It is remarkable how the Lord, when He has led us a little way by faith in simplicity of dependence on Him, provides for the exigency of circumstances which the failings of men produce around us, by the intervention of His gracious loving-kindness and guidance. He thereby teaches us to depend on Him for circumstances, as well as for ourselves; and keeping us (the great position of truth) in continual dependence, that we may in our feebleness learn the fullness of His resources, and the faithfulness of His love; His watchful care thus to keep us leaning on it, our only security from the power of selfishness and evil. Men, in all circumstances, shrink from the sense of dependence—dependence upon God. It requires faith; they are willing to trust upon man present, not upon God to their eyes absent; though a thing to be learned—the great lesson of the Christian dispensation—the character of all sanctity. It is true of righteousness in the Christian dispensation, and of course therefore ever in truth; and it is true in every circumstance of individual life, and of the necessities of the church.
The book of Numbers, the history of the Israelites, is a lesson of this—a lesson of faith. We get out of
Egypt, not knowing perhaps how, whither, or where we are going, only that we are leaving Egypt. But when Canaan is our constant hope, the wilderness is our constant way. Whether our journey be long or short, of vigor of attainment, or of self-earned weariness of unbelief, it is still through the wilderness. And God is there with us teaching us faith, teaching us to depend upon God, where there is nothing else to depend upon. There may be green spots from Him Who gives rivers in the wilderness; yea from our own souls rivers may flow, fed from the Rock that never fails. At the commandment of the Lord we may journey, at the commandment of the Lord we may rest awhile. Manna may daily surround our camp, surely fed every morning's early dawn; but we are still in the wilderness, in entire dependence upon God, learning to enjoy in the well-taught lesson of whence the enjoyment really comes. The losing the sense of this was the very mark of guilt for the Israelite in the land. A Syrian ready to perish was their constant confession in their faith, when they brought the first-fruits of that good land, a land of valleys, and watered with the dew of heaven, a land where the Lord's eyes continually were. This is our continual failing in the service of the church, namely, in the sense of entire dependence. There is nothing so hard to the human heart as constant dependence; when faith fails, we constantly find out where we are. It is the wilderness or God: nothing is so foolish as self-dependence; for in very deed it is God or the wilderness. Thus it is in the righteous position of the church's exigence: apt to loathe the light food, but conducted ever of God.
But there is another state of things far worse than this: when Babylon has carried the body of the people away, the reluctance of the residue to stay in dependence of faith, and their determination to go down into Egypt for help, where judgment would surely overtake them. Such is the continual tendency of the human heart, such help is the church therefore continually seeking. But the church is not of the world, even as Christ is not of the world. And how is Christ not of the world? Surely in spirit and in character He was not of it, as an evil world, unholy, opposite to God. When His spotless excellency passed through it, it was unscathed, though passing through every scene that wearies, that bows down our frail and feeble hearts. But it was with other thoughts also that Jesus is not of the world, and so said He of His disciples. He was not of it, but of heaven, the Lord from heaven; and we are not of it, but from thence, associated with Him Who was holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and is now made higher than the heavens, now in manifested association (i.e., to faith), as the object of it there, in the accomplishment of what forms the dispensation in the heavens. The founding of the dispensation upon the accomplishment of the exaltation of its Head is of the highest importance, because it is the ground of ascertained righteousness and its extent, and the seal of the character of the whole dispensation. It belongs, as being rejected in its Head from the world, to the heavenlies.
But it is not merely in the result of the treatment of the Lord, and His being glorified, that the dispensation had such a character, and held such a place. In the purpose of God it had no other place. It was the secret of God hidden from ages and generations, and formed an extraordinary break in the dispensations, to the rejection for their unbelief of the proper earthly people of God, a forming out of the earth but not for it, a body for Christ; a heavenly people associated with Him in the glory in which He should be and should reign, when the full lime was come, over the earth, in those times of restitution which should come from the presence of the Lord. A system forming no part of the earthly system, though carried on through the death of Christ in the forming of its members in it, but that when all things are gathered together in one Christ, in the dispensation of the fullness of times, these should be associates of His glory, in whom it and the riches of His grace should be shown, given them in Christ Jesus before the world began, according to the gift of the Father; a purpose formed for Christ's especial and personal glory before the worlds, and kept secret till the time of His sending down the Spirit after the actual glory was accomplished, after He had entered in risen manhood into the glory which He had with the Father before the world was.
The church has sought to settle itself here, but it has no place on the earth. It may show forth heavenly glory here according to that given to it; hut it has no place here, only in glory with Christ in heavenly places at His appearing. We, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.
This subject, as to the special distinctness of the dispensation, has been treated of in a former number, in an article under the title of “The Secret of God"; and therefore I do not enter into it at large here. I believe it to be the most important point for the church to consider now. Looked at as an earthly dispensation, it merely fills up (in detailed exercise of grace) the gap in the regular earthly order of God's counsels made by the rejection of the Jews On the covenant of legal prescribed righteousness, in the refusal of the Messiah; till their reception again under the new covenant in the way of grace on their repentance. But though making a most instructive parenthesis, it forms no part of the regular order of God's earthly plans, but is merely an interruption of them, to give a fuller character and meaning to them. As to the thing introduced, we are called to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is not the place or time of His glory. Our calling therefore is not at all here; but when Christ Who is our life shall appear, we also shall appear with Him in glory. Ministration upon earth is merely to this purpose. The moment there is a minding of earthly things, there is enmity to the cross of Christ; for “our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.” The system was a system of derived earthly authority, and, while the church was among them simply, it never lost its earthly character entirely. It was open at any time to the return of the Lord, and was formed upon the order of derivative authority from Him when He had not yet ascended into glory, though it was accompanied by the Spirit which enabled them to testify to His ascended glory. But they were Jews, and they maintained the character of the earthly system so far as it was associated with the risen Savior, the hope of Israel; for that which was identified with the resurrection of Christ was the “sure mercies of David.”
Thus we find the Lord telling them, “But when the Comforter is come, Whom I will send unto you from the Father, He shall testify of Me; and ye also shall bear witness of Me, because ye have been with Me from the beginning.” Accordingly we find the eleven choosing Jewishly by lot, before the descent of the Holy Ghost from heaven, the Witness of the glory, one to be a witness with them of the resurrection; one who companied with them all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among them. So in the sermon to those who came together on hearing of the tongues, we read, “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are witnesses;” and then he uses the descent of the Holy Ghost as the Witness of His exaltation. Again in the sermon in Solomon's porch, “Whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses,” and then goes on with a sermon purely Jewish. In Acts 5:2222But when the officers came, and found them not in the prison, they returned, and told, (Acts 5:22) the double witness is directly referred to and distinguished. So after the resurrection the Lord breathed into His disciples the Spirit of God, saying, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins ye remit,” &c. Subsequently they received the Holy Ghost, the Witness of exalted glory.
(To be continued.)