Two Viewpoints

By REV. W. H. WETZEL
Pastor, Lemington Methodist Church

I came not to destroy, but to fulfill. Matt. 5:17.

Jesus came not to destroy but to fulfill, and it is this attitude which Christians assume towards the moral law of righteousness as it is set forth in the Old Testament Scripture. Christians have no interest in discrediting the Old Testament. It has a place beside the New Testament on the pulpit of the Christian church. Our libraries are filled with books in defense of the revelation of the Old Testament.

The Christian viewpoint is that God's revelation of Himself has been progressive and that it comes to perfection in Jesus. Writing to the Jews of his day, one of the New Testament writers says "God having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son."

The Christian has no controversy with Judaism. Judaism is the bud; Christianity is the flower. Judaism is the root; Christianity is the fruit. Judaism is the prophecy; Christianity is the fulfillment. "The law came by Moses, but grace and truth come by Jesus Christ." From this point of view let us follow through several steps of this completed revelation brought about by the Christian Gospel.

In the first place, Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament revelation of God. There is in the Old Testament clear and certain light concerning the character of God, and from the Old Testament revelation we get a marvelous conception of his unity, his holiness, his power. The fact is that our modern world gets its conception of God from the New Testament. Gradually the Old Testament prophets approach the truth, that pureness of heart and not the observance of law or ritual found favor with God. Isaiah turned away from the sacrifices with disgust, and Micah said "What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to have mercy and to walk humbly with thy God."

In the second place, Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament conception of a righteous social order.

There are transcendent views of a new social order in Judaism, but they float on the horizon of prophecy.

They are prefaced with the words "In that day."

The new order that was to be is a vision and a glorious vision of hope. Constantly the Jews of Jesus' day ask Him "Wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?" Jesus came proclaiming not the kingdom of Israel but the kingdom of God.

If a false zeal led to the Crusades and to race prejudice, a true zeal and a true understanding of the spirit of Christ leads to a social order where there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, and to the recognition of personality as the ultimate value in society, transcending race and language and color. Sin and suffering have always pressed heavily upon our race. The Old Testament struggles for a solution and before the close there is dawn upon the horizon, but that is all. The Book of Job, marvelous in its insight, leaves the problem in a measure unsolved. The book of Ecclesiastes touches life with cynicism and dyes it deep in pessimism. Jeremiah comes nearer to an understanding, but his life goes out in obscurity and silence.

What does it mean? If God is good, why should men suffer? It is the age-long problem of all who have thought deeply about life and the only solution that meets life's enigma is the solution that is found in Christ and His cross, where we stand face to face with the conquering power of suffering love.

No one can read the 53rd chapter of Isaiah and then turn to the story of the Gospel and the cross without feeling that they belong in the same stream of history.

--Unknown date and source.

Three Pictures From God's Album

1916

By Rev. B. B. Sutchiffe.

TEXT — Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent towards Sodom. But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly. — Gen. 13:12, 13.

Someone has said that the Old Testament is God's picture gallery where he has given us in picture form the doctrines and truths he develops in the New Testament. Our text has three of these pictures, in which three classes of persons are described — Abram, Lot and the men of Sodom.

Living for Self.

Taking these in reverse order, we can see how the men of Sodom illustrate a large number of people today. They are those whose underlying principle might be termed living for self alone. They do not care for real religion, but are occupied entirely with the things of time and sense. What they will eat today or what they will wear tomorrow is to them vastly more important than how they will stand before God in the future. Their effort is concerned with this life alone, and they live and work and play as though there were no such thing as eternity and no such person as God. They come to the end like the man who told himself he could retire from business because he had much goods laid up for many years and he could now afford to enjoy the fruits of his toil and eat, drink and be merry. But he had laid up all his goods on the earth; they were not taken from him, but he was taken from them, and it is no wonder the Lord says he was a fool. The class under consideration are not necessarily bad people, for usually they are tolerant of religion, as the people of Sodom did not mind having Lot in their midst. But the religion that Lot had was not very insistent. When it would threaten to interfere with business or with pleasure it must not be heard. It was time then to laugh it out of court as a sort of fable, and when it became personal Lot was to [*]

Living for Self and God.

The second picture is that of Lot, in whom the half-and-half Christian is easily seen. This man illustrates those who seem to have, as the underlying principle of life, the idea of living for self and for God too. They attempt to serve two masters, and, failing to serve either, come to the end with nothing to show for their labor. They trust their own vision and live by sight and not by faith. Lot looked on the well-watered plain and, as far as he could see, it was the very thing he ought to have, the very thing that was best for him. But, as God saw, it was the very thing he ought not to have, the thing that was worst for him. He hazarded everything he had or hoped to have — himself, his family, his property — on what he could see with his own eyes, when he might have chosen what God could see. He trusted himself rather than God and the results were inevitable. He lost what God would have given him and he lost the enjoyment the men of Sodom had; for all the time he was there his righteous soul was vexed. He was neither out and out for self nor out and out for God. He had tried to live for God and self, he had tried to serve two masters and to get both the wealth of Sodom and the wealth of God. But he ended with awful disaster, losing his property, his testimony, his family — all that he had.

Living for God.

The last picture is that in which the "out-and-out" Christian is seen in Abram. The underlying principle of his life seems to be that he had made up his mind to serve God alone. He was far from being a perfect man. He made many mistakes and even committed some sins. But underneath he was living for God. He had learned "thou shalt have no other God before me" and his life was governed by this principle. He recognized that he could serve only one master with any hope of success and he chose to have the Lord as that one Master. What he was and had and hoped to be belonged to that Master to do with as the Master desired. Where he was to be and go depended on that Master's direction. He would not lean to his own understanding nor judge by the sight of his eyes nor walk by his own wisdom. He would gladly take the seeming second best from God, believing that whatever appearances might say, they could not tell the whole truth.

The men of Sodom lived for self alone and lost themselves and all they had; Lot lived for self and God and lost all he had of peace or power or property; Abram lived for God alone and, while he was not a perfect man, there was given to him the peace of God and power for God and possessions from God. "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve."

Note: [*] Unfortuately, missing at least one line of type here. The sense seems to be "when it became personal Lot was to" a) be ignored; or, b) keep his religion to himself.

Mosaic Precautions

1910

No one can fail to be impressed by the careful hygienic precautions of the Mosaic period. For example, consider how animals were divided into the clean and the unclean, the reason for this being that the priests, in preparing them for sacrifice, noted the presence of parasites in the flesh or insides of certain animals which were therefore to be avoided.


Bits and Pieces

Some people treat the sermon as a table d'hote dinner, picking out the things that will not agree with them.

When the pulpit gets into poetic clouds it misses the man on the pavement.

A catalogue of vices never led any one into virtue.

Anaemia is often temporarily mistaken for virtue.

An ingrowing conscience drives many a man into sin.

Coin Not Mentioned in Scriptures

1906

Throughout the early part of the scriptures, as well as through the poems of Homer, not a single passage occurs from which we can infer either the use or the existence of stamped money — the 400 shekels which Abraham gave for the cave of Machpelah, for instance, were measured by weight. It is now agreed that the Egyptians had no coined money.


Danger in Amusements

The habit of dissipating every serious thought by a succession of agreeable sensations is as fatal to happiness as to virtue; for when amusement is uniformly substituted for objects of moral and mental interest, we lose all that elevates our enjoyments above the scale of childish pleasures. — Anna Maria Porter.

Sunday School Lesson — Jeremiah 36

1905

I. The Beginning of Judah's Downfall. — To understand Jeremiah's prophecies one must know something of the history of the times in which they were written, and which they vividly reflect. About the twelfth year of Josiah's reign wild tribes of Scythians, from the plains of southern Russia, "streamed through the passes of the Caucasus in countless hordes, ruthlessly destroying cities, fields, men, women and children." — Kent. Zephaniah and Jeremiah were just beginning to prophesy. Said the latter: "Out of the north evil shall break forth upon the land (Jer. 1:14). However, after greatly terrifying the people, "the storm-cloud of Scythian invasion, like other storms, followed the line of the sea, leaving Jerusalem unscathed, and was dissipated on the borders of Egypt." — Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible.

From Egypt itself came the next peril. Pharaoh Necho marched up through Palestine to attack Assyria (B.C. 608). Foolishly and needlessly espousing the Assyrian cause, Josiah met him at Megiddo on the plain of Esdraelon, was defeated and killed. Prof. Kent calls this disaster "unquestionably the most tragic event in Hebrew history." It brought to an end the reformation which Josiah had inaugurated; for though the reform party at once placed upon the throne Josiah's third son, Jehoahaz, evidently because he resembled his father, as soon as the victorious Necho returned from the Euphrates he reversed the arrangement, carried Jehoahaz in chains to Egypt, after a reign of only three months, and left on the throne his elder brother, Eliakim, rightly judging him to be of a character more suited to his purpose. In token of vassalage Eliakim changed his name (in form, but not in significance) to Jehoiakim, "Jehovah raiseth up." He proved to be a tyrant, of whom Jeremiah speaks always in condemnation. His magnificent palace (Jer. 22:13-15) built by forced labor, his murder of the prophet Uriah (Jer. 26:20), and his persecution of Jeremiah, show his character.

The third peril was Babylon. "In 607 Nineveh fell, and Babylon became heir of all the countries washed by the Mediterranean, the realm which had just been added by Necho to his dominions. A conflict between the rivals could not long be deferred. In 605-4 the two armies met near Carchemish, where Nebuchadnezzar inflicted a decisive defeat on Necho, and Judah exchanged the yoke of Egypt for that of Babylon." — Hastings' Bible Dictionary. Jehoiakim was thrown into chains, to be carried back captive to Babylon, but this intention does not seem to have been fulfilled (2 Chron. 36:6). Some captives, however, were taken to Babylon, among them Daniel and his three friends (Dan. 1:6). This was the small beginning of the Great Captivity.

II. Jeremiah the Prophet of Warning. — In these troublous times, the saddest of Hebrew history, arose a great prophet through whom Jehovah uttered his final call to repentance. "Jeremiah was little esteemed in his life, but from being of no account as a prophet he came to be considered the greatest of them all." — Prof. A. B. Davidson.

His name means "whom Jehovah casts" or "appoints." His father, Hilkiah (Jer. 1:1) "was not the high priest of that name, so famous in connection with the reformation of King Josiah." — Expositor's Bible. His father, however, was a priest. His birthplace, where he probably resided during at least a part of his life, was Anathoth in the tribe of Benjamin, now 'Anata, between two and three miles north-northeast of Jerusalem.

His call to prophesy came when he was a young man (Jer. 1:6), in the thirteenth year of Josiah. (Jer. 1:2), B.C. 626. He was then about twenty years old, and so may have been born about B.C. 646, being of the same age, approximately, as Josiah. He prophesied till B.C. 586, after the Captivity, more than forty years.

His Character. "The most exquisite sensibility of soul was Jeremiah's singular and sovereign distinction above all the other Hebrew prophets. He was far and away the most spiritually minded of all the prophets. He was the supreme prophet of the human heart, and would have nothing from his hearers and readers but their heart. Both by nature and by grace he was the most inclined to pity of all the prophets. Dante comes next to Jeremiah, and we know that Jeremiah was that great exile's favorite prophet." — Condensed from Whyte.

His Writings. — The Lamentations are not attributed to Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible, but they are so attributed in the Greek translation, the Septuagint. Modern scholars are divided on the question of the authorship. "The balance of internal evidence may be said to preponderate against Jeremiah's authorship; but there is no question that the poems are the work of a contemporary (or contemporaries)." — Driver.

III. Jeremiah's Prophecies Written and Read. — Jer. 36:1-20. For twenty-three years Jeremiah had been trying, by oral teachings, to persuade the nation to repent and turn to God, but the people and their rulers had been deaf to his warnings. As a last resort, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (B.C. 605), the Lord commanded the prophet to write down the substance of his exhortations, thus to focus them in one mighty blow upon the consciences of king and people. Moreover, for some reason Jeremiah was "shut up," "restrained" (V. 5) from public utterance, being probably forbidden by the authorities to preach; and thus he could reach his audience through the lips of another.

The chosen amanuensis was Baruch, the son of Neriah, a scribe. The occasion was a fast day, appointed probably for the first anniversary of the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. To a throng gathered in the temple Baruch read the glowing words of Jeremiah, speaking from a balcony.

Among the listeners was Micaiah, grandson of Shaphan, Josiah's famous scribe. He went at once to tell his father, Gemariah, who was at the palace, taking part in a council that may have been discussing the dangers that still threatened the country from Babylon. The princes of the king's council sent at once for Baruch and listened to his reading of Jeremiah's prophecies, which made so deep an impression upon them that they decided to make known the whole matter to the king. First, however, they asked Baruch to hide himself and Jeremiah, lest the king be angry and slay them, as he had killed Urijah.

IV. Jeremiah's Prophecies Destroyed. — Vs. 21-26. It was a critical moment in the history of Judah, and of Jehoiakim. How many sorrows the nation would have been spared, had the king proved himself a Josiah or a Hezekiah!

21. "So the king sent Jehudi." One of his officers. "To fetch the roll." That Jehoiakim might learn its contents at first hand and not from hearsay. "Elishama." He was the king's secretary of state, and the roll had been left in his chamber that it might be safe from the king.

22. "The king sat in the winter-house. "In the ninth month." December, as the Hebrew sacred year began two weeks before the Passover, our Easter. "There was a fire on the hearth burning." Rather, in the firepan. They have no chimneys, and hearths are unknown in the East.

23. "When Jehudi had read three or four leaves." R.V. margin, "columns." "He." R.V., "the king." Jehoiakim seems to have snatched the roll angrily from Jehudi. "Cut it with the penknife." "Literally, scribe's knife." — Wood.

24. "Yet they were not afraid." "Unlike Josiah (2 Kings 22:11), and even Ahab (1 Kings 21:27)." — Pulpit Commentary. "Nor any of his servants."

25. "Nevertheless (R.V., "moreover") "Elnathan," etc. These were some of the princes. "Made intercession." "This word had by no means once that limited meaning of prayer for others which we now ascribe to it." — Cambridge Bible. "But he would not hear them."

26. -"The king commanded . . . to take Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet; but the LORD hid them. Perhaps Jeremiah was hidden, by some of God's servants, as John of Gaunt did for Wyclif, and an elector of Saxony for Luther; perhaps the Lord sent him out of the country. To this time are most naturally to be referred Jeremiah's absence from Jerusalem, and the symbol of the linen girdle which he was commanded (Jer. 13) to take to the river Euphrates. He is not heard of for several years.

V. Jeremiah's Prophecies Rewritten and Fulfilled. — Vs. 27-32. "The first result of Jeremiah's enforced seclusion reminds us of Martin Luther's Bible work in the Wartburg. Jeremiah, too, betook himself to Bible work. The first prophetic roll had been destroyed; but, as in the case of Tyndale's New Testament, a new and improved edition issued, as it were, from the flames." — Cheyne.

The New Roll. — 28. "Take thee again another roll," etc. This new roll was a repetition of the first, with the addition (v. 32) of many other prophecies.

The Truth Could Not Be Destroyed. — Jehoiakim had burned only the parchment; he could not burn God's condemnation of him. 29. "The king of Babylon shall certainly come and destroy this land." Nebuchadnezzar had already come, and rendered the land tributary; but he had gone away again. The prophecy that had aroused Jehoiakim's wrath was that Nebuchadnezzar would return and destroy the land. This prediction Jeremiah solemnly repeated, and it was fulfilled not long afterward in the reign of Zedekiah.

30. "Jehoiakim . . . shall have none to sit upon the throne of David." His son Jehoiachin, eighteen years old, attempted to do it for three months, but the whole time the land was occupied by Nebuchadnezzar's army, and Jerusalem was in a state of siege (2 Kings 24:8-17). "His dead body shall be cast out." Compare the vivid words of Jer. 22:18, 19.

31. "And upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem." "They would not have been punished for the crime of the king, had not that act only too well typified their own demoralization. Compare Jer. 19:15; 35:17." — Speaker's Commentary.

Josiah's Devotion to God

1911

Sunday School Lesson

LESSON TEXT — 2 Chronicles 34:1-13

TIME — Josiah began to reign B. C. 638. He reigned 31 years.

PLACE—Judah and Jerusalem. But his reforms extended over a considerable part of the territory of the Northern Kingdom which had become extinct in 722-718, 80 years before Josiah came to the throne.

Josiah was the grandson of Manasseh. He was born at Jerusalem, B. C. 646. His father was Amon, who reigned but two years, when he was murdered by his courtiers in his own palace. The people rose against the conspirators and made his eight-year-old son king in his place. Josiah's mother was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah. They belonged in Boscath, a town near Lachish in southwestern Judah, in the plains toward the Mediterranean sea. While King Amon was an idolater, and his court was corrupt, it is possible that Josiah's mother kept the true faith.

He began to reign when he was eight years old. Like his grandfather, Manasseh, he must for several years have been guided, and his kingdom controlled by his mother or by prime ministers. The worshipers of Jehovah must have been in control at the palace, the wise and religious teachers of the true God and the true religion. So that for the first sixteen years of his life the young Josiah must have been under good influences, while he also would know of his father's tragic death, and his grandfather's sins, sufferings, and repentance. And his ancestor, David, was ever before him as his ideal, his hero, his saint.

About the time when Josiah was twenty years old, and in the twelfth year of his reign, when he had begun his reforms, there came an invading host from the far east like a cyclone, an overwhelming scourge. Jeremiah foretells them in vivid pictures. But Herodotus tells us who they were, the Scythians "from the regions over Caucasus, vast nameless hordes of men who sweeping past Assyria, unchecked, poured upon Palestine. We can realize the event from our knowledge of the Mongol and Tartar invasions which in later centuries pursued the same path southwards. Living in the saddle, with no infantry nor chariots to delay them, these Centaurs swept on with a speed of invasion hitherto unknown. In 630 they had crossed the Caucasus, by 626 they were on the borders of Egypt.

The prophet, Jeremiah, describes in picturesque terms this invasion. "The lion is come up from his thicket;" "The destroyer of nations is on his way;" "Behold he cometh as clouds, and his chariot shall be as the whirlwind;" "Their quiver is an open sepulcher, they are all mighty men;" "They are cruel and have no mercy; their voice roareth like the sea; and they ride upon horses, set in array as men of war against thee."

It is easy to see how this terrible invader, coming so near, just as Josiah was beginning his reforms, must have interfered with his plans.

Josiah began his reformation in his twelfth year, but the invasion of the Scythians soon after this beginning interfered with the work. The savage and cruel host came close to Judah's borders. Scattered bands may have entered the kingdom. Terror reigned. Defenses must be strengthened. Outsiders rushed to Jerusalem and the fortified cities. How far the reformations had progressed we do not know. But the chronicler having recorded the beginning simply goes on with the story, as is frequently done by historians.

The restoration of the Temple was entrusted to a committee of three — Shapan, the secretary of state; and Maaseiah, the governor of the city, the mayor of Jerusalem; and Joah the recorder, the keeper of the records, the historian. The temple built by Solomon, was completed 330 years before. It was repaired by Joash 240 years before Josiah began his restoration. The ravages of time, with neglect and abuse during the sway of idolatry must have rendered it sadly in need of repair. It was during these repairs that the Book of Law was found.

The work interrupted by the Scythian hordes is now resumed with greatly increased intensity and enthusiasm, through the new consecration of king and people, due to the finding of the Book of the Law.

The first condition of salvation for individuals or nations is the putting away of sin at any cost. The second is the building up of the good. He that confesseth and forsaketh shall find mercy.

One of the greatest revivals of religion ever known was begun in meetings where the pastor called upon his church members on a fast day to confess and forsake their sins. "How many of you," he asked, "have neglected your family prayers?" Several arose and one was called upon to pray. "How many of you have been speaking evil of others?" Several arose. One led in prayer for all. And so through the list.

There has been a remarkable revival in the territory made famous in the Japanese-Russian war. The movement began in Llaoyang, spread at once to Mukden, and, soon after, to Haicheng, Fakumen, Newchwang, and numberless towns and villages and hamlets of less fame. A mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit came to the Christians. Immediately after the opening of the meetings, and his power became manifested at once in heart-breaking confession of sin; then in outbursts of prayer, both petition and intercession, in great Joy, and, finally, in thank-offerings to God of money and of service. It was a case of complete surrender to God.