation, and it had been cut to pieces and destroyed in the fire by the king. The second one had been written, with additional judgments. Chapter 45 indicates that Baruch had gone down deep in despair at what had been written; then Jeremiah (or the Lord) added to the woes. Then follow these warning, and could-be desolating, words: "And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not."

If we feel that this was too hard and cruel and unkind to say to a young man of such fidelity and devotion, our answer will come along the line of a wider horizon. We must look further and take in the long view. Perhaps we may find the most satisfactory answer to our question if we leave Jeremiah and Baruch for a moment and look a long way ahead to another situation which had many features similar to theirs. From vales of Galilee and vicinities of Jerusalem querulous voices can be heard:

"Lord, who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?" ... "And they disputed who was the greatest" ... "And there arose a contention among them, which of them is accounted to be the greatest" ... "Lord, grant that one may sit on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand when thou comest in thy Kingdom" ... "Jesus began to show unto his disciples how that he must go up to Jerusalem and suffer many things... and be killed..." ... "And Peter began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall never be to thee" ... "All ye shall be offended because of me, this night" ... "And they all forsook him and fled" ... "We had hoped that it had been he who should redeem Israel" ... "Lord, dost thou at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?"

How very appropriate it would have been for Jesus to have used the warning words of Jeremiah over all the above:

"Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not."

We must remember that as with Jeremiah and Baruch, so with Jesus, dark clouds were on the horizon. Many things had been said by both which pointed to ominous and distressing days. The great ordeal by fire was prophesied. For the disciples that was to be the Cross. For Israel, the devastating and desolating ordeal of A.D. 70 had been definitely intimated by Jesus. In view of both these pending tragedies it was no time to seek great things for themselves. But, there, in the last two words, we have the clue: "For thyself."

In the sovereign counsels and righteousness of God, both Jeremiah and Baruch have been vindicated. Baruch has greater things than he could have had in a perishing kingdom of this world. And we have only to read Peter's first Letter to know whether he thought that the loss of all earthly and temporal "great things" for the 'preciousness' of Christ was a poor exchange, a bad bargain. Everything turned upon the object of ambition; "thyself" or the Lord. When their Lord became the object and the end of all their seeking, they came into the greatest things of all! "Great things"? Yes; a thousand times, Yes! Not for ourselves, but for Him.

Israel lost everything by holding to themselves and denying Jesus His rights. It was a desolating self-interest. Peter, John, Paul, and ten thousand others have gained the transcendent things of eternity and glory by that change of object. "No longer I", 'not myself', but "unto him be the glory for ever and ever".

"As the serpent beguiled Eve..." (2 Corinthians 11:3). The key to all beguiling is selfhood. It is as subtle as the serpent and intrudes into the most sacred things. Hidden beneath our most convinced sincerity and devotion to God (as we believe, and as Peter believed) there may lurk that element of desire for place, for power, for self-realization. Only a shattering defeat can disclose this hang-over of the original 'Fall'. Herein, then, lies the imperative of a real and deep work of the Cross at the root of the self-life.

Chapter 7 - The Voice of Jeremiah (concluded)

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

"Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute?" (Acts 7:52).

Thus far we have been occupied with the many notes in the voice of the Prophet Jeremiah. Before we leave this Prophet we want to say a word regarding Jeremiah's representative and inclusive position. Perhaps some readers have wondered why we should have taken Jeremiah first in prophetic ministry. Most writers would - most probably - have put Isaiah first. "Jeremiah" is not an easy or happy Prophet to read. Isaiah is so much more likeable and readable. We may have our preferences among the Prophets, but - preference apart - there are reasons why we have commenced with Jeremiah, and there will be reasons why we do what we do in other cases.

Our main reason for this priority is that, in a fuller way than any other, Jeremiah accentuates the features of all the Prophets. What variety of features there is when we look at all the Prophets! Sorrow, hope, despair, joy, bitterness, light, darkness, love, anger, etc. While each Prophet may have more than one aspect, each one has some predominant feature. It is possible to say of each one: 'This is the Prophet of...' (and give a respective definition). When we look at Jeremiah we are impressed with many characteristics. But there is an inclusiveness here. If the predominant impression is tears and sorrow, this is alternated with hope, promise, God's sovereignty, and day of Salvation to come. The point is that many aspects go to make up the calling and vocation of prophetic ministry. Let us note some of these, to which Jeremiah is a pointer. We have dealt with this matter much more fully in our "PROPHETIC MINISTRY" and "GOD'S REACTIONS TO MAN'S DEFECTIONS", but it will not be unhelpful to indicate some points here. The Prophet and his ministry is the focal point of

God's Recovery Movement

That means that the function of prophetic ministry is introduced when things have departed from God's full intention. But it means more than that. The departure is marked by an element of strength which involves the Prophet in positive conflict. In such a ministry there is no passive accommodating to the situation, no compromise or appeasement. There may be appeal, entreaty, tears and sorrow, but there is no truce with spiritual decline. This is very apparent in all the Prophets from Samuel onward. They are fighting men, and the Chief of all was Jesus Christ Himself. God has a mind, and it is a full mind. This mind had been intimated, and the Bible is the history of the battle for its full realization. There is an intense downgrade element in creation. Left to itself nature declines, runs wild and loses character. Nothing rises - ascends - without a counter to this propensity. The Bible sees this element introduced as a part of one tremendous downward step by man; thorns and thistles for ever became symbols of a wrong direction, and toiling by the sweat of the brow the warfare to overcome that tendency. This inherent strain has marked man's relation with Divine things, and the history of the things of God has been: God moves - man countermoves - God moves again.

As we have said, the prophetic function stands at the centre of this conflict. It is here that the second of the two Scriptures at the head of this chapter has its place. Indeed, it is here that Stephen's martyrdom comes in.

"Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute?"

Because the fulfilment of this kind of ministry means an unrelenting stand against the incorrigible desire to play down to the easy level, those who have this ministry committed to them are not popular, and - like Jeremiah - are looked upon as really not concerned for people's interests. This is probably why Jeremiah, like Moses and Isaiah, did shrink from such ministry. When Jeremiah said to the Lord: "I am a child; I cannot speak", he referred to his sense of not having the prophetic qualifications of the prophet - to "speak". The ministry for him held none of the attraction of preaching, as preaching has for so many. It had to be thrust upon Jeremiah against his own sense of insufficiency, for Jeremiah well knew what he would be up against as a Prophet; and he got what he expected. But, the very survival of these Prophets through all that they encountered shows that God was with them; that He had called them; and that their ministry was of particular importance and value to Him.

The ministry of recovery of lost values, lost standards, and lost spiritual measure is a lonely way for those in it. The Prophets were very lonely men, and their ministry was very costly.

If Jeremiah did feel himself to be so inadequate and such a "child" alongside of the big situation to be met, the Lord - while doubtless appreciating his sense of insufficiency - would not allow His servant to limit Him (God) to Jeremiah's measure. It is one of the paradoxes of Scripture that, while the Lord takes care to have His servants weak and empty in themselves, He will not permit them to excuse or exempt themselves on the ground of this insufficiency. So, an Apostle will cry out of an overwhelming sense of inadequacy: "Who is sufficient for these things?" and then answer his own cry: "Our sufficiency is of God." Jeremiah had the answer to his cry of weakness in: "I have this day set thee over the nations." The voice of this Prophet, and all the Prophets, says:

"My strength is made perfect in weakness."

We must not forget that the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah, and more, are the definite result of the ministry of Jeremiah. (See 2 Chronicles 36:22 and Ezra 1:1.)

But remember also that Jeremiah's ministry and sufferings were vindicated in the Remnant. First the Remnant that returned to rebuild the temple and wall, and Jerusalem. Yes, but not only that temporal Remnant, but an eternal spiritual remnant, for the Apostle Paul uses this very truth in his argument concerning the inclusion of a remnant of Israel in the heavenly Zion, the New Israel (Romans 9:27-33). True, he quotes Isaiah, but, as we have indicated, the whole of the ministry of all the Prophets related to God's recovery movement; and that recovery is always in Remnants. May not the Overcomers of the Revelation be the Remnant at the end, embodying God's full mind? It is in those early chapters of the Revelation that we see that downgrade tendency so evident. Let us beware of playing down the full purpose of God. The false Prophets of Israel were not false in the sense that they never had been called to the Prophetic ministry. They were men who had been in the School of the Prophets; academically trained, and heirs of the tradition of Elijah, Elisha, etc. They were false in the sense of declension, compromise, time-serving; using their office officially and not spiritually; to gain popularity; men of policy and not principle; seeking to be men-pleasers, and to keep on pleasant terms with the people; not true at great cost to their trust and responsibility.

The criterion of our ministry at the end will be: 'Did the people of God really gain eternally by our having been with them, or did they lose what God wanted them to have?' Is the responsibility with us or with the people? This is the inclusive "voice" of all the Prophets.

Chapter 8 - The Voice of Isaiah

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

"In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up..." (Isaiah 6:1).

"While ye have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of light... though he had done so many signs before them, yet they believed not on him: that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?" (John 12:36-41).

Let us be reminded that what we are considering is the great difference between hearing Divine words and messages, and seeing Divine works, and really seeing through those things to their meaning. There is indeed a great difference between seeing and seeing through; between hearing with outward ears, and hearing with the inward ear. The context in history of our governing reference - Acts 13:27 - is the context of an unspeakable tragedy related to this difference. Both the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament are built upon this difference in seeing and at the same time not seeing, and hearing and yet not hearing. That is what we are coming to with Isaiah.

It is very impressive that John links together Isaiah 6 and Isaiah 53 in relation to the presence, ministry and work of Jesus - the Christ. John says that when Isaiah set down what he did, firstly: "Lord, who hath believed our report?", and the rest of chapter fifty-three; and then about his vision of "the Lord of Hosts", and the resultant commission as to Israel, "He spake of him" (Jesus) and it was when "he saw his glory". There is plenty to think about here. John says that the Lord whom Isaiah saw high and lifted up, and sitting upon a throne, "the Lord of Hosts", was Jesus. And in linking chapter fifty-three with chapter six John clearly affirmed that the "Lamb" of chapter fifty-three was "The Lord" of chapter six. We come back to that later.

What John is clearly saying is that, contrary to the great Prophet, Israel could have in their midst - in one Person - "The Lord" and "The Lamb" - with all their meaning, and yet not see, not hear, not recognize. All the wonderful enlightened ministry of Isaiah, and its actual fulfillment could be right amongst them and yet they not see. What is still worse: it could only result in a hardening rather than a saving. That is something terrible to contemplate! It is such a possibility, and - in Israel's case - such an actuality, which Paul carried over from Israel in general, in warning, to the Synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia; thus narrowing it down to a local company.

What was it that accounted for the judgment of blindness and deafness pronounced by Isaiah and made so evident in the days of Jesus Christ? There are at least three things that led to this, and will always lead to it.

1. Prejudice

The dictionary defines it as 'judgment reached beforehand'. It is drawing a conclusion before giving honest consideration. It is the closed mind and a closed heart. It is, not wanting to, and not intending to. It is, not being disposed to. The Prophets called it "Hardness of heart".

The closed heart will always result in closed eyes.

It is Henry Drummond who has - as a scientist - so forcibly illustrated this principle. In speaking of: "How shall we escape if we neglect..." he says: "There are certain burrowing animals - the mole, for instance - which have taken to spending their lives underground. And nature has taken her revenge upon them in a thoroughly natural way - she has closed up their eyes. If they mean to live in darkness, she argues, eyes are obviously a superfluous function. By neglecting them, these animals make it perfectly clear they do not want them. As one of nature's fixed principles is that nothing shall exist in vain, the eyes are presently taken away, or reduced to a rudimentary state. This is the meaning of the favourite paradox: 'From him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.' The presence of Jesus Christ among men, and the advent of the Holy Spirit, meant - and means - the possibility of seeing that which the natural eye cannot see; but 'neglect' or refuse 'the Light' and the judgment of double blindness is in the very nature of things; it is a law."

The terrible verdict to 'will not' is cannot.

Prejudice is a cruel and evil thing; it is a robber, a spoiler, in whatever realm it exists.

2. Self-interest

Israel's blindness was due to their fear of losing something if they yielded and obeyed. John quoted Jesus as saying: "How can ye believe, which receive glory one of another, and the glory that cometh from the only God ye seek not?" (John 5:44). Self-interest was the original sin of Adam, and by it the devil duped man into losing his spiritual faculties in relation to God. Pride it is that supports self-centredness. It was Israel's fall, as it was Satan's and Adam's.

3. Inaction

So often there is a large and fatal gap between knowing and doing. This is really the responsibility which the "Voices of the Prophets" laid at the door of Israel. The Lord has never judged people for what they did not know, or could not know, but always for not doing what they knew. Paul quotes Isaiah fifty-three in his great chapter on Israel's failure - Romans ten. He cries: "Did they not hear?" and answers: "Yea, verily." "But as to Israel he saith, All the day long did I spread out my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people." This voice of the Prophet (Isaiah) has a large place in this paragraph, and it has to do with the blindness and deafness resultant from doing nothing about what they knew.

We are often greatly dismayed, distressed, and disconcerted by the great amount of preaching and teaching which has so very little outworking, and we wonder how much longer the Lord will allow the light to shine. We commenced this chapter with John's quotation of the words of Jesus: "While ye have the light, believe on the light." To believe is to walk in and obey the light. Too often the congregations and meetings of the Lord's people, after an earnest and challenging message, just dissolve into a noisy rabble of talk on anything but the message, and so the message is dissipated and lost. How often is the reaction: 'What can we do about what the Lord has said to us just now?' This, then, is the point in Isaiah's voice: "Who hath believed our report?"

Before leaving this for the time being, we must just return to that point of "the Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up", "the Lord of Hosts", and the Lamb, of Isaiah six and fifty-three. It was in the year that earthly authority - as represented by King Uzziah - failed and departed that the authority in heaven was revealed to the Prophet. From that heavenly throne went forth the terrible judgment of double blindness and deafness. That state led on to not hearing the "report" and the consequent 'slaughtering of the Lamb of God'.

But ultimately the course of things is reversed. The Lamb is at last seen in the midst of the throne (Revelation 5:6), and that throne is seen to be the full and final authority in this universe. But what does the Lamb on the throne mean?

Hear Dr. F. B. Meyer:

"How does the Lamb come there? Surely meekness, humility, gentle submissiveness are not the virtues that win thrones! Perhaps not in man's world, but they are in God's. In the eternal world the passive virtues are stronger than the active: sufferers wield more might than wrestlers; to yield is to overcome; to be vanquished is to conquer. It is because Jesus was the Lamb that He is now God's anointed King."

This is the voice of the Prophet Isaiah.

Chapter 9 - The Voice of Isaiah (Continued)

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

"And unto them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah..." (Matthew 13:14).

It is very impressive that the Prophet Isaiah is quoted so many times in the New Testament. Over fifty-five times is Isaiah cited. Perhaps still more impressive is the fact that so many of these quotations are related to Israel's antagonism to God's messengers, and particularly to His Son, Jesus Christ. In the Gospels, where Isaiah is quoted so often, there are only two exceptions to this fact.

If this Prophet alone has such a very large place in the New Testament, which is the record of Christ; in other words, if there was so much Christ background to this Prophet, how very true it must have been that the Lord said so early to this Prophet as to his ministry:

"Tell this people, Hear ye indeed (marg. continually), but understand not; and see ye indeed (marg. continually), but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart..." (Isaiah 6:9,10).

"Read every sabbath," said Paul, but not perceived, not understood.

We, who now have the cumulative story, are amazed and cry: 'O, can it possibly be that Jesus, the Son of God, could be so imminent, both in prophetic ministry and His own personal presence, speaking, living, suffering, working, for so many years, and people be in close approximation without really perceiving and understanding?'

Yes, it is all too possible that, after years of hearing and being in touch, the final verdict should be: 'After all, they have not seen, the root of the matter is not in them, and they can persecute and discard without a pang.' There is no Prophet who brings Christ more into view than Isaiah. Probably no Prophet has suffered more at the hands of Biblical criticism. It is always significant that where Christ is brought most to view, there the opposition of every kind is fullest and fiercest. The work of discrediting will be found to reach its strongest when and where the glorifying of Christ is most present. We have heard it said in our own time: 'We don't want prophetic ministry; we want simple preaching!'

Tradition has it that the Prophet Isaiah was sawn asunder, and that the reference in Hebrews 11:37 is to him. If this is true, it alone would indicate how vehement is the hatred of the exaltation of Jesus. A focal point of this rejection is the pre-incarnate Divine sonship of Jesus Christ. One of the most remarkable statements in the New Testament relates to this. Quoting Isaiah 6:10, John says: "These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him" (John 12:41). This means that "The Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple... the Lord of hosts... the King, the Lord of hosts" is identified by John with Jesus. It is an astounding statement, and makes the matter of spiritual perception and understanding quite an acute one. Nevertheless, John understood it, and it is a part of that tremendous difference between the old Israel and the new spiritual Israel. The blindness of the former, due to pride, prejudice, and jealousy, has meant for them this closed heaven and has cost them dearly.

Hearing the voices of the Prophets, and not only the words, is thus no less a matter than one of life or death, salvation or condemnation. We repeat what we have said before: the New Testament, Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Revelation, is built very largely upon this faculty of the new creation of 'having an ear to hear, and hearing'. It is a faculty, like that of seeing, which - through new birth - gives capacity for knowing meanings, and not only theories or "the letter of the word". It is a simple fundamental of the Christian life; hence it stood right at the inception of things relating to the Kingdom, as in the interview of Nicodemus - the scholar and teacher - with Jesus. New birth means a new entity with new faculties.

Israel, as a nation, not believing and being born again, was doubly deaf by a judgment. This is the first thing that Isaiah says and 'voices' in relation to the Son of God. We have heard, read and said much about Isaiah 6, the Throne and the Lord upon it; the Train and the Temple; the Seraphim and their thrice Holy chant. Also the cry of woe from the Prophet, and his call and response to God's appeal. But we have learned little of the terrible issue of his commission. We know that Isaiah was read in the synagogues of Israel, for at Nazareth the ruler of the synagogue handed that Prophet to Jesus to read publicly. The Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 8 had been to Jerusalem and probably secured from the Temple or synagogue a copy of Isaiah's prophecies and was reading it in his chariot. He confessed his blindness as to its meaning, and confessing in humility, his blindness was removed. "He went on his way rejoicing," while Israel - who had the same scrolls - went on their way to perdition. It is not what we have, but what we know that we have, and whether what we have changes our lives, that matters.

The Holy Spirit, who inspired the Prophets (1 Peter 1:11), made the Apostles and believers understand that it was as the Spirit of Christ in them (the Prophets) that they wrote of Him. Thus they saw Jesus by the Holy Spirit where those who had not the Spirit were blind. This is not only a statement; it is a test.

Prophetic ministry, which is just the proclamation and presentation of God's mind, always has a threefold meaning:

(1) It brings that presentation of the mind of God into the presence of men.

(2) It challenges to the humble obedience of faith, with which is offered the new capacity and faculty of spiritual understanding.

(3) It determines destiny according to - not the hearing of the words, but - "the hearing of faith" and the consequent walking according to 'knowledge', or otherwise.

The serious and solemn question must be honestly and sincerely faced: 'How much of all that I have heard has really changed and shaped my life?' 'Is it so much teaching, doctrine, theory, or is it the truth of God?'

The right answer will be the ground of life and salvation.

The wrong answer will be condemnation and judgment.

The voices of the Prophets have a stern as well as a comforting note. This is peculiarly true of the voice of Isaiah.

Chapter 10 - The Voice of Ezekiel

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

We would remind our readers that these messages are constituted by a principle which governs so much of the Bible. It is that, deeper than the words of Scripture, there is a voice; that it was - and is - possible to hear the words and miss the voice. The words are the statements; the voice is the meaning. We have proved this to be the case by such a statement as that in Isaiah 6:9: "Hear ye indeed, but understand not, and see ye indeed (margin: 'continually') but perceive not." This is the condition lying behind our basic quotation in Acts 13:27.

The "voice" of Ezekiel has its own particular significance, and is very rich and challenging in the context of religion, and Christianity in particular as it has become.

Isaiah is mentioned many times in the New Testament, but this is not so with regard to Ezekiel, who is not quoted by name, but there is a profusion of allusions to his prophecies. On the surface of much of the New Testament his symbolisms are obvious, and beneath the surface his spiritual principles are not far to seek. It is this significance which constitutes the tragedy of Israel and the pathetic weakness and ineffectiveness of much that is called Christian. It is the failure to discern

The Essential Difference Between the Literal and the Spiritual

What a lot of labour has been spent upon trying to explain this book, and what a lot of explanation proves futile, if not foolish! This Prophet, more than any other, conveys his message in symbols and parables, and, while some of these can be easily interpreted by history, there is much which cannot be so interpreted literally without entering upon the realm of the impossible and the ridiculous. The only answer to this latter lies in spiritual principles, not in literal fulfilments. We will instance this shortly. But here we immediately find ourselves confronted with an imperative necessity: it is to point out another fundamental distinction. The literalists have resorted to an evasion of enigmas by launching a charge of 'spiritualizing things away'. In so doing they leave much without a satisfactory explanation, and - worse than that - they fall into the very deception which gives so much falsehood to so much 'Christianity'.

It is therefore necessary, before we can understand Ezekiel, to give space to this vital distinction which so few are able to recognize. It is

The Difference Between Mysticism and Spirituality

How terrible, and at what loss is this failure! Between these two things there are all the differences of two worlds, and if the contrast were understood there would be greater care in the use of the word 'mystical' in relation to such things as 'the body of Christ', 'Christianity', 'the elements of the Lord's Supper', etc. Perhaps the chief distinction between the two things is that mysticism is rarely - if ever - practical (in spite of a common phrase: 'Practical mystic'), while spirituality is most positively practical. Let us explain.

Mysticism has to do with the soulical senses, and usually relates to emotional and aesthetic impressions. It is the effect of music, pictures, ceremonial, ritual, vestments, pageantry, dramatic episodes, solemnities of voices, sounds, intonings, regalia, lighting (or the opposite), and all such things. The effect is transient and confined to the occasion. We have known the most vicious explosions of rival hatreds to take place immediately after those concerned have been in attendance at a celebration of the Festival of Corpus Christi, with the Elevation of the Host. This may be an extreme example, but it serves to define the nature of mysticism, for, during the 'Celebration', we heard those concerned groaning and swaying as if they were in the throes of Christ's physical agonies - which were being portrayed. Whether it be in such extreme form, or in much milder, mysticism is not practical in the sense of changing fundamental character, but puts people in a false realm, and deceives them into an idea as to themselves. It is an illusion, a false spirituality, and is - in its finest and also most evil forms - the devil's delusion. Religion, as such, can be just mysticism, without life-changing power; whether it be 'Christian' (?), Hindu, Buddhist, or any other.

On the other hand, what the Bible (particularly the New Testament) means by the spiritual is immensely and unavoidably practical. Basically it means a change of nature, as, said Christ: "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit", and thus "Ye must be born anew" (John 3:5,7). That is a statement of fact. The classic on the difference is by Paul in 1 Corinthians, chapter two. The contrast there is, in the first case, between the intensely religious, intellectual Ruler in Israel, Nicodemus, and a man born of the Spirit. In the second case, the contrasting of the 'natural' (Greek 'soulical') man, and 'He that is spiritual', and the focal point in both cases is understanding. Spirituality, therefore, according to the Bible, is essentially practical both as to the origin and the progress of the true Christian life. It is nothing less than a difference of species. The New Testament is founded and built upon this differentiation and contrast.

Herein, then, lies the tragedy of Israel and of much that is called Christianity. It is here, at this focal point, that failure to 'hear the voice of the prophets' is found. That is an essential preface to the understanding of Ezekiel's symbolism, and with that introduction we can proceed.

The key to everything in Ezekiel's prophecies (the whole book) is the characteristic word. From chapter one to chapter forty-two reference is made twenty-four times to "the Spirit". The Spirit is the energy, the guide, the revealer, the life, etc. The Prophet attributes everything to the Spirit. No book in the Old Testament gives anything like as large a place to the Spirit by name. While the same word is used for wind or breath, it is impossible - without being absurd - to use such words in all the connections in this book. We are compelled to relate the Spirit to God - the Spirit of God - in the ultimate conclusion of this book. God is taking the initiative; God is manipulating the Prophet; God is showing His servant; it is God speaking to the "son of man" (another characteristic term). The inclusive conclusion is that the great issue for the people was that they were confronted with a work and speaking of the Spirit of God, and they neither saw nor heard. The result was that - as a nation - they were lost in captivity and only a remnant was saved. With more to say as to the message of this book, we have already reached the climax in principle.

We, in history, have before us in full view the fulfilment of terrible words uttered by the Lord Jesus. We can see a nation, from the year A.D. 70 until our own times, in the "outer darkness, weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth". This was said by Him to be the consequence of "the sin against the Holy Ghost", for which there is "no forgiveness". But we are also in Romans: "But a remnant shall be saved". The "Son of Man", anointed and filled with the Spirit, came first to Israel, speaking and working "by the finger of God" (the Holy Spirit). His words and His works were discredited and repudiated, and He was charged with "having a devil". They "killed the Prince of Life", demanding a form of death so shameful as would never be imposed on a Roman by Rome. This was the sin, and the centuries have told the story.

To conclude this introduction, what is the point? Is it not that particular issue raised by Jesus in His time among men, and later to the churches: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith"? It is sometimes positively amazing and staggering what even Christians - and Christian leaders - can do and say because of this deaf ear to the Spirit. They can take up and pass on most pernicious reports which are sheer lies and do untold harm to others and the Lord's interests because they do not so walk in the Spirit as to have Him say within: 'That is not true.' It is one thing to include belief in the Holy Spirit as a tenet of Christian doctrine, and it may be quite another thing to know when "the Spirit of truth" witnesses within the heart to the truth or the falsehood. It is significant that both the Remnant and the Overcomer are marked by this 'hearing the voice'. Jesus placed the ultimate issue of life or death upon this 'hearing the voice (not just the words) of the Son of Man'.

"Every sabbath" they heard the words, but not the voice.

Ezekiel has so much to say to us which demands an ear for the Spirit. Let us pray for the ear of Samuel -

"Oh, give me Samuel's ear -

An open ear, O Lord!

Alive and quick to hear

Each whisper of Thy word!"

Chapter 11 - The Voice of Ezekiel (Continued)

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

Having laid the foundation for these messages, but making some essential distinctions and differences, especially regarding symbolism and reality, and mysticism and spirituality, we can now proceed to indicate how Ezekiel and his prophetic message falls into our basic purpose. That purpose is to show that it is possible to be very familiar ("every sabbath") with the words of the Divine message, and yet, at the same time, miss the inner meaning, the 'Voice'.

If we take only one major aspect and instance of this, it will indicate how serious this is, as well as obvious, to us who have the fuller story.

It will be known to those who are familiar with 'Ezekiel' that one of the most common characteristics of that book is the form of God's address to the Prophet. No fewer than ninety times Ezekiel is addressed as "Son of Man".

It does not concern me very much that in the Hebrew the term simply means 'Son of Adam', and is repeatedly used simply to indicate a human being, just mankind. I am impressed with two things in this book: one, that in no other case is it anything like as characteristic of an Old Testament book; and, two, the persistent and exclusive reiteration of the designation. There are deeper things than these which we shall draw out as we proceed; for it is in the deep significance of the two things noted that we shall find our message. This book is a book of visions, revelations, disclosures. It is a book of portents and predictions. It is not least a book of movements, activities, and energies. But in all of these God is addressing Himself to, and through, one whom He invariably calls "Son of Man". In every matter it is by keeping to this form of address. Very well, then, if that is noted, we can go further.

The "visions of God" which comprise this book are all governed by an inclusive and initial vision

The Vision of the Cherubim

We are not going to move into a study of the Cherubim from the Garden of Eden to the book of the Revelation - the first and last mention of them. We shall keep to Ezekiel with but one object. By the river Chebar the Prophet was given the vision of what has been called 'the chariot-throne of Jehovah', borne by the Cherubim. The Cherubim are a symbolic representation of creation. Four is the number of creation, and the representation is of the four realms and governments of creation. The lion, king in his realm. The ox, king in the realm of domestic creatures and the service of man. The eagle, lord of all the realm of the air. And man. It is common knowledge that in this symbolism the man-feature is pre-eminent. The fact that it is the 'chariot-throne of Jehovah' that is being borne by the Cherubim is meant to show the absolute sovereignty of God in His creation. This sovereignty is chiefly expressed - in the creation - manwise. "What is man? ...Thou madest him to have dominion..." (Psalm 8:4,6). In the three instrumentalities and methods of Divine government, i.e. Priest, King and Prophet (the Old Testament order), the Prophet is always represented as the man particularly. Man particularizes the speech of God. By his very creation in "the likeness and image" of God he speaks as God's representative. Of course, it is true that the Priest - the mediator - is man. The same is true of the King. But these have their own symbolism in the lion and ox, while the man is particularly indicative of the Prophet. The Prophet runs right through the Old Testament, so far as function is concerned, but he comes into full measure when Priest and King are either in weakness or needing special counsel from heaven.

I think that we have now reached the heart of 'Ezekiel', and there we find in as full a way as anywhere in the Old Testament the representative of God's mind in speech by vision, word and deed. That is why the Lord said to Ezekiel: "Son of man, say unto the people of Israel, I am your sign." "I have made you a sign..."

We lift out of this book the teaching and truth that the sovereignty of God in creation and redemption is manwise. Man - let us repeat - is God's representative in His government, and His instrument in redemption. (See Romans 5:12,19, and 1 Corinthians 15:21.)

The Prophet as a Sufferer

One other factor must be mentioned as essential to this particular message, for, without it, the whole case will break down. It is the suffering aspect of God's representative in redemption. The Prophet is invariably a suffering man. Suffering for God's people is a very real thing whenever and wherever the prophetic function is in operation.

This that we have said is the voice of the Prophet Ezekiel.

Now we are ready to make

The Transition from Ezekiel to Christ

The link between the two is largely found in the name, with a difference. In Ezekiel it is "Son of Man". In the Gospels it is "THE Son of Man". Here again, on the best of grounds, we reject (despite the Aramaic language) that it is just and only 'a man', one of the human species called 'man'.

This is a title chosen by our Lord as particularly His favourite. It occurs eighty-two times in the New Testament, and in all but two it came from His own lips. This alone gives it a significance that is more than the general 'a man'. But the main strength of its uniqueness is found in its various connections.

It is used in relation to:

1. His first coming.

2. His life here in union with heaven.

3. His ministry and work here among men. (His authority.)

4. His going out of the world.

5. His "lifting up"; the Cross.

6. His coming again.

7. His glorification.

8. His judgment of men and the world.

Inclusively and comprehensively the title is always with a supernatural context.

Jesus never referred to Himself as "Son of Abraham", "Son of David", "Son of Israel", etc. This keeps us to the real significance. Why did Jesus prefer and love this title?

First, it goes right to the heart of God His Father. It leads us to that great and dear concern of God for man; a creation in which God has vested so much for His creational glory and pleasure. It touches the deep sorrow of God because of man being "lost" (see Luke 19:10 and 15:4,6,9,24,32). It is therefore the Redeemer title; the title of the 'Kinsman Redeemer'. It is a name of universality; the whole race. It is more than any earthly category of nationality, colour, language, temperament, sex, age, culture, or zone. Herein is the "Voice" of the Greatest of all Prophets, it is "the voice of the Son of man" (John 5:27-29).

So, with a vast subject only hinted at, we come to our particular point. Why did Israel not hear this voice, although hearing the words every Sabbath, and hearing His words for over three years? There are two answers, or two factors to the one answer.

One was their national and exclusive prejudice.

Their horizon was Israel, and all others were "dogs", outsiders, and worse. They had lost their vision and vocation to the nations. They had narrowed God down to Jewry and Judaism. Still worse, they had come to believe that they alone were righteous, and all others were "Sinners of the Gentiles". It was not men for whom they cared, but for themselves as Israelites. Hence anything that did not conform to their exclusiveness was anathema to them: and Jesus did not conform! He refused to be trammelled by their legalistic strictures, the 'heavy burdens which they put upon men's backs'. He was already breaking down that legalism against which He later swung His great Apostle Paul like a battle-axe. Prejudice, born of exclusive self-rightness, will always result in blindness, confusion and limitation.

But there is another factor in their inability to hear; the last one mentioned in relation to the Prophet's ministry.

The idea of the Messiah being a man was not strange or foreign to the Jews. When Jesus was in popularity with the multitude they were ready to acclaim Him the Messiah. But a hitch and affront came to their enthusiasm, as it came to the disciples themselves when He introduced the subject of His approaching death, and that by 'lifting up', that is, the Cross. The word which expressed their reaction to that intimation was "Offended". The point was reached when everyone, even His disciples, lost confidence in Him. A suffering Messiah? "Far be it from thee, Lord, this shall never come to thee." "The Son of Man must go...", but surely not that way! So the multitude changed their minds and asked: "Who is this Son of Man?" (John 12:34). Unwillingness and unpreparedness to accept the Cross, "the fellowship of his sufferings", will certainly make blind and deaf to the full knowledge of Him, and hinder the fullness of the "New Man". The movement from the one man, Adam, to the One Man, Christ, is ever and only by way of the Cross. The ear has to be a crucified ear if it is to hear "the Voice of the Son of Man". Until the Cross has separated between the old and the new, the natural and the spiritual, there is no faculty for hearing "what the Spirit saith".

Words, yes words; year in and year out; but at the last the 'voice' has not really been heard.

Chapter 12 - The Voice of Ezekiel (continued)

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

If the prophecies of Ezekiel were read in the Synagogues, as no doubt they were, the hearers would hear a phrase three times repeated - "I have set thee for a sign"; "Say ye, I am your sign"; "Thou shalt be a sign unto them" (Ezekiel 12:6,11; 24:27). This designation as applied to the Prophet embodies and signifies the greatest of all of God's methods with man. It is therefore something of which to be taken very careful and serious notice by all who are called to represent God in this world; and what Christian is not so called? Indeed, that is the vocation of the Christian and of the Church! This supreme method of God is that He incarnates the truth in His messengers: that means that He does not just give a message in words, but He makes the messenger the message. It is not just that something has been said, but that there has been a person in the place. It means that the spiritual history of the representative is the ground of the message. That is why the factor and element of life is so very prominent in Ezekiel's prophecies. God is not working mechanically - machine-wise, but by "Living creatures". It is the life which is the essence of the testimony.

How strongly this law is applied to Ezekiel! This Prophet is not saying: 'I have an address, a teaching, a discourse, to pass on to you.' He is saying: 'I AM your sign.'

So the Lord makes him painfully set forth the message in his own body, and causes things to happen in his life, even his domestic life - the death of his wife - to make very personal and ocular God's message. This is very challenging and searching; but it is also very enlightening as to why God deals with His servants as He does. We can see the close identity of the persons and ministry of Paul, Peter, John and others. They had to go through the ministry before it could go through them. We could enlarge upon this at many points, but it would involve us in such an extensive necessity. We must keep close to the law of God's ways. It will now be seen how and why our basic Scripture - Acts 13:27 - is related to Christ by Paul. The argument of the Apostles was always that there had been a Man amongst men, and that that Man was Himself God's message, not only His messenger. Jesus enunciated this law and Divine method every time He said: "I am!" He was God's representation! To see Him, He said, was to see God. Not so to see Him was the very nature and judgment of spiritual blindness. Read John's Gospel again in this light. So 'the voice of the prophet' has become a living person.

When it came to the incarnation of the Son of God, that incarnation came to be shown as something vastly more than God taking flesh and blood. When John wrote: "The Word was God... and the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us" (John 1:1,14), that was just the introduction or preface to his Gospel. He then went on to elaborate and extend that, and to show what the incarnation meant. This - in his Gospel and the fight given him from heaven - resolved itself into two contrasted things. On the one line John brings out into clear definition that everything relating to God had, by the Jews, been resolved into a crystallized system; a fixed tradition, as such; an institution, a creed; a ritual; a form; a binding legality; and, although they might not use the word, an organization.

Along the other line, John shows throughout that Jesus was persistently, unbendingly, and with a constantly reiterated ''Verily, verily" - "Most truly, most truly" - bringing everything to the Person, making it all personal. He was the Law. He was the Temple. He was the Lamb. He was the High Priest. He was the inclusive Shepherd and the Vine, both of which were Old Testament symbols of Israel as the Lord's flock and the Lord's planting respectively. Jesus would not allow the people of His time to get away from Himself. Everything in the incarnation had become a Person, and that Person was - when the Holy Spirit came - to be not only the personal Christ (that would remain) but corporately manifested.

All those things mentioned above, which Judaism had become, had been displaced by the Person. This was the Sign. This is what the inspired Simeon meant when, taking the infant Jesus in his arms, he said: "This child is set for the rise and fall of many in Israel, and a sign that is spoken against" (Luke 2:34). This is the significance of Christ.

True Christianity is therefore not an organization, an institution, a tradition, a form, a creed, a ritual, etc.; it is the presence and expression of a Person, the Living Son of God! The living Son of God and an organization are complete antitheses. Organization is mechanism, committee, congress, directorates, arrangements, schemes, and so forth without end. It is man's hand of control, and man's mind of ideas as to the work of God. Christ repudiated all this, and the Spirit of Christ just brushed it all aside and took independent control, and the comparison is obvious. Have we travelled a long way from Ezekiel? Not in spiritual truth or principle!

Because the Jews failed through their fixed position, prejudice, pride, and bondage to the system, to hear this voice of the Prophet, they missed the significance of the Sign as tragically as they did in Ezekiel's time, with such baneful consequences. The Sign is a test, a stumblingblock for the rise and fall of many. This will be the effect of every ministry which is a personal embodiment of the truth, as differing from a secondhand retailing of studied material.

May it be ours to be so concerned for reality as to hear the 'voice' as more than words, and, above all, may we be the embodiment and not the imitation of the truth and testimony!

Chapter 13 - The Voice of Jonah

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

All that the majority of Christians, and others, know about the Prophet Jonah is the quite general substance of the little book that goes by his name. It is that he was commanded to go to Nineveh and deliver a solemn warning as to imminent judgment: that he refused to go and ran away, taking a ship to Tarshish: that a heavy storm arose on the sea so that the ship and crew were in jeopardy of their lives: that the superstitious sailors decided that there was a man of evil omen on board and they cast lots as to who it was: that the lot fell on Jonah; he confessed and told them to throw him overboard: that he was swallowed by a great fish and three days later was vomited on to dry land: and so forth.

Very little more and other is commonly known about Jonah, and the mention of his name usually brings little other than: 'Oh, yes, Jonah was swallowed by a whale!'

The fact is that Jonah was a great Prophet in Israel, contemporary with the close of Elisha's ministry (2 Kings 14:25). It will perhaps surprise our readers to know that in the middle of the nineteenth century a saintly and scholarly servant of God in Scotland wrote a book on the ministry of Jonah which runs into no fewer than 359 pages.

We shall see later that the Lord Jesus Himself concentrated His testimony to Israel with two references to Jonah. In this series of messages, as you have recognized, we are not dealing with the life and times of each Prophet in question, but only seeking to put our finger upon what we believe to be the particular 'Voice' of each; it is a matter of what is resultant from the passing on of the Prophet. The Prophet passes by, but his 'Voice' remains! The voice of Jonah is very challenging, and Jesus hung the destiny of Israel as a nation upon that voice. What then does this voice say at all times, and to our time essentially?

1. Firstly we must take note of a certain uniqueness about Jonah and his mission.

It was not something new in the eternal thought of God, but in the days of Jonah the specific call and commission of that Prophet was something new. So new and unusual was it that it startled both Jonah and Israel. In a way it was unheard of; certainly it was foreign to the ideas of the nation. It was a break-in, an innovation, a strange thing, a departure from tradition. While God did not plan or purpose the disobedience and breakdown of Jonah, in His foreknowledge and sovereignty He ordered that it should form the very setting and basis of a miracle which would give the message and a commission a thousand times more significance than it otherwise would have held. So deep and far-seeing are the ways of God! God just rode roughshod over all the set and fixed ideas of His own people; over all their notions and settled ways. It was a new thing in Israel, and that was a part - only a part, but a strong part - of Jonah's dilemma and difficulty.

Therein is the first note in his 'Voice'. The whole battle with Judaism in New Testament times, and, as indicated by our basic phrase (Acts 13:27), very largely, if not entirely, raged around this very fact. Stephen was murdered very largely because of this question. It is

The Serious Peril of Prejudice

Prejudice in Israel, as in Christianity, and everywhere, just means and says: 'God must not do that.' It shuts the door to man and to God.

If the writer may give his own testimony, for what it is worth, on this point, he has to say that a very big turning-point in his life and ministry, from limitation to great enlargement; was reached at a certain time. One Lord's Day morning I preached on prejudice. Didn't I slaughter prejudice! I called it by all the evil names that I could lay my tongue to. I called it 'the closed, slammed and barred door against God and man'. Very well! During the following week I received an invitation to a certain conference with all expenses paid. I had said long before that I would never have anything to do with what that conference stood for; indeed, I would never touch it at a distance. Well, this very kind and generous invitation came, and all my prejudice at once looked for a reason to refuse. I was a very busy man and my diary was very full of engagements for months ahead. So that was the first resort, and I did not think that my diary would let me down for a good excuse. But to my consternation the only week without appointments for a long time was the week of that conference! Was there any other honest excuse for refusing. I could not find one anywhere or anyhow.

As I sat there with my problem, it was as though a voice said: 'Now, what about your sermon on prejudice? You have only two courses open to you: either to say that you will not go, or to go; and if you say that you will not, it will be because of your prejudice!' It was a battle, but the Lord, and a bit of honesty, won. I went, and although full of reservations and questions, as I have said, it was a life-crisis which resulted in a new release of the Lord. Forgive the personal reference, but it may serve to give point to the message.

Prejudice can be a thief and a robber. It can be absolutely disastrous, as in the case of Israel. Said Nathanael: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" That was the most critical point in his whole life, and had he not been an honest man, 'an Israelite indeed in whom was no guile' (Jacob), all that was subsequently said of him would have been lost (John 21:2 and if, as is believed, he was identical with Bartholomew, Acts 1:4,12,13). How it becomes us to analyse our prejudices, to see if they are prejudices or true. Remember, Jesus Himself was involved in common prejudices, strongly supported and 'documented' by the best authorities, people would say; but history gives the answer.

2. Prejudice, as in the case of Jonah, meant an unwillingness to break with the set ways of Israel. God's dealings with Jonah, and Jonah's voice among the Prophets is the

Divine Thunder Against Exclusivism

In Israel, and Jonah, prejudice was based upon a wrong and false interpretation of election. Election with them, while being perfectly true, was interpreted as being a matter of salvation, whereas, in truth, it was a matter of vocation. They were it, for time and eternity. They were the first and the last. All others were hopeless exclusions. "Except ye be circumcised, you cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1,25). The tragedy, nay, the crime of Israel was twofold; it misinterpreted their calling and election, and in so doing made God far, far smaller than He is. Israel - to them - was a box or cage into which they forced God and sought to keep Him there. If there is one thing that the book and history of Jonah says above everything else, it is that God will shake sea and land to show that prejudice and exclusivism are a violation of His nature as "the God of all grace". The history of all ultra-exclusive movements, related to God's name, is one of endless divisions, disorders, and reproach. It is immensely impressive that Jesus - the full and final expression of God's grace - took up Jonah after Jonah's death, burial and resurrection, typically. Israel was indeed chosen, elect, selected, but it was in order that, by holiness and Godliness of life, of character, as God's representation, they might be God's messenger of grace to the nations; that, in the Seed of Abraham all nations of the earth should be blessed. This is the vocation of the Church; but its effective fulfilment waits and depends upon it being a true representation of God! Jonah defaulted in the first place. Israel failed finally. The 'Voice' of the Prophet Jonah is a warning.

3. So we come at last to that full and final voice of Jonah:

"A Greater Than Jonah is Here"

(Matthew 12:41)

We have said "Final", and by that we mean when the battle is over and Jonah - on resurrection ground - truly represents God. The context of Matthew 12:41 is in verse 40. There, on the one side, is "a wicked and adulterous generation" the Israel which has lost its place because it has failed in its vocation (note that!). In the middle is Jonah as a parable and sign. On the other side, Jesus; going down into death - on that side representing that which does not and cannot live before God, and then, by resurrection, representing that which is alive unto God for ever. This is the 'Sign' to Israel, whether historic or spiritual.

This is the voice of the Prophet Jonah, but it needs more than 359 pages to exhaust it!

Chapter 14 - The Voice of Micaiah

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

"How many times shall I adjure thee that thou tell me nothing but that which is true in the name of the Lord?" (1 Kings 22:16).

This is a thrilling story, and it reads like a drama. Micaiah is - so far as the record goes - a minor of the Minor Prophets, but quite evidently he was of some serious account in Israel, even if not very popular. It is something to be noted that his accountability was because of his unpopularity. He was evidently taken seriously even if he was in a very small minority. Among the Prophets of Israel his ratio was

Four Hundred to One

That is the first impressive thing of which to take note. It is possible for a servant of God, or 'voice' for God, to be just one over against a disparity of four hundred! But not just the ratio, but the one to be right and, in the end, vindicated. So this story shows.

Of course, this does not mean that singularity is necessarily a virtue, and that being different from everyone else is inevitably right. But, given that it is the kind of aloneness of Micaiah, it can very well be the 'voice' of truth.

Our verse above contains a suggestion and implication which is quite enlightening. Said Ahab, to Micaiah: "How many times shall I adjure thee...?" This, then, is far from the first time that Micaiah had toyed with Ahab, or taunted him. The Prophet evidently knew his man. He knew full well that Ahab was a man who, if he set his heart on having, or doing, something, he would have it at any cost, even the cost of principle, or the life of a good man, as in the case of Naboth and his vineyard. The deliberate tone of unreality in Micaiah's voice, which even a selfish and wicked man could not fail to detect, had provoked Ahab again and again, and made him, in spite of himself, demand the truth; although he had no intention of accepting it.

The voice of this Prophet, in the first place, shows that it is possible to be so set upon one's own course, and determined to have one's own way, as to pursue that end against the knowledge of the truth and all faithful warning and counsel. Such an attitude has at its very core the seeds of doom. It is very impressive that this very strength of self-will became characteristic of Israel in the years following Ahab and ended in the seventy years of captivity. Worse still, it was this very thing that led finally to their being set aside as a nation through the rejection of Him who was the Truth. Micaiah first played with Ahab, like a cat with a mouse, and then slew him. The reason for Ahab's terrible doom? Knowing the truth but refusing to obey it!

But what of Micaiah? The four hundred Prophets had tuned in to the popular strain. The ruling power wanted a certain theme. Policy demanded alignment. The current vogue required acquiescence. The day and the hour said that adjustment to its fashion was essential. Safety and freedom from trouble said - 'Fall into line'. The four hundred time-servers and opportunists were only concerned with, and actuated by, how things would affect their own interests and prospects. There was, however, the embarrassing presence of Jehoshaphat who, while he eventually smothered his better judgment, had a sense that all this noise and clamour was hollow and lacking in genuineness. He asked Ahab if there was not another 'voice' that ought to be heard. This put Ahab into a peevish mood, because Jehoshaphat, by his question, had brought a discord into the music and a cloud on the gay horizon. Yes, there was that fellow who had not been invited to the convocation because - well - he spoke the unpopular truth. Jehoshaphat insisted that Micaiah should be fetched, and the messengers sought to persuade him to play the popular tune, sing the popular song, and to fall into line. We know what Micaiah replied.

But Micaiah had every reason to know what would be the consequences of any failure to comply. He knew Ahab quite well, that he was not a man to take pleasantly to having his ambitions thwarted or questioned. Moreover, behind Ahab there was that evil genius, his wife Jezebel. If Jezebel had succeeded in making a stalwart like Elijah run for his very life, Micaiah would suffer no less a fate. He was already in Ahab's bad books. To oppose him on this supreme occasion would not make things easier. With his eyes wide open to consequences, after taunting Ahab, he - at all costs - said what he knew to be the word of the Lord. There are more details, as you can see by reading the story, but the hammer fell and for a time he was in a prison of discredit, ostracism, privation, and exclusion. But eventually his word was proved to be the truth. What Ahab's thoughts were when he was borne away, mortally wounded, to linger out the miserable day until he died at sundown, we do not know, but we can guess. We do know what Jehu did to the four hundred and to Jezebel. From this we see that if Micaiah had compromised, his fate would have been very much worse than it was under Ahab.

We come back to our general object in these messages. Our basic passage in Acts 13:27 focuses the voices of all the Prophets on Christ. He is the inclusive, full, and final 'Voice'. How true He was to the way of all the Prophets, and how true today! He, as the Truth of God, stood alone, "despised and rejected of men". He was offered bribes in the wilderness, and in His last agonies on the Cross, He refused to "come down" and have an easier path. "He endured the cross, despising the shame."

It is the way of all who have a prophetic anointing which stands against the accepted and popular current; who really have a message from God. Not a 'slant', a 'singularity', an idiosyncrasy, an eccentricity. There are plenty of these. Micaiah's stand was for reality! This is what all the Prophets stood for, and if there was one thing more than another that drew out the white heat of Jesus, it was unreality, hypocrisy, falsehood, and compromise with 'the prince of this world', in principle or system.

Unless we are mistaken, the Spirit of God is forcing the issue of reality in a very utter and ultimate way in our day. The 'four hundred' may seem to triumph for a little while; the Micaiahs may be in an ostracized minority; but reality will issue triumphant at the end.

So says the 'voice' of this Prophet.