A PATTERN OF SOUND WORDS

PERHAPS all sin stands related to the word of God. Certain it is that there is nothing new in sin since our first parents transgressed, and that was an offense against His word.

Any pattern of sound words does not appeal to the soulish man. His concepts of truth are decidedly impressionistic--a snatch here, a phrase there, according to the way he feels. It cramps his style to have a pattern. 'I like to think,' 'It seems to me,' 'I feel that,' etc., often betray too much. He synthesizes, he makes it up to suit himself, rather than give heed to what God has said. He invents rather than discovers, which last, he feels, is such an unoriginal thing to do. He would be like the Living Word in that all things that are made are made by him. But that desire is not original either; for it was present back yonder in the dawn of human doings.

God had made Adam, the groundling, and set him in the garden which was eastward in Eden and had instructed him to dress it and to keep it (Gen.2:15)--to prune, graft, and twine its growths and to guard it from potential enemies. Not doing the latter, he had small opportunity to enjoy the former.

One prohibition was laid on him. He was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen.2:16,17). God did not demand that man relinquish something that he already had. God did not demand that he perform some irksome and laborious work, not bidden but forbidden was man. Everything that was there he could have and enjoy. There was just one thing which he must forego; to take that meant death. He was merely to forego something that was not his own; forego one good thing which he never possessed. Could that be called a temptation, a trial, a testing?

Ah! to forego that which we do not have and still desire is the hardest thing of all. The hardest struggle and the bitterest toil wherein we strain our every power of mind and body to the utmost is easy compared with quiet, selfless resignation. Things possessed are not half so happifying to the natural man as that which is denied him. Yea, more willingly would he give of that in his hands than that he demurely fold his hands and say: I forego, my God, because it is Thy will. The permit to eat of all but one tree had been given before Eve's creation, but Adam evidently conveyed the facts to her; for theirs was a joint dominion (Gen.1:28).

Adam knew how to deal with the beasts of the field (wild animals), with cattle (domestic animals), and with the fowl of the air (Gen.2:20). There were no subtleties of feeling, instinct, thought, or practice which he could not understand in them. But there came a Shiner, a Brilliant One, a Bright Messenger whose motives were not so easily read as those of the beasts of the field. He was too slick, too wily, too capable a deceiver to be met by human wisdom. Eve was beguiled (Gen.3:1; 2 Cor.11:14,3).

Faith takes God at His word. Unbelief takes God's word and messes it up to suit itself. This the Slanderer proceeds to do with Eve, the Liver.

The Slanderer questions God's word. Is it really true that God hasn't given you carte blanche to everything in this wondrous pantry? Have I heard aright? I am loath to believe such a thing! One jar of jam which you dare not taste? And God's voice which forbade had hardly more than died away in the peace and happiness of the garden!

The seed of doubt was planted. Eve was becoming part of the intelligentsia, if you please. She claimed the 'right to doubt.' And the fruitage sprang up like a stalk of corn under a medicine man's conjurings. Inside of forty-four English words (nineteen in Hebrew) Eve does all the damage to God's word that any of her children ever did. It might be said to her credit that she at least did it in less space than most of her offspring.

The toxin of doubt was in her system now. She did not need to be as smart as her seeming benefactor. All she needed to do was to rely on what God had said; and that reliance she had already eschewed in favor of 'advanced thought' of the 'more progressive minds.'

Instead of pruning, grafting, and twining the vines of the garden Eve prunes, grafts, and twists the word of God. She mangles it by leaving out part of it; she adds to it by saying something God had not said; she garbles it by substituting one thought for another.

God Said	Eve said
Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of fruit of the the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that the thou eatest thereof thou surely die [Hebrew: dying thou thou shalt die].	We may eat omission of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it [addition], lest ye die [twist].

Like Achan, the son of Zerah (Josh.7:21), who, seeing the goodly Babylonish garment, some silver and some gold, which, as the first booty of the land, were devoted partly to destruction and partly to the Lord's treasury, omitted to destroy the garment, committed to steal from the Lord, and dissembled in the whole, so Eve sinned against God's word after the manner of the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes.

She omitted "freely" (literal Hebrew, eating thou shalt eat), because that gave a gracious, open-hearted and open-handed tinge to God's provision. He had provided. He had provided largely--"according to His riches in glory" --; they were to eat freely--help themselves and have some more. But now before this brilliant and dapper stranger the voice of God had lost its sweetness; his love had lost its grace. Her concept fell short of the glory of God, and that short-falling was sin.

But can there be more? Yes, more. She makes God a tyrant with purposeless restrictions. "Neither shall ye touch it." She made void the commandment of God by her human accretion. That was transgression.

More yet: Eve changed the inexorableness of the penalty to a risk. God had been very specific. She was very hazy and indeterminate, substituted one thing for another, which was a cutting offense--as though God did not know how to express Himself!

The Brilliant One, having laid down a barrage of doubt in Eve's mind by questioning God's word, now makes a two-flanked onslaught of falsehood. He advances his positive and his negative lies, both of them firmly believed not only by all of paganism but by 99.44 per cent of "Christendom" today--"Ye shall not surely die" and "ye shall be like God," `the one despite your disobedience and the other because of your disobedience.'

That old Shiner (for such is the significance of the Hebrew word), which is the Slanderer and Opponent (Rev.12:9), first questions God's word, then denies God's word, then affirms a falsehood in place of God's word. Nothing new has been done since that time. A new line of attack has been unnecessary, the old one works so well. The outward transgression which followed was but an amplification of what had already taken place in Eve's attitude toward God's word. Satan's questioning planted the seed, his denial cultivated the growth, and his affirmation fertilized it.

Now it was only necessary to gather the fruit from the Mother of all Living. And, as though in pantomime of her control, Eve plucked and ate the forbidden thing.

"And when the woman saw that (1) the tree was good for food, and that (2) it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired (3) to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat" (Gen.3:6).

So it happened, the dreadful thing, sin. It was not merely the eating of the fruit, but much more. Man flagrantly sundered the bond of love and confidence which held him to Jehovah; it was a blow in the face of his Father and his God--because he, in Eve, listened to the voice of the serpent, because he believed God to be a liar, because he believed that the Father of every good envied him his blessings and wished to set bounds thereto.

Eve first sank slowly into sin, like one who contested and struggled with herself. She sinned, but tremblingly. She stood and listened until her conscience grew confused. She started out by parleying with the wicked one; she entered into discussion and argument.

She not only answers the tempter, but lends her ear to his flattering voice. Ever sweeter sounds that voice, and ever sharper and more strident clangs the voice of God. His lovely and most gracious countenance transforms itself before her mind into the face of a cold and envious tyrant.

She looks at the fruit, the forbidden fruit; and lovelier and more fragrant and more to be desired and ever more to be desired and more indispensable becomes that fruit--every drop of blood within her seethes and glows. Impossible she cannot refrain -- there, it is done!

Before and after sin, what a difference in the human heart! Before, sin seemed so sweet; it would surely bring pleasure and repose; it would surely enrich the perceptions and faculties. Then afterwards, ah, afterwards. Unrest seized on the heart; fevered, downcast, man sought to hide himself in outgrowths of the earth. But God, the ever gracious God, seeks the sinning pair.

The beginning of strife among the sinner race lay in their effort to shift the blame. The end of all dissension is found in the Prince of Peace, who, though holy and blameless, willingly takes the blame of the unholy upon His shoulders.

Instead of (1) the lust of the flesh, (2) the lust of the eye, and (3) the boastfulness of life, which things are not of the Father but of the world (1 John 2:16), our Lord met the same Tempter on the same standardized temptation, not by being deceived or beguiled, but by faithfulness to the word of God. "If thou be the Son of God" (Matt.4:3). And God's voice had hardly died away, saying, "This is my beloved Son" (Matt.3:7).

Hunger, the desire of the flesh, was legitimate--just as it was legitimate for Eve to desire the fruit. But it was not right to predicate the satisfaction of that desire on a doubt inspired by the Slanderer; and our Lord did not do it. The Tempter was repulsed by what was written, and again when the appeal was to the spectacular (Matt.4:5) and to the ostentatious life of a worldly potentate (Matt.4:8). In all of these respects our Lord was faithful to the pattern of sound words. And in all of these respects will the Beast be unfaithful, unbelieving, in the end time (Rev.13:4).

The question is, are we in any measure miscreant to the word of God, which we are given to preach (2 Tim.4:2)? Do we ignore the pattern of sound words, even if we resist the so-called modernist tendency to doubt, and to glory in it? But among those who sincerely affirm faith in the word of God as such there are many who do not one whit better than Eve, in that they mangle, add to, and garble that word. Where is the creed of "Christendom" that does not do all these things? And where is the church member who does not believe both of Satan's lies? "If such there be, go, mark him well," for he will not stay a member very long, unless, perchance, the tail should wag the dog. "There is no death, what seems so is transition," "a never-dying soul to save," and all the rest of the pious satanic falsehoods that stink up the hymn-book ointment.

Our Lord said: "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees" (Matt.16:6). Fifty years ago these classes were called traditionalists and rationalists. Now they are called fundamentalists and modernists--both of the present-day names being highly misleading.

The Sadducees claimed the right to doubt. They had not seen anybody raised from the dead, therefore they "corrected" the words of God in the light of reason and of conscience.

The Pharisees did not doubt the word, but they super-added to it until the grace of God as it shone in the face of Jesus Christ was obscured in their hearts. From among the Pharisees some came to believe, but they were few. So we may not expect many "fundamentalists" to believe God's word as it is. They are so set on God's word as it is traditionally interpreted. But who knows who may be a bitter Saul or a fearsome Nicodemus?

The Essenes combined the asceticism of the Greek stoics with a knowledge of the law, and thus twisted God's word into some kind of apparent support for their self-righteousness. There are not a few such today.

The whoop-and-howler, the bleacherite, and the pietist are easily found among religionists, and each bears a certain relationship to the word of God.

The whoop-and-howlers are largely influenced by the lust of the flesh. They are the feelers, who subtract everything from the word of God which can't be interpreted in terms of emotion. This group is by no means limited to the flagrantly noisy. The Sadducees belong there, who discard all of the word to which they sense no physiological or psychological response. The soulish, who receive not the things of the spirit of God.

The bleacherites are the gentry of the puffy pew. They pay someone else to put on a good show, and add to the word a maze of pagan ritual. They may be the givers, but they suffer from lust of the eye. They have such a beaut-iful suhvice. Oh deah, yes. As an amateur theatrical it would be very creditable, but as an unauthorized addition to the word of God it is to be avoided by the man of God whose service will be rewarded not for the multiplicity or ornateness of his wood, hay, and straw, but for the genuineness of his gold, silver, and precious stones.

The pietistic school, the Essenes, reiterate the lie, "Ye shall be like God," by following Babylonian philosophy instead of God's utterances. The ostentation of life, religious life, occupies them with self-help to perfection. No Saviour, no Lord, no happy servitude. They gamble heavily in Bootstrap Limited.

There you have them--the feelers, the givers, the livers; the high and crazy, the low and lazy, the broad and hazy.

It is not to be hoped that any of us is free from tinges of all of these iniquities. But there is one thing certain and that is that our favorable reward as ministers or handlers of the word will be in proportion to our freedom from them.

There are no wholly typical groups. If there were, it would be invidious to point at them. But there are the facts and on suitable occasion we may and should call attention to what, in a given doctrine, omits a part, especially a gracious part, of God's word, what encrusts it with tradition, and what warps and twists it, changing a certainty to a contingency. What is missing is sure to be some precious truth; what is added is sure to obscure; and what is twisted is sure to produce deformity. Negative, positive, and substitutionary error.

These presentations may be recapitulated in tabular form for those whose minds work in geometric channels:

SATAN'S WORDS:	EVE'S WORDS:	EVE SAW:	EVE'S MOTIVE:
(1) Hath God said? [instill insidious doubt]	omit freely	good for food	lust of flesh
(2) Ye shall not die [deny plainest truth]	add neither touch	pleasant to eyes	lust of eye
(3) Ye shall be like God [affirm subversive falsehood]	twist condition	desirable to make one wise	pride of life
EVE AND ADAM ACT:	SATAN TO JESUS:	JESUS SAYS:	JESUS' WORDS:
did eat	If thou be	not by bread alone	instil faith in every word
eyes opened	leap--thou shalt not die	Thou shalt not tempt the Lord	state negative truth
knew good and evil	worship me-- thou shalt be as God	Get hence... worship only God	affirm Satan's retirement and God's being All in all

A PATTERN OF SOUND WORDS

2 Timothy 1: 13