Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 53. The Broader Look

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Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 53. The Broader Look



TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 53. The Broader Look

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The Broader Look

It is intensely interesting, oftentimes, to have a copy, or reproduction, of a small part of some work of art reproduced on a large scale. So you can see better the fine beauty of detail in the workmanship. But the small bit is yet better appreciated when it is looked at as a part of the whole. The little cherub faces in the Sistine Madonna at Dresden are very beautiful in themselves, but have a greatly added beauty when you see that they are looking at the Christ-child and His mother.

In Bible study we have gone almost wholly to the study of small bits. It is a good way, especially for young Christians. It has in it great blessing, making the truths seem very personal. It is really the child method, though never to be laid aside by the most mature. But we have largely lost two things thereby,—the broad grasp of the truth of the Book, and the additional beauty and meaning which the small bit gets when seen in its setting, its relation to the whole swing of truth. This small group of allied subjects is added to help a. little in getting, afresh, the broader outlines of God's plan.

The one thing in which the whole heart and thought of God has centred from the first is the whole race. He gave Himself to the whole race in giving His breath in Eden; He gave Himself for the whole race in giving His blood on Calvary. Both things are parts of one act. In giving Himself in Eden there was the tacit giving of Himself further when the need would come. It was the race He was thinking about throughout.

There are four great messengers to the race, to meet its need, and carry through God's great plan. The first great human messenger was a corporate one, a nation, the Hebrew nation. It brought a fresh statement of that message of God which was being lost by man. When it failed, there was already in preparation a second messenger, likewise human and corporate, the Church. Through both of these there came gradually a third messenger,—a Book, with the heart-throb of human life in it; with the direct controlling touch of God, at the first in its writing, continuous in its pages, and in its preservation and translations.

And from the first breath of human life in Eden, on through all the successive links, there has been the great divine Messenger, the Holy Spirit, the messenger of power. It was His presence that became the breath of life at the first, and has so continued with the coming of each new life throughout the earth. He is in every human life from birth to grave, though His great work of redeeming and making holy can be done only through the human choice, and consent, and sweet yielding to His sway. These four great messengers to the race reveal the patience and persistence and tenderness of the Father's great love for all the race.

The Kingdom is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end. It comes into view first in connection with Israel, the first messenger. It was to be the medium through which Israel's mission would be performed. Through the faithfulness of God to His covenant promises, that medium of service is to be used, until the great mission of Israel is accomplished, under its true King, our Lord Jesus. When the Kingdom's work is accomplished it will drop out of view. It is a means to an end, an end of blessing to all the race; not an end in itself.

From first to last, from Eden to the new Jerusalem, the question of God's way of dealing with sin has been one of the sore questions. It has been much misunderstood by godly people, and much misrepresented by unbelievers, especially unbelievers of the ugly, aggressive type. And so a little is added about judgment to reveal the great love of God dominant here as everywhere.