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The Comfort
of the Scriptures
A sermon
delivered by T. T. Shields
July 10, 1921
"For whatsoever things were
written aforetime were written
for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of
the Scriptures might have hope." - Romans 15:4
I
SHALL SPEAK TO YOU for a little while this morning about the use of the
Bible. It is represented in the above verse as a Book that has been Divinely
produced, with a view to effecting certain Divine purposes. It is not the
product of evolution, of the evolution of man's religious consciousness, nor is
it the result of man's blind search after God; but It is written for a special
purpose: "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our
learning."
Thus, human need has been
fully anticipated and provided for in the Scriptures of truth. It is a
remarkable fact that the Bible does not wear out. You have bought many books,
and you have read more than you have bought. Very few of them have you read the
second time, and some, perhaps, you have not been able to complete because of
their want of interest. But the Bible is as a well that is never dry, a light
that is never extinguished, a banqueting-table that is never exhausted of its
dainties; It is always ministering and never wearing out.
And
the reason is this: It has been especially prepared for our use;
the things that are written here were "written aforetime for our learning." How
reasonable it is that this should be so! How inspiring it is to read the record
of Divine grace! How beautifully, how fully, how elaborately our gracious God
furnished this earth for human habitation, so that when man was at last created
and put in the garden, every possible provision had already been made for his
every need. And even now, if I may dare to say so, we have not finished
unpacking the trunk. It was long before man learned that God had stored away a
supply of coal in the cellars of the world; and little by little, all through
the centuries, men have been discovering how fully God has provided for human
need.
After
all, that is the function of true science-not "science falsely so-called" to go
through this great house we call the world and discover its treasures which God
has laid up for those who love Him. Once we thought we were very clever when we
wired our houses and were able to talk to our neighbors without going
out-of-doors. We considered it an extraordinarily clever thing to send the
voice along a copper wire-but now we have learned that all that was provided for
long before we knew anything about it, and we are almost ashamed of our wires
now; for we have discovered that God has provided a medium through which we may
talk thousands of miles without any wires at all. And by and by, when we have
learned to articulate more clearly, we may be our own broadcasting machine and
may be able to talk from continent to continent, and who knows but from planet
to planet? Thus richly has this world been furnished, so that nothing we need
is lacking.
Would
it not be strange if He had made every provision for our need in the material
world and yet had made no provision for our spiritual requirements? The mariner
has something by which to guide his course: He has the pole star. There is also
that mysterious something which no one understands and which we call the
magnetic pole, by which the compass is directed, making it possible for men to
make their way across the trackless deep. In fact, in every realm of life God
has set up standards by which man may be guided and his life directed. I say,
how strange it would have been had He not provided for the requirements of the
soul! But just as our gracious God has furnished the world and provided for all
our material need, so in the Scripture He has stored away everything we require
for our learning in order that we may be the men and women we should be. It was
written "aforetime" by Divine order, and by Divine prescience every possible
requirement of the soul has been anticipated and provided for in this wonderful
Book.
The
Scriptures, then, were written for "our learning."
The Book is to be our Teacher; the Book is to judge us-we
are not to judge the Book. There is a world of difference between these
two attitudes of approach. Nowadays it has become common for men to attempt to
teach the Book. They turn to Genesis and go through every page of it and say,
"I do not believe that ... and I do not believe that ... and I do not believe
that." Poor blind souls they are, how little do they know that the Bible was
written for our learning! It was intended to be our Teacher, and no man will
ever get the wealth of wisdom and of grace here laid up for the believing soul
who approaches it in that critical attitude. "He that cometh to God must
believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him."
And it is equally true of the Word of God, that if you would get out of It
that which God has put into It for you, you must come to It as to the Word of
God: you must surrender your will to It; you must yield your intellect to It;
you must let It search your heart; you must sit at Its feet as at the feet of a
teacher.
That
is perfectly reasonable, it is not? It is useless for me to go to a doctor and
tell him how to heal me. If I were a doctor he would say, "Physician, heal
thyself." If you will be your own adviser, do it yourself. If you are a master
in any particular realm of knowledge, you do not go to anyone else for
instruction; you go rather to a man who has specialized in some particular
branch about which you yourself know little or nothing; and though you were a
college professor or the author of an encyclopedia, in the particular branch of
knowledge of which you are ignorant, you must go to a master and bow at his feet
and say, "What shall I do?" The Bible is the Master. It is the word of Divine
Wisdom; It tells of Him in Whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge
reside. It is, indeed, the record of Him in Whom "dwelleth all the fullness of
the Godhead bodily." And all that is written herein is written for our
instruction, that you may come to the Book as a humble pupil that you may learn
therefrom that which He would have you know. It was written "aforetime for our
learning"; but we shall learn from It only as we come to It in this
teachable attitude.
If
there are any here this morning who have never learned anything from the
Scriptures. it is because you have never gone to school to the Scriptures. The
Book is designed to teach us.
It
teaches us, first of all, about ourselves.
You will never learn what
you are until you come to the Book. Here your portrait is properly drawn. The
Bible will pay you no compliment; It will humble you in the dust. I remember
somewhere reading of a young man who went to college. He was taken into
the president's office, and the president said to him, "What do you know?" The
young man replied, "I do not know anything, sir. I came here to learn." "Well,"
said the president, "that is very good in general terms; I suppose you mean
that, but what schools have you attended'? What credits have you?" "Nothing of
which I am proud, sir," he said. "I have done such poor work that it is not
worth mentioning. I have come here to learn." "But what have you read?" he was
asked. "Oh, nothing worth speaking about." "Well, but have you read nothing at
all?" "Of course, I have read a little, but nothing to what I ought to have read
or should like to have read," was his reply. "And you know nothing?" "No, sir,
nothing worth speaking of. I supposed the college existed to teach, so I have
come to learn." The president took him by the hand and said, "Let me
congratulate you, sir. You are three years in advance of the average student.
It takes the average student three years to learn that he knows nothing."
Many
people come to the Bible with the idea that they know everything-, but if you
let It talk to you, you will discover what a great sinner you are. No one else
will ever tell you that you are a sinner. They may tell you that you are not
perfect, that there is something wrong; but the Bible will go right to the heart
of the matter and leave you stripped, standing before God as a poor, helpless,
bankrupt sinner. It was "written for our learning."
That
is the one thing you and I need to learn first of all: how sinful, how utterly
helpless we are. It is only because people do not know the nature of the
disease called sin that they try to heal themselves. They think it is just a
little human imperfection, something that can be sloughed off. But the Bible
tells you there is something wrong with the heart: "Every imagination of
the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually"-,
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked", that the will
is corrupt: "We have turned every one to his own way"; that the intellect is
against God: "The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to
the will of God, neither indeed can be"; that the memory is evil and retains
that which is evil and not good; that the "whole head is sick, and the whole
heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness
in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores." That is what the Bible
tells us, and that is what we need to learn.
Further. the Bible will teach us about others. It is more important that
we should know about ourselves. There are some people who know a great deal
about other people. I knew a man who said he was always rather suspicious of
people who were supremely concerned about other people's sins. There are people
who are expert in judging other people's sins; but the Bible will tell you what
you are, and then It will tell you that you are just one of a class, and that
all have sinned. It will cure you of a hundred evils to which men give
themselves who do not believe the Bible to be true.
Then
we shall learn from the Bible of God Himself, who He is. The Scriptures
"were written for our learning." We shall learn that He hears the cry of the
human soul, that He gave His Son to die for our sins, that He comes to the help
of the helpless, that He has compassion on the poor, that He gives energy to the
one who is being defeated. We shall know something of His holiness, something
of His mercy, His grace, His power. It was written "for our learning."
Certain people say, in effect, "It is no longer possible for us to unite on the
Bible, but we may unite on the person of Christ"! But what does anybody know of
"the Person of Christ" apart from the Bible'? This, my friends, is the record,
from Genesis to Revelation, that God has given us of His Son; and "whatsoever
things were written aforetime were written for our learning" that we might learn
of God. And you cannot learn about God anywhere else. The only God we know is
the God who is revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ, and the only record we
have of Christ is in this inspired Book, so that we are shut up for our
knowledge of ourselves and of our fellows-yes,
and I think, had I time to develop it, I could show you that you are shut up to
a knowledge of the world about you as well as to a knowledge of God, to the
Scriptures of truth. I do not believe that any man can be a true scientist-I
do not believe any man can discern the ultimate truth in any realm-unless
he approaches the study of that subject through the light of the Scriptures.
The message of God in nature is really known only to those whose minds are
illuminated by the Holy Spirit, just as truly as the message of God in the Book
can only be known by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, we know
nothing-we have no knowledge of truth in the absolute in respect to any
realm-apart from the written Word. We are dependent upon God to tell us the
truth for time and for eternity, written in this Book for our learning.
Let
us now observe why the Scriptures were written: "That we through patience and
comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." The Bible is given to us that
thereby, or therefrom, we may learn patience and receive comfort. Is there
anyone here who does not need to learn patience'? The fact that the days of our
years are three score and ten and that we are subject to the limitations of time
and space inevitably makes us impatient. It is not possible for a man to be
patient who sees only temporal things. Patience, in the true sense, is
possible only to one who gets the perspective of eternity. You can never be
patient until you learn to look at things through God's eyes. The little boy to
whom his father says, "Not today, my son, perhaps tomorrow," says, "Will
tomorrow ever come?" "Not this Christmas, my lad, perhaps next Christmas." "Next
Christmas! Why, that is an eternity!" I remember when I was a little boy I used
to feel that the day after Christmas was the nearest thing to nothing that
anything could possibly be because the next Christmas was so far away! For a
child to be told to wait is to inflict upon him a hard discipline because he
looks at things from a child's point of view.
We can
get a glimpse of this truth through the things that come to us through the
years. There are men and women here this morning saying, "When I was young I
wanted things done now-Now-NOW; but as the years multiplied, I learned how to
wait." But it is the hardest thing in the world to wait-wait-wait, and be
patient.
Why
were the Scriptures written? Why were they given to us'? That we might learn
to be patient, that we might come to look at things from the standpoint of One
who, in respect of time, is a Multimillionaire. God always has plenty of time;
He never is before His time, and He never is too late. Let me tell you what I
think is wrapped up in this simple text. Take the case of Abraham. He was a
man subject to like passions as we are, subject to all our limitations. He is
told to leave his country and go out to a land that he has never seen. He
obeys, and when he is brought to that land, God tells him that He will give him
the land but that He will give it to him in his seed, saying, "I will bless
thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven,
and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate
of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;
because thou hast obeyed My voice." God makes him a great promise, and already
the promise involves a miracle, for Abraham has reached the evening-time of his
life and has no son; and then after He has made the promise, for perhaps over
twenty years, he is kept waiting. Do you not suppose Abraham became impatient?
But he had to learn how God fulfills His own plans and purposes, and in due time
Isaac was born. And God told Abraham a strange thing in that period of
darkness-you remember the thick darkness that came upon him'?-the Lord told
Abraham that his seed should go down into Egypt, that they would be there four
hundred years, and after that He would judge that nation and bring them out into
liberty. Only when we get the Divine standpoint can we count in terms of
centuries and millenniums. Men say, "I have only a few years to live. It must
be now or never; let me have any good things I am to have now." The Lord said to
Abraham, "Be patient, and I will fulfill My plan to you by and by; by and by, My
word will be fulfilled."
We
come into Exodus, and there we see Moses eager to get at his work, just like
some young men who cannot wait for preparation. He wants to get into it at
once, "for he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his
hand would deliver them." But the Lord said to Moses, "You need a college course
that will occupy you forty years. Go back to the wilderness to school"; and He
sends Moses back forty years to get that impulsiveness corrected and to learn to
have patience to await God's time.
So I
could take you all through the Book, but I must be content with but one other
case. It is written of David: "And it came to pass, when the king sat in his
house, and the Lord had given him rest round about from all his enemies; that
the king said unto Nathan the prophet, 'See now, I dwell in an house of cedar,
but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains-I
will build God a house, and I will do it at once.’ ” And Nathan replied, "Go,
do all that is in thine heart." But when the preacher got home, the Lord talked
with him and said, "Go and tell my servant David, 'Thus saith the Lord, Shalt
thou build Me an house for Me to dwell in'? ... I will appoint a place for My
people Israel and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own,
and move no more; neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any more
as beforetime.’ ” Go and tell David that I do not want him to build Me a house:
tell him that I am going to build him a house. And then the Lord drew the
curtains, and David looked down through the centuries and said, "Who am 1, 0
Lord God? and what is my house that Thou hast brought me hitherto? And this was
yet a small thing in Thy sight, 0 Lord God; but Thou hast spoken also of Thy
servant's house for a great while to come. And is this the manner of man, O
Lord God?" And instead of praying for this house of cedar that he had wanted to
build, he began to pray that the purposes of God might be fulfilled in that
great while to come."
David,
like Abraham, learned something of God in those experiences. "Your father
Abraham rejoiced to see My day: and he saw it and was glad." It was as though
God said, "Patience, Abraham, patience. It is not Isaac of whom I speak;
certainly it is not Ishmael; but look down through the years, let the centuries
unroll and can you not see it?" At last Abraham got a glimpse of Christ, and he
knew that when God said, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth
be blessed," He was really selecting Abraham as the progenitor, after the flesh,
of the Messiah. "For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for
our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have
hope."
Can
you be patient a little while? "And comfort"-for
you cannot have patience without comfort.
The word comfort is
an old word. It did not mean, as used here, what we mean by that word today.
We think of a comforter as one who comes to allay one's grief, exercising a
tender, compassionate ministry; but the word here really comes from the same
root as the word Comforter, the Paraclete, one who comes to stand by or
alongside, "that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have
hope." We can have comfort only as God is alongside, to comfort. Go back
through the Book, begin with Eve when the promise of the Conquering Seed is
given, and come on down through the Book, and you will see that to every soul to
whom God spake, bidding them to be patient, He gave the promise that He would
stand by to gird them with His strength.
You
must think this through for yourselves. Had I time I should like to inquire of
every one of you: In what sphere of life do you need patience and comfort'? In
your family life? You will find it in the Book. In your business? You will
find it here. In any other realm of life? You will find it here. In the
national sphere? In the international realm? You will always find the example
in the Book of how God wrought patience and comfort in the hearts of His people;
and it is written there for our learning, that what God has done for others, He
can do for us, "that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might
have hope."
Some
of you have what you call a "promise-box." I confess that I do not share your
enthusiasm for them, this taking out a promise in a hop-skip-and-jump fashion.
God's Word is always true. Someone says, "My verse today was so-and-so." Well,
what did the verse do for you? "It inspired me; it was a kind of motto. I put
it up before me, I turned it over in my mind, and it helped me." And so the
Scripture was to you something objective, a sort of idea, or ideal, and had a
certain psychological reaction upon yourself. Then you say, "If the Lord
said, 'I will never leave thee,' well, I say that over to myself, and then I
believe it." Is that all'? The Bible says, "Through patience and comfort of the
Scriptures"-how
do the Scriptures work patience and comfort in the believing heart? There is
something vastly more than a psychological effect; there is a direct spiritual
action on the soul of man if we properly use our Book. As for example, when
Jesus Christ said to the leper, "I will, be thou clean," did He give him a motto
so that the leper said all day, "The Lord said, 'I will, be thou clean,' and I
will believe it"? No! The Lord Jesus Christ said, b will, be thou
clean," and that word conveyed power, and instantly he was clean. It was the
same word that commanded the worlds from nought; it was the same voice that
said. "Let there be light," and there was light; it was the same word that
said, "Let the earth bring forth," and it did as it was told. When we receive
the Scripture, are we merely to hang Scripture text mottos on the wall? Or, are
we to believe them for what they really are, the very Word of God, and to
receive instantly all that God wants us to have and all that He promises to give
us?
Think
of that great promise, "My grace is sufficient for thee." I read of one years
ago being in his study in great distress, in the face of some difficult
situation. He cried, "O Lord, let Thy grace be sufficient for me." He lifted
his eyes, and the very text he had been pleading was hanging on his wall; and he
said, by the touch of God, that one little phrase seemed to blaze like an
electric sign; and God said, "My grace is sufficient for thee." And that
preacher was able to rise from his knees with an accession of power, for God had
given him His Word. What do we need? Forgiveness of sin? Then take it; claim
it. It is conveyed; it is conferred to us through His Spirit. Do you need
sanctifying power to break the chains that bind? Expect that God will exercise
that power to break the chains and set the prisoner free. The "exceeding great
and precious promises" are given us that by these we might be able to follow
after the Divine ideal, that with these great promises before us we might aspire
to endeavor to approximate God's purposes for us-is
that what it says? No!
-"that
by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped the
corruption that is in the world through lust." Hence, patience becomes, not
something that is superimposed, but something that is wrought in the soul, as an
inherent quality of the soul; not a crutch or a prop, but a new power in the
heart. Even as Moses endured "as seeing Him who is invisible," man begins all
over again. The Scripture says, "Ye must be born again," and he is born again;
patience and comfort become a part of him; and in the measure in which he
appropriates the promises, in that measure will he grow up into Christ in all
things.
That
we "might have hope. " When hope departs, the man is dead. "We are
saved by hope." There are men and women here this morning facing certain things
tomorrow, or finding themselves in a particular condition today, and if you
believed that condition would continue indefinitely, you could not live; but you
are living in hope that the cloud will be lifted, that the winter will pass and
that the springtime will come again into your life. "We are saved by hope." I
do not know where to find hope apart from the Bible; 1, at least, apart from
that Book, am utterly hopeless, for I have tried myself so often. And I know
there is no human hand that can help me, but "through patience and comfort of
the Scriptures" I have hope that some day I shall be without fault before the
throne of God. I do not know how it can be, that is the miracle of all
miracles; but I know that it will be because it is in the Book. And I have hope
of being like Him some day.
There
are a great many people round about me for whom I have no hope. Please do not
ask me to nurse them; I do not know how to do it. There are some people who are
very difficult to help. I have no hope for them apart from God; but I know
"through patience and comfort of the Scriptures" they can be changed.
We
live in dark days for the Church. I read an article some years ago in The
Forum, written by a Chinese on the Chinese situation, in which he said that
Christianity had reached an end in China-absolutely
the end. It had done good in the past, but, like other religions, it had to
give place to other systems. Among other things, he said that this was due to
the wave of rationalism that had spread from the Chinese universities. In other
words, while there are Christian missionaries that have stood for the faith,
there are other religions that have built schools in China and have sent out men
who have taught China to reject the Word of God and, in the name of the
Christian religion, almost the very foundations of the work in China have been
destroyed by this accursed Modernism for which Christian people are foolish
enough to pay.
Everywhere you find it. Somebody comes to me and says, "I am going to a
certain city; can you tell me where I can go so that I may hear the Gospel of
salvation?" Someone asked me that of a certain American city the other day, and
I had to answer this: "I do not know; I have no doubt the Lord has His
witnesses, that there are groups of people, smaller churches perhaps, where
faithful witness is home to the truth; but so far as the outstanding Baptist
churches in that city are concerned, you had better stay away from them."
Frankly, in that city I do not know of one that is not a disseminator of poison.
Any man who says it is not dark is a blind man and has never seen the light of
God's Word. It is easy to put your head in the sand like the ostrich and
say things are progressing. Something called religion is progressing, but
the pure unadulterated Gospel of God's grace is not very generally preached.
What shall we do? "Through patience and comfort of the Scriptures" we may
have hope. I remember that a nation of slaves was born into freedom in a
day; I remember that while they sat down by the rivers of Babylon and wept when
they remembered Zion, and hung their harps in the willows, yet in the midst of
it all there came a time when the ransomed of the Lord returned; there came a
great revival, and Israel was restored. All down through the centuries
there have been dark days, but God has shone through. Someone says, "But
what if this be the darkest and the last?" Well, the darkness will be dispelled,
and "the Sun of righteousness will arise with healing in His wings." So we can
live in that glorious hope. "We are saved by hope"-hope for ourselves,
hope for the Church of Christ, hope for everybody, because the whole creation is
some day to be "delivered into the glorious liberty of the children of God." It
is all in the Scriptures. May God help us to use them more.
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