and it was apprehended by these saints, more in the light and knowledge
of His most perfect and beautiful ways than many of us, beloved, who, in
the fuller revelations of this present age, have been so much nourished
and instructed. But it is not the much schooling we get, but the
capacity which sits at the lesson. David wanted capacity for this same
lesson, when he talked of building a house of cedars, a fixed
habitation, for the Lord, while the land was still defiled with blood.
But the Lord (may I say?) would be, like the antediluvian saints, a
stranger on the earth, a dweller in tents, while blood was staining it;
and that very night rebuked the purpose of the king of Israel. 1 Chron.
xvii.
We have many exhibitions of this way of God in different forms of it.
The Lord, for instance, would have no altar in Egypt, uncircumcised 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 God 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 God in "this present evil
world."
We have to distinguish between these two things: _God's assertion of His
title to the earth, and God'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 God, 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 God called a people away from the earth to an inheritance in
heaven.
Then in Noah the Lord God re-asserted 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 God.
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
God's sovereignty. The ark passes 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 strangership here is the divine idea, till our being taken to
meet the Lord in the air.
This wondrous tale these dispensations of God, 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.[3]
[3] Such passages 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 God arises in this progress of His
counsels to _assert title 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
lordship of the earth was, accordingly, preceded by the flood carrying
away the world of the ungodly. Israel's inheritance of Canaan under
Jehovah, as the God 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 God_ is quite of another character. It proceeds on the
principle, that God 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
God, accompanies it.
This was exhibited in Abraham. Abraham was the object of the call of
God; and accordingly the Canaanites find no rival in him. He does not
dispute with them the title 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 God.
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 God. 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 God has marshalled
the hosts of God against principalities 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 God, linked with the
disallowed Stone, despised and rejected of men.
The family of Seth were, in like manner, under this call of God. 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, God 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 God in
them took this knowledge of the way of God, 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 God could sanction. They are "partakers of _His_ holiness."
The light they walked in was _God's_; the holiness they partook of was
_God'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 strangership 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 shine 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 God 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 God, 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 workmanship 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 fellowship 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, God 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 worship of God in spirit and in truth.
This was the religion of these earliest saints. It was simply the
religion of faith and hope. They worshipped God, 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 God, 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 worship. It bespeaks the
standing of a saint, and his spiritual service. It shall come to pass,
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 worship. It was worship in spirit. No temples,
or costly carnal services, or institutions 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 God than even Israel themselves.
They are the earliest witnesses of this heavenly strangership. Such a
life is exhibited afterwards in other saints of God 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 passage 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 God, 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
strangership 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 God 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 God?
[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 lusts. James summons us, in the
same Spirit, to know that "the friendship of the world is enmity with
God." And John separates us as by a stroke: "We are of God, 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 God, 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 shore at His command,
Forsaking all for Him.
"'T were easy, did we choose,
Again to reach the shore--
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 God 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
God was only dimly and occasionally, slowly and gradually, manifested.
But in the person of Enoch it is made to shine 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 lustre. This great fact among the
antediluvian patriarchs anticipates 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
anticipations, 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.
Rich endowments in the Spirit thus attach to their high personal dignity
with God. As with the Church now. "Stewards" they were "of the mysteries
of God." They could "sing of mercy and of judgment;" unto God and of His
counsels they could sing. Profoundest secrets feed their souls. "The
deep things of God," the things both of prophets and apostles, the
things of the epistles and the apocalypse, are theirs. Paul was
entrusted with the circumstances of the heavenly calling. He speaks of
our being caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and of
that great expectation as being our comfort and relief against the day
of the Lord and its terrors; Enoch in himself, long before, illustrated
that very thing. John speaks of the raptured saints accompanying the
Lord in the day of His power, joining in the breaking of the potter's
vessel, and in the warfare of the Rider on the white horse; Enoch in his
prophecy, long before, testified the same. Jude 14, 15. Prophets tell of
the wilderness by-and-by rejoicing, and of the desert blossoming, of the
blessed One renewing the face of the earth, and instead of the brier,
the myrtle flourishing; but long before Lamech had told of this same
comfort in the earth again, and this rest for man from the curse of the
ground. Gen. v. 29.
Rich indeed were these endowments in the Holy Ghost. There is even
peculiar vividness in these earliest utterances of the prophetic spirit.
There is commonly a haze over the distance. It is not clear, as if it
were the foreground. Indistinctness invests it. And this, in contrast
with the nearer landscape, only heightens the impression of the whole.
So the notices of the prophets, and the things reported by apostles.
They are delivered in different style. Properly so. The haze of distance
commonly invests the communications we get of the future. Such is the
perfectness of the way of the Spirit. The very drapery under which the
distant or the future appears sets it off fitly. Clearness, or literal
definiteness, would be offensive, as glare or nakedness. This is
commonly so, and this is all admirable. But if _at times_ the distance
is illuminated, we can delight in it; and in these earliest notices the
latest scenes of divine action are thus set off in strange and beautiful
distinctness.
Such was the heavenly calling, its virtues, its dignity, and its
endowments, of this antediluvian family of God. The end of their path
was heavenly also, as heavenly as any feature of it. I speak not of the
_fact_ of its ending in heaven, but of the very _style_ in which it so
ended. No sign among the nations gave notice of it. No times or seasons
had to mark or measure it. No stated age or numbered years had to spend
themselves. No voice of prophecy had so much as hinted the blessed,
rapturous moment. "Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took
him." Nothing peculiar ushered forth that glorious hour. No big
expectations or strange events gave token of its coming. It was the
natural heavenly close of an undeviating heavenly journey.
It was otherwise with Noah afterwards. Great preparation was made for
his deliverance. Years also spent themselves--appointed years. But not
so our heavenly patriarch. Noah was carried through the judgment; but
Enoch, before it came, was borne to the place out of which it came.[5]