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June 1927
T h e
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nature. Whatever men reason or dream, He was as pure humanly as divinely; and this may serve to show us the all-importance of holding fast what men call orthodoxy as to His Person. I shall yield to none in jealousy for it, and loyally maintain that it is of the substance and essence of the faith of God’s elect that we should confess the im maculate purity of His humanity, just as much as the real ity of His assumption of our nature. Assuredly He did take the proper manhood of His mother, but He never took manhood in the state of His mother, but as the body prepared for Him by the Holy Ghost; who expelled every taint of otherwise transmitted evil. In His mother that nature was under the taint of sin. She was fallen, as well as others naturally begotten and born in Adam’s line. In Him, it was not so; and in order that it might not be so, we learn in God’s Word that He was not begotten in a merely natural generation, which would have perpetuated the corruption of the nature and have linked Jesus with the fall; but by the power of the Holy Ghost He and He W HO has not been perplexed over the strange dis pensation of affairs in this worlds-the prosperity of the wicked and the afflictions of the saints? The very existence of these conditions should convinc ingly prove to the mind of those who believe in a Supreme Being that there must be a day in which all these entangle ments of providence shall be unraveled and men called to strict account for their abuse of God’s mercies. The only present answer we have to these enigmas of life is the assurances of the Word of God. The problem of the prosperity of the wicked is dwelt upon to great extent in the Psalms, and to some of these references we shall turn in odr study. I. T h e W icked A re at P resent U nder G od ’ s W rath “God is angry with the wicked every day” (Psa. 7 :11). Here is assurance that God is not insensible to these con ditions. Not only does He detest their sin, but there is not an hour but that His anger is aroused against those who despise and trifle with His laws. The sinner has no safe days, for he knows not what moment God’s wrath may bring him some awful affliction, or cut him off. God’s sword is being daily sharpened upon the revolving stone of their daily wickedness. "‘He will whet His sword; He hath bent His bow” (v. 12). The aim is taken, the arrow is fitted to the string. If He sees fit to tarry, remember His arrows never miss the mark. The Greek proverb has i t : “The mill of God grinds late, but grinds to powder.” II. T hey A re A lready H elpless A gainst S piritual E nem ies Though sinners “boast themselves in the multitude of their riches, none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give God a ransom for him; that he should live forever and not see corruption ; For he seeth'that wise men die." (Psa. 49:6-9). How utterly helpless are these people when even their most loved companions break in health and get into the chill grasp of death! With all their riches they cannot
alone was born of a woman without a human father. Con sequently, as the Son was necessarily pure, as pure as the Father in His' own proper divine nature, so also in the human nature which He received from His mother. Both the divine and the human were found forever afterward joined in the one and the same Person—The Word made flesh. It is well to pause and ask ourselves—How do we understand this transcendent mystery of Godliness;; the union of deity and humanity; “God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3 :16) ? It will not avail me anything to say that I believe there is a God; “the devils also believe, and tremble” (Jas. 2:19). I must believe in Him; own Him; obey Him. All creation—demons, bodies and souls of men, the grave, winds and waves, have yielded enforced hom age. I may yield in His grace, but if not, let me remember that as they, cried before Joseph, “Bow the knee,” so at the name of Jesus every knee must shortly bow (cf. Gen. 41:43 ; Phil. 2:10). rescue their comrades nor themselves.- Not a thing can they buy from the grave. Not a word of comfort have they for them, and all they can do is to cheat the worms by embalming their bodies or enshrining them in metal coffins. III. T hey A re N ot S ecure B ecause G od R ema ins S ilent Because God has kept silent" while the wicked carried out their plans, they have thought “that He was alto gether such an one as themselves,” but, says God, “I will reprove thee, and set things in order before thine eyes. Now .Consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces;, and there is none to deliver” (Psa. .50:21, 22). The silence of God is the great problem to us all. O, why does His longsuffering reign? Why are there so few bolts of fire hurled from heaven to halt the wicked? The sinner scoffs and says it is because there is no God, or He is like himself—a sinner. God cares not how men get plunder so long as they do a little good with some of it. But let us not imagine that because God, from our viewpoint, seems for the time to be dumb, that He ;is either deaf or blind. The day is surely coming when we will see all things “set in order.” Before the very eyes of the boasting sinner will be found his every sin, item by item, classified and arranged. God’s child, on the other hand, may be comforted by the fact that while his sins have been forever cast behind God’s back, He who takes notice of sparrows and numbers the very hairs of our heads lets no act of love done in Christ’s name escape His notice or slip His memory, but places it to our accounts for the great rewarding day. The wicked say: “The Lord shall not see” (Psa. 94: 7), but God answers, “He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see? . . . The Lord knoweth the thoughts o f men” (vs. 9-11). The Author of our senses is not senseless—either to the sins of His enemies or the sorrows of His saints.
gfe 'éà The Prosperity of the W icked B y K. L. B.
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