The Patriarchs Part 2

xvii.

We have many exhibitions of this way of G.o.d in different forms of it.

The Lord, for instance, would have no altar in Egypt, uncirc.u.mcised as that land was. He would not have a throne in the land (in the full glory of it) till the day of Solomon, when all was sanctified for His royal presence. Afterwards the glory was grieved away by the abominations which were done in the temple. The captives, in like spirit, hang their harps on the willows of the Euphrates; for how could they sing in a strange land, or let the songs of Zion be heard in Babylon? Separation was the rule of the divine mind. Separation was holiness. Pollution demanded it, and faith rose at the bidding. And with all this the Seth family, the household of G.o.d in earliest days--days before the flood--are in company. They are one in spirit with Jehovah Himself in Egypt, with the glory in the defiled temple, with the harps of the captives in Babylon, and with the Church of G.o.d in "this present evil world."

We have to distinguish between these two things: _G.o.d's a.s.sertion of His t.i.tle to the earth, and G.o.d's call of a people out of the earth_.

These different things have been again and again exhibited in the progress of the dispensations. And they have been exhibited, as I have long judged, alternately.

The Lord began, in Adam, to claim and display His rights on the earth.

The man in the garden was to own the sovereignty of G.o.d, and the earth was the rest and the delight of the Lord, and the place of His glory.

Sin entering and polluting all, and the pollution being left uncleansed, in Seth G.o.d called a people away from the earth to an inheritance in heaven.

Then in Noah the Lord G.o.d re-a.s.serted His rights here, and took up the earth as the place where His elect might find a home, and His own presence be known again.

After this Abraham is separated from kindred, and from country, and from father's house, to be a heavenly stranger on the earth, with his altar and his tent, looking for a city whose builder and maker was G.o.d.

Israel, in their day, then take up this mystic tale of the heavens and the earth, and in the land of Canaan become the witness of the scene of G.o.d's sovereignty. The ark pa.s.ses over the river as "the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth."

And now the Church is set for the full testimony of heavenly mysteries again; and strangers.h.i.+p here is the divine idea, till our being taken to meet the Lord in the air.

This wondrous tale these dispensations of G.o.d, like day and night alternate, have thus been telling from the beginning; and still are telling. And millennial days ere long will make these pledges good, and be the glorious substance of these foreshadowings.

Such pa.s.sages as Eph. i. 10 and Col. i. 20 tell us that both the heavens and the earth are equally the scene of divine purposes.

And the great argument in Rom. xi. instructs us about those purposes, and the ways and times of their accomplishment.

Now let me observe, that whenever G.o.d arises in this progress of His counsels to _a.s.sert t.i.tle to the earth_, He begins by judging and cleansing it. And this, I may say, _of course_; because, the scene of His purposed glory and presence being corrupted, He must take the offence away, for His presence could not brook defilement. Noah's lords.h.i.+p of the earth was, accordingly, preceded by the flood carrying away the world of the unG.o.dly. Israel's inheritance of Canaan under Jehovah, as the G.o.d of all the earth, was prepared by the judgment of the Amorites and the sword of Joshua. And the future millennial kingdom, when the earth is to be the place of the glory again, is (as all Scripture tells us) to be ushered in by that great action called "the day of the Lord," with a clearing out of all that offend, and all that do iniquity.

But the _call of G.o.d_ is quite of another character. It proceeds on the principle, that G.o.d Himself is apart from the earth, and is not seeking to have it as the home of His glory, or the place of His presence; but seeking a people out of it, to be His, away from it, and above it. The earth is altogether a stranger to such a purpose. It is left just as it is found. No judgment, no visitation of the scene here from the hand of G.o.d, accompanies it.

This was exhibited in Abraham. Abraham was the object of the call of G.o.d; and accordingly the Canaanites find no rival in him. He does not dispute with them the t.i.tle or possession of the soil. He finds them, and he leaves them, lords of it. He desires only to pitch his tent and raise his altar on the surface of it for a season; and then, for another season, to have his bones laid in the bowels of it.

So with the Church in this age. She is likewise under the call of G.o.d.

But her call leaves the Gentiles in power, as it found them. "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers." The saints have only to obey them unreluctantly, or to suffer from them patiently, according as the demand made by them is or is not consistent with their subjection to Christ and the call of G.o.d. They cannot strive with the potsherds of the earth.

Peter's sword is to be put up, and Pilate is to learn that the servants of Jesus cannot fight. Their warfare is not with flesh and blood. They are defeated the moment they begin it. The call of G.o.d has marshalled the hosts of G.o.d against princ.i.p.alities and powers on high, and the battle is there. It does not connect us with the earth. Our _necessities_ do, but not our _call_. We need the fruit of the ground, the toil of the hand, and the skill of the heart, to provide things needful for the body. Our necessities thus connect us with it, and we have to do with it for their supply; but our call separates us from it.

Joshua went into the possession of the Gentiles, that his sword might make it the possession of the Lord; Paul went into the places of the Gentiles, to take out of them a people unto G.o.d, linked with the disallowed Stone, despised and rejected of men.

The family of Seth were, in like manner, under this call of G.o.d. It was intimated to them by the charge to leave the blood of Abel unavenged, and they understood the intimation. If the earth be left in its defilement, G.o.d is not seeking it (as we have now seen all His ways declare), and this family of faith are in that secret. They will not seek it either. Cain's house was in possession of it, and Seth's family will leave them there, without a rival or a struggle. The mind of G.o.d in them took this knowledge of the way of G.o.d, and of His pleasure touching them; and they acted on heavenly principles in a blood-stained earth, whose judgment was now for a time to linger and to slumber.

I own, beloved, that I greatly admire this fine expression of the mind of Christ in these earliest saints. They take the only way which the holiness of G.o.d could sanction. They are "partakers of _His_ holiness."

The light they walked in was _G.o.d's_; the holiness they partook of was _G.o.d's_. 1 John i. 7; Heb. xii. 10. This is a peculiar thing. That light is not merely righteousness. It is the light of grace also. Yea, and the light of heavenly strangers.h.i.+p in a polluted world. It is a light which reproves the course of this world, and makes manifest other principles and hopes altogether. There may be righteousness, and the watching and praying which escapes temptation; but there must be a walk according to these principles and hopes, to form a walk "in the light, as He is the light." These earliest believers beautifully s.h.i.+ne there, I believe.

They were not under law. They come between Adam and Moses. They had not precepts, as I have already shown. But they were in the light, as G.o.d is in the light. And if afterwards Abram did not need to be told to have his altar and his tent--if he needed no precept from the Lord how to order the marriage of his son, or how to answer the king of Sodom--so these saints of still earlier days understood the holiness of the call of G.o.d, and took their journey for a heavenly country at the bidding of the pollution of the earth.

I own indeed, again, that I greatly admire this. It is the beauty of the Spirit's workmans.h.i.+p in His elect vessels. All is His. "How great is His goodness, and how great is His beauty!" They learn the word in spirit ere the voice of the Spirit uttered it--"Arise, depart, for this is not your rest; it is polluted."

The details about these antediluvian believers are very scanty; but through it all there is this heavenly character. They do not supply history for the world; but they do supply instruction for the Church.

This is heavenly. No spirit of burning or spirit of judgment had purged the blood of the earth, and they shrink instinctively from it. In the spirit of their minds they leave it. "What communion has light with darkness? what fellows.h.i.+p has righteousness with unrighteousness?" their conduct asks. Their _religion_ is that of separation from the world, and so are _their habits_.

They call on the name of the Lord. The name of the Lord is the revelation He has been pleased to make of Himself. Immanuel, Jesus, "the Lord our righteousness," Jehovah, G.o.d Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost--these are among His names graciously and gloriously published by Himself. And "to call on the name of the Lord" was service or wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d in spirit and in truth.

This was the religion of these earliest saints. It was simply the religion of faith and hope. They wors.h.i.+pped G.o.d, and, apart from the world, they waited in hope. "The work of faith" and "the patience of hope" are seen in them. Something of the Thessalonian spirit breathes in them. For they served the living and true G.o.d, and waited for the Son from heaven, who had already delivered them. 1 Thess. i. To "call on the name of the Lord" is faith, and salvation, and wors.h.i.+p. It bespeaks the standing of a saint, and his spiritual service. It shall come to pa.s.s, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Joel ii.; Rom. x. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord. Psalm cxvi. And such was their religion, such was their wors.h.i.+p. It was wors.h.i.+p in spirit. No temples, or costly carnal services, or inst.i.tutions of man appear.

And in their ways and habits they are only seen as a people walking across the surface of the earth, till their bodies are either laid under it, or are translated to heaven above it. They rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; they buy, as though they possessed not; they have wives, as though they had none. All around them is as Babylon to them, and their harps are on the willows. Cain's family have all the music to themselves. But Seth's family are a risen people. Their conversation is in heaven. They look for no estates or cities. All they take is an earlier Machpelah. Nothing is told us of their place or their business.

They are strangers where even Adam was once at home, and, much more, where Cain still was. We may follow them, and in spirit abide with them for a day; but where they dwelt we know not--like the disciples who followed the glorious Stranger from heaven in the day of His sojourn here. John i. 38, 39. They are without a place or a name. The earth knew them not. Like the stranger Rechabites, they are, throughout their generations, one after another, of the wilderness, and not of the city (Judges i. 16); or in Levitical language, they were a standing order of Nazarites, more separated to G.o.d than even Israel themselves.

They are the earliest witnesses of this heavenly strangers.h.i.+p. Such a life is exhibited afterwards in other saints of G.o.d in its fuller, beautiful details; but we have it here in spirit.

For instance, in Isaac. The world was against him. But he strives not with it either in deed or in word. He neither answers nor resists. The Philistines tell him to go from them. He goes at their bidding. They spoil him of his labours. He yields and takes it patiently, as Esek and Sitnah tell us. Gen. xxvi.

So his father Abraham before him. Only, sad to tell it, it is a _brother_ who acts the part of the world in the scene. Lot chooses, as the world chooses, the well-watered plain. Abraham suffers, and takes it patiently--though it was something more galling than the wrong of a Philistine--the unthankful, selfish way of one who should have known better, and who owed him everything. Gen. xiii.

So Israel, in still later days, accepts the insult of Edom in like spirit. They pleaded for a pa.s.sage through their land by the claims of kindred, by reason of their common origin, by their many toils and afflictions, by the tokens of the divine favour toward them, and by their present need as toiling, way-worn pilgrims through a desert land.

But Edom despised them and threatened. They pleaded again, but they were insulted again; they suffered it, and took another road. Num. xx. And so their Lord in the day of His pilgrimage. He sought another village when other Edomites of Samaria refused Him. Luke ix. Precious and happy, thus to put Him at the head of all that is excellent! The good that is done is _like_ Him, as well as _of_ Him. Isaac suffers wrong from _the world_, and takes it patiently. Abraham suffers wrong from _one who owed him everything_, and takes it patiently. Israel suffers likewise from their _kindred_; but Jesus from those whom _He was serving and blessing at the cost of everything to Himself_, from the world which He had made, and from that people whom He had adopted. And yet "He lays His thunder by," and goes on His pilgrimage of love and service still.

In like spirit the family of G.o.d, in days before the flood pursue their pilgrim path. They leave the world to Cain. There is not the symptom of a struggle, nor the breath of a complaint. They say not, nor think of saying, "Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me." In habits of life and principles of conduct, they are as distinct from their injurious brother as though they were of another race, or in another world. Cain's family make _all_ the world's history.

They build its cities, they promote its arts, they conduct its trade, they invent its pleasures and pastimes. But in all this Seth's family are not seen. The one generation call their cities after their own names; the other call themselves by the name of the Lord. The one do all they can to make the world their own, and not the Lord's; the other do all they can to shew themselves to be the Lord's, and not their own.

Cain writes his own name on the earth; Seth writes the Lord's name on himself.

We may bless the Lord for this vigorous delineation of heavenly strangers.h.i.+p on earth, and ask for grace to know some of its living power in our souls. It is this which has drawn me to this portion of the Word at this time. It reads us a lesson, beloved. And well indeed, if the instincts of our renewed minds suggest the same heavenly path with like certainty and clearness. The call of G.o.d leads that way, and all His teaching demands it. The pastimes and the purposes, the interests and the pleasures, of the children of Cain are nothing to these pilgrims. They declare plainly that they refuse the thought, that there is any capacity in the earth, as it is now, to give them satisfaction.

They are discontented with it, and make no attempts to have it otherwise. There lay their moral separation from the way of Cain and his household. They were not mindful of the country around them, but sought a better, that is, a heavenly.4 May I not therefore say of them, as I have said, that they are strikingly opposed to the way of Cain, and remarkably apprehensive of the way of G.o.d?

4 What I say of this antediluvian family is only as we see them in Genesis v. I doubt not, as under every trial of man, failure and corruption are witnessed. But I speak merely of their standing and testimony as given to us here. Sons and daughters, as we are told, were born to them, generation after generation, and seeds of apostasy were sown and sprang up among them, I doubt not. But this does not at all affect the lesson we get from this fifth chapter.

After this pattern the Lord would have us: in the world, but not of it; of heaven, though not as yet (except in Christ) in it. Paul, in the Holy Ghost, would so have us, taking example from those whose "conversation is in heaven." Peter, in the same Spirit, would so have us "as strangers and pilgrims" abstaining from fleshly l.u.s.ts. James summons us, in the same Spirit, to know that "the friends.h.i.+p of the world is enmity with G.o.d." And John separates us as by a stroke: "We are of G.o.d, and the whole world lieth in wickedness."

It is for the Church surely, beloved, to walk in this elevation and separateness. What is according to the call of G.o.d, and what worthy of heavenly hopes, but this? We breathe but feebly, and glow but faintly, in company with those and like witnesses. What a temper of soul, it has just struck me, we get in such a chapter as Phil. iv.! What a glow is felt throughout it! What depth and fervency of affection! What a shout of triumph the spirit raises! What elevation in the midst of changes, perplexities, and depressions! The apostle's whole temper of soul throughout that chapter is uncommon. But if one may speak for others, it is to us little more than the tale of a distant land, or the warmth and brilliancy of other climes reported to our souls by travellers.

Lead us, Lord, we pray thee! Teach us indeed to sing--

"We're bound for yonder land, Where Jesus reigns supreme; We leave the sh.o.r.e at His command, Forsaking all for Him.

"'T were easy, did we choose, Again to reach the sh.o.r.e-- But that is what our souls refuse, We'll never touch it more."

But surely it is one thing to be the advocate of Christianity, and another to be the disciple of it. And though it may sound strange at first, far easier is it to _teach_ its lessons than to _learn_ them. But so our souls know full well.

We have, however, still to look at the _destiny_ and _endowments_ of these saints, as we have already looked at their _faith_, their _virtues_, and their _religion_.

The translation of Enoch was the first formal testimony of the great divine secret, that _man was to have a place and inheritance in the heavens_. By creation he was formed for the earth. The garden was his habitation, Eden his demesne, and all the earth his estate. But now is brought forth the deeper purpose, that G.o.d has an election from among men, destined, in the everlasting counsels of abounding grace, for heaven.

In the course of ages and dispensations after this, this high purpose of G.o.d was only dimly and occasionally, slowly and gradually, manifested.

But in the person of Enoch it is made to s.h.i.+ne out at once. The heavenly calling at this early moment, and in the bosom of his elect and favoured household, declares itself in its full l.u.s.tre. This great fact among the antediluvian patriarchs antic.i.p.ates in spirit the hour of Mount Tabor, the vision of the martyred Stephen, and the taking up of the saints in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

Such was the high destiny of the elect people.

The prophecies of Enoch and of Lamech are samples of their endowments.

And rich indeed, worthy of their dignity, these endowments were. For those prophecies under the Holy Ghost tell us that glorious secrets had been entrusted to them. They were treated as in the place of friends.

"Shall I hide from them," the Lord was saying to them, as afterwards to Abraham, "that thing which I do?" For such privileges belong only to dignity. See Gen. xviii. 18. And if Abraham knew the doom of Sodom beforehand, Enoch, in a deeper, larger sense, knew the doom of the whole world beforehand. And his prophecy lets out a mystery of solemn and wondrous glory--that the heavenly saints are to accompany the Lord in the day of His power and judgment. And, as of a character equal with this, Lamech's, which comes after, in its turn, with happier antic.i.p.ations, sketches the scene that lies beyond the judgment, days of millennial blessedness, "the days of heaven upon the earth." The Lord has not given up the earth for ever. And these saints before the flood can speak of that great mystery even before the bow in the cloud becomes the token of it. But they know the judgment of it must come first; and they can speak of that mystery also before the fountains of the great deep were broken up.