will; and we are expecting, later on, to see Zion's king riding up
the slopes to the Holy City and all the people coming forth to cry,
"Hosanna to the Son of David," and "Blessed be he that cometh in the
name of the Lord."
When you open the New Testament you find four books--Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John.
The order of these books is fixed--it cannot be changed.
If _Mark_ be substituted for _Matthew_, then the New Testament
begins without an account of the birth or genealogy of our Lord
Jesus Christ; no intimation is given that he is born king of the
Jews, and is the expected Messiah.
If _Luke_ be given the place of _Matthew_, little mention will be
found of the Jewish kingdom of heaven; and our Lord will be seen
with a leaning towards the Gentiles.
If the Gospel of _John_ begin the New Testament instead of
_Matthew_, then we shall read of him who is Son of God rather than
King of the Jews, and the expectation raised by Malachi will seem
unfulfilled.
But the moment the order named is followed all is perfect, all is
harmony.
_Matthew_ presents our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of _Abraham_ and
Son of _David_; heir of the covenant _land_, and the covenant
_throne_, and at once links the New Testament with the Old.
_Mark_ announces that this King of the Jews came into the world to
be the _Servant_ of God and a blessing in his service to men.
_Luke_, although he announces our Lord Jesus Christ as King, sets
him forth pre-eminently as _The Man_, going among men, eating and
drinking with them, and speaking in such plain and simple terms that
the "common people heard him gladly."
In _John_, this Jewish King, this Servant of God and men, this Man
among men, who received sinners and ate with them, is revealed as
the Mighty God, the eternal _Word_, the Holy One of Israel, who came
down to visit his people, was made flesh and "tabernacled" among
them, as of old he dwelt in the tabernacle of the wilderness in the
Shekinal glory above the Mercy Seat and between the outstretched
wings of the golden Cherubim.
Take away the book of _Acts_, and nothing can be known of the origin
of the church and its apostolic history. Without the book of Acts
the epistles are wholly unintelligible when they refer to the
Church.
Do without the _Second_ epistle to the _Corinthians_, and you have
no revelation of the state of the Christian dead either as to their
location or condition.
Without the _Second_ epistle to the _Thessalonians_ you cannot fix
the identity of the Antichrist.
Leave out the epistle to the _Hebrews_ and there is no key to
_Leviticus_.
Without the book of _Daniel_ it is impossible fully to understand
the book of _Revelation_.
No matter at what period the book of _Revelation_ may have been
written, it can have but one place in the Bible, and that the last.
It must have this place because it shows us the foreview of Genesis
fulfilled: the seed of the woman has bruised the serpent's head,
Satan has been bound and Paradise is regained.
The Old and New Testaments stand related to each other as the two
halves of a perfect whole. In the Old Testament the New is
_concealed_; in the New Testament the Old is _revealed_.
_Genesis_ finds its key in the first chapter of _John's_ Gospel, and
identifies the creator of heaven and earth with him who was made
flesh and dwelt among us as the Son of God.
_Exodus_ is explained by the _First_ epistle to the _Corinthians_,
in which we learn that "Christ" is the "Passover sacrificed for us."
_Leviticus_ is expounded by the epistle to the _Hebrews_.
_Numbers_ has its correspondence in the book of _Acts_.
In Numbers you have the experience of the Children of Israel in
their journey through the wilderness. In Acts we get the story of
the Church in its pilgrimage through the world.
_Deuteronomy_ is to be read with _Colossians_.
In Deuteronomy the people of Israel are being prepared for an
earthly inheritance. In Colossians the Church is being prepared for
a heavenly inheritance.
_Joshua_ stands over against _Ephesians_.
In Joshua the redeemed people have to fight with flesh and blood in
order to possess the covenant land. In Ephesians "we wrestle not
against flesh and blood, but against wicked spirits in the heavenly
places."
_Judges_ may be understood by reading the _first_ chapter of the
_first_ epistle, and the _twelfth_ chapter of the _second_ epistle
to the _Corinthians_.
The book of _Ruth_ is illuminated by the _third_ and _fifth_
chapters of the _Ephesians_.
In Ruth you have the Gentile bride of a Hebrew Lord, the kinsman,
redeemer and advocate; who presents his bride to himself in the gate
before all the assembled judges.
In Ephesians, the Gentile Bride is seen to be the Church, the
kinsman, redeemer and advocate, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, having
loved the Church and given himself for it, will "present it to
himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such
thing."
The books of _Samuel_, _Kings_ and _Chronicles_, may be read with
the four _Gospels_ and the book of _Revelation_.
In Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, you have the story of David, the
anointed king, man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, triumphant
warrior, exalted king--Solomon, prince of peace, ruling over the
established kingdom and the queen of Sheba coming from the uttermost
parts of the earth to own and celebrate his glory.
In the Gospels we get the story of our Lord Jesus Christ as anointed
king and man of sorrows. In Revelation he is seen coming forth at
the head of the armies of heaven, a mighty warrior, a triumphant
king and, at the last, as Prince of Peace ruling in splendor over
his established kingdom; while the Gentiles, coming from the
uttermost parts of the earth to Jerusalem, bow the knee before him
and acknowledge his glory.
_Ezra_ may be read with the latter half of the _second_ chapter of
the _Ephesians_.
In Ezra you have the building of the material temple. In Ephesus the
building of the spiritual temple.
_Nehemiah_ can be read with the twenty-first chapter of the
_Revelation_.
Nehemiah gives us Jerusalem below. Revelation, Jerusalem above.
In the book of _Esther_ the name of God is not once mentioned; but
it shows us the unseen God acting in his secret providence to
deliver his covenant people, the Jews, from the hand of the Gentile
oppressor, and setting them in the place of authority and power over
the Gentiles.
The _eleventh_ chapter of the _Romans_ explains the book of Esther.
In the eleventh chapter Paul shows that God has not forgotten the
people whom he foreknew. The nation as such has been set aside. It
is now, as Hosea says, _Lo Ammi_, _"not my people,"_ not the people
of God.
An election according to grace is going on among the Jews. These are
being called into the Church and will form a part of the Body and
Bride. The Gentiles have come dispensationally into the place of
Israel, and God is sending his Gospel among them--calling out those
whom he has foreseen and known among the Gentiles. The nation as
such would seem to be cast aside. The people are walking in darkness
and the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their true God and only
Saviour, is not owned among them; but while the Lord is thus denied
by them, he has not forgotten them. His providences are round about
them in their preservation and multiplication, and in his judgment
of the nations which persecute them. Their present condition
nationally is temporary. Paul warns the Gentiles that the Jews have
been cut off and set aside because of unbelief. The Gentiles have
been brought in, and stand alone by faith. It is well for them not
to be "high-minded," but "to fear"; for so surely as God spared not
the nation and set it aside because of unbelief, just so surely will
he deal with the Gentiles if the Gentiles fall into unbelief.
The Gentiles must not be wise in their own conceits. The blindness
and the setting aside of Israel will last only till the "fulness of
the Gentiles be come in," that is, till the election among them is
complete; then the Lord will take up Israel as a nation again, and
precisely as he delivered Mordecai and the Jews of Esther's and
Ahasuerus' time and made them to be accepted and feared, so, it is
written, the Lord himself will come forth in behalf of his ancient
people. "There shall come out of (unto) Sion the Deliverer," and,
"so all Israel shall be saved."
The book of Esther read in the light of the eleventh chapter of the
Romans is illuminating as to the unchanging faithfulness of God and
his unceasing love for the nation and people of his choice.
Thus book after book of the Bible may be studied; and the more they
are examined and studied, the more manifest will be the intimate
relation and marvellous correspondence between the Old and the New
Testaments.
When you realize the fact that these Old and New Testament books, so
remarkably related and inter-explanatory of each other, have been
written by different authors, without possibility of collusion or
agreed plan; that each part fits into the other; that it cannot have
one book less or one book more; that to take from it would destroy
the completeness, to add would mar the harmony; that it is perfect
in itself, having the key of each book hung up at the entrance; that
it gives but never borrows light; that it cannot be explained or
interpreted outside of itself; that to him who diligently searches
it, it will reveal itself and make him wise both for this world and
for that which is to come; when all these facts are faced, it ought
to be evident that in the Bible we have a living thing and not a
mere handiwork wrought by man; that man can no more claim to be the
actual author of it than of the mountains that are round about
Jerusalem or the heavens that are high above them.
The unity of a book demands unity of objective.
This book has a great objective--a supreme theme.
That theme is not Israel--although two-thirds of the book considered
as a whole are taken up with the history of that people. The great
theme is not the Church of Christ--although the Church in this age
is the supreme thing in the sight of God. The one great theme, the
one immense objective of this book towards which it moves through
history and prophecy, through figure and symbol, through self
-sustained prose and musical song--the one great objective is--
OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.
It seeks to present him in his person, his work, his present office
and coming glories.
It sets him before us as,
The Child born.
The Son given.
The Counsellor.
The Mighty God.
The Prince of Peace.
The Everlasting Father.
The Lily of the valleys.
The Rose of Sharon.
The Branch.
The Lord our Righteousness.
The Lord's Fellow.
The Man of God's Right hand.
He whose Goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
The Burnt Offering.
The Meat Offering.
The Peace Offering.
The Sin Offering.
The Trespass Offering.
The Sum of God's Thoughts.
The Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.
Son of Abraham.
Son of David.
Son of Mary.
Son of Man.
God the Son.
King of the Jews.
King of Israel.
King of Kings.
Lord of Lords.
God the Creator.
God manifest in the flesh.
The Second Man.
The Last Adam.
The First and the Last.
The Beginning and the Ending.
The Way, the Truth, the Life.
The Light of the world.
The Bread of life.
The Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep.
The Great Shepherd who came again from the dead.
The Chief Shepherd, who shall appear with his flock in glory.
The Sin-bearer.
The Rock.
Our Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.
He who is.
He who was.
He who is to come.
He who before Abraham was, is, by his own announcement, the "I am."
The Almighty.
THIS SAME JESUS.
And to these might be added more than five hundred other names and
titles, together with their cognates, to say nothing of the various
characteristics assigned him, the things predicated of him, until it
is found that he is the very warp and woof of the book.
To proclaim him, exalt him, make him known, set him forth in his
many roles, his functions, his offices and his covenant glories,
prophets recite their visions, a Psalmist sings his rarest songs,
and apostles unfold their matchless doctrines.
When you contemplate the fact of this one objective; this tremendous
unity of intention in the book, you have an overwhelming
demonstration of the unity of its inspiration. Whether the
inspiration be a true or a false one, it is beyond all question one
inspiration. A book whose construction extends over centuries,
written by men separated by time and distance from each other, with
no possibility of personal or mental relation to each other--all
writing to one objective--and that to set forth the Christ of God in
his varied relations--a book with such a unity of purpose
demonstrates in the most self-evident fashion that the writers were
moved by a common impulse and, therefore, a common inspiration.
And this unity of objective and inspiration coordinates with the
wonderful fact that the book has but ONE KEY.
The key which can alone open this book and make every line
intelligible from Genesis to Revelation is Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Take Christ out of the Bible and it is a harp without a player, a
song without a singer, a palace with all the doors locked, a
labyrinth with no Ariadne thread to guide.
Put Christ into the Bible, and the harp strings will be smitten as
with a master's hand.
Put Christ into the Bible, and the voice of song is heard as when a
lark from the midst of dew-wet grasses sings, as it soars aloft to
greet the coming dawn.
Put Christ into the Bible, and all the doors of the palace are swung
open and you may pass from room to room, down all the ivory
galleries of the King, beholding portrait and landscape, vista of
beauty and heaped-up treasures of truth, of infinite love and royal
grace.
Put Christ into the Bible, and you will have a scarlet thread--the
crimson of the blood--that will lead you through all the winding
ways of redemption and glory.
Put Christ into Genesis, into the verses of the first chapter, and
it will chime like silver bells in harmony with the wondrous notes
in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, and tell you that he who
created the heavens and the earth is he who in the beginning was the
eternal Word, the voice of the infinite silence, and who, creating
for himself a human nature, and clad in mortal flesh, walked on
earth among the sons of men as Jesus of Nazareth.
Put Christ into the twenty-second, the twenty-third and the twenty
-fourth chapters of Genesis, and you will have placed before you in
perfect type the birth of Christ, the sacrifice, the resurrection on
the morning of the third day, the setting aside of the Jewish nation
as the first wife, the coming of the Holy Spirit in the name of the
Father and the Son to find a Bride for the Son, the calling out of
the church, the endowment of the church with the gifts sent from the
Father in the name of the Son, the pilgrimage of the church under
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Second Coming of Christ, the
Rapture and meeting of Christ and the church in the "field" of the
air, and the marriage of the Son.
Put Christ into the dryest and dullest page of the book of Kings and
Chronicles, and it will bloom with light and glory; and if you watch
in faith, you will see the King's chariot go by, and catch a vision
of the King himself in his beauty.
Put Christ into the Tabernacle, and it will cast its treasures like
a king's largess at your feet.
You will see the brazen altar to be the cross, the brazen laver, the
bath of regeneration, even the Word of God. In the Holy Place the
table of shew bread will speak of him who once said, "I am the bread
of life." The golden candlestick will remind you that he said: "I am
the light of the world." The golden altar and the priest with his
swinging censer of burning incense standing thereat will proclaim
him as the great high priest. The beautiful veil of fine linen
embroidered with figures of the cherubim in blue, purple and scarlet
color is (according to a direct Scripture) the symbol of his flesh,
his mortal humanity while on earth. Every board and bar, every cord
and pin, the coverings, the curtains, the blue, the purple and the
scarlet color, the golden vessels as well as the furniture, each and
all, proclaim him, illustrate and illuminate him in his person, his
work, his present office and coming glories.
All these are analogies, types, pictures, are so related to Christ
that he alone explains them; the explanation is filled with such
perfection of harmony in every detail, the relation between them and
our Lord Jesus Christ as the Antitype is so strikingly self-evident,
that any discussion of it would be useless.
When you find a key and lock which fit each other, you conclude they
were intended for each other.
In the light of facts already cited, what other conclusion can be
drawn than that Christ and the Bible were intended for each other?
And when you see this Bible coming together part by part,
foretelling the Christ and explained alone by him, what sane
conclusion is possible other than the book which is opened and
explained by him who is not only the Christ but the Personal Word of
God, _must be_, and _is_, THE WRITTEN WORD OF GOD!
Let your mind dwell for a moment on the style of the book.
It is so simple that a child may understand it; so profound, that
the mightiest intellect cannot go beyond its depths. It is so
essentially rich that it turns every language into which it is
translated into a classic. At one moment it is plain narration; at
another, it is all drama and tragedy, in which cataclysmic climax
crashes against climax.
It records the birth of a babe, the flight of an angel, the death of
a king, the overthrow of an empire or the fall of a sparrow. It
notes the hyssop that groweth out of the wall and speaks of the
cedars of Lebanon. It shows us so pastoral a thing as a man sitting
at his tent door in the cool of the day, and then paints for us a
city in heaven with jasper walls, with golden streets, and where
each several gate that leadeth into the city is one vast and shining
pearl.
It is full of outlines--outlines as large and bare as mountain
peaks, and then it is crowded with details as minute as the sands of
the sea. There are times when clouds and darkness float across its
pages and we hear from within like unto the voice of him who
inhabiteth eternity; in another moment the lines blaze with light,
the revelation they give is high noon--and all the shadows are under
the feet.
It is terrible in its analysis and cold and emotionless in the hard
impact of its synthesis. It describes moments of passion in
passionless words, and states infinite conclusions without the hint
of an emphasis. It shows us a man in hell (hades) and, although it
describes sufferings more awful than mortal flesh can know, causing
the soul to shudder at the simple reading of it, it takes on no
quickened pulse, no feverish rush of added speech.
In a few colorless lines it recounts the creation of the heavens and
the earth. In language utterly barren of excitement it describes the
most exciting and soul-moving event that can occupy the imagination
--that moment when the heavens shall be on fire, the elements melted
with fervent heat, the earth and the works therein burned up, and a
new heaven and a new earth brought into view.
It is a book of prose and yet a book of sublimest poetry.
The book of Job is a poem by the side of which the hexameters of
Horace, the drama of Shakespeare, the imagination of Milton, are not
to be compared.
In all literature the book of Job alone introduces a spirit into the
scene and reports its speech without utterly breaking down into the
disaster of the commonplace.
Listen to the account which Eliphaz the Temanite gives. He says:
"In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth
on men, Fear came upon me, and trembling which made all my bones to
shake."
Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up;
It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof; an image
was before mine eyes; there was silence, and I heard a voice,
saying, "Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall man be more
pure than his Maker?"
Here is the threshold of the unseen. Before he sees or hears
anything, the Temanite has the sense of fear--the fear of something
more than human. The unknown weighs upon him and presses him down,
all the life and energy in him are at low ebb--he feels as though
the tides of life were running out. A spirit passes before his face.
It is like a breath of scarcely moving air out of the night. The
hair of his flesh (mark the psychological and physiological fact),
the hair of his flesh stood up. It was as if a current of
electricity had passed through him. Then the spirit stands still. It
is as though this breath of air out of the night were no longer
moving. He cannot discern any form. There is nothing fixed or stable
enough for him to perceive. An image is before his eyes. He makes no
vulgar attempt to describe it--it is indescribable. There is a great
silence; then, as the margin has it, he heard a still small voice--
not a loud and jarring voice--but a voice low, soft, still; and yet!
the utterance of that voice! what immensity of self-conscious power
what authority and dignity--the dignity of infinite integrity:
"Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall man be more pure than
his Maker?"
How the night is full of a sudden law of proportion. Mortal man and
eternal God. You feel the distance widening and widening between
them there in the stillness of the night. The justice of man! man!
the unjust--the law breaker; man, who is of yesterday and is gone
to-morrow--mortal man, more just than he of whom it is said,
"Justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne." Fallen man,
man full of iniquity, shall he be more pure than he who made him; he
who breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and made him a
living soul; he whose name is holiness and righteousness and very
truth? As the question lingers man shrivels and sinks into the dust,
and the whole night is filled with stillness--with the stillness and
immensity of the all-pervading and holy God.
Read the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth chapters.
They record the highest reaches of human language, so great that our
own version cannot dim their splendor. Nothing ever written
surpasses them, not only in the felicity of expression, but in the
sense of deity pervading them. Each succeeding verse sustains the
other and, at the last, you feel that God, very God, indeed, has
spoken.
The Almighty answers the complaining Job.
He answers him, not out of the midst of a deep, unbroken calm, but
out of the whirlwind; and yet, from the centre of that mighty vortex
of unlimited force and energy and power, the voice comes forth with
the calmness of one who knows himself superior to the whirlwind and
the storm.
"Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?"
This is the abrupt and sudden question. It is the fitting question
of him who knoweth the end from the beginning. In the very asking of
it all the boasted knowledge, the attainment, the self-consciousness
and vanity of man fade away, and man himself is as nothing--God
alone remains upon the vision--all knowing--all wise--supreme.
This Bible is a book of history.
It will spend page after page in describing the doings of a
rebellious king, and then compress the story of twenty-five hundred
years into a few dozen lines, but will do this in such a way, by
means of exact symbols, that the twenty-five centuries thus
compressed will reveal a clearer outline and fuller vista than
thousands of ordinary volumes could set forth in detail.
Mark the providence that has guarded the book.
Kings and potentates have sought to destroy it. It has been thrown
into the flames. Volume after volume has been burned. But always,
and at the critical moment, some copy has been preserved--here in
the cottage of a devoted peasant at the risk of his life, hidden in
the crevice of a rock from the inquisitor's search, or cast aside by
a careless hand and forgotten amid a pile of swept up dust in a
neglected corner of some impregnable castle; from whence it has come
forth to be copied by slow and painful, yet loving, toil, passed
from house to house secretly as a priceless treasure, then printed
on concealed presses and at last cast forth as living and fruitful
seed.