ADAM
or, Discipline
No subject can be more deeply interesting to the saint
than the nature and effect of that discipline which our God, in the plenitude
of His love and wisdom, administers to His people. Interesting as the subject
is, and one so necessary to the secret exercises of the soul, yet it is little
understood ; and the dealings of God are either counted strange, or wanting in
any just or useful solution. I propose, therefore, with the Lord's help, to
present, in a series of papers, the peculiar discipline - its object and its
effect, detailed to us, respecting each distinguished witness for God on earth.
I am induced to do this, in order to lead the minds of saints to study
more a subject which of all others connects us most with the secret, loving
thoughts of our God about us. I accordingly begin with Adam. Though not
properly heading the life of faith, yet he was the subject of severe
discipline, and a remarkable illustration of its effects. Adam at one time
needed no discipline - a state unknown to any since. When he fell, the day of
discipline began. He who was made in the image of God, who approached nearer to
God than any creature, even he, is now imbued with a spirit and a nature so
adverse to God, that if he would live for God he must learn to renounce his own
will, under the training of the mighty hand of God. To Adam this must have been
a strange contrast to the once easy acquiescence of his mind with the will of
God. Consequently he must have felt it the more ; and as the rebellion of his
heart was being subdued, he must have contrasted the rule of God with the
powerlessness of innocence. As innocent, he fell; as fallen, the hand of God
exalts him not ignorantly nor passively, but in all the activity of anxious
conviction. Innocence with him was a weak thing; the power of God subduing his
nature no longer innocent was a great and mighty thing. He never would have
sought the innocent state again, for he knew how weak it was. He knew now that
he was able to do more with the power of God in a fallen state, than in
unassisted innocence he ever could aspire to. As innocent, he had no sense of
the value of life ; as fallen, yet believing in the revelation of God, he could
now name the only creature he had yet named, the mother of all living. Under
the sentence of death, he could speak of life, while as innocent, his penalty
(if disobedient) was the loss of life. Innocence could have had no charm for
him now. True, it was a moment of wondrous bliss; but it was a condition in
which he could not stand; and under God's discipline, he stands morally higher,
though conditionally lower. Adam was not deceived, but he was influenced. He
early discovers the sensibilities of nature, which eventually led to his fall.
Neither the world nor its glory, nor any class of the inferior creatures, can
supply the craving of the sociable heart of Adam: for him there was not found
an helpmeet, and it was "not good for him to be alone." The instincts of his
nature were not satisfied; but when the one who satisfied them was deceived, he
yields to her influence, as he himself admits: " She gave unto me, and I did
eat." The first man disclosed this secret of his heart, that he was dependent
on another; so that when Satan would not venture to beguile him, the object of
his affections successfully influenced him. Now they have discovered themselves
to be estranged from God, and they hide from His presence ; but now it is that
the first lessons of His grace are propounded to them.
In discipline
there is properly conviction of sin, as well as correction. Chastening or
correction while there is suffering for sin is to make me a partaker of
holiness. It is not to improve my nature, but so to convince me of its utter
helplessness that I may be devoted unto God, which is the true and distinct
meaning of sanctification, "without which no man shall see the Lord." There is
exceeding pain in being convicted of sin: and if there be not a strong sense of
the grace of God when we are convicted, there will be great depression, and a
tendency to give up all in despair. Hence the exhortation, "Faint not when thou
art convicted [Greek] of him." God does not convict hastily. He likes that,
through the action of His word on our conscience, we may be the first to
convict ourselves. It is very little use to tell a vain man of his faults ; it
generally only urges him the better to conceal or extenuate them. It is very
difficult to induce a person in ill-health and unconvinced of it, to adopt the
necessary regimen; the more you remonstrate with such a one, the more
strenuously will he endeavour to prove you mistaken, and you exasperate the
malady you would assuage, but the really sin-convicted soul, like the patient
tremblingly alive to his danger, is ready to receive every true correction and
remedy that is offered.
When Adam had perfected the devices of his
estranged and corrupted heart, when the aprons of fig-leaves are on and he
hiding behind the trees, the voice of God searches him, although he seeks to
escape from it. This is ever the tendency when light from the word first
reaches us; we prepare to evade it, like the Pharisees leaving the presence of
the Lord; and so we are continually allowed to run to the end of our own plans,
in order to learn how futile they are. Many a weary hour and long day is
squandered in the execution of plans which, when tested by the searching word
of God, must be entirely abandoned. What is the nature of such plans ? Are they
to distance and conceal you from God, or are they to bring you nigh unto Him,
and to unfold to Him the minutest secrets of your heart ? This question tests
them. Adam's were to cloak himself to escape the eye of God, and God allowed
him to complete his schemes. Oh, how well each of us knows what this is! The
poor prodigal tries the far country, but returns to his father's house a really
humbled man. The many intentions are well tested and found to be as husks, and
then the soul listens to the gracious tones of that voice from which it would
fain have escaped. It is a terrible thing to have to answer the question, "
Where art thou ? " when you find out the insufficiency of all expedients to
screen your conscience from the action of God's word. Did the prodigal like to
answer it when feeding the swine? Did Peter like to answer it when enjoying the
cheer of his Master's foes, in warming himself at their fire ? Did Adam like it
when he remembered the position which he occupied in contrast with the one
which he had forfeited ? The answer to the question, "Where art thou?" reveals
the state of the conscience. The voice of God searches it, and if it has not
learned that it is with God it has to do, the history of it must be, " I was
afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." Concealment is the first effort
of a suffering conscience. You neither like to see yourself, nor that any one
else should see you, as you are ; and at the sound of God's voice you hide
yourself, while concealment betrays distance as well as evasion. There must be
some activity in the conscience when concealment is resorted to, especially
when no penalty but the fact of your guilt being known is attached to it.
Concealment is, in fact, resorted to in order that we may appear better than we
are. If we were willing that every one should see us as we are, there would be
no concealment. A disguise was never yet adopted but for self exaltation. A lie
was never maintained but to gain credit for what is not deserved. When God
deals with us, we learn that " all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of
him with whom we have to do." The Word (see Heb. 4) acts on our conscience,
"piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints
and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart"; but
it conducts to God. It is with Him that we have to do." The voice of the Lord
penetrated the soul of Adam; and though girded with fig-leaves, which satisfied
his own standard of morality, yet when the Word came, it tried him, and he was
afraid, because he was naked - naked before God - and he hid himself.
It is important to study those two actions of the conscience ; for they give
rise to much exercise and trouble in the soul, from being confounded. When a
man has satisfied his own conscience, has adopted some system which conceals
from himself and from others the real state of his soul, he floats for a while
on peaceful waters ; but no sooner is the voice of the Lord heard, than all the
elements seem to him involved in a mighty tornado. His sleep is broken; he is
the convicted Peter of Luke 5: 8: he is "afraid." The fact that he is naked and
opened before God flashes fearfully before him, and so much the more because he
had deceived himself, and his reputation with another had helped it on. The
action of the Word of God would be desperate and overwhelming to the soul if we
had not a "great High Priest passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God." He
having been " tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin," supports
us with His sympathy as soon as we are, through the action of the word, apart
from the SIN, and His atonement, in full effect before God, sets the convicted
conscience at rest at the throne of grace, there to receive the grace and mercy
it needs. This is just what Adam had to learn; consequently the voice pursues
him to his hiding-place. It is in vain that we seek to escape the eye of God
when He determines that it shall search us. If we " take the wings of the
morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea," even there He will reach
us! Oh, how the conscience that seeks escape from God overshadows itself within
the foliage of this world! It engrosses itself with man's leading and most
ambitious pursuits, but in vain. The "watchers " will cry aloud, " Hew down the
tree, and cut off his branches, and shake off his leaves." The refuge of lies
shall be exposed, and the soul must have its account with God. It must answer
the question, " WHERE ART THOU ? " and all the answer needed is a tale of the
plain and simple facts, " I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."
The moment the soul of the saint is in full confession, he is in the region of
forgiveness and restoration, and the Spirit expostulates with it as friend
would with friend. Adam had tried his own expedients, and they were vain and
found to be profitless ; now he will listen to the grace that tells of a sure
and perfect remedy. But mark, he first discloses the true and full condition of
his soul; he confesses his fear - his nakedness - his effort to hide himself.
Discipline had effected this. Now God instructs him. Adam is " meek," and God
will teach him His way. He has learned that innocence was no protection against
an undue influence, and that the absence of evil motive is no guarantee for
true moral action. He alone knew what innocence was, and yet it had been no
safeguard. He was tempted, and he yielded to it. Conscious, indeed, that
innocence was gone, and that evil motive could rule, he still trusts to himself
to screen and rectify his disgrace. The expedient he adopted satisfied his own
moral sense, and, what was infinitely more delusive, the moral sense of the one
whose good opinion he loved to secure, and whose satisfaction was a bulwark to
his own. This is a snare that few, even godly men, escape. It is, in other
words, the reputation with one's friends, pressed on the conscience, as the
verdict of the last court of appeal, and conclusive to it, on any recurrence of
anxious inquiry. There is a reciprocity in this kind of reputation. What you
admit for me, I in return admit for you. If a girdle of fig leaves measures the
demand of your moral sense, and you accept it as sufficient for me, I in return
do the same for you. This is the essence and true character of all human and
religious reputation. But the voice of God is heard, and Adam is troubled in
his false and fallen position. That voice probes the entire condition, and at
last he finds himself "naked and open before the eyes of him with whom we have
to do." He confesses all, and he is now on the uppermost form for instruction,
with an humble and a contrite spirit. To the divine challenge he admits, though
with an excuse and mitigation, that he was tempted and had eaten. His
justification lowers him morally, more than the charge he seeks to justify
himself from. Yet it is a confession, and it is accepted as such ; and our God
enters on the gracious work of unfolding His counsels.
To each actor
in this wondrous scene is now meted the judgment due to the part he has played
in it. Satan's sentence is first pronounced, and while his doom is fixed,
deliverance from his power and the eternal remedy of the gospel is declared to
the listening and convicted Adam. It is the divine way, in restoring a soul, to
establish it first in the power of God and in His grace. The draught of the
fishes and the words of Jesus taught this to Peter; Luke 5. It is the
groundwork for all godly recovery. When the heart is established, as David's
was when Nathan said, " The Lord has taken away thy sin," then it can bear to
hear what is the discipline necessary to correct that in it, which sin could
act on. It is important to bear in mind the process by which the Lord reveals
to the soul the discipline which He will impose. Whatever has provoked our
failure is denounced, not in general terms, but in the proportion, and in the
order too, of its guilt; and at the same time the true mode of deliverance is
announced. Satan is not only sentenced, but the effect of his malice on man
will be his own irremediable retribution. Man shall be avenged of his enemy.
The serpent is not only assigned, as a signal judgment, to crawl and to eat
dust, in perpetual hostility to the Seed of the woman, but his "violent dealing
shall come down on his own pate - his head shall be bruised.
The next
brought up for judgment is the woman. She was the proximate cause of Adam's
failure; but as the principal had received his sentence, she must now hear
hers. She is condemned to times of great sorrow on every addition to the human
family which she has been instrumental in subjecting to the power of death,
with unconditional subjection to her husband, the want of which bore its
first-fruits in her own fall, and led to Adam's also. Each transgressor is not
only sentenced to a penalty corresponding to his guilt, but the relation in
which that guilt has affected Adam is also markedly repaired. God's servant
must not be touched with impunity, but he must not err himself. The righteous
God will avenge his cause, but only in righteousness. He cannot overlook the
frailty of his servant, though he will rescue him when the unmitigated sentence
is executed. When God enters into judgment, even-handed justice is dispensed.
But acts are criminal in a greater or lesser degree: that which draws God's
witness into distance from Him being more criminal in His sight, than the
failure which the witness exposes by being drawn into distance. The one who
misleads another comes under a severer penalty than he who is misled ; though
the latter is not exempted because he betrays moral feebleness. The infliction
of penalties is not necessarily for correction. There was no hope of amending
Satan, but yet severe penalties are inflicted on him because Adam had suffered
through him. Man was God's representative on earth; injury to him was treason
against God. Hence in divine discipline there is always a correction of the
evil principle of nature, and also retribution for the trespass we may have
committed on our fellow man. This is exemplified in the sentence on Adam. His
sin was yielding to his wife's request in opposition to the word of God.
Probably he did not do so with intent; that is, with deliberation. But the word
was not hid in his heart, and did not control him; for if it had he would not
have hearkened to the voice of his wife. But having surrendered his place, he
has to bear the penalty of it, and to become the great slave and labourer on
that earth of which he was the ruler and prince. Everything on it would bear
indications of in subjection to its rightful master. To assuage the trial he
must spend his life in toil in order to five; but in the end he must return to
dust, as dust he was. There is deeply instructive teaching in all this ; even
that if we surrender the position in which God places us in any relation, the
one we retire to will inevitably notify to us, in fearful reminiscences, what
has been our forfeiture.
The smallest thorn and briar reminded Adam
that he had surrendered his lordship in hearkening to the voice of his wife. If
David retire from the duties of the king (2 Sam. i i : i), he must surrender,
in a painful way, the honours of one; 2 Sam. 15, etc. He is reminded how
lightly he regarded them, by the successful rebellion of his own son. "Cursed
be he who doeth the work of the Lord negligently." All the influence of
Barnabas would not induce Paul to take Mark who had returned from Pamphylia.
The refusal of the apostle reminded him how he trifled with, and abandoned the
post once his, but which was easier lost than regained. This is the nature of
Adam's discipline. He is reminded by everything of that which he had
surrendered, and the less carefully and diligently he laboured to subdue the
numerous reminiscences of his failure, the more they increased, and the less
able was he to sustain himself against them. By the sweat of his brow he
mitigated his position for his own need. David returned, after a severe
chastisement, to the throne. Mark was "profitable for the ministry" after the
discipline had produced its effect. Faith always walks above discipline, though
learning from it. Adam hears the sentence on all, and in faith consenting to
it,, rises above it, and calls his wife's name Eve, because she is the "mother
of all living." Faith reaches unto God, therefore it can submit to the position
which judicially falls on an erring soul, and it can look to God for His own
time and mode of deliverance. It accepts the punishment of its iniquity, not
merely as retribution for it, but as correction. Discipline has in fact
produced its greatest effect, when the soul submits to it, as trusting in God.
Adam shews this, for in thus naming his wife he makes amends to her for his
former reproaches; and what was, in unsubdued nature, the agent of harm to him,
is now, in the eye of faith, the channel of life. As disciplined and walking in
faith, God clothes Adam, yet discipline must not be arrested nor reprieved. God
drives him out and sends him to till the ground from whence he was taken, to
find out what sort of a man he was, and to learn how his faith would sustain
him.
It is in our immediate relations of life in the innermost circle,
where there is least reserve, that we most truly disclose ourselves. A man who
cannot rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Power
is more effective applied at home than at a distance. If Adam is learning from
discipline, it ought to be seen in his power to avoid the evil for which he was
suffering. It does not appear that he does; for Eve assumes the place of naming
his eldest son, again losing sight of her own place, and doubtless filling her
first-born (which his name itself would suggest) with aspirations which led to
his fearful contradiction of God's promise, while it was the painful evidence
of her own misapprehension of it. There was the devastation of death where life
was expected ; the fact that one child was murdered and the other the murderer,
and that, the one in whom their hopes centred, must have been a trial to Adam
which we can little conceive, but it was a discipline which produced its
effects; for though it is said that Eve named Seth in the first instance, yet
it is also written that Adam called his name Seth, shewing, as it appears to
me, that he at length had learned what the discipline was sent to teach him;
namely, to act for God, above all influence, and not to allow anything to
distract him from the path of faith. He appears to have learned this in the
last recorded act of his life; a very pleasing consummation, showing the effect
of discipline, and a very fit and happy finale to his history.
To sum
up. We learn from this history that innocence or absence of evil motive is no
safeguard against influence ; that satisfying our own moral sense, or the moral
sense of any one else, is no proof that we can answer, or have answered, to
God's claim on us ; that if we cease to maintain our divinely appointed place
we are sure to fall, and the word of God, which would have preserved us in our
place, does not act on the heart outside that place ; but that in learning what
it has been to follow our inclinations, our discipline will always be of a
character to correct our failure, and to remind us, in very minute ways, as did
the thorns to Adam, what our frailty has reduced us to.
ABEL
Abel,
as the first in faith on whom the penalty of sin was by birth entailed, must be
one whose history we may expect to furnish us with outlines of that discipline,
which a life eminent for faith would require. It is a mistake, and one which at
times causes no little trial to the soul, to conclude, that because any line of
truth or grace is strong in me, on that account nature is less assuming. The
fact is the reverse ; for the more nature is made to feet its fall, the more
will it assume ; and it is well to understand this. Had nature in its first
estate been of any lower order than it was, although the fall could not have
lowered it more than it has, yet its aspirations and assumption to escape from
the effects of the fall would not have been so violent and daring as they are.
The fact of man having been made in the image and likeness of God, gives nature
ground for assuming what it has forfeited ; and the more it is pressed to feel
the immensity of the fall from its once high state, the more it struggles for
recognition and assumes importance wherever it can. Hence it is that souls who
are really in earnest to deny nature any position are opposed by it at every
step, and thus learn practically that they alone who have suffered in the flesh
have ceased from sin ; that only the cross of Christ frees from the power and
thraldom of nature and the world ; and to this great moral truth learning death
in discipline gives effect through God's grace. We learn that we are dead
through the death of Christ, and that we are before God in Him, freed from all
that was judged in that death. Consequently, the Father's discipline is to lead
us into the practical realisation of this our position in Christ; so that we
are not only dead in Him, but we reckon ourselves dead, the latter being the
practical effect of the former, and discipline is the instrument for
accomplishing that effect. The soul that fully learns its acceptance with God,
as righteous before Him, is taught it must not be dependent on the nature from
that which it is delivered, and outside of which is its existence. The apostle
could say that he died daily, bearing about with him the dying of Jesus, that
the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in his body. If our acceptance be
veritable - if it be truly a deliverance from our natural state, ought we not
to afford moral and practical evidence of its effect? Nay, must it not be so?
For acceptance in righteousness being entirely above and beyond our natural
condition, the more the one is enjoyed and maintained, the more the other is
lost sight of. And such is the only worthy acknowledgment of this our high
position. Can we maintain our natural condition and yet rejoice in deliverance
from it? If we rejoice in deliverance, must we not prove it by renunciation of
that from which we are delivered ?
If Abel be the first witness of
acceptance in righteousness, we shall find also that he was the first witness
who, as accepted of God, was deprived of his natural life. He was a witness in
one as well as in the other. If he testified of acceptance to the joy and rest
of his own heart, he by death also testified how true and glorious that
acceptance was ; so that " he being dead yet speaketh." This is the first order
of discipline: " Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed as to sin." This is
consequent on our life in Christ; for if living in Him, we ought to be dead in
ourselves; and discipline, in its simplest and primary lessons, instructs us in
this. There is no saint but must learn what death is ; it may be in the slow
process of a continual dropping of constant small trials, or through one
overwhelming calamity, or perhaps through a last illness : but in one way or
another death must be learned, in order to make good to our souls their
deliverance from it. And without this there cannot be testimony. Abel's history
is very scanty in details, but it presents, with a vividness and vigour not to
be surpassed, the two grand points in a believer's life: namely, acceptance
with God, and death to every natural tie and sense - the former being the easy
action of faith, the latter declared not willingly, but through violence,
consequent on an altered and fallen condition, in an evil world, from which
death gave relief. God allows the violence of Cain to afford an opportunity for
the display of all this. He thereby declared His own grace, and Himself as the
giver of it, while His servant and witness, although disciplined therein as to
himself, occupied the highest place of service in the gospel, even that of
suffering for righteousness' sake.
Let it then be granted that if I
know acceptance well, death is my portion here, and that discipline will not
overlook this ; for it is what makes the truth of my acceptance dearer to
myself, and what witnesses it to others. In this consists the whole interest
and instruction of Abel's history. He started in life, as we say, not according
to the rule and direction given to Adam-to till the ground from whence he was
taken; Abel, on the contrary, is a keeper of sheep, which discloses at the
outset that he had no intention of improving the scene around him, or of
deriving from the earth, by his own efforts, anything which would mediate
between him and God. The sense of death and judgment was before his soul, and
to be delivered from this could alone satisfy him. As a keeper of sheep he
tended his flock, passing from pasture to pasture as their need required.
Expecting nothing to spring from the earth to relieve him, no one place on it
was his permanent abode. A labourer - a wanderer, suffering from the curse
which rested on everything around him, and he himself under the penalty of
death in such a scene, he tended a living flock, which brought him into
association with life, the very thing which his own spirit needed. He,
therefore, in faith took of the firstling of his flock, the beginning and the
strength of it, and he offered it to God as God's own, and as typifying the
life of Christ. This, as presented to God, met his own sense of death; but
something more than this was needed in encountering the presence of God; there
was need of acceptance also. This was met and answered by presenting the fat,
which is the excellency of the animal, only obtainable through death; the
result in resurrection of the death of Christ, which now satisfies the
conscience as to its full acceptance with God. Thus Abel entered into the mind
of God as to his own state before Him, and thus he obtained witness that he was
righteous, not merely as to what he did, but as to how he stood. Happy as
accepted of God, he has to learn the place and the suffering of one so blessed
down here. If he be accepted of God, he must be dissociated from a scene which
was under God's curse. If he be delivered from the sentence of death, death can
be no penalty to him ; but he must expect it where everything is contrary to
the life in which he is accepted: consequently he is called to give unequivocal
proof that acceptance with God and deliverance from judgment are such real
blessings that actual death cannot deprive him of them. This is his testimony
and this is his discipline. As it was with Stephen, the first martyr of
resurrection, so with Abel, the first martyr of acceptance. Stephen gave
greater evidence in his death than in his life of the virtue of Christ's
resurrection, and his soul advanced more into its realities in the moment of
his death than it could have done during his lifetime. His last testimony was
the brightest. While they, the agents of the world's evil, were stoning
Stephen, he was only responding to their fatal blows by consigning his spirit
to the One whom they denied and disowned; and what a proof of how perfect and
assured he was in Christ's care and charge of him, that he could kneel down to
expend all the strength their malignity still spared him in their behalf.
The witness of acceptance and the witness of resurrection has no part
in this evil world. Everything must be death to him, and in discipline he
learns this in order to actualise to himself the greatness of the gift of God,
which is eternal life outside and beyond death. In whatever path you may walk
you must learn this, that the Father will have it so. He must have the life of
His Son true to its proper instincts. Out of "fire of sticks" the viper will
remind a Paul that this is a scene of death. It is only from one tomb to
another. In a shipwreck yesterday, afflicted by a viper to- day! We need this
discipline. We think we can pass on like other men, enjoying the new and
blessed portion we have received ; but we cannot. And it is well to understand
that the Father will have us to appreciate our portion in His Son, in contrast
to everything here. We try in vain to combine both, so that a great deal of our
time is spent in learning that there is nothing here to meet the requirements
of our new affections. There is a wandering in the wilderness in a solitary
way, and yet no city is found to dwell in. But God allows this in order that
His children may find that their desires can only be satisfied by Him. We must
learn that we are not of the world. We cannot trust it. Christ could not commit
Himself to man. Though Stephen have " the face of an angel," yet because he is
true to Christ, they will stone him. Though "Cain talks" with Abel, and they
are "in the field" apparently in easy intimacy, Abel soon learns that he cannot
trust him, for in that very social moment Cain rose up against him and slew
him.
Our profession declares that we have done with earth. God's
discipline will always lead us practically into this, as will also faithful
testimony. In our discipline we may give a testimony; but how much better, like
Stephen, to be disciplined in our testimony. Surely we ought to lay it to heart
how much our discipline arises from clinging to the world in one form or
another, instead of on account of our testimony against it. We can easily
account for Abel continuing in social nearness to his brother Cain, and justify
his doing so, because the hatred of man against the righteousness of God had
not as yet been exposed, and we can well understand how Abel preserved his
easy, familiar ways with his brother, which afforded a more favourable
opportunity to Cain to effect his deadly purpose. But while it is easy and
natural to account for this, on what ground can we excuse saints for continuing
in social intimacy with the world? Can we not often trace the cause and
necessity for the discipline which many are undergoing to the fact that they
who are alive before God in Christ, and who are through His death delivered
from all. that is of the world, are still clinging to it, instead of testifying
against it? The social hour was fatal to Abel, unacquainted as he was with the
wickedness of man, and unsuspecting any harm. The social hour now is often
morally more fatal to those who ought to know that the prince of this world
crucified the Lord of glory, and that the friendship of the world is enmity
against God. Do not such need discipline? Must they not be taught that they
must surrender all that Christ was judged for? If they do not surrender it
through grace, God our Father must, because of His love, sever His children in
one form or another from that world from which we are delivered according to
His mind by the death of His Son. It is right and fitting so to be. Let us then
accept our true place outside the world, and let our discipline be through our
testimony rather than our testimony through it.
ENOCH
In the history of Enoch we learn this
great truth, that the surest path, and the one which, as to outward
circumstances, is the most exempt from discipline, is a life of hope, being by
faith translated - actually in expectation and interest having passed away from
this present scene. Enoch, no doubt, had the secret chastenings which every son
in our nature needeth, but by faith, as a witness, he walked with God, in the
hope of being with Him, and thus he passed beyond death without being a victim
to it. During his walk of three hundred years, hope placed him beyond this evil
scene, and therefore he prophesied as to what would be the consummation of it.
If he was the first man who passed out of it through the power of faith,
superior to the sovereignty of death, so was he the prophet of the last moments
of death's cruel dynasty. If he were the first who was translated from the
world, he, in the enjoyment of hope and the domain which it spread out before
his soul, could best tell what would be the end of the world. Abel took his
place as the witness of acceptance in righteousness, and the world could not
endure him; he was unsuited to it, and it to him; he fell, and his blood was
shed on it by the hand of his brother. Human righteousness is honoured among
men, but righteousness through grace, by faith, honestly maintained, is always
abhorrent to man, for it gives him nothing to do, nothing to improve, but to
receive all from God and with God; this necessarily places him in isolation
from an human interests. Abel was a righteous man in an evil world, and he
found a grave in it - a terrible death and an unnatural one. Relationship with
God only places me in antagonism to the world. If we be sons of God, the world
knows us not, as it knew not the Son of God. If in this life, though a son, I
only have hope, I am of all men most miserable. Abel must have been happy in
his soul with God, but he was miserable in the world, and in the end he
suffered a cruel death in it. His very new position entailed this suffering on
him ; it demanded of him to die to everything around, because if he was
righteous, everything around was unrighteous. If he did not by faith walk in
hope above this scene, then he must die in it, and this is just where Enoch is
a witness of a better thing: and he can prophesy of the accomplished glory,
while Abel can but cry, by his shed blood, for a vengeance on a world that
would not bear a righteous man!
It is plain that in an evil world a
righteous man must either die in it or pass out of it in the power of
translation. Enoch did this latter, after he had walked with God. Nothing can
purify us from this world but hope, and the hope, too, of being with the One
whom Enoch saw: " My Lord cometh, and ten thousand of his saints with him." The
Lord personally engaging the heart, dissociates more from the earth than
anything else. " For their sakes [he says] I sanctify myself, that they also
may be truly sanctified." For the heart linked with Him outside the world is
the most perfect sanctification. Saints pass through much discipline from
outward circumstances, because their hearts are only set on being justified
ones in the earth, a blessed position beyond all question ; but ours is one
incompatible with everything earthly : and hence, if the soul does not own this
it must be taught it; thus Paul was taught to surrender Jerusalem and all the
associations there his heart clung to. He passed through many afflictions ere
he was morally delivered from his earthly. hope. Heavenly hopes exposed him no
doubt to other sorrows, but death was not one of them, for he longed to depart.
If our hope were really translation to see the Lord, beyond doubt the
casualties of this life would but little distress us ; they never could touch
our hope; and our sufferings from present things are not so much from their
actual influence or value to us as that they form so great a part of our hopes.
It is our hope that lends an interest to everything about us, and belonging to
us. The only discipline that Enoch sets forth is a long walk with God and a
prophetic testimony, and therefore it is the path that the well-disciplined
child will walk in, and the better he adheres to it, the less will he need
either a " weight " to be removed, or his unbelief to be admonished, which is
the end of all the Father's discipline.
NOAH
Noah's history is peculiarly interesting,
because it affords us a type of the servant of God on the earth, who is
testifying to the world of the vanity of everything here by his preparing an
ark to get safely out of it. He is in fact the head of the new order in moral
power. Adam was only a few years dead, as were also Seth and Enoch, and
therefore Lamech his father might count on God to send them some "rest"- some
evidence of His care and government. This Noah proved to be; and consequently
his life is very instructive to the servants of God. Abel and Enoch were
witnesses of principles, but Noah is the witness of God, in a scene where those
principles were declared and now disregarded. Noah therefore is God's patient
witness and servant in great long-suffering, warning of coming judgment. The
earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence : all the
barriers between clean and unclean were broken down. The children of God
intermarried (the most intimate intermixture) with the daughters of men as
"they chose." The will was the only guide and the only check to these
unhallowed unions. The NAME of God was lost in the earth. The religion of Enoch
and the fathers may have remained, but the lines and characteristics which the
children of God should observe to preserve His name were now surrendered to the
dictation of their own will. Thus in this early day was disclosed that the
gratification of our own will, no matter how great we are positionally, will
entail our surrender of that testimony to a holy God, which assuredly behoves
us in an evil world. Position is valuable if maintained, but aggravates our
defection if not ; because the higher it is, the less will it bear the
slightest defection. A failure which would be unnoticed in a lower position,
would be intolerable in a higher. It was necessary to tell Timothy not only to
purge himself but also to flee "youthful lusts" or impulses. The will must not
come in if the insular position of God's people on the earth is to be
maintained. Hence heresy is simply a determined adherence to one's own
opinions, on any subject. Now this doing as "they chose" was the ruling
influence with man at this time, after the departure of Enoch, whose prophecies
were unheeded; and God, now in His goodness and forbearance, raises up a
testimony for Himself in the person of Noah.
Noah had been five
hundred years upon the earth before he was called to his especial work, and we
are told that he was, in his fife and age (as generation may be interpreted), a
witness of the truths already revealed through Abel and Enoch on the earth. It
is said that he was " a just man," or righteous, of which Abel was the witness,
and that he " walked with God," which was the great and holy line observed by
Enoch. Such is the man who is called to declare the name of God - that is, what
God is, and what God has declared Himself in the world. Principles of truth to
bless man had been distinctly witnessed to on earth. Now when all moral
obligation to the holiness of God or apprehension of it is relinquished, God
comes forth to declare Himself. And His faithful servant devotes himself to
trace in new, deep and broad lines the nature of God. God is his object as well
as his subject. Man may forfeit and surrender his own dignity and position, and
do so beyond remedy: but the truth of God, and what God is, which afforded this
dignity and position, cannot be surrendered, but every true servant stands by
it and maintains it - not to repair the human vessel which ought to have
preserved it, but to vindicate His name and goodness, which had been lost sight
of. When principles are enunciated by God they are for man's blessing, and
therefore are peculiarly for men as their object; but when the men who receive
them make light of them, so that their beauty and value are marred, then it
becomes the servant to resuscitate them - not as toward men, though they be
still for them, but FOR GOD, whose honour is the more paramount, when
indifferentism to it prevails. And the more distinctly and vividly they are
presented, the more are the careless and unbelieving condemned, but the more
are the true servants - those moral victors - crowned with honour and blessed.
The servant, among such as Noah was surrounded with, had much to learn besides
his own acceptance and association with God.
The discipline is suited
to the service required. Patience pre-eminently was the great lesson Noah had
to learn ; but it was patience, too, combined with toil. Enoch had patience,
but it was in a separated walk. Noah must have it in practical life, dealing
not with that which was grateful to him, but with adverse spirits. Enoch
escapes from men to walk with God, and is patient therein for three hundred
years. Noah has to do with men in daily toil, condemning the world, and is a
preacher of the righteousness which by faith he had as believing in God, who
was morally denied in it. Instead of comfort from work and toil, as his father
Lamech expected, it is work and toil to reach comfort and rest, and toil, too,
to condemn the world, on which the curse of God rested. Patiently he worked on,
and patience had its perfect work, so far though we shall see later on in his
history that his nature betrays the contrary. To arrive at comfort and rest in
an evil world, I must patiently maintain the name of God and His truth. We
often propose a good and worthy object to our souls, but we little know the
trying and toilsome path we must tread to reach it. That Noah was to be a
comfort and a rest concerning the work and toil of man's hands was undoubtedly
true, though Lamech never lived to see it. He saw it in progress. The purpose
to reach a good and desired object modifies greatly intervening difficulties.
Noah, while patiently witnessing of the distinctness which ought to mark the
children of God on earth, was preparing an ark for the saving of his house, and
also condemning the world for their unbelief and denial of God. Let him only be
the patient servant, and comfort would accrue to his own house by the very toil
in which he was condemning the world for their ignorance of God.
God
always honours the servant who honours Him. "Because thou hast kept my word,
and not denied my name, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet,
and they shall know that I have loved thee." When God and His truth (at all
times as much as has been revealed) have lost their true moral effect on the
consciences of men, the only sure and certain means of restoring it; even to
one's self, is to declare emphatically, let God be true, and every man a liar!
I turn from men to bear witness of the truth, for no conscience, after all, can
be rightly blessed when God is not presented to it according to the truth.
Therefore if truth be fallen in the streets, the valiant for it, like the most
valiant One, avow that for this purpose came I into the world, that I might
bear witness unto the truth.
After years of discipline and toil, Noah
is in the ark. Very often the quality we are most pre-eminent for, and from
which we have gained most, becomes inactive, and we suffer much. Noah,
doubtless, became impatient to quit the ark after it had accomplished its
purpose. In nothing is our impatience or wilfulness so much exposed as here.
Noah was a witness of adherence to God's mind, in opposition to the wilfulness
of man around him. He toiled for many a year to prepare the ark, and now he is
impatient to abandon it, as soon as it has afforded him salvation. God has been
vindicated, His truth witnessed to, Noah and his house saved; and now he wants
to leave it before it is God's time. It is a greater test to remain in the
place of blessing than even to reach it, for many untoward things may induce or
press us to seek it, but if the mind be not satisfied, if it be not occupied
with the riches of God's inheritance, and in participating with Him according
to the joy of His heart in the circle of His delights there, "the leeks and
onions" outside invite its attention ; the saved and blessed one is in more
danger of being drawn aside than the unsecured one - the will is at work, and
the very rest to his conscience affords liberty to his unoccupied mind to seek
and plan for itself. The emancipated raven, going to and fro, is an apt emblem
of the restlessness of our impatient spirits. The dove reads Noah a different
lesson. The raven had taught him the true causes of wilfulness, which he
himself had witnessed against, like a dog roaming up and down, and not
satisfied. The dove tells first that he must have patience. How humbling when
we are rebuked by the weak, gentle accents of confiding love! The dove had a
home in the ark, why should not Noah? The second time the dove returns with the
branch of peace, so that not only must he submit, but patience having had its
perfect work, he wants nothing. The olive leaf tells us the fulness of blessing
which is his. And when the dove goes forth again she may tarry abroad.
Discipline has matured Noah, and he is called into a new scene wherein he is to
demonstrate the valuable education afforded to him! he having come forth from
the ark in all the vigour and faithfulness of a victorious servant, to set
forth God in His proper place on the earth. God is pleased, testimony is
restored, and with it increased blessing to man.
After this Noah
begins to find rest and comfort for himself. Self-pleasing takes the place of
patience, and there and then he exposes the frailty of the greatest servants of
God when they seek their own rest and gratification. The going to and fro of
thoughts, like the raven, when we are encompassed with still unabated
difficulties, may tell us what our propensity is ; but when we have succeeded,
and we have set ourselves down to enjoy ourselves, our weakness, in its
broadest lines, is exposed -(cursed be he who promulgates it). Though God has
long borne with us, He must teach us His grace. If I betray my weakness, when
in the excess of my enjoyment, I learn how frail I am; and thus Noah finds how
frail he is after all his self-renunciation and service and with this warning
voice his history significantly closes.
ABRAHAM
THE discipline which is necessary and
suited to the life of faith is what we shall find pre-eminently exemplified in
Abraham's history. Man, at Babel, had disclosed the secret purpose of his
heart. He built a city and a tower, whose top was to reach to heaven. He said,
"Let us make a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth."
He sought to accomplish it by his own works, and independently of God. God
confounded him in his attempt, and the whole human family is made to feel that
it is debarred from intelligent combination by the loss of a common medium of
communication, so that man became estranged from his fellow-man; whatever might
be his sense of common kindred his thoughts were checked or became
incommunicable. When God had thus confounded the independence of man, He, ever
true to the purpose of His love, as soon as the evil is checked, unfolds (and
by a man too) how that desire which man had aimed at, in independence of God,
can be attained in a supreme degree of dependence on God. And this, I may
remark in passing, is always His way with us; we feel our need, and attempt to
supply it by our own means; the Lord must confound us in the attempt ; but
having done so, He leads our souls to find and acquire an inconceivably greater
answer to our wishes than even that which we had described for ourselves. The
prodigal only sought " sustenance " from the citizen in the " far country," but
in his father's house he found not bread merely, but abounding welcome and a
fatted calf.
But to resume. The confusion of tongues being a fact, God
now enters the scene and calls out from it a man even Abram-to be the witness
of faith and of dependence on Him, and to look, not for a " Babel," but " for a
city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." And we are
graciously given the history of this witness and servant of God, in order to
instruct us as to what our nature is in its action under the call of God, and
how God deals with it under its many phases of self-will and independence ; how
He corrects, subdues and leads it into His own ways, which is for our blessing.
The word of God to Abram is, " Get thee out of thy country, and from
thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land which I will shew thee,"
and the word becomes the discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. We
never know the real intent of our own wills until we demand them to submit
implicitly to the expressed will of God, which His word unfolds. We may not see
any very great divergence in our course from the mind of God until we measure
it with the exact requirements of the word of God; and mark, not the
requirements of a part of that word, but the whole of it. In fulfilling it
partially we alter or qualify His mind as revealed; in departing from the
spirit of it we lose the instruction; but it is in adopting it, and adhering to
it as a whole, that the soul is delivered from self-will, and led into the
blessing which its instruction proposes. But then it is here that comes in all
the trial and exercise, for exercise and conflict there must be, from the
continual effort of the natural mind to evade or qualify the word of God, and
the inflexibility of God's purpose (because of His love) to confine us strictly
to His own mind. And this conflict necessitates discipline, and thus explains
incidents in our history which would otherwise be inexplicable to us. The call
of Abraham was clear and definite. It required him to relinquish locality and
all kindred associations, and to enter on a scene prepared of God. The accuracy
of his obedience tests the measure of his strength; he begins to obey the call;
he went forth from Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan; he came
out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt at Charran. He received the word and
undertook to obey it, and yet we find he did so imperfectly ; he only
relinquished his country, and not his kindred associations! he remained at
Charran till his father was dead. Nature had come in to check full obedience to
the call of God, and this is a great warning to us. We approve of, and adopt
the call, but it is only as we walk in accordance with it that we discover the
demands it makes on our nature. Nothing so proves our want of true energy as
inability to accomplish what we readily undertake. How many enter on the life
of faith eagerly and cheerfully who find ere long that they cannot " let the
dead bury their dead," and though they are ready in heart to seek " another
country," they are detained and turned aside by some link to nature. Nothing is
so difficult to man as to relinquish the ties of nature without compensation,
because such relinquishment must produce isolation, unless he has found some
other absolute association; and this is just what the Lord proposed when He
added, " Follow thou me." But if a relinquishment of these ties be an isolation
from the nearest communication with natural existence, so must the maintenance
of them be the maintenance of the most direct avenues to the human heart, and
hence it is written, a " man's foes shall be they of his own household." There
is no escaping nature outside grace. When Barnabas chose his kinsman Mark, he
also chose Cyprus, his native country. His failure was not only in nature, but
unto nature.
Abram, then, failed at first in performing the second
part of God's call ; he did not leave his " father's house," and consequently
is detained till his father is dead. This is the first stage in the life of
faith, and though he entered on it readily and heartily, as it is written, "he
went out, not knowing whither he went," he found that he could not perform it
until death had severed the bond which still attached or connected him with
nature. Faith is dependence on God, and independence of everything human to
sustain it. The path proposed to Abram accordingly demanded the distinctest
expression of dependence on God alone. It could not be without sacrifice,
neither was it meant to be, and besides the exercises which his own heart must
have passed through in treading this path of faith, he is taught that death
must practically sever the tie which detains him on his way. The first stage is
not traversed without the heart tasting of sorrow through death, but death
which brings its own deliverance. If Abram had not been detained by his father,
but had pursued the unknown path without halting till he reached the place to
which God had called him he would have escaped the sorrow which death entailed
; but having allowed himself to be detained, nothing could relieve him but
death; and therefore under that discipline he passes. Thus it is in mercy with
many of us ; our dependence on God is not simple and distinct ; we halt in the
path of faith, and are detained by some link to nature until it dies, for die
it must, if we are to pursue our course with God, unless we die to it.
Death, then, having dissolved Abram's tie to nature and freed him from it, he
must renew his course, disciplined, no doubt, by that which had removed the
weight which impeded him: a discipline which he might have escaped had he
walked in more energy of faith, but by which he was nevertheless a learner; and
how wholesome the lesson - that faith does not sway the natural desire in the
recesses of the heart, that, though the blessings be great, if it submits to
the dictation of God without exposure, yet it rarely does, and even if it does
for a while, will ever be contending for an open expression of itself ; and, if
openly acting, it must be openly subdued. If I allow my natural will to lead
me, and thus turn me aside from the path of faith which is God's line, I must,
when God in His mercy restores me to the right line, know in myself the setting
aside of my will. This is self-mortification, and this is discipline.
To young believers, to all, it is important how we undertake and accomplish
this first stage of the life of faith : failure and vacillation here may entail
sorrow and indecision throughout our course, for we never diverge from the path
of faith without picking up "a thorn" from that nature which we are called to
repudiate. It will be either nature mortified, or nature exhausted, or nature
bereaved : and though we may be freed, as was Abram, by the death of his
father, the failure though amended may not be eradicated in its effect, and if
so, the discipline which it demanded must be continued. Lot went with Abram,
but not only was he ever a trial to him personally, but his descendants were
the greatest scourge to Abram's descendants ; and their malignant enticements
at the instigation of Balaam are set down in Scripture as a type of the worst
machinations against the church of God; Rev. 2: 13. Wherever we fail once, like
a horse that stumbles, we are likely to fail again, consequently there must be,
through God's care of us, a continual reminder to warn us of our tendency,
though grace, when acting in us, always is most seen when most wanted.
Abram now enters on the second stage of the life of faith - a stranger in a
strange land, depending on God, and he builds an altar; for the strangership
into which faith leads us fixes our souls on God, and worship follows. But when
the consequences or circumstances of our strangership occupy us, we lose the
rest which faith supplies, and seek relief elsewhere. Thus Abram, when he found
that there was a famine in the land, turned aside from the path of faith on
which he had entered, and went down into Egypt.
How humbling it is to
find how vacillating we are in that path, and however happily and firmly we
seem to be walking in it, how needful to say " Let him that thinketh he
standeth take heed lest he fall " Although Abram is graciously restored to the
path from which he had departed, and even returns to the place where he had the
altar at the beginning, we find that the thorns which he picked up in his
wanderings pierce him in his restoration. The cattle, the gains of Egypt,
provoke a collision between the herdsmen of Abram and Lot; but restoration
always advances us in moral power, for true restoration sets us above that from
which we are restored; and now truly restored, he looks not to consequences,
but, depending on God, maintains the path of faith in high moral power. My
first difficulty in a walk of faith is to get clear of nature, place and
kindred, and, being delivered therefrom, and in felt strangership, my next is
the tendency to advance, or exalt myself, or to find rest in this new position,
even as an emigrant in a wild and distant land seeks to make a home for himself
as speedily as possible. This desire to advance, so strong a passion in the
human soul, and the moving principle of all the great efforts of Babylon, may
be designated ambition, but must be overcome by the man of faith, as God's
witness in this evil world. Thus Abram's ambition is now tested; but discipline
has done its work, and his restoration is complete. Does he seek any
acknowledgment or advancement in this new country ? No! he is walking by faith,
and resigns all present superiority to Lot, who, gratifying his ambition,
chooses the well-watered plain, while Abram is blessed with a fuller revelation
as a reward for his faith. But even this is not to be enjoyed without
suffering, for the moment I am on the path with Christ, I am on the path of one
sent of God to minister to His people down here ; and Abram, the dependent man,
pursuing his unseen and separate path, has now to come forward and render the
very service which Christ fulfilled, and rescue his brother Lot, who, on the
contrary, had gratified the ambition of his nature by mixing himself with the
course of this world, and had been consequently embroiled in its sorrows. And
if, in the dangers and exercises of this service, Abram was made to feel what
he had to suffer from this natural tie which he had brought from Ur of the
Chaldees, his soul was at the same time confirmed in the path of dependence on
God, and as his faith had on the former occasion been rewarded by a fuller
revelation of the promised inheritance, his conflict and service are now
rewarded by the refreshment and blessing of Melchisedec in the name of the Lord
God, possessor of heaven and earth, surely more than enough to compensate for
the renouncement of the ambition of mere nature!
Here let me add, that
though we separate from home and kindred, and still further take heavenly
standing, yet if the tendencies of our nature be unsubdued, and we seek in any
wise to distinguish or advance ourselves in our new position, we shall be as
Lot; while, on the other hand, though we may - often need discipline and be
taught to renew our course after failure, yet, if we really seek to maintain
the path of dependence and separation, our faith will be strengthened by
increased revelations, and our service will be invigorated by association with
Him who is our Forerunner within the veil, " even Jesus, an high priest for
ever after the order of Melchisedec."
We now enter on the third stage
of Abram's history in the path of faith, and one in which he is brought under
an entirely new line of instruction, even in the exercise of his affections.
The ambition of his nature has been tested before; now his affections are to be
put under discipline and this is brought about in the first instance by the
promise of a son, which is the subject of chapter 15. Let me say, in passing,
that in tracing the history of this servant of God, I confine myself to the one
subject, even discipline. I pass over many episodes on which others have dwelt
largely, such as his communion with God, intercession, etc., most interesting
as it all is, but which has already been entered into fully.
It
appears to me that the true state of Abram's heart is exposed in his reply to
God's most gracious appeal to him in the commencement of this chapter. True, it
was quite right for him to wish for a son; it was a wish responding to the
counsels of God respecting him, and the lack of which would not have been
according to the mind of God. But still his reply, "What wilt thou give me"
does not rise to the elevation in which God sought to establish him, even in
perfect contentment and satisfaction with Himself, for what could He "give" him
greater than the assurance of being Himself his "exceeding great reward"?
Nevertheless, God in His grace meets him on his own level and promises that
which He had before counselled to give; but a long course of discipline lies
between him and the fulfilment of the promise, and as Abraham must learn in his
own home a preparation for that trial to his affections which awaited him so
many years afterwards, and which it was necessary for him to pass through in
order to perfect him in the life of faith. It was not at all that he
undervalued the fulness and nearness in which God had revealed Himself to him,
but he disclosed the secret feebleness of the human soul to rest in God apart
from any human link. God knows this, and offers graciously to supply it ; but
if He promises and gives Isaac, Abraham must hold him from God.
Abraham believed God, but his heart needed preparation and discipline, as we
see by the impatience of nature which he evinces while waiting for the
fulfilment of the promise, and this he is subjected to in his own private
circle. Perhaps there is no greater cause of delay to the accomplishment of
what God purposes to confer on us than the natural mind (if I may say so)
getting a hint of it; for as it is a point with Satan to spoil what he cannot
defeat, so is it with the willfulness of our nature which would fain adopt and
accomplish what originated entirely outside itself and with God; just as Eve,
interpreting a spiritual truth by a natural mind, takes Cain for the promised
seed. It does not and cannot enter the heart of man the extent and nature of
what God prepares for them that love Him. An Ishmael was Abraham's measure, an
Isaac was God's. In the meantime Abraham must learn, through contention, strife
and sorrow what is the fruit of his impatience, and in the end he must do what
was very " grievous in his sight," even to banish his son. Thus our inventions
do but postpone our real blessings, for it is necessary that we should see the
end of them. It must have been a period of nearly twenty years from the time of
the promise to the birth of Isaac, and many were the exercises he had to pass
through during that time, as well as many and great communications made to him
by the Lord.
We are now come to the fourth stage of Abraham's path of
discipline; chapter 21. His cup seems to be full - Isaac is given - the
bondwoman and her son cast out - the Gentile powers typified by Abimelech come
forward to acknowledge that God is with him in all that he does, and he plants
a grove and he calls on the name of the everlasting God. But more discipline
was necessary to ensure to his soul that the filling of that cup was entirely
from God, that He could fill, empty, and fill it again, and that He alone was
the filler of it. Abraham had given up expectation from the world - can he now
surrender the object of his affections and hopes ? and not only so, but will he
be the actual perpetrator of the wrench himself ? It was "very grievous in his
sight" to cast out Ishmael; what must it be now to hear the word, "Take now thy
son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of
Moriah ; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains
which I will tell thee of." The surrender is not like Jephthah's, namely, of
his own proposing, but is distinctly required of him by God; and required not
only that he should assent to it, but that he should execute it himself!
Abraham obeys. He treads the path of dependence on God, high and elevated,
above every influence either of ambition or affection. But what discipline!
what denial of long-cherished hopes and affections! The object to be
surrendered was not like Jonah's gourd, which grew up in a night and withered
in a night, but the fruit of many years of patience, trial and interest, and
now he was to be himself the agent in dashing the full cup from his lips. Where
was nature?-where its demand? Was he, like Jephthah, "very low" that day; or,
like Jonah, "very angry"? No, the man of faith, in that moment terrible to
nature, rose up early in the morn and saddled his ass, and took two of his
young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the
burnt-offering, and went to the place of which God had told him. What a
continuance of calmness and dignity does faith impart! There was nothing sudden
or hurried here: the period for reflection was lengthened, for after the third
day the place was still " afar off." Who can traverse in the spirit of his mind
such exercises as those in a soul which faith held true in obedience to the
word of God and not wonder at the transcendent vigour which that faith confers
? The surrender is complete! Abraham with his own hand takes the knife to slay
his son, but he reckons on God, " accounting that he was able to raise him up,
even from the dead." Dependence on God has triumphed over the demands of
nature, and now follows the reward. " The ram caught in the thicket "- Christ,
the true burnt-offering, who places us in an excellency before God, which none
of our own offerings ever could He is the compensation to us after all
surrender, and also the true, real, entire satisfaction of our hearts. And thus
the place is called Jehovah-jireh ; it is the " mount of the Lord," because
here the Lord provides what fully meets our need, and in addition, there also
Abraham receives the largest and fullest revelation of blessing ever
communicated to him. Nature was so silenced, and dependence on God so true and
practical that the Lord can unfold to him the deepest counsels of His love. He
was so perfect and full grown that he has an ear to hear, and a heart to
understand wisdom. God's discipline had effected all this; and this, according
to the measure of His grace, is what He is leading each of us into. May we
indeed have grace and wisdom to discern the path of faith, and so abide in it
that our walk may be to the praise and glory of Him, who, in all His education
of our souls, seeks our blessing and our joy.
ISAAC
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were
distinctively the " fathers of Israel " - the heads of a people called of God,
to walk in the earth, as happily dependent on Him. Abraham leads the way; and
while the most exemplary in the faith which characterised them, he had also to
contend with peculiarities of circumstances and conflicts unknown to them. If
the path was higher, the difficulties were greater; if the faith was more
vigorous, the resistance and denial of nature was more obstinate and severe ;
but in leadership this became him. The mighty agencies of divine faith engaged
in fatal conflict each daring opposition, which wilful nature, struggling for
existence, raised against it. The combat was a close one: dependence on God,
wresting the creature from the government of his own will in order to subject
it to God's will must have evoked nature's bitterest antagonism. Abraham
properly presents the leadership in this momentous engagement. Isaac follows: a
leader, to be sure, but in a subordinate degree. Abraham, as it were, conquers
the country; Isaac is required to retain it, and must hold the position against
the common foe. Abraham suffers while contending for possession; Isaac, while
keeping it. Abraham's hindrances are generally from the force of circumstances
outside him; Isaac's, almost always from personal weakness. Isaac presents to
us the inability of nature, in its best and fairest condition, to hold the path
of faith, on which, through grace, man is set. His failures are not so much the
strength of the enemy turning him aside., as the mere weakness of humanity. The
disciples slept when the Lord asked them to watch, not from evil, for " the
spirit was willing," but because " the flesh was weak," and it could not
demonstrate the very feeling it commended. Isaac teaches us how weak and
rickety the best part of our nature is in the path of faith, how it fails
therein, and hence the discipline necessary for it.
Isaac enters on
the scene as the child of promise ; and, as his name indicates, under the
happiest moral auspices. No wonder that we should be prepared to see in him a
pleasing sample of fallen humanity, obedient, affectionate and domestic. Our
first notice of his opening manhood being the ascension of mount Moriah, a
scene so wonderful that we hardly know which most rivets our admiring gaze, the
self-possessed action of Abraham, or the lamb-like acquiescence of Isaac. It
maybe said, that he did not know beforehand that it so fatally affected himself
; but, even when he did know, by being laid on the wood of the altar, and the
knife in his father's outstretched hand to slay him, we do not find that he in
the least resisted its accomplishment. To obey in ignorance evinces unlimited
confidence in the one to whom I yield such unsuspecting submission, and, still
more, proves that I can bend and set aside my own will in subjection to the one
who has claim on me. Obedience must stand at the head of the fist of all the
activities which would conduce to order and blessing. The demand (even as it
was in the first instance with Adam) is to surrender the will to one rightly
invested with claim to it. Subjects, servants, wives, children, come under it;
and the first commandment with promise is such, because the surrender of the
will is an activity contrary to the very genius of our nature ; and this
activity God owns and blesses. The path of the Lord Jesus was one of
unqualified obedience, but He had always vividly before Him what the
consequences of that obedience would be; so that He submitted because of the
service He should render, and the joy He should contribute to His Father, and
not, as did His type Isaac, because he was ignorant of the issue, or only
sustained in his obedience by confidence in the one who required it. This
obedience of Isaac in the opening of his history, however, warrants our
estimate of him; but if (like the young man in the gospel whom the Lord loved)
it proceeded only from natural character, it must be (even as was his)
subjected to an unequivocal test.
The more lovely the character, the
more unmistakable must be the evidence that such an one has renounced all of
himself. He is required to sell all that he has and give to the poor, whence it
could not be recalled ; and thus, bereft and denuded, to follow the Lord.
Isaac, then, the gentlest of natures, must in figure pass through death! Death!
that end of all nature, the only true goal for it, for where the flesh is
entirely ended, even in the death of Christ, there only is full deliverance
from it, and conscious entrance into the place in which grace has set us. To
this unreserved submission to the divine mind unfailingly leads ; and this
discipline, so necessary and blessed for him, is imposed on Isaac at the very
opening of his history. It is not as with Abraham, separation and
self-mortification, but it is nothing short of death, moral death. The more
refined and perfect the nature, the more difficult it is to deny it; where
there is nothing very manifestly to be denied, it seems hard that all must be
denied. Where there is something manifest, the denial of it will always break
the will, because the will is expressed in the leading passion, and breaking
the will is moral death to nature, which all must pass through, only with some
it is accomplished directly through the crushing of some ruling taste or evil;
while with others, of a more even nature, such as Isaac's, where nothing stands
out prominently to be broken, the whole thing must be negatived, and that
practically.
The next notice we get of Isaac is also one of death; but
death of a different description, and which prepared him for a new order of
life. The death of his mother has left him a solitary one on the earth ; and
this was another way of learning it. Surely we find in divine discipline the
twofold way of learning death, that is, either dying myself or everything dying
to me. May we not say that, as Isaac meditated in the field, he must (though
cheered with hopes of better things coming) have experienced how death can
blight all the scene, causing a blank to the heart which nothing in it could
repair? The removal of Sarah, however, is followed by the gift of Rebekah, and
he emerges from the gloom and sorrow of death to enter, as it were, on the
consolation which the Lord has provided for him ; but even then, so true and
faithful are the dealings of our God with His people, Isaac the promised seed
has no heir; nor has he until cast on God, he is taught to look to Him instead
of to nature. He must learn that God's blessings, whatever they be, will not
yield desired results apart from Him. But, when this lesson is learnt, the
pre-ordained purpose will be accomplished, and thus to Isaac children are
given. At their birth is vouchsafed a revelation of their destinies sufficient
to guide an ear open to God's mind and counsels, as to what the divine mind
respecting them was, and what should be their respective places. Isaac should
have understood this, and acted towards them accordingly ; but he does not
appear to have done so, or else his habitual nature swamped the counsel of God
in his mind, for he does not seem to have discerned in Jacob the heir to the
promises, and "he loved Esau because he ate of his venison. The divine
intimation is overlooked, because the father's heart is gratified in the
attentions of the son, and is more influenced by the dictates of nature than by
the counsel of God. Natural and paternal as this was, it was man's will opposed
to God's will, and therefore Isaac must be taught to relinquish it - for the
word of the Lord, that shall stand!