The History of God's Testimony
Table of Contents
The History of God's Testimony: 1. Adam to Abel
I propose, with the Lord's help, carefully to trace the line of testimony from Adam downwards, embracing, as far as I can be assured, the state of man under each phase of testimony. I trust the attentive reader, or still more, the earnest student of the word, may be led from these pages to dwell on this wondrous subject, even how God has maintained a testimony for Himself from the beginning of man's history on the earth, That He did preserve such a testimony we may safely conclude; for though now and again it may have been reduced to a single thread, yet that thread was a golden, a divine one.
Whether it would be possible to trace the line outside revelation, I cannot determine. My business now is with the Scriptures.
There are two things which must strike every thoughtful man. First, that the Supreme Being, God, must be supremely good. Secondly, that if God be supremely good, why is man so miserable? Now if the first premise, that of God's goodness, be granted, we cannot account for the second, man's misery, on any other ground than that he is under penalty for transgression. Man in himself is in a twofold misery: he is thwarted in his moments of greatest enjoyment by the uncertainty of life- a fear which the lower animals know nothing of-and his superior intelligence, because of this felt uncertainty, imparts an additional misery to his existence; and he is; also liable at any moment to be made a prey of by Satan in a way that none of the lower animals could be. Every one admits that man must be impelled by an evil spirit more powerful than himself, or he never would commit the crimes of which he is guilty.
Scripture opens with an account of man's fall, which explains all to us fully. It presents him to us as placed in a circle of blessing where everything was suited to him; and with a suited companion. But notwithstanding all, he acts on the instigation of Satan; distrusts the love of God towards him, and incurs the penalty of disobedience. Thus the sentence of death falls on him, which entirely explains why man, notwithstanding God's goodness, is in so miserable a plight, uncertain of his life, and exposed to the power of Satan. He has yielded to Satan's representation of God, and has brought judgment on himself as well as placed himself in subjection to the enemy whom he obeyed. While surrounded in the garden of Eden with everything that his heart could enjoy, and with all that the kindness and love of God could group together; then and there, in the very enjoyment of all these indications of God's thought about him, Satan suggests that God has not heart to advance man's interests as He might according to His power. The power he admits, but the very admission is only to enforce the denial of God's heart to use His power for man's advancement. Man adopts this impression, acts on it, and thus incurs the penalty of death; while at the same time he becomes exposed to the thraldom of Satan, to whom he has lent himself without knowing the malice of the one who had beguiled his wife.
For a moment Adam was God's witness in Eden. Made in the image and glory of God, he was set in the finest group of natural blessing as God's representative on earth. Adam was at first the witness of God's purpose in man; lord over every other creature, naming them as he approved. And again in the espousal of the woman as formed from himself, as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. In both testifying of the two great circles in which our Lord will be manifested by and by as the last Adam. He sinned, and death came in, but even for the moment that be occupied this great position he prefigured and foreshadowed the last Adam, the second Man, the Lord from heaven, in whom every one of the blessings and glories forfeited by the first Adam shall be reproduced and set forth with surpassing glory and perfection.
Hence the testimony in the hands of man has a double interest for us, for we see therein, not only God setting Himself forth and maintaining an expression of Himself through fallen man on earth; but that every phase of that testimony, so feeble and imperfect as it is in the descendants of the first Adam, will be reinstated in all the greatness and might of the last Adam. What a captivating view of the purposes of God we obtain when the vision of His testimony, marred as it was in the hands of the first man, serves all the more to engage our souls with the assurance that all shall be presented anew in the power and dignity of the last Man, the Son of God! The day will come when our blessed Lord, with His Bride, will, as the center of every, blessing, set forth the glory and purpose of God in man. And in that day " the city shall have no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God doth lighten it and the Lamb is the light thereof."
But man, though fallen, and impressed with the sense of inevitable and impending death-the judgment on account of disobedience-is not abandoned by God; but on the contrary, in the greatness of His grace is sought after by Him. He addresses him, not from heaven, but in the garden, man's own abode, with those wondrous words, "Adam, where art thou?" And the avowal which this great question draws forth betrays to us man's newly-acquired relation and feeling towards God. " The voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" had made him afraid, and he had bid himself behind the trees of the garden Such was man's position now towards God. But God's thought about him is, on the other hand, most interestingly and blessedly disclosed. Distinctly and yet precisely the whole scene presents the mind of both God and man toward one another. Man, a sinner, in fear of God; his mind and heart alienated from Him; while God in the love of His heart follows the wanderer and opens out to him the purposes of His grace, even that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. This, the first intimation of the everlasting gospel to be yet preached to all the earth, is revealed to man shuddering in God's presence, and yet with tastes nurtured in a scene of the highest natural bliss, but now checked and clouded by the doom of death under which he is righteously placed. The more we are able to comprehend the mixture of taste, enjoyment, and disappointment which enter into the nature of man, the more do we see what a complex being be is; and thus are we prepared for understanding him, which is a difficulty, unless we combine the elements which comprise his nature. Adam is now set on entirely new ground, the ground of redemption and grace, and is presented to us as a witness of the same. God details to him His purpose, and he calls his wife's name " Eve," " the mother of all living," as manifesting his faith in God's grace now unfolded to him. He thus expresses his clear conviction that life will come where death was in crushing force impending. Thus the certainty of life through God's grace was given. Through the dreary cloud of judgment a ray of assured light had penetrated. Through that grace he could now speak of life, and connect her, through whom death came, with the One " who is our life." Wondrous testimony! How admirable and suited! What must have been the feelings of Adam at the moment when he called his wife's name Eve! What a rebuke to Satan! What a voice to the angels in heaven! In the presence of God condemned as a sinner and under judgment, sensible of the immense contrast which awaited him on-the earth, he had received in his soul this blessed conviction, vouchsafed to him by the grace of God and established in his heart, by the very word of God! How much the infidel loses! He cannot in any satisfactory way account for man's state. If he could but understand revelation, it would charm him by the miraculousness of its disclosures. What more fitting, what more just, what more beautiful? The one who sees the connection and scope of this revelation cannot but admit it to be the profoundest theory that was ever propounded. True, the natural mind cannot enter into its depths, because the grace of God is above it.
But, as I have said, If God be good and man be miserable, must there not be some just reason for man's misery? and must there not be some definite way in which God, as good, would retrieve man from his misery? This God does. His love has been denied by Satan, and Adam has adopted Satan's idea. But now Adam is obliged, through grace, to contradict the ideas he had accepted and acted on, while suffering the consequences of his sin. Adam believes in the love of God and calls his wife's
name " Eve." Love, the greater it is, the more distinctly does it act for me when I most want it. Adam at once laid hold on the life which his condition so required from the love of God. To man in his present state, there could be no real love unless life were the first expression of it. And hence, when God's love is fully revealed, it is eternal life, which is His gift through Jesus Christ our Lord. Adam, who had been the first man to distrust God, and thus, in consequence, to fall under the penalty of death, is also the first man to bear testimony that God is love, and that through His love he can call his wife " The mother of all living." She is the monumental witness of this great and glorious fact.
Hence God clothed them in skins, as a token and guarantee that He would shelter them from the shame they had drawn on themselves; and thus clothed by Him, He compels them to take their place outside the garden. Adam must enter on another scene. He had been happy and innocent in Paradise: and he had been miserable there because of sin and judgment. He had learned from God to rise by faith out of this judgment, and now, outside the garden, as clothed of God, he takes his place. What a beginning is he to the long line of witnesses! How he exemplifies God's purpose and interest in man! As head of our race how he must engage and interest us, and how we may learn from him our proper place, even as though we were beside him, or as if we had lived in his day.
We have now to behold Adam outside Paradise. On this wide earth, dressed in the skins which God had prepared for him, baffling the natural and domestic trials of an ordinary man, children being born to him, and he plodding his way for many a year as God's only witness on the whole earth. In process of time his sons grow up, and there we shall see a new testimony declared in the person of Abel, but the history of it I reserve for the next chapter.
The History of God's Testimony: 2. Abel to Noah
We should keep distinctly before our minds the place which Adam held on the earth, from God up to the mention of Abel. Adam and his wife bore on the earth a most remarkable testimony. There they were inwardly and severally conscious of their fall, but " clothed of God 1 " There is a wondrous and beautiful significance in the survey of our first parents, filling their appointed sphere in this wide earth in garments of skins made of God for them. We revere them as we realize the hand which clothed them, while we are solemnly reminded that no other band but God's could in any degree repair the disaster that had befallen them. They moved and lived as distinguished witnesses of God. No eye could light on them, but it must be occupied with the work of God for them, with which they were invested. How fully and touchingly it set forth the great standing and position to which He would eventually exalt man in Christ and by Christ! Let men or angels look at me a Christian according to the purpose of God, and their eye, as it surveys me, must be engaged with the beauty and being of Christ, by which I am and in whom I am. I am in Him who is of God to me wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption. I cannot but regard it as a most attractive and impressive sight to see Adam and Eve, in the ordinary ways of this life, consciously and manifestly clothed of God; and thus in themselves testifying on the earth of the great purpose of God in His love toward man. If this testimony had been perpetuated, what could have been more significant? And possibly it is in connection with that, according to the law of the offerings, the priest who offered the burnt-offering had the skin for his part. He was entitled to that part with which God first clothed man, indicating that he could appropriate personally the sweetness and value of the burnt-offering, which is Christ Himself.
But in process of time (or literally in " the end of days") Cain comes forth with his offering to God, thus superseding the testimony which up to this was supported by his parents. Let us note here, ere we proceed, that when the failure of one phase of testimony is consummated, and the attempt to supersede it is perpetrated as a consequence of the laxity in which the former was held then a new phase is introduced; not a revival of the old, but one which declares the truth of God's purpose apart from, and yet in keeping with, the intention couched in the old. Cain essays (and I assume it was the result of his education) to restore man in his relations with God, a very laudable desire if undertaken under the mind of Him who claimed every consideration on the part of man, who had been the offender. If I am a grievous offender against one who has every claim on me, I am bound to seek the reparation he requires, and not assume for myself what should be an adequate set off. But this latter is just what Cain did. He overlooks both the magnitude of man's offense, and the immensity of the claims which God had on man. He judges and determines with himself what he considers will be sufficient to repair the breach which is acknowledged as existing between them. Cain, I repeat, instead of being impressed with the fact that God must clothe man, and that thus alone could lie stand, screened and separated from the exposure of his fall, that his position was of such a nature that God alone could act in it, and therefore that man could not in anywise meet him as things then were; that is, simply as man in his own life and strength, for it was under judgment, and therefore positively in itself impotent to effect relief or even reprieve. Yet Cain assumes, and brings according to his own mind of the fruits of the earth an offering unto the Lord. By toil and industry, at personal cost, he succeeded in obtaining fruits from the earth which is now cursed. The very toil he endured in trying to counteract the curse, and extract from the earth fruits that would indicate that the effects of the curse had been mastered and annulled, had a voice to every one with a conscience.
Let us walk beside Cain for a moment, and catch up the idea under which he acted. Here was a man, the first-born of fallen Adam, conceiving in his own mind without co-operation or subsidy from others the idea of placing the earth and himself with it in acceptable relations with God. What an amazing scope of purpose is thus in its first and simplest form propounded! A man to conceive and attempt to set aside God's curse on the earth with the intent of placing himself and it in acceptable relations with God I View it from any side one may there is a boldness of design in it which lends an interest to it independently of the beneficent results it sought to effectuate. Cain, in his purpose and aim, gives to us in a very distinguished way the highest and best aim of the natural man. If it were but right how amiable and fine would Cain's action appear to us! He was evidently sensible of God's claim to a certain degree; he must have experienced painfully the distance in which man on the earth stood in relation to God. In a word, he was the first, and at this stage of his course, I doubt not, the brightest example of natural religion (eventually the Antichrist), he could set matters to rights; he did not deny the state of things, but not understanding anything morally of the distance between man and God, he attempts by individual toil to surmount and countervail the consequences of the penalty under which man lay, and not the penalty itself. In his act Cain embodies and exhibits the largest and fullest development of man's attempt in any age to place the earth and man in it, in such acceptability with God, that man would be owned of God as having effected such a desirable end; and hence, when the Spirit of God would delineate the characteristics of the great enemies of the Church in the latter days, He says, " They ran in the way of Cain." The scope and purpose of the apostasy in the latter days will be only on a par with that of the first human religionist. Whether as to its course and manner of action, or as to the moral feeling towards the people of God; respecting the one Jude warns us, and for the other John prepares us.
It was when this terrible and consummate purpose of man was being enacted, that Abel, the younger son of Adam, and therefore without natural title, propounds and sets forth, as taught of God, the only right and true ground on which man can ever attain to true and happy relations with God; and that, on that ground, he is sure to be in those desired relations. Abel is the witness raised up, not only to vindicate the truth of God in opposition to Cain's assertive attempts, but also to set forth to man the simple and blessed way in which God accepts the sinner. Abel acts in strict reference to the moral relations between man and God. God in His righteousness engages his soul, and man as a sinner under penalty, because of sin, is before him. He, therefore, brought of the firstlings of the flock and the fat thereof, expressing thereby the two chief points of that great sacrifice which should be henceforth offered to God by His own Son, namely, a life not chargeable-offered up vicariously-and the excellency which the fat represented, obtained through death. By this offering Abel sets forth what was due to God and incumbent on man. He was thus a true witness. He rebuked the presumption of Cain, and, at the same time, became the channel of announcing the terms on which God would resume happy relations with man; nay, accept him. " God had respect to Abel and to his offering, but to Cain and his offering be had not respect." "By the which," says the apostle, " he obtained witness that he was righteous," for he had apprehended the righteousness of God. The testimony is beautiful and distinct.
In " the end of days." I conclude when Adam was 129 years old, Cain presumtuously attempted to represent on earth what practically disavowed and superseded the testimony which, as clothed of God, his parents presented. Cain, as the first-born, had natural title to maintain the truth of God, as His witness on earth; be failed, because he overlooked the moral distance between God and man, and therefore did not comprehend what God in His righteousness required. He had no just apprehension of God morally; whereas, Abel, apprehending the righteousness of God and his own sin, offers with strict reference thereto, and is accepted. The mind of God is met, and as is always the case the moment it is, blessed be His name! He declares His acceptance of the sinner. How God signified His acceptance of Abel and his offering I cannot say, but that it was manifest enough is very plain: possibly by fire coming down from heaven; for Cain had palpable evidence of the different reception that Abel's offering met with in contrast to his own. Morally now there is the same difference only more controlling and influential. The Cains perceive easily enough that the Abels have an acceptance with which they are in no way favored, and on this account they hate and would extirpate them. " Wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous." Abel not only fully and distinctly set forth on earth the only true and perfect way of ensuring acceptance with God-vindicating God in nature, and His ways toward man and the earth, but he seals his testimony with his blood. He dies by the hand of his brother because of his acceptance with God. This was the fruit of acting righteously; for I do not act righteously unless I act according to the mind of God, and in keeping with His nature and will. How fine the testimony! May the heart travel in company with Abel, and may it covet to maintain this testimony in the most unequivocal manner though the consequences be nothing short of death; and death, too, at the hands of a brother who had assumed to repair everything.
Abel, the first martyr on earth, closes his history here in death at the hand of him against whom he witnessed for God as to the true manner of approach to God, and of acceptance as the fruit of it. If we could with any accuracy survey the scene and the testimony, and the different motives and ideas which produced such diverse actings in these two men, in the opening of the world's history, how impressive and grand it would become to us the more we dwelt on it, as a display of human religion against divine! Man does not, as a rule, deny altogether the claim of God, but he overlooks the moral side of it, and seeks to commend and render all acceptable by IMPROVEMENT. The Cains do not deny that there is need for improvement, but they rest everything on improvement. Abel, on the contrary, announces that all blessing to man comes from God through the intervention of one entirely outside himself, and therefore he is accepted; and because thus manifestly accepted of God, he is pursued with relentless hate, a hate that taketh away the life of the owner-the hatred of a murderer. The highest human religionists are, in reality, God's bitterest opponents; and in proportion as human religion is held to, so is their opposition to the divine. Abel heads the cloud of witnesses or martyrs. (The word is the same for both in Greek). He had obtained witness that he was righteous, hence he fell by the hand of his brother. What a commentary on man's goodness! and the earth which drank in his blood must answer for it. The fact of his death has a voice to man, and therefore though dead yet speaketh. Hence the Lord pronounces that, of the Jews-the earthly people rejecting Him-all the righteous blood shed upon the earth should be required: " from the blood of righteous Abel," &c. It called for judgment, and the world is oppressed with this additional judgment. Hence it is said of the blood of Jesus that it " speaketh better things than that of Abel;" for it on the contrary speaks of forgiveness.
After the death of Abel there does not arise any new order of testimony for 200 years; and then we find it in the person of Enoch; but during that interval, as we gather from Gen. 4:26, there was a faithful company who called on the Lord, or " by the name of the Lord." Growing evil compelled the faithful openly to seek the Lord and to manifest unequivocally where their hope lay. Doubtless the voice from Abel's death was not unheeded by those who feared God. To Adam and Eve is given another son after the death of Abel, and he is called Seth, in faith that God had "appointed them another seed;" so that both Cain and Abel are omitted from Adam's line: Abel because he had passed away in death, and Cain because he had forfeited his place in Adam's family-in the human family owned of God. At an interval of little more than 100 years, about the time of the birth of Seth's son Enos, men began to call on the name of the Lord; or, as the LXX. give it, " This man hoped to call on the name of the Lord." " This man" I should suppose to be Seth, and this rendering shows us how the passage was understood when the Greek translation was made (B. c. 273).
In studying the history of testimony we must be prepared to find long intervals between very distinguished witnesses, who were raised up specially to maintain the truth of God against increasing evil and assumption on the part of man, because God's principle has ever been, " when the enemy cometh in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord raiseth up a standard against it." An interval is allowed in order to prove the effects on man of any remarkable testimony, and then another phase is presented, though the former testimony is by no means superseded. Nearly 200 years have elapsed before Enoch, the seventh from Adam, is born, and he occupies the place of God's witness for 300 years. He " walked with God" for 300 years, " and he was not, for God took him." He was known as a prophet, warning of coming judgments, and in the spirit of john• in the Apocalypse, testified of the judgments coming on men, because of their growing ungodliness. From God's side he viewed the state of things on earth, and as Abel had testified how approach to God was to be obtained and acceptance known, so Enoch ix acceptance (the word " walked" is synonimous with " well-pleasing"—see Heb. 11) with God looks on the earth, and proclaims through His Spirit, in which he is himself in fellowship, what must befall man on earth, because of his departure from God. Looking from God's side and knowing in himself what was compatible with God in His holiness and truth, he saw clearly that nothing less than terrible judgment could vindicate it, even what is fully depicted in Rev. 19 His was a glorious testimony. He walked with God for 300 years and proclaimed to men the judgment which, as worthy of God, should await them. With God and for God on the earth, he passes away from it as one beyond the power of death. His testimony is sealed by the announcement, now through his translation made for the first time, even that the heavens are opened to man, that he is to have a place, an inheritance there, even as Adam in his first estate had on the earth. The seventh generation from Adam is chosen to announce the glad tidings that God will deliver from death; yea that light and incorruptibility have come even now. The supremacy of grace over the penalty of man is declared. if Abel had died at the hands of his brother because he was accepted of God, Enoch is enabled through the same grace to show himself victorious over death, as Stephen did in principle, and he " is not, for God took him." What instruction and interest does his testimony in every way convey to us!
Enoch's son, whom he named Methusalah, lived to the very year of the flood. Methuselah's son Lamech lived to within five years of it. None from
Seth down died before the translation of Enoch. We may conceive the effect that this increased light must have had on this living chain. The story of Abel was part of the history of each on earth, but the translation of Enoch presented a new and wondrous consummation to all their hopes and desires. What a revelation it must have been to those who must have felt the judgment on man, now the more aggravated since the unnatural death of Abel. Adam is now dead, but all his posterity in God's line do not pass away until after the translation. Even Adam lived to within fifty-seven years of it. What a day it was I And what strange joy it must have diffused among the godly, and what full and gracious unfoldings of His mercy for God to vouchsafe at that early day!
482 years elapsed between the translation of Enoch and the deluge. Methusalah, the son of Enoch, lives to the year of it, and Lamech, the son of Methusalah, is the father of Noah, whom he thus named in prophetic faith, which reached on to a time beyond that of which even Enoch had foretold, even the days when the earth, now cursed, should again be blessed by the Lord, and when the heavens should rule. " This same," he says (i.e., Noah, which signifies rest), " shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed." He had found nothing but toil here, and he does not, like Cain, attempt to improve the earth. He had no hope from it in its then condition, having seen the growing misery of all around him. But he had also seen the translation, the victory of God's witness not only over the earth, but over the penalty of death. He had, doubtless, hearkened to the prophetic warning of Enoch as to the coming judgments, and he is allowed to discern in the distance a happier scene beyond those judgments; a time of rest even for the cursed earth. In token of this he names his son Noah; he who was to pass through the deluge unscathed and be blessed anew in a purged earth; even as it will be with those whom Noah typified, in the days of millennial rest which will succeed the judgments which Enoch had foretold, and which that of Lamech and Noah's day had foreshadowed. Lamech did not die till within five years of the flood, and when the ark must have been well nigh completed, having, perhaps, assisted in its construction. His age is significant being 777 years; the number seven being, as we know, that used in Scripture to denote perfection; and the three sevens stand out in contrast to the three sixes (666) given in Rev. 13, as the number of the Beast-the " Man of Sin."
Lamech is properly the last before the flood and outlived all his forefathers except his father Methusalah, who, as living up to the last year, indicates, I should suppose, that the line of testimony should be unbroken to the last, and thus brings us in the year of the world to the flood, which I shall reserve for the next chapter.
THE CHURCH AT PHILADELPHIA.
"And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth, and shutteth, and no man openeth; I know thy works: behold I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie: behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly, hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."-Rev. 3:7-13.
How careful we should be in using the knowledge we gain at the hands of others, for there is danger of our using it, in ministry, as our own, in satisfying the desires of our minds! flow different is this from the thought of the apostle in speaking to Timothy: " Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee." (1 Tim. 4:16.) All that Timothy taught was to revert back on his own heart, and to be found in his own path. The delight felt by ingenuous minds of spiritual intelligence has been great at all that has been opened of the Scriptures in the past years; but the minds of teachers may be surely inclined, though taught of the Spirit, rather to multiply the setting forth the bright things which have been opened successively to their view than to regard the need of the conscience which the love of Christ was there to sustain. There is no book that has not received an enlargement, and its page a life that it never had before: at least it has not been recorded. Among others the Apocalypse presents difficulties more profound than most; but the portion from which our quotation is taken bears a simpler form, and one that is easier to illustrate from other parts of Scripture, but yet unexhausted.
In many respects the "Seven lectures on the seven churches, delivered in Davies Street," have supplied more than would content most readers; but Scripture knows no bounds in its teaching by the Spirit to the conscience, where there is a spiritual capacity to receive it.
It would be unnecessary to go far through the addresses to the churches in chapters ii., iii.; but there are two points I would observe upon: first, the sequence to be found in the addresses themselves, besides as one after another; and, secondly, the ground of the decadence of the assemblies; and then, God willing, how they apply to this particular church.
The first point I would suggest to the meditation of brethren, is whether there does not appear a succession in the state of each, as we have generally received a succession one to another. They all begin, up to Sardis, with a good and faithful state. Nor can we wonder at Thyatira receiving its meed of praise, so high and full, if we look at the corruption of Rome so faithfully delineated. What more excellent was there than her commencement, thirty of her bishops being martyrs in succession?
Sardis (to which Laodicea would have been a natural sequel, and succeeding the abuses of Thyatira,) came under correction of outward evil by the introduction of a controlling power, which was not of God and which left but little of Himself. She received another lord than Christ. She was to strengthen the things that remained. The power of worldly interference in Protestantism was now completely established in its rule in the Church, though it began with an emperor becoming a Christian. The faith that the Church should be removed, and that Christ was to come and rule the earth with His saints, had left the earth: truths which, by mercy, have been so widely restored. The failure of the recognition of the kingdom of God as to come, and to be established in the personal advent of the Lord, now bore its full fruit; and the Church, instead of being an exception to the world and the witness of the hopes of the saints, served only the order of the world as far as it might: but surely it took the sword, in principle, to perish by it. The fearful consistency of Rome in claiming power over all things, being but thus the source of the deepest religious corruption. The Church waiting in hope of the kingdom of God as the reward of her confession and path, and desirous of being with Christ, was kept free of the world, as well as of the value put on possession of it. While this faith continued, the impetus of the first works of the assembly at Ephesus continued. But they gradually failed in the works of faith as towards the Lord of glory, and in their affections towards Himself; and thus the separation that the standing of faith marked grew fainter, and the hope that belonged to it; and so the LOVE waned. It is not absolutely said that the works were His; but the divine love was, and the works began to take the character of christian beneficence. The love that looked on all those about them as heavenly strangers with themselves-and what they possessed not their own, and the mammon of unrighteousness making friends for the unseen country-was beginning to fail. The kingdom in which they were to rule and the hope of Christ, were ceasing from their spiritual vision; whose glory was the glory of the desolate of the earth, till He came. They referred their assigned duties less and less to the Lord, who should reward them in that day, because they served Him in them. The offering was less acceptable, and less accounted of, and the reward of the inheritance diminished, as He was less in view in them. All these defects continued to increase, and all that should have characterized the confession of saints continued to decline. In Smyrna there was some boast of either extension or of its embracing the great of the earth. It was to be tried therefore by fire. In Pergamos the evil becomes permanent. The Holy Ghost could not witness amidst such a state, and the felt deficiency was sought to be met by superstition (completed in Thyatira) and the filthy lucre of a Balaam spirit to establish its power. There was one sign of early declension which, I believe led to this, which is mentioned in the reprobation of the Nicolaitanes.
I see no ground for the common view of it. Could such have commenced in Ephesus? Hardly possible. But it has far more consistency with the state of the Church in considering it as the growth and claim of ministerial distinction, putting aside the place Paul saw himself in to the Church of God in 1 Cor. 3:20-23. " The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." It continued and found its way into the practice marked as the sin of Balsam. Thus the authority of Christ as Lord and the power of discipline were lost. God's assembly in, and yet out of the world, became corrupt; and how should not the calling of the Church become obscured and the heavenly calling despised?
We need not extend these observations for the purpose of drawing the attention of believers to Philadelphia.
Its first characteristic at the Lord's hand, is that He had set before her an open door. It is not the praise of the churches before Sardis, however they had fallen; but the opportunity God had given her-of what?-of return, of taking up again that which was lost in past ages. It is the last opportunity of recovery-nor is it called repentance. It is not given to Laodicea. Why is there room for the hope that such an opportunity puts before them? Because of previous grace. " Thou hast kept my WORD and not denied my NAME." The order is that of God. Keep my word-disciples indeed-knowledge of the truth again; knowing God's will-doing it-acquaintance with God. So here an open door is granted. Now, therefore, enter upon the charge my grace has given you in these last days, before the state of Sardis, closing in Laodicea, has earned final rejection of the testimony of the Church to Christ.
It is quite a mistake, that the open door is to the gospel. It is an open door to a return from a lost condition and confession. it is such an open door with His word and name, that makes such as to whom it is given to gain the place of pillars in the house of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
How sad is it to see on one side the apprehension of the exalted nature of the Church put aside the faith of the heavenly calling as a path on earth; and on the other, believers refusing to gather in the oneness which they may call a party, and deny as a practice, to secure the blessing.
Now, accepting Philadelphia as representing much we see and rejoice in at present, what a deep instruction it should carry to those " who seem to be pillars," and a warning to those who would call the acknowledgment of the appointment of the Holy Ghost as the unity of the body and the duty of acting on it, sectarian The neglect of this, coming on the failure of looking to the coming of the Lord as inchrinz all things. has been the source of declension and every difficulty. Even error would not cause mischief (for this works security against it) so dissolving to the Church of God as that. What, then, is said? " Hold fast that which thou hast: let no man take thy crown." The fruit of the mistake of those who gainsay their faith, however painful the sense of the stumbling-blocks around them, is not to weaken the hands of those to whom the Lord has committed, serving the saints in guarding them against these things. We are in face of the synagogue of Satan; that is, a return to beggarly elements as well. But if we would pass on through the open door it is in confidence of the wonderful grace of the opportunity given to those that hold fast the Word and Name of the Lord. It is this keeps it open in his hand; and what grace is there that does not humble and prepare the heart for service!
The stamp of rejection of the world which is on the heart of faith, and Christ coming to take possession with His saints, works strength to the Church, having her place above and knowing the mystery. These, thus taking up the desire of what is set before them, accept as no boon any veiling of the holiness of God in love. It is the want of affection to it that claims on the ground of the joy of grace (alas! we find often how the flesh can take up the best things), a latitudinarianism in principles, which has not learned the love of brethren after 1 John 5:2: " By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments." What is pleaded for by this latitudinarianism is not merely the reception of a believer simple and of very small knowledge.
The due acknowledgment of the Lordship of Christ in its various aspects is surely to enter on the way of " overcoming," through the open door. The firmness of the PM Lilt in this evil world will never be found without the faith of it in its revealed extent. Holy shall we enjoy the presence of the Holy Ghost unless Christ's exaltation is held in wonder and humility, and His steps ours? Nor should we forget the gracious encouragement as to being saved from the judgments, or " those things coming on the earth," yet worthy of the shelter and to stand at last among the attendants of the Son of man.
The History of God's Testimony: 3. Noah
Long before the death of Methuselah the building of the ark had begun, and Noah had thereby inaugurated the new and peculiar testimony committed to him. How long before the flood this took place we cannot determine, for if it were for 120 years, as some have supposed, how can we understand the word of God to Noah, when directing him to build: " And thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee?" For 120 years before the date of the flood, Noah's sons were not born. Moreover, it is not material to fix the date when the building commenced, it is only important to bear in mind that long before the death of Methuselah, who was the continuing link from Enoch, Noah, a " preacher of righteousness," had begun by word and act to announce to the world that God was about to deal with it, and that righteousness must be manifested when evil is dealt with, and while condemning the world on the one hand, he, according to divine instruction, prepared an ark for the saying of his house. The evil of man had now betrayed itself in wanton disregard of the line of holy separation which was due to God. Man allied himself as he chose; his lust was the arbiter of his actions. God's claims he set at defiance, his violence was great upon the earth, and every imagination of his heart was evil continually. The terrible character of man's nature was now exposed. It is manifested to God, and it grieved Him to His heart that He had set man, that which He had formed like unto Himself, on the earth. A most momentous moment is this for us to ponder on, and then gather up at this early date, on the one hand, the inconceivable repulsion with which God now viewed man, and, on the other, what He, notwithstanding, in His eternal goodness, purposes to do with man.
Noah is chosen of God to be the witness of His mind, and as such God directs him to build an ark, gives him the measurements of it, details who and what the occupants of it shall be, and announces, " Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life from under heaven, and everything that is in the earth shall die." Noah and his house alone of mankind are to be saved, and that through means of the ark. The testimony to be maintained is, that God will destroy all men except one whom, with his house, He will save out of the overwhelming judgment, to take his place again on the restored earth. Noah, accepting what is worthy of God touching the earth and man on it, maintains this testimony, which, as is evident, is twofold; one relating to the judgment and the time of it; and the other, after the judgment has passed away. One, comprising the building of the ark, and Noah's leaving it after the waters had dried up; the other, dating from Noah's occupancy of the restored earth.
First let us trace out how Noah maintained the testimony connected with judgment. Before there were any indications of judgment, nay, when men eat and drank, bought and sold, married wives, &c., and did as they pleased, apprehending no special catastrophe, Noah, walking with God, and having learned His mind, practically avows what is worthy of Him; and while maintaining his true place for God, at the same time and by the same act maintains the true place for himself " Moved with fear" he prepares an ark-for how many years I do not say, but for many-testifying by every hammer-stroke he gave to it that his hopes from earth in its then condition were at an end; announcing thereby to all his belief in the coming judgment, and, in God's purpose, to save himself out of it. If he falters, he has lost his own true place, and his true place for God; for it was worthy of God that all here should come to an end. And this was necessarily the first part of his testimony, as a preacher of righteousness and a witness against those who gave no heed to him and his preparations. How he must have looked on everything around him, all soon to be submerged in judgment, while his own hopes rested in God's provision for him out of it all! He carried out distinctly and fully the divine measurements. His all he knew would be there. His expectations, completely turned from the earth, all centered in the ark, where all that was valuable to him, all that of God he could surround himself with, was to be. This be declared, and this in practice he maintained. Many were the years, and much must have been the toil and exercise of mind, while, like another Paul (in Philippians), he had not yet attained, but yet this " one thing" he did in order to attain. He presented to an unbelieving world, that the ark would not only save him and his house, but contain in it every order of creature. No work of the Creator's hand would be lost, and none would he be deprived of, but it was all to be within the enclosure which God was providing for it; and from earth he ceased to expect anything. On he worked towards the completion of that which comprised, confined, and concentrated all his thoughts and energies. God had done with the earth, and man as he then was on it; and this Noah strictly and unequivocally bore witness of. If he had betrayed any hope from the earth, as it then was, he would have failed in being a witness of God's mind, for he could neither have prepared the ark nor condemned the world. He must not flinch or falter, or deviate from one of God's instructions to him. The testimony, to be maintained at all, must, be perfect in all its parts. What a life was his! What a position he held! One singularly apart from all human hopes and desires, which were centered, and all his labors expended, on that which alone was worthy of God, and in which he had been instructed through God's revelation to him. What a testimony at this early date I Even that God could sustain a man on the earth, not as Abel, in acceptance, and persecuted to death because of it; nor as Enoch, walking with God, apart from everything on it, and in the hope of being translated out of it; but, as in Noah's case, assured of judgment coming on the earth.—nay, more, knowing that, as under sentence, it was already judged in the sight of God-yet equally assured of a place of inviolable security for himself in the ark; thus simply and definitely presenting to us, even now, how we should rest in Christ in a world under judgment because of His death; for in Him, our ark, we are in spirit out of this world, while the Holy Ghost convicts it of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.
The second part in this the first line of Noah's testimony now follows (chap. 7:16). God has shut him in and there, amid the overwhelming judgment, relentless in its course, he testifies to the heavenly hosts, knowing in himself full and perfect security, though death and judgment reign universally and without restriction. For a year, which comprises all the vicissitudes of season and climate, and this typifies one natural life, Noah remains in the ark floating on the waters. For many years he had testified to men on earth of his hope of safety, and entirely apart from their hopes, had occupied himself solely and exclusively with the ark, but now he is in that which he had for so long been preparing, and through it he surmounts the waters of desolation of which he had predicted, and which now prevail upon the earth. How wondrous is this twofold testimony to us when read in the light of the glory of Christ? How beautifully and significantly these two parts of the first line of Noah's testimony come out and unite in their application to ourselves! For though with Noah the two lines were successive, with us they exist at one and the same time, even as Paul in Philippians and Paul in Ephesians. In the one he is building the ark, counting everything but dross to win Christ; his hopes as to earth are at an end, and Christ, whose death sealed the judgment of this world, is simply and entirely his object. In the other he is in the ark-" seated in heavenly places in Christ," in whom he is blessed with every spiritual blessing.
Noah, therefore, while personally a type of the remnant of the latter day, who will be borne scathless through the time of judgment, and possess the renewed earth, presents a testimony which in a still more comprehensive way in its two-fold features, answers to what our own should be. The saints now fulfill the Noahic testimony by witnessing on the one hand that while waiting for the judgment Christ is their only object and hope, and on the other that the judgment of the earth being sealed by His death, we are in Him above all the ruin and death here. If we do any other thing than seek to win Christ, we are not in our own true place, nor are we in our true place for God; and if I am not sensibly in Him, " shut in," knowing that all that is valuable to me from the Creator's hand is there-inside-and not looking outside for anything, I am denying what is worthy of God in ending all flesh. I am not a witness for Him, or rejoicing in His grace towards me. I may have light enough to see my place, but failing to maintain it, I cannot be happy in myself, or a witness for Him; for I do not accept that which alone is worthy of Him. Noah in heart, life, aim, and position, declared that it was worthy of God that the end of all flesh should come before Him, and he himself be saved in the ark. In like manner it is for us to declare that the judgment of this world is come, and that we through grace shall not come into judgment; that it is worthy of God that in Adam all should die, and in Christ all should be made alive; and that He is the depository and center of every blessing, so that it is as vain for us to look for anything outside Him as it was for Noah to look outside the ark, when all that belonged to him, or that be needed, had been brought into it, and the waters of judgment were overwhelming all the rest. And so we shall find as we go on, every faithful servant of God, from Noah down, is ruled in his walk and finds his own blessing in maintaining what is worthy of God; and thus their own souls grew and were enlarged in the greatness and goodness of God to themselves. For as we maintain what is worthy of Him, so do we enjoy it in ourselves; and as we enjoy it, so do we maintain it.
After a full year, after patience and hope had been exercised and proved, Noah leaves the ark for the restored earth, and here the second line of his testimony commences. On the purged earth he takes his place in type of the millennial saints, and he sets forth by offerings of every clean beast and fowl (Chapter 8:20) on the altar, man's true place with God's as to worship, and the relation in which through sacrifice and redemption man should stand with God. This infantine expression of man's true place is acknowledged by God, and He renews man's term on the earth with a large mitigation of the original penalty and in the sweet savor of the sacrifice, man becomes the object of fresh and multiplied blessings, while a second trial is ensured for Adam's race and that with the promise, " I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, neither will I again smite any more every living thing as I have done; while the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.". God blesses Noah and his sons, makes him the representative of government. Every created thing is delivered into his hand, and every moving thing was to be for meat, while it is also added, " and surely your blood of your lives will I require, at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man, at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man; whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man." It is important to gather up the elements of the testimony which Noah was called to support. Man is on his trial again, and for a moment fills the place appointed of God. The bow in the cloud is the token front God of His new arrangement with man, as He said, " I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood. Neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth." Noah for a moment maintains this testimony, a faint expression of that time when " the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." And very interesting is it to connect ourselves with God's great purpose at such an early date, and to discern how the things unfolded now, or which are about to be manifested, had an existence, and had been witnessed of characteristically by man ages ago; thus intimating the nature of God's purpose eventually.
But it was only for a moment that Noah maintained this testimony untarnished. Man's sufficiency in this his new trial and under new circumstances, is again found wanting. He drops into nature, and is exposed by his own son, who, in proclaiming his father's shame, shows man's advance in evil, and that man's nature is not only weak and foolish in itself, but that it is insensible to its shame.
Noah lives 349 years on the earth after leaving the ark, and this period embraces the building of Babel (man's effort to make for himself a name on the earth), little more than 100 years after the flood! This new form of man's evil-systematic and combined purpose -to be independent of God, and to make a name for himself, takes place on the earth so lately cleared of all that was of man, and under the very eyes of him who had been the witness of its destruction, and, with his house, was the sole survivor. So great and universal had been the judgment that for a whole year or more no man had set foot upon the earth; yet now, on the new earth, how rapidly man's evil and presumption had sprung up and ripened. Man's purpose now is in advance of and very different from that of Cain, who acknowledged a claim from God, yet being ignorant of what that, His claim, was; not understanding the distance between himself and God, he proposed to meet it by a work of his own. But here, the builders of Babel assume entire independence, and seek to effect it by systematic combination. The terms of the new covenant are entirely overlooked, and Noah, like Paul, survived to see the total failure of the testimony entrusted to him. How checkered was his life, and yet how fine the line of his testimony! Nor did he pass away from the earth till another and new order of testimony was ready to be revealed. For more than 200 years after the division of the earth, in the days of Peleg, did Noah live. He died two years before the birth of Abram, and whose father, Terah, was then 128 years old. God always continues one line of testimony until there is a full manifestation of man setting it aside. Noah's does not terminate at the building of Babel, where first the great full purpose of man's independence was developed; for he who had seen and witnessed of God's dealings and purposes respecting man, is continued on the earth for more than 200 years after the judgment on Babel. God's witness on the earth is still Noah; he who had demonstrated in such a terrible way God's judgment, and who had commenced again when God made a new trial of man on the earth; even he lives to see the development of man's evil in a more independent form than ever; and that mercy from God only exposed the more the estrangement of man's heart. God has no other testimony for the earth at such a time. Noah's is the suited one during the action and course of this evil. From the confusion of languages the various kingdoms were first formed; but the point for us to bear in mind, is that God vouchsafed no new line of testimony until the evil of man in the judged earth, which everyone knew had been judged (no event was ever so universally known or admitted under heaven as the flood), was fully developed.
The faithful had still Noah to look to and rest in as their guide from God; but after his death Terah, I conclude, in faith calls his son Abram the " great father," as the expected one to lead the people of God into the line for him, suited to the evil which had now grown to its height universally on the earth.
Before the death of Noah the two great kingdoms of the earth were founded-the kingdom of Egypt and that of Assyria. Thus we see of what long continuance was the Noahic testimony, and it is most interesting and instructive for us to bear in mind the moral conveyed in its continuance for such a period without any addition. Nothing else could God present to the faithful until the independence of man was fully developed and until as kings they had laid hold of the earth, and were governing it without Him. Then Noah dies, and two years after Abram is born, who is called to set forth a new line of testimony, which I reserve for the next chapter.
The History of God's Testimony: 4. Abram
We have seen that Noah continued until within two years of the birth of Abram, and we learn from Josh. 24:2, that Terah and his fathers " served other gods," thus proving that before the death of Noah man had fallen into idolatry. Not only were they independent of God, but they worshipped those who by nature are no gods."
It is important for us to preserve a view of the earth as it was morally at the time of Noah's death. Ham (the cursed) takes the lead in occupying the earth, especially that part which should eventually belong to the descendants of Shem, of whom it was said, "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem;" and from whom the people of God should spring. I have already called attention to the fact, that God allows man to expoSe the full opposition of his heart in contrast to His revelation (the maintenance of which is the only true testimony) before He sets up another; and when He does set up another, it is manifestly and peculiarly distinct and in contrast to the features of the declension then prevailing. Most interesting, therefore, and helpful is it for us, to keep before our minds the condition of things on which the sun of testimony (at least that particular phase of it) sets, and in which the light has not been comprehended; man having proved that the greater the revelation to him, the greater his natural repugnance to yield himself to it, and therefore he has studiously presented the converse of the divine mind, instead of the reflection of it, which the light of testimony vouchsafed by God, as suited to the condition of things, would have produced if comprehended. The manifestation of good calls forth, according to its order and quality, a correlative evil from man, because of his innate corruption. strikingly is this exemplified in the days of which we are treating; for before the death of Noah, the then vessel of God's testimony, independence of God and idolatry had become a confirmed characteristic of man; and this notwithstanding the testimony committed to Noah, and maintained by him, having circulated through his children into all the earth; for by the families of the sons of Noah after their generations were the nations divided throughout the earth after the flood, and in every ancient record or monument we find traces of the testimony, though almost lost in the perversion in which man always represents divine things.
As to locality, it is generally admitted that Ham and his descendants eventually occupied Africa, for the most part; Japhet Europe, and Shem Asia; but the important point for us to keep in mind, is the moral state of man when Abram, about 74 years of age, is addressed by the God of glory in the words, " Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee." This call embodied an entirely new principle. Abel by faith had offered; Enoch by faith had been translated; Noah by faith had prepared an ark for salvation; but now the earth on which man was is set under another covenant, and God's witness in the person of Abram is called to hold no place in it but in dependence on God and on His word. All he had naturally he must surrender, and assert or maintain no title or right to any place but by faith. Abram is to come into the land that God would show him, not to get possession in it, as we shall see, but to maintain this unique position, holding everything that he held, not by right of possession, but by faith in God. In a word, that he had no place on earth as a man, or after man by the rights of man, to whom the earth was given on new terms after the flood. Man had proved himself unworthy of those terms and unfit for them, and now God raises up, in the person of Abram, a new testimony, viz., that His people on the earth hold no place on it by the right of possession or inheritance, but by the word of God and in dependence on it; for it is not the land that I have acquired or have by inheritance succeeded to, but the land that He will show.
This testimony was most significant and needed, because man, to whom the earth had been committed by God on new terms, had entirely forgotten his allegiance to Him; and had not only denied dependence on Him, but had served devils (" other gods"). The full exposure of the principles of man's independence of, and alienation from, God demanded a testimony, which would declare that everything on the earth was to be held solely by the word of God and in the most complete dependence on Him (and this in addition to the surrender of every natural tie and association); and would disclaim and rebuke the rebellion and presumptuousness into which man had wandered and which he, without remorse, arrogantly maintained; now to be a witness of this truth, God calls out Abram. It is evident that Babel was the first kingdom founded. Here the seeds of man's presumption, independence, and self-confidence, were first sown; hence, Babel, called afterward Babylon, represents and embodies all the evil workings of man; and it is in the face of all those workings, and as a witness against them, that Abram is called out of Ur of the Chaldees from the scene of the tower of Babel, to declare that he had no place on the earth but in dependence on God; and therefore he gave up all he had by birth, and went out not knowing whither he went. Truly he looked for a city which hath foundations; he knew that God would not call him from anything without guaranteeing to him a superior; and he rested in the assurance that the builder and maker was God.
It would appear that Abram was a man of considerable consequence and means in the world, and his move must have been well known. His father, Terah, whether believing or not, accords with his son's call, for we read, " And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees to go unto the land of Canaan, and they came unto Haron and dwelt there." After the death of Terah, as we read further, " Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son and went forth to go into the land of Canaan: and into the land of Canaan they came." Abram's move had in it a voice to all the world. He had left the place he had in it by birth and association, and went forth dependent on the word of God. This was the testimony. He " passed through the land unto the place of Sichem unto the plain of Moreb, and the Canaanite (the descendants of Ham) was then in the land." Now the Lord appears to him again and says, " Unto thy seed will I give this land. And there builded be an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him." He holds his place on the earth by faith, builds his altar where the Lord appears to him in acknowledgment of his homage and link unto Him, asserts no claim to anything of the earth, but lets the Lord determine everything for him. What a remarkable testimony must this have been in contrast to all that was passing around! Man in full independence was seeking and maintaining government on the earth as possessors of it, owning no allegiance to God, worshipping them who are no gods. And here was a great man-a prince as known among men-leaving all his inherited or acknowledged rights, and following the word of God, dependent only on that word, " not knowing whither he went," and owning the unseen God by an altar of sacrifice where He appeared unto him. How instructive and interesting to grasp the nature and power of the faith which worked in Abram, and made him a fit witness for God in that evil day, declaring to us the true instincts of divine grace when brought in contact with the same order and character of evil. And this is essentially and particularly what we ought to learn and become imbued with while studying the testimony of God. The testimony is suited and in direct divine contrast with the form of evil rife, and working; and because it is of God, who is thus vindicating Himself while the enemy comes in like a flood, though the enemy be the more exasperated, and so on to the close; and therefore he comes with a more fearful opposition and evil virus in proportion to the manifestation of the purpose of God in His grace toward man.
Abram fails for a moment to maintain this testimony, and goes down into Egypt. The failure only showed how impossible it was to maintain it but in divine power. The more simply divine our path is, the more absolutely must we be kept there by divine power, and therefore there is oftener failure in that which is most divine than in that which is not. And the failure always has, through God's grace, this effect on us, that of making us distrustful of our -selves and reliant on Him, so that we return to the true path, more assured related in this chapter (14) are typical of the closing scenes in the earth's history, and are presented to us to exhibit the nature of the testimony which should be borne by the faithful at such a time. This conflict of kings has in it the elements of the final conflict; and the supremacy sought to be maintained by Chedorlaomer indicates that which the willful king will assert and assume in the latter day. The character of the passions working among men, and the way in which men were using their power, is presented to us in the scene here described, not so much to give an idea of the ultimate struggles for power, but as embodying a state of things which required a certain testimony for God, and which, in such a state, Abram is enabled to render. " Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled." Lot-representing God's people who have sought a present portion on the earth—is carried away by this successful power. What is the testimony for God at such a juncture? Why, to do as Abram did.
We must bear in mind that God is disclosing the characteristics of His own grace, in opposition to the violence and pride of man; and we are learning, not the history of Abram, but the grace of God, and how it calls on one, standing for God on earth, to act, and this in testimony for God with reference to the current state of things; and thus ever (for God's principles are unchangeable) in a similar state of things at any time.
Abram, though personally, entirely aloof from the scene of conflict, musters all his resources, and without reserve or personal consideration devotes all to the rescue of his brother Lot. By night (and night it was to them) be smote them and pursued them, and brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother. The reigning powers of the earth are in one way or another made to know the strength by which God's witness is sustained in his peculiar path. And God, as He is, is testified of as a truth. To Abram, returning from the slaughter of the kings is vouchsafed a revelation of the grace of God in the person of Melchisedec, which strengthens his soul in God and enables him still more distinctly to walk independently of man, or of his gifts on the earth. It is hard to live here and assert no claim to any place here. It is harder still to devote all our resources, at every risk, for the service of others, and yet receive no reward for it; nay, because of our dependence on God to refuse all acknowledgment from man, for the beneficial results to man from your services to the people of God. Doubtless, service rendered to the individual (as to the legion), confers a general benefit on the community at large. But as dependent on God, I must refuse all acknowledgment for it from man. When the Lord saw that the people would take Him by force to make Him a king, He departed again into a mountain by Himself alone. But God acknowledges the service. Abram's soul is enriched and strengthened, even as is the fruit-bearing disciple in John 15:5-16.
Melchisedec meets Abram, and so invigorates him that he is strong to refuse all the offers of the king of Sodom, whereby he displays another principle of the testimony committed to him; and the king of Sodom hears from his lips how the blessing of God, and the sure word of His promise, though the fulfillment of it be still future, can make a soul proof against even those things which are everything to the natural man.
(To be continued)
The History of God's Testimony: 5. Abram
We have seen what was the nature and scope of the testimony committed to Abram, as relating to man on the earth; that is, how the witness for God must conduct himself in relation to man on the earth, when independence of God and idolatry were man's principles; and how Abram is required and enabled to observe a line which would distinctly disavow such principles, not only to the thoroughly worldly man, but also to the unfaithful saint.
Now we come to another phase in the testimony, and one which has respect to the hope and status of the people of God on the earth. It is not enough in this order of testimony to disavow the principles of man, or to assert that the Lord is " possessor of heaven and earth;" but it is of God's grace that there should also be a testimony of the future blessedness of His own people on the earth. And thus it follows that the " one seed," the source and channel of all such blessedness, was now to be the great subject of testimony.
It is incumbent on us not only to know every line and phase of testimony as connected with the interests and purposes of God, but now, as in the light and grace of Christ, to maintain all and every line which, as worthy of Himself, was required of His faithful ones, according as He was made known to them. God's will has been perfectly accomplished by Him, in whom we are, and therefore we are responsible to gather up and embody in our practice here all the lines of testimony enjoined on, and maintained by, God's servants in any time.
Abram's desire for posterity-for a continuation as to himself here, gives occasion to that word of the Lord which embodies the new line on which he was entering. " Behold," he says, " to me thou hast given no seed, and lo 1 one born in my house is mine heir." Hence the word of the Lord to him: " This shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir." And He brought him forth abroad and said, " Look now toward heaven and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them; and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness." Abram has now a new testimony to maintain, namely, that the seed springing from him, of which there was no natural hope, would be as numerous as the stars of the firmament; and his belief in this, through grace, secured to him the position of righteousness before God. Faith in the fruit and issue of God's work, which He would do by Him, who would do His will and finish His work, enabled God to count Abram in the righteousness in and through which He would eventually bring about this glorious consummation, even that his seed should be as the stars of heaven. Abraham has now to journey on maintaining this. How fine! How blessed! He himself accounted righteous before God. He, in the spirit of his mind, having reached the day when God can, in His own righteousness, fill the face of the earth with sons and daughters of Abraham's seed, which is Christ.
And it is by the covenantal sacrifice that this truth, of which he is now the witness, is secured to him; and it becomes the basis and surety of all to him, even though a prolonged darkness rests on his path, and the night be dreary before the promised issue comes-before the earth bears in its bosom what the heavens in their starry myriads illustrate. All this is declared in chapter xv. 9-21. When, in answer to Abram's query, " Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?" God directs him as to the sacrifices he was to offer, after which a deep sleep and a horror of great darkness falls upon Abram, in which the history of his seed is revealed to him, and the extent and limits of his future inheritance detailed and defined, all on the ground of the covenant.
The testimony now is that man, believing in the issue of God's seed, is counted righteous; and this with a defined inheritance on earth is secured to him by a covenantal sacrifice. Abram in fact in this testimony stands outside man as he is, his faith connecting him with God's work, and he himself in righteousness thereby, depending on God through the covenant made by sacrifice for the consummation of His promise. Abram in this testimony is in the righteousness of God by faith and therefore outside of things seen; for faith is the evidence of things not seen, and while he so walks all is well.
It must be borne in mind that with every phase of testimony there is always a by-path, a " wile," by which the enemy would lead us, in order to remove us from the true line, and from which we should have been preserved had we truly and conscientiously abode by the terms on which we had been set on it. Abram, now set on the true line outside everything here, depending on God for the seed and the issue of it, the by-path or " wile," which would divert and allure him from this, would be one which
would propose to accomplish the desired end, through a merely human means. This Satan finds and achieves through Hagar the bondwoman.; and Abram falls from faith to sight, and is in the flesh; so that we find it written that " he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit." Eleven years after Abram had come into Canaan, Ishmael was born. That which is after nature precedes that which is after the Spirit. Ishmael is born fourteen years before Isaac. The testimony suffered on account of this failure, and Abram as the witness suffers also; but God overrules all in His mercy. Thirteen years after the birth of Ishmael, and within one year of the birth of Isaac, the testimony receives another addition, and at the same time a correction for the flesh. The Lord appears unto Abram (chap. xvii.) and unfolds to him two things-the one that where sin abounded grace superabounded, there being no other way open for God to act, therefore his name is changed to Abraham, with the reiterated assurance that, notwithstanding his failure, he should be a father of many nations; and, secondly, he is taught that, if God confers in grace, man must surrender, and deny himself in the flesh through which sin acts. Hence circumcision is required and enjoined. The cause of his having turned aside from the testimony, in the faith of which righteousness vas reckoned to him was the flesh. He had been accounted righteous for believing in the future of his seed, which God had revealed unto him; but instead of walking simply and restfully in this hope through faith, he is drawn aside to seek an heir in a carnal manner, and that which had been entrusted to him (the testimony) suffers. How needful for him to be taught that the evil of the flesh must be set aside; that flesh to which he had lent himself and by which he had been drawn aside from the simple testimony of waiting by faith for the seed promised of God. And this is what circumcision signified, as we see in Philippians Hi. 3, 4, &c. It prefigured the entire renunciation and putting away of the flesh. Therefore Abraham must be circumcised and his seed after him throughout their generations. A great addition was now given to the testimony. The Lord has revealed Himself more fully as He is in Himself, and on the ground of this by covenant He gives Abram the name of Abraham. This declared the manner of His grace; but if His grace be full and blessed, there must be a setting aside in man of that which called for the grace. Can I require and receive grace from God and yet retain that which, because of its evil and weakness, required it? Nay, if grace comes in, flesh retires; and hence circumcision is enjoined, being a " seal of the righteousness of the faith he had, yet being uncircumcised." The greater the grace, the more needful the abrogation of the flesh; and this is taught here in figure. It is as Abraham that he circumcises. It is the one who is in grace that can endure circumcision, who can afford to have "no confidence in the flesh," and to deny it, because he is on better ground. This was now the testimony for Abraham; " and the selfsame day Abraham was circumcised, and his son Ishmael, and all the men of his house, born in his house, and bought with money of the stranger, were circumcised with him."
Abraham now in his new position is shown the judgment on the flesh in its corruptions and lusts, out of which the uncircumcised one is delivered so as by fire, for Lot was uncircumcised. Abraham is shown in Sodom and Gomorrah the extent to which the flesh of man runs; and circumcision has its value as indicating the renunciation of the flesh. Lot, righteous in himself, is delivered from the judgment that overtakes Sodom, only to sink into positive crime, when, lost to sense, an advantage can be taken of him; while Abraham sees it all as one apart from it, and in company with God.
But though blessed and circumcised, Abraham is not unswerving in his path of testimony. He has still a tendency to go south, and dwelling at Gerar he learns that he is not in the power of the truth he professes; for in Canaan he fears to avow what is truth. These failures point out to us what the testimony would preserve us from and by what temptations it is damaged and spoiled, and for this purpose it is recorded. Therefore, I make this passing remark on the sojourn at Gerar.
When Abraham is an hundred years old, the promised seed is born; and now comes the open and manifest casting out of the bondwoman and her son. The counsel of God, of which Abraham is called to be the witness, is the promised seed; and, this being come, that which was born of the flesh must not continue in the same house or standing with him. And (how full and blessed is the testimony conferred on Abraham!) not only is the One born after the flesh (antitypically the Jew) to be cast out, but Abraham is still further taught that the promised seed does not depend on natural existence, but on resurrection-on Him who raises the dead. What an element I What a strength this imparts to the testimony. How line upon line the purpose of God is disclosed, and Abraham made personally a witness of it! Not only is Ishmael cast out, but in Isaac resurrection from the dead is in figure known by him, thus filling up his testimony; and then all the purposes of God, as conveyed to him in former promises, are enlarged and secured anew to him, founded on resurrection. God confirms all by an oath, as through faith in the day of glory. Abraham is accounted righteous, and takes this new standing. So now, having reached to the resurrection, God, by oath, confirms to him all previous promises.
The more we bring together and set forth in order the great principles of truth, which Abraham was called to exemplify, the more must we be charmed and edified by the beauty and greatness of the whole. Like the fir-tree among the trees, faith is the leading shoot; but as the tree grows, great branches are superadded on this side and on that, to furnish the tree and support it in its greatness. Thus Abraham grew up, and on; and, as we survey him in. the testimony to which he is called, we wonderingly see what grace can do in a man, while we also see the tendencies to which man is exposed, and to which he yields. But, at the same time, because grace is acting, opportunity is given to God to call that out in His servant which would preserve him from those tendencies. Consequently, Abraham's failures are given to us in order that we may see how God empowers him to rise above, and be superior to them. Before the birth of Isaac he had failed in the land from fear of the Philistines who were in the land. Here we get the moral relation of the Philistines to the people of God. It is the fear of man which bringeth a snare. Egypt was not in the land, and therefore the world; and there the fear of man is also. But Gerar was in the land, and Abraham, the circumcised Abraham, the Abraham who had passed through the experience of seeing the judgment on Sodom, even he fears the king of Gerar. After the birth of Isaac this self-same king makes a covenant with Abraham, and then comes in the resurrection as the true and stable ground for all this blessing, from which neither the Philistines nor Ishmael can displace him.
Three " branches" more remain to complete Abraham's testimony. One, his conduct and way on the death of Sarah; the second, with regard to the marriage of his son; and the third, the way in which he distinguishes between Isaac and his other children. It was in his hundred and thirty-seventh year that Sarah died, and she died at Hebron. Abraham had latterly resided at Beersheba. (See Gen. 22:19.) Hebron is a distinguished place; it was where the promise was first given; the promise of future blessing to the earth, and here it is that Sarah, the mother of Isaac, dies and is buried: thus testifying that nature in itself must end, when the grace of God and its accomplishment is manifested. In its highest sense, we may say, when Christ comes in. I can afford to part with mere nature however dear to me, when I am where God will establish the better than nature according to His own will. (Phil. 3) The bereaved Jacob buried his Rachel at Bethlehem; Sarah is buried at Hebron. Abraham, while living in the land, and traversing it by faith as his own, obtains no possession in it but a burying-place, and that he obtains not from God, but from man by purchase. He buys it. He does not buy from man a place to live in, but a place to be buried in. A striking but expressive testimony Living by faith, seeking no acquisition here to remain in, but when death supervenes, becoming a possessor of a burial place, an earnest of resurrection; for surely, as to inheritance, it was the only earnest he had; therefore his first actual possession was a burial place. He would tell the people of the land, " I have no possession here but a grave. I anticipate my right and buy a grave that my dead may rest securely till the day of glory." Beautiful and emphatic testimony.
The next line in this comprehensive testimony, following immediately on the death of Sarah, is the manner in which a bride and co-heiress is provided for Isaac. I am aware that Gen. 24 is generally interpreted as in figure presenting the Church, the body of Christ and the bride of the Lamb spoken of in Rev. 21; but though there may be some touches in the scene described there, which can only be fulfilled by the Church, yet I am inclined to think that it is more consistent with the testimony and purpose of God that we should here be presented with the earthly bride, the queen referred to in Psa. 45, the one who shares with the promised seed His rights and inheritance on earth. The sphere of the heavenly bride is in heaven, though exhibited to earth; that of the earthly bride, the queen, is simply the earth, and in partnership with Him who reigns here as the heir of all things. This is just and consistent with the testimony set forth in Abraham, and with this view we at once see the place of the nations presented to us in his children by Keturah. These children-six sons-Abraham sent away eastward into the east country after giving them gifts; and surely they must have carried with them some knowledge, at least, of the testimony which their father had maintained.
Here this wondrous and remarkable testimony is brought to a close. Isaac having been already called and used of God, to set forth His name and purpose on the earth, will engage our attention in the next chapter.
(Concluded from page 249.)
The History of God's Testimony: 6. Isaac and Jacob, Part 1
Isaac was seventy-five years old at the death of his father. He was married at forty years of age. His two sons, Esau and Jacob, were born in his sixtieth year, and they were at the age of fifteen at the death of Abraham.
In reviewing the history of Isaac and Jacob in order to ascertain the testimony sustained by them, we must bear in mind that they are rather the continuation of the testimony committed to Abraham, each in a distinct way, than the leaders of any new or advanced line.
We are to learn in and by them how the testimony committed to Abraham fails in the hands of those who are called to support it; but in their history also is presented to us all the difficulties with which one set in their place is beset; and therefore we shall find therein disclosures of the grace of God peculiar and blessed to meet and sustain His people, hindered and embarrassed by nature in the maintenance of His truth (for that is always His testimony). In a word, we shall find in Isaac how feeble mere nature is to sustain the path in which the testimony sets him; and in Jacob we shall find that not only nature, but all the powers which affect nature, and can use it against God, are brought to bear on him, How willful he is, and how he yields. How God delivers in both cases, exemplifying to us the nature of the difficulties in the way, but at the same time also the greatness of the resource that there is in God when one looks simply to Him.
In Abraham I have the difficulties which a man of faith has to encounter always; namely, bye-paths to the ways of faith. In Isaac, I have the trials and weakness of one who would keep the path of faith appointed, without any of the exercises of soul which leads into it. In Jacob I have one who trusts to his nature and his own devices more than to God; who seeks to secure the blessings of the path more than the path itself, and who discovers in the end that what he leant on was but a broken reed, which had pierced him through when he leant on it.
Isaac does not come prominently before us until after the birth of Esau and Jacob. He presents to us characteristically man in nature, supporting the testimony of God. He has little to contend with except what attracts his nature. His first trial as heir and maintainer of the testimony is that he has no children. For twenty years he was without an heir, and he entreated the Lord, and the Lord was entreated of by him. The patient continuance year after year in a country where one is a stranger, without any prospect or clue to inheritance, is the character of faith exemplified by Isaac. Before the birth of Esau and Jacob the Lord communicates to Rebecca the grand outline of their history; the patient maintenance of the testimony being that which devolves on Isaac. His trials are of the order to disturb and contravene patience. They are the ordinary ones of daily life, and his failures are always in giving way to his nature. Isaac's history is given us in order to present to us how a man in nature, however amiable, is tried when set as God's witness in the earth, and called to walk in dependence on Him in a strange land, where as yet he had no inheritance. The feebleness of nature to support this testimony is disclosed, and then God establishes His servant in the line committed to him.
Isaac and Jacob, as we have said, properly, only follow up the testimony given to Abraham, and therefore in Heb. 11, and in other places, they are classed together. We are to look at Isaac as occupying the place of testimony to which his father had been called, and in which he has grown up without learning any of the difficulties or exercises of reaching it, which peculiarly and singularly belonged to his father. But his history presents to us how God leads and deals with him, a man like unto ourselves in it; and yet all his hindrances are of himself and natural. He does not cease to be God's witness, but the indulgence of nature hinders and obstructs his testimony. There is an absence of self-denial in him, and therefore he must learn that all his troubles mainly spring from his own weakness. However, notwithstanding all his failure, he was a witness, for as such the Holy Ghost owns him; he " confessed that he was a stranger and a pilgrim;" he had no hope on earth but from God. For twenty years he, the promised seed, had no heir: but then God hears his prayers and Esau and Jacob are born unto him. It is important for us to note the difference of trials according to the order of testimony. Abraham, we have seen, had to contend with bye-paths, which proposed to him an issue similar to what faith proposed. Isaac, on the other hand, is seduced from the position of faith which he occupies, to consider for himself and his own ease therein. The one has to suffer in gaining the position, the other in maintaining what is gained. The art of the adversary, with regard to the first, must be to divert him from the true line; while to the latter, it would be to engross him with his own interests, and thus lead him through self-gratification to compromise his position as the witness of God.
Into this snare Isaac falls. Esau's hunting and acquisitions warp Isaac's mind and judgment because they minister to himself. He loved Esau because he did eat of his venison; and the witness for God on earth, the one whose history in connection with his testimony He has seen fit to record for us, while maintaining the place he was set in, is hindered, and attempts to run counter to the mind of God, because he had yielded himself to his own self-pleasing, and, as a consequence the testimony suffers.
flow little we contemplate or take into account the responsibility of being God's witness on the earth, and how impressed we are with the purpose and grace of God, when we begin to note the way in which He makes His chosen vessels to fulfill His pleasure and do His will. We may be God's witness on earth, and in the very position to which faith has called us, and yet like Isaac, be diverted from the support and resource which faith always gives by that which addresses our nature and gratifies it.
The land is the scene of this testimony. There is another famine in the land (Gen. 26), beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham, and Isaac went unto Abimelech, king of the Philistines, into Gerar. Thus the pressure of circumstances induces him to go down where man could afford him succor. God in His mercy appears to him and warns him not to go down into Egypt. The Philistines typified the support of man. This Isaac sought, for he was going " south," bordering on Egypt: but the Lord appears unto him, and tells him not to go to Egypt, but to " dwell in the land which I will tell thee of." This word of the Lord is but a renewal of the call to Abraham, and, with it, a confirming of all the promises made to Abraham. Isaac is now instructed in the mind of God, and how, as His witness, he ought to comport himself; but he must not trust in man. He does not go down into Egypt, but he dwells in Gerar, which was within the precincts of the land but in the hands of the Philistines, and hence the Philistines represent to us the flesh obtaining a place in the sphere entirely belonging to God. Isaac learns here not to trust in the flesh; he denies his wife; and afterward suffers at the hands of the Philistines because of the prosperity given him of God. This suffering was in order to separate him from them, for he was God's witness; but it is slowly he does so from Esek (contention) to Sitnah (hatred) and then to Rehoboth (room); and when he obtains the sense of room, the true liberty, he goes entirely outside the land of the Philistines unto Beersheba, a place already recording how the servant of God can stand outside and apart from all human support; and in doing so is owned by man as having God on his side. When Isaac, in the energy of faith revived, reaches this spot, the Lord appears to him " that night," and renews to him the promises made to Abraham; and there Isaac builded an altar and called upon the name of the Lord. The separation from the Philistine obtains for him true ground where God can appear to him, and where Isaac, in his own soul, can know that he is on God's side and for God on the earth. " Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar; and Ahuzzath one of his friends, and Phichol the chief captain of his army; and Isaac said, Wherefore come ye to me, seeing ye hate me, and have sent me away from you? And they said, We saw certainly that the Lord was with thee."
The testimony we see is confined to the land. Esau had already sold his birthright. His natural engagements which were so pleasing to Isaac had brought forth bitter fruit, but their own proper fruit, for Esau, hungry (destitute of natural resources) had despised openly what was of God even his birthright; and had sold it for a mess of pottage to his brother Jacob; and now in his fortieth year, when Isaac was an hundred years old, Esau marries two wives of the people of the country, both Hittites, which were a " grief of mind to Isaac and to Rebecca his wife." And such it must have been to see their firstborn son in this close affinity with the people of the land. Nevertheless, Isaac does not investigate the course and the habit of life which had led to this crisis; and because he fails to see the spring of it all, he becomes implicated in it himself. He grieves at Esau's marriage, but he gratifies himself with the result of Esau's works. Surely this is recorded for us that we may see what can spoil the testimony of God, and how subtle the snare by which we can be allured from the simple path of testimony. Isaac, failing in time to stay and correct this evil working, actually paves the way for the declension and suspension of testimony in the land. His expressed wishes to Esau, marked as they are with that vein of self-gratification which had led him astray, being overheard by Rebecca, cause her also to work carnally, and to counterplot in order to secure the blessing for Jacob. " Make me," he says, " savory meat, such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, and that my soul may bless thee before I die." Deceived by his natural partiality for Esau, he fails as God's witness, loses his power and due influence, and is inapprehensive of the mind of God; for he would have conferred the blessing on the son of his choice instead of on the one for whom God had designed it. Thus he falls from the place of testimony and Jacob henceforth comes before us as the one on whom it has devolved, because of the blessing conferred on him in spite of all the intentions of Isaac.
The manner, however, in which this blessing was obtained was not of God; and therefore demanded because of God's holiness, distinct and peculiar discipline. The working of nature in Isaac had led to the working of nature in Rebecca; and because of it, the testimony is passing away from Isaac; but as the way in which it devolves on Jacob is polluted by the same working of nature, he must be subjected to discipline before he can fully be the witness of God on the earth according to the place of blessing now from the lips of Jacob conferred on him. How interesting and momentous it is for us to note and grasp the patience of God in continuing through all opposition and failure one line of testimony. Varied and different is the opposition urged and leveled against it in the histories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The frailty and feebleness of man are exposed in the witnesses, yet God in His mercy and patience bears His witness above all, though (necessarily, because of His holiness) in a reduced condition or state of things which only marks the unfaithfulness which led into it.
Jacob now blessed is God's witness on the earth, but he must fly from the land, which was the proper sphere of his testimony. The manner in which he had obtained the blessing which set him in the place of testimony being by natural device, he must now learn that he cannot maintain the divine position without first in practical confession, declaring the end and weakness of himself-of that nature by which he had obtained it. In a word, he must be humbled first. At this juncture, Jacob was seventy-six years old (about one year older than Abram when he first entered the land), and at the counsel and instigation of his mother, he flies from the land for. fear of his brother Esau. Isaac renews the blessing to him and sends him away, directing him to take a wife of the daughters of Laban; and adds to the blessing these words, " That thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger." Peculiarly interesting is it to grasp and comprehend the nature of the testimony at this moment l The failure of the witnesses to maintain the truth committed to them subjects them to the most humiliating trials. Jacob has to abandon the land, and Isaac to endure the double trial of seeing his son Esau openly and avowedly departing from the position to which he was called of God, and to be obliged with his own lips to consent and approve of Jacob's retiring from the land, a consent forced upon him on account of the unhallowed marriage of Esau. The testimony, once bright in the land (how bright in the day of Abraham I) has gradually declined in the hands of Isaac, and is now, we may say, for a time suspended. True, Isaac survived and lived for forty years more, even to see Jacob again renewing the testimony-a lovely and touching instance of the grace and faithfulness of God 1 The stock of the old tree of testimony is not removed until the new one is fitted to replace it.
Jacob then leaves the land. (Chapter 28) He went out from Beersheba, and went towards Haran. When he reached Luz the sun did set and he tarried there all night. Then and there God appears to him and thus in his exit from the land, and in this moment of the declension and almost suspension of the testimony God spews him that in the land is the place where He will display Himself, and that there is the house of God, and He sees therefore the gate of heaven.
After a period of twenty years (Gen. 31:11-12), the history of which I pass over, our subject being that of testimony and not Jacob's personal history, God in His infinite mercy releases His servant from obscurity and calls him to resume his place of testimony for Him. " The angel of God spake to Jacob in a dream, saying, I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me. Now arise get thee out from this land and return to the land of thy kindred." How holy and patient and faithful is His mercy! The testimony for twenty years, one might say, was under a cloud; Isaac in the shade; Jacob subjected to discipline before he could be permitted to occupy the place.
(To be continued)
The History of God's Testimony: 6. Isaac and Jacob, Part 2
Oh! may not some of us lay this to heart while we may trace in our own histories the will and self-seeking that has driven us from the path of testimony to the distant land in which we have had to endure discipline for the carnality which proved our incompetence to be witnesses for Gad. Alas! the testimony has suffered. The witness is under discipline far off from his true place and under a cloud; but thy compassions, O God, fail not! Jacob is recalled. Gifted he is of God, but so little dependent on Him, that he can be no witness for the truth given of God until he has ceased to trust in his own plans, and rests simply on God. And thus it is with every saint now called of God to testify of Christ. There is neither power nor opportunity to do so, while he is seeking his own will and pleasure. Nay, before he can be used in his proper place he must be subjected to painful discipline, in order that he may seek Christ with a true heart, as one wearied with himself, and thankful that he is not debtor to the flesh, to live after the flesh; but that he is through God's eternal love in Christ Jesus a new creation of His Spirit and life.
It is evident, I think, that Jacob had not fallen into idolatry, though living with idolaters (even Rachael was one); nay, rather that Laban knew his faith, as we speak; for he says, " The God of your father spake to me yesternight." Thus, even in this very feeble way, the truth of the living God was again maintained in the land of Syria; and doubtless the interposition of God on Jacob's behalf, and the sequel of his sojourn there, must have had weight and testimony to many. Jacob returns to Galeed before Laban overtakes him, and without meeting with any reverse. There they both make a covenant in the name of the God of Abraham, and part company on good terms.
" And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him." (Chapter 32:1.) God in this distinct manner guards and inaugurates his return to the land. Jacob is now at Jordan, at the ford of Jabbok, in order to pass over with his family and his possessions. But here, and ere he accomplishes the passage, must he learn in the spirit of his mind what real, simple dependence on God is. He is not fit or competent to be a witness of it until he knows in himself the spirit and power of it. How little he yet knew it! He is now 44 greatly afraid and distressed" because Esau and four hundred men with him are coming to meet him; and he says, " O God of my father Isaac, the Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee. I am not worthy of all the mercies and of all the truth which thou hast shown unto thy servant, for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands; deliver me I pray thee from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau."
Jacob is now learning dependence upon God; but not as Abraham learned it. He " went out, not knowing whither he went." With Jacob it is quite different. As God's witness he has been subjected to discipline because of his willfulness, and now as restored of God to the path of testimony, his first lesson before he crosses the Jordan must be that only in God can he be preserved from that which his own evil had provoked-from Esau. Fine and wondrous is the character of the scene in which he learns this, portraying and presenting to us how God restores and replaces His servant in the true line of testimony.
" Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him till break of day." God contends with him, and in that unique and peculiar time he gets a double blessing. The marvel of grace is effected. Jacob is silenced; yet at the same moment he is conscious that as a prince he has power with God and with man. That which resisted God in him is overcome, and that of God, which "overcometh all things" is developed and displayed in him. Jacob's name is now Israel. Laban had owned that the hand of God was with him; Esau must own it too. Walking with God, dependent on Him was now the line of testimony, and one marked with distinct and open blessing. Men see the power and the greatness of God.
Jacob however, again ensnared, tarries at Shechem for seven years (chap. 33:18), nor does he truly resume the path of testimony until he reaches Bethel, and erects there an altar called El-Bethel (God of the house of God), and there the name Israel is confirmed to him. (Chapter 34:10); " And God said, Thy name is Jacob, thy name shall not any more be called Jacob, but Israel shall thy name be; and he called his name Israel."
Jacob is now witness for God in the land, and hence we read of the death of his father Isaac more than forty years subsequent to his flight from the land. " And Jacob came unto Isaac his father to Mamre unto the city of Arbah, which is Hebron, where Isaac and Jacob sojourned, and the days of Isaac were a hundred and eighty years." Consequently Jacob at that time was a hundred and twenty years old, and he dwells in the land in which his father was a stranger (chap. xxxvi. 1), in the land of Canaan.
From this time on, until Israel removes into Egypt, we have but one continued series of the evils of his children without any check of the grace of God in them, until at length on account of a famine they all desert the land, and go down to Egypt; a chapter in the history of God's testimony on earth which no one can read without seeing how sadly man fails in the place where God sets him, and how wondrous is the forbearance of God; how long-suffering and patient; not finally removing the people from the place of testimony until they had in every way and manner proved themselves not only incompetent, but, worse than all, indifferent both to His calling and His testimony.
(Concluded from page 128.)
The History of God's Testimony: 7. Joseph
The testimony connected with Joseph properly begins from the time he is made governor of Egypt; and this event occurred shortly after the death of Isaac. Jacob is now dwelling in the land wherein his father was a stranger. Isaac dies, and Jacob occupies the place of testimony; but before his death, before Jacob is left alone to maintain it, his sons had, in their fearful moral declension, given evidence of their entire unfitness to support it. Their hatred of Joseph drives them to an utter disregard of their father's feelings; their malice must be consummated in spite of all barriers, even divine ones; for their father's love for Joseph only exasperated the evil that it would cheek Reuben the eldest may remonstrate, indicating that a spark of conscience remained; but it is in vain. Joseph is sold into Egypt; but this is not all. Gen. 37 details how degraded in every sense Judah had become, though there too the voice of conscience is not yet silenced.
The testimony is now transferred to Egypt in the person of Joseph: after thirteen years of sore and heavy afflictions in which he is disciplined according to the will of God for the post he should fill, he is called from prison to interpret Pharaoh's dreams.
We shall do well to bear in mind the way and manner of God at this time. The testimony for God had failed in the land of promise. The one whom God would use as His witness, and of whom He testified and forewarned by dreams, his brethren had refused; and not only refused, hating him the more for his dreams, they had determined on his death, and sold him into Egypt; while his father Jacob, who observed these dreams, was nevertheless unable to check the wide-spread iniquity of his children, and thus represents the faithful remnant; true, but unable to stem the torrent of evil. The testimony is thus diverted from its true place by the working of evil in those who should have supported it, and Gad's vessel is fearlessly and ruthlessly cast out. God, however, in His boundless mercy causes that the fall of Joseph's brethren should be the riches of the world, and His servant after the needed preparation; first a slave seven years to the captain of the guard, and afterward six years in prison, comes forth to maintain His name and truth-riches to the Gentiles-and in relation to His people who had dishonored Him in Canaan how much more their fullness. In the land of Egypt, entirely apart from the land that was promised them, God in His unchanging faithfulness continues the testimony, but where evil is allowed He cannot continue it, and when the force of intent and will is to get rid of the witness, the opposition is in reality against Himself. Hence it shows itself in its dire hate of the one chosen of God. There is no room or place for the testimony, when the instrument which God would use to maintain it, is rejected and refused. Thus was the Jew tried and found wanting. They saw no beauty in the only begotten of the Father. With wicked hands they crucified and slew Him. " Now they have no cloak for their sin; they have both seen and hated both me and my Father."
The unfaithfulness and feebleness of Isaac and Jacob in supporting the testimony was what first led to the open departure from the line and principles of it, in their children. The children or successors always expose, retributively, as I may say, the dereliction of their heads to whom was committed the truth of God. In Gen. 35 we get Esau the son of Isaac setting himself in rule and power in the world independently of God; and in Gen. 37 Judah is presented to us as morally degraded; so that we may say that in both the outward circle and the inward, the declension from their first calling is so great, that there could be no testimony for God; nay, the witness who walked in any power must first separate himself from those who assumed to be such, or rather from the position they occupied. The evil of the children of Jacob has now come to a head; they have sealed their iniquity by putting an end as they supposed to God's chosen vessel and the testimony only lingers in the land.
There is much interesting and important instruction for us in all this.
It is recorded in order that we may understand the ways of God. God's purpose from the beginning was to declare Himself; and in proportion as He declared Himself, the wondrous fact was established; that man, lost as he was, was an object of His love. God had raised up a testimony to Himself, and the purposes of His grace in Canaan as His own inheritance. While the witnesses walked in any truthfulness of conscience, grace and help were afforded them; so that in spite of many failures, there was still recovery, and they were continued in the place of testimony. The long-suffering of God in the history of testimony is very touching and instructive. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, each respectively had been borne with and restored; but now when the evil of the parents works unchecked in the children, it reaches its height in rejection of the chosen of God; the one whom he had ordained to be chief of the family. The solitary spark of the fear of God found in Reuben, God will respect, and in future mercy to the nation acknowledge; but He will not continue the testimony where it has been openly refused and rejected. Joseph the future witness must be led through many and deep trials to declare His name in a scene and sphere entirely new and untried. God, let us note, never foregoes His purpose; but when evil arises-departure from the principle on which it is based-in the place where He would testify of it., He turns aside to another place. We have many instances of this principle in Scripture. God's testimony springs up in Babylon when Jerusalem is in the hands of the Assyrian, because of Israel's apostacy. The grace of God in the gospel is carried out unto the ends of the earth when by the murder of Stephen the Jew had formally driven the testimony from the land. The principle is plain, that the testimony which God has set up must continue until He sets it aside; but if those to whom He has committed it prove themselves unworthy of it, He consigns it to other hands; and I believe, as a rule, effects a change of place as to it also.
Certainly the candlestick (not the light but the lamp which should hold the light), was removed from Ephesus, but God's testimony in and through the Church must continue until He Himself sets it aside. I would call attention to this principle, because I think it explains how in the history of the Church God has used a knot or company of saints at their start for testifying of His truth, which, after a time were superseded by another company more earnest and faithful. And so it must be, I am persuaded, to the end; so much so, that I should hold myself ready through His grace to attach myself, and to walk in company with any knot or company of saints who I saw were led of Him, and were empowered by Him to maintain His testimony. May we walk in such self-denying faithfulness, that we shall be ever ready to accompany the most faithful and earnest.
The principle I have dwelt on is distinctly set forth in the history of Joseph. The evil of his brethren was at its height and he is sold into Egypt! Let us ponder for a moment and survey how God's testimony is maintained at that period on the earth-a dark age we may say! It was the winter which was maturing His plant for an early and fruitful spring. See Jacob scarcely recovered from his sorrow at the death of Rachel, still only on his way to his father Isaac; and now in his seventeenth year, Joseph is sold into Egypt, and the testimony consequently is transferred thither; for he is the vessel of it chosen of God.
Many and varied are the trials to which he is subjected for thirteen years, whether in the house of Potiphar or in prison, but in each he shines brightly as God's witness, the rebuker of evil and corruption in the one, and the interpreter of God's mind and counsels in the other, himself the sufferer for righteousness' sake in both. What a dignity there is in such a witness, and what an ordeal must such an one be subjected to I Here is one, a slave in the house of the chief captain of the guard, not only resisting temptation, but exposing himself because he resisted it, to the malice of the ungodly, who could not corrupt or turn him aside from his path for God, and is thus a warning voice to the unrestrained evil in that day, if known only to Satan. There is something more than mere testimony here. It is not that the vessel chosen of God can at any time at once and openly assume and present himself as a witness, be he either a Paul or a, Luther; but there is a struggling for the very existence of the testimony in the hand of the witness who is called to endure because of the evil which had grown up among the people of God. He must wade through, as I may say, in suffering, all the evil in which he is found, bearing it on himself personally, as if it were all his own or caused by himself, even as it is said of our blessed Lord, of whom Joseph is so marked a type: " He bare our sicknesses and carried our sorrows." Joseph, cast out by his own and as one dead to them, is from that moment ever rising up from the dead, from the depths to which he is reduced, to the place where he can fully assume and maintain the testimony of God. The steps, slow, measured, and sorrowful by which he wended his way to that position have a voice for us. He first wins the confidence of the captain of the guard who sees that the Lord is with him, and that the Lord made all that he had to prosper in his hand. But though the world can bear God's witness while he contributes to its gain, when in true self-denial and fear of God he rebukes and refuses its unholy allurements, it cannot endure him, and stoops to every malicious device to compass his ruin. Thus after seven years' faithful service, Joseph is cast into prison, and for six years more in this new and sorrowful sphere, he, is acknowledged as God's servant. " The keeper of the prison looked not to anything that was under his hand, because the Lord was with him, and that which he did the Lord made it to prosper." Satan outwits himself in driving the witness from place to place. Like as Paul cast into the prison at Philippi there found the " Macedonian," so here Joseph, cast into prison at the instigation of unsuccessful corruption, not only sets forth in such a sphere what is the power and favor of God, but also is distinguished by Him as possessor of that which, hidden from man, belongs only to God. " Do not interpretations belong to God?" says Joseph to Pharaoh's officers, who are powerless to interpret their own dreams. But Joseph, the witness, has the mind of God, and he can say, " Tell me them, I pray you," and then declares the interpretation of them.
Two years longer he remains in prison but now his time was come: the ruler of the people sets him free. He had witnessed for God and declared His mind in humiliation. He is now to do so in the court of Pharaoh, and prove that he has the secret of God when all the magicians and wise men of Egypt had failed. Who can adequately portray the scene now transpiring in the court of the then best organized country in the world! All its wisdom and power are at a standstill, and are entirely ineffectual to resolve the difficulty which has presented itself, when a slave, reckoned as a malefactor, is called forth from prison and all the great and wise ones of the earth are silent and subject while this unknown one, as the witness of God, expounds the purpose of God! How wondrously and beautifully the testimony is raised up and renewed! All man's power and glory are placed in abeyance before the power and word of God in the Hebrew stranger. God as the God of mercy and compassion is declared to the whole world.
Joseph is now governor of Egypt and a witness to the whole world of the goodness of God. Dispenser of blessing and plenty in the time of famine, the wisdom of God which had distinguished him as a witness in humiliation is as pre-eminent in his elevation; and through him the God of Israel is heard of, owned, and feared in many a land, for all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn; and God thus declares Himself and the compassions of His heart through His faithful witness.
And not only to the world at large, to Joseph's father and brethren the mercy and faithfulness of God in a glorious manner are declared. Joseph's dreams must be verified, and the circle which had so failed as to the testimony and rejected the witness, must own him now as lord of all.
It is beside my subject to dwell on the deeply interesting and affecting way in which the lately rejected but now glorious one leads his brethren to estimate their own sin and bloodguiltiness in compassing the death of him now about to be revealed to them as their savior, inimitable as is the history in its detail; nor can I here trace it as typifying that of the true Joseph in the day of His power. My subject is that of testimony. It was in the ninth year of Joseph's governorship over Egypt that his father joins him. Israel said, " It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die. And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac. And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I. And he said I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes." Jacob had forfeited the place of testimony in Canaan; but still, as true of heart, he is to be blessed now in the place to which the testimony is transferred, and in connection with the witness-God's chosen one, whom his sons had rejected. All his blessing now (and he was richly provided for in Goshen) is apart from the land of promise, and in virtue of his connection with Joseph; but with the promise that, though God will chasten His people, He will eventually restore them to their true place and inheritance: He will bring them up again out of Egypt.
Jacob lived seventeen years in the land of Egypt, but now the time is come that he must die. (Gen. 47:29.) His heart clings to the land of promise. In Joseph is his confidence, and to Joseph he looks to separate him from Egypt after death. " Bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt And be said, Swear unto me. And he sware unto him." Jacob is sick, nigh unto death; his heart bound more closely than ever to the land. The testimony has revived, but not there, and his dependence is on him in whom it had revived-on Joseph, as the minister of God. And in this association of heart and spirit, Jacob is bright and full of divine wisdom. Joseph brings his two sons to him, and Jacob, after rehearsing how God had given to his seed Canaan for an everlasting possession, adopts them as his own" As Reuben and Simeon shall they be mine." Whenever there is faithfulness to God under any circumstances, there the purpose of God, according to His own will, engages the heart of the faithful. Joseph and Jacob are as full of Canaan and interested about it as if they were living there in the happiest association and had no painful reminiscences connected with it. God's counsel has its place in their hearts. Jacob gives the pre-eminence to Joseph; he is to have a double portion in the land, the true seat of testimony. " Moreover (he says), I have given thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow." And when in his closing hours he, by the Spirit of God, unfolds the history of his seed on the earth, Joseph occupies his mind in the fullest and most blessed way, concluding with, " The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren." Wonderful burst of light! Remarkable instance of how God vouchsafes light and knowledge to His people when faithful, though previous unfaithfulness may have reduced them to very painful circumstances, even to a house of bondage.
Jacob dies and Joseph went up to bury his father. The testimony as we have seen is revived, but the inheritance is only enjoyed in hope. In Canaan Mere is a grievous mourning. Joseph must return into Egypt, and there he survived his father sixty-four years, having lived a hundred and ten years in all. " And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die, and God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence."
Thus, having set forth the name of God in the earth, and having manifested His grace and forbearance to his own people, Joseph sinks into the tomb, in vigorous faith of the future of Israel, making mention of their exodus, and giving commandment respecting his hones, in hope of a glorious resurrection. God's line of purpose was fully maintained. While the witness submitted to the low estate and humiliating position to which God in His righteousness subjected him, because of the evil of his people who had dishonored God in the land, but whom God would yet in His longsuffering mercy care for and correct, but never abandon.