Preached by The Rev. Donald MacLean, Portree, retiring Moderator, at Glasgow, May, 1959.
In the latter part of this Chapter, the apostle is referring to the two dispensations. The Old Testament dispensation which was inaugurated in a special way at Mount Sinai continued in the Church of God until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, when it was abolished and the New Testament dispensation introduced as that which is to continue to the end of time, when Christ will come again to judge the world in righteousness, “justice to give each one.” He is pointing out to the Hebrews the many great and precious privileges they enjoy under this new dispensation, while stressing at the same time their great need of grace to serve God in an acceptable way. Although the dispensation changed, the nature and character of God did not change, and grace was indispensably necessary to render acceptable service to the One Who is holy and Who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. This latter dispensation he calls “the kingdom which cannot be moved,” indicating that, unlike the old dispensation, it was not to be changed and, certain it is, that men have no authority from God to make changes in it although they do so in our day and generation.
We shall endeavour, as enabled, to remark on four things which are brought before us in these words:—Firstly, the Kingdom which is referred to here. The kingdom of God is a kingdom which is in this world, though it is not of the world. It is a kingdom of which God is the Author and Sustainer, and in which His people are to be saved with an everlasting salvation, being kept by the power of God through faith unto the inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled and which shall never fade away. Secondly, the peculiar characteristic of this kingdom stressed by the apostle—that it cannot be moved. In a day such as ours when everything, both in church and state, is in a condition of flux, when ways of life, ruling powers and even nations are changing, it is of great importance to note that this is a kingdom which cannot be moved. Thirdly, those who have received this kingdom and are thereby members of it. Fourthly, the spirit that such are called upon to exercise in their service to the King of this kingdom. This he describes as the spirit of reverence and godly fear and adds with regard to that, the solemn and searching reason that “our God is a consuming fire.” The revelation of God on mount Sion is that of holiness as surely as the revelation of God on mount Sinai. He is the God Who hates sin and the God Who has manifested, as we hope to be able to point out, that where there is service which is neither according to His command nor rendered in the strength of saving grace, He rejects such service. Indeed, with regard to such service, He manifests His wrath. This in one of the things that we as a generation need to learn. We are ready to think that because we please ourselves when serving God that He is bound to be pleased with us. This is a grave error and one of which this generation is verily guilty. God can only be served acceptably when such service is according to His own command and carried out in the strength of His own grace.
First, this kingdom is the kingdom of God. It is the kingdom of God in this world, existing as a witness for Him Who is its Author and to demonstrate and make evident that God is a great God and a great King. In other words, God is a Sovereign doing as He pleases among the armies of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. The doctrine of the sovereignty of God has almost been completely lost to this generation. Their God is not the sovereign Jehovah but a democratic and benign Being who exists to carry out the will of the people, and to give occasions for making a show of religion. But the sovereign God with power to rule, power to command, and power to punish as well as power to save is almost completely unknown to the vast majority of our fellow sinners today. The Church therefore exists to bear testimony to the fact that God is a Sovereign and that “there is another king as well as Caesar.”
The presence of this kingdom in the world under the form of the Church of God brings before us that God created man is His own image “in knowledge, righteousness and holiness with dominion over the creatures.” This dominion over the creatures shows how the power to rule was part of the image of God in the soul of man and a testimony to God as a Sovereign. Man, in the state of innocence, was fully conscious of the glory of His sovereign Creator and his greatest happiness was to do His will and to glorify Him. This brings us to view another power—the power of sin. We must never forget that sin is a power which desires to reign and which can never rest satisfied unless it is reigning. The enmity which is in the very nature of sin desires to remove God from off His throne, and this was the power which entered into the soul of Adam and caused himself and all his seed to fall from a state of righteousness and holiness into an estate of sin and misery “Ye shall be as gods,” said Satan, “knowing good and evil.” When man aspired to become a god, he became a child of the Devil and when sin entered his heart it went to the throne so that we read that sin reigns unto death (Rom. 5. 21.), and it is under this reign that the whole human family are as they come into this world. The disposition of the children of men, therefore, is to be rebels against the Divine majesty, to be at enmity with the Divine nature, and to reject the Divine claims. On the other hand, they are disposed to spend their days satisfying the lust of the flesh the lust of the eye and the pride of life. In other words, their desire is to put God off the throne of their lives, affections and interests, and to take up the language of others, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” (Luke. 19. 14.). The ultimate desire of sin is to put God off the throne of the universe. The nature of sin’s desire is clearly seen in Communist Russia and her satellites with their blatant atheism seeking to obliterate the thought of God from the minds of the unfortunate people under their despotic sway. In Popery, we see sin seeking to enthrone the “Man of sin” in the hearts of sinners, while Modern Liberalism seeks to set up modern learning in the place of God. But we must remember that this power is not merely in these places but in your heart and mine and, if we go to eternity without discovering this and without finding the divine remedy, God will demonstrate and make clear to our everlasting sorrow that He is a good and a great King, and that sin is that which He is bound by the claims of His holy nature to punish with the death which He has ordained—the wages of sin is death. (Rom. 6. 23).
Now, is precisely with regard to the fact that sin reigns unto death in the souls of sinners, thus bringing them under the sentence of eternal death, that the kingdom of God is set up. It is in order to deliver a number that no man can number of the human race from sin and its wages that the Church of God exists in the world as the kingdom of God, in terms of the scripture, “That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom. 5. 21). This kingdom then is the kingdom of grace and the salvation it gives is salvation by grace. All connected with it has grace as its fundamental principle, for it is written, “By grace are ye saved through faith.” (Eph. 2. 8).
The manifestation of the grace of God in this kingdom is to be seen in the choice of the One Who was made King of the kingdom. It was because there was grace in the heart of God from a past eternity—love that was everlasting going out to the election of grace, purposing to save them from their sins and to bring them into the liberty of the glory of the children of God—that God, the everlasting Father, appointed the King of Sion in the person of His beloved Son. No other deliverer could undertake the work which needed to be done but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God in our nature, and taking this nature into union with His Divine Person in order that He might manifest His grace. The grace of the Father thus appears in a most glorious light when viewed as appointing His Son as King of Sion. “Yet I have set my king upon my holy hill of Sion” (Ps. 2. 6).
We have another view of this grace when we come, by divine teaching, to look at the grace that is manifested in the King Himself. “Ye know brethren,” says the apostle, “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor that ye through His poverty might be rich” (2 Cor. 8. 9.). Here, we are called to contemplate, not merely the riches which are in His Divine Person as the Son of the Father, “the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person,” nor only the grace which shone in the works of power He performed while in this world in healing the sick and raising up the dead, but the grace that shone in this glorious King being made poor. The poverty of this King was bound up with His bearing the sins of all whom He loved in His own body upon the tree to give a full and complete satisfaction to all the claims of Law and Justice on their behalf. His people being exposed to the wrath and curse of God on account of their sins, He took their place and drank the cup the Father gave Him. It was this which brought Him to be so poor that He cried on the Cross, “My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me.” It is through this poverty that His people are to be made rich, to be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. It is at the Cross that the grace of the Son is manifested—”Having loved His Own, He loved them unto the end.” Here, also, is the grace of the Father evidenced “God commendeth His love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom. 5. 8.). What a kingdom and what a King! What an unspeakable honour to have a place in this kingdom, however humble, and to have the privilege of looking into the heart and life of this King and to see there such grace! Let the world have their kings and princes with all their pomp and show. This is what the church of God glories in—the poverty of this One. “God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Gal. 6. 14.). Once let the eye of the soul see by faith Christ and Him crucified and there you have a soul which glories in this King.
But we must not delay but go on to notice that grace is manifested also in the administration of this kingdom. That is to say, the administration of the kingdom lies in the power and unction of the Holy Ghost, the third Person of the Godhead, as the Spirit of Grace. The glory and power of this kingdom is consequently one which is hidden from the world that lies in wickedness, and is known only to those who come to taste and experience the outpouring of the Spirit from on high. Worldly men and women who have their portion in this life alone see no glory or excellency in the Church, but there are those who desire with David “to see thy power and thy glory so as I have seen thee in thy sanctuary.” (Ps. 63. 2).
The grace in the administration is seen, first of all, in the Word of God which is the Word of Grace. We shall come later on to refer to how this Word is the inspired Word of God, but merely note, at present, that it is here that the mind of God is revealed as the One Who is good and gracious, and in Whom compassions flow. Here, also, the mind of God is revealed with regard to all that appertains to this Kingdom and to the means set up in the church in order that sinners may seek peace with God. In these means, we also see grace manifested. Take the means of prayer. What is prayer apart from the spirit of grace and supplications but just mere words? There is no true prayer apart from the Spirit of grace drawing the soul to the Throne of grace and granting liberty to pour out the heart and mind to God in the heavens. It is He Who intercedes in the hearts of the heirs of salvation with groanings which cannot be uttered. Then, again, there is the singing of the praises of Jehovah in the public worship of the Sanctuary. This is to be done with grace in the heart and by the lips without the aid of instrumental music. The Psalms of David are given us so that we may have the mind of God when we sing His praises and, as these psalms are inspired by the Spirit of God, they express most adequately the frames and experiences of the true child of God. Man-made hymns have no authority in the public worship of God and such as introduce them have not the mind of God on the matter.
The preaching of the everlasting gospel is a means in which the grace of God is manifested. It is a gospel which closes out for ever the righteousness of the sinner and brings him in guilty before God. It sets forth the righteousness of Christ as the only foundation for a sinner to trust in. Jehovah Tsidkenu is the one foundation laid in Sion, and it is there that the trust of the poor of His people lies. There, alone, can a sinner be accepted as righteous in God’s sight, and his sins and iniquities be remembered no more for ever. The grace of the kingdom is also manifested in the invitations addressed to sinners, as such, to come to the King of the kingdom to obtain the blessings He has for them. “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11. 28). “Ho, every one that thirsteth come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” (Isaiah 55. 1). Grace is likewise manifested in the disposition of the King to receive such. “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.” (John 6. 37.).
Grace is also manifested in the government of the kingdom. The officers of the Church, ministers and elders, are not to be lords over God’s heritage but, in the exercise of grace, are to reign together for the good of Christ’s kingdom on earth. In the exercise of discipline, they are to show a ministerial, and not lordly, spirit having in view the correction and restoration of such as go astray, if the Lord will grant them repentance. But, time will not allow me to expand further on this point.
In the second place, the peculiar characteristic of the kingdom is brought before us in the words—”a kingdom which cannot be moved.” This is true of the Church of God in more than one way. For instance, Christ declared, “Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt. 16. 18). This indicated that, down through the ages, attacks of various kinds would be made against the Church in the endeavour to overthrow it. Satan wages constant warfare with the Church and is continually planning the destruction of all who fear God. But Christ makes it plain that, however successful he may appear at times, he shall not prevail. While sun and moon endure, there shall be those who fear God and who worship Him according to His mind. We do not believe, however, that this is the particular reference intended in the passage before us. The context shows how the Old Testament dispensation passed away. It was the will of God that it should be in existence until His beloved Son came to finish the work that the Father gave Him to do. When, however, this work was accomplished that dispensation was moved and the New Testament dispensation introduced as “a kingdom which cannot be moved.” Seen in this light, the New Testament Church will not be moved because it is God’s will that it shall endure until the end of Time. No other dispensation will be introduced to remove the present one until Christ will come at the last day to sit on the great white throne and to make the final and everlasting separation between the sheep and the goats. Now, this is an aspect of the matter which is very pertinent to the present day. The idea widely prevalent at the present time is that the Church is developing and progressing, and that all branches of the Church have their own contribution to make to the Church as a whole. Hence, it is commonly assumed that if all the branches of the Church were united together, a World Church would emerge containing all that was good in the assimilated branches. This idea is, of course, completely unscriptural and ignores the fact that God inaugurated in the New Testament dispensation a Church which, as far as its principles are concerned, cannot be moved. The duty of the various branches of the Church, therefore, is not to make the false assumptions they do, but to go back to the Word of God and find out, through the teaching of the Spirit, what is the mind of God with regard to His own kingdom and, then, set their churches in order according to the Word of God. That is exactly what took place at the time of the Reformation, and, we believe that is what will take place again, when God will grant times of refreshing from His own presence.
We are quite well aware of the fact that, from apostolic days, the Church has been giving forth statements called creeds in which definitions have been given of what the Church believes the Scripture to declare concerning certain doctrines of God’s Word. It is quite true also that, as history developed, these doctrines became more and more clarified as far as the Church’s statement of them was concerned. The formation of creeds and their consequent development, however, introduced no new element into the Church. The doctrines thus formulated were in the Word of God, which had been given to the Church and completed in Apostolic days. This is clearly seen for instance in the Westminster Confession of Faith where the doctrines set forth are firmly grounded on the Word of God. As one of the clearest of the Reformed Confessions, it illustrates what has been already mentioned, that the Reformers went back to the Scriptures for their doctrines, worship, and government and endeavoured to set up the kingdom which cannot be moved.
It is very necessary that this point should be clearly understood in our day. The Church does not change from generation to generation. Its doctrines and worship do not change with the customs, modes of learning, and fashions of any particular generation. The work of the Church is not to make its teachings acceptable to the “mind of the age,” but to seek, by the proclamation of God’s revelation in His Word, to bring the “mind of the age” to be moulded by the doctrines of Divine Truth. The mind of our generation is no more friendly to God’s Word that was the carnal mind in any age. But, if the generation is to be brought to have the mind of God, it is not by toning down His revelation to make it more acceptable that such a hope is to be attained, but by declaring a full-orbed gospel with the desire and prayer that the Holy Spirit will bless the Word. A great deal of the talk about “making the gospel relevant to the age” is just the philosophic reasoning of men who do not understand that “it is the Spirit Who quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing” (John 6. 63). The doctrines of sin and salvation are always relevant to sinners with guilty consciences on their way to death and judgment.
The Word of God, then, is authoritative in the Church. Christ rules this kingdom by His Spirit and Word. This Word which is the rule of the kingdom is an inspired Word and is, consequently, infallible and inerrant. The Word of God is the revelation that God has given of Himself to fallen and guilty men. This revelation has been set forth in the words of Scripture. By inspiration, we mean that God is the Author of His Word, and that the Holy Ghost bore men along so that the mind of God was recorded exactly as He intended it to be recorded. This Word we have in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the final and complete revelation which God has given to man. Here is recorded what is sufficient for the salvation of sinners and the rule of the Church till the end of the world.
Up to within the last century, when a question arose over any point in the church, the authority to which men went, whether heretical or orthodox, was the Word of God. There was no question as to the proper authority. The question was one of interpreting that authority, viz. the Bible. From the beginning of the last century onwards, however, a movement arose within the Church which sought to take away the Scriptures as the authority for doctrine, worship etc. and to put in its place the religious consciousness of man. According to this idea, the Scriptures contained an account of man’s search after God. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the others all had an experience of God, and the business of religious men is to quarry in these experiences and see if they can have similar experiences. Accordingly, God was making Himself known in the spirit of men and not in His revealed Word, and the Scriptures ceased to be the rule. It is obvious that this idea formed a kingdom which was very liable to be moved. It was a kingdom which changed with every school of theology, with the outlook of every generation and indeed with the feelings of every man. It certainly neither had part or lot in the kingdom which cannot be moved.
If the religious consciousness of man was to be made the source of religious teaching, however, it was necessary that the authority of the Scriptures should be attacked and denied. This is exactly what the history of the 19th Century unfolds. Men, within the Church, laid their unholy hands upon the Word of Jehovah. They found fault with its inspiration, its doctrines and worship and did all they could to deny its authority. By this means, they paganised the people of this land, emptied the Churches and deprived young and old of the Divine Oracles. We are now reaping a dreadful and solemn harvest in the unparalleled crime and immorality which pollutes our national life today. The root of the “teenager problem” is just that young people are being brought up ignorant of the gospel.
I may just remark in passing that the Roman Catholic Church makes the claim that she is “semper idem”—always the same, but, like many another claim by this false anti-christ, there is no reality in it. A recent illustration of this is seen in the decision, in 1950, to declare that the Assumption of Mary was a doctrine to be believed by all or they would perish. This was adding to the Word of God with a vengeance, and here we see the main error of Romanism. Just as Modernism seeks to take away from the Word of God, so Romanism adds to it. Thus both Romanism and Modernism are kingdoms which move, and both can move in any direction that suits them at any particular time. They are far removed from the kingdom of the Saviour.
There is a general realisation at the present time in many Protestant circles that the policy of criticising the Bible simply will not do. The emptiness of the churches bears an eloquent testimony to the fact that Modernism has been a ghastly failure. You cannot deny the authority of the Bible on the one hand, and expect people to come to Church on the other. Consequently, there are movements appearing on the horizon professing to lead people back to the Bible, the Reformation principles and Calvinism. This tendency is to be seen in the fact that it is quite a common thing for Church of Scotland leaders now to be praising John Knox—a thing which would not have been heard of some years ago. It is likely that much praise will be bestowed on him by such people during the coming commemoration of the Reformation. I think you will discover, however, that while they will praise Knox, they will also add that his work was spoiled by the men who followed him, such as Andrew Melville, as well as by the acceptance of the Westminster Confession by the Church of Scotland. Andrew Melville and the framers of the Westminster Confession were more in sympathy with John Knox than the present leaders of the Church of Scotland, however, and the reservations the latter make with regard to the work of John Knox make it abundantly evident that they have no real understanding of the man.
There are two movements I would like to mention which profess to be leading the people back to the Word of God. The first of these has at its head Karl Barth, who is a very prominent man in the theological world today. Among other things, Barth professes to lead people back to the Word, to the Reformers, and even to Calvin, alleging, at the same time, that the doctrines of Calvin have been spoiled by the Puritans. Since this movement seeks to lead people back to the Word of God, we are surely entitled to ask, “What is your attitude to the Word,” and if we find this unsatisfactory to view the movement accordingly. The following is the view that Barth gives of the Scriptures in his own words, “If God has not been ashamed to speak through the Scriptures with its fallible human words, with its historical and scientific blunders, its theological contradictions, with the uncertainty of its transmission, and above all, its Jewish character, but rather accepted it in all its fallibility, to make it serve Him, we ought not to be ashamed of it when, with all its fallibility, it wants anew to be a witness to us it would be self-will and disobedience to seek in the Bible for infallible elements.”* Such a statement settles the question as far as Barthianism is concerned. Any man who holds such a view of the Word of God is a victim of the delusions of his own philosophy and imagination. He is grossly ignorant of the experience of the Thessalonians to whom the gospel came not “in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance” (I. Thess. 1. 5). The movement of which he is the head is destined to reach the same miserable end as the form of modernism it seeks to oppose.
* The New Modernism p. 286.
The second movement is called the Biblical Theology movement. This movement also calls upon men to return to the Bible. It acknowledges that much of modernistic teaching has been and is wrong, and that what is needed now is that men should come to understand the Bible from within. They insist that all doctrine must be Biblical etc. We are also entitled to apply our test here and to ask the leaders of the movement, “What is your view of the Bible?” Here it is, in the words of one of the leading men. Referring to the work of modernism or liberalism, as he calls it, he goes on to say of their efforts, “All was done with the very best intentions, in the firm belief that liberalism was on the side of progress, and that purification and strengthening of the Christian religion was in full swing. The truth now coming to light is that Christianity was gradually becoming transformed into humanism . . . We must retrace our steps to the point where liberalism went off the track: and having reached that point we must go forward not backward.”* In other words, this movement has no intention of going back to accept the Word of God as inspired, infallible and inerrant. Other writings show that the leaders wish to conserve the best results of the Higher Critics of the 19th Century which means that, in essence, they are not returning to the Bible as the revelation of God. The movement, therefore, is not a genuine return to the divine oracles and, like Barthianism, will fade away on the barren desert of unbelief. One of the great dangers, to my mind, of the movement is that there will be an increased use of Biblical words as the movement progresses. We shall begin to hear words which have been banished from the pulpits for many a long day, such as, regeneration, justification, sanctification etc. The meaning given to these words, however, will be different from that revealed in the Scriptures taken in their entirety.
* Professor T. W. Manson.
The presence of these two movements throws into sharp relief the great privilege of being in the kingdom which cannot be moved. It is being acknowledged now that the movement away from Christianity which took place in the 19th century was wrong. The true Church of Christ, however, never swung away from the Word of God as inspired, infallible and inerrant. Neither did it depart from the doctrine, worship and government founded upon that Word. It is being realised now that the powers which worked to effect the Declaratory Act in the Free Church of 1892 were powers which were swinging away from Christianity. Men are allowing this to be true now, but Free Presbyterians were saying this over sixty years ago! To take one prominent case known to you all. Professor Robertson Smith was dismissed from the Free Church because he accepted views in line with what was called the Wellhausen theory. At that time in the history of the Church, no one could be considered a scholarly Christian who did not accept this theory. At the present time, however, this theory is largely abandoned and discredited. It has been relegated to the theological museum as an interesting relic of the notions of bygone days. Free Presbyterians condemned not only the theory, but the whole outlook which lies behind the theory, in 1893 and we are condemning it still and will continue, as long as grace is given to us to that end, to condemn every movement which does not accept the Word of God as the inspired, infallible and inerrant revelation of God’s mind. You see therefore the great advantage of being in the kingdom which cannot be moved. If you remain close to the Truth of God, you will remain firm in the midst of all the religious movements around you. You will “henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine,” (Eph. 4. 14.) but be established in the faith once delivered to the saints. Our godly forefathers in 1893 took the stand which they did in order that, both they and we, would have the inestimable blessing of the kingdom that cannot be moved. Let us then seek grace to serve Him Who is the King of the Kingdom.
I now come, in the third place, to remark very briefly on those who have received this kingdom. They became members of the kingdom by receiving it, and they received it through the effectual call of the Holy Ghost. No man will receive this kingdom apart from the effectual call, for the carnal mind is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be. Christ declared, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” He cannot see the Kingdom nor can he see the glory and beauty of the King, apart from the new birth. But God’s people are brought into this kingdom. The Holy Ghost convinces them of their sins, causes them to realise they are in the presence of a holy God, Whose hand finds out all those that are His enemies. They are convinced that they are lost and unable to deliver themselves. But they are not left there. The Holy Ghost makes known to them Christ in the everlasting gospel and, by faith of the Spirit’s operation, they are enabled to receive Him and rest in Him as all their salvation and all their desire. As those who have received Christ, all that pertains to His kingdom has a place in their hearts, so that they can say as others did when they wept by the rivers of Babylon that Jerusalem is set above their chief joy.
There are others who receive this kingdom, not only by the effectual call of the Holy Ghost, but also by the call to the ministry. It is Christ, Who effectually called them by His Spirit, Who also, by the same Spirit, calls them to this office and Who thus puts them in trust with the things which pertain to the kingdom. They are called upon to discharge that trust faithfully, for it is required in a steward that he be faithful.
This brings me to mention—very briefly again—in the last place that, such as receive this kingdom are called upon to serve in it and to evidence a certain spirit in this service. When God purposed to set His people free from the Land of Egypt, He told Pharaoh, through Moses, “Let my people go that they may serve me.” Such as are in the Kingdom of Christ, whether they be in the ministry or not, have a heart to serve God. Their desire is to serve the One who did so much for them, but they are fully conscious of the fact that it is by grace they are to serve Him. This makes them dependent on Him who said “Without me, ye can do nothing,” and gives them to look to His promise, “My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Now, where such a disposition is, there is reverence and godly fear. This reverence and godly fear brings before us that the One Whom we serve is the Lord our God, “Who is holy still” (Ps. 99. 9). The One Who is laying the service on them is the One who is to supply the grace whereby they will serve Him acceptably. Reverence and godly fear embraces a fear of offending God, which means that the service rendered is according to the Word of God, where His mind has been made known. The apostle then goes on to add the solemn words, “For our God is a consuming fire.”
We read of one instance in particular when the God who dwelt between the cherubims was a consuming fire. That was in the case of Nadab and Abihu. They took their censers; they took strange fire. They took incense and went in before the Lord and fire came out from the Lord and destroyed them. Their service was not accepted: they were slain in the midst of Israel to let Israel know that the God Who dwelt between the cherubims was not to be trifled with. Their sin was that they took strange fire. They did not take the fire from off the altar. They knew nothing of what it meant to be so weak and empty of all that pertains to man, that they would need to be dependent upon the Lord and take fire from off the altar. The second part of their sin was that they offered “what the Lord commanded not.” (Lev. 10. 1.) Their service was not according to God’s Word. These two errors were found with them. They did not offer to the Lord what came from Himself, neither did they offer according to the Word of the Lord. However much men may praise such services, God will not accept them but will manifest His displeasure against them. It is for this reason that the Apostle, through the Spirit, exhorts those in the kingdom to seek “grace whereby we may serve God acceptable with reverence and godly fear.”
What a mercy if we are enabled to go in and out in connection with the worship and cause of God with a sense of the eye of God upon us and entirely dependent upon Himself to supply all our needs! Let us therefore cleave to the kingdom which cannot be moved, delight in it more and more, and seek to follow the Lord through good and evil report.