I have found that one of the points on which the condition of the church of God hangs very much at the present time is, whether obedience precedes blessing, or blessing obedience. Many are, in some degree though perhaps by no means altogether, aware of the extent to which the principle, that blessing must precede obedience where the will of God is ascertained, has gone, or how widely its influence is spreading. It is a strange point of connection between Newman Street and the subsisting systems. The directions (as far as they are apprehended in the minds of those concerned, which is the only way in which we are concerned in them) which have emanated from Mr. Irving, or those speaking with him, have certainly varied; but they have all borne directly upon retaining those subject to them, in the systems current as religion in the world (though these are all asserted by them to be Babylon), and upon the plea that they could take no step until they received the Spirit, such as they possessed in Newman Street. This has frequently been the result of direct instructions in that place to persons who have gone there.
Another principle has been adopted by a large body of the clergy, tending to the same point: that without tradition no step can be taken, because obedience becomes uncertain and therefore dangerous. The result is wonderfully similar, and seems to me to proceed from Satan -- such uncertainty and difficulty of mind as leads a person to settle down in what is confessedly wrong, and what he knows to be such. This, inevitably dulling the conscience, leads to a state of mind grievous to the Spirit of God, and necessarily lowering the moral energies of the parties concerned; "for whosoever hath to him shall be given." The coalition between Irvingism and high-church principles in this respect has an astonishingly wide influence; and often so, when the persons concerned little suspect the source from which it flows; while it finds ample aliment in the natural feeling of timidity and unbelief, and assumes the justifiable principle of caution, and is never thought for a moment to be the result of man's disposition to acquiesce in evil, rather than to act in trying circumstances.
In those who decline acting from the want of the power of the Spirit it assumes the form of greater humility than usual, and greater dependence upon the Holy Ghost. On the other side, it appears like great steadiness of character, and an indisposition to acquiesce in the movements unguided by principle, which the easily led human mind is in so many ways making at the present moment. Thus certainly the fairest principles of conduct are brought to bear (though from such opposite, and, but for this, mutually opposed sides) upon those who conscientiously do not acquiesce in the evil in which they find themselves placed. Nothing can be more opposed than the principles which lead to the conclusion on one side and on the other. In result only they agree -- to stay where circumstances have placed them; which is just what the selfishness of unbelief will always do.
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Now there is one thing only which can justly withstand the power over the mind of such nominally good views as these, so apparently opposed to evil; and that is obedience. There is nothing so humble, nothing so steady as obedience; nothing which so marks the Spirit's presence, nothing so opposed to insubordination, nothing by which every ungodly voice must be so utterly silenced, as by obedience. I confess, when I see such very opposite principles leading to the same conclusion -- principles so diametrically opposite, and in conflict with each other, as resting on the presence of the Spirit, and tradition -- I am led to think that the result is not the effect of the principles in either case, but of some entirely different motive; and that the only operation of the principles is to neutralise, in either case, some other principle which acts in moving those who plead them; and consequently, by so neutralising it, to leave them where they were, without respect to the right or wrong of the case; which is precisely the result in the present instance.
And such I believe to be just the fact: but if God have any will in the matter, and this consequently terminates in disobedience, it becomes a very positive evil, most grievous to the Spirit of God, supposed to be, or waited for, and makes tradition (discoverable or undiscoverable) to be such as renders void the word of God. It is reserved for these days, among protestants, to make tradition a necessary supplement to the word of God; and it is a very great mistake to suppose that it was ever used in the early churches in the way now proposed. It was there, whether wisely or unwisely, a positive tradition, and in confirmation of doctrines avowedly taught and declared. A tradition that they had not yet (or did not know to be the security of the church) was an imbecility reserved surely for a state of hopeless decay.
But the assertion that obedience is the great principle to go on -- obedience to known truth, not plans of our own mind, but obedience to known truth as the portion of a single-eyed, humble, simple mind; and that this is the way of these additional blessings, which are matters of God's gift (obedience to the order of which is then part, of course, of every spiritual mind) is of very great importance: but, in all cases and under all circumstances, gifts or no gifts, obedience is the path of a Christian -- the path of duty and blessing.
I would first shew the essentiality of the principle, its deep essentiality; then, that it is the preliminary of blessing; and lastly, that it is the order of all special gift in Christ, the ground on which it all flows forth. The first establishes the principle; the last applies it.
Obedience is the only rightful state of the creature, or God would cease to be supreme -- would cease to be God. God may shew the impotency of the creature by turning all the wilful rebellion it may be guilty of to His own purpose in blessing; and they that are adversaries bound to it in His own power; but the only rightful position of the creature is obedience: upon this hangs all the order of the creation -- on this hang sin and righteousness. The definition of sin is lawlessness, doing one's own will. "He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."
Let us see how distinctly this is brought out in Scripture in its broadest lines. The first Adam and the second, the Lord from heaven, the great heads and types of ruin and of blessing, are thus distinguished as the disobedient and the obedient ones. The first Adam did his own will. He was put under a test of obedience. This was the critical point of the first Adam's standing and blessing: "Thou shalt not eat." He did eat, and was ruined: death, the wages of sin, came in, the consequence of man's act, that not being the will of God. Death was the wages of sin; and sin was disobedience -- in subjection to God. Here its character and result were determined -- the hinge of man's fate -- the now wide-open door to every evil; but at which indeed mercy entered before man was excluded, that he might bear it with him in the desert into which he was driven, justly driven, without.
Precisely the opposite was found in the blessed and perfect Saviour. Would you know His character, His attitude now that He is ushered in, in His own humble but holy and perfect announcement? "Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me; I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart." This was His constant character, His perfectness, as man. So we read in the course of His life: "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." This character was stamped on every circumstance; "He took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men." And as in life He did always such things as pleased His Father, for He sought not His own will but the will of Him that sent Him; so there was no limit to its extent any more than to its perfectness: for, loving His own to the end, He became obedient unto death, the death of the cross; for, though willingly doing it, "this commandment have I received of my Father."
He had now ears dug for Him (Psalm 40: 6): the Lord God had opened them, and He was not rebellious, neither turned away back, but "gave his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair"; nor hid His face from all that obedience brought Him into, power or no power; for He was crucified in weakness, though He liveth by the power of God. His power was the powerful service of God; His weakness the patience of all His will.
So it was -- obedience was the principle on which He acted -- in temptation. "It is written" was His reply ever to the tempter's suggestions; and when the tempter would thereupon have guilefully alleged a promise, "It is written, he shall give," etc., our Lord met him by the answer, "It is written": an answer shewing the principle of obedience as contrasted with the principle of assumption, of the assumption even of true privilege -- a most important truth! But of this more hereafter. Perhaps I have said more than is needful on this; for the one sentence, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God," to the believer stamps the character, and fills up the principle, of the life of the holy Jesus. He was the Model of obedience. Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.
The essential contrast to this is in Antichrist: "The king shall do according to his will." This is his characteristic: not regarding any, "He shall do according to his will and magnify himself."
Let us now trace other parts of scripture. In Exodus the word of the Lord to Moses is, "Thus shalt thou say, Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself; now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed," etc. And all the people answered together, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do." I speak not here of their competency to fulfil their undertaking, but of the principle of obedience -- the only principle on which God could deal with man, or man walk with God.
So, in the blessing of Abraham in Genesis 22, the Lord closes with this -- "Because thou hast obeyed my voice." And Jeremiah takes up the word of the Lord to Israel by Moses (chapter 7: 22), "For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices; but this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people; and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you."
Such is the tenor of the covenant on which the existing comforts of the land were held, as detailed in Deuteronomy 28, after they had broken the former. Such is the principle of the restoration -- covenants of faith, when they had lost the fruits of the former, as given in Deuteronomy 30; "and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice, according to all that I command thee this day."
So, in the apostasy of Saul in 1 Samuel 15, we find the same basis of judgment -- "Why didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice"; even as we find its principle and its perfection in our Lord's constant walk. It is the character of the believer's sanctification -- sanctified unto obedience and the blood of sprinkling of Jesus Christ; 1 Peter 1: 2. This is that to which the believer is sanctified; this the purpose, the object, of his sanctification: so, where the contrary state is spoken of in Ephesians 2, "Wherein in times past ye walked according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience."
Nor does anything ever affect this essential principle: nothing but sin can draw a man out of it. The doing our own will is always sin, always the acting of the old man, not subject to God or it would do His will, not its own -- the nature which does not bring in God, but acts for itself. The object of obedience may be in question, but self-will is always wrong. Thus Peter, when charged before the high priest's council with disobedience to its behests, does not plead a right to do his own will -- a right to do what he pleased; he had no such right. As towards God, it would have been the expression of self-will; he would not have been honouring God therein. His word was not, 'I have a right to do what I like without reference to you'; but, "We ought to obey God rather than men." It would have been really disobedience to have obeyed them. God would have been disobeyed in the result. Peter would have acquiesced, yea, taken a leading part in disobedience, as far as he was concerned.
Thus we find how the principle is preserved in all the trying circumstances of refusing subjection to human authority. It can be swerved from in no instance without breaking through the first and only principle of accepted relationship to God; it is the only exercise, save praise, of life to God.
It appears to me that this principle is greatly lost sight of and abused by all religious parties. As to this, they are divided into two great classes -- those who plead obedience, and those who plead liberty. Peter's answer, it seems to me, meets both. The dissenters, as a body, plead liberty -- rights -- the title to do, as regards men, what they please. The churchmen claim obedience, and plead frequently the principle; but it is still to men, and not to God. "We ought to obey God" is the Christian's answer to both. "We ought to obey," I say to the dissenter, who claims rights: "We ought to obey God," to the churchman, who pleads the principle of obedience in the defence of all the corruptions which rest merely on the authority of man and his ways: "We ought to obey God rather than man." How perfect is scripture in setting in order the ways of men, the narrow path which no other power detects, as revealing the principles of the human mind, and judging them! Self-will is never right. Obedience to man is often wrong -- disobedience to God.
The next thing I would mark in connection with this is, that the commands of God, though the literal circumstances of blessing associated with them may be gone, never lose their power; for they are always, unless as connected with these blessings in detail, moral -- in their character, exhibiting and expressive of God, on which relationship to Him is necessarily founded. This is what the word in Deuteronomy 30: 12-14, quoted by the apostle, means: "It is not in heaven, that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it unto us, that we may hear and do it ... . But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." Now the apostle calls this the righteousness of faith (Romans 10: 6), the force of which we shall see in a moment, if we examine the place where it occurs in Deuteronomy, and learn also the accuracy of scripture quotation; and that this quotation in Romans, as everything else in Scripture, is the mind of the Spirit of God.
The statement of Moses in Deuteronomy was not the covenant on which, in literal obedience, they held the land; this would not have been the righteousness of faith, but the principle of Do, and then the blessing. It was besides the covenant that was made with them at Horeb (chapter 29: 1), and proceeds upon the ground of the total loss of the literal blessings, which were the result of literal -- obedience in the land: "And it shall come to pass when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind, among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey," etc. That is, after the covenant of literal obedience had been so broken that they had lost the fruits of it in the possession of the land, and were driven out (at once the evidence that it was broken, and constituting the impossibility, in that exclusion from the land, of such literal obedience), thereon the Lord says, "For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven," etc. But it was nigh them, that which faith recognised in its power and principles, although, in exclusion from the land, its literal observance was impracticable.
Here the apostle took up the Jews, and planted them on the principle of the obedience or righteousness of faith (to them still "Lo-ammi"); that is, the confession of Messiah, at any time the great hope and comfort of their law to them, but specially while they were thus in bondage and sorrow. No other but a basis of faith could be available to them. This was its strength and surest object; while the obedience of faith for His name was withal spread to the nations also. The obedience of faith, whatever the state of, however apostasy is undermining, the church, is still, and so much the more, the principle of all righteous individual conversation.
It is not the exactitude of literal observance which is here imposed -- that may be impossible. It was so with the Jews when there was the highest exemplification of faithful obedience, as in Daniel for example; neither is the oldness of the letter the character of the Christian dispensation; that is not the obedience of faith. But the obedience of faith, in the newness of the Spirit, is always open, and finds its path according to the spirituality, and therefore spiritual discernment, of the people seeking it; and upon this God rests it. Exact conformity to His mind may be, and surely was, accompanied by direct and immediate witness of blessing, such as we have not now -- and could not have, because it would be the recognition of inconsistency, which God could not sanction, whatever be His individual prerogative of mercy. It was God's testimony and sanction to that which was His moral witness in the world.
It is precisely in these circumstances that the obedience of faith comes in on which the blessing comes, as may be seen in Deuteronomy 30; not the insistence on literal ordinance, but the power of moral consistency, according to the expressed mind of God. Nothing can be more important than the position which this passage in the book of Deuteronomy holds in this respect, nor than the principle which it affords. The privileges attached to the dispensation were gone. Obedience, in the literal sense, was impossible. The ark was gone; the Urim and Thummim were gone. The temple, where literal services could be accomplished, was desolate and burned with fire, where their prescriptive services alone could be performed; and they were captives moving to and fro. What then could be done! The word was nigh them, in their heart and in their mouth, that they might do it. Here was the principle of conduct which assured God's accepting favour; here is the principle on which alone, in darkness, we can walk acceptably with God. Compare Isaiah 50, 51, where we have the application of this -- the progressive triple link of obedience; and then, Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O arm of the Lord!
On the other hand, the notion of tradition neither recognises nor amends the fallen state of things; it does not recognise it, for it assumes the literal state of things precisely, but does not fulfil it. It does not acknowledge the evil and fallen state of the church. It assumes the continuance of that literal exactitude of services; and that, these being present, there is the security of the church. It acknowledges not, that it has lost its glory in the display of present power to the world; it says, Give me my ordinances, and all is well; not seeing that it has been deprived of power, because of its moral departure from its constitution with God. It may have been God's wisdom so to order this dispensation: I speak merely of the fact. Neither does tradition amend it -- it puts the church wholly on the wrong ground. The spirit of obedience, the righteousness of faith, is that which we need, if indeed fallen. Though we had the most certain information of traditional forms of worship or ordinance, it would not make the church of the living God. It is not the sign of the true church, or suited to the humiliation of the church in its fallen and low condition. The perpetuity of ordinances is not its rightful position in Babylon, but the spirit of humbled obedience -- the word nigh it; the present spirit of obedience to the word nigh them is that which marks the spirit of faith, and acknowledgment of God, not making haste. If we repent, we may, according to the word of Ezekiel, be shewn more. To mock the fallen church with tradition is but a bitter and death-bearing substitute for the living power of the divine presence, or the obedience of faith, the only sure ground on which to stand, if we have fallen from the manifested glory of it.
But to trace the other parts of the subject. To shew that it is the preliminary of blessing, few words, after what has been said, will be needed. "If any man will do his will," says our Lord, "he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." Now this is precisely the obedience of faith; and shews that moral preparation for blessing given is conversion of will into the spirit of obedience; "if any one desire to practise his will." It is not the literal fact of outward act, but the spirit of mind, which will be therefore necessarily shewn in outward acts when that will is set before him. The next point is to do My will; then he shall know -- the gift of knowledge founded on the spirit of obedience; for what does it avail to confer gift on the disobedient, unless God should provide for His own dishonour?
I would refer also, without dwelling on them, to Luke 6: 4-9; Matthew 3: 15; John 13: 16, 17 and chapter 12: 26. The same truth is very distinctly taught us in John 14: 21-23, where love to Jesus is thus definitely marked, and blessing marked as consequent upon it: "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him."
Nothing can be more distinct -- nothing more distinct than the sovereignty of grace to the sinner through the obedience of Christ; the sureness of blessing to the saint in the order of obedience to the word. The chastenings of unchanging love, I speak not of here. But the doctrine is very express in the word as to the order of all special gift; that it is adherence to the obedience of Christ; that it hangs upon, and finds its scope and exercise in, obedience. There may be an extraordinary act of everlasting sovereignty, as Balaam and Caiaphas; but this is not ground that the church of God can go upon; these are not given to the church as examples, unless men would associate themselves with the apostasy as God's order. God may set light to His church upon the most dangerous rock on the shores of destruction; these may be beacons all around them, but no attractive guide to the place where they stand; though we may bless the hand that set them there, a warning for none to approach, though a guide to all that pass. Unhappy people, the witness of the ruin that rolls around themselves!
One would have thought that it had been amply enough to have seen the broad and essential principle on which the whole order of Christian truth is founded, to have determined the Christian mind as to its righteousness and judgment. One would have thought that its conclusion would have been intuitive, and the fruit of the Spirit shewn at once in the recognition of obedience as the path of the saint: that path which, to a saint led of the Spirit, is the only one in which the Spirit can lead. But the enemy of our souls is not met by the simplicity of truth, because of the want of simplicity of our minds. According as they are not spiritual, and in any sort are under the influence of, or attached to, anything not the object of, to which they are not led by, the Spirit, therein the simplicity of truth fails to keep them, and the power of the enemy can avail itself of its subtlety against them. If there be any measure of positive, though imperfect spirituality, evident rejection of the word would not be received: but Satan does not so proceed. He does not therefore propose disobedience, but modifies obedience, proposes preliminaries to it, or substitutes something instead of God's word.
Nor does Satan deceive the saints, or those under the form of saints, with an open and simple lie (they are not the subjects of that); he has not ordinarily done so. If Satan said, "Ye shall be as gods (Elohim)," One far above an created beings repeated, "The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil." But oh! what a store of accompanying evils and ruin, come in upon the act of disobedience founded on this devil -- used truth. Using it out of place, suppressing what went along with it when man acted on it, was the foundation of the ruin that came upon the world.
We must then meet Satan, not only by the simplicity of truth, which is the happiest way -- which is happiness -- but, when our weakness and inconsistency open the way to his guile, by the wisdom of the word which applies to the case; which the unbounded and illimitable goodness of our God has provided for the weakness and necessities of His children, knowing the subtleties of their enemy, and providing for them who are assailable by reason of that weakness.
Thus the Lord (far, most far from inconsistency or evil, but assailed by that which would act upon ours) met, by the testimony of the word, the subtlety of the enemy of our souls. What subtlety! an unconditional promise: a promise to Him, alleged to be His as Son of God, by virtue of His privilege: "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down hence, for it is written." [Oh, high-drawn wit, a refinement of evil!] Was it not true? and was not Satan a liar? and could Satan produce a true promise of God, would not God be true to it? If thou be the Son of God, act in faith upon this promise; claim its effect, shew the power and glory which belong to this dispensation. And how bright the glory, how fair the witness, how singular and suitable the testimony to what He was! what strength imparted in His service! what foundation to claim credence to the mission which presented Him in this very character! Why not do it? What reason could be alleged? Must they not be the cavils of unbelief? Were the promises not true to the Son of God? Would God prove Himself a liar? It was the characteristic honour and place of Messiah; the ministering angels of the dispensation were to approve their Head in it: what could be more suitable or approved? But after all it was Satan's proposal -- the Lord's answer was His total refusal. If a Son, He had yet made Himself a servant. There was no command on which to act; had there been, ten thousand temples would not have stopped His course, be they ever so goodly, ever so high, adorned with ever such goodly stones or gifts.
It is remarkable, too, in connection with what we have said as to Deuteronomy, that all our Lord's answers were taken from it. The word "Lo-ammi" had never been erased from the badge of the Jewish people, since the day of their captivity; they bore it still upon their forehead: but the Lord took the part of Scripture precisely applicable in their present state. He took the phylacteries of God therein afforded, and bound them round His forehead; and Satan could not touch Him then. And here was another most important principle connected with this subject. The promises of God were true, and the gifts and calling of God without repentance (and this passage refers directly hereto -- to these very Jews); but they did not apply to their then present state. Satan would have used them so. But the path of obedience was to understand the mind of God; and the Lord applied, in their acknowledged apostasy, that which God had applied to that state of things.
The Jews applied the promises to themselves, without the recognition of their fallen estate, and herein shewed that they had not the Spirit of God; and, by their application of these promises of God, came under the power of Satan, and were led of him. The Lord declined them, and rejected and baffled Satan. He took and kept the path of simple obedience; He rejected tradition. He rejected the promises; aye, He rejected the promises used not in the path of obedience and the understanding of the divine word. The first evidence, the first point of the teaching of the divine Spirit, of the wisdom of God in Christ, who was the wisdom, is the ruined state itself into which the church is fallen. Here is the key, the at once solution of all the rest; where this is, it is and must be the first instruction of the Spirit to us in our church -- acting capacity; and all our conduct flows from it; and God has expressly provided the obedience of faith for such a time, never, never deserting His own, wherever the apostasy may be; for He cannot, and does not, turn away, nor is His faith made of none effect; and in the time of all these difficulties, the Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation (through faith which is in Christ Jesus), and are profitable, etc.; "that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished to every good work." Oh, what a blessed word! what a blight upon the holders of tradition, as the pretenders to any light which should guide them farther than the perfectness of the man of God -- the strength, the comfort, the wisdom of the divine word. May we be occupied with His commandments!
Let us turn to the third part of the subject -- that obedience is the order of special gift. We have here direct and topical instruction of Scripture on the subject, in chapter 15 of John's gospel. Of the principle of it we have an illustrious instance in Samson and his history. There was one separated to God, sanctified for Jehovah, and therefore put into the order of defined obedience; his hair was not to be cut. While the commandment and precept were observed, his strength was with him. There might have seemed little connection between long or uncut hair, and all-overcoming strength; but God was in it: and an obeyed, honoured, God is a God of strength to us. It was God's strength, and given to one so definitely recognising Him; it was a gift hanging (as to its retention) on obedience -- consistency with the undertaken vow of separatedness to God. The surrender of this secret betrayed to the world the corrupting influence which had wound round the deceived Nazarite. His locks were cut by one nominally the friend and associate of the God-devoted man, in truth the sure ally of the Philistines, and suited instrument of Satan's power. Once shorn of his strength, and in the Philistines' hands, his eyes are put out; and, if in any sort he regains his strength, it is blindly to destroy himself with his enemies. That which I insist on here, however, is the sign of separation to obedience being the order and hinge of the possession of the given strength, the presence or absence of the one depending upon the presence or absence of the other, however unconscious the unhappy victim was of the strength of others thereupon against him: a sorrowful yet instructive history to our weak and wayward will.
But I have referred to John 15, as direct instruction upon the subject: it is most exact as to it. The Lord had stated the truth as to personal blessing, the special gift of His manifested presence, as contrasted with the world, in chapter 14: "He that hath my commandments" (how different from a tradition we have not got!)+ "and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him." Here the broad principle of general blessing is laid down, and we may observe what is most important in it -- "he that hath my commandments."
Let us turn to chapter 15: 4, "Abide in me, and I in you; as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me." This is a practical abiding, or it could not be a command; abiding in Christ as the true Vine, not in anything else; for the vine of the earth, its grapes shall be cast into the winepress of wrath. Again (verse 7), "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you"; and in verse 10, "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love"; that love from which all the gift and blessing flows, "even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love." Would the church presumptuously assume a higher prerogative of the sureness of the Father's love, than the Lord Himself, who says, as to the order of its continuance, "As I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love?" Can anything be more definite and clear, that the ground of the assumption of blessing, the continuance of gift or blessing, is continuance in the words of Christ, of His words in the church? The assertion is not more clear than the ground of it is most plain and intelligible -- the holy commandment. God's power, His glory, would otherwise serve as the sanction of unrighteousness. So in verse 14 (stating the ground on which the communications of His mind, special revelations, would rest) He says, "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." Nothing can be more definite, nothing more certain, than its thrice repeated accuracy of assertion.
+ The Lord's commandments are always moral, and not of ordinance. The two ordinances which were established by Him, and which separate the church from the world, are, though ordained by Him, not commandments for personal obedience. As to baptism, this is perfectly clear, from the absence of command, and from Acts 8: 36 and 10: 47. As regards the Lord's supper, it might seem to be so, but "Do this in remembrance of me" is not a command to do it; compare 1 Corinthians 11: 25. Ordinances are always separative. If I am marked by any prescribed act, this act distinguishes me, and connects me with an those who have it as a body, contrasted with those who have not such prescribed form. Hence all peculiar ordinances minister to separation among Christians, those that are God's to separation of them from the world corporately. I read, "we have no such custom," where evil was sought to be introduced; never of any circumstance, we have such an ordinance. I do not think the apostles themselves had the power to ordain anything, but as morally conducive to the good of the church. "So ordain I in all the churches" was a common order profitable for the glory of God.
The order of God to Christians is, not obedience upon blessing, but blessing on obedience; not to wait for blessing in order to obey, but to act on the command, and the blessing follows. And this is faith. There would be no faith if the blessing came first. Even Christ obeyed before He had the blessing -- speaking of Him as the self-humbled Man. So we are justified by bowing to God's word, and in our obedience are the consequent blessings: to him that hath shall more be given. It is the business of spirituality to ascertain His will -- to be, in our measure, of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" If it be said, Yes, but the church had to wait for the presence of the Spirit before it could do anything, I answer, True; before then, properly speaking, it was not a church; and even that was in obedience to the Lord's word; Luke 24: 49. But when the Spirit was received all that was so dictated became the subject-matter of the obedience of all who were under the influence of the Spirit thenceforward; and it was denying the Spirit to say, We must wait for the Spirit to obey what the Spirit has taught. It was mocking the Spirit. The Spirit of God had revealed it, and spirituality of mind would discern the holy purport of the thing -- would surely do so, and act on it according to the power given, waiting for all other gift. Such is the necessary consequence of spirituality; and anything else is only denying the Spirit, not waiting for Him. "He that is spiritual," says the apostle, "let him acknowledge that the things which I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord"; and if so, what then? They are to be obeyed as the occasion and skill of obedience arises. Used in obedience, the gifts certainly were to be received in it also; for we are sanctified unto obedience. The church is sanctified unto obedience, becomes by conversion obedient: that is the thing done with it in time. The man is turned to obey God, instead of doing his own will: "Lord, what wilt thou have me do?" And it receives blessing, it walks in obedience -- the obedience of love, and it continues to receive a blessing; it disobeys, and received judgment, though God's long-suffering may wait upon its rebelliousness.
On the whole, the scripture is plain, as the principle is uniform -- that obedience is the way of blessing; and that we are not to wait for power to obey a command, but to obey it that we may find power. The Lord did not restore the hand that He might stretch it out and shew it, but ordered the man to stretch it out, that it might be restored. And this is true in all possible cases. The Lord is obedient; therefore He is exalted to the place of power, to be Giver of gifts. He took upon Him the form of a servant, and became obedient, and that even to death; wherefore also God hath highly exalted Him. Now while the redemption of the church is herein complete (for, by one man's obedience, many shall be made righteous), in the work in the church, obedience always goes before the manifestation of blessing. Thus Saul, struck to the ground, says, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" and the Lord answered, "Go into Damascus, and there it shall be told thee what thou oughtest to do." He went and received comfort, and strength, and blessing, through the means of Ananias there sent to him; he acted in obedience in the first instance. So the poor blind man, in the days of the Lord, being, in the flesh, a pattern and type of the whole case: "Go wash in the pool of Siloam: he went his way therefore and washed, and came seeing"; and, having been faithful to this, he was able to teach his teachers, because he had obeyed the word; and, being cast out for it the Lord hearing this to be the case, finds him, and reveals Himself to him. Is it then that we act without the obedience of faith? We are so led: "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." "Go wash in Jordan seven times" is an humbling thing, instead of having the prophet's hand struck over the leper; but going and washing proved that he believed the testimony of God -- the Spirit of God to be in the prophet; he owned the Spirit when in the obedience of faith, and the blessing came.
So in the word we own the Spirit of God, the sure Spirit of God in the word, and act upon it: which shews that we own the Spirit of God, and that He is able to bless; and the blessing comes from that Spirit, vindicating His truth. Whatever blessing is inconsistent with obedience is not really a blessing in result, though it should have the form of an answer to claim on the faithfulness of God; as we see in the quails in the wilderness. Our whole inquiry must just be, What is the will of God? The blessing of the Spirit goes with it, for that is the testimony of the Spirit; and, taking it as the way of the blessing is honouring the Spirit. Therefore the very acknowledging the Lord is made a matter of obedience. It is the command of God to acknowledge His Son (1 John 3: 23), to honour Him as we honour the Father. "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." Yea, the Lord, while He shewed that He loved the Father, yet, in His yielding Himself to death, declares, "This commandment have I received of my Father"; and the gospel is sent "for the obedience of faith among all nations for his name."
The operation of the Spirit is to make us obey. There is no owning of the Spirit but in obedience; and obedience is the evidence that we do acknowledge the Spirit, that we are led of Him -- that which God will own, whether the world own us or not. And I suppose that the highest progress of spiritual life is not energy, but the enlarged discovery that all is within the sphere of obedience; and that all our efforts are so far profitable as they are within obedience -- God's prescribed order; and that all without is the energy of our own will, and evil. Does the spirit of evil or our will lead us in obedience? Clearly not! We have only then to plead the word, and we necessarily plead the operation of the Spirit of God in us; His energy is but to enable us to obey, and to reduce all else to the same thing.
Our having the commandments is the sign of an obedient heart taught of God -- the communicated apprehension of the divine mind as in the word, spiritual communion with God giving that discernment; our keeping them, of a patient will under Him to follow on as led and established by Him, and in spite of, and overcoming the enemy; God working in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
To lean upon tradition is to prove that we have not His commandments; to wait, as men speak, for His Spirit is to prove that we are not inclined to keep them; both concurring to shew that we do not really love Him; and the latter, the merest though most subtle sophistry, and making us deny obedience to the word of the Spirit, in order that we may obtain His presence: a way as strange in its proposal, as it is contrary to the word of God (as we have seen in John 15); denying that we have it whereby alone we can have it or obey it, whereby we have it more abundantly; a hiding of the talent in the napkin, as though God were an austere God.
Our whole dependence then is on the Spirit of God, for we have no strength in ourselves; the object of our desires and prayers, the great and continual object, all hangs on His presence; for by it alone we recognise ever what the Father and the Son are to us in the blessed counsels of His will -- we recognise it as a present thing.
The Spirit is the immediate agent in all divinely led human conduct, as indeed in all operation on creation. But the measure of the Spirit is known by the obedience of faith -- the understanding obedience of faith, to that which the Spirit has laid before us in the word of truth -- the true revealed mind of the Spirit of God. Whatever the power, we shall ever seek increase as to its exercise under the divine will. He will ever lead us on farther and farther into the path of obedience, and will unfailingly sanction all our previous footsteps in this way; for indeed, howsoever little known, He has led us in them.
If a child habitually neglected its father, and did not take the trouble of knowing his mind and will, it is easy to foresee that, when a difficulty presented itself this child would not be in circumstances to understand what would please its parent. There are certain things which God leaves in generalities, in order that the state of the individual's soul may be proved. If, instead of the case I have supposed of a child, it were a question of a wife towards her husband, it is probable that, if she had the feelings and mind of a wife, she would not hesitate a moment as to knowing what would be agreeable to him; and this where he had expressed no positive will about the matter. Now you cannot escape this trial: God will not allow His children to escape it. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be fun of light."
People would like a convenient and comfortable means of knowing God's will, as one might get a receipt for anything; but there exists no means of ascertaining it without reference to the state of our own soul. Moreover, we are often of too much importance in our own eyes; and we deceive ourselves in supposing some will of God in such or such a case. God perhaps has nothing to tell us thereon, the evil being altogether in the stir we give ourselves. The will of God is perhaps that we should take quietly an insignificant place.
Further, we sometimes seek God's will, desiring to know how to act in circumstances in which His only will is that we should not be found at all; and where, if conscience were really in activity, its first effect would be to make us leave them. It is our own will which sets us there, and we should like nevertheless to enjoy the comfort of being guided of God in a path which we ourselves have chosen. Such is a very common case.
Be assured that, if we are near enough to God, we shall not be at a loss to know His will. In a long and active life it may happen, that God, in His love, may not always at once reveal His will to us, that we may feel our dependence, particularly where the individual has a tendency to act according to his own will. However, "if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light"; whence it is certain that, if the whole body is not full of light, the eye is not single. You will say, That is poor consolation. I answer it is rich consolation for those whose sole desire is to have the eye single and to walk with God -- not, so to speak, to avoid this trouble in learning His will objectively, but whose desire is to walk with God. "If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him." It is always the same principle. "He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." You cannot exempt yourself from this moral law of Christianity. "For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing by the knowledge of God." The mutual connection of these things is of immense importance for the soul. The Lord must be known intimately if one would walk in a way worthy of Him; and it is thus that we grow in the knowledge of God's will. "And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; that ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ." Finally, it is written that the spiritual man "judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man."
+Extract from a Letter, translated from the French.
It is then the will of God, and a precious will, that we should be able to discern it only according to our own spiritual state. In general, when we think that we are judging circumstances, it is God who is judging us -- who is judging our state. Our business is to keep close to Him. God would not be good to us, if He permitted us to discover His will without that. It might be convenient just to have a director of consciences; and we should thus be spared the discovery and the chastisement of our moral condition. Thus, if you seek how you may discover the will of God without that, you are seeking evil; and it is what we see every day. One Christian is in doubt, in perplexity; another, more spiritual, sees as clear as the day, and he is surprised, sees no difficulty, and ends by understanding that it lies only in the other's state of soul. "He that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off."
As regards circumstances, I believe that a person may be guided by them: Scripture has decided that. It is what is meant by being "held in with bit and bridle"; whereas the promise and privilege of him who has faith is, "I will instruct thee, and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye." God who is faithful has given the promise of directing us thus -- near enough to God to understand by a single glance from Him. He warns us not to be as the horse and the mule which have no understanding of the will, thoughts, or desires of their master. It is needful to hold them in with bit and bridle. Doubtless even that is better than to stumble, fall and run counter to Him who holds us in; but it is a sad state, and such it is to be guided by circumstances. Undoubtedly, too, it is merciful on God's part so to act, but very sad on ours.
Here, however, there must be a distinction drawn between judging what one has to do in certain circumstances, and being guided by them. He who allows himself to be guided by them always acts in the dark as to knowing the will of God. There is absolutely nothing moral in it; it is an external force that constrains. Now it is very possible that I may have no judgment beforehand of what I shall do: I know not what circumstances may arise, and consequently I can make no resolutions. But the instant the circumstances are there, I judge with a full and divine conviction what is the path of God's will, and of the Spirit's intention and power. That demands the highest degree of spirituality. It is not to be directed by circumstances, but to be directed by God in them, being near enough to God to be able to judge immediately what one ought to do, as soon as the circumstances are there.
As to impressions, God can suggest them, and it is certain that in fact He does suggest a thing to the mind; but, in that case, the propriety of the thing and its moral character will be as clear as the sun at noon-day. In prayer God can remove from our heart certain carnal influences, which, being destroyed, leave room for certain other spiritual influences taking all their place in the soul. Thus He makes us feel the importance of some duty, which had been perhaps entirely obscured by preoccupation caused by some desired object. This may be even between two individuals. One person may not have enough spiritual discernment to discover what is right; but the moment another shews it to him, he understands that it is the truth. All are not engineers, but a simple wagonner knows a good road when it is made. Thus the impressions which come from God do not always remain simple impressions. But they are ordinarily clear when God produces them. I do not doubt, however, that He often makes them on our minds, when we walk with Him and listen to His voice.
When obstacles raised up of Satan are spoken of, it is not said that God Himself may not have allowed these obstacles to some good desire -- obstacles caused by an accumulation of evil in the circumstances which surround us.
Again the case should never exist of a person acting without knowing the will of God. The only rule that can be given is, never to act when we do not know what is the Lord's will. The will of God ought to be the motive as well as the rule of our conduct; and until His will is in activity, there is an absence of any true motive for ours. If you act in ignorance in this respect, you are at the mercy of circumstances; however God may turn all to the good of His children. But why act when we are ignorant what His will is? Is the necessity of acting always so extremely pressing? If I do something with the full certainty that I am doing the will of God, it is clear that an obstacle is no more than a test of my faith, and it ought not to stop me. It stops us perhaps through our lack of faith; because, if we do not walk sufficiently near to God in the sense of our nothingness, we shall lack faith to accomplish what we have faith enough to discern. When we are doing our own will or are negligent in our walk, God in His mercy may warn us by a hindrance which arrests us if we pay attention to it, whilst "the simple pass on and are punished." God may permit, where there is much activity and labour, that Satan should raise up hindrances, in order that we may be kept in dependence on the Lord; but God never permits Satan to act otherwise than on the flesh. If we leave the door open, if we get away from God, Satan does us harm; but otherwise it is a mere trial of faith to warn us of a danger or snare -- of something that would tend to exalt us in our own eyes. It is an instrument for our correction. That is, God allows Satan to trouble the mind, and make the flesh suffer outwardly, in order that the inner man may be kept from evil. If it is a question of anything else, probably it is only our "buts" and "ifs" that stop us, or possibly the effects of our carelessness, which has opened a door to Satan to trouble us by doubts and apparent difficulties between God and us, because we do not see more clearly. For "he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not." In a word, the question is wholly moral. If any particular question is raised which at the first blush we cannot solve, we shall find that often there would be no such question there at all, if our position were not false -- if we had previously been in a good state of soul, and a true spirituality had guarded and kept us. In that case, all we have to do is to humble ourselves for the whole affair.
Now let us examine whether Scripture does not present some principle suitable to direct us. Here evidently spirituality is the essential thing -- is everything. The rule that we should do what Jesus would have done in such and such a circumstance is excellent, where and when it can be applied. But are we often in the circumstances where the Lord was found?
In the next place, it is often useful to ask myself whence comes such a desire of mine, or such a thought of doing this or that. I have found that this alone decides more than half of the difficulties that Christians meet with. The rest of those which remain are the result of our haste and of our former sins. If a thought comes from God and not from the flesh, then we have only to address ourselves to God as to the manner and means of executing it, and we shall soon be directed. There are cases where one has need of being guided, not always without motives; as suppose, when I hesitate about a visit to make, or some such other case. A life of more ardent love, or love exercised in a more intelligent way, or set in activity in drawing near to God, will clear the motives on one side or another: and often, perhaps, we shall see that our part in the thing was but selfishness.
If it be asked, But if it is no question either of love or of obedience? then I answer, that you ought to shew me a reason for acting. For if it is nothing but your own will, you cannot make the wisdom of God bend to your will. Therein also is the source of another numerous class of difficulties that God will never solve. In these cases, He will in His grace teach obedience, and will shew us how much time we have lost in our own activity. Finally "the meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way."
I have communicated to you on this subject all that my mind can furnish you with at this moment. For the rest, remember only that the wisdom of God conducts us in the way of God's will: if our own will is in activity, God cannot bend to that. That is the essential thing to discover. It is the secret of the life of Christ. I know no other principle that God can make use of, however He may pardon and cause all to work for our good. If there still be a query as to His direction, He directs the new man which has no other will than Christ. He mortifies and puts to death the old man, and in that way purifies us that we may bear fruit. "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God ... . I delight to do thy will." It is the place of a porter to wait at the gate; but, in doing so, he does the will of his master. Be assured that God does more in us than we for Him; and that what we do is only for Him in proportion as it is He Himself who works it in us.
I add with regard to a principle expressed above, that we are sanctified to the "obedience ... of Jesus Christ." Now He came to do the will of His Father, without which He did nothing. Thus, in the temptation in the wilderness, Satan tried to make Him act according to His own will, in things where there was not even an appearance of evil. The Father had just owned Him as His Son: Satan tempted Him, saying, "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." But Jesus was a servant, and His answer consists in doing nothing, because there was wholly no will of His Father in the matter: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." As there was no word from God for the actual circumstances, Jesus did nothing. Satan could do nothing more. Although ever active to do good, He did not stir, when Mary and Martha sent to tell Him "he whom thou lovest is sick." His Father had not sent Him there. When He goes later, the wisdom of God is thus manifested, in that a testimony to the divine power of Jesus as Son of God was rendered by the resurrection of Lazarus. So then, when the will of God is not manifested, our wisdom often consists in waiting until it should be. It is the will of God that, zealous of good works, we should do good always, but we cannot go before the time, and the work of God is done perfectly when it is He who does it.
Psalm 32: 8, 9
There are three special characters of blessing mentioned in the Psalms.
First, that which we get at the very opening of them "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of Jehovah; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water," etc.; Psalm 1. It is here a contrast between the ungodly and Christ, the righteous Man.
In Psalm 119 we go a little farther. This psalm speaks of having wandered, and of being restored (verse 67, 71, 176). It is here, "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of Jehovah." It speaks of one who has the word, delights in it, looks to it, and seeks to be guided by it; still it is not so absolute.
In the psalm before us (Psalm 32), we get the blessedness of, and God's dealings with, the sinner whose transgressions are removed. "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered [not who has not transgressed, who has not sinned). Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile" (that is, the restored soul).
It is important to notice the work of the Spirit of God, in the process through which the soul is going here (as it says, "Thy hand was heavy upon me"), God's dealings with the soul that does not submit itself entirely in bringing it down into full subjection and confession. "When I kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto Jehovah; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin," verse 2-5. This is always true, if the Lord's hand is upon a man, until he recognises the evil before God; and then there is forgiveness of the iniquity. It is very important that we should distinguish the government of God towards our souls in forgiveness.
Until there is confession of sin, and not merely of a sin, there is no forgiveness. We find David, in Psalm 51, when he was confessing his sin, saying, "Behold I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me," etc., not merely, I have done this particular evil; that he does (verse 1-4); but he recognises the root and principle of sin. When our hearts are brought to recognise God's hand, it is not merely, then, a question of what particular sin, or of what particular iniquity may need forgiveness; God has brought down the soul, through the working of His Spirit on it, to detect the principle of sin, and so there is confession of that, and not merely of a particular sin. There is then positive restoration of soul.
Now this is a much deeper thing in its practical consequences, and the Lord's dealings thereon, than we are apt to suppose. Freed from the bondage of things which hinder its intercourse with God, the soul learns to lean upon God, instead of upon those things which, so to speak, had taken the place of God. "For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance," verse 6, 7. There is its confidence.
And then follows what, more especially, is the object of this paper -- "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle lest they come near unto thee," verse 8, 9.
Now we are often like the horse, or the mule, every one of us -- and this, because our souls have not been ploughed up. When there is anything in which the will of man is at work, the Lord deals with us, as with the horse or the mule, holding us in. When every part of the heart is in contact with Himself, He guides us with His "eye." "The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light," Luke 11: 34-36. When there is anything wherein the eye is not single, so long as this is the case, there is not free intercourse in heart and affections with God; and the consequence is, our will not being subdued, we are not led simply of God. When the heart is in a right state, the whole body is "full of light," and there is the quick perception of the will of God. He just teaches us by His "eye" all He wishes, and produces in us quickness of understanding in His fear; Isaiah 11: 3. This is our portion, as having the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, "quick of understanding in the fear of Jehovah," hearts without any object, save the will and glory of God. And that is just what Christ was: "Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart," Psalm 40: 7, 8; Hebrews 10: 7. Where there is this, it may be bitter and painful as to the circumstances of the path, but there is in it the joy of obedience as obedience. There is always joy, and the consequence -- God guiding us by His eye.
Before anything can be done, if we have not this certainty, before we enter upon any particular service, we should seek to get it, judging our own hearts as to what may be hindering. Suppose I set about doing a thing, and meet with difficulties, I shall begin to be uncertain as to whether it is God's mind or not; and hence, there will be feebleness and discouragement. But on the other hand, if acting in the intelligence of God's mind in communion, I shall be "more than a conqueror," whatever may meet me by the way; Romans 8: 37. And note here: not only does the power of faith, in the path of faith, remove mountains; but the Lord deals morally, and will not let me find out His way, unless there be in me the spirit of obedience. What would it avail -- unless indeed God should provide for His own dishonour? "If any man will do [wills to do] his will," says our Lord, "he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself," John 7: 17. This is precisely the obedience of faith. The heart must be in the condition of obedience, as Christ's was, "Lo, I come," etc. The apostle speaks to the Colossians of being "filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding," Colossians 1: 9. Here it is quickness of understanding in the fear of the Lord, the condition of a man's own soul, though his spirit of mind will be necessarily shewn in outward acts, when that will is set before him; as Paul goes on to say, "that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful unto every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God."
Here then is the blessed joyful state of being guided by God's "eye." "I have meat to eat," says our Lord to the disciples (John 4), "that ye know not of." And what was that meat? "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work."
The Lord guides, or rather controls, us in another way by providential circumstances, so that we may not go wrong, even though we are those which have no understanding. And thankful we ought to be that He does so. But it is only as the horse or mule. Your will being subject to Mine, He says, "I will guide you with mine eye" -- but, if you are not subject, I must keep you in with "bit and bridle." This is, evidently, a very different thing.
May our hearts be led to desire to know and to do God's will. It will then be not so much a question of what that will is, but of knowing and doing God's will. And then we shall have the certain and blessed knowledge of being guided by His "eye." There is all this government of God with those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile -- whose whole dependence is upon Him, and who feel they are sure to go wrong if not guided by Himself.
There is a guidance with knowledge, and there is also guidance without knowledge. The former is our blessed privilege; but it may be the latter is needed to humble us. In Christ there was everything exactly according to God. In a certain sense He had no character. When I look at Him, what do I see? A constant never-failing life -- manifestation of obedience. He goes up to Bethany just when He is to go up, regardless of the fears of the disciples; He abides two days still in the same place where He is, after He has heard that Lazarus is sick; John 11. He has nothing but to do all, to accomplish all, for the glory of God. One man is tender and soft; in another firmness and decision predominate. There is great diversity of character amongst men. You do not see that in Christ at all; there is no unevenness; every faculty in His humanity obeyed, and was the instrument of the impulse the divine will gave to it.
Divine life has to be guided in a vessel that has constantly to be kept down. Thus even for the apostle the command not to go into Bithynia (Acts 16: 7) was not guidance by the Spirit of the highest sort. It was blessed guidance, yet not the highest character of guidance an apostle knew. It was more like the government of the horse or the mule, not so much the intelligence of God's mind in communion.
A great range of the guidance of the Spirit is just what we get in Colossians 1: 9-11 to those in communion with God. There we find the individual to be "filled with the knowledge of his will." The Holy Ghost guides into the knowledge of the divine will, and there is no occasion even to pray about it. If I have spiritual understanding about a given thing, it may be the result of a great deal of previous prayer, and not necessarily of the things having been prayed about at the time. One has often had to pray about a thing, because not in communion. I may have my mind exercised about that today, honestly, truly, graciously exercised, which, five years hence, it might be, I should not have a doubt about. When God is using us, if we are free from ourselves, He may put it into our hearts to go here, or to go there; then God is positively guiding us. But this assumes a person to be walking with God, and that diligently; it assumes death to self. If we are walking humbly, God will guide us. I may be in a certain place, and there have one say to me, Will you go to -- (naming some other place)? Now, if I have not the mind of God, as to my going or otherwise, I shall have to pray for guidance; but this, of course, assumes that I am not walking in the knowledge of God's mind. I may have motives pulling me one way or the other, and clouding my spiritual judgment. The Lord says (John 11) -- when the disciples speak of the Jews having of late sought to stone Him, and ask, "Goest thou thither again?" -- "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him." This is just an application of the simple fact, that, if walking in the night, I must be on the look-out for stones, lest I stumble over them. So Paul prays for the Philippians, that their love might abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; that they might approve things that are excellent [try things that differ]; that they might be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ, without a single stumble all the way along.
Many speak of providence as a guide. Providence does sometimes control, but it never, properly speaking, guides us; it guides things. If I am going to a place to preach, and I find, when I get to the terminus, that the train has started, God has ordered things about me (and I may have to be thankful for the over-ruling); but it is not God's guiding me; for I should really have gone, had the train not left: my will was to go. All we get of this guidance of providence is very blessed; but it is not guidance by the Spirit of God, not guidance by the "eye," but rather by the "bit" of God. Though providence over-rules, it does not, properly speaking, guide.
2 Timothy 1: 3-8
Such exhortations are never given unless there are circumstances to require it. They are intended to meet some tendency in the flesh, that we may guard against it in the Spirit. It is well to remember how the Lord deals with us, just as we are; how, in all His ways, He takes into account the circumstances we are in, and does not, like philosophy, take us into other circumstances.
With regard to our cares and trials, Christ does not take us out of them. "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world." While He leaves us in the world, He leaves us liable to all that is incidental to man; but, in the new nature, teaches us to lean on God. The thought with us often is, that (because we are Christians) we are to get away from trials; or else, if in them, we are not to feel them. This is not God's thought concerning us.
The theoretical Christian may be placid and calm; he has fine books and nice sayings; but, when he has something from God to ruffle his placidity, you will find he is a Christian more conscious of the difficulties there are in the world, and of the difficulty of getting over such. The nearer a man walks with God, through grace, the more tender he becomes as to the faults of others; the longer he lives as a saint, the more conscious of the faithfulness and tenderness of God, and of what it has been applied to in himself.
See the life of the Lord Jesus; take Gethsemane, what do we find? Never a cloud over His soul, uniform placidity. You never see Him off His centre. He is always Himself. But take the Psalms, and do we find nothing within to break the placidity? The Psalms bring out what was passing within. In the gospels He is presented to man, as the testimony of the power of God with Him, in those very things that would have vexed man. He walked with God about them; and so we find Him in perfect peace, saying with calmness, "Whom seek ye?" -- "I am he." How peaceful! How commanding! (for peace in the midst of difficulties does command.) When by Himself, in an agony, He sweats as it were great drops of blood; it was not a placidity because He had not heart feeling within. He felt the full trial, in spirit; but God was always with Him in the circumstances, and, therefore, He was uniformly calm before men.
We are not to expect never to be exercised, or troubled, or cast down, as though we were without feeling. "They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." He thoroughly felt it all. The iron entered into His soul. "Reproach," He says, "hath broken my heart." But there is this difference between Christ in suffering and affliction, and ourselves; with Him there was never an instant elapsed between the trial and communion with God. This is not the case with us. We have first to find out that we are weak, and cannot help ourselves; then we turn and look to God.
Where was Paul when He said "All men forsook me"? His confidence in God was not shaken; but looking around him, by the time he got to the end of his ministry, his heart was broken because of the unfaithfulness. He saw the flood of evil coming in (chapters 3 and 4), and the danger of Timothy's being left alone, looking at the evil, and feeling his own weakness; and so (lest Timothy should get into a spirit of fear), he says, "Stir up the gift that is in thee,+ ... for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou, therefore, ashamed of the testimony of the Lord, nor of me his prisoner; but be thou a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God." If we have got the spirit of fear, this is not of God, for God has given us the spirit of power. He has met the whole power of the enemy in the weakness of man, in Christ, and Christ is now set down on the right hand of the majesty on high.
"Be thou a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel, according to the power of God." What! a partaker of afflictions? Yes. Of deliverance from the sense of them? No -- a partaker of afflictions that may be felt as a man, but "according to the power of God!" This is not in not feeling the pressure of sorrow and weakness. Paul had a "thorn in the flesh" (2 Corinthians 12); and did he not feel it, think you? Ay, he felt it daily; and as "a messenger of Satan to buffet him" withal. And what did he say? "Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities [in those things in which I am sensibly weak], that the power of Christ may rest upon me." The power of God coming in on our side does not lessen the feeling to us; but we "cast all our care upon him, for he careth for us." Not that at the very moment we refer it to God we shall get an answer. Daniel had to wait three full weeks for an answer from God; but from the first day that he set his heart to understand and to chasten himself before his God, his words were heard; Daniel 10. With us the first thing often is to think about the thing and begin to work in our own minds, before we go to God. There was none of this in Christ. "At that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father," etc.; Matthew 11. We weary ourselves in the greatness of our way.
+This passage connects the exercise of gift with the spiritual state. "God has not given us the spirit of fear": therefore do not be discouraged, though the state of things is so melancholy. Again, in Philippians, they were to be "in nothing terrified by their adversaries."
"Be careful for nothing," Philippians 4: 6. That is easily said. But what! not be careful about the state of the church, or about the pressure of a family? etc. "Be careful for nothing." Whatever produces a care in us, produces God's care for us; therefore "be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God." So, "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds, through Jesus Christ": not your hearts keep the peace of God; but the peace that God Himself is in, His peace, the unmoved stability of all God's thoughts, keep your hearts.
Further, when not careful, the mind set free, and the peace of God keeping the heart, God sets the soul thinking on happy things. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest -- just -- pure -- lovely, of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do; and the God of peace shall be with you." God is there the companion of the soul; not merely "the peace of God," but "the God of peace."
When the soul is cast upon God, the Lord is with the soul in the trial, and the mind is kept perfectly calm. The Spirit of love, the Spirit of Christ, is there; if thinking of myself, this is the spirit of selfishness.
Ephesians 6: 10-24
The very blessings of the church set us in a sort of conflict, that, without such blessings, we should not have. Thus we are subject to more of failure and evil. A Jew might do many things that would be monstrous in a Christian, and find no defilement of conscience. The veil being rent, the light shines out, and the consequence is, that the light coming from the holiest cannot tolerate evil. Blessed be God! we have power to meet the difficulties of our position; and this epistle brings out the provision which God has made for the saints.
The church is seated "in heavenly places in Christ" (chapter 2: 6) -- blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ; chapter 1: 3. So also are we said to contend with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places (verse 12). We are carried into conflict in the very place of strength; for the nearer we are to God, the more we want strength to walk there.
Israel, when they got into the land, found the consequences of sin desperate. What a terrible slaughter at Ai, for the sin of Achan!; Joshua 7. And again, the consequences of neglecting to ask counsel of the Lord about the men of Gibeon went on for generations, even to Saul's time; 2 Samuel 21. In the land, where God was and took His place, the consequences of sin were proportionate.
By virtue of our privileges we get this conflict. Moreover, if you and I have more knowledge than many other Christians, there will be more dishonour and failure amongst us than amongst other Christians, unless we are walking according to the light.
"Be strong in the Lord," verse 10. Here is the place of strength -- strength found only in Him. Whatever instrumentality He may be pleased to use, there is no object of faith but the Lord Himself. Whilst there is nothing more blessed than the ministry of the word, and also, if I have been instrumental in the conversion of a soul, through God's blessing, that soul will cleave to me, and rightly so, it is of God and God owns it (for if He breaks that which is of the flesh, He creates that which is of the Spirit: God gives it -- it may be abused, yet God makes the link between the one blessed and the instrument), yet you cannot exercise faith in man, you cannot put your dependence on man. It is true, there is this link; but it is because the soul is brought to Christ. This alone is conversion. And here is the place of strength. There is no strength but in Christ. I have none, at any time, except as my soul is in secret communion with Him, and (through Him) with God the Father. Now the direct power of Satan is towards this point, to keep our souls from living on Christ.
What we call duties, but what God calls "cares," often separate from Christ. They fatigue and oppress the soul: and, if the saints do not cast all this on Christ, they unnerve themselves by things which distract the mind. The person says, I do not enjoy Christ; he knows not how it is, but thinks it is from the pressure of unavoidable care; whilst, in truth, it is the effect and result of having sought his resource elsewhere than in Christ. The soul has got distressed because it has not found Christ in the suffering, and this has thrown it toward something that is not Christ, something that (to human sight) promised fair. Thus it gets a taste for mere idle things. What we are led to by the Spirit is to be "strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." It is no good talking of cares: Satan is behind them all; it is no good talking of difficulties: Satan is behind the difficulties, thrusting them on to shake the power of the word in us; and we may be quite sure of this that, if not in communion, Satan will have the advantage of us, because these cares, etc., are not about Christ. I have all to do to, and for, Christ. He will make us feel our dependence, but it is never falsified.
Whilst thus oppressed with the turmoils of life, it is ever a truth, that we are not in the strength of Christ, for He is stronger than the shop or the family or any other care. It may be I am occupied with something I ought not to be; if I cannot do it, "to the Lord," I ought not to do it. It is quite certain that Christ's strength does carry us through everything, no matter what the difficulties are: we shall feel them, we may groan under them; but when I can say, with David, "It is God that girdeth me with strength" (Psalm 18), the enemy may come against me -- a bow of steel is broken by my arms. "The Lord made him triumph over all."
It is in difficulties that we learn this strength. Hence in little things the believer is apt to forget, that our whole dependence is to be "strong in the Lord"; that is, not being taken out of the place of conscious weakness. Paul says, "I was with you in weakness," etc. (1 Corinthians 2: 3); so, again: "without were fightings, within were fears," 2 Corinthians 7: 5. It is not that the saint will be able to say, I am strong, when put into difficulties: these make us lean on Christ, when in them, and strength is always there -- "strength made perfect in weakness" (a consciousness of weakness). The whole truth of it is in the spirit of dependence, whether we see bright light or not. Paul said, "I glory in mine infirmities" -- why? Because they made him lean on Christ. Faith, in exercise, is strengthened, and Christ giveth light to him that wakes up: "unto the upright there ariseth light in darkness." The reason why a saint, who has had a great deal of joy, often gets into failure is, because it has taken him away from the present consciousness of dependence; the very goodness of the Lord has made him enjoy himself There is always a tendency for the flesh to slip in.
After shewing the place of the Christian's strength, the apostle says, "Put on the whole armour of God," verse 11. The great thing is, that it is God's armour. There is no standing against Satan without this. What is not of God fails. If ever so skilful in argument, and able to confute an opposer with the truth, I have nevertheless done him no good, and myself much harm, because I was acting in the flesh: Satan was working on me, and not God. Whenever it is God's armour, it must be by faith, and in secret communion with God. There is the departure from all strength, when we lose this; not anything we know will be of use -- the word of God even, for it is the "sword of the Spirit," and it is shut up. Strength is always the effect of having to do with God in the spirit of dependence. In the exercise of this dependence, I may have such a blessed sense of His power, that I may triumph over all; but whether in trial or in triumph, I shall be strong in a sense of dependence. If Moses' hands were not upheld, Amalek prevailed; Exodus 17. One who looked on might have been astonished at seeing Amalek prevail at certain times, and would be calculating about the array (the advantages or disadvantages of the array) in which Israel were set; but the secret was, when Amalek prevailed, Moses' hands were hanging down. It was not because Joshua was not in the blessed place of doing God's work, but because the act of dependence on God was stayed. If my mind has been exercised about a brother, and in walking along the streets, on my way to him, I get apart from God, I shall do him no good, though I say ever so much to him.
See the contrast between Jonathan and Saul (1 Samuel 14) -- between confidence in God overcoming difficulties, and self failing, with all the resources of royalty. Jonathan clambers up upon his hands and feet, confident in God, and the enemy falls before him. Saul, when he sees the Lord's work going on, not knowing the Lord's mind, calls for the priest. It may be that he had a right intention, but certainly not simplicity of dependence on God (when inquiring what he should do); and he spoils all by his foolish oath. It was said of Jonathan, "He hath wrought with God this day." God was with him, and he had strength and liberty. When we are walking in dependence upon God, there will always be liberty before God. Jonathan knew what he should do, and took some honey, because he went on in liberty, for God was with him; whilst Saul, in legality, put himself and the people into bondage. Unless we are dependent on God, the very things that would be our armour will be weapons against us, striking friends instead of enemies, or injuring ourselves.
Observe it is said, "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil" -- "Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may withstand in the evil day," etc. (verse 13). If I saw a person going into battle without a shield, and without his helmet, etc., I should say he was mad. One living in theory might not have it; but, if we live near enough to God, to be practically in conflict, we shall need "the whole armour." If we pray without searching the word, or read the word without prayer, we may get no guidance. Jesus said, "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you," John 15: 7. Without this, I may be asking some foolish thing that will not be given.
Conscious weakness causes a saint not to dare to move without God. I cannot go to meet an enemy with the word and without prayer. If I felt as a sheep in the midst of wolves (Matthew 11: 16) I should be aware of my weakness. I may be, like an antiquary, occupied with the theory of the armour, and not putting it on, not having any real dependence on God.
We have to stand against the wiles of the devil (it is not said his power). As soon as I see them I can avoid them. But after all it is not knowing Satan that keeps us intelligent of and able in discovering his "wiles," but keeping in God's presence. It was always so with Christ. Even Peter's affection tried to make the cross ugly to Him; Matthew 16: 22. Jesus resisted Satan and discovered his wiles; He not only always received things from above, but in the spirit of dependence on God. The moment we know the thing to be of Satan, the temptation is over if we are walking with God. When the devil came to our Lord (Matthew 4), Christ did not at once say to him, Thou art Satan; that would have been only shewing His power. He acted as the obedient Man, and thus foiled the tempter. When the devil claims worship, He then says, "Get thee hence, Satan." To discern his "wiles," we should see whether the thing proposed leads from obedience to Christ; if it does, no matter who proposes, I must reject it. The devil has this character of subtilty (not always of open opposition), as the serpent (see 2 Corinthians 11: 3); but the place of obedience to God will always upset him.
This is a remarkable expression -- "the evil day," verse 13. It supposes, in a general way, all this present time, for it is the time of Satan's temptations; but then there are certain circumstances which cause Satan's power to be more exercised at one season than another. There is a time when the soul will be put to it. It is different to be going on in energy against Satan, and exercising the triumphs of victory, enjoying the triumphs; we may be walking in an energy that overcomes all opposition, or in the conscious weakness of being hardly able to stand. A soul often gets an "evil day" after triumphing through Christ. There may be exaltation in the remembrance of the triumph, and a new source of trial and dependence comes. I may give up the world and be so very happy in the esteem and love of Christians as may bring out a bit of the flesh lower down. A saint often gets into this state,, having gone on for a while in the strength of former conquests. A fresh battle comes; and, if he is not prepared for this, he is overcome for a season. The place of strength is always that of being forced to lean on God. As noticed before, respecting David,+ what a contrast between his songs of deliverance and thanksgiving to God, and the mournful words, "My house is not so with God," 2 Samuel 22 and 23.
+ See "The last words of David," page 93 of this volume.
The saint that always fears God, is always strong, for God is always with him; the secret of his strength is, he has God on his side. We are apt to look at means, even right means, and forget God. The most important victory has often come, when we have been most afraid of being beaten -- the brightest songs, when an evil day has forced us to lean on God. The soul fearing, and in dependence, difficulties fall before us. We might not be able to explain why success was there, but the secret is, the hands were lifted up. The Lord is always working out His own plans.
"Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth." Truth is never really ours but as the affections are kept in order by it. I might preach beautiful truth, and many delight in the truth, but the soul not having been in communion with God in the truth spoken, the loins would not be girt with it.
"And having on the breastplate of righteousness." A person not having a clean conscience, Satan cows him in his walk; but if the conscience is good, he has on the "breastplate," and so is not continually thinking of attacks there. If Satan accuse me, I say, Christ is my righteousness. But here it is Satan troubling me as to conscience. If I am not honest in my confessions before God, I am without the "breastplate." If I have it, there is no need that I should keep looking at my own breast, I can go on in the confidence that I am hiding nothing from God, but am walking in all good conscience before Him. The Lord may shield us in the battle, but we cannot go on in conflict unless we have on this part of the "whole armour." There is a resource, doubtless, in God's grace, in all our failure; but the right place is to have a good conscience. And it is the place of liberty and strength.
"And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace." The gospel of peace is ours in Christ; but I must have the spirit of peace in my heart. Peace has been made for us that we may dwell in peace. It is the peace that "passeth all understanding" -- "the peace of God" that is to keep our hearts and minds. There is no place so full of peace as heaven -- no jar there: myriads of worshippers all in concord, while there are a thousand harmonies round the centre of God's glory. The soul in communion with God will live in the spirit of peace. There is nothing more important, to meet the turmoil of the world, than getting into this spirit of peace. When the spirit of peace does not rule in the heart, how can the saint walk as having always peace? There may be uncompromising faithfulness in such a man, but he cannot walk as Jesus walked. Nothing keeps the soul in such peace as a settled confidence in God. Without this a man will be continually excited, in haste, and full of anxiety. If the peace of God keep your hearts, you will have the triumph of it; nothing can be heard that is distinctive from it, that does not perfectly harmonise with it. Uncompromising firmness becomes us, yet calmness; and nothing keeps the soul so calm as a sense of grace. This is a sign of power, and, moreover, connected with humbleness. All grace has come to us. A sense of nothingness, with the spirit of peace, gives a power to surmount all things.
"Above all taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one." Every "fiery dart" is quenched by confidence in God. A Christian need not be afraid to hold up his head in the day of battle, because God is with and for him. This is not shaken by whatever abominable thought Satan puts into the mind. All is quenched by this confidence. "And take the helmet of salvation." I hold up my head because I am safe. Salvation is mine.
Strength begins from within. We first have the loins girded about with truth, the breast covered with righteousness, the feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, etc., and then we can take (our only offensive weapon) "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." There is nothing more dangerous than to use the word when it has not touched my conscience. I put myself into Satan's hands if I go beyond what I have from God, what is in possession of my soul, and use it in ministry or privately. There is nothing more dangerous than the handling of the word apart from the guidance of the Spirit. To talk with saints on the things of God beyond what I hold in communion is most pernicious. There would be a great deal not said that is said, were we watchful as to this, and the word not so used in an unclean way. I know of nothing that more separates from God than truth spoken out of communion with God; there is uncommon danger in it.
"Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints," etc. The word "always" is not used in reference to some other things; prayer is the expression and exercise of dependence. If a person asks me a question, and I answer, without speaking to God about it, it will be more likely to lead from God than to God. Just as with Hezekiah (Isaiah 39) when the ambassadors came and he turned them to his treasures instead of to the Lord who had healed him. When a question or a difficulty comes, do we turn to God? We may have turned to God before, and the thing is answered; and we ought to have that power of prayer that there would be no difficulty when any circumstance arises -- this continual supplication; we ought to be furnished unto every good word and work. Thus it was with Jesus. He had prayed before, so when the cup came He was quite ready to drink it.
A wish or a desire expressed to God, in the confidence of a child to its father, is heard; but this is not necessarily prayer "in the Spirit." When living really in the power of communion, we have that energy of supplication that looks for answers (1 John 3: 21, 22; chapter 5: 14, 15), and the apostle, here, speaks of one who is in communion. Thus should it be with us; we should be so walking in the liberty of Christ, as not to be tripped, or thrown out of communion, by the cares, lusts, and anxieties of this life, though it may be an "evil day."
Suppose you begin the day with a sweet spirit of prayer and confidence in God; in the course of the day, in this wicked world, you will find a thousand causes of agitation; but, if you are spiritually exercised, alive to see the things God is exercised in, everything will become a matter of prayer and intercession according to the mind of God. Thus humbleness and dependence should be marked on all a saint's actions. Instead of being full of regrets at what we meet with, if walking with Christ, we shall see His interests in a brother or the church. What a blessed thing to carry everything to God! to take all to Him, instead of constantly murmuring over failure! This is our position -- to have on the whole armour of God, and not to be tripped up of Satan. Unless right ourselves, we cannot make intercession for others. The words in verse 18 refer to a man who is walking in "the whole armour."
The apostle could pray for everybody, and yet he the more needed the prayers of the saints, because he had more cares than others; verse 19, 20. He always wanted their prayers, as we see; verse 19. Walking in full affection himself, he reckoned upon people caring for him; walking as Paul did, this is taken for granted. Here too (verse 21, 22), and to the saints at Colosse, he speaks of having sent Tychicus, to declare his state -- "that ye may know my affairs, and how I do." He takes their love for granted. We also, if walking in the love of the Spirit, can always count upon others being interested in our "affairs." In the world it would be pride to suppose others anxious about our concerns; but the saint knows, and counts on, the love of the Spirit in the saints.
To come back to the first great principle -- "Be strong in the Lord," etc. Spite of Satan, and of all he may do to hinder, we have the privilege of individual dependence upon God. Everything may look dark, but the Lord tells us "to be strong." This is always accompanied with lowliness of heart. Come what will, when the Lord is rested on, we are strong. But our dependence must be simply, and singly, on God.
The experiences of the heart occupy a large place in the thoughts of Christians. It is nevertheless important always to judge them by the word of God. These experiences are the expression of the inward state of the heart, and of our relations with others, as well as of the sentiments which our conduct, in these same relations, produces in our hearts and in our consciences.
It is not necessary here to speak of the experience of an unconverted person, although such a one is nevertheless not without experiences. It is true, that he does not know God; but, in a certain sense, he enjoys His goodness in nature; his conscience can blame him -- he can be weary of sin, and alarmed at the thought of judgment. He can even forget the latter in the enjoyment of his family and society in a life naturally amiable; but he can do no more.
Nevertheless there is a great variety in the experiences of men in whom the Spirit of God is working. This difference arises, on the one hand, from the relations in which we stand to God, and, on the other, from our conduct in the same relations. It is true that God has not put us under the law; nevertheless an awakened conscience is, as regards its relationship to God, either under the law or under grace. The Spirit of God, who has awakened it, has caused the light to enter, and produces there the feeling of its responsibility. I am under the law as long as I make my acceptance with God to depend on my faithfulness to God, that is, on the fulfilment of my duties. If, on the other hand, the love of God and His work in Christ are, for my conscience, the only and perfect ground of my acceptance, then am I under grace. The Holy Spirit will not weaken the responsibility; but He will reveal to me that God has saved my soul, which was lost because my life did not answer this responsibility.
As long as the awakened soul remains under the law, it has sad experiences; it feels that it is guilty according to the law and that it has no power to keep it. It is well aware that the law is good; but, in spite of all its efforts, it does not attain its object, which is obedience. The experiences of souls in such a state are the experiences of their sin -- of their weakness and of the power of sin. Even supposing such a soul should not be as yet altogether brought to despair by the expectation of the just judgment of God, because it experiences in a slight degree the love of God, and because it hopes in the work of Christ, there will not be less uncertainty as to its relations with God; and this gives place to alternations of peace and trouble.
+The original was in German.
In the latter case, the soul has indeed been drawn by grace but the conscience has not been purified, and the heart not set at liberty. These experiences are useful, in order to convince us of sin and weakness, and to destroy all confidence in ourselves. It is necessary that we should feel ourselves condemned before God, and that we should know, that henceforth all depends on His unmerited grace.
It is otherwise when our conscience is purged, and we have understood our position before God in Christ. Condemned in the presence of God, we understand that God has loved us, and that He justifies us by the work of His Son; we understand that sin is taken away, and our conscience is made perfect. We have no longer conscience of sins before God, because He Himself has taken them away for ever by the blood of Christ, and that blood is always before His eyes; we know, that being united with Christ, who has fully glorified God in that which concerns our sins, we have been made the righteousness of God in Him. So the heart is free to enjoy His love in the presence of God.
Thenceforth we are under grace. Our relations with God depend thenceforth on God's nature, and the righteousness which Christ is become for us. Our relations with God do not depend on what we are before Him as responsible beings. Our experiences thenceforth ever return to this: that God is love, that Christ is our righteousness, and God is our Father. We have communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. We enjoy all the privileges of that relation. Nevertheless the use which we make of our privileges affects that enjoyment. These relations remain constantly the same, as well as the perception which we have of them; but the enjoyment of what God is in that relation depends on our conduct in such a position.
The experiences are always founded on my relations with God. Am I sad? It is because the communion with God -- communion which answers to my relations to Him -- is interrupted. I feel that I do not enjoy the blessed communion to which I have attained, and it is this that causes my sadness; but this does not arise from uncertainty as to the communion. itself The flesh has no relations with God; and the flesh is ever in us. And "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us," Romans 5: 5. By the Spirit we have communion with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1: 3); and we are called on to walk in the light, as God Himself is in the light; 1 John 1: 7. Our communion with God depends on our walking in the light, although, when we have lost it, God can visit us by His grace, and restore communion. But God is faithful, and does not permit sin in His children. If they do not walk with Him in the light, He will cause them to pass through all the trials and all the conflicts necessary to bring them to the knowledge of themselves, that they may remain in the light, and that their communion may be true and pure.
It is true that these trials and conflicts do not affect our relations with God, because they depend on what God is in Christ, according to His grace and righteousness; but the suspension of communion with God, a suspension which puts us outside of the enjoyment of the light, brings us into all kinds of conflicts, and painful and humbling experiences of what our own heart really is. God Himself also employs correction to humble us and break our will. Not only is the actual fall into sin an opportunity for the dealing of God with our souls, but all that is hard and rebellious in our souls also affords an opportunity for it. The consequence of these truths is, that the experiences of a soul that walks with God are far more simple than the experiences of an unfaithful soul; and, nevertheless, the knowledge of God and of the heart of man will be far deeper in the former case. As long as we walk in communion with Him, we walk in the light; and we have in His presence the continual sense of His fatherly love. Never-the-less this presence acts upon our soul to manifest all that is not in harmony with the light. The judgment of ourselves takes place in the presence of God, in the sense of His love, and in connection with that love. Sin has the character of everything which is not light; and is judged, not only because sin cannot agree with holiness, but also because it does not agree with the love of God.
With hearts purified by the love of God, and strengthened by communion with Him, the grace which acts thus in us takes the place of sin which has been judged, and thenceforth our walk in the world is the effect of the communion of God in our hearts. We carry God, so to speak, through the world in our hearts filled with Ms love, and living in the power of the life of Christ, that which Satan offers does not tempts us. Our worldly trials become a motive to obedience and not to sin. The presence of God in our hearts preserves us in our relations with men. Thenceforth we experience proofs of our corruption in the presence of God, and in communion with Him. It is thus we judge sin in ourselves, and sin thus judged does not appear in our walk. But if we do not walk in fellowship with God, if sin is not thus judged, we walk more or less in the world with a rebellious will and lusts unjudged. The action of our self-will makes us uneasy, because we are not satisfied. Are we satisfied? Then God is forgotten. Satan presents temptations which answer to unjudged lusts; then the corruption of the heart manifests itself by a fall and by our relations with Satan, which take the place of our relations with God. Such a knowledge of the corruption of the heart will be never so deep, never so clear, never so true., as that which we shall have obtained in the presence of God by the light itself We shall know sin by sin, by a bad conscience, instead of knowing it by the light of God Himself. We shall be humbled, instead of being humble. The faithfulness of God will restore the soul; but the continued power and growing light of His communion will not be the same. It is true we shall experience His patience and His goodness; but we shall not know God in the same way as when walking faithfully in communion with Him. It is true, God glorifies Himself by His ways with such a soul, because all things concur to His eternal glory; but the knowledge of God grows by our communion with Him.
The life of Abraham and that of Jacob come in the way of interesting examples, in support of what we have been saying. It is true that neither the law, nor the fulness of grace, had been as yet revealed. Nevertheless, as we see in Hebrews 2, the principles of the life of faith in the promises of God were in general the same.
"In many things we offend all." Abraham himself failed in faith on some occasions; but, in general, his life was a walk of faith with God. This is the reason why his experiences are of another nature, far more intimate with God, and more simple, than those of Jacob. His history is short, and not rich in incidents; while the communications of God to this patriarch are numerous and frequent. In his history there is much about God, and little about man. With one single exception Abraham always remained in the land of promise. He was indeed a stranger and pilgrim, because the Canaanites dwelt there (Genesis 12: 6), but he was in relation with God, and walked before Him.
At first when God had called him, he had not fully answered this call. It is true he left indeed his country and kindred, but not his father's house, and so he did not arrive in Canaan. It is true, he had given up a great deal; he had gone from Ur in Chaldea, but he came no farther than Charran and rested there; chapter 11: 31, 32. So it is with the heart that has not learned that it belongs entirely to God. It is only in conformity with the call of God that we can enter into the position of the promise.
After the death of his father Terah, Abraham started at the command of God; and they set out to come into the land of Canaan, and they entered into it; chapter 12: 5. Here we have the position of the heavenly people. Placed, by the grace and power of God, in a heavenly position, of which Canaan is a figure, they dwell there; they have everything in promise, but nothing as yet in possession. The Lord revealed Himself to Abraham in calling him; He reveals Himself anew to him in the place which he now knew, and which he was going to possess: "I will give this land to thy posterity," verse 7. Such is in general our confidence in God, that we shall possess really in future that which we know now as strangers.
"And Abraham built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him," verse 7. He serves God and enjoys communion with Him. Thence he goes into another place and there pitches his tent; he builds anew an altar to the Lord, and calls on the name of Jehovah; verse 8. He is a pilgrim in the land of promise; and that is his entire history. We dwell in the heavenly places, we enjoy them by faith; and we have communion with God who brought us thither. Abraham's tent and altar in this place give a character to his whole history, and all the experiences of faith consist in that.
His unbelief brings him into Egypt; verse 10-21. There he had no altar. An Egyptian servant-maid becomes afterwards the occasion of his fall, and a source of trouble to him. She is, as we learn in Galatians 4: 24, 25, a type of the law; for the law and the flesh are always in relationship with each other. The grace of God brings Abraham back; but he does not regain an altar till he has returned to the place where he first pitched his tent, and to the altar which he had built before; there he has communion afresh with God; chapter 13: 3, 4.
The promises of God are the portion of Abraham. He lets Lot take what he pleases: "Is not the whole land before thee? Separate from me, I pray thee. If thou choosest the left, I will take the right; and if thou take the right, I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes, and saw the whole plain of Jordan, which, before the Lord had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, was watered throughout until one comes to Zoar, like the garden of the Lord, and like the land of Egypt. And Lot chose for himself the whole plain of Jordan," verse 9-11. Lot is the type of a worldly believer. He takes that which for the moment appears the better part, and chooses the place over which the judgment of God is suspended. Abraham had given up everything according to the flesh, and God shews him the whole extent of the promise. He gives him a visible proof of that which he has given him; and confirms it to him for ever; verse 14-18. Lot, the worldly believer, is overcome by the princes of the world. Abraham delivers him. With the servants of his house he overcomes the power of the enemy; chapter 14: 1-21. He will receive nothing of the world. He says to the king of Sodom, "I have lifted up my hand to the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread even to a shoe-latchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich," chapter 14: 22, 23.
Afterwards God reveals Himself to Abraham as his buckler and great reward. He promises him a posterity at a time when his body was now dead. justified by faith, he receives the confirmation of the promises of God, who binds Himself by a sacrifice, type of the sacrifice of Christ. Then the inheritance is shewn him in its details; chapter 15.
Following the counsels of the flesh, Abraham desires for a moment the fulfilment of the promise by the law; that is to say, by Hagar. But thus he only learns that it is impossible that the child of the law should inherit with the child of promise; chapter 16. Then God reveals Himself anew as God Almighty. He tells him that he shall be the father of many nations, and that God will be his God for ever; chapter 17: 1-14. The posterity according to the promise is promised again; chapter 17: 15-19.
After that, God once more visits Abraham, and gives him positive promise respecting the approaching birth of his son; chapter 18: 9-11. He looks upon him as His friend, saying, "Shall I hide -- from Abraham that thing which I do?" chapter 18: 17. He communicates to him His thoughts concerning the world, and Abraham converses with Him in perfect peace and familiarity. He prays for those who had forgotten the Lord; chapter 18: 23-33. It was necessary that Abraham should again experience, in the case of Ishmael, that the law produces sadness and anguish; and at the court of Abimelech he learnt to know that when unbelief is in action, it only produces troubles and sorrows. But God, in His faithfulness, watches over him, as well as over the mother of the posterity.
Afterwards Abraham was tried in the highest degree, till he had to give up everything according to the flesh, and even the promises. But the promises in a Christ raised in figure are confirmed to Christ Himself, and in Him to all the spiritual posterity of Abraham; chapter 22: 15-19; compare Galatians 3: 16-18.
Abraham then has learned by a fall that neither the law nor the promise is of any avail for the flesh; nevertheless, in general, his peculiar experiences consisted in pilgrimage and adoration, all the time he continued in the promised land. We have now remarked that his life is characterised by a tent and an altar. The whole experience, the whole life of the faithful Abraham, consists almost entirely of worship, intercession, and revelations from God; so that he learned to comprehend these latter with increasing clearness and accuracy. He passed his time in the place to which God had called him. The revelations of God were for him, rich, sweet, and admirable; his knowledge of God intimate and deep; his personal experiences happy and simple; for he walked with God, who had revealed Himself to him, in grace.
Now let us also examine a little more closely the life and history of Jacob. He was the inheritor of the same promise, and, as a believer, he valued it; but he did not trust in God alone. He did not walk, like Abraham, in daily fellowship with the Lord, and waiting upon the Lord. It is true he received the promise, but his experiences were, very different from those of Abraham. Although at the end of his life he could say, "The angel which redeemed me from all evil" (Genesis 48: 16), he nevertheless was constrained to add, "The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers, in the days of their pilgrimage," chapter 47: 9. The variety of his experience is a proof of unfaithfulness.
In compliance with his mother's advice, he employed profane means to obtain his father's blessing; and was obliged, through fear of his deceived but profane brother, to leave the land of promise; chapters 27 and 28. Now his position is altogether changed; his unbelief has driven him out of the land of promise. His pilgrimage is not, like that of Abraham, in the land, but outside of it. It is true, God watches over him, waits on him, and preserves him; but he does not walk with God. He has no altar till his return, after a course of painful experiences; chapter 33: 20. He had no full communion with God till he returned to the place where he had last enjoyed the revelation of God, and where he had been strengthened by His promises. For one-and-twenty years he had to do with men who cheated and oppressed him, while God preserved him in secret; but he could not possibly have an altar outside the land of promise.
We also worship God, and we have communion with God, while we dwell in spirit in heavenly places, there where God Himself has given us our proper place. But if we get outside of it, we can have no fellowship with Him, although He knows how to keep us by His grace and faithfulness.
At the end of twenty-one years God orders Jacob to return. He must flee far from his father-in-law like a guilty fugitive. It is impossible to be pure from the world if we have lost heavenly communion with God; and it is difficult not to carry away something that belongs to the world, if we abandon that communion. But God is faithful. From that moment a course of experiences begins for Jacob (as they are generally called), but which nevertheless are nothing more than the effects of his getting away from God.
Delivered from Laban, Jacob pursues his journey towards Canaan; and God, to comfort and fortify him, sends an army of His angels to meet him; chapter 32: 1. Nevertheless, not-withstanding this encouragement from God,, unbelief, which deliverance from danger does not destroy, renews Jacob's fear in the presence of his brother Esau. One does not get rid of the difficulties of the path of faith by trying to avoid them; one must surmount them by the power of God. Jacob had brought these difficulties upon himself, because he had not trusted in God. The host of God was forgotten; and the army of Esau, who no longer cherished in his heart hatred against his brother, frightened the feeble Jacob; chapter 32: 7. He could then employ all kinds of means to appease the presumed and dreaded anger of his brother. He causes flock after flock to pass; and this does more to shew the state of the heart of Jacob than to change that of Esau. Nevertheless Jacob thinks of God; he reminds Him that He told him he ought to return; he implores Him to save him from the hands of his brother; he thinks of the state in which he left the country, and acknowledges that God had given him all his possessions; chapter 32: 9-11. But his prayer discovers an ungrounded fear. He reminds God of His promises, as if it were possible that He had forgotten them. It is true there is faith in it, but the effect of unbelief produces a wild and confused picture. The timid Jacob has not only sent forward his flocks to appease Esau (chapter 32: 13-20), but he sends his whole family across the brook, and remains behind alone; verse 22, 24. His heart is filled with anxieties. But God, who guides all, awaits him precisely there. Although He had not permitted Esau to touch so much as a hair of Jacob's head, He nevertheless had Himself to judge him, and bring him into the light of His presence; for Jacob could in no other way enjoy the land of promise with God. God wrestles with him in the darkness till daybreak; verse 24. It is not here Jacob wrestling with God of his own accord; but it is God wrestling against him.
He could not bless him simply, like Abraham; he must first correct the unbelief of his heart. Jacob must experience the effects of his conduct; he must even suffer, because God will bless him. Nevertheless, the love of God is acting in all this. He gives strength to Jacob during the conflict in which he must engage to obtain the blessings, to persevere in waiting for them. He will nevertheless have to retain a lasting proof of his weakness and previous unfaithfulness. His hip-joint had been put out while God wrestled with him; verse 25. And not only that, but God also refuses to reveal His name to him unreservedly. He blesses Jacob. He gives him a name in memorial of his fight of faith, but He does not reveal Himself. How great is the difference here between Jacob and Abraham! God reveals His name to the latter without being asked to do so, that Abraham may know Him fully; for Abraham generally walked with Him in the power of this revelation. He had no conflict with God; and, far from having to fear kinsfolk, he overcame the power of the kings of this world. He is there as a prince among the inhabitants of the land. God frequently converses with him; and, instead of wrestling with Him to obtain a blessing for himself, Abraham intercedes for others. He sees the judgment of the world from the height where he was in communion with God. Let us return to the history of Jacob.
Notwithstanding all, his fear never leaves him. Blessed by God by means of his conflict, he still trembles before his brother Esau. He divides his children and wives according to the measuring of his affection, so that those whom he most loved were at the greatest distance from Esau. Only then does he undertake to go to meet his brother. But nevertheless he deceives him again. He evades the offer of an escort which Esau makes him, and promises to follow him a little more gently to his residence near Seir; chapter 33: 14. But Jacob went to Succoth; verse 17.
Now Israel (Jacob) is in the country; nevertheless, his heart having been long accustomed to the condition of a traveller without God, he knows not how to become a pilgrim with God. He buys a field near Shechem, and settles himself in a place where Abraham was only a stranger, and where, knowing the will of God, he had not possessed a spot of ground whereon to set his foot; verse 19. It is at Shechem for the first time, and after having returned into the land, that he builds an altar; the name of the altar recalls the blessing of Israel, but not the name of the God of the promises. He calls the altar "God, the God of Israel," chapter 33: 20. Thankfulness, it is true, recognises the blessing which Jacob has received but the God who blessed him is not yet revealed.
We now find corruption and violence in his family; chapter 34. The wrath of his sons, cruel and void of the fear of God, brings him out of his false rest, which was not founded on God; but again the faithfulness of God preserves him. Hitherto Jacob had not thought of the place where God Himself had made him the promise, from the time of his departure, and where Jacob had promised to worship when he should have returned by the help of God. God Himself sends him there now, and says to him, "Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto God who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother," chapter 35: 1. God, who had guarded, guided, chastened him, had prepared him to come into communion with Him. But first it was necessary that he should leave his false home, where God was not. He must lodge at Bethel (the house of God), and in that very place build an altar to God who had first revealed Himself to him. We here see the instantaneous effect of the presence of God with Jacob, a presence which he had not yet learned to know, in spite of all his experiences up to that moment. The thought of that presence immediately recalls to his mind the false gods which were still among his furniture.
These false gods were the effect of his connection with the world; and Rachel, from fear of Laban, had hid them under the camels' furniture. Jacob knew well that they were there; nevertheless he said to his family and to all those who were with him, "Put away the strange gods that are among you and be clean, and change your garments, and let us arise and go up to Bethel, and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and who was with me in the way which I went. And they gave Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings that were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the oak that was by Shechem.," chapter 35: 2, 4. The thought of the presence of God made him remember the false gods; it awakens in his soul the conviction that the gods, the objects of the adoration of this world, can never be kept together with a faithful God. Nothing else can awaken this conviction. No possible experiences can ever have the effect which the presence of God produces on a soul. Such experiences are useful to humble us, they are a means of stripping us of ourselves. Nevertheless it is only the presence of God as light which can cause us to condemn ourselves, and gives us power to purify ourselves from our deepest and well-known though hidden idols. Abraham had nothing to do either with Jacob's idols or Jacob's experiences.
The fear of God reigned over the enemies of Jacob, so that they did not follow him, notwithstanding the murderous violence of his sons; chapter 35: 5. Now God could reveal Himself to Jacob; and although he remained lame, all went on as if he had not before passed through any experience. Jacob had come to Bethel, from whence he had started. There he built an altar to the God who had made him the promises, and who had always been faithful to him. The name of his altar no longer reminds us of Jacob blessed, but of Him who blesses, and of His house. It is not called the altar of God, the God of Israel, but the altar of the God of Bethel, that is to say of the house of God; chapter 35: 7. God at this time speaks with Jacob, without saying anything at all of his experiences. These had been necessary to chasten Jacob, and empty him of himself, because he had been unfaithful. God Himself appeared to him now without being entreated. We read in verse 9, God appeared again to Jacob when he came from Padan-Aram, and blessed him. He gave him the name of Israel, as if He had not given it him before, and reveals to him His name without Jacob having asked it of Him. He converses with him as formerly with Abraham. He renews the promises, and confirms them to him -- at least, those which have reference to Israel; and, after having ended His communication with him, God went up from him, for He had visited him; Genesis 35: 13.
Jacob was then returned, after a course of experiences, to the place where he could have communion with God -- to a position in which, by the grace of God, Abraham had almost always kept himself Jacob is a warning to us, but Abraham is an example. The first has, it is true, found the Lord again by His grace; but he has not had the many and blessed experiences of the other, and does not pray for others. The highest point of attainment with him is Abraham's starting point, even the home of his soul. With the exception of a few falls, this was the habitual state of Abraham, the state in which he lived. Abraham "died in a good old age, an old man, and full of days, and was gathered to his people." But Jacob said, "Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers, in the days of their pilgrimage," Genesis 25: 8; chapter 47: 9. He ended his life in Egypt. The experiences of Jacob are the experiences of what the hearts of men are. The experiences of Abraham are the experiences of the heart of God.
We have described three kinds of experiences: 1, Those which take place under the law, the position of a believer not known; or, when without being ignorant of it, he is there, having his heart all the time under the law. 2, The experiences which one had of his own heart, from the time that one walks far from that position where God reveals Himself to cherish and keep up this communion. 3, The simple and blessed experiences which one has in walking with God, in the place where God has set us, to enjoy communion with Him, in lowliness and thankfulness. These last are experiences of the heart of God, which bring us into the knowledge of His counsels, and of the faithful love which is contained in them. They consist in a close communion with God Himself; the others are, as it has been said, the painful experiences of the heart of man., among which the highest measure -- and also precious for us -- is, that God remains faithful in the midst of our unfaithfulness, and that He is patient towards our folly, by the which we put ourselves at a distance from His presence.
Our privilege is to walk like Abraham; our refuge when we are unfaithful (for God is faithful who does not suffer us to be tempted above what we are able to bear) is that God remains faithful, and draws us out of all danger to the end. May God give us grace to dwell near to Him, to walk with Him, that our experiences may have for their end the growing knowledge of His love and of His nature; Colossians 1: 9-12.
Leviticus 10
One of the blessed places in which we are set, as children of God, is that of being made "priests" unto Him. But whilst we are apt, and justly so, to consider this a position of highest privilege, we too often forget, practically, that it is one of constant service. Set in blessed nearness unto God, yet (and by that very nearness) the priests in Israel became mere servants of all the people. Jesus, though "made an High Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek" (a priest and king), is now a "minister of the sanctuary," after the pattern of the priestly service of Aaron; and we, "priests and kings unto God," etc., are set in the place of service, as the "sons of Aaron."+
We trace all through the Scriptures the record of the failure of man. In every circumstance wherein he has been set, man has failed. And yet (as we have often heard) all this failure is seen but in the end to redound to the glory of God -- to the praise of His grace. How full of blessing and goodness is this! It meets the pride of our hearts, and their natural tendency (that which is in every one of us) to self-dependence. Adam, Noah, Israel in every form, teaches this lesson -- the giving of the law, priesthood, prophets, kings, the whole history of the wilderness and of the land, the same. Failure is ever the character of the ways of man; and the chapter before us presents it in most striking as well as touching circumstances. The "sons of Aaron" were set in the place of grace, and there in the place of grace they failed.
The law had in itself no aspect of grace -- this of course. Let me take law in its highest sense, as that which even concerns angels -- unfallen, perfect beings -- what does it teach? What God requires -- what ought to be. "They do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word." And thus also the ten words were the distinct demand, on the part of God, of righteousness from man, of what man ought to be towards Him and before Him -- "Thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself." Nay, more; the law supposed sin -- was adapted to those who had a tendency to sin; but the foundation and centre of aft our blessings, what God is towards man in love and grace, was never brought out at all. Thus law (properly so) utterly fails in bringing us to God.
+[We find in this part of scripture the high priest and his sons, or "Aaron and his sons," continually presented to us as a type of the church. Sometimes, however, they are very distinctly separated, as, for instance, in their consecration; Leviticus 8. Aaron is anointed without blood having been sprinkled upon him -- they with blood. This shews very definitely the perfectness of Christ in His own Person to receive the fulness of the Holy Ghost: we can only have it by virtue of His perfectness and blood-shedding for us. I look at Aaron as a type of Christ -- "Aaron and his sons," of the whole church.]
But there were accompaniments to the law -- sacrifices, which had the character of grace, because they were on behalf of transgressors. And here, properly speaking, priesthood found its place. See Hebrews 5. The priest was "ordained for men to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sin." That is grace -- God not requiring goodness, but providing for sinners.
Here then we find the failure of the "sons of Aaron" in this practical development of grace, and man's services in grace.
But first let us look a little at another part of priestly service -- I mean worship. All that is properly worship, while there is sacrifice for sin, yet, strictly speaking, is not founded upon the presentation of the "sin-offering." As redeemed, we cannot draw nigh to worship without it; it is the door of entrance, indeed, but not the proper character of our worship. This assumes the "sweet savour" of the "burnt-offering" -- the coming up to God not only in the value of the blood, but in our acceptance in Jesus, as having all the positive savour of what He was and did unto God -- blessed thought!
There is this great principle in all worship: death must come in between us and God. See the case of Cain and Abel. Cain brought of the fruit of the ground upon which the curse rested -- that which every natural man brings to God. His worship cost more of the "sweat of his brow," the judicial toil of the curse consequent on sin, than that of Abel; but there was no faith in it, no recognition of the ground of his own standing before God, or of God's judgment, mercy, and patience. The offering of Cain (as of every natural man) is the witness of the most perfect insensibility of heart as to what he was before God. All that we can offer of our natural hearts is "the sacrifice of fools." The contrary was the case with Abel: his "more excellent sacrifice" consisted in this -- it confessed that death must come in between the soul and God. And so it ever must; there can be no worship without it: in all circumstances death must come in between us and God.
Still there are two very distinct characters in death, as the wages of sin, and for God. While it is the witness of man's sin, yet because of the death of the Lord Jesus death is now one of our servants. All things are ours, whether life, or death, or things present, or things to come'; all are ours. Death is for us now as it was against us before, because Christ has tasted death. "Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage," Hebrews 2: 14, 15. It was "by the grace of God" Christ tasted death. In His death we see the grace of God, though it was on account of sin. All that was against us is gone. The Lord Jesus Christ turns everything He touches into blessing. "Out of the eater cometh forth meat, and out of the strong sweetness." If I am able to contemplate death in its mightiest power, the death of Jesus, I see in it the power of grace.
And here it is that I find the proper character of the savour of worship, in the "burnt-offering." The blessedness of the offering of Jesus was in the perfectness of His will, but the entireness of self -- sacrifice to God -- "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father," John 10: 17, 18. He was not only the spotless victim, but one able to give Himself to God. "Being in the form of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," Philippians 2: 6-8. Again, "Lo I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O God; yea, thy law is within my heart," Psalm 40: 7, 8; Hebrews 10: 7. So we get not only the grace of God in the gift of Jesus, but that Jesus, "through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God," Hebrews 9: 14.
Will, which in us is sin, becomes in the offering up of Himself, obedience -- in every phase was perfectness. Perfect in all His ways, in all His life, in self-consecration to God; but this perfect thing itself He offered up to God in perfect obedience: "not my will, but thine, be done." There was the perfection of glorifying God in it. just as the purpose of self-will in the first Adam, who sought to glorify himself, brought in death, so that of the will to glorify God in the Lord Jesus Christ, through death brought in life to us. The divine glory was gone, so far as man was concerned; he had insulted the character and majesty of God, had listened to the he of Satan against God (for he denied that truth and goodness were in God), he had taken Satan for his friend: but the Lord Jesus Christ, in thus offering up Himself, glorified God in all. And so when Judas had gone out, He says, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him," John 13: 34. God found rest there.
God was glorified. Was He true in saying that the "wages of sin is death?" Satan had said "ye shall not surely die": see Jesus. Was He true in His love for man? This Satan had questioned: Jesus died for him. Did Satan tempt man, and say, "then shall ye be as gods?" God gave His Son, and conformity to His image. God was vindicated thus against man, though for man.
When the Lord Jesus Christ "through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God," God found His rest there. It is no matter where I find my rest, if I am not seeking rest where God has found His. God has found it in Jesus (He can look for or to nothing else, in one sense); and we can rest there also. Here we have the ground of worship, and worship itself: it assumes the proper savour of all that Christ was and did for us, and thus has the character of the burnt-offering."
In another character -- as the "sin-offering" -- sin was laid upon Him, "He was made sin for us," 2 Corinthians 5: 21. This was not "an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto Jehovah," but was burnt without the camp as an unclean thing; Leviticus 4. When the offerings themselves are brought out in Leviticus, the burnt-offering, meat-offering, and peace-offering are mentioned first, and then the sin-offering; but in application, when the individual worshipper is treated of, he presented his sin-offering first, then his burnt-offering, etc., because he could not worship whilst sin was against him, but had to approach by the efficacy of that which took it away. Though God meets us in our sins by the blood of Christ, yet when we speak of worship we speak of Him in His own savour before God. We come in all the savour of Christ's sacrifice. Sin is gone out of the place, and we stand in the value, the intrinsic value, of Christ.
The burnt offering was a "sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto Jehovah," Leviticus 1: 9. The more it was searched by the fire, the more its sweetness came out before God. So was it in Christ. The coming down of the fire of the holiness of God, trying and searching all the inwards of everything in Him, only brought out a "sweet savour" unto God. This too is our acceptance; it is in this value that we ascend up to God; and being there, we have communion of worship and fellowship before Him. In the sacrifices God had His food, the priest his share, and the rest ate of them also. All our feasting upon Christ is in this value.
It was from the "altar of burnt-offering" that coals were taken to kindle the incense that went up before God. "Strange fire" not arising from this source was inadmissible. All our worship, our singing a hymn together, for instance, must have this character -- the savour of Christ; God accepts it as such, though full of failure. Everything must be "salted with fire"; if it does not go up through fire, it cannot stand; apart from it there is only condemnation and judgment -- the character of the sin of Nadab and Abihu. The fire tries every man's work; and if judgment has already done its work on Jesus, we have nothing but the savour of Jesus to be in before God. This is the real value of our place before the Lord. In this is our joy. It is the place of grace.
But then it was here that the "sons of Aaron" failed. "And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire thereon, and put incense therein, and offered strange fire before Jehovah, which he commanded them not," verse 1. There was the separation of service from the power of its acceptance, and thus failure in the place of grace; failure, not on God's part, but on man's. Man has failed under law, that might be expected; but, when brought near to God in grace, there also has he failed. The sin of Nadab and Abihu (in this the awful type of the professing church) was sin against the very grace of God, want of respect in the sense of their position, of reverence of God. Our place, though that of perfectness of joy, is ever that of reverence Hebrews 12: 28, 29.
But how is the sin met? As must needs be, in judgment -- judgment coming forth from the very place of grace: "there went out fire from before Jehovah, and they died before Jehovah," verse 2. It is a terrible character the Lord puts on here! The "strange fire" met in result by holiness, the true fire of God's judgment -- "they died before Jehovah." Awful thought! He was found to be a God of judgment, in the very place of blessing and of grace. And thus must it ever be with that which takes falsely a place "before Jehovah"; for after all, though it is a place of grace, it is still one of judgment; "I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me." We have ever to judge ourselves, that we be not judged of God; 1 Corinthians 11: 31.
We read, "But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father, who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear," 1 Peter 1: 15-17. The Lord always judges according to the place into which we are brought, according to the position in which we stand. And so do we of others, in some sort. For instance, I judge of those who are within my house differently from what I do of those without; I say, not to a stranger, but to one brought into my house, You must have clean habits to live here. God is dealing with us on the ground of grace, yet of holiness; for holiness is with us as much a part of grace as any other blessing. "Be ye holy, for I am holy" is the expression of intimacy, and comes not merely in the way of command. Grace must make us holy, "partakers of his holiness." See Hebrews 12. It is not God requiring man's holiness, but making us partakers of His. What could we wish more? Love does it, and we are made partakers of that which separates God from all that is inconsistent with Himself -- holiness, not mere innocence. Innocence is the ignorance of good and evil; you would not say that God was innocent, bull holy. He makes us "partakers of his holiness." It is "his holiness" -- the knowledge of evil as He knows it, and ability to rise above it. The holiness is as much a part of the grace, as the love that does it.
They died. "And Moses said unto Aaron, This is it that Jehovah spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace," verse 3. There was silence as to the place of intercession. "There is a sin unto death": the church has to be silent; 1 John 5: 16. God has taken the cause into His own hands, He has acted in His holy place, and all that man can do is to hold his peace. But this is not all. The Lord takes occasion by this failure, to bring out what is our position "before him" day by day, and to shew forth yet other failure.
"And Jehovah spake unto Aaron" -- to Aaron, because about that which became the priests, those who go in "before Jehovah."+ We have instructions from Christ, as the Priest, as well as the Lawgiver. There are things which refer to the comeliness of the saints, and not to mere righteousness -- things which are known by the Spirit to be comely to us as priests. We read in Hebrews 5 that those are priests who are "called of God, as was Aaron," and that "Christ glorified not himself to be made an High Priest, but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." So, though in an altogether inferior sense, we are priests as born of God, we become priests. That which is here brought before us is not merely precept; it is priestly instruction as to the manner of our approach to God; and that which understands and estimates it is the new nature in which we are born of God.
"And Jehovah spake unto Aaron, saying, Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die; it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations; and that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; and that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which Jehovah has spoken unto them by the hand of Moses," verse 8-11. "Wine" and "strong drink" -- all that excites the flesh, that does not belong to the cleanness of spiritual apprehension and judgment becoming those who go into the sanctuary, must be put away.
+ This is of common concern to all saints, for as "sons of Aaron" all have an equality: though in another sense, when looked at as Levites, there may be distinction, and whilst all are equally servants, all near, one has to carry the ark, another the boards, etc. And it is in this our highest and proper character we are here spoken of. The Lord gives the instructions to Aaron the high priest as to how the "sons of Aaron should draw nigh."
I believe we are often hindered going into God's presence by this "drinking of wine." The moment there is that which acts on the flesh and excites nature, the going to find pleasure and joy in things harmless even in themselves, no matter what (nature may take up anything), there is "wine" and "strong drink," that which would put us out of the place of spiritual discernment; and it is inadmissible.
There are ten thousand things which may thus excite, eloquence for instance. If excited by eloquence, this would hinder the enjoyment of truth: the same truth, were it presented without it, and thus that which is of Christ, would pall on the taste. Eloquence is not in itself a wrong thing, and yet Paul says, "And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech, or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."
There is a vast deal connected with the things of God that is not like this; a vast deal which after all is "wine" and "strong drink," and it unfits for the sanctuary. Whatever has not the real, calm, spiritual joy fit for the presence of God is so. Look at it -- we see it connected with all the forms of false worship. Again, thought as to the beauty and elegance of the edifice where we meet for worship, etc., has the same character; it acts on nature, and whatever does this cannot be fit for the presence of God -- cannot be carried into His sanctuary. So of all things around which hinder the power of spiritual discernment, though not in themselves wrong. We might be in a lovely place and not think of it; then it is not "strong drink."
The object of this instruction is not merely as to our acting rightly. The condition of mind which gives the capacity of judging "between unclean and clean," depends on the absence of these things -- the capacity of learning, through fellowship with God in the sanctuary, to "put difference between holy and unholy." So the apostle prays for the saints at Colosse, that they might be "filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that they might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing," etc. So, too, for the Philippians, that they might have such a knowledge of, the will of God, "that ye may approve things that are excellent [try the things that differ]; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ": without a single stumble all the way along until the coming of the Lord. He supposes there might be such intimacy of acquaintance with the mind of God, that they would not.
We can never give the least justification to sin and say, The flesh is in us, and we could not help it; for "there hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape that ye may be able to bear it." The theory of the Christian is this -- the flesh should never be discovered but in the presence of God, where it is always in the presence of grace and of holiness too. This is the true power of our walk. It is not any particular measure of attainment; it is simply a man walking according to his communion, who never gets into the weakness of the flesh, for the flesh is known only before God, and not before Satan. When I learn the flesh thus, I drink into the opposite of it, the grace of God, and so go forth in the strength of what is in God, and not in the shame and weakness of -- what is in myself.
Thus it is, that, in estrangement from all that acts upon the flesh, and near God., I learn in the sanctuary His mind, and am able to "put difference between holy and unholy, unclean and clean." Then also I can teach others and say, That is the mind of the Lord about such and such a thing; as it is said here, "teach the children of Israel all the statutes which Jehovah hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses." But have we not often found an incapacity to judge according to the mind of God, where there was no failure in precept -- a spiritual incompetency? Alas! my friends, we have been content to "drink wine, and strong drink," and thus our spiritual faculties have become darkened.
There is another thing to notice. The "sons of Aaron" were to eat of the "meat-offering" and the "peace-offering ... " verse 12-15. See the fellowship here. The inward parts were fed upon by God (of the "peace-offering," it was "the food of the offering made by fire unto Jehovah"). Aaron and his sons had their part, and so also the particular worshipper. I cannot then separate myself from God herein, because I cannot separate myself from God's delight in Christ, nor from the whole family of God who have all their portion. There is no proper worship that does not take in God, Christ, and the whole family of Aaron -- the church: it is a common feast, if true. So in Ephesians 3, "that ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." How can I "comprehend with all saints" if I leave out any? I cannot separate from them without diminishing my own sense of the fulness of the love of Christ and of God. If I leave out one, he is Christ's joy. And here we fail.
Again: there is, in a certain sense, a priestly way in which we have to bear the sins and sorrows of our brethren; not, of course, as to atonement (that was Christ's alone; the blood carried inside was Christ's alone), but still there is a true sense in which we have to bear them. And in this, I believe above everything else, we fail. It is not only that Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire: Eleazar and Ithamar were not like them, and yet their failure is recorded. "And Moses diligently sought the goat of the sin-offering, and behold it was burnt: and he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron, which were left alive, saying, Wherefore have ye not eaten of the sin-offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy, and God has given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before Jehovah? Behold, the blood of it was not brought in within the holy place, ye should indeed have eaten it in the holy place, as I commanded," verse 16-18. The rule as to the sin-offering was this: if the blood was carried inside, to be sprinkled before Jehovah, the body was carried without the camp to be burnt; but in the sin-offering for offences, the priest was to eat it and in this the "sons of Aaron" had a share.
We get the pattern for the exercise of grace in the saints as to the failure and sins of their brethren, in John 13: "If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet." Where there is defilement seen in a brother, there should ever be this washing by us; but it is impossible that there can, unless in spirit we bear before the Lord all the burden of the fault and sin we desire to confess (washing the feet is not atonement); and here we all fail -- in the use of this priestly service.
Suppose I were really walking in the power of the place in which I am set, if I see sin in my brother, and go to pray for him, I find him identified with Christ as represented to the world: the garment of Christ is soiled, the honour of Christ is affected, the joy of Christ is hindered, all is spoiled in that sense, communion with Christ is lost. It is a terrible thing to see the saints of God dishonour Christ thus! Well, now, it is to bear the misery and the sorrow of all this, as though I had been in the sin myself. Love gets into the place of the sinner, and his sin becomes the occasion of the outgoings of the heart in intercession to God -- of the working of love.
Suppose a child in agony -- the mother sees it thus distressed, convulsed by pain; and, though she herself has no pain of body, she suffers far more than it in pain of mind, in agony of heart. Thus should it be with us, in feeling with the saints, when writhing under false doctrine or unworthiness of walk. All is borne by Jesus, but then we should identify ourselves with Jesus in dealing about the sin -- in feeding on the "sin-offering." See Daniel, in his confession. Did he say Israel has sinned? No, but "we have sinned"; "to us belongeth confusion of faces we have rebelled." And this is our place.
When Moses charges Eleazar and Ithamar with the sin, Aaron comes in (verse 19) and answers for them; he lays it all upon himself. And so Christ for us: He makes Himself responsible for it all. It was, however, their privilege to have eaten of the "sin-offering," as it is ours: we are given this portion. God, in the riches of His grace, not only blesses us, but uses us: we are fellow-workers under Him. Paul plants, Apollos waters, God gives the increase; whilst it is God who has done it all. If a man was converted, whose joy was it? "Ye are our joy." It was Paul's joy. Paul had not redeemed them, but he had the joy of love.
In giving us this service of love we have His Spirit in us, and so the joy of love is ours. But it is not merely that we should go out and preach the gospel to sinners (preaching the gospel answers to the ministry of apostleship, whilst teaching and admonishing the saints answers to that of priesthood); prayer for a brother is ministry of love in priesthood. If it be a matter of intercession, we ought to bear all the iniquity of it on our own hearts before the Lord. Thus the very sin itself becomes the occasion of the outflowing of love, and not of judgment.
But is it not true that we have failed? Whilst the outward professing church has offered strange fire "before the Lord," have we known how to "eat the sin-offering" for our brethren? Have we not been charging them with the offence in righteousness, laying it down to them as under law, instead of eating the sin-offering in the holy place?
Grief should not hinder our acting thus in priestly service before the Lord; but let us take care also that the joy of nature does not, the "wine" and "strong drink." Again, I say, have we not shrunk from bearing the iniquity of our brethren in intercession before the Lord, from eating the sin-offering in the holy place? How little do the faults of a dear brother pain us as our own! Have we really pleaded, as feeling the evil, in the intercession of grace? How seldom do we thus deal with it, standing as it were in the gap! There is a vast deal of failure in all of us as to this -- abundant failure! There is not that sense among us of the identity of Christ with His saints, which would put us thus in the place of intercession.
But the voice of Aaron is lifted up (verse 19) and it prevails Moses, the commander and requirer, is "content," verse 20. So. in hearing the voice of our Aaron, when lifted up on our behalf, God is "content." And here is our comfort under the sense of it all.
Peace is heard again. But if it be so, the sense of that should not make us think lightly about the sins of our brethren.
Genesis 11: 27; 12: 1-7
We are going to examine the various circumstances which furnished Abraham occasion to offer his worship to God. We will also consider his walk and the character of his worship, and how he was led by faith to present this worship to God.
It is very precious to find in Genesis the elements and the broad principles of the relations of God with man in all their freshness, from the creation, sin, and the promise of the second Adam. We also see how the government of God was exercised; in what manner man fell; the judgment of the deluge, which put an end to the old world; the promises made to Abraham; the two covenants of Sarai and Hagar; the relations of God with the Jews in the beautiful typical history of Joseph. Thus, in a word, we find in Genesis, not only a history, but the grand bases of God's relations with man. Abraham under this holds a chief place as the depositary of the promises. We may understand this by what the apostle Paul says to the Galatians (chapter 3: 13, 14): "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit, through faith."
We see by this word, "blessing of Abraham," the importance of that which is attributed to him. In considering the blessing of Abraham, we shall see the position God has made for us, in His grace, as to the accomplishment of the promises; even in considering it as a principle, we shall better understand the glory of Christ, heir of all promises of God. It is true that the relations of Christ with the church were as yet hidden, having been revealed only after His death, save at least in type; nevertheless, the various aspects of the relations of God with man, in all their freshness, and the various cases in which they have place, are in the germ found in this book.
In chapter 9, after the account of the deluge, we find that Noah, to whom the government of the earth had been entrusted, fails in this position. He got drunk: we see then the iniquity of Ham, who mocked his father. Afterwards, in Babel, comes the separation of the nations, each after his tongue; chapter 10. In chapter 11 men, united amongst one another, exalt themselves against God. In the midst appears Nimrod, the violent man upon the earth; while the family of Seem, blessed in the earth, is that in the bosom of which God establishes particular relations with men. Babel presents itself, whether as the commencement of the kingdom of Nimrod, or as the false glory of those men whose unity was in Babel, and who were dispersed of God.
Such are the principal features of the three preceding chapters. Noah had failed; then the nations. Men exalted themselves against God instead of being subject to Him; they joined themselves together to make themselves a name, and not to be scattered; but their exaltation becomes the cause of their dispersion.
Before we stop at the race of Seem, concerning whom God is particularly occupied, one remark is needed. A terrible principle is come up in this state of things. Man exalts himself in separating from God. But, insufficient to himself he becomes a slave; he submits to Satan's power, serves him and adores him. Having abandoned God, Satan usurps this place; he alarms the conscience; he takes possession of the heart and energy of man, who gives himself up to idolatry.
You will find this fact in Joshua 24: 2. It is the principle of Satan's power on earth; which adds to the history of man. Joshua furnishes us with this addition to the account of the things which came to pass after the deluge -- the violence of man, the dispersion of the nations; that is, that the. family of Seem even, these children of Heber, worshipped other gods than the true and living God. The apostle tells us they were demons. "The things which they sacrificed, they sacrificed to demons and not to God." Such is the new world; Satan becomes the ruler of the one we inhabit (a circumstance we set too much aside). God can deliver us, in one sense, from the yoke of Satan as ruler, although it abides true that this latter can tempt us by the lusts of this world, and make us fall morally under his yoke. For example, if the gospel be received outwardly in a country, and if the word of God have its free course there, whilst in another country evangelisation is not even permitted, it is evident that, in this latter, souls labour under a yoke which does not weigh in the former, and that Satan rules over one of these countries as he does not over the other. I believe it is important in these times to discern these two things.
The simple fact of being entrapped by one's own lusts is a yoke of Satan, but is not the rule of which we speak. Now, it may happen that several persons of the enfranchised country may be more guilty, for the very reason that they have superior advantages; but the yoke is not the same.
Independence of God is the desire of all men. Man will do his own will, and he falls into the enemy's hand. Such was the state of Abraham's family, as of all other men. In the midst of this evil, God comes, and manifests these three principles to Abraham; election, calling, and the promises. He finds him in the evil, and He calls him according to the choice He has made; then He gives the promises to him He has called, and Abraham receives them.
Besides this, we have the manner in which God does this. He manifests Himself, then He speaks. Often, in those days, He visibly did so. He came down to the earth and spoke to the individuals, and He has even done so since. Let the manner be what it may, He manifests Himself to faith by producing confidence. For example, when Jesus manifested Himself to Paul on the road to Damascus, He did so by a visible glory, but acting on the conscience and drawing the heart. Paul asks himself (1 Corinthians 9) "Have not I seen Jesus Christ our Lord?" In Acts 7: 2 you will find these words of Stephen: "The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he dwelt in Charran."
God manifests Himself to the conscience, which sees itself in the presence of God; it feels that God is there; it perceives beforehand a judgment which is impending; and, whatever be the lack of outward manifestation, man must find himself before God, must follow Him, whereas before this he did his own will. So it happened to Saul of Tarsus. Saul had not troubled himself about God's win; but as soon as he had heard Christ, he must enlist himself. The effect produced in the heart is expressed in these words: "What wilt thou have me to do?" The communication of life, we know, takes place in the soul. Also, God speaks, even though He should have manifested Himself to the sight, as to Saul. It is His word which makes itself to be heard, even when it is written; and the written word is in fact of authority, without question, to judge what is said, though it were an apostle who spoke. The Lord Himself refers Ms disciples to it ("they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them," Luke 16: 29), and places it as an instrument above His own words. I say as an instrument, or rather, as a rule; for, whether written or from His own lips, it is from Himself.
The authority of the word is immediate. The Lord may employ Paul, Peter, John, as messengers, but He wills that it be received from Himself. The word of God, addressed to man, must be received on the sole authority, that it is God who has spoken it: if he does not know how to discern the voice of God and to submit to it, without the authority of man, it is not faith in God; the man does not receive it because it is God. In the natural state, the heart does not hear Ms voice. The principle of Abraham is, that he believed God, and God put him to this trial. There is hard work in the heart of man before the authority of God Himself be established in it.
I daily perceive more and more the importance of this. In an exercised soul which has felt that God has manifested Himself to it, which has known its responsibility, whose heart is in activity, the word has often but little authority. Such a soul may have received a strong impression. God has manifested Himself: the conscience is awakened; but it does not receive what God has said in that quiet faith which, having owned that God has spoken, is arrested by His word, confides to it unhesitatingly, unquestioningly, and is found in peace.
We must not despise the first of these positions, neither must we abide in it. If I belong to God, I can no longer do my own will, and this is what God says to Abraham: "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred." ... This is neither pleasant, nor easy; but hearken to what Jesus says: "Whosoever forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." There is the grand principle. God will have a people that absolutely belongs to Him.
Christ gave not Himself by halves: circumstances may vary, but the principle is ever the same. Whatsoever be the friends, the things which retain us, we must nevertheless come to this: "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred." ... This order is terrible to the flesh; it is not that we must hate our father and our mother as the flesh hates; notwithstanding the chain that is in oneself must be broken. It is from within the heart that we are detained; it is also from this we would escape; it is with self that we must break.
But God, who knows the heart, makes it deny itself, by making it break the ties with the world, which are without it. "Get thee out of thy country," says He. He goes further: "And from thy kindred and from thy father's house." Because God had manifested Himself to Abraham, he must belong to Him entirely. Abraham does it, but not completely. He did not, at first, all he ought to have done. He truly left his country and his kindred generally, but not his father's house; he goes no farther than Haran, and stays there.
He desires not, like many, to take all with him: he gives up a great deal; but this is useless: Terah cannot enter into Canaan. He was not called. In chapter 11: 31, Terah took his son Abraham, and Lot his grandson, and Sarah his daughter-in-law, Abraham's wife, and they went forth with him, from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran and dwelt there.
We see by this verse that Terah took Abraham; then he did not quit his father's house, and could not make much way. The thing is evident in Genesis 11; and Stephen speaks of it in these words, Acts 7: 2, 4: "The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran," etc., "and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land wherein ye now dwell." God hid said to him: "Get thee out from thy father's house," but he leaves it not. just so it happens to a heart which has not understood that it must give itself wholly to God. It gives up a great deal for duty, it receives nothing. When the question is of following God, it keeps something for itself. Nevertheless, grace acted towards Abraham, but thus it is that one often plunges oneself into doubt.
The Lord had said, Get out and come into the country that I will shew thee. Abraham, not having done so, might have said, What win become of me? I have not left my father's house: what will befall me? I have only followed half way the command of the Lord; I have not done all that He said to me; my heart not being in it, I have here neither the word nor the promises, I am about to perish in Charran. But such was not God's thought. Now, in chapter 12: 1-4 it is said "So Abraham departed as the Lord had said to him." All goes well. Lot goes with him; Abraham was seventy-five years old. They come not to Haran to live there, but "into the land of Canaan they came." That is to say, as to us, as soon as we will do God's will, all goes well, God takes care for all. Before this, Abraham had stayed at Haran, and there was no blessing. It is only when his father Terah is dead that he goes forth and comes into Canaan. This is what we see in the four first verses of chapter 12. We may remark how God presents Himself to Abraham. He does not reproach him. The obstacles are removed; he is put in the way of faith.
In verse 7 God appears to Abraham; it is a fresh manifestation. He says to him: "Unto thy seed will I give this land." He renews the promises in a more definite way; He had already brought him to live and walk in dependence on Himself; now, He shews him the land and renews to him the promises, explaining to him the accomplishment of them. He will give the land to his posterity. In our case, it is heaven. God wills that we also should be in blessing, walking in dependence on Him.
In verse 2 God had said to him: "I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee"; in verse 3: "I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." God will be glorified, and He will bless; two precious things, for He glorifies Himself by blessing. He encourages Abraham in the way of faith, by identifying himself with the blessing. He engages him to trust in Him; "I will bless them that bless thee." Thus Balaam cannot curse; and in Jesus we are blest. God Himself conducts us, and identifies us with the blessing of Christ. The church may be tried, may encounter difficulties; but the blessing resulting from it is assured in Christ.
God then brings Abraham. into Canaan: what is there for him there? Nothing as yet to be possessed. The Canaanites are there; enemies all around in this land of promise. He has only his faith for his pains, not a place where to set his foot on, which properly belonged to him. Stephen tells us so in Acts 7: 5: "And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on; yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child."
This also happens to the church. In the land of promise we find the wicked spirits, and we are pilgrims here below. Abraham also was a stranger and a pilgrim. He had not where to set his foot. It is a little hard to the flesh to have forsaken all and to have found nothing. But he cannot yet possess the country. This happens to us as well as to the Jewish people, who went up to the wilderness, and find but a wilderness. Man must sacrifice all he loves, and rise to the height of the thoughts of God. But thus it is that the call and the deliverance make us strangers even in the very land of promise, until the execution of judgment be come.
We read in Hebrews 11: 8: "By faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went." There is that which characterises. his faith. "By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country; for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." In drawing him by the path of faith and renunciation in the land of promise, God gives him nothing; but He sets him on a position elevated enough to see the city which hath foundations.
God draws us also into the wilderness; and when we are there, He gives us nothing; and if we ask for anything, God answers: It is not good enough. The disciples would have liked to remain and for Jesus to remain; but Jesus tells them, It is good enough for your heart, but not enough for Mine; I would not that you should remain where you are; but where I am, there ye shall be also. He desires a complete felicity for His own. He tells them, before leaving them, I go to prepare a place for you. For where I am, I desire that there ye may be also."
When we are come out of this world and of that which keeps back our heart, then He can receive us. Abraham being thus separated from his earthly ties, He shews him the city which hath foundations. The great principle we find here is that, these Canaanites (to us the wicked spirits) not being yet driven out, we are strangers in the land; but, on the other hand, Abraham being in the land, the Lord appears to him. He had the revelations from God, no longer to make him walk (it was no longer a question of manifestation for the walk), but for him who has walked in order that he might enjoy God Himself.
I have wished you to observe, that God begins by making the conscience act. Afterwards He gives the enjoyment of Himself and of converse with Him after we have walked; such is the difference. The God of glory appeared indeed to Abraham in Ur. Thus perhaps He reveals Himself to our souls to draw them. But after that, He will have the conscience touched, and completely separates us from all that nature would retain', or by which nature would retain us, and that we should walk as called of God and belonging to Him, that the heart may thus peacefully enjoy Him in communion with Him when we have walked.
God can speak to Abraham, not now to make him go on, but that he may enjoy Him and converse with Him; and, further, to communicate to him all His thoughts as to the fulfilment of the promises. God will bless. Here is his position. He has walked with God, but as yet possesses nothing of the inheritance in the place to which God has led him. The enemies are there. But the Lord appears to faithful Abraham. In the enjoyment there of this communion and of this hope, Abraham builds an altar to Him who thus appeared to him.
God introduces us into the position of promises, in order that we should render Him worship, and make us understand distinctly how He will accomplish His promises. When Christ shall appear, then we shall also appear with Him in glory. We shall have all things with Him.
The portion of God's child is communion, intelligence of the counsels of God for the enjoyment of what God will accomplish. Thou shalt be a stranger, but I will accomplish my promises in giving the land to thy posterity. "And Abraham builded an altar to God who had appeared to him." His first manifestation made him walk; this makes him worship in the joy of communion in the land of promise whereinto faith introduced him, and in the intelligence of the promise relative to it. We see God by faith, and how by-and-by He will fulfil the promise. He makes us see Jesus, the true "Seed" and "Heir" of all things, and gives us the enjoyment of it in our souls.
Abraham, stranger-like, goes here and there. He pitches his tent and builds an altar. It is all he has in the land. Happy and quiet he rests in the promise of God. And this also is what we ourselves have to do. Perhaps it will happen to us, as to Abraham, to buy a sepulchre (chapter 23), and that is all.
The Lord give to us a like position, that is to say, a quiet faith, like his who left all. God cannot be satisfied with a half-obedience; but, having walked in what God says, we may rest in His love and have His altar until He come in whom are all the promises; even Jesus, in whom all the promises of God are YEA and AMEN to the glory of God by us.
Psalm 22
The result of the truth taught in this psalm, is, that "they shall praise the Lord that seek him." It is the fruit of unmingled grace, brought out in a very remarkable manner, and quite different from a hope or a promise. Assuredly that the Holy One should be forsaken of God is not promise, and such is the ground laid here for praise.
In Psalm 19 we have the testimony of creation and of the law. It is a solemn thought that whatever man has touched he has corrupted. Creation groans when a man has been there. But if I look where man cannot reach, at the moon, the stars, etc., all is glorious. The "heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handy-work." Next (verse 7 to 11) "The law of Jehovah is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of Jehovah is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of Jehovah are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of Jehovah is pure, enlightening the eyes." Here the point is not whether man can keep it or not, but its intrinsic perfection and its value for those who by grace profit by its light. Neither of these witnesses can be changed. Man early filled the earth with corruption and violence. "And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt; and God said, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them." The heavens spread over all, and the sun going about in unwearied circuit from one end to the other, are the bright unchanging witnesses, above man's defiling hand, of the divine glory. As little does the law of Jehovah vary; but if man cannot change the law, he disobeys it. The effect of law is to claim from a sinful man that he should not be sinful.
Mark, in passing, the order of God's dealings. When sin came in, God said that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. This is not promise to Adam, but the judgment pronounced on Satan: if a promise, it is one to the second Man. Then comes a word of positive promise to Abraham, the father of the faithful: "in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." Afterwards, when the offering had taken place on Moriah, the promises were made, uncondtionally as before, to his Seed. But the question of righteousness must be raised, because God is the righteous God. Blessing under law depended on man's faithfulness, as well as God's. At Sinai it was said, "If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people." The law raised the question of righteousness, and put man under obedience, instead of his taking his place as a sinner. "All the people answered together and said, all that Jehovah hath spoken we will do." This was law, and Israel under it: but "as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse." Long afterwards rises another Witness -- One who testified to the moral nature of God as well as His power -- One who manifested the righteousness of God instead of merely claiming that of man -- One who came, as it were, with all promises in Himself, if He had been received.
And how was Christ received? He was entirely rejected. In Psalm 20 Messiah is viewed in the day of trouble. So the Jews will see in their latter-day trouble, identifying Jesus as their Saviour. Psalm 21 is the answer to their godly desire touching the Anointed of Jehovah, and the expression of their joy at His exaltation as King. He has been heard, and has His heart's desire given Him.
In Psalm 22 we have a totally different thing. It is Christ forsaken of God. Not that He is not despised of the people there: strong bulls of Bashan beset Him round, dogs compassed Him, the assembly of the wicked enclosed Him; but all this, felt as none but Christ could feel, what was it in presence of the awful reality of Christ suffering from the hand of God -- of Christ suffering for sin? It is a sad but useful picture, the side of man; for it is all the same nature -- such were we; but turn it round, and what is the other side? Christ has brought out what God is, and this is love, even when it is a question of our sins.
What is man? What was Pilate? An unjust judge, who washed his hands, while he condemned to death the One whom he had thrice proclaimed to be guiltless; and this at the instigation -- at the intercession! -- of the chief priests and the rulers of God's people. And the disciples, what and where were they? "They all forsook him and fled." "And Peter followed him afar off." When he comes into the palace, he curses and swears, and denies Jesus again and again. Take man where you will, and if Christ be there, everything is put to the test; only sin comes out. His cross, His death revealed the real character of all. The history of man, morally, is closed. "Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Man has been weighed and found wanting in every way. "The flesh profiteth nothing"; it breaks law, and abuses grace. The end of all I am as man I read in the cross. "But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." For there is another thing altogether there. On the cross hung the one spotless, blessed Man, yet forsaken of God. What a fact before the world! No wonder the sun was darkened -- the central and splendid witness to God's glory in nature, when the Faithful and True Witness cried to His God and was not heard.
Forsaken of God! what does this mean? What has man to do with it? What part have I in the cross? One single part -- my sins. Here then is One forsaken of God and saying it aloud before all men. There is none to see and sympathise as in Psalm 20. The women who followed from Galilee were there afar off, but they understood not. It baffles thought, that most solemn lonely hour which stands aloof from all before or after. How does not the perfectness of Christ shine in it! "The man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth"; yet was his spirit provoked. so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips. "Ye have heard of the patience of job?" yet he opened his mouth to curse his day, and murmured that the Preserver of man had set him as a mark, so that he was a burden to himself. In Christ nothing was brought out but what was perfect.
But if I have to say to Christ, what is my first thought? What do I bring to the cross? What have I in it? My sins. There is not a vanity we have not preferred to Him. What a humbling thought for us, for me! The Righteous One in suffering for sin, vindicates God, though to Himself the depth of agony, when God forsook Him, when most, we may say, He needed God. "But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. But I am a worm," etc. It was obedience -- suffering -- to the uttermost; but forsaken as He was, Christ says, His God was holy all the same. We know now, why it was. It was for sin, for our sins, not for righteousness. Our sins were our only contribution. What a tale that tells on our part: on His, O what blessed love!
The wonderful truth is that the Son of God came into the world, and in the cross God has made Him sin who knew no sin. The sinless Saviour has drunk the cup of wrath. It pleased Jehovah to bruise Him -- to make His soul an offering for sin. He has borne our iniquities. What is the consequence? He died under the burden of sin, and what becomes of it? It is clean gone; not that it has been glossed over, but put away by the sacrifice of Himself.
Thus, before the day of judgment, sin has been thoroughly dealt with by God in the cross of Christ. There will be a day of judgment, and those who believe not will find everlasting condemnation there. But for those who believe, there has been already judgment in Christ. God must judge sinners; but were this all, where would be His love? If He overlooked sin, where His holiness? That would not be love but indifference to evil. When I see the cross, I see the perfect desert of sin, and that not in the destruction of the sinner, but in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, suffering once the just for the unjust that He might bring us to the God who was glorified in the sins being thus completely blotted out. Christ took sin in His own body on the tree, laid down the life in which He bore it, and rose absolutely without it. Now then the question of righteousness is not raised only, but settled. Neither is it any longer a promise, but a work done. There are promises for the believer to enjoy in their season; but the suffering on the cross is ended and past. Redemption is neither creation, nor law, nor promises, but a divine work wrought about sin and already accomplished in Christ through His blood -- in Christ now accepted of God and glorified at His right hand.
Hence, if sin was judgment to Christ, it results in nothing but grace to us in and through Him. For if God takes up sin in my case at the day of judgment, I am lost. But I say, He has taken it up in Christ, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; and now there flows a stream of unmingled grace. For it is not only that the unsparing wrath of God fell on Christ crucified, but that Christ enters into all the delight of God after putting away sin. God was now no longer a judge and an avenger, but a Deliverer from death and all the consequences of the sin Christ had taken on Himself; His glory as God and as Father was concerned in raising Christ from the dead, and setting Him in righteous glory as Man and in infinite delight as Son before Him.
What a change there is now! Christ is heard from the horns of the unicorns. Resurrection is the answer of His God and Father. But, mark, Christ has people whom He calls His brethren, and to them He must go and tell it all. God has righteously and in perfect love brought Him back from the grave; and now says the Lord, "I will declare thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I sing praise to thee." Never had the divine complacency in Christ been so complete as on the cross -- never was God so glorified as in Him there; but there was not, nor could be, the enjoyment of communion in that awful hour, when sin was judged as it never will be again. But now, sin-bearing was over, and God so perfectly justified and glorified in it, that it became a question of Christ's bringing others into the place of holy joy and peace, and His own relationship to His God and Father.
Mary Magdalene wept at the grave, for she loved the Lord and knew not salvation in Him risen. "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him." To her apprehensions, if He were gone all was lost. But Jesus made Himself known to her in resurrection, and says, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father but go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." For whom was the work done, but for them? But more than this. God was His Father, He was theirs; if His God, He was theirs also. He brings the disciples into the same place He has entered Himself.
If you love your children thoroughly, you desire them to have the same place as yourself. It was so with Christ. He could suffer alone, but, that finished, could He praise alone? No: "in the midst of the congregation will I sing praise to thee." All the suffering and sorrow were His; His joy He would share with those He loved. He Himself leads their praises. He is come out from unutterable, unfathomable agony and shame, and does He keep silence? Does not His tone of praise well assort with the darkness He was in? Does not fullness of joy now answer to God's forsaking Him then for our sin? Compare verses 24, 25. He had been in the depths for us, but now He is out and praising; and how should we praise? With Him in the certainty of what He has wrought. God would have us free before Him in joy by virtue of what Christ has done; He would have us judging every evil, for it is a holy place, but the place He is in is the result of His work and He gives it -- nothing less than it -- to us. Could I go into the presence of God in my sins? I should flee from Him like Adam. But, believing in Christ, I am in God's presence, because He has brought me there.
Are you then seeking God? Have you heard the voice of Christ? It is no longer the cry of deepest grief unheard. The atonement is made, He Himself is raised from the dead, the accepted glorified Saviour; and what to Him the change from the affliction of the afflicted to His joy as risen? He gathers around Him those who receive Him, and in their midst sings praises to God. If you seek God now, you are entitled by His work to take up and join in His songs of praise. For it is not a promise, but an accomplished fact. Do I believe in Christ? If so, I am before the throne of God (in title, not in fact, of course) by virtue of the cross; I am inside the veil, and my sins are left for ever behind me.
From verse 22 we find nothing but grace. Do you who seek God say, Oh that I could find Him? But He has found you. Come then and praise Him. Christ has been on the cross, bearing our sins. You have to learn it as an accomplished fact; not saying, I hope He will do it. The work is done, sin is entirely put away, and Christ the leader of praise, according to His estimate of sin, of wrath due to it, borne in grace, and of the perfect deliverance displayed in His own resurrection. Thenceforward is heard praise, and praise only. First, Christ in the midst of the congregation praises God, and those that fear Jehovah are called to praise Him; verse 22, 23. Then His praise is anticipated "in the great congregation," and "they shall praise Jehovah that seek him: ... all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord," verse 25-27. In the millennial earth the homage will be universal, "all they that be fat upon earth" -- "all they that go down to the dust"; yea, and not that race then alive only, for they "shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this."
In the light there are exercises of conscience, but how do I get there? Because Christ put away sin and I receive Him. True, we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; but it is the judgment-seat of Him who loved me and gave Himself for me, who saved me and in whom I am accepted. If Christ had to do with a Pharisee, He soon unmasked him; but to one who came to Him as a poor sinner, He was always grace, as to the woman in Luke 7. Never did He deal roughly with one soul who came in the truth of its condition: to such He spoke and wrought in the truth of His own grace. That sinful woman was attracted by divine love in Christ, and hears Him pronounce her many sins forgiven. She knew His great love, and loved much. When He comes to this, He does not trouble Himself more about the Pharisee, but says to the woman, "Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace." And no wonder; for it is the self-same thing which brightens heaven that made her heart bright.
We must, then, be all manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, before the Person who by His death put away all my sins. What a blessing to find Him on the judgment-seat! There is nothing in this to disturb the peace He has made by the blood of His cross; and peace we must have in order to enjoy communion with God. Can two walk together, except they are agreed?
Then think how it is we get there. Christ will come and receive me to Himself, because He loves me, and wants me to be with Him where He is; and how do I arrive? Glorified in a body like His own. Do you ask, How can people speak thus? I answer by the question, How can you be in heaven in any other way? He who of God is made unto us righteousness is the Judge. To believe in His name and yet doubt that we have peace, is calling in question the value of His work. He who suffered and is now glorified will not gainsay it when He judges. But then there will be nothing secret -- all will come to light. What a lesson for us when in glory! And what is the effect? I look on my past life, and what have I been? I look since I have been a Christian, and what feebleness, what failure! But am I therefore to be afraid? No: I look at God and say, What a God I have had to do with! Every step is a manifestation of my Father's love, who has led me along the way. In glory I shall see all my foolishness, but it will be in the body risen or changed. I shall learn the love of Christ in every tittle of my life from beginning to end.
Are your voices tuned to praise with Christ? He is gone from the wrath and darkness of the cross into the light and love of His Father's presence, and is praising. Can you praise with Him? There all trembling disappears. Do you believe "he hath done this"? Oh, beloved, how those who seek Him lag behind His heart! What is it you believe? and in Whom? Do you not know that He drank the cup to the dregs? and is all uncertain to you still? If you think of what you are, I say you are a thousand miles off what you ought to be. If you seek Him, His word warrants that you shall praise Him. He is in the presence of God as the consequence of His work. May your hearts set to their seal that God is true! As a Father, He may chasten, but the chastenings are a Father's ways with children's hearts. May you not reject the testimony of Jesus that He has spent His life, having suffered once the just for the unjust, that your souls may have present peace with God. "He hath done this."
Remarks on Luke 22: 14-34
How good and precious it is that we have at all times the Lord to look to; for if our eye had always to be fixed upon self, not only should we not advance, but we should be thoroughly discouraged by the thought of the evil within us. We confine ourselves to the idea of the evil, and thus deprive ourselves of the strength which can overcome it.
The nature of the flesh and the blindness of man's heart are worthy of remark. What foolish things come between God and us, to hide from us that which we ought to see! How strangely, too, do the thoughts of the natural heart follow their natural course (even when the Lord is near us), and deprive us of the consciousness of the most striking things, which have a sensible effect around us! We find this presented in the portion before us.
The Lord Jesus was about to accomplish that work which can be compared to no other; He was on the point of bearing the wrath of God for us poor sinners; He was in circumstances which ought to have touched His disciples' hearts. He had just spoken, in the most touching terms, of the Passover which He desired to eat once more with them before He suffered; He had told them, too, that one of them should betray Him. All this ought to have rested upon their minds and have filled their hearts. But they? They were striving among themselves which of them was the greatest!
To us the curtain is withdrawn; and when reading of this fact, we can hardly understand how they could be busied with such things; but we know what was then about to take place. How many things have power to turn even us, who have more light than they, from the thought which then filled the heart of Jesus! Such is the heart of man in presence of the most serious and solemn things. The death of Jesus should exercise the same influence on our hearts as on the disciples'; it should be precious to us.
The Lord is with us when we are gathered two or three together; and yet we well know the thoughts which then pass through our hearts and minds. Here we see the same thing under the circumstances most calculated to touch the heart. Jesus tells His disciples that His blood was to be shed for them: "the hand of him that betrayeth me is with meat the table, but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed"; and they inquire among themselves which of them it was that should do this thing. One might suppose that they would think of nothing save the death of their gracious Master; but no! "There was a strife among them which of them should be accounted the greatest." What a contrast! But alas! if we examine our own hearts we shall find these two things generally brought together, namely, real feelings which bear testimony to our love of Jesus, but also, and perhaps within the same half-hour, thoughts which are as unworthy as this strife among the disciples. This shews the folly and vanity of man's heart; he is but as the small dust of the balance.
The Lord, ever full of gentleness and meekness, forgets Himself in His care for His disciples, and says to them, "He that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve." He knows how to teach them, by His own example, what the love of God is; and at the same time He shews them the grace which is in Him, and all the faithfulness for which they are indebted to Him. It is as though He had said, Ye need not raise yourselves: my Father will raise you. "Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; that ye may eat and drink at my table, in my kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."
Instead of being irritated by the abominable conduct of His disciples, He shews them that, if there is no grace in men, there is grace in one Man, that is in Himself. This grace is perfect in Jesus; and He places His disciples in it, whatever they may have been toward Him. He has fixed them firmly in the principle of grace, instead of the folly of the flesh which had just shewn itself among them; as though He had said, I am all grace towards you, and I trust the kingdom to you.
We are put under grace, and its voice is always heard. It assures us that, notwithstanding all our weakness, we have continued with Jesus, and that He gives the kingdom as His Father gave it to Him. Nevertheless the soul which is to enjoy these things must be exercised. The flesh must be made manifest to us as men; and therein we see the needs-be of all the trials we pass through; but Jesus enables us to persevere, because we belong to Him. If He says to His disciples, "I appoint unto you a kingdom, ye shall Sit on thrones," etc., etc., He takes care to shew them what the flesh is.
"Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." He does not say, Thou shalt not be tempted; I will hinder Satan from sifting thee; no, nor does He do it. We see here that God often leaves His children in the presence of their enemy, whom lie does not destroy; but, even while thus in the presence of the enemy, He watches over His own; as we see (Revelation 2: 10), "The devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."
Peter might have said to the Lord, Thou canst hinder my being thus sifted, as Martha and Mary thought Jesus could have hindered the death of Lazarus; and, truly, He who can give the crown of life can shelter us; but He does not do so, that we may be tried. Satan desired to have Job to sift him like wheat, and God permitted him to do so; and this happens to us also. We often say within ourselves, Why has He dealt thus with me? Why has He put me in such or such a crucible? Ah, it is Satan who desired, and God who permitted it. Things often. occur which we cannot understand; such things are intended to shew us what the flesh is.
When God is about to use a Christian in His work, He takes the one who has gone the farthest in the path of trial. Thus here it is said, "Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you." The danger is presented to all; but He adds, speaking to Peter, "I have prayed for thee," for thee in particular; for Jesus distinguishes him from all the rest because he had taken a more prominent position than the others, and was thus more exposed, though they were all sifted at the death of Jesus.
The Lord then says to Peter, "When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." He was not going to spare any of His disciples the sifting; but Peter was to be the most severely tried, and, therefore, the best to strengthen his brethren. Notwithstanding all this, Peter is full of self-confidence. "I am ready to go with thee both unto prison and to death." But Jesus replies, "The cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me."
The flesh acting in Peter had only power to carry him up to the time of trial, and there failed; for Peter denied the Lord Jesus, even in His very presence. He might have seen his Saviour, if his heart had not been turned away from Him. Jesus was looking at him; and yet he denied Him to the maid, saying, "I know him not." He had been warned; but the Lord would not allow him to be kept by divine power at that moment, because he needed to learn by experience what he was in himself
If we notice all that Christ did, we shall see how He was watching at this time over Peter; His grace (so to speak) went out to meet him, and took care of him all through the temptation. The first thing that Jesus tells him is that He has prayed for him. It is not that Peter's repentance led to Jesus' intercession; but the intercession of Jesus brought about Peter's repentance. "I have prayed for thee," and "Jesus looked on Peter." As to Judas, he denied the Lord; and, when his conscience was awakened, he killed himself. No sooner was the crime committed than all confidence fled, and he went and killed himself. But, here, the effect of the prayer of Jesus was to preserve faith at the bottom of Peter's heart, so that, when Jesus looked on him, he was broken down.
The first thing to remark is, that the Lord had prayed for Peter; and the second, that He always remembered His disciple, and as soon as the cock crowed, Jesus looked on him, and Peter wept bitterly. It is in this way the Lord deals with us, He prays for us, and allows us to go into temptation. If He conducts us when in it, He also bids us to pray that we enter not into temptation: but God permits all this because He sees the end of it. If Peter had been conscious of his own weakness, he would not have dared to shew himself before the High Priest. This trial was the natural consequence of what he was in the flesh; but it was God's purpose to use him, and even to put him in a prominent position in His work. The cause of his fall was self-confidence; the flesh was actively present.
God did everything well for him, and Peter saw what was the power of Satan's sifting. The other disciples, not having the same fleshly strength, fled at once. They had not so much confidence as Peter; but God left him to struggle against Satan, and Jesus prayed for him, in spite of his fall, that his faith should not fail. The moment Peter fell, the eye of Jesus was turned upon him. That look did not give peace, but confusion of face; Peter wept; he went out, and it was all over. He had learnt what he was. There was his failure -- the sin was committed, and could not be undone; it could be pardoned, but never blotted out. Peter could not forget that he had betrayed the Lord: but Jesus made use of this fall to cure him of his presumption.
It is the same with us. We often commit faults which are irreparable, from too much confidence in the flesh. When there is no possibility of correcting one's faults, what is to be done? The only resource is to cast oneself on the grace of God. When the flesh is too strong, God often permits us to fall, because we are not in that precious state of dependence which would preserve us.
Jacob had too deeply offended Esau not to dread his anger; yet God did not leave him in his brother's hand, but gave him enough faith to carry him through the difficulty. God wrestled with Jacob, and the latter prevailed; but he must have felt within his heart what it is to have had to do with evil. God would not allow him to be given over to the hatred of Esau; and at the end of his course Jacob could say (Genesis 48: 15, 16), "The God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil," etc.
When God tries the heart in this way, He sometimes leaves it in Satan's hands, but He never leaves the consciences of His children in the enemy's hands. Judas' conscience was in Satan's hands, and, therefore, he fell into despair. Peter's heart was in his hands for a time, but his conscience never. Therefore, instead of despairing, like Judas, the love of Jesus, expressed in a look, had power to touch his heart.
Directly grace acts in the heart, it gives the consciousness of sin; but, at the same time, the love of Christ reaches the conscience, deepening the consciousness of sin; but if this is deep, it is because the consciousness of the love of Christ is also deep. Perfect as was the pardon of Peter, he could never forget his sin. Not only was he fully forgiven, but his conscience was in the Lord's hand when the Holy Ghost revealed the fullness of the heart of Jesus to him. His conscience had been so fully purified, that he could accuse the Jews of the very sin he had himself committed under the most solemn circumstances. "Ye denied the Holy One and the Just," were his words. The blood of Christ had fully cleansed his conscience; but if the question of his strength in the flesh was raised, all he had to say of himself was, I have denied the Lord; and, were it not for His pure grace, I could not open my mouth.
Jesus never reproached Peter with his sin in those conversations He had with him. There is never the question, Why hast thou denied me? No; He does not once remind him of his failure: on the contrary, He acts according to that expression of love of the Holy Spirit, "I will remember their sins no more." Jesus had forgotten all. But there was one thing He had to shew Peter; it was the root of the sin, the point where he had failed. Satan's temptation, with his own want of love, had been the cause of his fall, and had destroyed his confidence; but now, his conscience being touched, it was needful that his spiritual intelligence should be formed. Peter had boasted of more love to Jesus than the rest; and Peter had failed more than all.
Then Jesus said to him, "Lovest thou me more than these?" Where is now Peter's self-confidence? Jesus repeats three times, "Lovest thou me?" but He does not remind him of his history. Peter's answer is, "Thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee." He appeals to Jesus, and to His divine knowledge; "Thou knowest that I love thee." This is what Jesus did for Peter, and that after his fall.
Jesus had foretold his failure; and here He asked him, "Lovest thou me more than these?" Peter can say nothing, save that he has learnt his weakness and that he has loved Jesus less than the other disciples. The relationship between Jesus and Peter is all of grace; he had no resource except to confide in Jesus, and now he could be a witness for Him; he had felt the power of a look of Jesus.
Peter seems to say, I confide in thee, thou knowest how I have denied thee; do with me what seemeth thee good. Then we see Jesus sustaining His disciple's heart, lest Satan should rob him of his confidence, and saying, "When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." What enabled him to strengthen his brethren? His denial had so taught him what the flesh was, that he would no longer bind himself to anything; he knew. that he had nothing to do save to trust God. Whatever his own incapacity to resist Satan, he could appeal to the grace of Him who knows all things. The knowledge that he could confide in Jesus, was that which made confided His sheep to him: "Feed my lambs" -- and it was not till then that he could strengthen his brethren.
The flesh has a certain confidence in the flesh, and this is often the folly into which we fall. It is then necessary for us to learn ourselves by conflict with Satan; every Christian has to learn what he is through the circumstances in which he is placed. God leaves us there to be sifted by' Satan, that we may learn our own hearts. Had we enough humility and faithfulness to say, I can do nothing without Thee, God would not leave us to this sad experience of our infirmity. When we are really weak, God never leaves us; but, when unconscious of our infirmities, we have to learn them by experience.
If a Christian does not walk under a constant sense of his infirmity, God leaves him in the presence of Satan, that he may there be taught it. It is then also that he commits faults which are often irreparable; and it is this which is the most sorrowful part of all.
Jacob halted all his life. Why was this? It was because he had halted, morally, during one-and-twenty years. He wrestled mightily, yet he must have been conscious what a feeble creature he was in the flesh, although God did not leave him to struggle with Esau. We need never be surprised if the Lord leaves us in difficulty; it is because there is something in us to be broken down, and which we need to be made sensible of; but grace is always behind all this. Christ is all grace, and if He sometimes appears to leave us to learn our weakness, still He is grace, perfect grace, towards us.
It was not when Peter turned his eyes towards the Lord that Jesus shewed Himself to him; as to communion, indeed, this is true, but it was before his fall that Jesus had said "I have prayed for thee," for it is always grace which anticipates us. Jesus sees what Satan desires, and leaves us to that desire, but He takes care that we should be kept. It was not when Peter looked at Jesus, but when Jesus looked on Peter, that the latter wept bitterly. The love of Christ always precedes His own; it accompanies us, precedes us in our difficulties, and carries us through all obstacles. While it leaves us in Satan's hands, that we may learn experimentally what we are, it is always near to. us, and knows how to guard us from the wiles of the enemy. Here we see the perfect goodness and grace of the One who loves us, not only when our hearts are turned towards Him, but who adapts Himself to every fault in our characters, that we may be fully and completely blessed according to the counsels of God.
All this should teach us to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt us in due season. When I feel cast down and grieved in thinking of myself after a fall, I ought not then forthwith to seek comfort, however natural that may be: no; it is not that which I am to seek, but rather, and first of all, the Christ who is there; I have to learn the lesson which God has traced for me.
If, in the midst of painful circumstances, you say that you cannot understand the teaching, God knows what it is, and He leaves you there to be sifted, in order to bring you by this means to a deeper knowledge of Him and yourself; He wishes to shew you all He has Himself seen in you, so that we ought not to shrink from this sifting, but rather to seek to receive the precious teaching which the Lord offers us through it; and thus we shall obtain a much deeper knowledge of what He is for us.
We must learn to yield ourselves to His mighty hand, till He exalts us. May God give us to know Him alone! If we had only to learn what we are, we should be cast down, and sink into despondency; but His object in giving us a knowledge of ourselves and of His grace, is to give us an expected end.
One can say then, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."
2 Samuel 22; 23: 1-7
There is a remarkable contrast between the two songs in these chapters: the song of David after he had done with an his enemies (that is, after his trials by Saul), and the song of David after he had done with himself; here brought together by the Spirit of God.
At the end of his trials, when looking back at his enemies, he sings of joy and triumph: all is exaltation. After his experience of the blessing, it is, "Although my house be not so with God." The end of all the sorrow and trial with Saul is rejoicing, exaltation, and strength. "The waves of death had compassed me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid, the sorrows of hell compassed me about, and the snares of death prevented me"; yet, the result of all he thus went through, in deep and bitter exercise of soul, is triumph, thanksgiving, and praise in the first instance, when he recounts God's deliverance; while, in the second, the result of the place of honour, blessing, and triumph, is deeper and bitter sorrow -- the confession, "my house is not so with God!" Not that he was without something to sustain his heart under it all; for he adds, "yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure." For this he waited until the "morning without clouds." But the end of all his blessing here is, "my house is not so with God." This contrast makes trouble precious, and is a check to any desire to get out of it.
So practically is it with us. We need to guard against the effects of success; the pressure of circumstances which keep me down produces nothing but joy and praise in the experience of God's goodness; the effect of circumstances which lift me up is sorrow. How often has a saint, when in trial and conscious weakness, cast therein upon the Lord, cried unto Him, and as a faithful servant been sustained, had blessing and acquired influence, godly influence too; but how often satisfied with the blessing and the influence thus acquired and losing the sense of his weakness, has he stopped suddenly short in his course, been arrested in the point of influence obtained, and become comparatively useless in the church of God! This should lead us to desire conformity in suffering to Jesus. The path of grace is, like Him, to be getting on nearer and nearer to the Father, but to be getting nothing here.
There are three things brought before us in these chapters: one of them intended to give us solemn warning: First, the result of David's trials at the hand of Saul. Then, second, when set upon the throne, the consequence of his being surrounded with all the earthly blessings. And, third, the joy at the end, of "the sweet psalmist of Israel," in anticipation of the "morning without clouds."
Whilst the heart receives the warning against the effects of success, or anything in present blessing, are we looking out for and resting on, the full, distinct, and perfect blessing, which will be in that day when the Lord Jesus comes? We see here the way in which the Spirit of Christ gathers up the history of Israel in Christ as a centre, and makes the harp of David that on which it should be played. There is perhaps nothing of deeper interest than to see how God takes up the history of David in the Psalms, writing as it were upon the tablets of David's heart the history of the Lord Jesus.
In the first song there is a remarkable allusion to the whole history of Israel, to dealings of God with them, of which David felt the moral power in himself. We have a wonderful variety of circumstances, backward, forward, and around, gathering up all the history of David, and the triumphs of David; unfolding the sympathies of Christ with the heart of David in sorrow, until he is made the head of the heathen, his own people being blessed under him.
In chapter 23 we get "the last words of David." And here we learn where his eye and heart rested, amidst consciousness of his own failure, and the failure of his house. He was looking for the "morning without clouds," for the One who should rule over men in the fear of the Lord, who should build God's house, and in whom the glory should be manifested. These men of Belial too, there must come one in the sternness of judgment to set them aside: then "they should all of them be as thorns thrust away." There is the deep consciousness of all the ruin, but the effect of the coming morning shining into it. The effect of the coming of the Son of David on David's heart, and the failure of everything around, leading him to reach forward in spirit to the full triumph of that day when all should be full of blessing.
We thus, in the two chapters, have the unfolding of the sympathies of Christ with the heart of David, gathering up all the sorrows of the history of Israel; and also the heart of David resting in the consciousness of what the "morning without clouds" would be. We should seek so to get the power of the Spirit in the sympathies of Christ, and at the same time to reach out to the hope which the Spirit of God sets before us, as by the way to be thrown upon the fellowship of Christ's sufferings.
Let us now trace a little what David was, up to the time of this success. It is ever just the very thing that seems hopeless in the eyes of man, which is taken up of God. See Sarah, Rebekah, Zecharias, and Elizabeth, so too here with David. In him there was everything contrary to the thoughts of the flesh. Contrast him with Saul. Saul was the comeliest in Israel, taller than them all by the head; "from the shoulders and upwards he was higher than any of the people" -- strength in the flesh. But all this is passed by, and it is the "lad keeping sheep" that is taken up! Saul is unfaithful -- rejected from being king, and then God sets His eye upon David.
Samuel, by the Spirit of prophecy (1 Samuel 16), goes down to Bethlehem, to select from among the sons of Jesse one who should be king in the room of Saul. He causes them to pass before him. Seven come in. Samuel asks, Is there not another? Yes, a lad keeping the sheep. "Send and fetch him." David comes, and is designated by the Spirit of prophecy as the anointed of Jehovah. All that is great in Jesse's eyes is suffered to pass unnoticed; the seven were personable men, but it is the lad keeping the sheep, the eighth, the weak one, that is preferred and taken up!
From that time the Spirit of God departs from Saul, and an evil spirit falls upon him. David is brought into his company as one who could play upon the harp. Here we find him of no importance, so that afterwards, when he had killed the giant Goliath, on Saul's inquiring of Abner, "whose son is this youth?" Abner says, "I cannot tell." His brethren too ask him, "with whom he has left the few sheep in the wilderness."
But what traits do we find in David? Deep consciousness of having God's strength, and forgetfulness of self in all the difficulties which come in the way of duty. He keeps his father's sheep: a lion and a bear come to take a lamb of the flock. It is his business to guard sheep, and he goes at once against the lion and the bear., and slays them. These energetic works are done with simple reference to duty: therefore the difficulties are as nothing.
Here we see faith in operation. Faith recognises God and duty to God; and then the thing is a matter of course. Put a child to raise up a stone, and it is all effort; put a strong man, and the thing is easily accomplished. Faith realises the strength of God without reckoning on self, and so does that which comes in the way, and thinks nothing about it. David here in the path of duty gathers up the consciousness of having God's strength with him to be used in after trial. The secret of strength, thus learnt in retirement, prepares him for that which the Lord has subsequently for him to do. Blessing still followed the career of Saul; we read "whithersoever he turned himself, he vexed his enemies." Though evil, seeking his own, and rejected from being king, there is blessing to Israel through him. But the Lord in secret had set His eye on David.
The Philistines are gathered together to battle against Israel (chapter 17): David goes up to the camp, sent by his father, with provisions for his brethren, where he hears Goliath challenging Israel. Having learnt in the simplicity of the path of duty with the God of Israel, when no eye was upon him, that He was a faithful God, now that he comes to see the people of God, and Goliath against them, he is astonished at finding them all afraid, and asks, "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?" Why, he is an uncircumcised Philistine, and he is defying the armies of the living God! Bad motives are imputed to him by his brother, for coming to the camp; but there is in him such simplicity of heart in recognising God, that the path of duty is straightforward, and in power. Whether as a shepherd, whose business it was to guard the sheep, if the lion came, he took him by the beard and slew him, or the bear in like manner, he slew it, without display and without boast; they were simply matters of duty, and are untold until there is a needed occasion for mentioning them; or, if afterwards, it be this uncircumcised Philistine, it is the same thing, "he shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God!" Onward he moves in the energy of faith; he looks not to Israel for help; he rejects the proffered armour of Saul; he thinks not of the spear like a weaver's beam. Is this uncircumcised Philistine to defy the God of Israel? that is the question; and he says, "This day will Jehovah deliver thee into my hands!" His heart is on Israel, he takes up the relationship of God with Israel. Although the exercise of faith depend on a single individual, "the battle is Jehovah's; he identifies the glory of God with Israel, and then the uncircumcised Philistine" can have no power at all. With a sling and a stone from the brook he destroys the Philistine, and cuts off his head with his own sword; as it is said of Jesus -- that He destroyed through death him that had the power of death, by the very weapon of him who had the power.
His heart rested on the faithfulness of the God of saints. This was the secret of his strength, learnt by himself, to be acted upon in any circumstance. And this is always the character of faith. Faith, when acting, brings in God -- makes God everything, circumstances nothing. Whether it be the lion and the bear, or the uncircumcised Philistine, it is the same thing. The secret of God's strength, learnt when alone, is that by which faith looks upon every circumstance as the same, making God the great circumstance that governs all else.
After this they begin to sing, Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands "and then David becomes the object of Saul's hatred." Saul eyed David from that day and forward." Subsequently we find in the character of David, when in the midst of mighty enemies, the consciousness of weakness and infirmity, and the absence of all thought of avenging himself against Saul. He never takes a single step without consulting God, save in one instance; and then he gets chastened for it. Everything is against him: he is conscious of being in the midst of subtle enemies, and of conflicting with a power which he cannot set aside. Saul seeks his life (chapter 18: 10, 11), but he has no right to set aside the power of Saul.+ The enemy cannot be got rid of, and therefore he is forced to go to the Lord for guidance as to every step he takes.
So is it with the saints. And this is just what they need now -- the consciousness of conflicting with a power which they cannot set aside; and the sense of their own utter weakness, so as to be forced into direct reference to God in every circumstance, to be thrown into dependence upon Him for every step. At last Saul drives him fairly away: full hostility is manifested; and he becomes an outcast. All this is necessary for the exercise of his faith, and he gets practised thereby in waiting on the Lord, "In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God." He escapes to the cave of Adullam (chapter 22), is separate from all that God is about to judge, and gathers together his mighty men. The beginning of this chapter opens with a most miserable scene, "Every one in distress, and every one in debt, and every one that is dis-contented," gathering themselves unto David in the cave of Adullam; but with these outcasts, we find God's prophet,++ God's priest, and God's king: all that God really owned was there.
+It was righteous power, for God had set him in it; but not rightly used.
++Saul had slain the priests; but Abiathar, one of the sons of Abimelech, escaped, and fled after David; and, in verse 5, we find Gad, the prophet of the Lord, mentioned as also being there.
Let us follow David in his course. Through all the scene we find him in constant dependence on God's strength, not avenging himself, but ever gracious to Saul when in his power. See chapters 24, 26. Such is his constant dependence on the strength of God, that no matter what the consciousness of weakness, however reproach may break his heart, the moment he is in the presence of the power of ungodliness, he confesses unworthiness of self; but still he can take the place of superiority, just as Jacob when recounting all the misery of the days of the years of his pilgrimage, blessing Pharaoh there. That poor weak man became identified with God, could stand in conscious superiority in the presence of the power and glory of the world, as faith always does; and thus, in the very confession of weakness, take the place of the better: "the less is blessed of the better."
David had led a miserable, sorrowful life, because of Saul; and when Abishai says, "God hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand, this day," he answers, "Jehovah forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against Jehovah's anointed." Again, when pleading with Saul, "Jehovah judge between me and thee, and Jehovah avenge me of thee, but mine hand shall not be upon thee." "Jehovah deliver me out of thine hand." So was it with the Lord Jesus, "when he was reviled, he reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed his cause to him who judgeth righteously."
And this is what the church is called upon to do amidst enemies whom it cannot set aside. If seeking God's glory, we shall not want to justify ourselves: there may be entreaty ("being defamed, we entreat"), but not haughty self-vindication. Peter says, "If when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God." This is a strange principle for anything but faith. But as a saint I cannot, whilst the usurper is in power, take my portion (just as David could not touch Jehovah's anointed); there is "a morning without clouds" coming, when the true King will be set up -- then I shall have it: now it is doing well, suffering for it, and taking it patiently, just what the Lord Jesus did; but with this comfort -- the consciousness that "that is acceptable with God."
At last (chapter 28) Saul is in the sad, terrible condition, that Jehovah has departed from him. The day comes when he has to sink down with the consciousness of not having the answer of Jehovah, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets. All depart from him, and are with the suffering man who had nothing here. Then Saul falls, Jonathan falls, and David takes the kingdom. And now we come to a sad picture; we see a different line of conduct in David.
What marks his confidence as king in his own house? He trusts in his own power. "I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains"; he is going to build the temple when he had no word from Jehovah to do it. The thing itself is not bad which he purposes, but he has not the perception of the mind of Jehovah about it, because he has not consulted, he has not waited upon Him. We find in him now the want of that direct reference to Jehovah which had so marked his previous course,+ he trusts in his own strength, lives in self-indulgence, and then falls into gross sin.
Self-will having come in, self-indulgence follows; then there is the breaking out of positive sin in the murder of Uriah, and adultery with Bath-sheba: and afterwards distrust of Jehovah, in the numbering of the people!
The end of all this is the word of Jehovah by the prophet, that the sword should never depart from his house. David is chastened, repentance given, and the sin put away; but the sword departs not from his house.
+When about to bring back the ark in the desire to build Jehovah's house, we see him going to the Philistine, the world, for help.
In this latter part of the history of David, we see the consequence of blessing, the result of faith, when used in the flesh and for himself. It is not that he was like Saul, beginning in the flesh, ending in the flesh, and not blest at all. It is a lovely picture of faith, a humble, gracious walk, up to the time of his being king in his own house. Jehovah had said, "I have found a man after my own heart" (not that his conduct was so, but "a man after mine own heart"); he was a godly man with grace shining in a lovely way, and in the end there is rich blessing.
But we see the godly man blessed, and the results of his fidelity too much for the faith that brought him there! Grace shines through, and there is lovely humbleness afterwards, most precious grace; but at the same time we have in his history solemn warning as to the result in blessing of faith being too strong for the faith through which it came.
The only safety for us is in the word in Philippians, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" the going down, down, down, always humbling oneself. David was blessed as much when king, whilst humble, as when an outcast he was hunted by Saul, like a partridge in the mountains.
In these "last words of David," as we have seen, there is deep consciousness of the failure and ruin, "My house be not so with God." Where did the heart of David find rest amidst it all? In this, "Yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, for this is all my salvation and all my desire, although he make it not to grow."
Where does the church find its comfort, resource, and joy, upon the perception of ruin, when, in looking upon its present state, it has to say, "Not so with God"? And is there a single heart, having the Spirit of God in it, that does not feel thus, as not satisfied with any honour now resting upon the house of Christ? Is there one not bowed down at the condition of Christ's house, looked at in what way you please? Is it such as can give joy and gladness, or has not one to say, "Not so with God"?
Well, we should have sorrow and humiliation at this, though all turns to practical comfort as to the end; for David's house shall yet be glorified in the Person of Christ, in the midst of the nation now "scattered and peeled"; and we shall be along with Him in His glory, as the head of His body, the church. There is "a covenant, ordered in all things and sure," in which we stand, an everlasting covenant, a covenant established before the foundation of the world; and this we need to sustain our souls.
But is it the effect of having the assurance of that covenant to make us content with the ruin, satisfied with the want of honour now given to Christ's house? When David felt all the ruin of his own house, although he could still say, I have a covenant, ordered in all things and sure, could he be content and happy? Impossible! It was David's feeling about David's house. So should it be with us. If we have the Spirit of Christ, there will be grief and sorrow of heart, because the house is not so with God; we shall say, after all the manifestation of Christ's honour and glory in the day of His appearing is revealed to us as an assured thing, what I have to seek is His glory now. So will there be sorrow of heart at His present dishonour.
It is a most terrible thing to say, The covenant makes all things secure for me for ever, and therefore I do not care for Christ's glory now; it is just saying, Christ's glory may go for nothing. This is practically antinomianism as much in the church, as the making the grace of God a cloak for licentiousness is antinomianism in an individual, though not so tangible.
Still, amidst all the ruin around us, it is a comfort to know that that which is before us is blessing. We need, for the sustainment of our souls, what is presented to us as our hope, the coming of the Lord. This it is which really brightens up our hearts. It is most important for us practically to have that upon which our hearts can rest, as a sphere and scene of blessing amidst our present trials. Where will you find the manifestation of happy affection in an individual? It will be in the one who can turn to a home where those happy affections are in exercise. And so with us as Christians: it is most important that we should have a full unhindered sphere where our affections may be called forth, and all our associations be pure and happy. Where is there the man who, being always occupied in cleaning that which is dirty, does not get a little dirty himself? I want to have my soul sometimes undividedly occupied with what is good; it must centre in God. But He has not shut Himself up! Being love, He has come as it were out of Himself and flowed forth in the communication of love. We should seek to have our associations in that sphere where God becomes the centre of communicated blessing.
It is when God shall have put all things under the Lord Jesus Christ, as the one that is "just, ruling in the fear of Jehovah," when the power of evil shall be set aside, the men of Belial be "all of them as thorns thrust away," at the revelation of Jesus Christ, that the thoughts of the Lord's mind may be exhibited.
Then, too, man is set as the head and centre of all this blessing, man as the executor -- the Lord Jesus Christ. Man has failed in every dispensation of blessing from the hand of God; left to himself, after he has seen the glory, he will fail. But God's heart rests on the manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the unfailing Man, as the centre of all the blessing. It is when He, the great Melchizedek Priest, comes down out of heaven from God, that the fullness of the blessing will shine forth. There is that which is from heaven now, but it is the Spirit which makes us cry, as conscious of all the disorder here, "not so with God!" Then there win be an ordered state of blessing in this world, a time when the Orderer of blessing, and the Communicator of blessing comes down from God. This is the great character of "that day," blessing according to God's mind coming down from heaven in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Everything takes its place, then, in reference to its relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. If the church is the bride of Christ, the church takes its place in its proper relationship to Him as such. So again with Israel it is the same, "He that ruleth must be just, ruling in the fear of Jehovah; and he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth, by clear shining after rain." "Behold the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is the name whereby he shall be called, Jehovah our righteousness," Jeremiah 23: 5-25. But if He shall reign, we shall reign with Him, as the wife, associated in His glory. Israel will be blessed under Him as their king; but still He is "the head of his body, the church, the fullness of him that filleth all in all."
So too the Gentiles. Israel will then be the centre of the blessing on earth, yet "in him shall the Gentiles trust." "In that day there shall be a root of Jesse which will stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek, and his rest shall be glorious," Isaiah 11: 10. "All nations shall call him blessed," Psalm 72: 17.
And further, "All things were created by him and for him." He is a "faithful Creator": this too is a sphere of blessing which He is to reconcile to Himself, in which His power is to be manifested. Dominion is already put into His hands, "all power is given unto me in heaven and earth"; but the power is not as yet applied. "We see not yet all things put under him."
It is not for us to be looking for blessing here, apart from the future manifestation of Him in whom the blessing comes, in the "morning without clouds." Until the power of evil is set aside, the effect of the energy of the Spirit is to make us groan and suffer in proportion to it. Our groaning, as saints, should ever be that of the Spirit because of holiness of mind, as amidst the evil, and not on account of our own evil. So was it with Jesus: He groaned because of holy affections, and not because of unholy. Until the power of evil is set aside, the greater the energy of the Spirit, the more is the individual in whom it is manifested exposed to the fury of Satan.
These "men of Belial" too, the saint has to do with them. The soft hand of grace cannot touch them; "they shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands; but the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear, and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place." Tares have sprung up among the wheat; Matthew 13. Grace cannot take the tares out of the field, grace does not turn the tares into wheat! They must be "let alone until the harvest." Then they are to be gathered together in bundles to be burned.
There was no reckoning in David, of setting the house in order again, when it had failed! He was looking for the "morning without clouds," when there would be full blessing. So it should be with us. Take Israel, the church, David, whatever it may be, all have failed; the "house is not so with God." Man has failed -- must fail. Paul had to say, "no man stood with me, but all men forsook me; notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me." God must be the centre of our blessing. We feel that we need something: the bright energy of faith realises God; not the increased outpouring of the Spirit because of our faithfulness, but God's faith fullness in spite of our failure. "If we believe not, he remaineth faithful, he cannot deny himself" But it is a good thing for us, not only to be able to say, "God is faithful," but to have our affections unfolded and exercised in a sphere where all is perfect blessing, to have them engaged with those things which satisfy His heart. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him; but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." That which the Holy Ghost reveals unto us is the display and character of the glory in heaven and earth, which the Lord Jesus Christ will be the centre and displayer of by-and-by, when He comes again. This is a sphere of joy, comfort, and rest for us. Affections raised by the Spirit of God never can get their rest until they find it where His own heart rests. Here is their centre, their sphere, and their rest, the glory of Jesus.
The practical effect of all this upon our hearts and consciences is to throw us into the first part of the history of David. Be it in what it may, if we are faithful in singleness of eye in the camp of Saul, we shall soon find ourselves in the cave of Adullam, taking, as the portion of our souls, fellowship in Christ's sufferings. It is there we shall have all the unfoldings of those internal affections, those secret affections of heart, which were in David when humble. It was when David was a partaker beforehand of the sufferings and afflictions of Christ in the cave of Adullam, hunted as a partridge upon the mountains, that he was compassed about with songs of deliverance.
The Lord give us singleness of eye, and in the power of His resurrection to have fellowship with His sufferings.
The substance of a discourse on John 17
There is no chapter in the Bible which traces more, as a whole, the position of the Christian, and what Christ is for him. I do not say that it states such or such circumstances in which the Christian may be found, but all He is Himself in the presence of God, and how He has introduced us into that position.
You know that Christ Himself says, "I am no more in the world," verse 11. He views His position in the face of God and in the face of the world; He sets the Christian in the same position where He is in the face of God and in the face of the world, and He lays the foundation of all that. I do not explain at this time all that might be said on the chapter, because it contains a very great number of important truths. I will confine myself to developing some of them, which will make us understand how Christ presents Himself to us, and presents us to God. There is this grand thought, that Jesus is the source of everything for us. He takes it up from the Father.
We may consider Jesus in two ways: either as accomplishing certain promises (for example, those made to Abraham), or, moreover, as son of David; but He is, on the other hand, a source of life, coming from the Father (accomplishing the promise made in Him before the world was). And it is thus that the Lord Jesus is presented in this gospel.
It is not only as accomplishing certain promises, which besides is very precious, but which is far from being all He is for us. He is the Son of the Father, the Word in whom is life, according to that which is said in the first chapter of this gospel: "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth ... . And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace." There is what He is. John says, This is the Word that has been made flesh, and we have received of His fullness, and grace for grace. The Gospel of John, having developed His history here below under this relationship, presents Him to us in this chapter at the close of His life; and He, being grace and truth, come forth from the bosom of the Father and ready to return to Him, gives the Father an account of all He has done.
There is something very special in the chapter. It is the only one which admits us to these wondrous conversations. It relates to us, not only what the Lord says to men, but what He says to His Father, while we hearken to Him. It is not trust merely, but confidence. We are here hearkening to Jesus, who is giving account of all to the Father.
"I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." He gives account of all. He pours forth His heart about His own into the heart of the Father. It is the most intimate relation in which one could be, and wherein He has placed us. Christ the Son has satisfied the Father. He gives account to the Father of all that work of grace, whereof He Himself is he representative.
We find, in this chapter, the most intimate relationship between Him and His Father, and through Him with the Father between us and Himself. We find therein the basis on which to found our hope. In the preceding chapters He had spoken to His disciples of various circumstances; but now the time is come when all which would bring immediate relations between God and us was about to have its course. As regards men, His work was finished. All that the second Adam had to accomplish is accomplished in His Person. All the evil introduced from the creation by the fall of the first Adam has been but the occasion of what the Second came to accomplish. He was from heaven, and He is come, from His Father, to establish all the relations between God and us; and He places Himself before Him according to the basis established for what the Second man had to do. God does His own work. He would have a man for Himself in the place of the first Adam, and Christ perfectly fulfilled this end. It is the Second man who acts in the very circumstances into which the first Adam had plunged us; and it is not on what we have done, but on what God has done, that this basis is established. It is well to understand that our relations are based on what has been accomplished by God's Man. So far there had been on our side but sin and folly: what Christ did was the perfection of wisdom, purity, and obedience.
The hour was come for proving if man could present himself before God, if this new Man Jesus could stand before God. And He can do so. He can lift up Ms eyes to heaven. And instead of beholding the cherubim, who barred the entrance of Eden in a terrestrial paradise wherein Adam had failed, and whence he had been cast out (Genesis 3: 24), He can look on high and return whence He had come in grace, saying, "I have glorified thee on earth," verse 4. He could lift His eyes to that heaven whence He had descended, and the imprint of which He had borne all His life. "Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee; as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. [Behold, I take a place before thee, in glory, to glorify thee on high, as I have already done on the earth.]" verse 1, 2. We see that He always speaks in complete humiliation. I speak of the place that He not only has acquired, but that He has made for Himself. If man had been innocent, he would have had his place in Eden. But that a man should make his place in heaven before God, as Christ did, and did it for us, such a thing existed not yet, save in the mind of God. A man, who has the life of God, and has made His place by the work that He has accomplished -- there is a new existence. And this is what is remarkable -- that He takes the glory as a given glory, keeping His place as man, though Son; He places Himself with His own while He is their Head on the same level with them -- as receiving all from the Father. He takes His place in the glory with the Father for ever. As God has given Him authority over all flesh, He takes His place as Head, to give life to all those whom the Father has given Him; Himself thus receiving all from the Father. "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
The righteousness of man is no longer the question: here it is eternal life. When a certain lawyer came to Jesus (Luke 10), and asked Him, "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus answered him, "What is written in the law? how readest thou?" Christ's hour was not yet come; as to the ways of God, the door was not yet shut; the Christ was not yet rejected. Jesus said to him, "This do and thou shalt live." The lawyer had not asked, What must I do to be saved? but to inherit eternal life. Had a man fulfilled the law (though we know that man was incapable of it), he would have had eternal life. But now, if there is not the knowledge of the Father and the Son, there is no eternal life; and if any one thinks that God gives eternal life, and that he so thinks according to his own thoughts and not according to what is revealed to us, that is not eternal life. If a man makes to himself a Bible of his own heart, how will he know what is life eternal? Will it be in his heart? Oh, no; God alone can say, This is life eternal. And if you cannot have it from Jesus, there is no eternal life for you. Nothing is needful in us in order to have it. It is entirely a new thought. It is no more sought in man here below, but only in Christ, who has established relations between God and man; and then, when a man knows the Father and the Son, he has eternal life.
There are those who cannot say, I know the Father, and the Son whom He hath sent. But if, through grace, we can say, I know the Father and the Son, we may say, I have life eternal; and what a happiness that the thing is so simply said! To bear fruit we must have life; and what happiness! A whole life need not be spent in order to know this. If you know the Father and the Son, you have life; and he who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself, and precious is the knowledge that the Lord can lay down a thing with such certainty. A soul may say to itself, I have not eternal life, for I do not glorify God. Dear friends, lay yourselves a little aside; it is the Son who speaks to the Father, and it does not become you to place yourself between them with your wretched thoughts. In what the Son says to the Father: "I have glorified thee on the earth," and there is nothing that thou canst require, but that I have performed. Where did He find His glory?
God could not rest in man; but He could rest in Jesus. Before Jesus, it was with God as with the dove sent forth by Noah (Genesis 8: 8), there was nowhere for God to rest; but when the Son comes, He could say, "I have glorified thee"; and on Him the eye of God can rest. He is daily His delight. Jesus can say, at the close of His life here below (that Satan may hear, that His own may rejoice in it, that the world may know, that angels may marvel at it), "I have glorified thee."
Behold this accepted Man given from God; the Man who has perfectly fulfilled all that the Father could desire! His glory had not been entire, if one single point had failed; but He can say, "I have finished the work which thou hast given me to do." (I have nothing more to do, and Thou hast nothing more to exact.) "I have glorified thee on the earth; and now, O Father, glorify thou me with thyself, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." There is the basis of all, and of our salvation.
It is most interesting to observe how the Son, though God equal with the Father, and having right to the glory, asks it, because as man He is worthy of it. And He takes this glory in the position of man. Thus we understand how Christ has taken our place as man; as the responsible Man in our position as sinners (though Himself without sin), and thereby, even because He has perfectly glorified the Father, He has acquired the right to this glory. And in order that, in this position as man, He may be glorified with the Father, having acquired the right to this glory, He asks it, that it may be for us as for Himself. He humbled Himself unto death; wherefore God has exalted Him; Philippians 2: 5-11. There is the basis of the whole thing: the Son glorifies the Father on the earth, and the Father must glorify the Son in heaven. He has taken His place, because all is accomplished. The Father has nothing more to require: all is done.
Now, what does He as to us? "I have manifested Thy name to the men thou hast given me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me, and they have kept thy word." (I place them in my own position, and there it is that they became cognizant of their own.) There was nothing left to be done, and Christ manifests the name of the Father to those that God has given Him.
About to ascend to His Father (chapter 20: 17), He says, My Father and your Father. He manifests the Father's name such as He has known it Himself. He lays us on His Father's heart, as He Himself is laid there; weaker doubtless, just as a little child is weaker and knows much less than a bigger one, but not less therefore children of their father, no less the objects of care and tenderness. We do not understand all the love God witnesses to us. But Christ says to us, "I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me," verse 23.
"Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words that thou hast given me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now I come to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves," verse 7-13. Thus are we set in intelligence and in truth, whatever the degree in which we realise this position. But, observe this: He was "not of the world." Man, the first Adam, had no place before God, because of his sin in Eden. Having failed, he was going to be cast out into hell; Christ, the last Adam, places Himself in the position of sinful man, to fulfil God's purposes; but He was not of the world, and consequently there was no place for Him in this world. The men that God gave Him are taken out from the world, and He says of them, as of Himself, "They are not of the world," verse 14-16. He sets them in the position which He has made for Himself, and this position is not of the world. He win take the world for His inheritance, but the world now is neither His place nor ours.
In verse 25 Jesus says, "Righteous Father, the world has not known thee." He says, "Righteous Father," not "Holy Father," because it was all over with the 'world. He appeals to righteousness against the world: the world has not known the Father, although He was fully manifested in flesh.
The hour was come for deciding the merits of Jesus and those of the world. God had to pronounce for one of the two; for they could no longer walk together. God could no longer love this world where His Son had been dishonoured and contemned; and when Judas went out, and the measure of sin was thus filled up, the judgment of this world takes place, though as yet it be not executed. The prince of this world was cast out, and those to be withdrawn from his power are given to Jesus. "I have given them thy word," added the Lord, "and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil," verse 14, 15. Thus He describes these persons: "Thine they were"; and "They have kept thy word." Observe when Jesus says, "They have kept thy word"; and how have they kept it?
There is much consolation in considering this word of Jesus. His disciples, of whom He was speaking to the Father, understood it but little. Their walk, the details of their connection with Jesus, were most sorrowful; but they had (except Judas) persevered, in weakness perhaps, yet they had persevered. Well, that was all. There were many things they did not understand, but they had kept the Father's word which spake of Jesus. When, one day, Jesus asked them, "Will ye also go away?" Peter answered, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life; and we believe and are sure, that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God," John 6: 68, 69. They had persevered, they had kept the Father's word: as soon as the word of the Father has our confidence, because Jesus has spoken it, we are His.
The most advanced Christians need this interpretation of the judgment borne by the Lord on their lives. We may be very wretched, and we find that we all are so, if we compare our state with what we might be. These same disciples, a little after Jesus had been telling about the last circumstances of His life, were disputing between themselves who should be the greatest. Well, for all that, they had kept the word. The eye of God sees the smallest spark of grace. He blows on it and makes it become resplendent; and, notwithstanding all the wretchedness, the weaknesses, and the failures, it suffices that they have kept the word that Jesus has given from His Father. If confidence is there, Jesus says, "They are thine, and I am glorified in them."
They might have said, We have not kept Thy word as we ought to have done; but what they had kept was precious in the sight of Jesus and of God. Jesus always speaks according to the principle that is there. The great matter is that Jesus was the Sent One of the Father; and as to all that belongs to Jesus, to this poor carpenter's son, it is the Father who gave it to Him. The disciples had understood that the Son of God had received everything from the Father, that He was Heir of all things. Well, when Jesus takes this place in the heart, we are happy. He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities (Isaiah 53): but He is the beloved of the Father. This poor Jesus is but too often practically despised and set aside for thousands of frivolous things, even in the heart of the Christian; but we have understood what Jesus is -- insulted, despised, and rejected though He be. The eye has penetrated by faith through all this contempt, and has seen in Him the Son of God, the Beloved of the Father; and this cheers, because we have understood that therein is life eternal. We have the same thoughts as God. Our desire has Christ for its object, and we find our delight in Him. We say, Yes, He is right: all comes from the Father. They have believed that Thou hast sent me, and that I came forth from Thee.
Such is the extent of the privileges of the Christian of whom Jesus speaks: we have seen how and why He can claim the glory. The Father owed it Him, and He gives it us. But, moreover, all the words that Jesus received from the Father, all the plans and secret counsels of the Father, whereof Jesus (taking the place of prophet on the part of God) as man has received the communication; all the testimonies of the favour and ways of God which comforted His soul -- these all He has communicated to us. The glory that He has acquired (verse 22), the words that He has received (verse 8), He has given them to us. It is His will that we should have the same communion of thoughts with the Father, that we should have part intelligently in all His love and all His grace, having communicated to us all that the Father has said to Him. See what a position is ours as to communion, and what support for practice has been granted to our souls! And if the intelligence, by means of which the Father's love is poured into the heart of the Son, be given to us, we may say that we have known that Jesus is come forth from the Father, and that we have believed that He has been sent from Him. This love of the Father to the Son is also poured into our heart to strengthen us, and to make us justly appreciate (which, after all, we never can fully) our identification with the Son in His relations with the Father, and in the position that He has acquired for us, having glorified His Father upon the earth. It is thus eternal life to see all that the Father is to the Son; this is to know the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
Jesus was the depositary of the outpourings of the Father's heart, and that is the place that He has willed that we should have. He wills also that we should know the glory that belongs to Him, being with Him where He is: we who have known Him in His humiliation, we who have shared in principle this humiliation. "Father, I will," says He, "that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory" -- the glory of Him who, though the world despised Him, had been loved by the Father before the world was.
"I have given them thy word, [He does not say Thy words, but Thy word. When He speaks of our privileges, He says, Thy words; but when He speaks of our position in the world, He says, I have given them Thy word; that is to say, the position of testimony by the word which has reached us through Jesus, the word of the Father], and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, as I am not of the world." And to whatever degree we enjoy the position of Jesus in heaven, we must also share His position here below, to be hated: it is the practical position of the Christian.
We have seen how God makes a Christian, by separating him from the world in the death of Jesus. At the moment in which Jesus speaks, God had tried all, and He had given up all His trials. It was quite another question now. God would have nothing more to do with the old man: God set up new relations for Himself in Jesus. Are they firm? They are immutable. He has glorified Jesus as man. God has received His Son; and He having entered in as man with the Father, He makes Christians, according to the principle after which this new Man is entered into the presence of God His Father. The Christian understands the activity of the love of the Father. He is based on this hope; all his joy is in the life which results from it. He no longer knows the old man but as a sinner, and the new man as having immutable relations with God. He knows Jesus Himself as the Beloved of the Father. The word that the Father has given to the Son he keeps, and recognises the Son as the object of His love. And what can we say? Is our happiness on the side of truth? Can you say that you have received these words that Jesus gives us from the Father, and Jesus Himself as the only One that God can recognise?
It was the hour of the judgment of the world, as it was the hour of the reception of the Son. It is well worth our while to consider whether we receive this word of eternal life. Are you placed on this new basis? What a basis! What a position! A position to which Satan cannot reach; an immutable position, beyond all that Satan has been able to do, and whither he cannot enter. What largeness of grace! May our ears be opened to hear all that the Son says to the Father when He pours forth His heart before Him concerning His own! And what a happy position is that into which He has brought us! How ashamed ought we not to be that we know so little of these things, and that we make so poor a use of them! What have we learnt of that which the Father says to the Son, and the Son to the Father? If you were asked, What have you learnt of this love of the Father, what would you answer? But, on the other hand, remember that when Jesus says, "They have kept thy word," He declares to us that His grace has placed us there. Look at His disciples: they were very ignorant. But what I have quoted is not to make you satisfied with remaining in ignorance and indifference; it should rather humble us, if we are in the same case. Rather should we be encouraged to profit by this position, in recognising it as ours. "They are thine." "They have kept thy word." What grace! How precious is this grace! How should it urge us to seek the realisation of all these things, so much the more precious as they manifest our gratitude; and if we are led in truth, we shall make account of it to glorify Him, who through His grace has so much loved us!
Hebrews 4
It is a blessed thing, though in one sense a terrible one (terrible ever to the flesh), to know that we "have to do" with God; verse 13. Yet there is nothing that we so easily forget, or so often lose sight of. The natural tendency of our hearts is to get out of, and then (as the disobedient child, that of the parent whose eye he fears to meet) to dislike and dread, God's presence. Always, every moment, under every circumstance, it is God with whom we "have to do." People who are ever looking at second causes are led into practical infidelity; and so is it in measure with the saint of God: if he be resting in circumstances, he loses the sense of "having to do" with God. But whether it be for blessing, or for profit to the conscience, we have alike "to do" with God.
Are we seeking happiness, where shall we find it? where shall we get blessing that nothing can touch or hinder, that nothing can separate from, except in God? He is not only the source of our blessing, but the blessing itself. There are indeed many outward blessings given to His children by the way, and these even the unconverted may have; but the strength, the comfort, the joy of the Christian is this -- he "has to do" with God. God is the source and centre of his blessing.
When once we come really to know God, we know Him as love. Then, knowing that everything comes to us from Him, though we be in a desert -- no matter where, or what the circumstances -- we interpret all by His love. I may be called on to pass through pain, and sorrow, and trial, as part of His discipline; but everything that comes from God, comes from a source and spring in which I have confidence. I look, through the circumstances, to Him; and nothing can separate me from His love.
Where God is but little known, and where there is not therefore confidence in His love, there will be repining at circumstances, and murmuring, and rebellion. In such a case, the sense of having to do with God will cause more fear than gladness. John says, "We have known, and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."
Is it not quite true that we often stop, practically, at the circumstances in which we find ourselves placed, and consider only our own feelings and judgment about them? Now this is a proof that our souls are not living in the fulness of communion with God. That with which we should be occupied is, not the circumstances, but what God intends by them.
Conscience must be in exercise as well; for it is equally true, that in our consciences we "have to do with God. This is very profitable, though not so pleasant. All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do," verse 13. And after all, dear brethren, is it not a blessed thing to know that nothing can escape either the hand or eye of God? What a comfort that He discerns every thought of our hearts that would hinder blessing, or dim communion with Himself! There may be some secret evil (one of the ten thousand things that, if indulged, would hinder the enjoyment of God) working in my heart, and yet I remain unconscious of it. Well, God sends some circumstance that discovers to me the evil, in order that it may be put away. Is not this a blessing? The circumstance does not create the evil which it excites; it only acts upon what it finds to be in my heart, and makes it manifest. Since I "have to do" with God, I am made to understand evil in myself which I had never understood before, or known to be there. God discovers the "thoughts and intents of the heart"; He could not rest whilst leaving anything there that would hinder our love and confidence, our comfort and peace in Himself. The evil being discovered, circumstances are all forgotten -- God's end alone is seen.
The heart of man naturally seeks rest, and seeks it here. Now, there is no rest to be found here for the saint; but it is written, "there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God," verse 9. To know this is both full of blessing and full of sorrow: sorrow to the flesh, because as it is always seeking its rest here, it has always to be disappointed -- blessing to the spirit, because the spirit, being born of God, can only rest in God's own rest, as it is said, "If they shall enter into my rest," verse 3, 5. God cannot rest in the corruption of sin. He can only rest in that which is perfectly holy. And because He who thus rests is love and loves us, He makes us understand that He will bring us into His own rest, into His own delight.
Now let the soul once know what this rest of God is, let the heart once be set upon it, there will be joy unspeakable in understanding that God's love can rest in nothing short of bringing us into His own delight. There will then also be the full, settled consciousness that we cannot find rest elsewhere. There are indeed joys by the way, but the moment we rest in them, they become, as the quails of Israel (Numbers 11), poison.
Whenever the soul loses practically the knowledge that its rest is in God's rest, the moment the eye is off that which "remaineth," we begin to seek a rest here, and consequently get uneasy, restless, and dissatisfied. Every time we find something on which we attempt to settle, that very thing proves but a new source of trouble and conflict to us, a new source of exercise and weariness of heart. God loves us too well to let us rest here.
Are you content, dear brother, to have or seek your rest nowhere, save in God's rest?
What is the secret of the unhappiness and restlessness of many a saint? A hankering after rest here. God is therefore obliged to discipline and exercise that soul; to allow, it may be, some circumstance to detect the real state of the heart by touching that about which the will is concerned. Circumstances would not trouble, if they did not find something in us contrary to God; they would rustle by as the wind. God deals with that in us which hinders communion, and prevents our seeking rest in Him alone. His discipline is the continual and unwearied exercise of love, which rests not now, in order that we may enter into His rest. If He destroys our rest here if He turns our meat into poison, it is only that He may bring us into His own rest, that we may have that which satisfies His desires, not ours. "He will rest in his love."
"For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his works, as God did from his own," verse 10.+ This is not a question about justification or rest of conscience as to judgment: that is all settled. "As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous," Romans 5: 19. There we rest, and there God rests. Again, "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified," Hebrews 10: 14. The believer has already and altogether come to rest on Christ's work as to that. He has peace through the blood of Christ.
+Such is the true force. -- Ed.
The point is one which concerns those who are justified, whom God has brought into His family; God is training such, and bringing them up into the full enjoyment of His own blessedness and rest. If I, being a parent, enjoy anything, it is impossible (if I really love my child) not to wish him to enjoy it with me. And if we, who are evil, do this, how much more our heavenly Father! What God desires for us, as we have seen (and He delights to do it), is to bring us into the enjoyment of all that which He Himself enjoys. He has made us partakers of the divine nature that we may enjoy it. The Hebrews were continually liable to sink into the seeking a rest here, in short, not to live a life of faith. The great point on which the apostle insists is that God has not His rest here -- that while there was that which hindered the comfort of His love He could not rest. And this is proved by a variety of testimonies. See verses 3-8.
As to their own state, though he says, "We which have believed do enter into rest" (verse 3), it was not needful to prove to them, any more than it would be to ourselves, that they were not in the rest. We read of their enduring a great fight of afflictions, of their being made a gazing-stock both by reproaches and afflictions, and of their becoming companions of them that were so used. They were still in circumstances in which it could be said to them, "Ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise." The exhortations are plainly inconsistent with a state of rest: "Let us therefore fear" (verse 1) Let us labour, therefore," verse 11.
It may seem strange to have pressed upon us at one moment unqualified assurance in the love and faithfulness of God, and at the next to be addressed thus, "Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it," verse 1. But God never ceases to warn in order that there may be the exercise of responsibility towards Himself, while we are on our way to the rest. Were justification spoken of, had that been the point in question, it would have been said, Do not fear, and do not labour; for Christ has done all for you. "To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt."
This "fear" and this "labour" begin when that question is settled, and settled for ever. The blessed principle brought out is, that they are consequences of our having to do with God. Because we have full confidence in the love of God, and because we value the rest of God, we fear everything; not only the temptations and snares that are in the way, but every working of the flesh and the like, that would come in between us and God. Blessing is secured at the end, "reserved," as it is said, "in heaven for us"; but conscience reasons thus, how shall I do this great wickedness, and sin against God! It is "through faith" that we are "kept by the power of God unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time." Faith realises the presence of God. Therefore there is this holy fear: we pass the time of our sojourning here, in fear.
Paul, in writing to the Philippians, says, "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus"; and again, "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead," chapter 3. Was it that he did not see the certainty of the end? No, but because he saw the way as well as the end and all the difficulties of the way. Paul greatly feared whatever might distract him in his course, or lead him for a moment in the downward path (the flesh, whenever indulged, does this); and then he adds, "Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk, so as ye have us for an ensample. For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you, even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things."
Where there is this holy fear, the promise made being that God's rest, we know the end of the path; but we "labour, therefore, to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief," verse 11. Grace will prevent such a result; but it is that to which the flesh -- the working of man's will -- must bring the unrenewed professor.
There is no such evidence of a true-hearted saint as this holy fear. An unconverted man has, properly speaking, no dread of Satan; but, if not quite hardened, he has great dread of God. The saint of God has no fear (that is, dread) of God, whilst he has great fear of Satan. Jesus, speaking of His sheep (John 10), says, "A stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers," verse 5. There is in them the distrust of everything but the known voice of their own shepherd; verse 27. Above all they fear the wolf, because conscious of their weakness. If any were to say, 'the end is sure, never mind the means,' the sheep would know that that was no true shepherd's voice. Everything that would dim our eye as to the glory, or prevent its being single unto God, however precious or valuable it may seem, has to be watched against, for its tendency is to hurry us on in the downward road. Where the eye is single, the whole body is full of light; and therefore every evil is detected, every hindrance to the affections being fixed simply and undividedly on God.
It is not then from any uncertainty about God's love, but from the certainty of being in the desert, that we are to "fear" and to "labour." The saint knows that this is a "dry and thirsty land, where no water is": bring him into God's presence, and his soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, it is made to drink of the river of His pleasures. Redemption from Egypt brings into the desert. If we have not God there, we have nothing. There is nothing in this wide world, or of it, which can refresh the new man, any more than there is in heaven to satisfy the old. Should we lose sight of God's eye and hand, we have nothing but our own folly and the desert sands around us. One may say to a saint, The rest is pleasant at the end -- Ah! he replies, it is not enough for me to know that by-and-by I shall be with God; I have rest in God now, I know God now, I enjoy God's presence now, I cannot be satisfied without having God as a present portion, and I exceedingly dread anything that would come in between me and God. While the eye is fixed on God, and the soul is resting on Him, the ways, and not the end only, are in our hearts, and become to us channels of communion with Him.
Everything, dear friends, proves to us that our rest is not here. Fearing, because I am in the desert with a heart prone to depart from God, is not rest. Having to conflict with Satan is not rest. Labour is not rest. "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God." Then there is also the diligence and activity of the new man in its own portion. It is of real importance for our joy, that we should be diligent in our own portion. The church needs to know that it has its own proper portion, its own peculiar sphere of labour. "Much food is in the tillage of the poor; but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment." When we are poor in spirit, and are labouring to enter into God's rest, there is a reality found to be in the riches which are in Christ Jesus, that many a saint has no conception of. Have we not a sphere in which our life has its portion? The men of this world have their own pursuits, they have that which occupies and engages them; and has the life of God in us no resources to strengthen it, no riches in Christ to feed on? -- Yes, "We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle." We have a sphere in which the divine life communicated to us can exercise its own faculties, and find its own resources. The church has its own joys, its own interests, its own treasures, its own sphere of life, its own field for the affections, its own topics -- its own world, in short, in which there is fruit unto God. Have you, dear reader, consciously this portion, and is it the delight of your soul to search out therein the riches of Christ? the goodness that is in God? All that I have yet got of Christ's riches, is only in order that I may become the more enriched, a means by which to attain those riches which are unsearchable.
This holy labour, in searching out the riches that are in Christ, keeps us in the lively sense of what is ours in Him, and therefore makes all else worthless. Having the soul fixed on Christ will enable us to resist temptation and sin. It is not so much by thinking of the object that may be a temptation to us, that we shall get strength; it is not in letting our minds dwell on it, even though it be with the effort to resist it. Our privilege is to be occupied with Christ, and thus obtain the victory. Our liberty is to be no longer, and never, subject to sin -- a liberty to serve God without hindrance of the flesh. I do not want liberty to the flesh, but liberty to the new man; and that is to do my Father's will. If anything could have taken away the liberty of the Lord Jesus, when on earth (which, of course, was impossible), it would have been this, His being prevented doing the will of His Father.
It may not perhaps sound like privilege to talk of "fear" and "labour" but it really is so. And because we fail so much in these things, it is also a blessed privilege to know that God searches the heart and deals with the conscience, that "all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." If we do not judge ourselves, God will judge us. But "when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world."
Is it not a comfort to the soul that really loves holiness to know that God will come and sweep the house, lest there should be a single thing left there to offend His eye, or hinder us from walking in the light in which He dwells? Grace emboldens the saint to say, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." What amazing confidence! And God does search us, and that by the light of the word. He shews us the evil by the word. This is the use the Spirit makes of the word: "For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, 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," verse 12. We are brought into God's presence; we have, as it were, God speaking to us. He searches my heart even in the sweetest testimonies of His grace: and then, having discovered to me the evil, does He speak about it in judgment, as that which is imputed to me as sin? No! He says, Here is something not in accordance with My love, something that does not satisfy My love.
If we have neglected to judge ourselves by God's word, there may be something more needful in the way of discipline; but, still, it is our comfort and consolation that we "have to do" with God. Perhaps, for instance, we have been seeking rest here, and have at last well-nigh settled down, and found a home in the wilderness. Then God begins to work in uprooting us again; unless indeed He sees it needful to leave us to ourselves for awhile, in order that, by stumbling, our consciences may be awakened.
If there are circumstances that try and perplex our hearts, let us just say, It is God with whom I "have to do"; and what is He about with me? The moment the heart is brought into the recognition of God's presence, all is done -- it submits. The soul finds itself in communion with Him about the circumstances. All is peace.
It is not rest to be searched and tried. Rest, blessed be God, is not to be our portion here. His holiness will not let us rest where there is sin; His love will not let us rest where there is sorrow. There "remaineth a rest" for us, His own rest -- God's rest. There will be neither sin, nor trouble, nor sorrow, in God's rest. There will be Himself there. And we shall rest in Him.
If we did but know a little more of the comfort and joy of drinking into the fulness of God's love, we should feel present circumstances to be as nothing. Nay, if we entered a little more into His purpose toward us, we should say, Let Him deal with us, let Him chasten us, let Him uproot us as He will, so that we have but full fellowship with His love.
Oh, let us not be satisfied with small portions of blessing -- low measures, low enjoyments; let us press forward, let our eyes look right onward; let us seek, through the power of the Spirit, after the realisation of all that is ours in Jesus.
Genesis 24
In Abraham, as being the depositary of the promises of God to the patriarchs, we find the fundamental principles of the believer. Abraham having offered up his son Isaac, and having received him back, this act gives us the type of the resurrection of Jesus, who becomes, like Isaac, heir of all the goods of His Father. Rebekah, type of the church, is called to be the bride of Isaac risen. Afterwards in Jacob we have the typical history of the Jewish people.
In Abraham we have the principle of man's relationship with God, pure grace without law. Hagar is introduced as a figure of the law coming in. Isaac, raised from the dead in figure, shews us Christ, the Head, having accomplished His work, and being in the position to maintain all the results of the divine counsels.
In this chapter Abraham sends Eliezer to seek a wife for Isaac. This represents the Holy Spirit sent by the Father to seek the church, "the bride, the Lamb's wife." It is not Isaac who goes to look for a bride. No more does Christ return to this earth to choose a church for Himself. Rebekah must leave her country and come to the land of promise. In this chapter we see the features of the Holy Spirit's work, and how a soul is conducted under His guidance. That is what we are about to see in Eliezer and Rebekah.
Abraham, having become old, says to the eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, "Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh: and I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell," verse 1, 2. The first thing which is presented to us here is Eliezer, who has the superintendence of all the goods of his master. He is not the heir -- the son is the heir. Thus the Holy Spirit has the disposal of all things. He takes of the things of Christ and shews them unto us, that is, to the church. "But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac. And the servant said unto him, Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou camest? And Abraham said unto him, Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again," verse 4. It is impossible that there should be any relation between Christ risen again and this world. Isaac does not go for Rebekah, but she must come to him. Abraham gives directions to his servant. Thus the first thing is to be directed by the word of God. Instead of making further inquiries, Abraham's servant makes ready and goes off to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor, with no other information; verse 9-11.
It is important that we should act in the same manner. Natural wisdom can form a judgment up to a certain point, but it takes the soul away from the presence of God, even when we are doing things according to God. If we begin to deliberate, there is hesitation: we take counsel of flesh and blood. The first thing is to put ourselves in the presence of God; without that there is neither wisdom nor power; whereas, placed in the path of blessing, we get from Him all the intelligence which we shall need. We observe this in the journey of Abraham's servant.
Eliezer says, "O Lord God of my master Abraham." He does not say "my God." The promises had been made to Abraham, and God had revealed Himself as the God of Abraham. Here the servant shews himself in entire dependence; and we find him in the path of promise, not exalting himself, but acting according to the counsels of God in entire dependence, and not pretending to have anything, except where God had placed the blessing; for the promises had been made to Abraham. For us this blessing is in Christ, and there is the answer to our requests; nor do we desire to obtain anything save where God has put His blessing, namely, in the path of obedience to the faith.
Eliezer addresses the God of his master Abraham, praying him to favour his master: "O Lord, let it come to pass that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also, let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shewed kindness unto my master." (O Lord, thou must act, and I must know by that the one whom thou hast designed to be the wife of thy servant Isaac; the one who will do these things will be the one whom thou hast chosen.) "And it came to pass, before he had done speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder. And the damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her: and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up. And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water of thy pitcher. And when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking. And she hasted, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels. And the man wondering at her held his peace."
Why any doubt? Why does the servant hesitate, since his request has obtained such an answer? Here is the reason. Whatever may be the apparent manifestation of the hand of God, there is a positive rule in the word to which the Christian must pay attention, and which he must not neglect, because of his weakness in discerning what is of God. Faith looks to the power of God, but judges all by the word; for God must act according to His word; and the servant, being in communion with God, ought to act in this thought; and even when there may be signs, he should decide nothing until the will of God be clear according to His word. He must be able to say, This is indeed according to God.
"And it came to pass, as the camels had done drinking, that the man took a golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets, for her hands, often shekels weight of gold; and said, Whose daughter art thou? tell me, I pray thee; is there room in thy father's house for us to lodge in? And she said unto him, I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bare unto Nahor. She said moreover unto him, We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in."
God had perfectly answered the desire of Abraham. Eliezer, for his part, sees that he has been heard. Before going farther, before even entering the house, inasmuch as he had recognised the intervention of God in the whole of this business, he bowed himself and worshipped the Lord, and said, "Blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth: I being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master's brethren."
We see the same thing in Daniel; he betakes himself to prayer with his companions; and when Daniel has received the revelation of the dream, before presenting himself before the king who had commanded that he should come, he blesses God for having revealed to him that which the king wanted to know. It is always thus when God is in our hearts; we feel that it is He who is acting, and we thank Him.
"And the damsel ran and told them of her mother's house these things. And Rebekah had a brother, and his name was Laban: and Laban ran out unto the man, unto the well. And it came to pass when he saw the earrings and bracelets upon his sister's hands, and when he heard the words of Rebekah his sister, saying, Thus spake the man unto me, that he came unto the man, and, behold, he stood by the camels at the well. And he said, Come in, thou blessed of the Lord; wherefore standest thou without? for I have prepared the house, and room for the camels."
Laban and Bethuel, after having heard Abraham's servant narrate the circumstances, acknowledge that the thing proceeds from the Lord, and say, "We cannot speak unto thee bad or good," verse 50. Thus, if in the circumstances of our Christian life we act in entire dependence on God, He will make our way plain, and will even soften our enemies, on account of the dependence on Him in which we live. Because we have set the Lord before us, He will be always at our right hand.
If I have asked anything of God, and have received His answer, I then act with assurance, with the conviction that I am in the path of God's will; I am happy and contented. If I meet with some difficulty, this does not stop me; it is only an obstacle which faith has to surmount. But if I have not this certainty before I begin, I am in indecision, I know not what to do. There may be a trial of my faith, or it may be that I ought not to do what I am doing. I am in suspense, and I hesitate; even if I am doing the will of God, I am not sure about it, and I am not happy. I ought therefore to be assured that I am doing His will before I begin to act.
Observe, in passing, that God disposes all things according to the desire of Eliezer. This is what necessarily happens to all those who have their delight in the Lord. All the wheels of God's providence go in the way of His will which I am carrying out. The Holy Spirit, by the word, gives me the knowledge of His will. This is all that I want. God causes that all things should contribute to the accomplishment of His will. If, by spiritual intelligence, we are walking according to God, He assists us in the carrying out of His will, of His objects. There is need of this spiritual discernment, that it may abound in us in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." I know not whither He will lead me, but this is the step I must take to proceed in the path in which I have to walk.HOW TO KNOW THE WILL OF THE FATHER+
I WILL GUIDE THEE WITH MINE EYE
"THE SPIRIT, NOT OF FEAR, BUT OF POWER"
FAITH FURNISHED FOR THE EVIL DAY
THOUGHTS ON THE EXPERIENCE OF ABRAHAM AND OF JACOB+
THE FAILURE OF THE SONS OF AARON
THE ALTAR OF ABRAHAM
THE SUFFERINGS AND THE PRAISES OF CHRIST
SIFTED AS WHEAT; OR, SIMON PETER
THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID
THE HEART OF CHRIST ABOUT HIS OWN, POURED FORTH INTO THE HEART OF THE FATHER
GOD'S REST, THE SAINT'S REST
THE CALL OF THE BRIDE