God has spoken. He has given to mankind a revelation of Himself and of all we need to know about spiritual things. And that revelation is “settled”, which is the word we find in Psalm 119:89, where the Psalmist addresses the Most High: “For ever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in heaven”. J A Alexander notes that settled means “literally, made to stand”, that is, “unalterably fixed”. He notes further that the phrase, “in heaven”, teaches us that God’s Word is “beyond the reach of all disturbing causes”. So we should be convinced that the Bible is altogether safe from all the attacks of all its enemies. And William S Plumer adds that “there is no better word [than settled] to express unchangeable fixedness”.
We live in a world where so much is subject to change: one generation passes away and is succeeded by another; individuals age; buildings decay and crumble, opinions alter; new discoveries are made. Yet, in the Bible, God has given us what is fixed unchangeably for ever. Peter, himself inspired to write two parts of God’s settled Word, states, “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth for ever” (1 Pet 1:24,25). He compares human beings to grass, which quickly withers in the absence of rain. Similarly, bright, colourful flowers droop and the petals fall off, when moisture has dried up. So also, even where human glory is at its greatest, it will not last; the most eminent in society will inevitably die, and even before that happens, their status may be reduced to that of the most ordinary of their fellow creatures.
Not so the Bible. It is settled in heaven. It is accurate. It is totally reliable. It is the truth of God, which can never change. But man is fallen; he wants to think his own thoughts, independent of God. In his fallen state, he will not submit to the truth revealed in God’s Word. Yet what man needs is, to use Augustine’s expression, to “think God’s thoughts after Him”, the thoughts He has revealed in Scripture. Probably there have never been so many copies of the Bible in circulation throughout the world. But throughout the world the proportion of those who take heed to God’s Word in our time is limited.
The Bible contains God’s account of what He did in bringing the world into existence and everything in it – and everything in all the other parts of the universe. We should consider that account to be settled in heaven, but every effort is made to dismiss it and to promote the foolish idea that everything just happened to come into its present condition by a very long series of chance events.
When people reject the authority of Scripture, they reject God’s law in particular. Scripture tells us that “the carnal mind” – the mind in its natural, fallen condition – “is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be”. Unconverted sinners have a natural opposition in their hearts to God and cannot submit to the authority of God speaking in Scripture. They do not want to be told what to do, and Satan leads them further and further away from God in their rebellion against His authority.
God says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”. His authority as God is settled in heaven; it represents reality. Man would be glad to give himself the first place in everything and thereby make himself a god; apart from God’s restraining power, man would indeed give himself that place. And that restraining power prevents individuals from breaking some of God’s Commandments, at least outwardly. This power may work through conscience, or through people recognising that a general agreement to respect, for instance, the command, “Thou shalt not kill”, makes life easier for everyone. Yet there is no respect for the spirituality of these commands; this inward, spiritual respect is only possible if a new heart is given, through the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.
All the truths in Scripture are settled in heaven. In particular, God has revealed what should be obvious from the most superficial observation of ourselves and others, that all are sinners. We are all doing wrong, not only against other people, but against God. Yet most people ignore this settled truth, a truth that demands a response from each of us. God’s settled Word calls on us to “repent . . . and believe the gospel” (Mk 1:15). The idea of turning from sin is unacceptable to rebels against God, apart from the Holy Spirit working graciously and powerfully in their souls. To go on in sin just seems too attractive. This is especially the case when so many reject God’s authority in giving His law to tell human beings what they must do and what they must not do.
The idea likewise of believing the gospel, the good news that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – which is so central to God’s revelation in Scripture – is unacceptable to people generally. Even if they recognise that they need to be saved, it is natural for them to want to save themselves, or at least to contribute to that salvation. They do not want to be totally in-
debted to God and the salvation that He has provided through His Son; such is the corruption of the natural heart. How much we need to submit to the emphasis of Scripture on our total need of the Holy Spirit to apply Christ’s saving work to our souls, as the Saviour emphasised to Nicodemus: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:5).
We may not need Scripture to make us aware that everyone will die, but we do need Scripture, as applied by the Spirit, to bring us to make a profitable application of that fact to ourselves. We need the Spirit to make us realise our need of being prepared to meet God at death and to understand what that preparation consists in – that we must be born again and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and on Him alone, for salvation. Here again contemporary thinking clashes with scriptural teaching. The latter is settled in heaven, and we on earth must wholeheartedly receive that there is no “salvation in any other [than Christ]: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). God has revealed one Saviour, one true religion, and only one. This generation claims to believe that all religions point in the same direction, and therefore that multi-faith worship is acceptable. But it is most certainly not acceptable to God. What He has revealed in Scripture is truth; whatever contradicts Scripture in any religion or philosophy is therefore false. If we cannot accept that conclusion, our religion has no value.
Plumer remarks on Psalm 119:89: “However fleeting, changeable and unsatisfactory are all things merely temporal . . . the Word of God is stable, unchangeable and everlasting. It depends upon His truth and faithfulness”. So we should ask ourselves what use we are making of Scripture, which is the only sure, unchanging guide through life; nowhere else can we find reliable directions for a blessed eternity. This generation may generally wish to believe that there is nothing beyond death – in particular, no judgement and no hell. Yet it is settled in the justice of heaven that there will be a judgement, where we must all appear – whatever our preparedness for it, or lack of it – and that there is an eternity of punishment in hell, where all unbelievers must go.
God has spoken on these and so many other matters. It would be good for us to say, “I will hear what God the Lord will speak” (Ps 85:8), and to seek God’s grace so that we might indeed be able to fulfill that resolve. It is our duty to listen to Him with the kind of listening that leads on to sincere obedience. To repeat, what God tells us in Scripture is the only reliable guide to getting safely through this world and arriving safely in heaven at last. May we not be swept away by the unbelieving attitudes of today!