Since the present war began, evacuation is a word that has become familiar with the man in the street. We read about evacuated areas and evacuees and so forth.
There is, however, a sense in which this word is used that we wish to draw the attention of our readers to. The dictionary gives as one of the meanings of the word, evacuate, to make void or empty.
As Christians we have to do with divine things, and it is possible for us to possess the form of these things without any true knowledge of their power. The Apostle Paul, writing to Timothy warns him of the perilous last times. Describing their characteristics as they affect men, he refers to them as having “a form of godliness but denying the power thereof” (2 Tim. 3:5). This description is terrible. Godliness is the one thing worth having. All else is corruption and evil. To have the form of what is good, and for it to be a mere form, evacuated of all the power that is inherent in true godliness; to be a mere shell without a kernel, is sad beyond words. Of what use is a shell in living nature, if there is no succulent kernel?
A striking example of evacuation is found in the following verses. We emphasize the words we wish to draw attention to as examples of evacuation.
“After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for He would not walk in Jewry,* because the Jews sought to kill Him. Now the Jews’ feast of tabernacles was at hand” (John 7:1-2).
{*Jewry is the same word commonly translated Judaea.}
When the land of Israel was broken up into two kingdoms, the southern kingdom went by the name of Judah. It contained Jerusalem and the Temple, which was an attraction to all godly Jews.
Presently the word Jewry or Judaea came into use. Ezra 5:8 speaks of the province of Judaea, showing how the land had passed under the control of a foreign power, the Temple having been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The only bit of true godliness was connected with a feeble remnant. In Daniel 5:13 we read that Belshazzar addressed Daniel as having been brought by his father out of Jewry.
We read in Leviticus 23:4 it “shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days to THE LORD [JEHOVAH]” (v. 34). Verse 36 tells us, “Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire to THE LORD [JEHOVAH].” Verse 36 again says, “Ye shall offer an offering made by fire to THE LORD [JEHOVAH].” Verse 39, “Ye shall keep a feast to THE LORD [JEHOVAH] seven days.” Verse 40, “Ye shall rejoice before THE LORD [JEHOVAH] your God.” Verse 41, “Ye shall keep it a feast to THE LORD [JEHOVAH] seven days in a year.”
Thus we see how strongly emphasised is that the feast of tabernacles was “to THE LORD.”
What was the condition of things in the days of our Lord? A gorgeous temple, but no shekinah glory; elaborate ritual but no touch of spiritual power. The more gorgeous the temple, the more elaborate the ritual, the greater was the tragedy of the whole thing—an empty shell without a kernel, spiritual evacuation of the very breath of God. Deadness, deathlike spiritual gloom, reigned supreme. The flesh had driven out the spirit.
If the JEWS’ feast of tabernacles had been indeed the feast of THE LORD [JEHOVAH], then would our Lord have been rapturously welcomed and acclaimed by the high priests; but instead they were plotting for His life.
History is for our learning, and it has been cynically, but alas! too truly said that history teaches us that we do not learn by history. What do we see today? Colossians 2 warns against the danger of rationalism on the one hand and ritualism on the other. Is that warning heeded today? Alas, no.
Rationalism, that working of the fleshly mind in the sacred things of God, in other words, Higher Criticism and Modernism, have evacuated the Scriptures of their true meaning. Instead of the Word of God being living and powerful in the minds of those affected by twentieth century rationalism, they feel themselves competent to criticize the inspired word of God, with fatal results to themselves.
Ritualism on the other hand is the going back to the shadows of Judaism; and thereby refusing the Substance, even our Lord Jesus Christ, the fulfiller of the shadows. The more elaborate the ritualism the further removed is the ritualist from the real true power of Christianity. I have seen picture postcards of bishops in full canonical attire in the shop windows in Paternoster Row, and one has often wondered what the Apostle Paul would have thought of such ecclesiastical millinery. Their garments are more or less a copy of the garments of glory and beauty of the Jewish high priests. These garments were all typical of the great High Priest the Lord Jesus Christ. To deck oneself out in such garments is to betray one’s ignorance of their true meaning and fulfilment in the great Antitype, even the Son of God.
A glaring present-day instance of spiritual evacuation is seen in the way the rite of baptism is carried out. Instead of being a burial to the death of our Lord, it is turned into a fashionable ceremony with christening robes, christening cakes and the like. Not only so, a virtue is ascribed to the ceremony, that in the mere carrying of it out, the baptised, or christened, becomes a child of God, an inheritor of the kingdom of God. It matters not how godless the baptised may be in after life, this remains true, it is falsely claimed—surely if ever there was spiritual evacuation, it is here with terrible fatal results.
But to come closer home, is there not a danger with saints of God, warned in a general way against rationalism and ritualism, intelligent as to Scripture, being satisfied with correct doctrine, the shell, if you please, and not concerned about holding truth in power in the soul.
Does not Galatians 5:6 put it in a nutshell, “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith which works by love.” That is to say, the mere rite as a rite apart from its true moral import is an utterly negligible thing, but faith working by love is what matters. We come to living realities when we speak of love and faith—faith working by love—love the divine nature leading to a life framed in the light of another world with different and diametrically opposed values to the life of the flesh.
May we be found holding not in mere terms of truth, but its real force and power in our lives. It is possible to hold the terms of divine truth very correctly, and yet do so in fleshly energy, working deadness and untold mischief among the children of God. May we be preserved from this.