THE CHURCH’S DANGER
The
Temple was the summary of the whole standing and
destiny of Israel; and a
key-fact between the dispensations of Law and Grace is that to-day there is
equally a Temple,
but spiritual. "Ye also, as living stones,
are built up a spiritual house" (1 Pet.
2: 5): "know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1
Cor. 3: 16). And the parallel is
designed. "In these things" Paul
says, "they became FIGURES OF US"
(1 Cor. 10: 6,
R.V., margin). Both Temples are God’s special creation; both are
the sole abode of God on earth; both could be defiled, and so draw down the
Divine displeasure; and in each case, when the last crisis approaches,
an enormous gulf yearns between what God says
is coming and what the people of God imagine is coming. The sequel of Jeremiah’s whole prophecy, in
his final chapter, is the disintegration and dissolution of the Temple.
The
immediate future of the ancient Temple, and of
the Holy Land, created a sharp and public
clash on the grand scale. At the critical moment, when the destiny of
God’s people hung in the balances, and iniquity was deepening on every hand, Hananiah - a
unique figure in the Bible - confronts Jeremiah, and the vast crowd in the Temple precincts, with the
promise of a golden dawn. "Hananiah spoke in the
house of the Lord, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel,
saying, Within two full years will I bring again into this place all the
vessels of the Lord’s house" (Jer. 28: 3).
It was as public a challenge as was possible: it was a blank denial of
Jeremiah’s prophecy of Israel’s seventy years - not two - in exile (Jer. 29: 10): it was a positive prophecy, definite,
minute, detailed: it claimed to be an utterance straight from God. Moreover, Hananiah
attached no condition whatever to the promise of peace: the Temple vessels were to come back merely because they were
the Temple
vessels. Jeremiah and Hananiah embody the two mighty, antagonistic outlooks of
the people of God in a dying dispensation.
Now
the silence of Scripture concerning Hananiah’s exact
spiritual standing most helpfully shelters very diverse optimists under his
cloak. He is five times called a ‘prophet’
by the Scripture itself; and Jeremiah’s words concerning him certainly seem to
imply that he was a genuine prophet - "The
prophets that have been before me and before thee;"
and his national acceptance as a prophet Jeremiah never challenges. It
may be that, like so many to-day, Hananiah absorbed himself exclusively in Scriptures
that seem to state limitless privilege, such as that which Balaam
uttered (Num. 23: 21) - "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen
perverseness in Israel." Or, perhaps more probably, like a
modern Pentecostalist, it may have been a demonic seizure which he sincerely
mistook for a Divine inspiration, and which he had not been careful -
challenged, as he was, by the startling prophecies of Jeremiah - to sift and
test. In any case, Hananiah is the embodiment of all who "lean upon the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us: none evil can come upon us" (Mic. 3: 11).*
[* If Hananiah
really doubted the divine inspiration of Jeremiah’s warnings, as the modern Hananiah
doubts (or avoids) the still graver warnings of the New Testament,
surely their fundamental rightness, their essential justice, their total
independence of human wishes, ought to carry overwhelming conviction of the
divine origin of both.]
So
now we face the sharp clash of prophecies over the respective Temples in each closing dispensation.
The fact that sin, judgment, repentance
are words that Hananiah never once uses, and
that they appear completely absent from his mind, the Temple
alone absorbing his thought, yields the clue: privilege - the enormous privileges of the Temple of Jehovah
- produced the fatal oversight of the consequences of
sin. Jeremiah had warned
of this:- "Trust ye not
in lying words, saying, the temple of the Lord, the Temple
of the Lord, the Temple
of the Lord, are these" (Jer. 7: 4) - the People of God; immune, therefore, from all possible judgment. Israel thought that the Temple - the summary of themselves -
guaranteed them from Divine displeasure apart altogether from any question of
sin. It is a sore temptation of
God’s people throughout all the ages to absorb the sweets of revelation while they eschew the bitters. There is a dangerous parallel to-day.
The spiritual Temple, more wonderful even than the Temple of old, is the marvel
of the world; its privileges reach up to heaven: nevertheless
sin - [That
is, wilful, high-handed, known, deliberate, unconfessed and unabandoned
sin.- Ed.] - in the People of
God is the same as all other sin; and our peril of the Great
Tribulation, and our certainty of a coming Judgment Seat, God
explicitly states. But
this danger is denied by
the two conceptions that
cover nearly all contemporary Christian thought. Either (1) the Spiritual
Temple is to dominate all nations by
the conversion of the world; or else (2) the Spiritual
Temple is to be removed, every stone
of it, into sudden glory: in either case, disaster may overtake Egypt, or Assyria, or Babylon,
but God’s Temple
- never. It is exactly so that Hananiah
speaks: he claims that his happy
forecast is God’s Word; and he spoke, unchallenged, for the whole People
of God.
Now
Jeremiah gives the answer of God that runs through the ages, and is our model.
"Amen: the Lord do so:
the Lord perform thy words which thou hast prophesied, to bring again the
vessels of the Lord’s house." Fundamental privilege abides;
and its assertion, in main and in foundation, is right concerning both Temples. For both
temples the final future is golden, and
the ultimate deliverance of both Temples is sure. Jeremiah himself
has given (31: 33) as lovely a word of Israel’s salvation at the last as any ever
given; and it is from this Prophet, out of all others, that the Holy Spirit
selects the great charter of grace to eternal Israel. (Heb.
8: 10) :- "I will put my laws into their
mind, and on their heart also will I write them; for I will be merciful to
their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more." Nevertheless Jeremiah reaffirms judgment on
sin as the universal testimony of God’s prophets, and warns that privilege which wipes out
judgment will prove a mirage. He says :- "The prophets of old prophesied of war, and of evil, and of
pestilence" :- that is, all Scripture clamps together sin and judgment, for every human
soul, with links of steel; and all who do not take the warnings must take
the consequences. You, Hananiah, prophesy peace, with no conditions - no sobs of repentance, no abandoned sin, no joyous obedience, to precede the
Golden Age: the coming facts (Jeremiah says) will show which is the Word of God. So Jehovah Himself puts it:- "All shall know [by the
events themselves] whose word shall stand, mine,
or theirs" (Jer. 44: 28).
A
symbolic action follows, in which Hananiah, instead
of being startled by the blank contradiction, and bowing to the Word of God,
resorts to violence, so forecasting persecution. He steps forward and
snatches the Yoke Jeremiah was wearing as a symbol of the coming judgment, and
breaking it, blankly denies the Seventy Years captivity of the People of God:-
"Thus saith the Lord, Even so will I break the
yoke of Nebuchadnezzar within two full years from off the neck of all the
nations" (verse 11). But the danger for the People of God of such
a negativing of Divine prophecies now leaps to light: denial of judgment openly deepens
it.
After Jeremiah had slipped quietly away, God says to him:- "Tell Hananiah,
saying, Thus saith the Lord: Thou hast broken the bars of wood; but thou shalt
make in their stead bars of iron." Defiance of truth only aggravates
judgment, for sin only deepens with impenitence, and automatically increases
the judgment.
So also the extreme
personal danger of leading others astray by contradicting God’s Word on coming
judgment on both Church and world is embodied for all time in Hananiah. "Hear
now, Hananiah," Jeremiah says, sent
expressly by Jehovah to the facile optimist - (Jeremiah himself had sought no
vengeance whatever upon Hananiah) :-
"thou makest this people
to trust in a lie: therefore saith the Lord, Behold, I will send thee away from
off the face of the earth: this year thou shalt die, because thou hast spoken
rebellion against the Lord." In two years, Hananiah said, Jehovah would deliver them all: in two months he was dead.*
[* It is the refusal of the believer’s judgment which gives the
Arminian believer his whole standing: for it is
the penal consequences with which the sinning servant of God is threatened are
not (as we believe) temporary, they are eternal: they are concrete and real in either case, and Hananiah’s role
of denial is as dangerous as it is disloyal.]
This
vital disclosure is crowned for us by the fact that the chief revelation of our
own Temple is
carefully set in dual warning. The revelation is this:-
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"
(1 Cor. 3: 16).
Immediately before this
supreme truth there is set a warning, concerning the believer whose
discipleship has been mere wood, hay, or stubble - "He himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire"; and immediately after it, a warning still graver -
"If any defileth the temple of God, him
shall God defile; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are."
"In the LXX as well as in the New Testament the Greek word means to ‘mar’:
the passage may, therefore, be rendered, ‘If any man injure
the temple of God, him will God injure’"
(C. Hodge, D.D.). The
Church would be a holier church if it realized its danger. It is no imagination even of the apostle,
but an inspired portrait (Rev. 1: 14), that
when our Lord appears to His Churches in order to examine their works - "I know thy works" - He confronts them - all His Churches, without any exception - with eyes
of fire and feet of burning brass; and it is to the Church of God that these
words are addressed - "The Lord shall
judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into
the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:
30).
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