The Hawks Are Gathered

Seek and read from the book of the LORD:  Not one of these shall be missing; none shall be without her mate.  For the mouth of the LORD has commanded, and his Spirit has gathered them. -- Isaiah 34:16

The context of Isaiah 34 appears to be the certainty of God’s wrath falling upon the descendants of Esau in retaliation for Edom’s animosity and frequent treachery toward their Semite cousins in Israel.  Judgment will fall and the land of Edom will be turned over to the various wild beasts and birds for there will be no human inhabitants to trouble or disturb those creatures. 

Looking at verse 16 from this perspective, we see that the Spirit of God will gather all those creatures to overrun and inhabit the desolated territory.  There are numerous prophecies alluding to this so a person can go through the Scriptures and see that each creature listed will indeed be present with its mate, ready to multiply in the absence of human dwellers. 

Or, consider the birds and beasts as manifestations of the prophetic word.  We can find these words in the “book of the LORD”.  None of God’s words will fall to the ground to be lost or fail.  Each word He has spoken will have its “mate” – its fulfillment.  The Holy Spirit works to gather those words into the Holy Scripture – so that we may trust it to be truly the word of God.  But He also works to bring about the complement, to cause the word to come to pass. 

If an owl or a hawk, a porcupine or a hyena is used by the Spirit to fulfill and complete the word of God, are we thinking too highly of ourselves and those around us if we think that He is working in us to build the kingdom, to accomplish His will and to live out His truth in this world?  The Word is alive in His people. 

An owl, being a creature of instinct, will tend to follow the opening that is before it apart from hesitation caused by caution.  We, as creatures of intellect, imagination, and will, made in the image and likeness of God, may choose to rebel against the Spirit’s urgings.  Kind of a sad thought, isn’t it?  I suspect there are many, unaware of the Spirit’s work among them, thinking to do their own will, who end up furthering the purposes of a God they disdain.  Origen says that Christ was put on the Cross by God, by man, and by the devil, but the intentions were vastly different. 

Whether we are aware of it or not, the Lord has called to us and spoken to us about our destiny, in Scripture, in circumstances, and from the lips of those around us.  If we are willing to follow Him, not one of those words will be missing from our lives and each will be present with its fulfillment. 

The Letter

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. - John 5:39-40

Charles Spurgeon, consistent with Origen's view of Scripture, gives us a meditation upon this passage:

Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega of the Bible. He is the constant theme of its sacred pages; from first to last they testify of him. At the creation we at once discern him as one of the sacred Trinity; we catch a glimpse of him in the promise of the woman’s seed; we see him typified in the ark of Noah; we walk with Abraham, as he sees Messiah’s day; we dwell in the tents of Isaac and Jacob, feeding upon the gracious promise; we hear the venerable Israel talking of Shiloh; and in the numerous types of the law, we find the Redeemer abundantly foreshadowed. Prophets and kings, priests and preachers, all look one way-they all stand as the cherubs did over the ark, desiring to look within, and to read the mystery of God’s great propitiation.  

Still more manifestly in the New Testament we find our Lord the one pervading subject. It is not an ingot here and there, or dust of gold thinly scattered, but here you stand upon a solid floor of gold; for the whole substance of the New Testament is Jesus crucified, and even its closing sentence is bejewelled with the Redeemer’s name.  

We should always read Scripture in this light; we should consider the word to be as a mirror into which Christ looks down from heaven; and then we, looking into it, see his face reflected as in a glass-darkly, it is true, but still in such a way as to be a blessed preparation for seeing him as we shall see him face to face. This volume contains Jesus Christ’s letters to us, perfumed by his love.  

These pages are the garments of our King, and they all smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia. Scripture is the royal chariot in which Jesus rides, and it is paved with love for the daughters of Jerusalem. The Scriptures are the swaddling bands of the holy child Jesus; unroll them and you find your Saviour. The quintessence of the word of God is Christ.

The scribes and the experts in the law in the days of Jesus' ministry on the earth had the groomsman's coat but not the Groom.  It may be that is the case with many today who have their texts and their prooftexts and their pretexts, wielding the letter like a hammer while turning from the Spirit who gives life to both Word and worshipper. 

I confess it has too often been the case with me that my knowledge outran my wisdom.  Or, perhaps, as Paul says of some of his Jewish brothers in Romans 10:2, my zeal was not sufficiently tempered by knowledge of the Scripture's purpose. 

Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:5-6).

It's Always Personal

And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.   For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. – 2 Peter 1:19-21

I was raised in a good old Southern Baptist country church.  The Bible was considered the Word of God, and as having what is technically called “full verbal plenary inspiration”.  If the King James Version was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it was good enough for us.  I learned the Scripture as a kid the same way that I learned history, the state and federal constitutions in school.  I don’t ever recall being an atheist or even agnostic with regard to the existence of some kind of spiritual reality.  Materialism made no sense to me, and the first time I read about the Big Bang, I immediately reconciled it to the Bible and equated it to God speaking creation into existence. 

What I wasn’t sure of for a long time was Christianity, especially Christianity as it had been preached, taught, understood, and practiced by my good, church-going hillbilly family, friends, and neighbors.  My friends and I would sit around drinking beer and smoking dope talking about Jesus as someone worthy of respect and emulation while rejecting the pale, frowning, foreboding image presented by our elders.  I changed one day as I was sitting at the little, round kitchen table we had in our trailer where I was reading “A Chapter Not Strictly Necessary” in Miracles.  I started going to church. 

Within a few months, I was not only attending church three times a week, I was teaching.  Generally, I was teaching from a Sunday School quarterly, and, other than adding my own rhetoric flourishes, metaphors, and illustrative stories, I stuck to the doctrinal points in the lesson.  Where I would get into trouble was in talking to people off the cuff over lunch.  I have heard many times the King James Version of verse 20 above:  Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.  Often it was said this way, “Yes, but remember, there are no private interpretations.”    

 What the speaker meant is that a) you have to be careful about applying a verse to a specific situation in the world – something with which I agree, or b) trying to understand Scripture in a way not perfectly consistent with the generally accepted understanding and application is a bad idea – something with which I disagree.  Even if I am wrong, this particular verse does not endorse that view.  What Peter is saying is that Scripture is not something made up by a person to serve that person’s ends, like the Book of Mormon or the Koran.  With apologies to any Mormons or Muslims that might happen to read this, that’s what I believe else I would be a Mormon or Muslim.  Right? 

As far as I can tell, revelation is always personal and individual.  By that, I do not mean to imply that I disagree with any basic doctrine of Christianity or that I think there is any way of salvation apart from the Cross.  If God doesn’t speak to us personally, we do not know God.  If God speaks only to the congregation and the revelation is only corporate then I do not see how an individual experiences salvation apart from being initiated as a member of the corporate body.  Indeed, this seems to be what is taught by some churches.  I don’t know that any denomination puts it exactly like that, but such a statement would be consistent with their practices.      

To me Scripture is a carrier of revelation.  I’ve told the story before of how I had that experience of connecting to Christ and asked my wife to pick up a new Bible for me.  The one she bought was a KJV like my old one, but more compact, about 4” by 6”, and no red letters or references.  When I started reading it, I was astounded that someone had the audacity to change the Bible.  I was so convinced that it was different that I dug out my old one to compare it.  The difference in the revelation was like night and day.  But the words were the same. 

I can read the same verse that I read ten years ago, even a passage that I studied in depth or taught on, and, today, I will find a whole new level of meaning and understanding it.  And I will sit here and say, Now I see what it really means.  Ten years from now, if I should still be living for some strange reason, I will likely read it, see something new, and say the same thing.  It is like what Jeremiah says in Lamentations 3:21-23 -- But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:  The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

God’s revealing of Himself is a continual – we might even want to say an evolving process.  In any long-term relationship with real friends or with a spouse, with children and parents, there is always this kind of newness and discovery.  If that isn’t there, the relationship can falter and breakdown.  It doesn’t mean that a person needs to get a divorce or abandon a friend or never call home, but it does mean there is less joy and meaning in the relationship.  We may remain loyal and faithful out of decency or a memory of what once existed. 

With us as imperfect people the loss of interest in a bond of love can usually be blamed on both parties to a greater or lesser extent.  When the bond is between us and our Father, I’m pretty sure the fault lies all on my side.  It is important for us to continue to pursue God and never accept the rigid view that knowing all the doctrines of the church means knowing all there is to know about Christ. 

Inspiration and Scripture

All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable.  This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet:   “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” – Matthew 13:34-35

I, somewhat facetiously, said a day or two ago that we know it is God and not goddess because He lays out the rules plainly.  That’s true enough about the Law.  Do this and you will live.  Do that, and it is death.  Yet life has both its pedestrian, masculine side and its exotic, mysterious, feminine side.  When it comes to what we are to be rather than only what we must do, we find the Lord talking about seeds and weeds and bread and vines. 

That’s the way that it works.  The Bible is not informational, certainly not solely informational.  It is not a book of facts or a flight schedule that tells us which plane to board for a trip to heaven.  That kind of thinking leads to the misunderstandings of extreme fundamentalism, of eschatological date-setting, of accusations of heresy over how long it took God to create the cosmos.  Has the sun indeed set on the Sixth?

I think the Bible is inspired literature.  I think the writers wrote, sometimes, lists of names because they were scribes and that is what scribes did.  I think Paul wrote greetings, salutations, and personal details in his Epistles because an epistle is a letter to one’s friends or potential friends.  Romans is possibly the richest Epistle in terms of doctrine but can we say it is more inspired than the simple little note Paul dashed off to Philemon about a useless runaway slave named Onesimus*? 

When a person becomes a Christian, he or she is baptized in symbolic death and resurrection.  God does not pull a man from the game and send in an angel to replace him.  Instead, by His Spirit, Christ comes to dwell in the man, in that flesh, though it be abused and wounded, even crippled and scarred.  We could all change our names to Christopher, for we are all Christ-bearers.  God makes new men out of old by inspiration in the fullest sense of the word.  As He breathed into red clay the Breath of Life, and Adam became a living soul, so the Holy Breath sanctifies the flawed and weak material bodies of those who will trust Him today.  We become sanctuaries of the Living God.

Are we surprised, then, that He took what is, in places, fairly prosaic literature and inspires it that His Spirit might make of it sacred Scripture?  It seems like something God would do.  He speaks to us through and by the limitations, the prejudices, and the flaws of those who wrote.  Like us they were but jars of clay, and, also like us, jars filled with an unimaginable treasure.  Whatever was in their minds as the pen moved, whatever the conditions that motivated them, whatever the context, though it may help us in understanding the language, does not limit the meaning. 

*For those who might not know, Paul has a little fun with the name Onesimus which means, literally, useful.  See verse 11 -- Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.