Family Character and Family Religion
John Gifford Bellett
Table of Contents
Family Character and Family Religion: Family Character
"And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees." Gen. 11:26-28.
FAMILY CHARACTER
We learn from Scripture that the family of Shem had become very corrupt in the days of Terah, the 6th or 7th from Shem; they were serving false gods. But the power of the Spirit and the call of the God of glory visited the ear and the heart of Abram, the son of Terah, and separated him from that corruption.
We also know that a godly influence extended itself from this in the family. Terah the father, Sarah the wife, and Lot the nephew, join Abram in this, and they all leave the land of Mesopotamia together. Abram's brother Nahor, however, did not come within this influence. This is to be much observed, for the like of it we may witness every day. One of the family becomes first the subject of divine power, and then family religion, or the knowledge of the Lord in the household, spreads itself, but some remain uninfluenced.
We know that each quickened soul must be the object of the effectual drawings of the Father (see John 6:44, 45) but I speak of the history or manifested character; and, as we have seen, Nahor's household remains unmoved in this day of visitation. He and his wife continue in Mesopotamia, and thrive there. Children are born to them; goods and property increase. They pursue an easy and respectable life, but they do not grow in the knowledge of God, and bear no testimony, or but an indistinct one.
The character of Nahor's family was thus formed. They were not in gross darkness and corrupt like the descendants of Ham in Canaan, among whom Abram had now gone to sojourn. They had a measure of light derived from their connection with Terah and Abram, and as descendants of Shem; but all that was sadly dimmed by the cherished principles of the world from which they had refused to separate themselves, and a family character and standing were thus formed.
This is serious! and of daily occurrence among us, and of needed application to our consciences.
We lose sight of this family for a time as they are not the direct object of the Spirit's notice; but being connected with Abram, in process of time tidings about them reach Abram in the distant place of his pilgrimage (chapter 22).
Bethuel was the son of Nahor—one of his many sons, rather, and the one most brought into view. He had flourished in the world, and though perhaps a man of little energy or character himself, had a son named Laban who evidently knew how to manage his affairs and to advance himself advantageously in life. He seems, as we say, to have known the value of money, for the sight of gold could open his mouth with a very hearty and religious welcome even to a stranger (chapter 24). Here we reach a period in the history of this family which is chiefly to be considered.
A fresh energy of the Spirit is about to visit it. As I have already observed, this family is not in the gross darkness of the Canaanites, nor in the idolatrous condition of Terah's house (see Josh. 24:2) when the God of glory called Abram. They had been brought into a certain measure of light, and within a certain standing, by profession, as Abram's act and word seem to allow (Gen. 24:4). Thus the Spirit's testimony had put this household in some sense apart from the dark state of the men of the world, and it becomes us seriously to notice the nature of that visitation of the Spirit, for it will be found to be a separating power or visitation. As the call of the God of glory had before disturbed the state of things in Terah's house, so now the mission of Eliezer disturbed the state of things in Bethuel's house. Abram had been separated from home and kindred, and so is Rebecca now to be. It leaves the serious impression that a respectable professing family may need to be visited by the same energy of the Spirit as a more worldly or idolatrous family.
It is a disturbing or separating power of God which now comes into this family—not simply a comforting or edifying power. The ministry of Eliezer (God's servant, as well as Abram's) came to Bethuel's house to draw Rebecca out of it, and to lead on that very journey which two generations before the God of glory had led Abram. I judge that there is a lesson in this which is much to be pondered. A professing, decent family have to be aroused, and a fresh act of separation produced in the midst of it.
But there is another lesson in this history to which I would call your attention.
Rebecca comes forth at the call of Abram's servant, but a character had previously been formed, as it is with us all, more or less, before we are converted. The separating call and power of the Lord is answered, but it finds us of a certain character, in a certain complexion of mind. It finds us, it may be, as Cretians (Titus 1), or as brothers and sisters of Laban, or the like. Character and mind derived from nature, from education, or from family habits, we shall take with us after we have been born of the Spirit, and carry in us from Mesopotamia to the house of Abram.
It is serious, as I observed before, that a respectable professing family is visited by a separating, and not merely by an edifying, energy of the Spirit; and serious it is that with the quickening or converting power of the Spirit, the force of early habits and education, or family character, will cling still. The story of Rebecca reads to us these serious lessons.
I need only briefly speak of what her way was in the further stages of it. It is a well-known story, sadly betraying what we may call the family character. Laban, her brother with whom she had grown up and who was evidently the active self-important one in his father's house, was a subtle, knowing, worldly man. And the only great action in which Rebecca was called to take part gives occasion to her exercising the same principles. In the procuring of the blessing for her son Jacob we see this Laban-leaven working mightily. The family character sadly breaks out then. The readiness of nature to act and take its way shows itself very busily. Her mind was too little accustomed to repose in the sufficiency of God, and too much addicted to calculate and to lean its hopes on its own inventions.
What have we to do then but to watch against the peculiar tendency and habit of our own mind to rebuke nature sharply, that we may be sound or morally healthful in the faith (Titus 1:13), not to excuse this tendency of our nature, but rather the more to suspect it and mortify it for His sake who has given us another nature.
These lessons we get from the story of this distinguished woman. Beyond this, her way is not much tracked by the Spirit. Was it that He was grieved with her, and leaves her unnoticed? At any rate she reaps nothing but disappointment from the seed she had sown. No good comes of her schemes and contrivances, but the reverse. She loses her favorite, Jacob, and never sees him after her own schemes and contrivances ended in his long exile.
But there is this further; Jacob got his mind formed by the same earliest influence. He was all his days a slow hearted, calculating man. His plan in getting the birthright first, and then the blessing; his confidence in his own arrangements, rather than in the Lord's promise, when he met his brother Esau; and his lingering at Shechem, and settling there instead of pursuing a pilgrim's life in the land like his fathers; all this betrays the nature and the working of the old family character.
What need have we to watch the early seed sown in the heart! Yea, to watch the early or late seed which we are helping to sow in others' hearts! For the details of this history warn us of such things still.
The birth of Esau and Jacob is given us at the close of chapter 25, and as they grow up to be boys, occasion arises to let us look in at the family scene, which is truly humbling.
This was one of the families of God then on the earth—nay, the most distinguished, in which lay the hopes of all blessing to the whole earth, and where the Lord had recorded His name.
But what do we see? Isaac the father had dropped into the stream of human desires; he loved his son Esau because he ate of his venison! Esau, as a child of the family, was entitled to the care and provision of the house, and Isaac and Rebecca surely gave him all that, together with their parental love; but for Isaac to make him his favorite because he ate of his venison, this was sad and evil indeed. Do we not in this see some further illustration of our subject? Isaac had been reared tenderly. He had never been away from the side of his mother, the child of whose old age he was. His education perhaps had relaxed him too much, and he appears before us as a soft, self-indulgent man.
But oh what sad mischief opens to our view in all this family scene! Are we saying too much, that one parent was catering to nature in one of the children, and the other to the other? Isaac's love of venison may have encouraged Esau in the chase, as Rebecca's cleverness, brought from her brother's house in Padan-aram, seems to have formed the mind and character of her favorite Jacob.
Oh, what sorrow and cause of humiliation is here! Is this a household of faith? Is this a God-fearing family? Yes, children of promise and heirs of His kingdom are these: Isaac, Rebecca, and Jacob.
At another time and in other actions they delight and edify us. See Isaac in the greater part of Chapter 26; his conduct is altogether worthy of a heavenly stranger on the earth; suffering, he threatens not, but commits himself to Him who judges righteously. He suffers and takes it patiently; and his altar and his tent witness his holy, unearthly character. So with Rebecca in chapter 24. In faith she consents to cross the desert alone with a stranger because her heart was set upon the heir of the promises, leaving home and kindred, "forgetting her father and her father's house." But here in chapter 27, what shame fills the scene, and we blush and are confounded that heirs of promise and children of God could so carry themselves!
But, alas! the heart is not only base and corrupt, it is daring also, taking its naughtiness even into the sanctuary, as the close of this story shows.
The word to Aaron, long after this, was, "Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation." Lev. 10:9. For nature was not to be animated in order to wait on the service of God. Nature was not to be raised, or set in action, by its food, for the fulfilling of the duties of the sanctuary; strong drink might exhilarate and give ebullition to animal spirits, but this was not the qualification of a priest.
But even into such a mischief as this, Isaac seems to have been betrayed. "Take, I pray thee," said he to Esau, "thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison; and make me savory meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die."
He was going to do the last religious act of a patriarchal priest, and he calls (as for wine and strong drink) for the food of mere nature to animate and fill him for the service of conferring God's blessing! What abomination!
We may all be conscious that much of nature soils our holy things; much of the excitement of the flesh may be mistaken for the work of the Spirit. We may be aware of this in the places of communion, and to our sorrow; we confess it as evil, and weakness, and watch against it; but to prepare for this is sad abomination.
We know full well the guile that Rebecca and Jacob practiced in this scene. Nothing comes of this subtlety and fleshliness. The holiness of the Lord lays it all in ashes. Isaac loves his Esau; Rebecca never sees Jacob again, for her promised "few days" were an exile of twenty years, and the calculating supplanter finds himself in the midst of toils, and an alien from his father's house for a long and dreary season. All is disappointment, and rebuked by the holiness of the Lord.
But it remains for us to see grace assuming its high, triumphant place and attitude. Its holiness is established thus by the Lord with great decision, setting aside all advantages which sin had promised itself; and then divine grace reigns.
In the great mystery of redemption, grace takes its triumphant place in the promise that the Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head; but there is also the full execution of all the decrees of holiness against the sin, for death came in as was threatened, and penalties fell on the man, and on the woman, and a curse upon the serpent. So here: Isaac loses his purpose touching Esau; Rebecca has to part with Jacob; and Jacob himself, instead of getting the birthright and the blessing in his own way, has to go forth a penniless exile from the place of his inheritance and the scene of all his promised enjoyments. The only wages of sin is death; but grace takes its high place and shines through Jehovah's burning holiness.
Even the misery to which his sin had reduced the object of God's grace, sets off its glory. When Abram's servant had of old gone forth on a like errand (chapter 24) he had camels and attendants to make his journey across this very desert honorable and pleasant. But now the son and heir for whom the honor of the house and the joys of the marriage were preparing, has to lie down alone, unfriended, uncared for, unsheltered, the stones of the place his only pillow. But grace, which turns the shadow of death into the morning, is preparing a glorious rest for him; he listens to the voice of wondrous love, and he is shown worlds of light in this place of solitude and darkness. He dreams and sees the high heavens open to him in that dark and barren spot on which he then lay, and he hears the Lord of heaven at the top of this mystic scene speaking to him in words of promise only! He sees himself, though so erring, so poor, and so vile, thus associated with an all-pervading glory full of present mercies and consolations. The holiness of grace still leaves him a wanderer; but the riches of grace will tell him of present consolation and of future sure glories. But this has borne me a little beyond my immediate subject.
There is then such a thing as family character; and the recollection of this, when we are dealing with ourselves, should make us watchful and jealous over all our peculiar habits and tendencies; and when we are dealing with others it should make us considerate and of an interceding spirit, remembering that there is a force of early habit and education working more or less in all of us. But let us not forget that if a certain family character clings to us, or habits with which birth has connected us, so are we debtors to exhibit that character with which our birth and education in the heavenly family have since connected us.
In the 8th chapter of John the Lord reasons upon this ground, that our sonship, or birth, or family connections, are to be determined by our character or doings. "If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham." Thus we see the necessity of our bearing the character of that family into which the new birth introduces.
But we are exhorted also to the same thing—to take after our Father's character in the cultivation of all virtues. The Lord says, "Be ye perfect"; and the Apostle takes up the same thought in pressing the duty of love and forgiveness, "Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children." Eph. 5:1 (N. Trans.).
Oh then that we may be set on the cultivation of this family character! Let the old man go down and the new man rise and assert his place in us! Let the character we have gathered from natural ties or natural habits be watched against, and the character of our heavenly birth be cherished and expressed to His praise who has begotten us again out of the death in which we lay.
Family Character and Family Religion: Family Religion
Among the sons of Noah, religion was connected with Shem rather than with his brothers, and from him came the separated people.
In the progress of a few generations, however, this religious family became corrupt; for in less than three hundred years (and we know not how much earlier) we find them serving other gods (Josh. 24:2). This is a common history even to this day. Families, as well as churches, are seen in a sadly degenerate and corrupt condition, though once they were known for their zeal and service.
The Spirit of God, however, in the sovereignty of grace, visits a son of Terah, of the 8th generation from Shem. The call of the God of glory came to Abram and separated him from those corruptions, and from country and kindred and his father's house, to fashion him as a new piece of workmanship for the Lord (Acts 7:2).
Abram, it appears, made this call known to his family and, as is often seen to this day among ourselves, this communication has a certain influence among them. Family religion springs from this.
The power of the gospel is known at first by one member, and from thence it spreads. And the Lord would have it so. It is a bad symptom, as we may see presently, where this does not take place.
So here. Terah, the father, gets: ready. Nahor, one of his sons we may presume from the whole narrative, was not much under this influence; for he, his wife and children, all abide where they were. But Abram and his wife, and Lot (the son of Terah's deceased son Haran) set out on the divinely appointed journey. Terah, the father, apparently takes the lead (chapter 11:31).
But ere I go farther with this narrative I would ask, Was all this entirely right on Abram's part? The call had been to him. On him the energy of the Spirit had come. Within the range of that energy or influence the family, it is true, may be brought; but still, did it not belong to Abram to fill that place which divine energy had manifestly assigned him? Was there not some conferring with flesh and blood on Abram's part ere Terah was allowed to take the lead in this great movement under the Spirit of God? I rather judge that there was, and that this has to account for the delay at Haran, and for the death of Terah there, and for the putting forth of a second energy from the Lord in calling Abram from Haran (chapters 11:31; 12:1).
This is all admonitory to us. Family religion is beautiful, but family order or human claims are not to assume the rights of the Spirit. It is beautiful to see Cornelius, or any other in like circumstances, bringing his friends and kindred within that influence which was visiting his house; but if flesh and blood, or human relationship, disturb the sovereign progress of the Spirit, we may expect a halt at Haran, at the half way house, and the need of a second call-in some sense a second -to set the soul in the path of God afresh.
We may mark and distinguish these things for profit and admonition. However, under the renewed energy of the Spirit Abram renews his journey, and Sarah his wife, and Lot his orphan nephew, accompany him. It is a scene of family religion still. And in Lot we see one who was within the general or family influence. We read of no distinct call on him, or of any sacrifice from him. Not that he represents a mere professor, or one who attaches himself to the people of God for some selfish end. No; he was a "righteous man," and had a living soul that could be, and was, vexed with the wickedness of the wicked (2 Pet. 2:8). But his entrance into the household of faith expresses no energy. It was effected in a family way, as I have been observing-as a thousand cases in our own day. And good such things are. It is happy when Sarah the wife, or Terah the father, or Lot the nephew of these latter days will go along with our Abrams. This would not be, we know, without the drawing and teaching of the Father. And Lot was as surely elect of God as Abram. But the energy of the call of God is not manifested in him as in Abram-distinctions which we cannot fail to mark continually. It was a personal thing characteristically with Abram; it was a family thing characteristically with Lot. And according to all this, in the very first scene in which Lot was called to act in a personal or independent way, we see his weakness.
Abram gives him the choice of the land. And he makes a choice. Now it is not merely in his choosing the goodliest that our hearts condemn him, but in his making a choice at all. In every respect Abram had title to have the first choice, as we speak. He was the elder, both in years and relationship. He was principal in all that action which had drawn them to this distant land, and Lot was but, as it were, attached to him. Noble it was in Abram, and generous, in surrendering his right to his younger. But Lot was insensible to all this, and he undertakes to make the choice, and then (naturally in the course of such a beginning) he chooses on an entirely worldly principle. He takes the well-watered plain for his flocks and his herds, although that took him near the defiled city (chapter 13).
This first trial of Lot is thus a painful witness against him. It argues the weakness in which faith or the kingdom of God had been held in his soul. Abram's way was very different, for the voice of the God of glory had been powerfully heard by him, detaching him from that world to which Lot was still adhering. And all this has language in our ears to which we are to take heed.
It is soon discovered what a disappointing world Lot was choosing. The well-watered plain soon becomes a field of battle; and had it not been for Abram, or Abram's God, Lot would have lost his liberty there, and all his possessions.
But it is still more sad that this first disappointment does not free his heart from its unholy attachment. He takes up with Sodom a second time, till he is forced to remove by the hand of God Himself. When the watered plain became a field of slaughter, and Lot still refused to learn its character and to leave it, he must learn it by its becoming burning heaps in the day of the Lord.
Melancholy catastrophe! Shameful end of an earthly-minded believer! What a voice for us in all this! Here was a saving "so as by fire"-a running out of a house in flames, an inglorious departure from the world! We may lay the admonition to heart, and watch against the first look toward the watered plains of Sodom.
In the whole of this we indeed get great lessons, whether of comfort or of warning. It tells us that family religion is a beautiful thing, and that true godliness may begin in that way as in Abram's house. But it admonishes each one of us to take good care to cultivate godliness in a very personal way, lest our religion have the weakness of a mere general or family influence, and in a little season leave us stranded by the way.
Under Abram, family religion, as I was observing, did spread, but not under Lot; for his wife continued with the mind of Sodom in her, and is made a beacon light to warn passengers on their way, to this hour. His two daughters defile themselves and become the parents of two such corrupt seeds as are under special prohibition as to any place in God's house (Deut. 23:3), and his sons-in-law, when he spoke to them of judgment, profanely thought that he was a trifler or a fool.
Here surely is serious matter for our souls to consider. If our religion or profession of Christ have but sprung up under the influence of a family atmosphere, we have warning here to watch and cultivate personal godliness in holy fear of the weakness of such a plant.
But again, if our profession of Christ has not, as with Abram spread an influence in the family, we have great reason to be humbled, and to fear that it is because, like Lot, we have not in our own person the faith in its separating and victorious power.
Lessons of serious and holy importance on the subject of family religion are in that way read to us by this little history. It tells us that we ought to be the means of spreading the knowledge of God; and if we lack in this, there is reason to suspect the moral condition of our soul. The unerring Spirit says, "Let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another"; and as to the family's upbringing it says, "Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them up in
the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Family religion is thus honored by the Lord, but the thorough and the personal power of it is also assisted. The fathers to the children are to make known the truth (Isa. 38:19), though each one must be born again or he cannot see the kingdom of God.
It is beautiful to see the "unfeigned faith" dwelling in one generation after another of the same family, as in the grandmother Lois, the mother Eunice, and the child Timothy; but it is beautiful also to read in the third of those family generations the tears and the affections which give the full persuasion that their religion is not a mere imitative or educational one-the mere catching of a family influence-but the precious inwrought power of a kingdom which God Himself has set up in the soul.
"Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength, and His wonderful works that He hath done." (Psalm 78:3, 4).
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