Understanding the Bible - Letters 1-12

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UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE

 

LETTERS 1—12

 

A. D. Norris

 

Contents

 

LETTER
1.	THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE COURSE
2.	THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE
3.	THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS
4.	THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY
5.	GOD’S DEALING WITH SIN
6.	THE PROMISES TO ABRAHAM
7.	THE KINGDOM OF GOD
8.	THE LIFE OF JESUS
9.	THE DEATH OF JESUS
10.	THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS (Also see: LETTER 3)
11.	THE RETURN OF JESUS
12.	UNDERSTANDETH THOU WHAT THOU READEST?
	CONCLUSION

 

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1．THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE COURSE

 

Three agents must play their part if this course is to be a success: ourselves, yourselves, and the Bible. This letter, with those which follow it, is our part in the arrange­ment. Your part is a double one: First, to read what we have to say, and then to go to the Bible. There is then no doubt that the Bible will fulfill its own part faithfully.

 

In short, while we want you to read the letters as they are issued, their purpose will have failed unless you read the Bible also. They do not claim to stand alone, they do not offer an easy way of understanding the Book without reading it, they do try to suggest a way of reading it which will let the word of God speak its own message clearly. It will therefore be an essential part of this course to follow certain Bible readings, and follow them faithfully. Each letter will give a selection of chapters to be read, and it will be under­stood that you have read the portions suggested in this one—and so on throughout the course.

 

But we do not wish the usefulness of these letters to be limited to the short message they contain. It is ob­viously impossible to cover all the ground in this way, and there must arise, from time to time, questions in your mind which you would like to discuss. We want you, therefore to consider yourself at liberty to send any questions and comments you choose, and we will do our best to give you a full and satisfactory answer from the Bible. Such knowledge as we ourselves have of the word of God, has been gained from a regular reading of the whole Book. This is our chief training, and this is our pride. We want it to become your pride also.

                                                              

THE MEANING OF UNDERSTANDING

 

At this point, please read Acts, chapter 8, verses 26-40.

 

This story will show as well as any other what we mean by understanding. A man is reading the Old Testament (actually Isaiah chapter 53), and is clearly in some doubt as to its meaning when a disciple of Jesus is sent to talk to him, for when Philip asks him whether he understands what he is reading, he has to answer that he does not. At this point Philip proceeds to explain to him. The passage he is reading is about Jesus. What Philip said about Jesus is not told, but we are told what it led to. The man who had been reading a book, suddenly called attention to a pool of water, and asked to be baptized.

 

Without pursuing the details of this story, notice the moral: as soon as the man came to know what the Bible had to say about Jesus he wanted to do something. Under­standing the Bible is bound to lead that way. It is not possible to be really aware what the Bible teaches, and do nothing about it. This is our warning from the start: understanding the Bible will mean seeing that it asks something from us. But this is not all. This man did what he saw he must, and the last we hear of him is that “he went on his way re­joicing”. Whatever it was that he did, and for whatever reasons he did it, it was obvious that he found it very satisfactory. This is our invitation from the start: the Bible asks us to do something, but those who really understand it find it delight­ful to do as it asks. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in my heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30).

 

HOW THE BIBLE IS ARRANGED

 

At the front of all Bibles is a list of the “Books’ they contain. The Bible is made up of the writings of many men, written over a vast period of time, and the separate writings are the ‘Books’ of the Bible. These letters will take it for granted that the Books really were written, at the time, and by the people that they claim for themselves. Taking this list of contents, then, we can describe the make-up of the Bible thus:

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THE OLD TESTAMENT

 

1. THE BOOKS OF MOSES: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These describe the creation of the world by God, the failure of the first man and woman under test, and the history of the first ages of their children’s inheritance. After the sin in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3), the first period of wickedness comes to its end in the destruc­tion of the Flood (Genesis 6), and a new start is made with the children of Noah. From the descendants of this man, a single individual, Abraham, is selected by God of Genesis 12), and with the story of the wanderings of this man, and Isaac and Jacob and his descendants, begins the account of God’s Chosen People, Israel, now known as the Jews.

 

The rest of the Old Testament is about this people. The end of Genesis shows them settled in the land of Egypt. The Book of Exodus gives the account of the way in which God brought them out from there by the hand of Moses, and through the remaining books of this section we are given the record of their wanderings towards Canaan (Palestine), and of the great Law which God gave to them from Mount Sinai. The section closes with the death of Moses, leaving Israel on the borders of the Promised Land.

 

2. THE BOOKS OF JOSHUA AND JUDGES: The first of these takes the nation of Israel, by the hand of God, into Palestine, and sees them established there. The second shows their varying fortune under their judges, showing their mis­fortunes when they turn away from God, and their deliverance when they turn back to Him. The book of RUTH is set within this latter period, and prepares the way for the next section by giving, at the end, the names of the ancestors of David.

 

3. THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL, KINGS and CHRONICLES: These six books show the people choose to be ruled over by an earthly king, although God is their true King. After the fall of their first king, Saul, God appoints over them the David of whom we have just spoken, and the sons of David continue to reign over some part of the nation from this time to the end of the books. The kingdom does not long last in its early glory. The prosperity of Solomon’s reign is followed by the splitting of the nation into two sections, of which only the southern, Judah, remains true to the house of David. (The maps at the end of our Bible will show us the approximate positions of the two kingdoms). The northern kingdom is ruled over by a succession of evil dynasties, and destroyed by the Assyrians about 700 years before Christ, the southern has occasional good kings (like Jotham and Hezekiah and Josiah), but finally falls in its own wickedness, and comes to an end not much more than a century afterwards. Its inhabitants are (except for the poorest of them) taken away into Babylon.

 

With this event the story of these books closes, except that the last chapter of the last of them (2 Chronicles) prepares us for the next stage.

 

4. THE BOOKS OF EZRA, NEHEMIAH AND ESTHER: In Ezra and Nehemiah the story is told of the return to Palestine of those Jews who took their opportunity of going: Esther described what occurred in Persia to those who elected to stay behind.

 

5. THE POETICAL BOOKS: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes Song of Solomon. Up to this stage we have had straightforward history. But the book of Job deals with a problem which has existed throughout all history, when it pictures a righteous man trying to solve the problems of his sufferings, and teaches us the meaning of faith in God, and a proper humility in His presence. The books of Psalms consists of songs, many of them composed by David and some used in the worship of God in Solomon’s Temple. In this book there are poems of the past history of God’s people, poems wrung from David’s own experience, and poems which look forward to great events of the future. The book of Proverbs is a record of the wise sayings of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes of his adventures through the pleasures and ambitions of life, until he comes to the conclusion of the wholes matter”, and teaches those who read his book to “fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man”. The love-song of the song of Solomon is believed to point forward as in a parable to the work of Jesus.

 

6. THE PROPHETS: These are the remaining books of the Old Testament. They include long works like those in Isaiah, Jeremiah (with Lamentations), Ezekiel and Daniel, and a set of twelve shorter ones (usually called the Minor Prophets), from Hosea to Malachi. They are the writings of men who spoke the word of God to His people during the time of the Kingdom Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah and others), while they were in exile (Ezekiel, Daniel), or when some of them had gone back to their own land (Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi).

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THE NEW TESTAMENT

 

1. THE FOUR GOSPELS: Matthew, Mark Luke and John, These tell the story of the earthly work of Jesus. They give a good deal of space to His birth of the Virgin Mary (Matthew and Luke), very little to his childhood, much to the three years He spent in preaching the gospel, and a relatively enormous amount to the last week of His life and the accounts of His using from the dead. They close with the record of His going to heaven.

 

2. THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES takes up the story where the Gospel of Luke ends (for Luke wrote this book also), it tells how the disciples of Jesus set about their work of making His Gospel known, both to Jews, and to Gentiles like our­selves, beginning mainly with the work of Peter, Jesus’ most prominent disciple of the twelve, and concluding with the great missionary work of Paul, a one-time enemy of the Gospel who had been miraculously converted.

 

3. THE LETTERS OF PAUL: from Romans to Hebrews. These are letters written by the great Apostle to the Churches which he founded or visited, or, in the case of Philemon Timothy and Titus, to men whom he had converted. They are not merely letters, however, but contain Paul’s defence of the Gospel against its enemies, and much teaching and advice of value to Christians throughout all ages.

 

4. LETTERS BY OTHER DISCIPLES: James, Peter, John and Jude.

 

5. THE REVELATION. This is the last recorded message of Jesus in the Bible. It is given, as it says, “to show unto his ser­vant things which must shortly come to pass”, and it contains a detailed prophecy of the progress of the world towards the rime when Jesus shall come back to the earth, and set up here God’s kingdom among men.

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THE DATES OF THE BIBLE

 

We do not need to go into any detail here, and these round figures will do as well as we shall need: Abraham lived 2000 B.C., that is about as long before Christ as we live afterwards. Moses brought the tribes of Israel out of Egypt, probably about 600 years later, the first king was on the throne about 400 years later again, and the last was removed about 400 years later still. Six hundred years after that, Christ was born. For our purpose, then, we can be satisfied with:—

 

2000 B.C. Call of Abraham (Genesis 12)

1400 B.C. Exodus from Egypt

1000 B.C. First human king over Israel

600 B.C.   Last king removed from the throne

 

The New Testament deals with a much shorter period of time, starting with the events leading up to the birth of Jesus Christ and ending about a hundred years later. “B.C.” and “A.D.” will do nicely as summing up the distinction between the two parts of the Bible, but we shall quickly see that, although the New Testament is concerned with Christ from beginning to end, the old Testament has very much to say about Him too. It is for this, indeed, that its importance to us is so great.

 

READING

 

Since in this letter we have been concerned with the Bible as a whole, it is not possible to select readings which bear specially upon its subject. There are a few chapters, however, which sum up the story of the Bible very effectively and which will help us to see whole the period with which it deals. The following selection should therefore be read in connection with this letter.

 

IN THE OLD TESTAMENT: Psalms 105, 106 and 136

 

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT: Acts 7:1-50; 13:17-23; Hebrews 11.

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2. THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE

 

At this point we begin to see why understanding the Bible is such an important matter. The Bible is not like other books. The one of whom we read in Acts 8 would never have been moved to do the thing he did by reading even the great­est of other works. The difference is simple but profound, the Bible claims throughout its length to be the Word of God. It was men, certainly, who put pen to paper, but the message came from God Himself. See how extensive the claims are:—

 

1. THE OLD TESTAMENT’S CLAIM FOR ITSELF: Only a few examples out of hundreds can be given. Turn up the ones we mention here, and as you go through further Bible-reading, make a note of the others you come across. They will be very many. Take first the books of Moses. No greater claim for the authority of the words in them could be made than Exodus 31:18, “He gave unto Moses. . . two tables of testimony. . . written with the finger of God”, but the same authority is claimed for all that is recorded in these books: Look through the first verses of the books of Leviticus and Numbers, and count the number of times where it is said “The Lord spake unto Moses”. Evidently the word so given, with the account of Israel’s journeys, was written in a book during Moses’ life­time, and the Law written therein was to be the divine guide of any rules the people might make (Deuteronomy 17:18-19). Their great leader, Joshua, was commanded by God, “This book of the law shall not depart out of my mouth: but Thou shalt meditate therein day and night” (Joshua 1:8).

 

The claims are more far-reaching than mere repetition of words can show. Time after time, things are recorded of God which must either be true, and revealed by God Himself, or the purest invention. Take this example: “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth”, (Genesis 6:5), or this: Abraham “believed in the LORD, and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6), and ask how the writer could possibly have known either of these things unless God Himself had told him, and then the nature of the claims will become plain:

 

With the prophets the claims are just as emphatic. Ex­pressions such as “The word of the LORD came unto me”, “Hear ye the word of the LORD”, and “Thus saith the LORD” are constantly to be found. Look at these examples taken from the early chapters of Isaiah 1:2; 1:10; 1:20; 1:24; 3:16; 7:3; 7:10; 8:1—to which very many others can be added without difficulty.

 

The prophets were well aware what was meant by God’s speaking to them: When Jeremiah tried to stop prophesying, “His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing and I could not stay” (Jeremiah 20:9). When Amos tried to explain what it was like to receive God’s word, he said: “The lion hath roared, who will not fear? The LORD GOD hath spoken, who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8).

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2. THE NEW TESTAMENT’S CLAIMS FOR THE OLD: Jesus and His apostles fully accept these claims of the Old Testament. “The scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35) is what Jesus says. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God” is Paul’s echo (2 Timothy 3:16), and “The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” is Peter’s confirmation (2 Peter 1:21). And once again, it is not merely statements like this which make us sure where the New Testament stands. The whole spirit in which Jesus and the rest of the characters in the New Testament use the Old shows that they regard it as being the reliable Word of God. “It is written” is to them a proof that God said so (See for example, Matthew 4:4, 6, 7, 10).

 

3. THE NEW TESTAMENT’S CLAIM’S FOR ITSELF: these are of the same kind. In the past, “God at sundry times and in divers manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets” (Hebrews 1:1): now He has “spoken unto us by his Son”. Jesus Himself speaks “as one having authority” (Matthew 7:29), and He claims. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). Telling His disciples of the time when He should leave them, He promised that the Holy Spirit which should come to them from heaven should “guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).

 

Therefore, the Apostles refer to their own writings as “Scripture”, just as they do to the works of the Old Test­ament: When Paul says, “The Scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward” (1 Timothy 5:18), the first part of the “Scripture” comes from the book of Deuteronomy (25:4), and the second from the Gospel of Luke (10:7). Peter tells us that Paul’s letters are like the other inspired books (2 Peter 3:15-16), and Paul says of his own writings: “If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord”. (1 Corinthians 14:37).

 

We see now what the Bible says it is. If it is true, ob­viously no attention we can pay to it is too great, for the Book is God speaking to us. It may be that we do not question its truth, or it may be that the modern outlook upon religion has unsettled us and made us wonder. In the former case, what follows will only confirm us, and make us value the Book more highly. In the latter, it may help to bridge for us the chasm which doubt has dug in the path of obedience.

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THE REASONS FOR BELIEVING THE BIBLE  

 

These are many. The most important of them all is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. A special letter will be de­voted to this, and we will now only consider what it proves, if it is true. In that event, as Paul says, Jesus is “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4). If Jesus is so proved to be the Son of God, it is clear that anything He claims for the authority of His words must be true. And since He says (as we have seen) that the Old Testament is the word of God, while His disciples will be inspired to write the new, then this must be the case. It would be a bold (or vain) man who would set any opinion of his own against the Son of God.

 

But consider the alternatives: if the Book is not divine. I then the writers who claim that it is can only be either deluded (thinking that God has compelled them to speak when He did not) or fraudulent (claiming what they knew that they had not got). Both these choices are impossible.

 

Neither fools nor rogues could have invented the words of grace with which the Book abounds. Neither could have insisted upon so high a moral standard, and at the same time be so brutally frank with the failing of their heroes. The prophets (and our Lord Himself) did not arise naturally out of the times in which they lived, for their times rejected them. Even the very friends of Jesus could not understand the gentle gospel He bade them believe, and they followed Him in spite of His teaching, not because of it, because there was an indisputable divinity about Him which they were obliged to receive. Even now, indeed, among the many who cannot help but admit the divine origin of the teaching of Jesus, there are few who are willing to commit themselves to obey it.

 

This is a proof in another way, too. If the woman had rapturously received the doctrine which Jesus taught, that very doctrine would have been proved false. As we shall see in a later letter, Jesus did not expect the world to be converted by His message. “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”. (Matthew 7:14; Luke 13:24). Jesus prophesied a time of general unbelief before He should come back to the earth (Luke 17:26-30) and we are faced with the strange situation that if the world had believed Him, He would have been wrong!

 

This does not mean, of course, that Christianity has failed, or will fail, as we shall see. Jesus will bring about its resounding success in His own way, with those who do believe and are ready for Him.

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THE EVIDENCE OF PROPHECY

 

The last section ended with an example of this. Jesus correctly foretold the state of the world in our own time, and it would be beyond the power of man—particularly of a man seeking disciples—to do this. But the Bible is full of the words of prophets claiming to say what will happen in the distant future. These are not purposeless predictions: the Bible is no almanac of astrologers’ tales, but a purposeful setting out of the purpose of God, telling us how far it has gone, and leading us all the time to its final completion.

 

Thus, Genesis 3:15 is the first of a long line of pro­phecies which tell of the coming of a Saviour to the world. Here it is foretold that He shall destroy the power of sin. In other places we are told that He shall be the descendant of Abraham (such as Genesis 22:18), of David (2 Samuel 7:12) and of God Himself (2 Samuel 7:14). We are given pictures—of which more will be said—of His suffering and crucifixion and resurrection. The detail and precision with which these things are foretold is amazing. Not all the prophec­ies concerning Jesus have yet received their fulfilment, for His work is not yet done. But those who have seen the fulfilment so far can look forward confidently for the rest.

 

Again, from the time of Abraham, God chose the nation of Israel to perform His work upon the earth. Two chapters Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, foretell what would happen to that nation if it were disobedient, and the prophecies were bitterly but accurately fulfilled. Who can think of what it means now to call anyone a “Jew”, and not see the fulfilment of Deuteronomy 28:37? But in all the sufferings of Israel, the prophets say also that the nation will not be destroyed. Always we are told that a remnant shall be saved (for example Ezekiel 5) and we are told to look forward to a time when the people shall be restored to their own land (as in Jeremiah 30 and 31).

 

Old and New Testaments combine to look forward to this time. And when they tell us of it, they say that the return of the Jews to Palestine will take place when the world is in a turmoil, when there are wars and rumours of wars, in a time of trouble such as never was (Daniel 12:1; Ezekiel, chapters 36 to 39; Joel 3; Luke 21:24-26).

 

We can look upon the fulfilment of these words and marvel.
 

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We can see how the Jews, unbelieving Jews, have fulfilled the words of the prophets in their troubles, we can see how they have fulfilled them in surviving, in spite of all the efforts of their enemies to wipe them out, we can see how in our own time, the return of over 2,000,000 Jews to Palestine within a generation (in a time of trouble and war such as have not been known before), have demonstrated the accuracy of the prophets’ foretellings. And once again, we can look forward to something of which the prophets speak, but which has not happened yet.

 

And while the Bible tells us of the fortunes of Israel, it tells us also of the nations with whom she comes in contact. “Though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee” (Jeremiah 30:11). We know it has happened: ancient Egypt, ancient Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome and many others have gone as the prophets said they should, while Israel has remained. This, too, has its purpose: Daniel 2 gives us a vivid picture of the passing of four great empires, to prepare us for what shall happen when they and their remnants have passed. For this, we look to the future again. There will be more to say of this.

 

The evidence of the prophecy is powerful. Its fulfilment shows us that the Book is such as men could never have produced. The details of its predictions demand that we recognize God as the Author of them. But in the very act of proving the Bible to be true, the prophecies prove it to be pur­poseful, they show us that the things which happen upon the earth are known before to God, and they prepare us for a time when God’s work will come to its perfection upon the earth.

 

The prophecies prove, in short, not only that the Bible is true and inspired, but that it is significant, and significant to us. Jesus after foretelling the troubles in the world of which we have spoken, said to His disciples, “When ye see these things begin to come to pass, lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh”. (Luke 21:28). What this redemption is we shall see in a later letter:

 

READING

 

Like the last, this letter has been general. But the section on prophecy makes it desirable that some of the more straight­forward prophetic chapters should be read:

 

OLD TESTAMENT: Deuteronomy 28; Isaiah 53; Jeremiah 30 and 31; Ezekiel 36 and 37; Daniel 2; Joel 3.

 

NEW TESTAMENT: Luke 17:20-37; Luke 21; 2 Timothy 3 and 4.

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3．THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS

 

This is taken out of its natural order for a very good reason. The fact that Jesus rose from the dead is right at the centre of the evidence that Christianity is true, and that the Bible is the Word of God: If we are satisfied, on good grounds, that this Resurrection really did happen, we shall not be moved by trivial doubts which may arise on other matters, and the demands which Jesus Christ will be found to make will find a readier acceptance in our hearts. It is because this fact makes all the difference between our study being a mere hobby, and its being the basis of a career to everlasting life, that we set the demonstration of it here.

 

THE RECORDS

 

Please read at the outset the accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus to be found in:—

 

Matthew 26:36-28:20; Luke 22:39-24:48

Mark 14:32-16:20; John 10:1-20:29

 

These readings include a good deal other than the actual record of the Resurrection itself, so as to give us the setting of the whole incident. There will be other pieces of evidence which will be referred to as we go along.

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THE STORY 

 

We can piece together the different records to read some­thing like this: After Jesus had eaten the Last Supper with the disciples, and Judas (one of them) had departed to betray Him into the hands of His enemies, He went with the rest of them to the Garden of Gethsemane. Here Judas led the band of men who were to arrest Him, and Jesus was taken for His trial. Actually His trial was of two kinds: before the Jews He was convicted on a charge of Blasphemy because He admitted the title of Son of God, but this charge would have been of no weight before the Roman governor. Before him, therefore. He was accused of sedition because He accepted the title of King of the Jews, and Pilate was driven by fear to endorse the Jewish sentence of death.

 

After many indignities, Jesus was taken to Golgotha and crucified between two wrong-doers, in the presence of His mother. His disciple John, and certain believing women who included Mary Magdalene. Upon His death the body was re­moved by two influential Jews who believed in Him, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and placed in a tomb belonging to the latter. Here the stone was sealed by the order of the High Priest, and a guard was set.

 

Before dawn, however, the guard was rudely disturbed by angelic visitation, and fled. The stone was rolled away from the door, and when the later visitors came, Jesus was no longer there. At about dawn, women who had witnessed the crucifix­ion came to anoint the body, no doubt by arrangement with Joseph, for when they came near the garden they asked, “Who shall roll away the stone?”, as though they had been disappoint­ed of expected help. (There is a legend that Joseph had been taken into custody by the High Priest, which fits the facts very well). Coming near the tomb, however, the married women found it empty, and, receiving a command from the angel there to tell the disciples of the Resurrection, fled away, afraid.

 

Successively, then, events occurred which brought to the disciples the conviction that Jesus really had risen. Peter and John saw the empty tomb, and John saw there evidence which persuaded him that Jesus must have emerged alive: Mary Magda­lene was greeted by the Lord Himself, and afterwards the other women also. Two disciples walking from Jerusalem to a near-by village were encountered by Jesus, who made Himself known to them by “Breaking Bread” as He had done at the Last Supper. He appeared through closed doors to the body of the disciples in Jerusalem (when Thomas was absent) and yet again (with Thomas present). He encountered them again, by appoint­ment, in Galilee, and also (to their surprise) as they were fishing in the lake. They saw Him ascend into heaven (read here Acts 1:1-12).

 

Much later a confirmed enemy of the Gospel, Saul of Tarsus, was given a special vision of Jesus from heaven, as he was going to persecute the disciples (read Acts 9:1-20). There is a sum­mary of some of these appearances, and one or two others, in 1 Corinthians 15:1-7).

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THE NATURE OF THE DISCIPLES’BELIEF

 

The first thing to notice about these records is the way in which they represent the disciples as coming to believe. Without a single exception, they started off with blank unbelief, demand­ed the strongest of evidence, and were not persuaded until they received it. The women thought the body had been taken away. Mary’s first impression was that Jesus was the gardener. The disciples walking to Emmaus had been astonished but uncon­vinced by the women’s story. Those in Jerusalem laughed at the women’s accounts as at idle tales, and believed them not, and would not accept the story of those who claimed to have seen Him. Thomas did not believe although the united voice of the others declared the truth of it, until he had seen the Master with his own eyes and had the opportunity of handling His body (which Jesus invited all the disciples to do). Saul was not only unbelieving, but hostile, before his miraculous conversion.

 

This is a significant fact. In the most natural way possible the records unite to tell us that the disciples behaved just as we should expect men to behave in such circumstances and that Jesus provided just the kind of proof which men would need to convince them. If the stories are not true, they are remarkably true to life.

 

This can be taken further. When the disciples had been convinced they set about preaching the Gospel to other people, who were as hard to convince as they had been. And so, as Jesus had “showed Himself alive after His passion by many in­fallible proofs” so they were ready to give the witness of those proofs to the world: Indeed this word “WITNESS” becomes a prominent one in their preaching from then on. Look up the following passages: Luke 24:48; Acts 1:21-22; 2:32; 3:15; 10:38-42; 13:30-31; 26:12-18. There is no suggestion of conspiracy in all these, but the unity with which the same kind of claim is made, and the same proof is offered, is surely impressive.

 

This the more so when we remember what kind of men they have been, There is no mistaking the Gospels’ portrait of the disciples before Jesus’s death. They had great hopes of Him as a King, but none at all as a dead man. They would go anywhere with Him (even to death) so long as they thought that He would strive for victory: “I will lay down my life for thy sake” (John 13:37) was no idle boast on Peter’s part, for he actually set about to do it in the Garden (Matthew 26:51; John 18:10). But Jesus’s refusal to be defended and His unresisting death left them stupefied. They were brave enough when there was a goal they could see, but when their Master took away the very hope in which they had followed Him, they lost heart, and fled terrified. “We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel” (Luke 24:21) they confessed afterwards in their disillusionment. With His crucifixion their expectations were dashed.

 

There was no suggestion of hysteria in all this. The matter-of-fact way in which they had expected Jesus to accept a King­dom, and followed Him so, was succeeded by an equally matter-of-fact assurance that everything was all right now, because they had seen Him, listened to Him, and eaten and drunk with Him (Acts 10:41) after He had risen from the dead.

 

Nothing short of the obvious answer will explain the change and the conviction it brought to those who heard them. They knew that Jesus was alive as really as He had been before. They invited searching of the evidence: “More than 500 saw Him—and they are mostly alive and waiting to be asked” is the spirit in which they preached: (1 Corinthians 15:6).

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THE CASE OF THE APOSTLE PAUL

 

This is in some ways the most remarkable of all. No one can doubt that the Christian Gospel did spread over the Roman world at a tremendous speed, and that some stupendous event is required to account for it. Equally, no one denies that the bulk of the credit for this spread goes (humanly speaking) to a man who was not among Jesus’s first disciples. His conversion has already been mentioned. His later history occupies the second half of the Acts of the Apostles, and many of the letters which follow. He began as a confirmed enemy of the faith.  Suddenly he turned, and became its most energetic preacher. He claimed that the change was due to the fact that he, also, had seen the risen Jesus. “Last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time”. (1 Corinthians 15:8).

 

THE EVIDENCE OF THE SCRIPTURES

 

It is too early in this course to go into this in detail. It is worth noting, however, that Jesus is said to have devoted His first opportunity (after the Resurrection) to showing His disciples that His death and resurrection were foretold in the Old Testament (Luke 24:25-27; 24:45-46). The most rapid reading of the Acts shows the apostles persuading the Jews in the same way. There is one remarkable passage in which Paul says that the Jews who crucified Jesus fulfilled their Bible-prophecy, but only because they were ignorant of what it meant! (Acts 13:27): Obviously the Jews could not have dared to have Jesus done to death if they had known that their prophets proved that they were slaying the Christ of God, the Messiah. But this is precisely what they did. Without troubling too much at this stage about the details, look up Daniel 9:24-27, which sets the time when Christ shall come, tells of His “cutting off” (or judicial death), and speaks of its purpose.

 

The Scriptures actually go further, for they tell of the time when the Gospel shall be preached to the Gentiles by the work of the Servant of God (for example, Isaiah 49:5-6), a fact which was recognised by the aged man who took the child Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:25-33), and a fact to which Jesus Himself called attention (Luke 24:46-47), And of course we know that it happened.

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WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES

 

A great deal of this evidence is admitted by the most doubting of doubters. When those who do not believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead recognise that the tomb in which the body had been placed must have been empty as the Scriptures say it was, then there must be some explanation of its re­moval. According to the Gospel of Matthew, the Jews invented the theory that the disciples had stolen the body, and a writer of the second century shows us that the Jews were still saying that then. But can anything be more unlikely than that these disappointed men should steal the body of the man who had disappointed them, hide it, invent a story that it had risen, and then proceed to die for their legend?

 

In later days it has been suggested that the women went to the wrong tomb, the evidence being obtained by taking Mark 16:6 making it read quite differently, and ignoring the rest of the chapter. How the stolid menfolk became convinced is not satisfactorily explained even if this fantastic tale could be received. Alternatively, it is said that Jesus did not really die on the Cross: The soldiers who omitted to break His legs (John 19:31-34) permitted Him to escape with His life, and it was only a swooning Jesus who deluded practised Roman soldiers, watchful Jews and attentive friends into thinking He was dead! This same Jesus apparently overcame the obstacle of the stone, emerged from the grave, and appeared bloody and half-dead, in the presence of His disciples, and persuaded them that He was immortal! How He covered up His subsequent death is explained by the invention of a fictitious “double”, or left unexplained altogether.

 

There is no doubt which conclusion is the most likely. Jesus rose from the dead, and in consequence. His own reverence for the Scriptures must be ours: His estimate of their authority will persuade us to listen to them. We are on the high road to understanding what they are about.

 

READING

 

Apart from the resurrection narratives already suggested, it would be as well to read as much as possible of the Acts of the Apostles, but particularly chapters 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 13, 17, and 26.

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4. THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY

 

The first three chapters of the Bible have an importance out of all proportion to their size. This is easily seen by glanc­ing through them. Briefly, but very plainly, they show God as the Creator of the world, and passing rapidly over His lesser works of creation, concentrate their attention upon our race. They give it a dignity higher than all when they describe Adam as made “in the image and likeness” of God. They show some­thing of the scope of that dignity when they reveal God giving the man a position of authority over the beasts, and a position of responsibility with respect to Himself. In one dreadful passage they set the stage for all the history of sin and death which follows, and for the broadening promises of redemption which the rest of the Bible works out.

 

In days when the old Testament is so often ignored and despised however, and when this supremely probable account of the origin of sin is discarded as a fairy tale in favour of no explanation at all, it might encourage respect for these chapters if we show how fully the New Testament draws upon them for its own teaching: It is a simple fact that much of the New Testament cannot be understood at all without reference to these records, a fact you will not doubt (if you did before) after turning up the examples which follow.

 

GENESIS 1:26, “Let us make man in our image”, is alluded to in 1 Corinthians 11:7, where man “is the image and glory of God”, and in James 3:9, where men are “made after the similitude of God”. It is the obvious basis of the words, “being in the form of God”, used of Jesus in Philippians 2:6.

 

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife”, are used by Jesus in Matthew 19:4-5 to support His teaching on the binding nature of the marriage bond. This is a most important quot­ation, for Jesus’s teaching stands or falls with it. If we are prepared to believe the Son of God in His doctrine of marriage, we have no choice but to accept the arguments by which He establishes it.

 

GENESIS 2:2, “On the seventh day God ended His work which He had made”, is used in Hebrews 4:4, “And God did rest the seventh day from all His works”, to point forward to the completion of God’s purpose in the future.

 

GENESIS 2:7, “The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground . . . and man became a living soul”, is the basis of a comparison between Adam and Christ in 1 Corinthians 15:45-47, where we are told, “The first man Adam was made a living soul . . . The first man is of the earth, earthy”.

 

GENESIS 2:9, “The tree of Life also in the midst of the Garden”, which was denied to the man on account of his sin, is pictured in Revelation 2:7; 22:2; 22:14, as restored to a world where God’s blessing shall have ousted the curse under which it has laboured for so long.

 

GENESIS 3:1, 13, “The serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field . . . The serpent beguiled me”, is directly referred to in 2 Corinthians 11:3, “The serpent beguiled Eve by his subtilty”.

 

GENESIS 3:19, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shall return”, is twice used directly, in Romans 5:12 “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin”, and in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 “By man came death”, “In Adam all die”, and lies at the back of the whole message of the Gospel.

 

This is only a selection of the more obvious allusions but it is sufficient to command attention. The importance of the chapters lies not merely in the fact that they are quoted, but in the reasons which led them to be quoted. There are certain basic facts introduced here which must not be argued by those who would understand the rest of the Bible. We are brought face to face with the meaning of Sin and Death, and through them with the hope of Righteousness and Life. We cannot have the one without the other, and it is therefore through a dark beginning such as this that our understanding must enter.

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WHAT THE SCRIPTURES MEAN BY DEATH

 

It is most important at this point to keep our minds wide open. Many of us start with an idea of death which we supposed to be Christian and Scriptural which will wreck our hopes of understanding the Bible unless it is removed. There is a well-known verse which sums up the position.

 

“Life is real, life is earnest.

And the grave is not its goal”

“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul”.

 

The first two lines are true of those who understand the Bible rightly. The last two are simply false of everyone, as we shall see immediately. When the Scriptures speak for them­selves they speak very plainly.

 

For according to the second chapter of Genesis, God “formed man of the dust of the ground”, and it was when God had breathed into his nostrils the “breath of life” that he became a living soul. The living man was the living soul, precisely in the same terms as the living animals were “living creatures” (2:19), for “creatures” and “soul” are the same Hebrew word: It was this living soul to whom God said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die” (2:17). It was this living soul who disobeyed, and was sentenced to death, in the words: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it was thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”.

 

There is no mistaking the teaching of this story. The living man was sentenced to death for the sin he committed. There is nothing here of a mere body going to the dust, while the soul which can live without it goes to eternal pleasure or eternal sorrow. It is the whole being of man which goes to the dust.

 

And this is the teaching of all the Scriptures. Death is spoken of throughout in a matter-of-fact way which shows that those who died expected their death to be, in the ordinary course of things, the end of them. Amongst a wide range of passages which could be used to show this, please read the following:—

 

OLD TESTAMENT: Psalms 6; 49 and 146; Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 (which practically repeats   the story of Genesis 2 and 3), Isaiah 38:9-20, 40:1-8; Ezekiel 18:4.

 

NEW TESTAMENT: Luke 13:1-5; John 3:14-16 Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:17-22; James 1:10, 11, 15; 4:14; 1 Peter 1:22-25.

 

It could be pointed out, rightly, that most of the New Test­ament passages are not primarily talking about death at all. For example, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16) is talking about salvation. Of course this is true, and lies at the very heart of the Gospel But the reality of death is taking its place in the statements for all that God gave His Son, “that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish”, which is very sufficient evidence that we shall perish without Him: “All flesh is grass” is the starting point, and without that we shall not be ready to receive the message of the gospel that “the word of our God endureth for ever” (Isaiah 40:8; 1 Peter 1:25).

 

The importance of our starting point will be plain now. If we do not know the meaning of death, we shall not be ready to hear the meaning of life. If we start correctly, with the know­ledge that we are the children of Adam, and that in Adam all die”, we shall be in the best possible position to ask how we may be saved from the common lot, and in the only possible frame of mind which will enable us to take advantage of what we find.

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WHAT THE SCRIPTURES MEAN BY SIN

 

It is just as important to have clear ideas about this. Sin, to many of us, is either the same thing as “crime”, or it is something scarcely respectable, with a dash of excitement about it. In the first case, a man is a sinner if he has broken the law, and more particularly if he has been caught and convicted for doing it. In the second, he is a sinner if he has disregarded the convent­ions of society, and it will depend a good deal on the circles in which he moves (and the state of public morality at the time) whether he is condemned or applauded for doing it.

 

Coupled with the mistaken view of sin, is a wrong attitude to sorrow about it. We may regret being found out, or we may be sorry at the consequences of something we have done, with­out feeling any particular shame at the wrongness of the thing itself. And we may try to “be good”, not from any necessary conviction that this is the right way, so much as from respect for the opinion of our neighbours, or the police: It may seem to follow that what society allows, God will also approve:

 

Now sin is certainly the breaking of Law, but not primarily, the laws of any country. It is the breaking of the Law of God: And it does not consist merely in the breach of any commandment or set of commandments. It is a state of mind which is universal among men. In Genesis 3, Adam is represented as having a choice: to obey or disobey. The issue was not simply whether he should eat a certain fruit or not, as those who think that God acted harshly may suppose. It was the graver issue as to whether he would do God’s will, or follow his own—whether he would do as he liked or whether he would do as he was told—whether he would be a faithful servant of his Creator, or whether he would try to be his own master.

 

The course he took was a deliberate wrong turning at the parting of the ways, and its consequences were bound to be what they were. For God has created all things, and for His pleasure they are and were created (Revelation 4:11). Our race, made “in His image” is not here to please itself, but to do His pleasure. Then His face will shine upon it, but it is impossible otherwise. God who loves righteousness cannot do other than hate iniquity.

 

The course which Adam took of his own free choice, has involved all the rest of his race, “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). The sentence of death, the powerful disposition to sin, have passed upon us all, and so the Scriptures speak of us as having been concluded under sin (Galatians 3:22; Romans 3:23).

 

This is the grim lesson of our early Bible reading. But grim though it is, it is most necessary. Starting from there, and know­ing that we are bound under sin, and humanly helpless, we can now go on to show how God has made it possible for sinners to approach to Him, and avail themselves of His offer of righteous­ness and life.

 

READING

 

Some of this has been indicated already. The first three chapters of Genesis are the subject matter, the passages in the Old and New Testaments speaking of the true meaning of death follow after. Though certain difficulties will arise which it will require later lessons to resolve, it will be well to read also the first three chapters of the Letter to the Romans.

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5. GOD’S DEALINGS WITH SINNERS

 

The close of Genesis 3 finds man turned out from the Garden, and separated from the close intimacy with God which existed there. “They heard the voice of the Lord God, walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8) might well have been a frequent fellowship between the man and his Creator before he chose to go his own way, but this record of it is the last. From now on, if God is to be approached by man at all, it must be in a very different fashion.

 

The next chapter in Genesis (4), shows us that God can, in fact, be approached, and it gives us an idea of the new conditions. For Cain and Abel come before God bringing “offerings” (4:3-6) Cain brings a vegetable offering, and Abel an animal,  and it is immediately made clear that God is not prepared to accept the former. There had, indeed, been a hint of this before, for when our sinful parents clothed themselves with garments of fig-leaves (3:7), God replaced them with clothes made from the skins of animals (3:21).

 

We can read the lessons of this account in two ways.   First, it is a simple lesson in the duty of obedience. It illustrates the same problem of human nature as the story of Adam and Eve itself. Faced with the alternatives of doing as he liked or of doing as he was told, Cain appears to have decided that his own way was good enough. He was typically the man of the world, who goes his own way without reference to the wishes of God, and can therefore have no ground for complaint if God is not well pleased with him. Abel seems to have taken the other course, and done as God wished him to do. It was easier for him, perhaps, but for either it was perfectly possible. And so he was typically the man of faith, who goes God’s way without regard for consequence, and is therefore acceptable to God.

 

Second, it illustrates an important principle. Simple obedience to God’s will is a good enough reason for doing as we are told, even though we cannot decide why it is His will. But there is a deeper reason than this. This record is the first open instance of the need to shed blood before we can approach acceptably before God. The coats of skin were another of   a less obvious kind. Soon we shall find this clearly   expressed, but we can even at this stage discuss something of its importance. The children of Adam have no right to come to God at all. We are justly sentenced to death, and if God receives us, it is of His mercy, and on conditions. We   must recognise our    relative positions. We may pay our respects, and recognise our deserts. Our lives are forfeit, and the shedding of blood shows our recognition of it.

 

The New Testament makes great use of this record. Jesus puts Cain as the first-of the murderers, and when He tells the Jews of His day that “the blood of  all the prophets, from the blood of Abel” shall come upon the people who murder Himself (Luke 11:50-51) He relates the sin   of all mankind to the sin which slays Him, and for which He dies. John says of Cain that he “was of that wicked one and slew his brother because his own works were evil and his brother’s righteous” (1 John 3:12). Now there is nothing on the face of it evil in bringing an offering of vegetables, or particularly righteous in bringing animals. But what we have said   before of the real nature of sin will show us how just John’s comment is:  sin is pleasing ourselves rather than God, and therefore Cain was the sinner, and Abel the righteous man.   The letter to the Hebrews takes this up: “By faith . . . Abel offered   a more excellent sacrifice than Cain by which he obtained witness that he was righteous” (11:4). A man of faith is a man of trust, who accepts God’s way and follows it wherever it leads, and the examples in this chapter of Hebrews will engage us again. In Abel’s case it led to death, but this is not the end of it. The next chapter of Hebrews, speaking of the death of Jesus, talks of “the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel” (12:24). Abel shed blood, and Abel’s blood was shed, and this double significance points forward to the time (now in history) when Jesus also would give His blood to be shed. This is anticipating another, and the greatest, importance of blood sacrifice, and we must retrace our steps for a while before discussing this further.

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“IT IS THE BLOOD THAT MAKETH ATONEMENT”

 

After the acceptable sacrifice of Abel, it is clear that the system of blood-offerings became a general one for men who wished to come to God. Examples which can be turned up to show this are:  Genesis 8:20; 12:7; 15:9; 22:13; 31:54; Exodus 5:3. We leave the history of this period to make itself plain in the reading which should accompany this letter, so as to concentrate on this matter of sacrifice, for as soon as we pass from this last reference to the time when God led His people out by the hand of Moses into the wilderness, and there gave them His Law, we find an elaborate code of sacrifice laid down, and detailed rules given as to how it is to be carried out. As the Letter to the Hebrews says again “According to the law, I may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission” (9:22, Revised Version*)

 

The sacrifices are intimately associated with SIN: “In those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year” (Hebrews 10:3) and a most important word used in connection with them is ATONEMENT, as in the passage with which this section is headed: “It is the blood which maketh an atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:11). The English word seems to be a fusing together of “AT-ONE-MENT”, and so to signify a bringing together of God and man, which is indeed an import­ant part of the work of atonement. But the Hebrew word actually means “covering”:  it is used to describe the way in which Noah covered his ark to secure it from the weather, “pitching it within and without with pitch” (Genesis 6:14).

 

And so the idea is that those who would come to God need to have their sin covered up, and to accept His righteousness. As David says, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity” (Psalm 32:2 used by Paul in Romans 4:7).     

 

No doubt the covering of the nakedness of our first parents with coats of skins has the same import.       

 

We do not need further, at this stage, to discuss the signific­ance of the various offerings. It is worth while noting again, however, how precise their requirements are, and how carefully they are expected to be obeyed. The place of worship must be constructed in the way in which God ordains (Exodus 25:40; Hebrews 8:5), unauthorised persons must not take part in the celebration of the ritual (2 Chronicles 26:16-21): those who were appointed must not go presumptuously or drunkenly into God’s presence (Leviticus 10:1-11). Materials appointed for the service of God must be used for the service of God alone, and any violation of this would be   heavily punished (Exodus 30:.23-38). All the ordinances of sacrifice emphasised the holiness of the Lord and the duty of humble obedience to Him.   

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* NOTE: Almost always in these letters, the quotations are given from the ordinary Bible, the “Authorised Version” of 1611, which is in everyone’s hands. Very rarely appeal will be made to the “Revised Version” of 1880 where some useful point is brought out by that translation. But the plain truths of the Bible are not a matter between one version and another. They can be clearly understood from any.

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“I WILL BE SANCTIFIED IN THEM THAT COME NIGH ME”
 
There are several grim examples of the way in which violation of the commands of God was visited, some of which are to be found in the references above: Cain was rejected, Nadab and Abihu were slain by fire, Moses himself was forbidden to enter the land of promise because he had taken the credit to himself for a miracle performed by the power of God (Numbers 20:7-12), Uzziah the king was smitten with leprosy (as Miriam had been earlier for challenging the Lord’s leader (Numbers 12:1-10), one who dared to touch the ark, to which he was not appointed, was smitten (2 Samuel 6:6-8).
 
We can approach these examples in such a way as to learn nothing from them. We can be critical of God, and presume to ask why these hard judgements were made, as though implying that they ought not to have been. Or we can, remembering that “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning” (Romans 15:4; 1 Corinthians 10:11), seek humbly to learn the lesson which they teach, and know, in our own approach to God that “to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at My word” (Isaiah 66:2). Such a lesson will stand us in good stead when we find—as we shall—that the Scriptures call upon ourselves to be ready to take certain humble steps of obedience, and take them in the way provided.
 
There is an example of a gentler kind, of a heathen captain who suffered from leprosy, and sought the help of a prophet of God. As became a conqueror, he looked for a display in which he could appear the hero, forgetting that he was a leper coming to ask for a favour. The prophet declined to minister to his vanity, sent a servant to command him to dip seven times in Jordan, and remained at home. The enraged potentate was going away, a leper still, when his servants counselled him to the wiser course of obedience, and at the seventh dipping “his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child” (2 Kings 5). Our own condition is similar to this leper’s, we are sinners without any human hope of bettering our situation, and we shall fare for better than Naaman might have done if we take his earlier course. We are sinners with a promise of redemption made us, which we are beginning to see, and readiness to obey the will of God will make the promise our own.

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“THE LAMB OF GOD, WHICH TAKETH AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD”

 

This is the goal to which all these sacrifices lead. They demand humility and obedience from the offerer: Some of them demand a very real trust in God on his part too, for the people were commanded that all their menfolk should go up three times in the year to the centre of God’s worship, trusting in His care while their homes were unprotected   (Exodus 34:23-24). But their principle   significance lies in their prophecy. Blood-letting of animals would in itself get nowhere. It would show a right state of mind on the people’s part, but it would accomplish nothing. “It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4).

 

But a greater sacrifice does (in a way to be discussed) what these earlier ones failed to do. Jesus is the “Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Peter speaks of the disciple as having been redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without   spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19). The Letter to the Hebrews, after telling us what the blood of beasts could not accomplish, speaks of Jesus “offering one sacrifice for sins for ever” (Hebrews 10:12). The prophets of the Old Testament had spoken of His coming in similar terms (Isaiah 53:10; Daniel 9:24-27).

 

Thus we see in the sacrifices of the Old Testament, the first of three great themes which point forward to redemption in Christ Jesus. The other two will engage our attention immediately.

 

READING

 

Most of the appropriate reading has been indicated in the notes, but the following chapters can be singled out for special consideration. It is not impossible that the detail in some of them will be a little confusing . . . and that some of the matters treated will not, at this stage, be fully understood: In the light of what has been said, however, the general teaching of the passages will be plain, and we can defer detail until we have a better all round equipment for the purpose.

 

Genesis Chapter 4.

Exodus chapters 11, 12.         

Leviticus chapters 10, 16, 17.

Isaiah chapter 53

Mark chapters 14 and 15

Hebrews chapters 9 and 10

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6. THE PROMISES TO ABRAHAM

 

THE SEED

 

This is the second of the great lines of prophecy which point forward to the work of Christ. It is introduced to us in the very passage which conveys the sad results of the Fall, in which the tempter is told, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head and thou shaft bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). The subjection of the woman and her race to sin should be broken when a child of hers should arise who should engage the power of sin afresh, and defeat it, wounding it mortally, though suffering hurt Himself in the process. Even now we shall no doubt be able to identify the occasion on which this was accomplished.

 

The word “seed” occurs for the first time here. The word is ordinary enough, meaning, in our common parlance, “offspring”, and capable, like the latter word, of referring to one child or to more. But it is impossible, in going on through the book of Genesis, not to recognise the very special use to which it is put.

 

After the Fall, as the world’s population grew in size and wickedness, God’s violent intervention in the Flood (Genesis 6) selected the family of Noah for preservation when the rest of mankind was destroyed. Noah’s descendants multiplied and re-peopled the earth, and relapsed into idolatry once more. From this world God selected one man, Abraham, and made him the bearer of His promise. Genesis 12 and onwards records the history of God’s dealings with him. What happened to him was, if we were to take no notice of the hand of God in it, local enough to seem of little importance. He left his native town of Ur of the Chaldees, and wandered up the Euphrates Valley and across to the West, entering the land which now we know as Palestine. Journeying for the remainder of his life between here and Egypt, he died a nomad. His son Isaac and his grandson Jacob lived similarly, but in the days of the last, the people descended from him began to take shape as a distinct nation: Under the leadership of Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons, seventy odd souls went to live in Egypt in time of famine, including Jacob himself, and the end of the book Genesis leaves them there.

 

But the hand of God is evidently there. God called Abraham to leave Ur, and led him “to a land that I will show thee” (12:1). In the course of his subsequent life, God made promises to him repeatedly, many of them centering in the “seed”, among which we may note the following:

1. “I will make of thee a great nation ... In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (12:2-3).
2. “The land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth” (13:14-17).
3. “Thou shall be a father of many nations” (17:4).
4. “Thy seed shall possess the gate of His enemies, and in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed (22:17-18).

Promises similar to these were repeated to Isaac and Jacob. How far were they fulfilled? So far as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob personally were concerned, they were not fulfilled at all, because they died and were buried in lands they did not possess. So far as their descendants were concerned, there was certainly some fulfilment, for the few who went down into Egypt in the time of Joseph were multiplied into a great company by the time, over two hundred years later, that the Book of Exodus takes up the story. The race which was delivered from the oppression of the Pharaoh and taken by Moses into Sinai, is actually described by Moses in the terms which God used to Abraham (Deuteronomy 1:10 and 10:22).

 

But this state of affairs did not last. Moses had warned the people that the continuance of God’s favour to them depended on themselves, and if they should turn away from Him, their abundance would forsake them, and they would become a pitiful remnant (Deuteronomy 4:25-31 and 28:58-62), and we know from their later history (which we shall briefly consider shortly) and from their present condition, how bitterly this has been fulfilled. There is a very useful summary of their behaviour and their fate in Nehemiah 9:6-37, written after their first series of great calamities had come upon them.

 

As to the rest of the terms of the promises, they have hardly been fulfilled at all. No one would claim that all families of the earth have yet reaped any abiding blessing from Abraham, and his Child or children, and there is no sign in our present world of any special sense of gratitude to the Jewish race. It is not really true that any Jewish ruler has ever possessed “the gate of His enemies” in the way Abraham was promised.

 

If the promises of God are sure, therefore, practically everything remains to be fulfilled. We turn again, therefore, at this stage, to see what the New Testament has to say.

[Resource Manager]

‘THY SEED, WHICH IS CHRIST”

 

We find the same kind of things as we did when we discussed Sacrifice. One Person is pointed to as the source of all hope in connection with these promises. Before He was born, the mother of Jesus anticipated His coming as the fulfilment of the oath “to Abraham and his seed” (Luke 1:55). When He went about preaching, He told the Jews who trusted that they were the legitimate heirs of Abraham’s promises, that it was to Himself that Abraham had looked forward. “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad” (John 8:56). Much the same idea is contained in the words of Peter that “the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified His Son Jesus” (Acts 3:13). When Paul is discussing the promises made to Abraham and his Seed, he says expressly that the Seed is Christ (Galatians3:16).

 

The promises which God gave are therefore to find their fulfilment in Jesus. But have they? Are we yet any better off in looking for the blessing on all nations, for the everlasting inheritance of the land by Abraham and his Seed, for the subjection of all enemies to Him?

 

The New Testament answer to all these questions is No. But the foundation has been laid. The work has been begun and will be accomplished. Take the promise: “Thy seed shall possess the gate of His enemies”. In the days of His flesh, the enemies of Jesus seemed to triumph over Him, and they certainly crucified Him. He rose again, however, and ascended to heaven, and there He waits. A Psalm quoted in the New Testament more than once says of Him, “Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool” (Psalm 110:1; Acts 2:34, 35; Hebrews 1:13). Jesus Christ, who has fulfilled the task of suffering, will return to take up the task of subjecting the world to God.

 

This solves the question of the promises—made to Abraham personally, too. We have already said that he died without entering into possession. So Stephen says: “He gave him none inheritance in” the Land, “no, not so much as to set his foot on; yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession” (Acts 7:5), and so the Letter to the Hebrews: “These all died, in faith, not having received the promises” (Hebrews 11:13). But we have seen, too, that Jesus speaks of Abraham as looking forward to Himself, and this same letter to the Hebrews says so, too: “He looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (11:10). A dispute between Jesus and His enemies shows us what we are to expect: Jesus had plainly taught that there was to be a resurrection of the dead in the future and there were certain Jews, called Sadducees, who did not believe this. The problem with which they presented Him, and the way in which He answered it, are detailed in Matthew 22:23-32, and we are particularly interested in His statement that God, who called Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is not the God of the dead but of the living. These patriarchs are to be raised from the dead, at the time of Jesus’ coming, and will so inherit the fulfilment of the promises.

 

Therefore it is that Jesus can speak of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God of the future (Matthew 8:11, Luke 13:29).

[Resource Manager]

“IF YE BE CHRIST’S THEN ARE YE ABRAHAM’S SEED”

 

There are two senses in which the promise that Abraham’s Seed shall be a blessing to all nations will be fulfilled. In the first place, there is the obvious one, that when Jesus Christ returns to the earth, the order which He will establish then will bring blessing to the whole world. In the second, there is the plain teaching of the New Testament that the children of Abraham, who therefore share the promises, are not to be restricted to natural Jews only. In the very early days, when John was telling of the coming of Jesus, the Jews were warned that they must not trust in their descent from Abraham, for “God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matthew 3:9). Jesus warned them, similarly, that fleshly descent was of no avail if they did not live after the spirit of their great ancestor, and told them pointedly, “Ye are of your father the devil” (John 8:33-34).

 

He told them further that God would cause the hope of the gospel to be shared by many who should come “from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God”, in the passages already quoted, and there are frequent indications in the Gospels of a wider purpose with men and women of all nations. (See John 10:16; Luke 24:47; Matthew 28:19 and Mark 16:15).

 

Paul takes up these promises and expounds them as a general principle. The great characteristic of Abraham, to which the records of his life in Genesis bear witness, is his faith—the fact that he was prepared to go where God directed, and to do as God required, “He believed in the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness” is the key verse (Genesis 15:1-6), and is repeatedly used in the New Testament (Romans 4:3; Galatians 3:6; James 2:23). It is this faith which marks out a righteous man in God’s eyes. No amount of good works will do, because we are all sinners, but to trust in God and seek in such a spirit to do as He wishes—this is to receive His seal of righteousness.

 

And this is open to Jew and Gentile alike. The 4th chapter of Romans brings this out, and says that the title “Father of many nations” receives its fulfilment in the men and women of all races who follow Abraham’s example (verse 17). Galatians 3 makes the same point. Those who trust in what God has done through Jesus are adopted into Him, and are recognised as part of the Seed of Abraham and therefore, “Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:26-29).

 

It would be wrong, of course, to apply this promise universally to everyone. There are no exceptions to it, in the sense that each one, of whatever race, can take advantage of the offer which he hears to take part in it. But he must take that step. The chapter just referred to speaks of a rite of admission which has been hinted at before, and makes it a condition of becoming “Abraham’s seed”, or remaining outside, in sin and death.