The Oil of Joy for the Spirit of Heaviness

A Christmas Message

"The LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken‑hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD…to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." (Isa.61:1‑3)

Isaiah the golden‑tongued was the first to receive this soul‑stirring commission, but he was not the last. Our Lord at the commencement of his earthly ministry took the same message to himself and told the wondering listeners in the synagogue at Nazareth "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." (Luke 4:21) His whole life was spent in fulfilling the provisions of this mandate. He gave the commission to his disciples, and they in turn passed it on to those that followed, so that today we who carry the flaming torch in our own midst can say as truly as did Isaiah of old "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me…"

But there is more than one way of interpreting the details of the commission, and if we are to be as certain as was Isaiah of the meaning and application of the message preached we do well to consider them carefully and in the light of the main principles of the Divine Plan. We do not want to preach a message now which is due to be preached only in another Age: neither do we wish to fail in the preaching of the message which ought to be given to the people of this generation. Noah preached repentance against the background of a coming Flood; John the Baptist preached repentance because the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand; Isaiah preached repentance in the light of the Divinely promised glorious restoration of Israel’s former glory. All condemned sin; all preached repentance; all sought for conversion, but in each case, there was associated with their message that which gave it both point and urgency.

So, the question comes before us and has to be faced: Are these blessings which we offer to the unconverted—beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness—are they, as most theologians insist, spiritual blessings in Christ to be enjoyed here and now, in this life, by the converted, and nothing more, or are they blessings of the future, to be realised when God turns his face again toward his erring children, and sends the "Times of Restitution," (Acts 3:21) the Golden Age, spoken of by all his holy prophets since the world began? Future or present? An inheritance to be anticipated or a possession in the heart now?

It is easy, of course, to say "Both," but that answer is altogether too indeterminate and avoids the real issue. Is our message to promise the repentant and converted one happiness and peace with God in this life only, or is it also to relate the fact of repentance and conversion to the ultimate purpose for which God calls to repentance and conversion? Are we to rest content with one who, being justified by faith, now has peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and not tell him anything about the purpose for which God has called him? Or are we to prepare and fit him for his entry into the world that is to be—irrespective of whether it be a spiritual or an earthly world into which he is to enter?

Isaiah seemed to be in no doubt as to the scope of his own commission. In a blaze of passionate fervour, he throws out his arms and cries "They shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations." (v.4) This is comfort for the present evil time certainly but comfort based upon a solid hope for the future. This clear vision of the promise and purpose of God is held forth as a positive inducement to the men and women of Israel to turn from their evil ways and return to God, who is working all things for their ultimate happiness. "I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem" cries the prophet "which shall never hold their peace day nor night" (Isa.62:6) and then addressing those watchmen "ye that are the LORD’s remembrancers, keep not silence, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." (Isa.62:6‑7 KJV/RV) And so, the glorious message of joy and peace is to go on and widen over the length and breadth of the earth until the Golden Age of all prophecy has swept away this present world of sin and death, and the Sun of righteousness has risen with healing in his wings. (Mal.4:2)

This theme of the future restoration of Israel’s glory as the comfort for present distress is the burden of the Old Testament prophets. Not for nothing did St. Peter, preaching Restitution to the wondering crowds at Pentecost, remind them that this coming glory had been spoken by all the prophets from the beginning. There is hardly a notable name, from Moses onward, that is not associated with some one or another foreview of the day that is to be, when not only Israel, but all of every nation, will realise to the full what great things God has prepared for those who have waited for him and who love him. We could roam to and fro over the pages of the Hebrew prophets and find one all‑absorbing central theme, the glory that shall come when the lessons of this Age of sin and death have been learned. To those fervent devoted men this life had no meaning except it were co‑related to the future life. Sin, evil, suffering, death, were insoluble enigmas until in the distant but certain future they perceived righteousness, goodness. happiness, life. Judgment must mark the dividing line between the two. Yes, they knew that. Repentance and conversion must be the only bridge whereby one may pass from the one to the other: they knew that too. But they never lost sight of what lay on the other side of the bridge. To them it was no mysterious avenue ending only in mist and obscurity, a vaguely defined world having nothing of the certainty of this one. To those men the future earth was as clear and sharp as the present and as they saw it resplendent in the golden light of the Sun of righteousness, they pointed men to it with every device and embellishment the art of description could bring to their aid.

Now the New Testament equivalent of the prophets are the Apostles, and the New Testament equivalent of Moses is Christ. What was their attitude to this question of the Divine commission, and what was the message they preached? Did their exhortations and writings relate only to this life, or did they include a generous view of the life to come? Did their appeal rely for its force entirely upon the sense of release from guilt, upon the peace and joy of the Christian life? Or did they follow the example of Moses and the prophets and point men to the coming Day when God will arise to determine for all time the issues of good and evil and require all to make a personal choice? How can we expect Jesus and the Apostles to have done anything else than follow their predecessors’ examples? To preach Christianity without preaching the Kingdom is to preach a truncated Gospel—cut in half, with the very part which gives meaning to the whole thing missing.

Jesus went about preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. Since He came, not only to die for men, and minister to them, and win their love and allegiance, but also to raise every one of them out of death and teach them the issues of life, that the purpose of God in creating man might be accomplished, it is inconceivable that Jesus could have done anything else than preach the Gospel of the Kingdom in its future aspects as well as in its present one. It is just as inconceivable to imagine any instructed Jew receiving his message from any other standpoint. A Messiah without a Messianic kingdom is a contradiction in terms. Not one of those who gave credence to his claim to being the "sent of God" could have associated his message with anything else than the promised future Kingdom. Not one of those who gave their lives to him did so without expecting the glory and power of the Kingdom. So, the disciples must have lent very attentive ears when, in response to their question, Jesus told them that when He came again, in the regeneration, seated on the throne of his glory, they also would be seated on thrones, judging the tribes of Israel. When the dying thief begged to be remembered when the Lord should come into his kingdom it was because he had been taught by the rabbis, and because Jesus had confirmed that teaching in his preaching, that the Kingdom was a future event but one surely to come, and the thief believed him.

Similarly with the Apostles, there was a strong undercurrent of what today is called in Church circles, somewhat scornfully, "dispensationalism." The mission of the Apostles was two‑fold, first, to convert men and women to Christ, and second, to instruct and build up those thus converted that they might become, at the last, "meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." (Col.1:12) There were two aspects of the future Kingdom to which the Apostles had to give attention, the earthly and the heavenly. They knew that the High Calling to the heavenly Kingdom was first in order of time in the Divine Plan, and it is only what we should expect to find them spending their principal efforts in exhorting, teaching, and establishing those who had intelligently given themselves in consecration to God, that they might eventually be the Divine instruments in the work of reconciling all. St. Paul in 1 Thess.4, in 2 Thess.2, in 1 Cor.15, and in a score of places, relates the present life of the Christian to the consummation of the Christian hope in the celestial Kingdom.

In just the same way we find that in their preaching the Apostles could not divorce their message from the theme of the coming Kingdom. When Jesus was about to leave them and ascend to his Father they asked him, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6.) That long‑cherished hope of the Messianic Age still held first place in their hearts. St. Peter’s first sermon, preached on the Day of Pentecost and recorded in Chapter 2 of the Acts of the Apostles, was a Messianic sermon. It took as its basis the prophecy of Joel which envisaged the events surrounding in the establishment of the Messianic kingdom and Peter told his hearers that the prophecy was even then entering into its fulfilment. St. Peter’s second sermon, a few days later, elaborated this theme and defined his position even more clearly. He called for repentance and conversion in order that the times of refreshing, the times of restitution, associated with the Second Advent of Christ, might come to earth. The Jerusalem conference of Acts 15 connected the growing missionary work of the Church with Amos’ prophecy of the Millennial day; St. Paul, addressing the philosophers of Athens, related in Acts 17, made the whole point of God’s call for repentance hinge upon the coming of that day in the which He was to judge the world in righteousness: later on, before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, he avowed that the whole of his position stood or fell upon the "hope and resurrection of the dead" which to all Jews was synonymous with the Messianic Kingdom. Making his defence before Felix the Roman governor, he re‑affirmed that position, and later on, before the Jewish dignitary Herod Agrippa, "expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews" (Acts 26:3) he affirmed it again. Last of all, the final glimpse we have of this doughty warrior is in Acts 28, where a prisoner at Rome, he "expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets." (Acts 28:23) The curtain drops with Paul still "preaching the Kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ." (Acts 28:31)

The glory of the Christian gospel is that it takes this life and the next life and of the two makes one harmonious and understandable whole. By explaining to us the future purposes of God it enables us to see our place in the Divine Plan now and to work intelligently for good. Our consecrated lives can he charged with definite purpose. We serve and labour and evangelise with a definite end in view and can see the connection between our present efforts, be they crowned with success or apparent failure, and ultimate outcome. Without the message of the Kingdom no evangelistic work can attain its highest peak. The prophets of old soared into their loftiest heights of understanding and gave voice to their most eloquent appeals when their eyes were fixed on the future. The Apostles laid down their clearest definitions of Christian doctrine when they were enabled by the Spirit to range in thought backward to the beginning, and forward to the climax, of the Divine Plan. The whole counsel of God must include a wide and comprehensive view of the eternal purpose of God, and if in our evangelistic work we are really to accomplish that to which we are called, that eternal purpose must he closely integrated with the call to repentance and reconciliation which admittedly lies always at the foundation of all our work. It is the glory of the Truth that we can speak positively of things which lie beyond the vail of the future, where so many others can only wander in a vague and misty land. It is that same certainty which can give our message the force it had in early days— if only we are truly positive about it.

"He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." (Matt.7:29) So much of Christian evangelism today holds out as the great attraction of repentance and conversion a deliriously happy life, here and now, in which the possession of Christ evokes an eternal sunshine around all one’s affairs. The idea of a calling to sacrifice and suffering is not always stressed as it should be. In the teaching of Jesus, it was stressed, "through much tribulation shall ye enter into the Kingdom." (Acts 14:22) Perhaps we are on much safer ground if we take Isaiah’s words to mean exactly what they say and go out, in the power of our faith and knowledge of the Divine Plan, to preach good tidings unto the meek, to bind up the broken‑hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to comfort all that mourn, to give beauty, joy and praise for sadness, mourning and heaviness, because earth’s dark night of sin is nearly at an end, and the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!

AOH