Genesis in the
Light of the New Testament.
Page 105 - 133
Abraham 2
Circumcision known, we find in the next chapter God in
communion with Abraham (now indeed Abraham) after a manner never before
enjoyed. The Lord not only comes or appears to him, but openly associates
Himself with him as with one of whom He is not ashamed. No one can doubt, that
looks at it, the suggestive contrast with the next chapter, in which Lot for
the last time comes before us, the very type of one "saved so as through the
fire." This has been seen by others, but the more we look at it, the more
striking and instructive will it be found. I shall dwell at more length than I
have usually permitted myself upon lessons of such intense and practical
interest as are those which God in His mercy has here given us.
It
should be evident that the foundation of all this contrast expresses itself in
the different position of these two men - the one, in the door of his tent at
Mamre; the other, in the gate of Sodom. In the one, we see still the persistent
pilgrim; in the other, one who has been untrue to his pilgrim-ship, and is
settled down amid the pollutions of a sinful world. Striking it is, and most
important to remember, that he is a "righteous man," expressly declared so by
the word of inspiration: "That righteous man, in seeing and hearing, vexed his
righteous soul from day to day with their ungodly deeds." He is thus an example
of how "the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations." (2 Pet.
ii. 7,9.) This is a complete contrast with the way in which the book of Genesis
represents him. I need scarcely say, there is no contradiction ; and the
contrast itself is a very beautiful instance of the style of Scripture. In the
actual narrative he is spoken of as one of whom God is ashamed: "And it came to
pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham,
and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in
the midst of which Lot dwelt." Lot has been under the cover, and God must use
the cover toward him. He is the God of Abraham; how could He call Himself the
God of Lot? How solemn this treatment of one of His own! Reader, how is it with
you this moment as before God? Is He confessing, or denying you? This is not a
question which you can turn off by saying, I am a Christian. It is on that very
ground that it appeals to you. In the history, then, we find God making Himself
strange to Lot. This was what His governmental ways required - the discipline
that the need of his soul called for at the time. The need past and gone, as He
looks back upon that history now, He can pick out of it the good He had marked
all through, and say how precious to Him, even in a Lot, was the trouble of
soul which the iniquity of Sodom gave him. Such is our God! Such is His
holiness, and such His grace!
But then how clear this makes it that it
was not because Lot had taken part in the wickedness of Sodom that the Lord was
thus displeased! It was simply on account of his being there, even as of
Abraham that tent life of his is marked out for His special approval: "By faith
he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in
tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise .... These
all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar
off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they
were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. .... But now they desire a better
country, that is, a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their
God; for He hath prepared for them a city." (Heb. xi. 9, 13, 16.)
Thus,
then, we are right in saying that the tent at Mamre and the gate of Sodom are
characteristic and contrasted things. Faith, looking for a city which hath
foundations, is content to scratch the earth with a tent-pole merely. This was
Abraham's place, pattern as he is, and father of all them that believe; and God
comes to commune with him, in the broad open day - "in the heat of the
day."
The style of His coming is as noticeable as all else: there is no
distance, there is intimacy: it is three men who come; in fact, two angels, and
One before whom the angels vail their faces. But they come as men, and keep
this place - the more strikingly, because in the next chapter we find those who
had left Abraham still as two men appear in Sodom explicitly as angels.
Clearly, this difference has meaning in it. How sweet a foreshadowing of what
in due time was to take place - the tabernacling in flesh of Him in whom faith
realizes the glory of Immanuel, now no more to faith a Visitant merely. And
Abraham's practiced heart knew under all disguises Him who stood there. We
learn this plainly from the first words with which he welcomes One whom yet in
this garb he has never seen before. "Lord," he says, distinguishing Him by a
title only given to God, " if now I have found favour in Thy sight, pass not
away, I pray Thee, from Thy servant; let a little water, I pray you, be
fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: and I will
fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass
on: for therefore are ye come unto your servant."
The faith that
recognizes, entertains in the same simplicity Him whom it recognizes. There is
none of the unbelieving cry so often heard, "We have seen God, and we shall
die." In beautiful confidence of faith, he meets Him who has come to him as
man, and as man gives Him human welcome. If He stoop to come so, he will not
say, "That be far from Thee, Lord," but receive Him as He comes, putting
undoubtedly before Him whatever he has, and being met with unhesitating
acceptance. " He stood by them under the tree, and they did eat."
And do
you, beloved reader, in the like unsuspicious way receive the grace which has
now come to us in a Christ made fully known? or do you, alas, draw back from
His approach, as if He knew not the full reality of the place which He has
taken with us, or else the full reality of what we are, among whom He has come?
I cannot find that Abraham even put his dress in order to appear before the
Lord Almighty. His best and his worst were not so far apart as to make him
think of it. There was no preparation of himself to appear before Him who knew
him through and through. Just as he was, whatever he was, the love that met him
was worthy of reception, then and there: all the sweeter and more wonderful the
more he was unworthy.
But in fact, if we translate these figures,
Abraham has that which may well, wherever He finds it, bring the Lord in to
have communion with us. These "three measures of fine meal," and this "calf,
tender and good" do you not recognize them? Surely wherever such food is found
there will still be found the Lord in company. It is Christ of whom these
things speak, and occupation with Christ is still the essential and only
prerequisite for communion. It is when the apostle has introduced to us, in
just such nearness as was Abraham's here, that eternal life which was with the
Father, and heard, seen, looked upon, and handled with the hands among us here,
that he says, " That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye
may have fellowship with us," and then he adds, "and truly our fellowship is
with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ."
If, then, our souls
lack fellowship, if we are out of communion, - ought we not to ask ourselves if
the great primary lack be not of occupation with Christ? Other things, no
doubt, will enter in where this is absent, and we shall not be able to return
to feed on Him until these things be judged and removed. But here is the first
point of departure, as with Israel the turning from the manna.
Abraham's
tent is provided, then, with that with which he entertains a heavenly guest.
First, the three measures of meal tell of Christ personalty. The "meal" is not
merely this: it is the "fine flour" of the meat-offering afterward, which we
all know represents Him. It is Christ as man, the Bread of life, the food of
His people. But what then are the "three measures"? What is the measure of the
Man Christ Jesus? Nothing less, surely, than this, that "in Him dwelleth all
the fullness of the Godhead bodily." And is not this what the number three, the
number of the Trinity - that is, of divine fullness, speaks?* The "calf," on
the other hand, - not necessarily what this implies for us, but a young, fresh
animal - no less clearly reminds us of Him who was the true and perfect Workman
for God. And here that mystery, which we have before seen after the flood began
to be pressed upon man, that life given up must sustain life, is once more told
out.
*"The same exactly as in the parable in Matthew xiii. I cannot but
understand, therefore, that it is Christ also that is represented there : it is
the food of God's people which the professing church, having assumed the
teacher's chair, is leavening with false doctrine.
t"Isaac" means
".Laughter."
In Scripture thus the person and work of Christ are kept
ever together: it is not a work alone, but a living Person who has accomplished
the work. Where we have Him before us really, communion with God there cannot
but be. How sweet that thus, Lord's day by Lord's day at least, the bread and
the wine are to be before us, to occupy our very hands and eyes - so busy with
the things of time and sense as they are - with Him who claims the whole man
for Himself, - that is, for fullest joy and blessing, that afresh and afresh He
in His person and work may make communion with God our power to go though a
world which has rejected Him.
And now Abraham is to receive the final
message that the long-expected promise shall be fulfilled. Intimately
connected, surely, with the scene before us (if we look through the figure to
that of which it speaks,) is the birth of Isaac now announced. It was a "son
born" that was to make Abraham's heart glad, and we know of whom Isaac is the
type. Is it not of Christ come to dwell - no more to visit merely - that the
figure speaks? Thus we have here what filled the apostle's heart so afterward
for the Ephesians, and bowed his knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ:
"That He would grant unto you, according to the riches of His glory, to be
filled with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your
hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to
comprehend with all saints the length and depth and breadth and height; and to
know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with
all the fullness of God."
But this we shall have to look at more in
another place. We have now to see as the fulfillment and fruit of communion,
the Lord disclosing to Abraham the doom of Sodom, now just ready to overwhelm
her. How striking are the words in which He counsels with Himself as to this,
permitting us also to hear that counsel! "And the Lord said, 'Shall I hide from
Abraham that thing which I do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great
and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?
For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him,
and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the
Lord may bring upon Abraham all that He hath spoken of him.'"
How
beautiful this testimony to one who could be called "the friend of God"! How
sweet the encouragement in maintaining in one's household an authority rapidly
being given up in these days - an authority from God and for God! " He will
command . . . and they shall keep the way of the Lord." Do we not see the
connection also between the man of God and the prophet? It was the constant
title of these men of God: Abraham too is called "a prophet." "And surely,"
says Amos, "the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His
servants the prophets." To be with God is the way to penetrate the reality of
things even of the world itself. And it is in this way that the book of
Revelation addresses itself to Christ's servants, " to show unto them the
things which must shortly come to pass."
How carefully and patiently God
judges, moreover, as to Sodom, - no indifference, with all His apparent
slowness! How that full oversight and patient judgment of every thing are
affirmed! "And the Lord said, 'Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great,
and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether
they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me;
and if not, I will know.'" "And the men turned their faces from thence, and
went toward Sodom; but Abraham stood yet before the Lord."
And now
Abraham takes the place which it was surely one part of the design of this
gracious communication to put him into - the place of intercession. For us
whose characters are to be formed by the apprehension of Christ, and who know
Him now as in this very place of intercession, how important it is to realize
what is before us here! It is His people for whom the Holy Spirit intercedes
below. Abraham's prayer too follows the same pattern: "And Abraham drew near
and said,' Wilt Thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure
there be fifty righteous within the city, wilt Thou also destroy and not spare
the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from Thee to do
after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked; and that the
righteous be as the wicked, that be far from Thee: shall not the Judge of all
the earth do right?'"
How strange the implied doubt here in Abraham's
mind! What poor weak questions do not these minds of ours raise! An Abraham
praying the Judge of all the Earth to do right! Is it not a first principle
that, of course, He must? How could he doubt, we say? Beloved, do we never? How
much more do we know of God than Abraham could do possibly! How large a portion
of our prayers, if they were analysed, would be resolved into this, the asking
God to do right! Alas! What infidelity, even as to first principles, cleaves to
us when we little suspect it! God will do right! Why, of course. Oh, but when
every thing on earth seems as if it were going wrong, - when with Jacob we are
tempted to say, "All these things are against us," - when with Job we have to
take our place upon the dust-heap, has there never the bitter question sprung
up in our hearts, if it brake not the door of our lips, - do we never at least
have to still our hearts with it, - " Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do
right?"
But it is beautiful to see how Abraham flings it all out - doubt
and all, casts it down before God. "Pour out your hearts before Him," says the
Psalmist; " Be careful for nothing," adds the apostle; " but in every thing by
prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto
God." In these very requests, what a multitude of things unworthy of Him! But
He who has known them in the heart before would have us pour them out in His
presence, and oh, the relief that the heart gets so! How many of these workings
of unbelief do the psalms thus give us, but they are poured out before God, and
the soul stills itself in that blessed presence as no where else can it be
stilled. What! We have been asking God if He is God! " O thou afflicted, tossed
with tempest, and not comforted," peace! He is indeed the " God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ."
On the other hand, the intercession is right,
and of God. He will do all things well. He will care for His saints whether we
ask Him or not: Christ intercedes; could we add any thing to the efficacy of
His intercession? Is it not all-prevailing? Does it not cover all? Yes, yes,
yes, He into whose hands God has given His people is surely the merciful and
faithful High Priest, never forgetting those whom He bears upon His breast
before God. Yet none the less is it ours to pray "with all prayer and
supplication for all saints." He has ordained, in His grace to us, that that
flow of abundant blessing which He pours out upon His people should flow, in
part at least, through channels of our own providing. He has given us
fellowship with Himself in His love and care for His people. How blessed this
fellowship! Is it not, I ask again, in a peculiar way our privilege who are one
with Him who as man has entered into the presence of God, and with whom we are
one, surely not in position only, but in heart and spirit also? Thus the Spirit
maketh intercession for the saints according to God - and in our hearts where
this intercession is made, if there be prayer "in the Holy Ghost," it will
still be "intercession for the saints:" not for me or mine (in the narrow human
sense), not for individual saints dear to me merely; not for sect or party; but
"for all saints"! O for more power for this broad and blessed outlook, with
Christ for the whole field of those that are His! O for more ability to throw
ourselves in with them into their joys, their sorrows, their cares, their
exercises; to "bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ;"
to realize our oneness with Him, as we take His own into our arms and hearts in
real and hearty recognition of eternal kinship! Sodom's judgment is indeed,
alas! near at hand; and little does the proud and self-sufficient world dream,
(just ready to throw off openly the rule of the ordained Ruler of the scene of
His rejection,) that it is the " fifty righteous " that alone have suspended
divine judgment hitherto. How solemn their condition for whom presently no
prayer will any more avail!
There is no rebuke with God, but a full
answer. "And the Lord said,' If I find fifty righteous within the city, then I
will spare all the place for their sake.'" Abraham goes further. But it is not
needful to go through the detail, so familiar as it is, of these requests
which, pressed on and on, find nothing but acceptance from the patient goodness
of God; until at last Abraham's faith fails, but not God's goodness: for we
read that "it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that
God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He
overthrew the cities in the midst of which Lot dwelt."
Lot
"And there came two
angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them
rose up to meet them: and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; and
he said,' Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house,
and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early and go on
your ways.' And they said, 'Nay; but we will abide in the street all
night."'
How every circumstance seems designed to bring out the
contrast! Two angels come, not men: there is distance, not familiarity; and the
Lord Himself does not come nigh. Hence communion there is not and cannot be.
Evening, too, is fallen; they come in gloom, and as it not to be seen. And
although Lot's hospitality is as ready as Abraham's, there is no such readiness
in the response. They yield, however, to his urgency - "And he pressed upon
them greatly, and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he
made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat."
But
even the semblance of communion is not possible for him. Out of the path of
faith, he is not master of circumstances, but they of him. The men of Sodom
break in upon him, and the very attempt to entertain the heavenly guests only
provokes the outbreak of the lusts of the flesh. Instead of the good he seeks,
Lot has to listen to a message of judgment, which falls upon all with which he
has chosen to associate himself.
How solemn is the lesson of all this in
a day when heaven is indeed allowed to be the final home of the saint, but in
no wise his present practical abiding-place; when Christians count it no shame
to be citizens of this world, to be "yoked " in every possible way -
commercially, politically, socially, and even ecclesiastically - "with
unbelievers;" to sit as judges in the gate of Sodom, and mend a scene out of
which He who came in blessing for it has been rejected, and which, when He
comes again, for that rejection, He comes to judge! If all this be not just
Lot's place, what is it? Personal "righteousness"- in the low sense in which
necessarily we must think of it here - no more exempts one from the condition
pictured than it actually exempted Lot. God's Word persists in claiming one's
voluntary associations as part of one's personal state. Not to be "unequally
yoked with unbelievers" is the condition God gives upon which alone our Father
can "be a Father to us;" to be " purged " from " vessels to dishonour" is the
only state which has attached to it the promise, " He shall be a vessel unto
honour, sanctified and meet for the Master's use, and prepared to every good
work." (2 Cor. vi. 17, 18; 2 Tim. ii. 21.)
I am well aware that such
principles are too narrow to meet with aught but contemptuous rejection in the
present day. Evangelical leaders even can now take their places openly on
public platforms with Unitarians and sceptics of almost every grade; and
societies, secret or public, can link together all possible beliefs in the most
hearty good fellowship. It is this that marks the time as so near the limit of
divine long-suffering, that the "very people who are orthodox as to Christ can
nevertheless be so easily content to leave Him aside on any utilitarian plea by
which they may have fellowship with His rejecters. Do they think that they can
thus bribe the Father to forget His Son, or efface the ineffaceable distinction
between the righteous and the wicked as "him that serveth God, and him that
serveth Him not"? Alas! They can make men forget this, and easily teach the
practical unimportance - and so, really, the untruthfulness - of what in their
creed they recognize. O for a voice to penetrate to the consciences of God's
people before judgment comes to enforce the distinction they refuse to make,
and to separate them from what they cling to with such fatal pertinacity! The
days of Lot are in their character linked in our Lord's words with "the day
when the Son of Man is revealed." May his history, as we recount it, do its
work of warning to our souls.
Communion we have found to be one thing
impossible for Lot in Sodom. It is surely what is implied in that assurance on
God's part, - " I will be a Father to you," - which He conditions upon our
taking the separate place from what is opposed to Him that our relationship to
Him necessitates. How is it possible, indeed, if "whoever will be the friend of
the world is the enemy of God," to have communion with both at the same time?
How is it possible to say to the world, " I will walk with you," and stretch
out the other hand to God saying, "Walk with me"?
But if this be so,
communion with God must be how rare a thing! How many things must be
substituted for it, and, with the terrible self-deception which we can practice
on ourselves, to be taken to be this even! With most, indeed, how little is
Christ abidingly the occupation and enjoyment of the soul! And when we would be
with Him, in our seasons of habitual or special devotion, how often do we
perhaps all realize the intrusion of other thoughts - unwelcome as, to Lot,
were the men of Sodom. We are apt, at least, to console ourselves that they are
unwelcome, perhaps to silence, or seek to silence, conscience with the thought,
as if this relieved us from responsibility about them. Yet who could assert
that Lot was not responsible for the intrusion of the men of Sodom? If their
being unwelcome settled the whole matter, there is no doubt that they were
unwelcome. But why had Abraham no such intruders?
The thoughts that
throng upon us when we would gladly be free - at the Lord's table, at the
prayer-meeting, or elsewhere, - have we indeed no responsibility as to these?
The effort necessary to obtain what when obtained we can so little retain,
while other things flock in with no effort, does it not reveal the fact of
where we are permitting our hearts to settle down?
It may be, perhaps, a
strange and inconsistent thing at first sight, in view of what has been already
said, and if we are to find a figure here in Lot's case as in Abraham's - that
he has the materials wherewith to entertain his heavenly visitants. It is true
he has neither the "calf, tender and good," which Abraham has, nor the "three
measures of meal." Applying these figures, we may say that Christ is not, in
the way thus pictured, present to the soul of one in Lot's case. Yet he has,
what may seem almost as hard to realize, that "unleavened bread" with which the
apostle bids us keep our passover-feast, and which he interprets for us as "the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." How, then, may we attribute this to
Lot?
The answer seems to me an exceedingly solemn one. It is found, I
doubt not, in the very first case in which the command to keep the feast of
unleavened bread was carried out. How, and why, was it carried out? Nothing
would seem clearer than to say, Because the Lord enjoined it. But it is not
this that Scripture itself gives as the reason. "And the people took their
dough before it was leavened; their kneading-troughs being bound up in their
clothes upon their shoulders. . And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough
which they brought forth out of the land of Egypt: for it was not leavened;
because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry; neither had they
prepared for themselves any victual." (Ex. xii. 34, 39.)
That is, their
obedience to the divine command was not the fruit, alas, of the spirit of
obedience. It was the product of necessity, the fruit of their being forced out
of Egypt. And do we not, indeed, easily recognize in the Church's history under
what circumstances in general the feast has thus been kept ? Has it not been
when by the hostility of the world she has been forced out of the world?
Persecution has always helped men to reality. If it be simply a question
between open acceptance of Christ or explicit rejection of Him, this will be a
matter necessarily settled alike by every Christian. The black or white would
have no possible shades of intermediate grey. The "perilous times" of the last
days are not such to the natural life. All the more are they perilous to the
soul.
Similarly, in the shadow of calamity and distress men wake up to
reality. Their desire, the object of their lives, is taken from them, but the
stars come out in the saddened sky. Face to face with eternity they have to
learn how "man walketh in a vain show, and disquieteth himself" too "in vain."
There are times when even Lots become real. Yet, as the mere fruit of
circumstance, it has no necessary permanence in it, nor any power to lift to a
higher level one in fact so low. Nay, a Lot stripped of his cover, how degraded
does he seem! Strip some of my readers, perhaps, of every artificial help to
make something of them, - of every thing outside the man himself, - what would
be the result? Yet to this it must come: aye, to this. We brought nothing into
this world; we can carry nothing out: the world passeth away and the lust
thereof. If our hearts have chosen that which passes, retain it we cannot. We
must some day stand where Lot stood, and hear, as he did, words of judgment
from the very lips of grace.
"And the men said unto Lot,' Hast thou here
any besides? Son-in-law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou
hast in the city, bring them out of this place: for we will destroy this place,
because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord; and the
Lord hath sent us to destroy it."
And then we find how utter had been
the wreck of testimony with a man personally righteous. Nay, that character of
his (who can doubt) would only contribute to the rejection of so strange a
story as that God would visit with signal judgment for its wickedness a place
so attractive as Sodom had proved to righteous Lot. God, then, it would seem,
had not been in sympathy with him. This was his own confession: but if He now
were, who could then possibly tell? " He seemed as one that mocked unto his
sons-in-law."
Here we have, clearly, designed, sharp contrast with what
had been God's own testimony as to Abraham's household. Evil has thus its law
and order, we may be assured, as good has. " Train up a child in the way he
should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Train him up for the
world, and can you marvel if your work be as successful? " And when the morning
arose,, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, 'Arise, take thy wife and thy two
daughters which are here, lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.'
And while he lingered, the men" - notice how in the time of his strait the more
familiar term is used again, - "the men laid hold upon his hand and the hand of
his wife and the hand of his two daughters, (the Lord being merciful to him,)
and they brought him forth and set him without the city."
But now the
shipwreck he had made of faith begins to be apparent in him. How often do you
hear people speak of not having "faith for the path"' Here, it becomes plain
that what is needed is to have the path in order to faith. How, indeed, can one
speak of faith except for God's path ? Can we have faith to walk in some way
that is not God's or does He put before us one way for faith, and some
alternative way if we will be excused from the necessity of faith?
If we
have not, then, faith for the path, we must walk, manifestly, in unbelief,
where God is not with us, where no promise of His assures us, where the might
of His arm cannot be reckoned on. What a thing for men to choose - from
weakness, as they would urge, or fear - a path in which God is not! Surely the
sense of weakness it is not which drives men away from Him: it is willfulness,
or love of the world - sin; but never weakness. Had one to ask really, Have I
faith for the path? Who could dare to say he had? This excuse might well excuse
us all. Which of us knows where God's path may lead? The one thing certain is,
it will be a path contrary to nature, impossible to mere flesh and blood. Had
we in this sense tc count the costs - or better, to meet the charges of the
way, we would all be bankrupts the first day's journey.
But is there,
then, no Shepherd of the sheep? Does He not lead now in green pastures, and
beside still waters? Even in the valley of death-shade is there no virtue in
His rod and staff? Shall we malign a path which is His path, or count upon all
that which calls for His power and grace, but not upon Himself to show
this?
In the path it is that He sustains the faith for the path. Out of
the path, faith goes overboard at the first step; and then the after-life
becomes necessarily the diligent practice of an unbelief which strengthens
itself with all the maxims of sense and selfishness and worldly calculation. In
Lot we have to recognize now this utter prostration of faith in a
believer.
"And it came to pass, when they had brought him forth abroad, that
he said,' Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all
the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.'
"And Lot said
unto them, 'Oh. not so, my Lord: behold now, thy servant hath found grace in
thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy which thou hast shown me in saving
my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I
die: behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one : oh,
let me escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live!'
"
How many prayers does not unbelief dictate! How plainly does it
characterize this prayer throughout! He owns a mercy he yet dare not trust;
asks God for Zoar as a little city, that He might spare as such; and for his
own good, not the human lives that were involved. How base is unbelief! How
wonderful the goodness that, at such intercession, could spare Zoar!
But
for Lot there is no revival. His wife's end follows, involved in the
destruction of the city from which she had never really separated. Then he
leaves Zoar, haunted still by the unbelieving fear which had taken him there at
first. Finally, he is involved in the infamy of his own children, and his death
is unrecorded: he had died before.
Thus far, if the anchorage be lost,
may the vessel drift. And this is what the Spirit of God has put before us as
the contrasted alternative with the life of faith in Abraham. Let us remember
that the grossness of the outward history here may have its representative
before God in what to mere human eyes may appear as correct as can be. God
knoweth the heart. Blessed be His name, He has shown us also what is on His
own.
The
Philistines
After the judgment of Sodom, and before Isaac is yet
born, we find Abraham again in the south country, and in connection with a
people who in the after-history of Israel have a much more important place.
Throughout the times of Samson, Eli, Samuel, and Saul, (whom they defeat and
slay,) the Philistines hold the chief place among the enemies of Israel. David
defeats and subjugates them, although they appear again in the times of his
degenerate successors.
Their typical importance must correspond to their
place in an inspired history of "things" which "happened unto them for types,"
and their general history and character throw light upon what is written of
them in that part of Genesis to which we are now come. The Philistines were not
Canaanites, although sons of Ham. They sprang, according to Genesis x. 14, from
Mizraim, to whom the land of Egypt gave its distinctive name. Yet we find them
in the land of Canaan always, on the lowland of the south-west coast, with
their outlook indeed toward Egypt, with which they had (as see Ex. xiii. 17,)
the freest and most unobstructed communication.
To translate this
spiritually, they are natural men in heavenly things. Of Ham and Mizraim we
have already briefly spoken. Ham is the darkness of resisted light, and out of
this, Egypt, the natural world, is come. Its name, " Mizraim," or " double
straitness," applies with unmistakable clearness to the strip of land on either
side of the river, maintained in fertility and beauty by its yearly overflow,
and bounded strictly by the desert on either hand. From their land the people
derive their name. As natural men, they are conditioned and limited between
narrow bounds, within which they may do great things, but not transcend them.
They are governed and characterized by their conditions, naturally; are
governed and get their name from what they should govern.
Such limits -
indeed, much narrower - confine the Philistines to their strip of sea-coast.
They hold but a border of the land; and, however fertile, its lowest part.
Other parts they may ravage, not really possess: there, they are (according to
their name) "wanderers" merely. Here too they are sojourners in a land that is
not theirs: it belongs already, in divine purpose, to the seed of that "Abram
the Hebrew," who now comes to Gerar, no wanderer, but a "passenger," or
pilgrim. To the one alone is there a future, a fixed point beyond, faith in him
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Yet as the
order is, first, that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual,
the Philistines for long seem to possess the land. Abraham already finds a king
at Gerar whose name, however interpreted,* speaks of established, successional
authority, while the captain of his host is Phichol - i.e., the "voice of all."
Who that is prepared to find meaning here at all can fail to see in this the
shadow of that traditional authority to which human religiousness, ignorant of
the living Spirit, ever appeals? And completely in accordance with this it is
that with Abraham and Isaac, as with the men of faith of every age, their great
contention is about the wells of water which they themselves never dig, but of
which they would with violence possess themselves, only to stop them again with
earth. Of how many Sitnahs and Eseks has church-history been the record, until
in God's mercy a Rehoboth came and they who sought the truth found "room"! All
this in its general meaning seems easy enough to follow, and to make the
typical character of these Philistines very clear.
*Abimelech: either
"Father of a king," or "Whose father [is] king:."
It is noteworthy,
too, that while never themselves possessing more than a border of it, they have
loomed so largely in men's eyes as to give their name to the whole land.
Palestine is only Palestine. So the traditional church is "catholic" -
universal. And now at Gerar we find Abraham once more failing as long before he
had failed in Egypt. These Philistines, too, are but Egyptians, though in
Canaan; even as the world, though come into the church, is still the world.
Sarah, the covenant of grace, belongs still and only to the man of faith; but
how often has he failed to assert this absolutely exclusive claim! In the
present day there is surely more failure in this respect than ever; when, with
an open Bible ours, and more enlightenment, Protestant traditions are become
the rule of what is no less a world church than Rome itself. For such, the
Abimelechs and Phichols will have their place as of old; human authority be
substituted for divine; the wells which faith had dug be stopped again. And
here, how great the danger of Sarah being given up - of grace being divorced
from faith!
Alas the liberality of the day is gone so far in this
direction, that grace must not be denied where not only faith, but the faith,
is absent, - where Christ is Himself denied. Orthodox and unorthodox mingle on
platform and in pulpit. All lines are being surely and not slowly effaced.
Churches with orthodox creeds open their doors widely to what is popular enough
to make it worth their while; and Christians, with whatever trouble of
conscience or grief of heart, dare not purge themselves from the evils which
they feebly lament. They have obeyed one scriptural injunction at least - they
have "counted the cost:" alas! with too cold a calculation, into which neither
the glory of God nor even their own true blessing has been allowed to
come.
How little man's hand is competent to hold what God has intrusted
to it we may see in Abraham. It is not the young and raw disciple, but the man
who has walked in the path of faith for long, who here shows himself ready to
give up the partner of his life, and the depositary of all the promises! What
then is man and what hope for him except in God? None, surely. And it is to
ground us well in this that we are given to see the sad and terrible failure of
these honoured servants of God. Not to discourage, but to lead us to the source
of all confidence and strength. Only in realized weakness do we find this. Only
when unable to do without God for a moment do we find what He is for us moment
by moment. And it is the best blessing that we show most our incompetence to
hold. Our place in Christ is that upon which all else for us depends, yet who
of those to whom God has in His goodness been showing it in these last days is
not aware how the knowledge of it had for ages almost disappeared out of the
faith of Christians? Justification by faith, given similarly back to us in
Reformation days, has been only by the same goodness preserved by constant
revivals out of perpetual decline since then. Well for us will it be in
proportion as we learn these lessons and our faith takes hold upon the living
God. Alas! that even here the very failure of man should tend to shake our hold
of His faithfulness, - as if He, not we, had failed ! But "hearken unto Me, O
house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which are borne by
Me from the belly, which are carried from the womb, even to your old age, I am
He; even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I
will carry, and will deliver you."
In a marked way God interferes here
for His tailing servant, suffering him indeed to find for awhile the fruit of
his own ways, but coming in for him at last in how tender and gracious a
manner, to speak of him as "a prophet," and to make Abimelech debtor to his
prayers. How different from our own ways with one another, ready as we are so
easily to give up each other, sometimes at the mere suspicion of wrong-doing,
when faith would hold fast the people of God for God! How sweet and restoring
too for Abraham's soul this goodness of the ever-faithful One! for grace it is
that restores alone: "sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not
under law, but under grace."
Let us hold each other fast for God, if of
this grace indeed we would be ministers. Members of Christ as we are, we are
members also, and thus, of one another. This bond will survive all failure, and
it should in whatever failure be felt (the more, not the less, for the strain
upon it,) in our hearts.
And now, unmoved from His own purposes of
wisdom and of love, the Lord fulfills to Abraham the promise that He had made.
A son is given to gladden his life, and be the pledge of mercies yet to come.
Isaac is born, type of a greater, in whom all promises find completion. In Him,
dwelling in the heart by faith, the life of faith finds its completion. From
the first its one necessity, He now becomes its abiding realization. Let us
look at this briefly, as the prayer in Ephes. 3 develops it.
The
apostle's prayer is to "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom every*
family in heaven and earth is named." Christ in His place as Man, yet Son of
the Father, is a new link of relationship between God and all His creatures.
Angels as well as men have their place here. It is impossible but that the
place He takes must affect all. He is Head over all things, as well as Head to
His body the Church: the " First-born of every creature," - " Beginning of the
creation of God." The arms which reach to man at the farthest distance
encompass all between. The love which has displayed itself toward the lowest is
felt as a pulse of new life by every rank of the unfallen " sons of God." Every
family of these has for its Father the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. How
this at once sets the one in whose heart by faith Christ dwells at the centre
of all the divine purposes ! How "length and breadth and depth and
height" begin to dawn upon him whose eye rests upon Him by whom and for whom
all things were created! No wonder, therefore, that the apostle prays " that He
would grant unto you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened
with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts
by faith." The "inner man" and the "heart" are parallel in meaning in
Scripture: the "hidden man of the heart," as Peter calls it; not affections
merely, but the whole man himself - the true man under all
appearances.
Here, in the centre and citadel of his being, faith
receives its Lord. Christ dwelling in the heart by faith redeems us then from
the narrowness and pettiness of mere individual interests, and brings us into
the plans and counsels of a wisdom that embraces all things. "Rooted and
grounded" ourselves "in love," which has met and satisfied all need in so
wondrous a manner, "breadth and length and depth and height" begin to be
revealed to us. All mysteries find solution in the deeper mystery of the cross.
Evil is no where else so evil, but it is no where else so met, defeated,
triumphed over, by the inherent power of good. And it is good which is in God
Himself toward us, which manifests and glorifies Him.
* So the Revised
Version, with Allord, Bllicott, etc.
The "breadth and length and
depth and height," of which the apostle speaks, are not, of course, measures of
"the love of Christ, which," he declares, "passeth knowledge;" yet are they the
means of better knowing how infinite it is. The "love" in which we are "rooted
and grounded" alone enables us to "comprehend the breadth and length and depth
and height;" and these apprehended, heaven and earth, time and eternity, are
filled forthwith with the fullness of a divine presence. We know the love of
Christ, which passeth knowledge, and are filled up in all the fullness of
God.
This is the consummation of the life of faith when the true Isaac
dwells thus with us. It is the conclusion, therefore, of this section of the
book before us, save only the brief appendix in which we see, first, the
bondwoman and her child cast out, and then the Philistines owning the
superiority of the pilgrim man of faith.
The first has a dispensational
application, which the apostle gives us in Galatians iv; and here Isaac
appears, not as the representative of Christ Himself, but of those who by grace
are one with Him. "Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise;
but as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after
the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the Scripture? 'Cast out
the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with
the son of the freewoman.'"
In Christianity God had for the first time
recognized relationship with a family not born after the flesh, as in Judaism
Israel as a nation was, but with those spiritually born of Him. The children of
law were born to bondage; the children of grace alone are free. But the Church
had, as Isaac, its weaning-time, before the child of the bondwoman was cast
off. The larger part of the Acts illustrates this, which the close of the fifth
of Hebrews explains and applies. The last chapter of this epistle shows the
camp rejected - Ishmael and Hagar, the nation on the footing of the legal
covenant.
Cast out, they wander in the wilderness of Beersheba, and are
nigh perishing for thirst. This I conceive to be the present condition of
Israel. The water, the word of life, is spent for them, and the well they see
not, although the oath of God, the covenant with their fathers, secures it for
their final possession.* This, therefore, their eyes shall yet be opened to,
and Hagar herself become a means of blessing to them (Deut. xxx. 1-3.); their
dwelling still and ever outside of Canaan - the heavenly inheritance. The
development of these things would be full of interest, but would lead us too
far to follow. The individual application is clear in general, although the
details may be less easy to trace. Most interesting is it to see that the
Philistine has now to concede that "God is with" the man of faith, and that the
well of water is all his own. Here, then, afresh he worships, calling on
Jehovah, the everlasting God.
*"Beersheba" means "The well of the oath."
(Ver. 14.)
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