“The Lord is in His holy temple: let all the earth
keep silence before Him." Habakkuk. 2:20.
FROM EVERLASTING to everlasting our God is
the same unchanging Being, dwelling in a light to which no man may approach. He
remains the same yesterday, today, forever. The star-studded heavens never
cease to reveal His glory, and a far-flung firmament displays the marvels of
His handiwork. In wisdom, He is infinitely perfect: His justice and power
beautifully coordinated, and His love beyond any measure of man's mind. His flawless judgments "are
a mighty deep," and the multitude of His wonderful ways "past finding out." To
know Him is life eternal, and for those who are His, "at His right hand there are pleasures for evermore." He
is our God, and because we are what He has made us, beings gifted with powers
of mind and heart answering to His own. The unfolding revelations inherent in
His Being, and His purposes embracing the eternal ages, are now, and ever shall
be, the undiminishable, joyous realm of discovery for all His intelligent
creatures. As for the present, no amount of transfiguration glory; no
third-heaven vision possible to us, "whether
in the body, or out of the body," – nothing, could carry one beyond
knowing only in part, and as seeing through the haze of darkened glass. Mysteries
would yet remain in the great untouched realms of God's secret counsels. From
regions unseen and numberless, a multitude of voices might yet be heard revealing
that the half had never yet been told.
While eternal ages roll along, our
wonderful Creator will continue to unfold the wonders of foreknown purposes,
and manifest "the exceeding riches
of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." (Ephesians
2:7.) His pleasure has ever been in giving pleasure to His creatures, human,
angelic, and His predestinated divine family. Of the
eternal pleasures designed for all of these, neither tongue, nor pen can
portray more than a dim outline. The eye may scan the known universe, and faith
penetrates beyond the seen and visible into the celestial spheres, "And all this is the mere fringe of His
force, the faintest whisper we can hear of Him! Who knows then the full thunder of His power?"
Job 26:14,
Moffatt's translation. Thus it is that our God and His beloved Son
appear more and more wonderful as our spiritual perceptions become more
matured. As we progress from knowing about
God, and reach the plane of intimate
relationship where we can say with Jesus, "O righteous Father, I have known Thee," then it is that we see
God as He desires we should.
Drawn into this nearness to God through
the study of His Word, we find Him coming nearer to us, revealing Himself in
ways calculated to completely humble us before Him, and yet lifting us upward
into the heights of His sanctuary where His presence is felt most manifest, and
where every power of response we possess is affected by His loveliness, goodness,
and grace. Here the prayer becomes intensely fervent, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." Here
it is that we learn best how little we are, and how little is yet seen of the
possible unfolding of an inexhaustible God through endless ages to come.
But how profitable is this realization of
present limitations! How sublime the reverence for God it creates within the
heart! This is the condition of heart most pleasing to God, and this is the
heart into which He will bring "the
spirit of wisdom and knowledge of Him" (Ephesians 1:7). Thus from
grace to grace, from knowledge to knowledge we follow on to know the Lord,
finding each fresh revelation of His grace an inspiration to "dwell in the house of the Lord all the
days of our life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His tabernacle"
(Psalm. 27:4).
At the beginning of our Christian
experience we may have thought that the sense of mystery in connection with
spiritual knowledge would pass away as we grew older. At the beginning there
were many things we could not understand: but, we thought, I shall understand
all presently. How different has been the real influence of advancing spiritual
knowledge! If the Lord has called us, with advancing years, still further into
His marvelous light; if, as He gave to Peter on the transfiguration mount, a
new and more magnificent view of the person of Christ and the relation of the
law and the prophets to Christ, He has also given us a brighter and fuller
vision of Jesus; it is therefore no more true of us than it was of Peter, that
all sense of mystery has passed away under the brighter vision of the truth. With the marvelous light has come to us, as to
him, the marvelous cloud, the more overwhelming sense of the infiniteness of
God; of the tremendousness of the infinite purposes; of the impossibility of
comprehending all that God is, and all that God means.
Think
not that spiritual knowledge means the reduction of the infinite truths of God
to the easy and familiar terms of every-day life. Spiritual knowledge means to
be drawn step by step into the marvelous light of the glory of God, and in
that light to realize the infiniteness of truth, till a man sinks down before
his God and worships with holy fear. Though each step in this light unfolds
more that makes us feel how little we are, and how vast Christ is, we know that
here, and only here, have we found the peace the world can neither give nor
take away. 'Though pressed to earth by
the weight of truth we cannot grasp, the consciousness of having reached a nobler life burns within us, and our soul testifies
to Christ, 'Lord, it is good to be here.'"
Is this our experience? Do we want it to
be so? We should so desire it, for it represents nearness to the infinite Being
whom we are graciously permitted to call our
Father. It is good to be here! It is good to be here for the humbling of
our spirits. Job was here when, out of his further discovery of God he
confessed, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye sees You.
Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:5, 6). The
holy Prophet was here when his intimate vision of the Lord brought from his
lips the cry, "Woe is me! For I am
undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts"
(Isaiah 6:5). The Apostle Paul was standing here as he reviewed the marvelous
sweep of the divine purposes for Jew and Gentile, and under the inspirational
influences of that great, magnificent spectacle of the stately steppings of our
God, his pen edited words so expressive of his admiration and joy: "O the depth of the riches both of the
wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and. His ways
past finding out. For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His
counselor?" - Rom.
Blessed indeed, are those pure in heart that
thus see God as did Job, Isaiah, and Paul. Such know how "the reverence of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
They know that walking reverently before the Lord is the humbling way, but the
most blessed way. The way by which the heart realizes most clearly that only by
walking with God and dwelling in the Light of His face can transformation and
translation into the Kingdom of His dear Son become a completed experience. "He has shown you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and
to walk humbly before your God" (Micah 6:8).
-
J. J. Blackburn.
“Give thanks to the LORD, call on
His Name; make known among the nations what He has done. Sing to Him, sing praise to Him; tell of all
His wonderful acts. Glory in His Holy Name; let the hearts of those who seek
the LORD rejoice.”
Psalm 105:1-3