Last Updated on : Saturday, October 11, 2014

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KNOWLEDGE WE CANNOT DO WITHOUT

Popular aversion to knowledge � much human knowledge valueless � eternal life depends upon knowledge of God � only through Bible revelation � wonderful comfort to know God andpurpose � know Jesus Christ and obey.

IN the hymn we have sung we have been asking the watchman to tell us of the night- What watchman this is we know; it is not any living person. God set watchmen over the house of Israel, who by inspiration were able to reveal the times. They have long since disappeared from the land of the living. The prophecy has been fulfilled which said the sun would go down over the prophets, and the day would become dark; but though the personal watchmen are dead, their words in great measure have been preserved, and by referring to these, we are able to do what the hymn expresses, that is, to ask them to tell us of the night. There is a sense, of course, in which they cannot do so;they cannot tell us what is coming on in our own day; this we have to ascertain for ourselves. But then the significance of what is coming on in our own day arises from what they foretold; and therefore, figuratively speaking, our studies are a reference to them, to tell us of the night, what its signs of promise are.

This word �night� is also a figure, but a figure with very substantial meanings. They do not mean the literal darkness that prevails over the face of the earth when the sun is absent. There is a darkness more dreadful than this. The shining of the literal sun is itself an empty thing when figurative darkness holds sway. If your affairs, for example, are in darkness, a sinking heart is not helped by the shining of the sun. If ignorance and barbarism have the upper hand in a population, as in the central districts of Africa, the brightness of the orb of day and the beauty of tropical vegetation are a kind of mockery. Darkness in a man�s mind makes everything dark for him. There are various kinds of darkness; we are concerned this morning with only one particular form of it. �Tell us of the night.� This is the state of things now reigning among mankind. It is the night to which Paul says the brethren do not belong, �We are not of the night, nor of darkness.� What is it that causes the darkness? The absence of light, but what is the light? As the darkness is figurative, so is the light. We have it apostolically defined for us with almost the precision of a dictionary. It is the �light of the knowledge of the glory of God� � the light of knowledge in a certain direction. How important is knowledge. We read in the Proverbs that �fools hate knowledge, and do not choose the fear of the Lord.� By this we may know that the population around us are truly in the state alleged by Mr. Carlyle, �mostly fools,� for the general attitude towards knowledge is that of aversion. What is relished is sensation. The people are doing the reverse of what they are exhorted to do in the Scriptures; they do not search for wisdom, and dig for it as for hid treasure; but, like children, they turn their backs upon the hard work connected with the quest, and run after the fluttering gew-gaws on every rag- and-bone man�s cart that comes along. We must not be carried away by their influence, nor follow their example. If we stand on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, we are all children of the light and of the day; that is, men and women in love with knowledge, and exercised in its daily use, as the birds of heaven soar in the sunlight. This indeed is the preparation for the literal basking in the light and life and glory that awaits the children of God in the ages to come, in which, as Paul says, He will show to them the exceeding riches of His kindness towards them.

There are various kinds of knowledge, and all knowledge is light in some sense or other; but some kinds of knowledge are not important for us at present. There are so many towns and villages in China, and so many trades, and so much revenue; to know these is to possess an item of knowledge, and therefore light, but obviously such knowledge is of little value. So we might know the exact number of the butterfly species in the British Islands, or the various orders of birds that visit our shores; but this also is of too limited value to be ranked with the knowledge of which Paul speaks. All knowledge in the ordinary sense waits the children of God in the Age to come, but most of it they can do without at present; but there is a knowledge they cannot do without, a knowledge which comforts and beautifies them now, and saves them hereafter. Jesus refers to this knowledge in his prayer recorded in John 17, �This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.� This is a comprehensive summary of the whole knowledge that constitutes the gospel of salvation; for although the Gospel of the Kingdom and the things of the Name are not mentioned, they are embraced.

Let us dwell for a moment upon these two great branches of saving knowledge � the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of Christ. To know God is to know what is revealed concerning Him, and to be in sympathetic submission to His will. We cannot know Him apart from revelation. The most that we can know without this is that He exists. This much only a fool can fail to discern, for as Paul says in writing to the Romans, �The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse� (Rom. 1:20). No other account can be given of the existence of heaven and earth than that there is an antecedent, eternal, underlying Power, equal to their production, but this is a meagre and naked conclusion by itself; it does not impart to us the power that comes with the revealed knowledge of God. We could not know His character, nor His purpose, nor His will, nor whether He had any, nor whether He took any notice of us one way or other; and it is from the knowledge of these items that the power of godliness comes. These are the things that have been made known in the course of that wondrous evolution to which Paul refers in the beautiful opening statement of Hebrews: �God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last times spoken unto us by His Son.� This history of this speaking is the history of the revelation of those things so important to be known. It is the history contained in the Bible, and in the Bible alone. It is there contained in a form fully adequate to our spiritual needs. It is a form not to be mastered without patient industry; but still it is accessible to this. It has pleased God to place it in this position. This is His method in many things, placing His goodness within our reach, but in a position requiring us to put forth our hand and make an effort to get at it. It is so in all the precious metals which are hidden in the earth; it is so even in daily food, which requires the patient toil of the field cultivator. Those who turn away discouraged from the situation of things must needs die; the man who does not plough cannot reap. Let us not play the fool, but act the part of wise men, and address ourselves to the knowledge that God has revealed in the form in which He has revealed it.

The writings of Moses, the prophets, and the apostles are fully able to impart to us the precious knowledge of God. From them we learn that God is one, in the inscrutable sense illustrated to us by the unity of light; that He is universal in the presence of this unity; yet that His eternal and omnipresent Being is brought to a glorious focus at some point in the everlasting heavens, in which He holds high court, as we might express it, attended by multitudes of angelic beings, who act as His agents and commissaries in all parts of the universe, �excelling in strength, doing His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His Word;� that He has organized or concreted, or put into tangible form His eternal energy in the creation of the heavens and all that they contain; that by Him they have been contrived in wisdom, and are upheld in power; that in Him all things exist; that nothing can be without Him. They also reveal to us that this great Being, though so terrible in power, and dazzling in wisdom, is a magnanimous Being, gracious, long-suffering, slow to anger, plenteous in goodness and truth; that He will not pass by insubordination, but nevertheless delights in mercy, and will pardon where submission is conceded. That He has made all things as the delightful exercise of His power, and for the reflection of His glory; that He has made the earth for this purpose, and that He proposes slowly to extricate from the confusion incident to human rebellion an order of things in which His name will be in the ascendant, and all His servants in the perfect enjoyment of His goodness in its highest form. That this purpose

He will at last accomplish in its completeness, when His glory will fill the earth, and the inhabitants thereof will rejoice in the possession, not only of immortal life, but in every joyful capacity and circumstance of life. How glorious is the knowledge of God thus revealed; it enables us to adjust ourselves to all the conditions of this present life with tranquility and resignation and hope. Heaven and earth are to those possessed of this knowledge a very different place from the empty universe of the agnostic; they are the Father�s house of comfort; whereas the universe of the mere scientist is the chilling vault of gloom and death.

But Jesus says we must not only know the only true God, but Jesus Christ, whom He hath sent. We therefore look at Jesus himself; it is the next element of the light of heaven. To know him is to discern him as exhibited in the testimony concerning him. There is much talk of Christ in public literature, without this discernment. He is spoken of as a paragon among men, but still a man, a great moral reformer, but only as men are supposed to reform each other; a teacher of kindness, but only as kindness is known between man and man. He is praised as a prodigy among fellow-men, but only as possessing in a higher degree what they all are supposed to have; for here is a great spiritual blight that runs everywhere � man is regarded as an immortal creature of the sky, instead of what he is � a poor perishing worm of the dust. The consequence is that Christ is displaced from the position to which he belongs; he is levelled down to man, or man is levelled up to him, and in either case it is impossible to know Jesus Christ, whom the Father hath sent. To know him is to accept him as presented in the apostolic testimony. By this we have to hold hard and fast, aye, with the desperate tenacity of men struggling in the water with their hand upon a lifebuoy; for the tendency of all human speculation is to weaken and obliterate the testimony of the apostles as a reliable thing. Robust reason acting upon the facts of the case seen in their naked truth, is all against this tendency; nevertheless, by reason of almost universal inattention to the facts, a tendency in the public mind is stronger than the facts, and we are liable to drift with the stream. We may accept absolutely, and without any reservation, the test formulated by the apostle John, �We (the apostles) are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us, the that knoweth not God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of Truth and the spirit of error.� This is an impregnable rock in the midst of the restless ocean of human change. The apostles are demonstrably divine, as we know, and this being so, it must follow that everyone in true harmony with God is in harmony with the apostles, and that to be out of harmony with the apostles is to be out of harmony with God, however popular and prosperous for the time being.

Now the apostolic testimony concerning Christ is distinct and palpable, and also beautiful and reasonable. They preached Christ crucified. There are two elements in this: a man might preach Christ without preaching Christ crucified; it would be preaching Christ to preach the coming manifestation of a seed of Abraham and a Son of David, in kingly power and glory in the earth, under whom the whole race of man would attain to blessedness. A Jew might preach this, but this would not be to preach Christ crucified. The apostolic preaching was that this coming seed of Abraham and Son of David was crucified with a special divine aim, and by special divine plan, having to do with the foundation of the blessedness to come after. What this aim was is plainly stated. �Him hath God set forth,� says Paul, �as a propitiation for our sins,� and again, �He was delivered (to death) for our offences, and raised again for our justification.� How prominent this aspect of Christ is all through the apostolic writings cannot be hidden from those who read them. Christ himself said he had to give his flesh for the life of the world, and that he would lay down his life for his sheep, and that the symbolic cup was the new covenant in his blood, shed for the remission of the sins of many. �In him,� said Paul to the Galatians, �we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of our sins;� and in the Apocalypse the redeemed appear in the act of thanksgiving and praise to him �who washed them from their sins in his own blood.�

To know Jesus Christ, then, whom the Father hath sent, is to know him as the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. But to know him in this character we must know something of sin. With the wise of the world this is baby knowledge, but to the wisdom that sustains the universe, it is the first principle of eternal wisdom. Sin is disobedience of God�s revealed Law, and the penalty of it � death. The idea of immortality to a sinner is a human speculation in outrageous revolt against the first principles of truth. Sin reigns, and man dies; but God is kind, yet wise and just, and therefore, as regards permitting eternal life, will not pass by iniquity. It has to be visited by Him, and recognized by us. In Christ He has provided the means of this; for in Him we have not only the glory of God manifest, but a fellow-partaker of the mortal nature that has been propagated throughout the earth as the result of sin; and in this nature God condemned sin by its crucifixion, and rescued the crucified one from death because of righteousness and love, and has given him to us as our only avenue to life eternal. �This is the testimony, that God hath given us eternal life, and this life in His Son.� He who attains possession of the Son attains possession of the life; but he who stands apart from the Son has nothing but his own evanescent mortality, which will disappear when the judgments of God are complete in the earth. How to obtain possession of the Son, is only to be learnt from the apostles and from Christ. �He that believeth;� this is the first and incessantly prescribed condition, apart from which nothing can be done. Next, he that is obedient, for He is revealed as �the author of eternal life to all them that obey him.� Those who obey Him are meantime on trial for his approbation at his coming. He exhorts them to be �faithful unto death,� to �watch,� to �overcome,� that he is coming shortly, that his reward is with him, and that he will give to every man according as his work shall be � God having given to him the prerogative and power of judgment unto life or death eternal. To know all these things and to put faith in Christ, who, though absent, is alive, and to walk in harmony with his commandments, is to know Jesus Christ, whom God hath sent. To know Christ according to any philosophic or pagan or false theological method, is to know another Jesus, and not the Jesus Christ whom God hath sent.

Thus the watchman tells us of the night in various ways. He tells us that the state of things now upon earth is night and darkness. He also tells us that the night is far spent, and that the tokens of the approach of morn may be recognized in the signs that have been revealed. These tokens we know are all visible on the horizon. The power of the papal Antichrist has disappeared; the frog�power has embroiled the nations, the kings of the earth are getting ready their armies for the Armageddon assembly. The Euphratean flood, long shrunk in its channel, is about to disappear in final evaporation; the revival of Jewish nationality, though but in embryo, has begun; the lions of Tarshish are in possession of the Holy Land�s neighborhood, and their ships are crowding every sea in readiness for the use of Zion�s king. We may therefore well take heart in the midst of the gloom, and do as Christ commanded when he said, �When ye see these things come to pass, lift up your heads, for redemption draweth nigh.�

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