Hudsonville Protestant
Reformed Church
5101 Beechtree
Hudsonville, Michigan 49426
Services: 9:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Homepage on Internet: http://www.prca.org
Vol. 9, No. 5
Contents:
Christ's Words
Shall Never Pass Away (3)
God’s
Saving Love (2)
The Role
of Israel (1)
Christ’s Words
Shall Never Pass Away (3)
Christ’s words, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Matt. 24:35), are a divine promise of the preservation of the entire Scriptures up to (and beyond) Christ’s second coming. This text leads us to believe that God has providentially maintained His Word for over 3,000 years and will continue to do so. The Westminster Confession states that the OT in Hebrew and the NT in Greek "being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical" (1.8).
God’s special preservation of the Scriptures is denied or ignored by many. Liberal Protestants don’t see God’s sovereign hand much in the world at all, never mind in His singular care for His Word. Muslims tell us that the Bible is hopelessly corrupted and so cannot be trusted. Most textual critics labor without a living sense of God’s special providential preservation of His inspired Word.
It is true that we do not have the original manuscripts written by holy men of God as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (II Peter 1:21). And in the thousands of copies that we have, there are transmissional errors. However, from these manuscripts, the correct reading can be and is seen.
God used the Jews as the librarians of the OT for the church, as Augustine said. The OT priesthood was commanded to care for the law (Deut. 31:9f.). When Ezra returned from the Babylonian captivity, he probably brought with him the inspired oracles written up to that point. Philo, an Alexandrian Jew and a contemporary of the apostles, said that the Jews would rather die a thousand times than see one word of the Scriptures altered. It was a common Jewish saying that to alter one letter of the law is no less a sin than to set the whole world on fire. The Massoretes, Jewish scribes who labored in the second half of the first millennium after Christ, had a great respect for the written Word. They counted the number of verses in each book and identified the middle verse. They numbered the occurrences of each Hebrew letter in every book and in the whole OT. For example, the letter Aleph occurs 42,377 times and Beth 38,218 times. In 1947 when the Qumran scrolls were found in some caves west of the Dead Sea, unbelieving scholars hoped to see vast differences between these Hebrew manuscripts written before Christ and the later manuscripts used by the church. Much to their chagrin, the Dead Sea Scrolls agreed with our Hebrew manuscripts remarkably. These are just some pointers showing how God has kept the OT pure by "his singular care and providence" (W.C. 1.8) so that His Word shall never pass away (Matt. 24:35). Rev. Angus Stewart
For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment (Deut. 10:17-18). The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth (Ps. 11:5). Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated (Rom. 9:13).
The question is, "Does God have a compassionate love, if not a redemptive love, towards all his creatures? Or does he have only hatred towards the reprobate?"
In the last issue we considered some of the issues involved in this interesting question. This time, we will look at the texts referred to (Deut. 10:17-18; Matt. 5:44-45; Acts 14:17).
In Deuteronomy 10:18, we read that God "loveth the stranger." Israel had thousands and thousands of foreigners in the nation. This began with the Egyptians who came out of Egypt with Israel. There were also Rahab, the Gibeonites, Ruth and many from various countries and nations who made Canaan their home. Some were taken there as slaves; some were attracted to the nation for various reasons. Uriah, whose wife David stole, was a Hittite. Araunah, on whose threshing floor David sacrificed to stop the angel of death, was a Jebusite. Foreigners were plentiful in Israel.
What is unique to all these foreigners who took up permanent abode in the nation was that they were so incorporated and absorbed into the nation that they and their descendants became, in fact, Jews. They were, therefore, members of the church of the old dispensation. In this way they too were saved. This was all prophetic of the coming age when God would save a church from all nations and tribes and tongues.
Is it any wonder then that Israel was commanded to be kind to these strangers? And is it any wonder then that God loved them? They were part of the church and nation that God loved. This does not mean that God loved every one of them, for He did not even love every single Israelite. God has mercy on whom He will have mercy and compassion on whom He will have compassion (Rom. 9:15). But the nation, with its many strangers, organically considered, was loved by God.
Matthew 5:44-45 and Acts 14:17— both frequently quoted as proof of God’s love towards all men—do not, in fact, mention the love of God at all. You may consult your Bible to see that this is true. To say that these texts speak of a love of God for all is to introduce something into the text that simply is not there. We must not do that.
But the argument is that we must love our enemies if we are to be children of our Father in heaven, for our Father in heaven sends rain and sunshine on His enemies.
Herman Hoeksema explains this passage well: "... it stands to reason that, in the case of loving our enemies that despitefully use us, curse us, and persecute us, love must needs be one-sided. There cannot be a bond of fellowship between the wicked and the perfect in Christ. To love our enemy, therefore, is not to flatter him, to have fellowship with him, to play games with him, and to speak sweetly to him; but rather to rebuke him, to demand that he leave his wicked way, and thus to bless him and to pray for him. It is to bestow good things upon him with the demand of true love that he leave his wicked way, walk in the light, and thus have fellowship with us. If he heed our love, which will be the case if he be of God’s elect and receive grace, he will turn from darkness into light, and our love will assume the nature of a bond of perfectness. If he despises our love, our very act of love will be to his greater damnation. But the cursing and persecution of the wicked may never tempt the child of God to live and act from the principle of hatred, to reward evil for evil, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
"As a single illustration from actual life and experience, the Lord points to the fact that ... God [sends rain] and causes His sun to shine upon the just and the unjust, thus bestowing good things upon them all, demanding that they shall employ them as means to walk in righteousness and light. For with God love is delight in perfection in the highest sense of the word. If now the wicked receive grace with rain and sunshine, they will walk in the light and have fellowship with God. If they do not receive grace, they will employ the rain and the sunshine in the service of sin and receive the greater damnation. But rain and sunshine are never grace [or love] and Matthew 5:44, 45 does not prove the contention ..." (Ready To Give An Answer*, pp. 72-73).One more quote: "God does, indeed, love His enemies, not as such, but as His children in Christ ... if rain and sunshine are a manifestation of God’s love to all men, the just and the unjust, what are floods and droughts, pestilences and earthquakes, and all the destructive forces and evils sent to all through nature, but manifestations of His hatred for all, the just and the unjust? But it is absurd to say that God hates the just, for He loves them. It is also absurd to say that God changes, now loving the just and the unjust and manifesting this love in rain and sunshine, now hating them and revealing His hatred in upheavals and destruction. Hence, the interpretation that leads to this evident absurdity is itself absurd" (Ibid., pp. 71-72).
It is all so clear; it is all so God-glorifying; it is all
so conducive to seeing God’s magnificent grace shown sovereignly to us poor sinners!
Prof.
Herman Hanko
*To
purchase the book, Ready to Give an Answer, write to our address for purchase
price.
The
lady who asked about the meaning of Christ’s cursing the fig tree, while stating that
she agreed with most of the exposition in the last issue of the News, questions one
of my conclusions: "At no time in the future will Israel be restored to her special
nation status with God and certainly not in some future earthly millennium." She
quotes Jer. 31:36 which says that Israel shall never "cease from being a nation
before me for ever" and several other passages (Isa. 41:9; Eze. 37:22; Ps. 121:4)
which she understands as speaking of a future spiritual restoration of the nation of
Israel. Her question thus concerns (chiefly) the subject of the last times or, more
specifically, the role of national Israel in the future.
The
difference can be expressed like this. (1) There are passages in the Bible that speak of
God’s casting off Israel because of their rejection of the Messiah. Jesus cursed the
fig-tree (which the questioner and I agree refers to Israel): "Let no fruit grow on
thee henceforward for ever" (Matt. 21:19). Later Christ said to the Jews, "The
kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits
thereof" (43). (2) Other Scriptures (such as Jer. 31:36) say that God chose and loves
Israel and that He will never cast her off.
How are
these to be reconciled? Some say that God will convert national Israel in a future
millennium or golden age (premillennialism and dispensationalism). This view seeks to
reconcile (1) and (2)—that Israel is cast off and that Israel will not be cast
off—by saying that Israel is not now experiencing God’s
special favor but that she will be converted in the future. The other view is that
Israel is not now and never will be restored as God’s special nation and that the OT
passages which promise that she will not be cast off refer to spiritual Israel, both Jews
and Gentiles who are elect and called.
In
support of the latter position, I remind you that Christ’s pronouncement, "Let
no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever" (Matt. 21:19), is a word of curse
upon the nation of Israel ending her role as the nation of God not just for two
thousand or more years but "for ever." But more needs to be said than
this because, as the questioner indicates, this is an important issue determining
one’s view of Israel and the future, as well as one’s interpretation of many
Scriptures and OT prophecy. However, this will have to wait for consideration in the next
few issues. Rev. Angus
Stewart