Gooding, David: 19 - Contending for the Faith

Gentlemen, the organizers of this retreat have a very high estimate of your Christian grace, for I have permission from the top brass downwards to once more encroach upon your question time this morning in order to complete our studies as best we can today. What I am proposing, therefore, now is to take two further periods of some thirty five or forty minutes each. That will encroach severely, but on the other hand, be it said that we didn't quite start at nine o'clock. When we broke off, we were making attempts to understand the Philistines, to perceive what is the significance of the description that is constantly given to them, the uncircumcised Philistine. And we're, for that purpose, we consulted Jeremiah, who shows us that the true meaning of circumcision, that is the symbolic meaning of circumcision, is to have no confidence in the flesh, in man and his puny efforts. Thankful for all that God has given us by way of wisdom, riches, and strength, to use them gratefully to their maximum potential, but always to maintain our confidence solely in God. The Philistines, being uncircumcised, are typically gentile and unregenerate men who put their confidence in the flesh. You will therefore find in the histories of them in the Old Testament, they are men who, when confronted with the presence of supernatural power of God, feel distinctly uncomfortable. They try to discover its secret, not that they too might come into the enjoyment of the supernatural power of God, but so that they might control it and then destroy it. Uh, let me remind you, therefore, of some of the stories about Philistines in the book of Samuel. I understand that many of you are experts in that book, and I shall need only to remind you of these things. When Israel came into serious moral and spiritual decline under Eli the priest and his sons, they made the opposite mistake of treating the Ark of God as though it were some kind of magic. Supernatural power is not magic. So when they were being defeated by the Philistines because of their evil ways, they thought to bring the Ark of the Lord to the battle, that it might save them. They themselves had descended to the point where they viewed the Ark and the rituals of the tabernacle as so much magic. God had to disabuse their mind and allow the Ark to fall into the hands of the Philistines. Among the Philistines, however, God had to take the opposite tack. When the ark first came into the battle lines, the Philistines were afraid. Gods have come among them, they said. And then typically Philistine, nonetheless, let us quit ourselves like men, they said, do our best as men against the threat of this God. When God delivered the ark into their hands, they installed it in their temple. Now God had to teach the Philistines the reality of his person and the reality of supernatural, genuine supernatural power. And they came the next morning to their temple, old Dagon lay flat on his face. Then the Philistines did a typically Philistine and idolatrous thing. They put their wits to the problem, and they s- came up with the answer that if your god falls down flat on his face, the thing to do is to use your brawn and power to put him back again. So, having decided it with the wisdom given to them, they exerted all the power they possessed and put their god back on his perch. Gods really shouldn't fall down, but when they do, man has to do something to restore them. They came the next morning, and Dagon was not only, uh, fallen down, his head was cut off and his hands were cut off. So much for Dagon's brains and Dagon's brawn. That was a bigger problem. I don't know how longer it, much longer it took them to solve it with their wit. But they decided that if your god loses his head and loses his arms, we'll say, well, you better do your best with the wit given to you and your power to restore the god's brains and to restore his power. So they put his head on again and his hands on again, and then they heaved a good Philistine heave and put their god back on his perch. As you perceive, gentlemen, the Philistine god was but an idealization of the Philistines' own brains and brawn. There is, of course, a danger to man, isn't there? Even in the highest flights of this noble science of physics and chemistry. Godly Christ- godly scientists, God-fearing scientists like Kepler went about their investigations of the universe not in order to control the universe, but to worship its makeup. They stood in awe of the universe because they saw in it the creation of the Creator and the wonder of the mind of the power of the Creator expressed in the universe. And the discoveries of, of a Kepler led Kepler to profound worship of God. It should be so, gentlemen, every day of the week in our physics laboratories, in our chemistry institutions. As men discover more and more of the way the universe works, it ought to lead to profounder worship and admiration and awe at the sheer wonder of the divine handiwork in nature. So often it doesn't do that. You'll say ever since the Garden of Eden, man has been tempted to a wrong attitude to the universe around him. You may eat of every tree, said God, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat. Knowledge of good and evil is the knowledge of everything there is. And you cannot attain to the knowledge of everything there is truly without God. But man was tempted to try the knowledge of good and evil without God, and independence of God, that he might be as God and control the thing. And we have to beware of the dangers of the modern attitude to our universe, even in our, uh, uh, re- scientific researchers, lest it turn to a mere technology, the aim of which is to get the secrets of nature so you might control nature. Then ultimately, not only to control nature and the vast mysteries of the universe, but to control their power with no longer need for any god out there at all. That is a typically Philistine attitude. In addition to that, however, another danger to the Phil- to the Israelites came from the Philistines. They were latecomers. They arrived after Israel arrived. Well, let me rephrase that. There was an earlier invasion of Philistines. As you know from the book of Genesis, there were Philistines established in cities while Abram was still a nomad. But there was a later phase of the invasion of Pa- uh, of Canaan by Philistines that came after the Israelites had arrived under Joshua. Philistines were not Semitic. They weren't Hamitic either. They were Indo-European people, as far as we can make out. Some people say nowadays they came from, uh, Cappadocia. The Septuagint translation, uh, hazarded that guess. Modern research tends to say that they came perhaps from Crete. They may even have been part of the Minoan civilization that flourished on that island in early times. When they moved southeast, they became a pest to the Egyptians. The sea peoples, they were called, because they came by sea. The Philistines managed to, uh, the Egyptians managed to exclude them. They settled in the seaboard southwest of Canaan, gaining a foothold, a foothold on the coast. But little by little, they began to infiltrate Israel. You will not read in those early days of terrible battles and shedding of blood. The Philistines proceeded by infiltrating and gradually pushing further and further east and north. Until they became a threat to Israel. They managed at one stage under Saul to penetrate right across the country to Shiloh and Mount Gilboa itself, it also became an area for the Philistine armies, uh, to maneuver and fight in. It is a very interesting thing that as a result of it, in later centuries, other nations came to call Israel, the land of Israel, Palestine, the country of the Philistines. Be careful, gentlemen, if you go to Israel or are talking to modern Israelis, you don't refer to their land any longer as Palestine, else they will correct you, sometimes not too politely. Palestine means the land of the Philistines. And the Israeli will tell you it was never meant to be that. It was the land given by God to Israel. This is Israel, not Palestine. Uh, for many centuries, the other nations, uh, thought that that whole country of Israel was in fact the land of the Philistines. They didn't see any difference between Philistines and Israelites. Our considerations this morning have reminded us of the basic difference. The Israelites were circumcised partly because of they had the sign of the covenant of men descended from Abraham, God's chosen people, witnesses to the true God of heaven. They were circumcised too, and it should have meant that they were men who had no confidence in the flesh. Their confidence was in the living God. It was a very big danger when Philistines, who had no part in that covenant and were uncircumcised in all its meanings, so infiltrated the Israelites that, uh, the two groups became indistinguishable to all onlookers. You will observe- have observed a similar danger in Christendom, would you not? True Christianity preaches at the very outset not religion, but regeneration. Not man's works, but God's spirit. Not salvation by man's own effort, but salvation by the supernatural power of God, and a Christian life that is not energized simply by man's willpower, but a Christian life that is achieved by the leading of the Spirit of God. It stands for a revealed religion, that the Bible is not merely the product of a human intelligence. It is the inspired revealed word of God. Our Christendom has long since been infiltrated by Philistines, gentlemen. So the world looking on outside doesn't know the difference. True got the true gospel was very early on corrupted into a mere religion of man's works, and in these later times corrupted by the infiltration of unregenerate intellects that reduce the Bible to the mere effort of man to understand God. It was therefore... a positively good thing, wasn't it? If I may speak so impertinently of the, uh, uh, uh, uh, of the Lord. It was an understandable tactic. When he raised up Samson to begin to deliver his people from the Philistines. Notice the sobriety of that restrained language. The angel told Manoah, Samson's mother, that he would raise him up, and he should begin to deliver his people to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. Thirteen verse five. You note the verb begin. God wasn't expecting too much of Samson, apparently. He certainly didn't complete it, did he? Indeed, completing of the deliverance of Israel from the Philistines was not even accomplished by Saul, who was defeated by them. It was finally achieved only by David. There is a very real sense in which Samson began to deliver God's people in spite of all his failings, because he was moved by the Spirit of God, and exhibited the reality of the supernatural power of God. And if his exploits were not always of permanent benefit, some of them of little worth, that he did make that distinction between the true God and the gods of the Philistines, between man's confidence in his own flesh in the realm of science and religion, and true faith in the living God and his supernatural revelation and his supernatural power. Samson was a walking exhibition of the difference between. The Philistines didn't like it. They were puzzled, as unregenerate men always are, in the presence of supernatural power. Decidedly uncomfortable. They didn't rest until they had wormed out of him his secret, not in order to benefit from that supernatural power themselves, but first to control it and then to destroy it. Though Samson was, in one sense, such an abject failure, so that in the end he labored in the prison for the Philistines. And the Philistines came round and said, now see what this supernatural power amounts to. Our God has delivered us from the hands of Samson. Our God, after all, can control these funny phenomena that were exhibited themselves in Samson. There's nothing to fear in this apparently supernatural power. We have, in fact, overcome it. Our God is superior to his God. Oh, as far as Samson's work went, Samson miserably failed, brought the Philistines to the point where they thought they had explained away and defeated and controlled this supernatural power. God, in his mercy, stepped in. When Samson's hair began to grow again, though he never came out of the prison, his death in defeat and captivity was another exhibition of the reality of the supernatural power of God. Perhaps for the moment and in the situation, that was enough. It was the first stage in a battle that began to deliver Israel by pointing out very vividly the distinction between Philistineism and true faith in the living God. The first phase in the battle that should bring ultimate victory much later in history, in the time of David. Gentlemen, not all claims to supernatural power in Christendom at the moment are genuine, are they? There is much counterfeit, much foolish excitement that masquerades as the spirit of God, much that could even be darker and sinister. Many a situation where you must stroke your beard and wonder whether this is of God, whether it's a mere psychological phenomenon, or whether it comes from more serious sources. You will notice that, as in the case of Samuel, uh, Samson, interpretations differ as to what he did and its value. So in this whole area, true Christian people still come to different assessments. In all our assessing, gentlemen, let us be careful of one danger, that pseudo manifestations of supernatural power. Do not drive us to the other extreme of denying completely and in toto all supernatural power. We are not to be anti-supernaturalists, are we, gentlemen? The false claims of supernatural power in healings that are made, made these days in their thousands, and have nothing to do with the power of God at all. That can be forms of hypnotism, psychological manipulation, and even worse, should not drive us to a position where we no longer believe that God would he- heal by his supernatural grace, surely. For when you come to that position, gentlemen, you might cease your praying altogether and rely simply on medical skill in every case. The maintenance of the distinction of mere human religion and the realities of supernatural power at the level of salvation and regeneration. This is absolutely fundamental. Praise God for everything that shows mere religious but unregenerate Christendom that they haven't got the real thing, that there is a power of God. Only the power of God can produce regeneration in the believer or lead to true Christian living. Praise God. I say for e- every exhibition that genuinely insists on and makes that difference. Praise God for men whose lives may be surrounded by what we might feel were disobedience after disobedience and the breaking of God's laws, whether in things ecclesiastical or otherwise, who nevertheless have been genuine men of faith, like Samson was, whom God used in spite of disobedience, and used mightily by his spirit, for they were genuine men of faith, and in their ministry there were examples and instances of God's gracious supernatural power in the regeneration of multitudes, and indeed in miracles of his providence in their lives. There are many lessons to learn from Samson, surely. And we turn to what was the greatest element in his preparation. We have been thinking together, haven't we, of many aspects of these captivities, the need to reconnoiter the enemy, the need to adopt the right tactics, and the need for deliverers to be qualified. And we come now to notice the qualifications of Samson. The major qualification of Samson was in his parents. You're wise to choose the best parents you can, gentlemen. Choose Godly parents. Strongly to be advised. What a preparation Samson was given in the great spiritual exercises of his mother and father. You'll see the angel of the Lord appeared. There is no doubt from the subsequent happening who the angel of the Lord was. Announced the birth of the child, required of the mother that she abstain from this and that because her child was to be a Nazarite from the womb. Led on by the wonder of this appearance, they asked him his name. He said, why do you ask my name? For it is wonderful, mysterious, inscrutable. They brought him a sacrifice. And as the sacrifice burned, the angel of the Lord ascended in the smoke of the offering to heaven. For the moment they were terror struck, for they realized who it was they had seen. They had seen God face to face. Said the father, we shall die. Said the mother, no, with greater spiritual desertment. The Lord had intended to kill us. He would not have accepted our sacrifice today. And they stood there in all that wonder and awe that comes over the human heart and spirit when they come face to face with the Lord of glory. Don't say it was a type. There wasn't even a prototype of the Lord of Glory. It was the Lord of Glory himself. And what is his name? Old gentleman, God forbid we ever get beyond the stage, when that glorious name is a mystery and a wonder. They don't try to reduce the Lord of Glory to our mere human categories and do the Philistine on him. What is his name? But the high mysteries of his name an angel's grasp transcend. The Father only, glorious claim, the Son can comprehend. No one knoweth the Son, save the Father. All the mystery of the story, we know it at a later stage, when the Son came down, not merely came down to our earth, but became in common, and in him we have seen and do see the very face of God. How does the looking upon that face not destroy us completely? Us little finite worms of the dust. Yet and yet, if God had meant to destroy us in all our sinfulness and weakness and folly, would he have accepted us? Then you say it wasn't our sacrifice, it was his. Tell me and describe to me adequately, if you can, the wonder of the men that had seen him hang, nailed hand and foot at Calvary. Tell me the wonder with which they woke up to the fact that the man that slept in their boat was God incarnate. The wonder of seeing that man, flesh and bone, rise from Mount Olivet and ascend into the glory. Not an exhibition of heavenly fireworks, but the wonder of it. Send in the very smoke of the sacrifice. Our acceptance with God. Gentlemen, what is our experience of religion worth? If we do not from time to time look upon the very face of God in Christ and are overawed by the reality of the wonder of the man Christ Jesus who walked on earth, died for us at Calvary. The great mystery of his person, and that even greater wonder and mystery, who shall ever get to the end of explaining it? But for our sakes, he offered himself and ascended to God at God's right hand, the basis of our acceptance with God. I tell you now, in all your meetings of the church, and in all your preaching of the gospel, and in your all your exposition of his word. You'll not get that across by mere human ability, by mere human emotion. That's a Philistine attitude. We shall only get this across when the Holy Spirit of God himself moves in the gifts he has given, moves in the heart of the sinner, moves in the heart of the saints, and makes them know and feel the wonder, the mystery, the supernatural power of the work of the risen Lord in our life. When I was a boy, I had men. I thank God for their memory. They were not perfect any more than anybody else. As I have grown older, with due respect, I think some of their doctrines were a bit odd. But this they taught me, that in the church of God, if the people of God fail to wait upon the Spirit of God, you'll get very little way forward. When they heard that I was going preaching at conferences, it astounded them, and not a little alarmed them. Shaking their finger before me, they said, now look here, young man, it's not enough for you to have a word from the Lord today. Don't you realize you must have the word from the Lord? And they met in dependence upon God, not looking to men, but expecting the risen Lord by his spirit to reveal himself to his people in the meetings of the church. Gentlemen, if we lose that level of supernaturalism in our assemblies, we shall return inevitably to mere Philistine religion. Thank God for a generation past that knew this, whatever else were their faults. God save us in our generation from forgetting what was the secret of their progress and power in the things of the Lord. Perhaps then we ought to break off here our second session.