The Patriarchs Part 7

GENESIS XII.-XXV.

In earlier parts of the book of Genesis, I have already traced two distinct histories--that of the antediluvian saints, or the times from Adam to Enoch; and that of Noah and of those who followed him, down to the scattering of the nations.

The first of these histories occupies chapters i.-v., the second, vi.-xi.

In the chapter which follows--xii.--the story of Abraham begins, and is continued down to chap. xxv. This forms the third portion or section of the book of Genesis, and presents to us a new era in the ways of G.o.d.

And in all this, I am sure, there is beautiful moral order, and an unfolding of the dispensational wisdom of G.o.d. For in these things the heavens and the earth are made, by turns, to take up the wondrous tale of that wisdom, and to rehea.r.s.e divine mysteries--such mysteries as, "in the fulness of time," will be accomplished, when, as we know, He shall gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. Eph. i. 10.

Adam in innocency was a man of the earth. He had to enjoy it, knowing it all as his, but knowing nothing as his beside. But when he was sent out of Eden, he became a stranger in the earth. He received no commission to improve or furnish it. He had simply to till the ground for a living, and the translation of Enoch tells us, that the destiny and inheritance of that earliest household of G.o.d was _heavenly_.?

? The family of Cain was the contradiction of this, in those antediluvian days. They tilled the ground for something more than livelihood. Their tillage led to the culture and advancement of the world as a system of gain and pleasure. And thus were the two families distinguished--the one was formed by faith, or by obedience to the revelation of G.o.d; the other by the despite of it, as the world is to this day.

In Noah, however, in process of time, the purpose of G.o.d is different.

Noah is a man of the earth again. He leaves the ark in a character very different from that in which Adam had left the garden. Noah left the ark under commission to keep the world in order, as judge and ruler. It was not strangers.h.i.+p on it, but citizens.h.i.+p in it, and government of it, that was now again the divine thought. But a second apostasy was witnessed in the midst of Noah's descendants. In process of time, they affected independency in the earth, casting off the fear of G.o.d, and seeking to do for themselves without Him, as Adam had (seeking to be as G.o.d) in the garden of old.

Abraham, upon all this, finds grace in the eyes of the Lord. He is called out from this apostate scene; and, as we might expect, from this alternate telling of heavenly and earthly mysteries, after Noah the man of the earth, Abraham is called to be a heavenly man.

The Lord said to him, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house." This was the character of the call of Abraham. It was not a call from moral pollution, or from idolatry, or the like; it was a call from the a.s.sociations of nature and of the earth. There were idols to be left, I doubt not. See Joshua xxiv.

2, 3. But it was not the leaving of them that const.i.tuted the nature of the call. Yet Abraham, touching the earth, was to be like Adam outside the garden. He leaves Ur of the Chaldees, as Adam left Eden. He received no commission to cultivate the land of Canaan for the Lord, or to conquer and govern the people there. The arrangements of the world were left just as they were. Abraham had nothing to say to the nations through which he pa.s.sed on his way to Canaan; and when he reached that land, he found the Canaanite there, and there he left him as he found him.

Government had been set up in Noah, and nations had been organized; as natural relations.h.i.+ps had been inst.i.tuted at the beginning, or in Adam.

But Abraham is called from all this. G.o.d Himself is received by faith; and the things of nature which Adam might have conveyed to him, or the things of government which Noah might have secured to him, are left behind.

In their day, Abraham's seed, or the nation of Israel, are again an _earthly_ people; and they exhibit the very opposite of all this. They _smite_ the nations of Canaan; and instead of being called _from_ kindred and country, they are called _to_ all such things; men, women, children, and even cattle (for not a hoof was to be left behind), journeyed from Egypt to Canaan--from a land of strangers to their own inheritance.

In our patriarch, then, we see the election and the call of G.o.d. He was of the corrupt, departed family of man, without a single claim on G.o.d.

But sovereign grace (in the virtue of which all the redeemed, according to eternal counsel, stand) had made him its object; and under such grace he is, in due time, manifested as a chosen one, and is called of G.o.d to be a heavenly stranger in the world. Scripture speaks of him as the father of all them that believe. Rom. iv. We may, therefore, expect to find the life of faith exhibited in him; and so we do find it, as this little book designs to show.

But in this "life of faith" we do not merely look for the principle of dependence on G.o.d, or of confidence in Him, though that may be the thought immediately suggested by such words. It signifies much more. It is a life of large and various energies; for according to G.o.d, or Scripture, faith is that principle in the soul which not only trusts Him and believes Him; it is also that which apprehends His way, acts in concert with His principles and purposes, receives His promises, enjoys His favour, does His bidding, looks for His kingdom, in His strength gains victories, and by His light walks in light; and thus it is ever, though variously, exhibiting a life according to Him, or formed by communion with Him.

All this is strongly marked for our observation.

Heb. xi. shows us all this--the life of faith in its vast diversity of exercise and action. Accordingly, we shall find, in the life of Abraham, occasions where confidence in G.o.d was the virtue exercised; occasions, too, where strength was put forth and conflict endured; and again, where surrender of rights and submission to wrongs were the virtues. And the life of faith is beautiful in its variety; for this variety is but the changeful glowing of the same mind, the mind of Christ, in the saint.

But again. We are not to understand that we get _nothing else_ than this light and power of faith in the believer or saint. Perfectness in this variety of the life of faith is not to be found save in Him who is set before us as "the Author and Finisher of faith," and whose way, from beginning to end, and in every incident of it, was the great exemplar of this life in full unsullied brightness. Still, however, the life of Abraham, or of David, or of Joseph, or of Paul, is to be called the life of faith; for it was the life of those in whom that principle was, though betraying again and again, and that too in different ways, the pravity of nature, the workings of unbelief, and the counsels of a heart p.r.o.ne to converse with flesh and blood, and to take the way of a revolted world.

This life of faith our Abraham entered upon with beautiful simplicity and earnestness. "He went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan he came." He went out, not knowing whither he went.

He took G.o.d for his security and his portion; and, as another has said, "it is in this that the Spirit of G.o.d rests, as characteristic of his approved faith; for, by separation from the world, on the ground of implicit confidence in G.o.d, he lost everything, and got nothing but _the word of G.o.d_."

We do not like such conditions. The heart resents them; but the renewed mind approves them, and justifies G.o.d in them. The _sufferings_ of Christ are first, and then the _glories_. 1 Peter i. 11. Job was nearer his good thing in G.o.d, when he lay in ashes amid the potsherds, than when he was happy in his nest. Israel did not descend Mount Lebanon, and enter Canaan after a fruitful journey, through a land of cities and villages, and corn and wine, and rivers and vineyards; but they paced it slowly, through one desert after another. And so Abraham was called out from all, to go he knew not whither; but this he knew, that it was G.o.d who had called him. And this was faith's beginning. "He went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan he came."

He came, however, rather to sojourn than to dwell there. He moves from place to place, and in every place it is but a tent he pitches. He had been told by the G.o.d of glory, that the land should be _shown_ him. He should _have_ it in _his seed_ for ever, but in _his own person_ he was but to _see_ it. And, accordingly, we find him _surveying it carefully_, but not _occupying any of it_. For this was the right answer of such a promise. He _looked_ on the land, because the promise was that it should be _shown_ him. He went first to Sichem and to the plain of Moreh; from thence, southward, to the neighbourhood of Bethel and Ai. But he was a man of the tent, and of the tent only, wherever he went. The Canaanite was then in the land, and he was the occupier of the soil; and Abraham did not dispute with him for a foot's breadth of it. He surveyed it, and had such possession of it as faith and hope imparted; but he sought no personal, present inheritance there. The promise lived in his heart, and the promise was his measure as well as his joy. Chapter xii.

Quickly, however, another man in our Abraham is before us; for, like all of us, beloved, he was a man of _nature_, as he was a man of G.o.d; and there is none perfect in the life of faith, as we said before, but the Master Himself. Famine touches the land into which the call of G.o.d had brought him. A strange surprise this may well be thought to have been.

But faith would have been equal to it. Faith in Paul was equal to a like surprise. Called into Macedonia by the voice of G.o.d, a prison awaited him. But Paul stands the shock, though Abraham falls before it. Paul and his companion sing hymns in the prison in Macedonia; but Abraham practises a lie, seeking help from the famine of Canaan in another land, of which his call under the G.o.d of glory had made no mention whatever.

Such things have been, and still are, found among the saints. There are "Little Faith" and "Great Heart" among the elect, as well as flesh and spirit--nature and the new mind in each of them. But this we may know: that if nature _rule_ us, nature will _expose_ us. Even the man of the earth, Pharaoh of Egypt, puts Abraham to shame; and his journey, instead of being onward in the witness of his tent and in the joy of his altar, was that of a wearied foot, because it was that of a rebuking heart. He has to "do his first works," to retrace his steps, and regain his standing--sorrowful works at all times. He has to leave "by-path meadow"

for the King's highway again, betaking himself back from Egypt to the place between Ai and Bethel, where he had raised his altar at the first.

What say we to this, beloved? The flocks got in Egypt accompany him home. The glitter of the gold and the silver--the offerings of a land that lay beyond where the G.o.d of glory had called him--adorn and set off his return. All this is so indeed. But what say we to all this? again I ask. Is the bleating and the lowing of such flocks and herds in our ears like the soft music of an approving conscience? or this glittering wealth like the brightness of the divine presence which was now lost to Abraham? I am bold to answer for Abraham, though I may not for myself, that his spirit knew the difference. The wearied heart was but feebly relieved by all that he brought with him from the land of Egypt, or out of the house of Pharaoh. Sure I am of this. It could not but be so with such a man. "He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul," must have been his experience; and his action in the scene which immediately succeeds, as I judge, tells us something of this.

Lot, his younger brother, or his brother's son, who had come with him out of Ur into Canaan, now becomes the occasion of trial to Abraham, as the famine had lately been. But faith in Abraham triumphs, I may say, to admiration. The very style in which he gives this trial its answer seems to say, that he will return fourfold to the life of faith for that which nature had so lately, as it were, taken away from it. The herdmen of the two brothers, the elder and the younger, cannot feed their flocks together. They must separate. This was the occasion of trial which had now arisen. But "let Lot choose," is Abraham's language. In a fine sense, he will act on the divine oracle, "the elder shall serve the younger." Lot may choose, and leave Abraham what portion he please. The well-watered plains may be his; Abraham can trust the Lord of the country, though he lose them. He may have to _dig_ wells instead of _finding_ them; but it is better to dig for them in the strength of G.o.d, than to find them in the way of covetousness; better, as it were, to wait for them in Canaan, than to go after them again down to Egypt.

xiii.

This is beautiful recovery. And in this way will faith, at times, exercise judgment on unbelief, and clear itself again. And now the Lord visits him, as He had not, as He could not, have done in Egypt. The G.o.d of glory, who had called Abraham into Canaan, could not go with him into Egypt: but to the man who was surrendering the best of the land to his younger brother, in the joy of restored confidence in G.o.d, He will delight to show Himself.

Where, then, are we, beloved? I will ask. Where is our spirit? On which road with Abraham are we, as at this moment, travelling? Are we knowing Egypt in the bitterness of self-reproach, or a regained Canaan in the joy of G.o.d's countenance? Is it a walk with G.o.d we are taking every day?

The life of faith knows the difference between the checks of the worldly mind and the enlargements of the believing mind. Abraham knew these things. He knew, in spirit, what Egypt was--the place of gold and of silver, and of rebuke and death; he knew what it was to regain Ai without an altar on the road; and he knew what it was to rest again, with altar and tent, in the plains of Mamre.

Thus the chequered life of faith begins. But there is vastly more in it than this. And in this variety of action in the life of faith, we notice its _intelligence_, the exercise of the mind of Christ, or of the spiritual sense, which discerns things that differ, which has capacity to know times and seasons according to G.o.d. This fine endowment of the saint we find in Abraham, in the next pa.s.sage of his history.

The battle of the kings is recorded in chap. xiv. While that was a mere contest between such, Abraham has nothing to say to it. Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds. But as soon as he hears that his kinsman Lot is involved in that struggle, he stirs himself.

Everything, as we read, is beautiful in its season. There is a time to build, and a time to pull down. There was a time for Abraham to be still, and a time for Abraham to be active; a time to be silent, and a time to break silence. And he understood the time. Like the men of Issachar afterwards, he knew the time, and what Israel ought to do.

G.o.d's principles were Abraham's rules. Lot was taken prisoner, and the kinsman's part was now Abraham's duty. The battle-field in the vale of Siddim shall be his now, as the tent had been his till now in the plains of Mamre. The mind of G.o.d had another lesson for him than that which he learnt while the potsherds of the earth were alone in the conflict; and a time to break silence calls him out at the head of his trained servants.

Excellent and beautiful indeed in a saint is this intelligence of the mind of Christ, and beautiful is everything in its season. Out of season the very same action is defiled and disfigured. For the _material_ of an action is not enough to determine the _character_ of an action. It must be _seasonable_ likewise. Elijah, from his elevation, may call down fire from heaven on the captains and their fifties; and so, the two witnesses, in the day of Rev. xi. But it will not do for the companions of the lowly, rejected Jesus to act thus on the Samaritan villagers.

Luke ix. It is only in its season that anything is really right. How was the garden of Gethsemane (made sacred as it was by the sorrows of the Lord Jesus) disfigured by the blood which Peter's sword drew there! What a stain on that soil, though the power of Christ was present to remove it! But another sword was doing right service when it hewed Agag in pieces. For when vengeance is demanded, when the trumpet of the sanctuary sounds an alarm for war, vengeance or war will be as perfect as grace and suffering. It is for G.o.d to determine the dispensational way, and to make known the dispensational truth. That being done, all life of faith is just that manner or order or character of life that is according to it. "The duties and services of faith flow from truths entrusted. If the truths be neglected, the duties or services cannot be fulfilled." And the good pleasure of G.o.d, or His revealed and dispensed wisdom, varies in changing and advancing ages. Noah, in a few generations before Abraham, would have avenged the blood of one made in the likeness or image of G.o.d, in the same spirit of faith, as Abraham allowed one army of confederate kings to slay another. It is neither the "sword" nor the "garment," as the Lord speaks in Luke xxii., that must needs be the due instrument of service, or symbol of faith; but either of them, according as it severally expresses the dispensational good pleasure of G.o.d at the time.

This is much to be observed; for the distinguis.h.i.+ng of things that differ, and the rightly dividing of the word of G.o.d or of truth, is expected, among other virtues, in the life of faith. Abraham was endowed with this fine faculty. He walked in the light of that day, as G.o.d was in the light. He knew the voice of the silver trumpet; when, as it were, to gather to the tabernacle, and when to go forth to the battle.

But there is more than this in our patriarch at this time. Two victories distinguish him--one over the armies of the kings, and one over the offers of the king of Sodom.

The first of these Abraham gained, because he struck the blow exactly in G.o.d's time. He went out to the battle neither sooner nor later than G.o.d would have had him. He waited, as it were, till "he heard the going in the mulberry trees." Victory was therefore sure; for the battle was the Lord's, not his. His arm was braced by the Lord; and this victory of Abraham's was that of an earlier sling and stone, or of the jaw-bone of an a.s.s, or of a Jonathan and his armour-bearer against a Philistine host; for Abraham's was but a _band of trained servants against the armies of four confederated kings_.

The second, still brighter than the first, was achieved in virtue of fellows.h.i.+p with the very springs of divine strength. The _spirit_ of the patriarch was in victory here, as his _arm_ had been before. He had so drunk in the communication of the King of Salem--had so fed on the bread and wine of that royal, priestly stranger--that the king of Sodom spread out his feast in vain. The soul of Abraham _had been in heaven_, and he could not return to the world.

That was his blessed experience in the valley of Shaveh. Happy soul indeed! Oh for something more than to trace the image of it in the book!

Zaccheus, in his day, was a son of Abraham in this generation, or according to this life and power. Zaccheus so drank in the joy and strength that are to be known in the presence of Christ, that the world became a dead thing to him. He had sat at table with the true Melchizedek, and had eaten of His bread and drunk of His wine. Jesus had spread a feast for His host at Jericho as He had in other days for Abraham in the valley of Shaveh; and, strengthened and refreshed, this son of Abraham, like his father of old, was able to surrender the world.

Behold, Lord, says he, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have wronged any man of anything by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. He could give Abraham's answer to the king of Sodom, for he had had Abraham's refreshment from the King of Salem.

Surely, beloved, this is the way of victory in all the saints. The springs of strength and joy are found in Jesus. May you and I be able to look at Him and say, "All my fresh springs are in thee." "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." And what are all conquests in G.o.d's account but such?--

"'Tis within The fervent spirit labours. There he gains Fresh conquests o'er himself, compared with which The laurels that a Caesar wears are weeds."

Such, then, are the victories of faith.

But we have more still; and in the next scene, in chapter xv. we see faith's _boldness_.

And let me ask, for our common comfort, what more precious with G.o.d Himself than this? The intelligence of faith is bright, and its victories glorious; but in the accounting of the G.o.d of all grace, its boldness surpa.s.ses all.

After Abraham's victory over the world, or over the offers of the king of Sodom, the Lord comes to him with some great pledges and promises.

After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy s.h.i.+eld, and thy exceeding great reward. xv. 1. After the heat of the preceding day, it was meet, in the ways of grace, that Abraham should be owned again, and encouraged again.