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About the Book
Table of Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
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The Silences of God
Chapter 2
The Silence is Broken
THE MOMENT we
enter the New Testament, the silence is broken, the heavens burst
into an Allelujah chorus to announce the birth of the promised
Saviour-Messiah, and the covenant relationship of God with Israel
which has been in abeyance for four hundred years (though by
no means abrogated) is suddenly made active once again. God broke
his silence gently at first. A few shepherds learned the wonderful
news of the Lord's birth in a lowly stable, and a few Magi made
a long journey to greet the newborn Child, only to return another
way, never to be heard of again. Herod brought a time of grief
to mothers in one little district in Palestine as foretold in
the Old Testament, but then for thirty years there was almost
complete silence again.
The time of the foretold presentation
of Messiah to his people, as revealed in Daniel 9:24-27, was
not yet fully come. The period of 483 years from the issuing
of the edict to restore and rebuild Jerusalem had not altogether
run its course, though it was so nearly over that the Jewish
people were already beginning to look for the appearing of their
King. Simeon and Anna, seeing the Child in the temple, had wonderful
visions for the future (Luke 2:25-38), but even the miraculous
events surrounding his birth were somehow kept secret from all
but a few.
Then suddenly, about thirty years
later, when much of the excitement of these earlier days had
been lost with the passing of time, a prophet like Elijah began
calling the nation to repentance.
And so John the Baptist, as the
Messiah's forerunner, appeared like a prophet of old in the desert.
We are told that excitement and expectancy were by now so great
(Luke 3:15) that people flocked to him to be baptized "for
cleansing" as a symbolic way of bearing witness to their
readiness to receive their King. Yet, when
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Jesus presented Himself,
John was guided by the Holy Spirit to identify Him only as the
Lamb of God, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, rather than
as the promised Messiah of Daniel 7. This must have puzzled even
John himself: but we know now, of course, that Jesus was soon
to validate His title as Messiah by the signs and wonders which
He was to perform in great numbers. It was clear that God had
begun once more to deal directly and manifestly with
His people, and John's ministry signaled the picking up again
of an active covenant relationship by the revival of the prophetic
office entirely in the manner of the Old Testament, as though
such a one as Elijah had appeared again in Israel (John 1:21).
It is evident for a number of reasons,
moreover, that while the more thoughtful of the Jewish people
were clear enough in their own minds, from a study of the Scriptures,
as to the nature of the mission of the Messiah, they were not
as clear about the identity of the Suffering Servant whose coming
they also anticipated from Isaiah 53. They could not reconcile
the two, because the King was clearly coming to rule, whereas
the Suffering Servant was clearly coming to die. They knew from
Scripture that the Lamb was to be cut off (Isa. 53:8), though
not for Himself. But because of their rather imprecise views
regarding the resurrection, they did not see that the reconciliation
of these two opposite roles for a single individual was quite
possible if he were to be raised from the dead to become King
only after being offered as the Lamb. And it appears that even
John was confused on this point.
John seems to have had no doubt
that Jesus was the Lamb. But from his prison cell he subsequently
sent to Him and asked Him whether He really was the promised
King or whether Israel was to look for some other person to come
in that capacity (Mattheew 11:2ff.). Jesus sent word back to
him which was full of meaning, pointing out to him that all the
promises of healing and cleansing and other miraculous signs
which were to accompany the Messiah according to Isaiah 35:4-6
had manifestly been performed by Him during the past months.
Jesus did not rebuke John for his doubts, a circumstance which
I think is significant and from which we may draw a further conclusion
-- namely, that the Lord Himself was quite aware of the problems
which even believing Jews had in reconciling in His person the
two roles He was playing. I think that Jesus was sympathetic
to the confusion also of those who opposed Him -- in spite of
the virulence of their hostility -- and that this sympathy was
indeed the basis of His prayer from the cross that his Father
would forgive them their terrible decision to put Him to death,
in that they did not really know what they were doing (Luke 23:34).
This
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fact is also noted by
Paul (I Corinthians 2:8): "For had they known, they would
not have crucified the Lord of glory." Moreover, in Peter's
second sermon after the Crucifixion he reiterated the same thing
when he said, "For I am aware, brethren, that ye did it
in ignorance" (Acts 3:17).
The circumstance is not without
interest, because it suggests that the scribes and Pharisees
and the rulers in Israel were not perhaps at first as inexcusably
obstinate as we tend to assume. Three times John mentions
in his Gospel that there was a division among them (7:43; 9:16;
10:19). Evidently there was not unanimity in rejection. In fact,
in John 12:42 we are told that there were many believers even
among the chief rulers. In John 8:28 I think the implication
of the Lord's words could well be that they really did not recognize
Him as Messiah, for He said that after they had crucified Him,
then they would know that He was. Among those who may
have been in the favouring party must be numbered Nicodemus,
of course: but it appears that even Gamaliel tended to share
Nicodemus' view. This seems reasonably clear from the record
of Gamaliel's words in Acts 5:34-39, in which this very famous
"teacher" in Israel tries to warn his colleagues that,
while they are quite right not to accept too readily the claims
of anyone as being the Messiah -- several impostors having quite
recently pretended to be so -- yet they should not fall over
backward in the opposite direction "lest perhaps they should
be found even to be fighting against God." They were no
longer acting in ignorance. This is quite clear from their own
admission in Matthew 27:64 that if the Lord's body were stolen
from the tomb by the disciples in order to be able to say that
the Lord had risen from the dead, then "the last error shall
be worse than the first." Thus whatever may have been true
of their reasons for rejecting their Messiah before the Crucifixion,
there is no doubt that their subsequent action in persisting
in their rejection of Him after Stephen's sermon was totally
inexcusable and had a profound effect upon their covenant relationship
with God and its attendant signs and wonders.
The signs and wonders which the
Lord had been performing and to which He drew John the Baptist's
attention, had begun within three or four days after John had
officially presented Him as the Lamb of God. However, the first
miracle which occurred in Cana of Galilee does not appear to
have been performed in any sense as demonstration of His Messiahship.
It was performed rather because of a sudden private emergency
occurring at the wedding of a friend. John 2:1ff.). All
the circumstances surrounding this first miracle seem
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to me to bear out the
fact that Jesus was not performing it as part of His official
presentation of His credentials as Messiah. And it is for this
reason, I think, that when Mary first pointed out to Him the
embarrassing situation which had occurred at the wedding, He
replied to her in such a way as to indicate that it was not the
proper place for Him to perform such a miracle. "Signs and
wonders" were credentials -- credentials not appropriately
presented before their time, to the wrong audience, and entirely
in a private situation. Credentials must always
be presented to the right people, at the appropriate time, and
before the proper witnesses. Hence His words (John 2:4): "Mine
hour has not yet come."
We may gather from the Lord's conversation
with Nicodemus in John 3, however, that other miracles had
been performed in such circumstances as to fulfill the requirements
in this respect. This man Nicodemus, a prominent member of the
ruling class of Jews, was clearly aware of some of these miraculous
activities, for he said (verse 2) "No man can do these miracles
that thou doest except God be with him." From this we may
conclude that the Lord had now officially begun to present Himself
to the authorities as the promised Messiah by fulfilling the
conditions which ranked first in their estimation as validation
of that claim.
In John 5 we have a particularly
good illustration of this. Here was a paralytic who apparently
neither expected nor asked for healing from this gentle rabbi
who engaged him in conversation. Unasked, Jesus nevertheless
healed him completely. He then instructed him to take up his
bed and carry it away, even though He knew it was the Sabbath
day and such an activity was strictly forbidden. This whole event
seems to me to have been a test case, at most a provocation,
to provide opportunity for Him to present His claims officially
before the authorities. I do not think one can read from verse
17 onward without concluding, as many commentators have done,
that the Jewish authorities were so appalled by the audacity
of His claims that they called Him to account before some kind
of court. The record of His "defense" seems to have
been reported for us from verses 19 to 38. There are reasons
for this opposition. First, it will be noticed that throughout
these verses only, the first person pronoun ("I" or
"me") is not used as it is everywhere else in this
chapter; every remark is recorded as though by an observer, a
kind of "Jewish Hansard." In the second place, there
are very subtle but highly significant references to certain
events made by Daniel regarding the Messiah, not the least of
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which is that His name
would be "Son of Man"; it happens that when the Lord
refers to Himself thusly in verse 27, He quotes precisely from
the Septuagint of Daniel 7:13, which in this instance does not
say "the Son of Man," which would have been
a title, but simply "Son of Man" without the
article, which therefore identifies it more as a name than a
title. This is the only occasion in the New Testament in which
the definite article is omitted when the phrase is used.
In such a court, when a capital
offense was being tried, the accused could only be condemned
"by the mouth of two witnesses or more," and accordingly
he could exonerate himself only by the mouth of two witnesses
or more (Deuteronomy 17:6). The offense for which Jesus was being
tried was indeed a capital one, i.e., one which demanded the
death sentence if guilt were established. The whole situation
arose not merely because He had challenged Jewish authority by
instructing the paralytic to carry his bed contrary to law, but
-- far more serious -- because He had claimed God as His very
own Father. The Jewish belief in the fatherhood of God was common.
It was based on Malachi 2:10: "Have we not all one father?"
Had the Lord used the words "our Father" rather
than "My Father worketh hitherto," it is quite
possible His only offense would have been the instructions given
to the paralytic regarding his bed. What really appalled the
Jewish authorities was not only His reference to God as "My
Father" (John 5:17), but what must have been His emphasis
on the word My. That this seems to have been the case
is borne out by their accusation in verse 18 that He had not
only broken the Sabbath, but had claimed that God was His "very
own Father" (so the Greek). For them, this was too much:
it was outright blasphemy.
And so the court called Jesus to
account for his words. In his defense, He insisted not merely
that his mission was divine, but that He Himself was divine.
He claimed that He always saw eye to eye with the Father (verse
19), that nothing was hidden from Him (verse 20), that
He would even raise the dead (verse 21), indeed, that in the
great resurrection of the dead which they themselves believed
in, it would be His voice which would bring them forth (verse
25). He claimed to have life in Himself (verse 26) and that it
was He who would be the Judge of men when the great accounting
came. He told them, in fact, that He was acting both for God
and as God -- an unthinkable claim for mere man.
Perhaps it was then that they demanded
of Jesus two witnesses. He brought forth at once, as His first
witness, John the Baptist, whom they themselves had already openly
admitted. But He said He had a greater
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witness yet in that no
matter what He decided to do, God would support Him in it. He
was about to perform such signs and wonders with such implications
that if his Father were not with Him, God Himself would judge
Him at once. One of these signs was that He would manifestly
demonstrate his power to forgive sins, a power no man could claim
-- only God. In Luke 5:24 He demonstrated that it was as easy
for Him to say to a cripple "Thy sins be forgiven thee"
as it was "Rise up and walk." The effect was precisely
the same, which it could never have been unless his Father fully
supported both claims.
Apparently the Jewish authorities
were so astounded by what He was proposing that they seem to
have decided that they ought not to call Him to account until
the second witness had been allowed to validate Him or condemn
Him. In other words, the miracles which He performed were to
have a double purpose: first, the alleviation of suffering; but
even more importantly, the confirmation of his claim as Messiah.
Jesus again and again drew attention to this fact, more particularly
when some special feast brought the authorities to Jerusalem.
Thus, in John 10:22-26, as Jesus walked in the temple of Solomon's
Porch at the time of the Feast of the Dedication, the Jews came
round about Him and said, "How long dost Thou make us to
doubt? If Thou be the Messiah, tell us plainly." Jesus answered,
"I told you, and ye believe not: the works that I do in
my Father's name, they bear witness of Me. But ye believe not
. . . ." In short, He was saying that although they
demanded a second witness and He had constantly provided this
witness, yet they still did not believe. It was clear that their
preconceptions and their prejudices were not going to allow them
to evaluate the evidence rightly. God had not merely broken
His silence, He had done so and was indeed shattering it!
Yet they could not understand.
As long as such signs and
wonders were being performed, God was actively demonstrating
the reality of his covenant relationship with Israel. Once that
active covenant relationship began to be undermined because of
their rejection of Him as the Lord's Messiah, however, then signs
and wonders became less and less frequent. Jesus, having by his
miracles brought the authorities to the point where they must
decide one way or the other, it seems that these authorities
became divided into two camps -- on the one hand those who saw
the challenge as a threat, and on the other those who saw it
as a promise. It is clear that those who saw it as a threat ultimately
predominated and soon reached the point where they positively
decided that this so-called Messiah must
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be stopped. They determined
to put Him to death. And as soon as that decision had been taken
in the higher courts of the nation, Jesus was at once aware of
it (John 11:53, 54). From that moment He performed no more signs
and wonders openly, publicly, in front of them, in demonstration
of his claim as their promised King. He took steps to prevent
those who were directly involved in miracles from publicizing
them. Matthew describes the circumstances thus (Matthew 12:14-16):
Then the Pharisees went out
and held council against Him, how they might destroy Him. But
when Jesus knew it, He withdrew Himself from thence and great
multitudes followed Him, and He healed them all; and charged
them that they should not make Him known.
But there was
one notable exception, the raising of Lazarus. It was his final
and conclusive demonstration to them that the dead would indeed
hear his voice and come forth out of their graves. No other miracle
could possibly have carried as much weight in validating his
claims in the eyes of the Jews. The circumstances surrounding
this tremendous event are very special and require looking into.
It will be realized that the Lord
had already raised two people from the dead. Again, the circumstances
are highly significant. If we go back almost to the beginning
of his ministry, we find Him first of all restoring to health
a nobleman's son who was "at the point of death"
(John 4:47). It appears that the next miracle of this kind was
the raising of Jairus' daughter, who died while He was on
the way to her home (Mark 5:35). The third incident is found
in Luke 7:11-18, where the young man was actually being carried
out to be buried (verse 12). We are told that when He delivered
the young man alive to his mother, "there came a great fear
on all: and they glorified God, saying, 'A great prophet is risen
among us' and 'God hath visited His people'" (verse 16).
The news of this event spread throughout Judea and all the region
roundabout in a way that the other two "raisings" had
not done. Each miracle had surpassed the previous one.
Nevertheless, despite what may
appear to the contrary according to our standards of judgment,
the Jewish authorities may not have attributed the significance
to these miracles that we might. The reason for this is that
they commonly believed a man was not truly dead until the body
had started to decay. This belief is shared in many parts of
the world, (29)
and it may possibly have arisen because on occasion, people who
are pronounced
29. Three days in the grave: see "If
Adam Had Not Died", Part III in TheVirgin Birth and the
Incarnation, vol.5 of The Doorway Papers Series, Zondervan
Publishing Company.
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dead revive. At any rate,
because the initiation of decay was accelerated or slowed up
by environmental conditions and in order to simplify the problem
of making an official decision as to when "death" was
certified, it was usual to state that a person was truly dead
only after the third day. (30) The Jews could therefore have argued among themselves
that neither Jairus' daughter nor the widow of Nain's son were
really dead: Jesus had merely revived them; He had not actually
raised the dead.
It is this circumstance which explains
the Lord's behaviour when He heard that a beloved friend, Lazarus,
was dead. In John 11 we are told, first of all, that Jesus loved
Martha and her sister and Lazarus (verse 5). We know therefore
that what He was about to do was not for any lack of concern
when it is recorded very specifically that He stayed where He
was for two more days and only after that, said to his disciples,
"Let us
go. . . ." And so He arrived in Judea too late to
anticipate Lazarus' death. There is no escaping the fact that
He knew Lazarus would die before He arrived there for He said
(verse 15), "I am glad for your sakes that I was not there,
to the intent that ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto
him." At this point Thomas, who realized full well that
the Jews were now out to destroy Him said heroically, "Let
us go, too, that we may die with Him."
By the time the Lord arrived at
Bethany, which was quite near Jerusalem, He was told (though,
of course, He knew it well) that Lazarus "had lain in the
grave four days already" (verse 17). The rest of the story
need not concern us in the present context, except to note that
the body had by now begun to decay (verse 39).
And then the dead heard His voice!
Had He merely said, "Come forth!" who knows how many
might have risen from their graves. But He called Lazarus by
name, "and he that was dead came forth." And this,
to the Jewish authorities, ought surely to have been the final
validation. That it wasn't so only demonstrates the extraordinary
extent to which prejudice and preconception can darken our understanding.
The common people however, do not
seem to have been quite so blind. Very soon afterward they welcomed
Jesus triumphantly into Jerusalem, as He fulfilled the last prophetic
vision concerning the Messiah: "Behold, thy King cometh,
riding on an ass" (John 12:15). Yet, their adulation was
soon undermined by the authorities.
30. Note that in Revelation 11:7-11
the two witnesses are left lying in the streets for three days
before their enemies allow themselves to rejoice over them, but
half a day later God raised them to life again from the dead,
just when their enemies thought they were in the clear.
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The
trial that followed must surely have been unique in history,
since without realizing what they were doing, the rulers exactly
fulfilled the conditions in the choosing of any sacrificial lamb
which was to be slain according to the Mosaic law. Without intending
to do so, they demonstrated clearly from the evidence that the
Lamb of God was absolutely "without blemish" (Acts
13:28), and then they condemned Him to death. In doing this,
they precisely fulfilled the purposes of God and opened the way
for personal salvation for all who should avail themselves of
the sacrifice of the One whom they had rejected. At the same
time, rejecting their own Messiah, they committed national suicide.
Yet there was no alternative: it had to be this way.
And so they were given one more
opportunity to recover their identity as a chosen vessel. God
graciously provided a reprieve, giving them one last chance to
repent and acknowledge the Lamb of God as their Messiah after
all.
This reprieve was foreshadowed
in one of Jesus' parables, the parable of the man who had a fig
tree planted in a vineyard and who visited this fig tree three
years in succession but found no fruit on it. The owner said
to the gardener: "Cut it down, why does it encumber the
ground?" But the gardener said, "Leave it for one more
year and let me give it some special treatment during that interval,
and then if it still does not bear fruit, let it be cut down"
(Luke 13:6-9).
As we have shown elsewhere, the fig tree
seems to stand, in the chronicles of Israel, for her religious history
-- the history of her priestly caste and her temple and its ritual. The
vineyard consistently depicts her political and geographical history.
Within this vineyard there existed a fig tree, i.e., within the nation
there existed a religious core, more particularly epitomized by the temple
complex (see the paper "Three Trees and Israel's History," Part II in Time and Eternity,
vol.6, The Doorway Papers Series, Zondervan Publishing Company).
Now, as far as we know, the Lord's
official ministry appears to have involved three Passovers, exclusive
of the last one at which He presented Himself as the Lamb. When
He was twelve years old, He visited the temple during the Passover
(Luke 2:41-50), but I do not think this visit can be included
as part of his official ministry since He had not yet been presented
to the nation by his forerunner, John the Baptist. But after
his identification by John, we find Him visiting the temple at
the time of the Passover (in John 2:13-16) undoubtedly, like
the owner of the vineyard, expecting to find fruit on the fig
tree. What He found instead was a den of thieves. The zeal with
which He cleansed the Temple on this first occasion was not without
effect, because it appears that
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one year later, when
He must certainly have visited the temple a second time, no such
action was called for (John 6:4). If there was no fruit, at least
it had not again become a den of thieves. But human wickedness
recovers quickly after redress; upon the third occasion of His
visiting the "fig tree," the old iniquitous situation
was once more everywhere evident, and it became necessary to
take the same remedial action and cleanse the temple afresh.
This occasion followed his triumphal entry into the city after
the raising of Lazarus (Matthew 21:12-17). Significantly, it
was immediately after this that He cursed the barren fig
tree (verses 18-20). Thus the owner of the vineyard had visited
his fig tree for three years and found no fruit upon it: but
the gardener - -and in this case both the Owner of the vineyard
and the Gardener were one and the same Person -- determined to
leave it one more year, on probation as it were.
During that probationary year,
after all the events of Jesus' crucifixion, the resurrection,
and the ascension, Peter stood up and explained to the Jewish
people in Jerusalem the true significance of those terrible days.
He assured them that if they would even now repent and turn to
the Lord, He would come back to earth as their glorious King
and fulfill the second part of his predicted ministry, restoring
to them their promised spiritual glory. Thousands of Peter's
Jewish listeners, seeing the signs and wonders which accompanied
the ministry of the apostles, turned to the Lord in repentance
and faith, and they filled the temple with their joyful presence
(Acts 2:46; 3:1; 5:42).
Yet for all that, the heart of
official Judaism was somehow hardened in its resolve to hold
fast to the disastrous course they had embarked upon. In his
preaching, Peter was at pains to point out to them (Acts 10:38)
that the very miracles which had signalized the Lord's ministry
from beginning to end were proof that God was with Him, that
He was indeed their Messiah. But when Stephen addressed them
gathered together as a kind of official body, and when he recounted
to them how consistently throughout their history they had betrayed
their calling, disobeyed the Lord's instructions, murdered his
messengers, oppressed his people, and lived in defiance of their
holy calling -- at that decisive moment they refused to listen.
Instead of acknowledging the truth of Stephen's message, they
utterly rejected his words and, as Scripture puts it, "gnashed
on him with their teeth." And with their rejection of his
words went their final rejection of the Messiah in whose name
he appealed to them. When in their fury they turned on him and
stoned him to death, the die was cast. No longer could
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they plead ignorance.
Stephen was the messenger whom they sent afterward saying, "We
will not have this man to rule over us" (Luke 19:14), and
the Lord stood to receive the first Christian martyr (Acts 7:56).
From that moment Israel was laid
aside. For a while, individuals continued to enter the blameless
family of God through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ,
which many of them had probably taken part in. But the testimony
to the nation as a whole had essentially come to an end, and
slowly a divine silence settled over the world as God's active
covenant relationship with Israel was once more held in abeyance.
The silence this time was not to last a mere four hundred years:
it has already lasted for nearly two thousand.
Postscript
One of the Old
Testament "signs" was the existence of men who spoke
as they were directed to do so by God Himself. The very last
prophetic statement uttered in Israel was made by Caiaphas. It
sounded the death knell of their Messiah, but it also ended their
existence as a nation. It is recorded in John 11:49-51:
Ye know nothing at all, nor
consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die
for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.
And this spake he not of himself:
but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus
should die for the nation.
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