...the second chapter, we're going through the book,
and we're now to chapter 5, and I
like to hear the rustling of the leaves.
These are not maple leaves, it's your rustling,
but they are the leaves of the scriptures.
Next best after the maple leaf.
Beginning with verse 5, chapter 2, and going
to verse 10.
"...for unto the angels hath he not put
in subjection the world to come, whereof we
speak.
But one in a certain place testified, saying,
What is man that thou art mindful of
him, or the son of man that thou
visitest him?
Thou madest him a little lower than the
angels, thou crownest him with glory and honor,
and didst set him over the works of
thy hands.
Thou hast put all things in subjection under
his feet, wherein that he put all in
subjection under him.
He left nothing that is not put under
him.
But now we see not yet all things
put under him.
But we see Jesus, who was made a
little lower than the angels for the suffering
of death, crowned with glory and honor, that
he by the grace of God should taste
death for every man."
That verse in its English construction is likely
to be misunderstood.
"...we see Jesus, who for the suffering of
death was made for a little while lower
than the angels, we see him now crowned
with glory and honor."
Now, we have here revelation.
And in the Christian testimony, which has come
down the centuries, there are two words which
occur very frequently and should occur very frequently.
One is inspiration, and the other is revelation.
I thought I might explain those two words
for those of you who may be not
too familiar with them, or at least with
the distinction between them.
Inspiration and revelation.
When we say inspiration, meaning that the scripture
is inspired or given by inspiration, we mean
that in its original signature, that is, as
originally given, the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible
to be written.
What is here was put down at the
order of the Holy Spirit.
That's what we mean by inspiration.
Now, God wrote the Bible as originally given,
and it is a trustworthy source book of
authentic truth.
And what is here is true, but not
everything that is true is here.
You can learn everything from the Bible that
the Bible teaches, but you can't learn everything
from the Bible.
For the reason that the Bible doesn't teach
everything, it doesn't pretend to.
The Bible has to do with that which
deals with redemption.
It is a book interested in our rescue
from sin and death, our moral rehabilitation, and
our spiritual regeneration.
It is interested in keeping us right and
making us useful and causing us to grow
up into the maturity of a Christian, and
then at last having us prepared for the
journey across.
It is interested in all that, but it
isn't interested in geometry.
You can't go to the Bible and learn
geometry, but you can go to the Bible
and learn that God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son.
You can't learn from the Bible how to
bake a pie or send up a rocket,
but you can learn from the Bible that
except a man repent, he shall surely perish,
and unless he be born again, he cannot
see the kingdom of God.
The Bible reveals the truth that we need
to know to save us from sin, regenerate
us, rehabilitate us morally and spiritually, and prepare
us for the day of the Lord.
And it's all here, and that's what we
mean when we say the Bible is the
only source book for our rule and practice.
That's a good Baptist expression, but it's one
that we also agree with and teach, that
the Bible is the only source book, the
only final authentic source book, of information concerning
those things that have to do with our
salvation.
In the scriptures we are told that God
created the heaven and the earth, and we
are told many other things that do not
seem to bear directly upon our salvation, but
that does nevertheless bear upon it.
Revelation is the uncovering of truths which had
not been before known and that are undiscoverable.
There are some things that you can discover,
you know.
They discovered that there was an atom.
Old Lucretius wrote a book before Christ's time
on the nature of things, and in it
he told us that there were atoms.
That was way back there, but he thought
that atoms were little, tiny, hard bits of
matter out of which everything was made, just
as a concrete building is made out of
tiny bits of matter, sand and concrete.
You can break it down and find its
tiny particles.
But he came, I think, wonderfully close to
it, even though he did not have the
benefit of modern scientific techniques and information.
Now, those things are discoverable.
You can discover them.
But there are truths which can never be
discovered.
Let me show you how, while God inspires
the Bible to be written and inspires men
to say things, often those things could be
discovered.
They are not undiscoverable.
Look at that 8th Psalm.
When I consider thy heavens, the work of
thy fingers, the moon and the stars which
thou hast ordained, what is man that thou
art mindful of him, and the Son of
Man that thou visitest him?
Thou madest him a little lower than the
angels, and hast crowned him with glory and
honor, and hast madest him to have dominion
over the work of thy hands, and hast
put all things under his feet, sheep and
oxen and beasts of the field, and fowls
of the air and fish of the sea.
Now, that was an inspired utterance in that
the Spirit of God moved David to write
this psalm.
And it has a spiritual benefit for us.
But this is not revelation in that it
is a reaction anybody could have, even if
he were an atheist or a communist.
He could still look up into the heavens
and say, when I look at all the
vast spaces, what is man?
What is man?
Now, you'll notice that the 8th Psalm is
a night scene.
When I consider thy heavens, the moon and
the stars which thou hast ordained.
But the psalm we read this morning, the
19th, is a day scene.
The heavens declare thy glory, and the firmament
shows thy handiwork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto
night showeth knowledge.
And then in verse 5 it talks about
the sun and says, which is as a
bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoices
as a strong man to run a race.
Seen from the earth up, that's exactly what
the sun looks like.
A great shining bridegroom of the world, shining
in his splendor.
That's the day scene.
And the 8th Psalm is the night scene.
And they're both inspired, but there's no particular
revelation there in that anybody could say the
same thing.
Anybody could say that the heavens declare God's
glory and the firmament show his handiwork.
That's a discoverable truth.
You see the distinction between revealed truth, which
is undiscoverable, and truth which is discoverable, but
which is inspired nevertheless, in that it's brought
into the scriptures and becomes part of the
inspired canon of divine truth.
Now, nobody could have discovered, for instance, John
3.16, for God so loved the world.
But in the 104th Psalm, which happens to
be one of my favorite psalms, the 104th,
look how much here could be discovered.
Anybody could see this.
The birds make their nests in the trees,
and the stork makes hers in the fir
tree.
And the hills are the refuge for the
wild goats, and rocks for the conies.
And the sun nose is going down, and
the moon is for seasons.
And the young lions roar after their prey,
and the sun rises, and they go back
into their dens, and man goes forth to
work into his labor until the evening.
Anybody, just an observer, could see that.
And yet the Holy Spirit caused the man
of God to write this into the 104th
Psalm, weaving in truths that could be discovered
with truths that were undiscoverable.
He wrote perhaps the greatest nature poem, divinely
inspired nature poem in all the literature of
mankind, the 104th Psalm.
Now, I hope I haven't confused the issue
too much.
I have a habit never of reading question
and answer.
Somebody writes into the magazine and asks a
question, and then the fellow starts in to
answer the question.
And before he's through, he's confused the issue
so much that I know less about it
than I did before.
So I don't listen much to questions and
answers.
And I am afraid that when we preachers
say, now I'm going to make this clear,
that we succeed only in making it unclear.
We simply stir the pool and the mud
in the bottom is shaken up a bit,
and the result is we know less than
we did before.
I hope it won't be so now, because
here is truth that is partly seen and
partly undiscoverable.
The man of God says as he gazes
up at the stars and the moon at
night and says, What is man that thou
art mindful of him?
Now, this is a question from the man
David, and it's an inspired utterance and written
into the inspired proof.
But it's not revelation as anybody could see
when he looks up at the heavens and
says, Man, when you see the size of
the heavens, what am I?
I am nobody.
Well, it's a reaction anyone could experience.
But when you come to John 3.16,
For God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth
on him should not perish but have everlasting
life.
There is not only inspiration, there is revelation
of truth that could never be discovered by
the mind of man.
Now, what is man and the Son of
Man?
David here sees when he says, Man and
the Son of Man.
David first saw mankind, and then by prophetic
vision he saw the great Son of Man.
By a kind of double exposure he gets
them both in the picture.
Mankind as mankind and then Jesus Christ as
the great man who was born a woman
that he might be man.
And here we see the religious value of
the sky, but we're going to skip that
this morning.
Sometime maybe I'll preach on the religious value
of the sky, but we certainly won't this
morning.
But it says that he made mankind a
little lower than the angels.
Now the translators are kicking that around and
they don't know whether that expression, a little
lower, means a little lower or for a
little while lower.
But I claim it doesn't make any difference
anyhow because he did make him lower than
the angels.
You and I were made lower than angels,
and it's obvious we were made that way
for a little while.
So we were made for a little while
lower, and we were made a little lower.
Sometimes it isn't a choice between one or
the other, it's both.
You can have both here, and you'll still
be right.
Man is the unknown.
The pitiful, the wonderful, the mysterious creature, the
weakest creature in all the world.
I just noticed what Pascal, the great French
mathematician and philosopher, said about man.
It isn't very complimentary to us, but it's
here, so I thought I'd let you hear
it this morning.
He says, Man is but a reed, the
most feeble thing in nature, but he's a
thinking reed.
The entire universe need not conspire to crush
him, for a vapor, a drop of water,
suffices to kill him.
But if the universe were to crush him,
man would still be nobler than that which
killed him because he knows that he dies,
and he knows the advantage the universe has
over him, and the universe knows nothing at
all.
And he says this, What a chimera is
man!
What a nonsuch!
What a monster!
What a chaos!
What a contradiction!
What a prodigy!
Judge of all things, and yet an imbecile
maggot.
Depository of truth, and yet sewer of uncertainty
and error.
He is the glory and the rubbish of
the universe.
There you are, my brother and sister.
You don't have to like it, but it's
there, and we might as well face up
to it.
We are the glory and the rubbish of
the universe, but we never would have been
the rubbish of the universe if we hadn't
chosen the gutter.
If sin had not entered and we hadn't
fallen, we'd never have been the rubbish of
the universe.
We would have been the glory of the
universe.
And when our Lord is finished with his
redemptive work, he will have made his people
again the glory of the universe when he
comes to be admired in his saints and
glorified in all them that see him.
I say that man is the weakest creature
there is, but he's the only creature that
knows how weak he is.
And that's where his glory is and his
weakness.
He's able to know how weak he is
and no other creature knows.
I don't suppose that if you were to
ask a mosquito, which I consider a very
weak creature, touch him and he's dead, but
I don't suppose if you would ask him,
are you weak, that he would say yes,
for he doesn't know he's weak.
He couldn't answer you.
He wouldn't know what you said.
I suppose mosquitoes don't particularly like human beings.
I suppose if mosquitoes talk, they call us
the animal that swats, because that's the only
way, the only thing they know about us.
We are the creatures that swat.
When a mosquito lands on you, you swat
him.
Man is the unknown, the pitiful, the wonderful,
the weak, the mysterious, and yet he's the
only creature that knows that he is this.
Man is the only creature that sins, and
yet he's the only creature that could know
that he sins.
And man is the only creature that laughs,
but he's the only creature that knows how
foolish he is and how inconsistent and laughs
at himself.
He's the only creature that aspires, because there's
no other creature dissatisfied with himself.
Man alone is dissatisfied with himself.
Do you remember when Keats wrote Ode to
a Nightingale?
He said in it, I won't give it
word by word, but he said in effect,
among other very wonderful things, he said, "'You
were here way back yonder long ago when
Grecian days, when the Grecians heard thee sing
among the isles of Greece.
Yes, the Nightingale was there then, but the
Nightingale was there before there was any Greece.
The Nightingale was there before there was any
Egypt.
The Nightingale was there before there was any
caveman, if there ever was a caveman.
I'm doubtless about that.
But the Nightingale was there.
Why has the Nightingale remained the Nightingale from
the time God made her and said, "'Let
the birds inhabit the air'?
Because the Nightingale, although she's a beautiful singer,
she doesn't aspire.
But the man who used to come out
of his cave, if he came out of
his cave and listened to a Nightingale, is
now dressed in Hart Shaffner and Marx clothing
and looking at television.
Why?
Well, he's aspired, you see.
He's come up.
I don't know how far you come up
to look at television.
Sometimes I think you have to go down.
But anyhow, he's invented that one-eyed monster,
and he sits there and looks at it.
And he can go up and around the
earth now and look down on us.
He's aspired, but only man does.
The other creatures are exactly what they were.
And the only creature that ever improves is
the one that a man gets ahold of
and cross-breeds.
I suppose you know that those Guernsey and
Jersey and Holstein and Hereford cattle that you
see standing around in little clusters under the
trees these hot days, I suppose you know
that they are cross-breeds.
That is, they have been bred up to
that by careful breeding.
Man got ahold of a poor swayback heifer
out yonder and he bred her to something
better and then got ahold of that and
bred that to something better and on until
he's got these fine cattle.
If man can get ahold of a thing,
he'll breed it up because man alone aspires.
Nothing else does.
What does it indicate?
It indicates that God made man in his
own image and the image and likeness of
God made him and that of nothing else
can it be said.
And so man aspires.
Man is the only creature that prays and
the only creature that worships.
God made man to worship, but he's the
only creature that God made to worship.
He's the only creature down here.
The lion roars for his prey and the
birds build in the thicket, as the psalm
says, and the stormy wind fulfills his will
and he gives his hail like wool and
snow like wool.
But the snow doesn't pray and neither does
the bird pray and neither does the lion
pray and neither does the stormy wind pray.
We can read prayer into it, but it's
not there until we read it in.
We who can pray read into nature prayers
and we say the wind is moaning her
prayers to heaven, but she's only moaning in
our imagination.
The wind is just blowing.
But you and I are the ones that
are doing the moaning.
So we read it into nature.
We say the little bird dips his bill
in the water and then looks up and
thanks God for it.
But the bird is merely putting his chin
up so that the water will run down.
The birds have chins so that the water
will run down, that's all.
It's a purely mechanical thing.
No bird prays.
I think it's perfectly terrible to get a
dog down on his knees beside the bed
and have him pray as some people do.
I don't believe in it.
If God had made a dog to pray,
he'd be praying without your getting him down
alongside of your bed, so stop it if
you've been doing it.
It isn't good, it isn't reverent.
But no dog ever prayed and no bird
ever prayed.
Man alone prays.
What is man that thou art mindful of
him?
Seen as a small creature in the vastness
of the universe, man is very small indeed.
But seen as a spiritual creature in the
bosom of God, he is greater than all
the winds that blow and all the mountains
that rise and all the seas that flow
and all the rivers that run down to
the seas.
He is greater because God made him in
his own image.
And that's why the Son could come, the
Son of Man he sees now, too.
He sees him.
Why did the Eternal Son become the Son
of Man?
He was the Son of God.
Why did he become the Son of Man?
Because man had sinned and had become, as
the man said, the glory and the rubbish
of the universe.
He came down into human flesh in order
that he may get down as far as
we were.
If he had come down and been, come
into the world a child of ten, it
would have been nine years unaccounted for.
If he had started out as a child
of five, there would have been five years
unaccounted for.
If he had started out a year old,
it would have been a year unaccounted for.
If he had been born by some miracle
apart from childbirth, there would have been nine
months unaccounted for.
But that holy thing which is conceived in
you shall be called the Son of God.
And Jesus went clear, back not only to
the embryo, but clear back to the original
germ, that he might know everything that man
knows and develop all through man's development right
up to full, blooming manhood.
He came clear down to where we are.
If he had been born in a palace,
there might have been those who were born
in huts and grass, cottages that he would
not have understood, but he was born in
a manger, in order that he might know
the poorest that there are.
And he is now the corporeal head of
the human race, and under him the human
race is going to regain sovereignty.
We've lost sovereignty.
He came down in order that he might
taste death for every man.
And that word taste there doesn't mean taste,
as a child might taste food and then
reject it.
It means experience.
He experienced death for every man.
And now we see not yet all things
put under him, but we see only that
which has been done.
We see that he was born.
We see that he grew to manhood.
We see that he died.
We see that he rose again from the
dead.
We see that he is saving his church,
and that there is a church in the
church, a church in the church, that is,
redeemed people, regenerated people, blood-washed people, forgiven
people, people that compose the true church.
That isn't all that's called itself church, but
that's the church inside the church, the true
church inside the false church, the church that
God acknowledges and approves within the vast Christendom
which God rejects.
We don't see yet all things put under
him, but we do see what was done,
and by faith we see all things put
under him.
You see, faith is a kind of sight,
because faith sees what yet hasn't happened.
And if we have actual faith, we act
as if we saw what we believe.
And if we claim we believe and do
not have faith, to act as if we
believe that we don't believe it at all.
There was a Jim Hunter up at Glenrocks
last week, told about that fellow whose name
I don't remember, Rondine or some such name,
who wheeled a fellow across Niagara Falls in
a barrel, on a wheelbarrow, on a barrel,
and on a rope stretched across from the
Canadian to the American side, and he went
across there.
And he saw him do it.
He wanted to take somebody else across.
He called up a man and he said,
Do you think that I could wheel you
across?
Oh, sure, he said, I think you could.
He said, Do you believe it?
He said, I certainly do, I saw you
do it.
Well, he said, Come on.
He said, Not me.
Not me!
And he refused absolutely to go.
He didn't believe enough.
He didn't believe enough to act as if
he believed it.
What he was trying to say was, You
made it once, and there's a slim chance
you'll make it again, but there's a bigger
chance you won't, and I don't want to
be on that bigger chance.
See, that wasn't faith.
We say we believe in revelation, we believe
in inspiration, we believe in man made in
the image of God, we believe in God
made in the image of man again, in
the incarnation of the Holy Son.
We say that.
We say that we believe he tasted death
for every man that we might cease to
be the disgrace of the universe and become
the glory of the universe again.
We say that.
And if we truly believe it, we begin
to act as if we believed it.
For remember, you don't believe a thing rightly
until you act in accordance with it.
When you bring your life into line with
your faith, you're a believer.
But when your life isn't in line with
your faith, you're no true believer at all.
We believe that he tasted death for every
man, and we believe that he will soon
triumph over all things, and God will put
all things under his feet.
I believe that.
I believe there will be a new heaven
and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
I've believed and taught for a long time
that God is going to clean up his
universe, but I didn't know there was going
to be so much to clean up.
Now that we've sent a lot of truck
up there and still floating around the sun
and around the moon and around the earth,
the Lord is going to have to send
an angel to clean up the truck he'll
save, one of his angels, get your dustpan
and broom and clean up that stuff that
in the United States and Russia is sent
up there to mess up the heavens.
Get it out of there.
When he comes, who's right it is to
reign, and he becomes Lord over all of
his creation, and there is a new heaven
and a new earth.
Or yet I wonder if he'll sweep it
up.
I think I know the better way, and
I think I know the Bible way.
The heavens and the earth which are now
are reserved unto fire against the great day.
There's nothing that can withstand fire, and God's
going to let the heat of his mighty
presence burn up all that's evil in order
that he might replace it with all that's
good.
Now we see not, says the Holy Spirit,
we see not all things under him, but
we see Jesus.
God has put all things in subjection under
his feet, for in that he put all
in subjection under him.
He left nothing that is not put under
him.
Now we don't see it all done yet,
but we have faith, and we see Jesus,
who for a little while was made lower
than angels in order that he might suffer
death.
We see him crowned with glory and honor
at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty.
And when he comes back again, he'll put
all things under his feet.
For myself, by God's help, I want to
live for that time.
I want my money to live for that
time.
I want my talents, whatever they may be,
to live for that time.
I want my time to be given for
that hour when he comes back again.
I don't want to divide my life and
live for the earth while this is approaching.
I want to live for that while it's
approaching.
For I believe with all my heart that
God has put all things under his feet,
and one of these days he's coming back
to take his power and reign.
May God grant that you and I be
ready.
Amen.