These chapters are to be read together, and afford us a large and vivid
exhibition of certain great truths, which concern us at this moment, in
as full a sense as ever the facts themselves, which convey them to us as
in a parable, concerned Abraham and his generation.
Sodom, in that day, was the _world_. It had been warned, but had refused
instruction. It had proved incurably departed from God, and beyond
correction. Sodom had been visited and chastened in the day of the
victory of the confederated kings--as we saw in chapter xiv.; but it was
Sodom still, and was, at this time, in advanced iniquity, in a state of
ripened apostasy, her last state worse than her first.
Sodom was the _world_ in this day. The Lord Jesus, in His teaching,
gives it morally that place, just as another generation had been the
world in Noah's day. See Matt. xxiv.; Luke xvii. They are like figures,
presenting to our thoughts "this present evil world," which is ripening
itself for the judgment of God.
At such a crisis, however, in this day of the judgment of Sodom, or the
overthrow of the cities of the plain, as in every other like day, there
are two incidental matters to be deeply pondered by our souls; there is
_deliverance out of the judgment_, and there is _separation before it
come_. There is Lot, and there is Abraham. Lot is delivered, when the
hour of the crisis comes; Abraham is separated before it comes.
All this is much to be weighed in our thoughts. _Judgment_,
_deliverance_, _separation_--these are the elements of the action here,
and these are full of meaning, and of application to our own history as
the Church of God, and to the world around us.
Before this action opens, Abraham had been in a heavenly place. He was a
stranger on the earth, having his tent only, and wandering from place to
place without so much as to set his foot on; and now, when the judgment
comes, he is apart from it altogether, like Enoch, the heavenly Enoch,
in another and earlier day of judgment. Each of these, in the day of
visitation, was outside, beyond, or above the scene of the ruin; not
merely delivered out of it when it came, but separated from it before it
came.
Abraham had already stood with the Lord Himself on an eminence which
overlooked Sodom, as he and the Lord had walked together from the plain
of Mamre; and now, when the judgment spends itself on that apostate,
polluted city, Abraham is again, in that high place, beholding the
desolation afar off. He was (in the spirit of the place where he stood)
in company with Him who was executing the judgment. But Lot is only
rescued. Lot is a delivered man, Abraham is a separated one. As Abraham
is the Enoch, Lot is the Noah of this later day, and is drawn forth from
the devoted city.
What mysteries are these! What solemn realities, in the counsels of God,
are here rehearsed for our learning! Do we know what we are looking at
in all this? Do we not see great purposes of God, as in a glass, in this
varied and eventful action? Have we to ask, Where is this mystic ground,
on which we are here standing? Surely, beloved, we ought to know it. In
this action, the world, as Sodom, is typically meeting its doom; the
righteous remnant, as in Lot, are delivered in that hour of wrath; and
the Church, as in Abraham, already separated and borne above, looks afar
off on the scene of the mighty desolation. Surely these mysteries are
before us in this action at Sodom. "Known unto God are all His works
from the beginning of the world." The world, the Church, and the
kingdom, are here in mysteries or types; the thing that is to be judged;
the thing that is to be separated to heavenly glory; the thing that is
to be delivered, and thus reserved for the earth again after the
purification. Enoch, Noah, and the deluged creation are again here in
Abraham, and Lot, and the doomed cities of the plain.
These are mysteries of which the Book of God is full. And thus is it
again and afresh witnessed to us, what we are and where we are, though
travelling on, to all appearance, in the common track of everyday human
life, with a generation, in the spirit of their mind, still, as ever,
saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell
asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the
creation."
Many incidental things might occur to the mind in this, as in other
sections of this wonderful history; such as the visit of the Son of God
to Abraham; Abraham's intercession for Sodom; the angels' reserve
towards Lot; and the contrasted characters of the two saints--the saint
of the tent, and the saint in Sodom. But my purpose, in this little
book, does not take in such details. But I would ask, in closing this
action in chapters xviii. xix. Are we, beloved, apprehensive of the
moment in which we are living? Is "man's day" brightening up to its
meridian before us, ascending to its noontide splendour? And what think
we of that? Are we joining in the congratulations of man with his
fellow, that thus it is? Or is all this brightness suspected and
challenged by us, as the sure precursor of God's judgment? Do we know
that the god of this world finds a house "swept and garnished" as
thoroughly a scene for his evil and destructive energy as a Sodom? Do we
judge, with our generation, that this cannot be? Or do we hold it in
mind, that it is in such a house that he will work at the closing of
Christendom's history? And are we waiting for the Son of God to take us
up to that mystic eminence where of old He took His Abraham? The Lord
give us grace to occupy such ground! And we shall the more easily and
naturally do so, if, like Abraham, we are saints of the tent and not of
the city--such saints (again like Abraham) as rejoice, "in the heat of
the day," to hold communion with the Lord of glory.
After this we go, with our patriarch, into the land of the Philistines,
where he sojourns during the times of chapters xx. xxi.
The old compact between Abraham and Sarah is acted on again, after so
long a time--acted on now at Gerar, as before it had been in Egypt. It
had been made between them ere they left their native country. It was
brought out with them from the very place of their birth. It was, I may
say, in them older than anything of God; and after many changes and
exercises it is in them and with them the same thing still.
It was a very evil thing--both subtle and unclean. It was false and yet
specious, and savoured strongly of the serpent, of him that is a liar
and the father of lies. Abraham was forced to betray it, vile as it was,
to the king of Gerar. "It came to pass, when God caused me to wander
from my father's house, that I said unto her, This is thy kindness which
thou shalt show unto me: at every place whither we shall come, say of
me, He is my brother." This was worse than we might even have feared.
There was not a principle in the life of faith that was not gainsaid by
so vile a compact as this, brought from the very place of their nativity
with them. And such is the flesh, the inbred corruption. Its way,
whenever taken, is shame and deep dishonour. It degrades a saint even
before men. It is that which will confound and expose an Abraham before
an Abimelech. And it never changes, or improves, or ceases to be. It is
the same in Egypt, and at Gerar. It lives in us still, and follows us
everywhere. We get it at our birth from the loins of Adam; and we are,
for the common consistency of our way as the called of God, to mortify
and refuse it.
Wretched indeed it is to have to see such a thing as this. But the
Spirit of God hides nothing. There it lies before us, this vile and
wicked thing, in the pathway of the recording Spirit. We have, however,
other happier objects.
The progress of Sarah's soul, under the light and leading of the Lord,
is to be tracked in its own peculiar and instructive path. Under the
influence of the flesh she had, at the outset, joined Abraham in this
unclean compact, of which I have just spoken. In unbelief, she had
afterwards, as we also saw, given Hagar to her husband; and then, in the
haste and rebellion of the heart, she resented the effects of that
unbelief, and cast out the bondwoman, whom she had adopted and settled
in the family. But at the command of the Lord, Hagar had gone back to
her; and now, at the time of this action, she had borne with her in the
house for fourteen years. There was, however, no manifestation of the
renewed mind, or the life of faith, in her. It was even during these
years, that in unbelief she had laughed at the promise, behind the
tent-door. But still, I may say, she had, during this time, in one
sense, _been at school_; and she seems to have learnt a lesson, for she
submitted patiently and unresistingly, to the presence of the bondwoman
and her child in the house of her husband. We hear of no fresh quarrels
between them. This was something. This was witness of her being in the
hand of God, till at length, as we know, she was given faith to conceive
seed. Heb. xi. A great journey, however, after all this, is now about to
be taken by her spirit. She is to take the lead even of her husband. And
happy this is--common enough, too, among the saints--but happy, very
happy. And were we of a delivered heart--a heart given up to the desire
of Christ's glory only--we should rejoice in these discoveries, made in
the regions of the Spirit, though we ourselves would have to be humbled
by them. "The last shall be first, and the first last." These are among
the ways of "new-born souls," and to be discerned still by those who
"mark the steps of grace." Paul could say of some, "Who also were in
Christ before me;" but we may be bold to add, in that case, though he
did not, "The last were first." And the generous liberty of the redeemed
soul will but glory in these sovereign actings of the Spirit.
Sarah's elevation above Abraham in the things of the kingdom of God is
now to appear in illustration of all this. In obedience to the command,
Abraham calls the child that was born, Isaac. But Sarah _interprets_
that name: and this is a finer exercise of soul over the gift of God. To
obey a word is good; but to obey it in the joy of an exercised heart,
and in the light and intelligence of a mind that has entered into the
divine sense of that word, is better. Abraham called the child that was
born to him, Isaac: but Sarah said "God has made me to laugh; and all
they that hear it will laugh with me." The oracle of chapter xvii. 19
was made more to her than a command to be observed. It had springs of
refreshing in it, and kindlings of soul. It was full of light and
meaning to the opened understanding of Sarah. And this leads to strength
and decision. This Deborah of earlier days will brace the loins of
Barak. "Cast out this bondwoman and her son," says Sarah to Abraham; for
she was happy in the liberty of grace and promise, while he was still
lingering amid the claims of nature, and the desires which his own loins
had gendered. "Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this
bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac." And this was
_Scripture_, as we read in Gal. iv.; this was the voice of God. This
decision of faith, in the liberty of grace, gets its sealing at once
under God's own hand. "Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath
made you free," says the Spirit. And what met the mind of the Lord, in
the days of His flesh, like the faith which was bold and free, after
this manner? the faith which would use Him without ceremony, which
reached Him through a crowd, which pressed in through the silent
reproaches of a misjudging Pharisee, or through the injurious whispers
of a self-righteous multitude! And how much of the energy of the Spirit
in St. Paul is engaged in giving the sinner this precious boldness, this
immediate assurance of heart in Christ, in spite of law, conscience,
earth, and hell!
This boldness of faith in Sarah, this challenge of the bondwoman, this
demand (in her own behalf too) that she might enjoy her Isaac all alone,
is _Scripture_. Gal. iv. 30. She spake as "the oracles of God." But in
Abraham nature now acts. He would fain retain Ishmael. This is no
strange thing. Nature now acts in Abraham, and faith in Sarah; as, on an
earlier occasion, which we noticed, nature had acted in Sarah and faith
in Abraham. But nature in Abraham must submit. He must not let Sarah be
entangled any longer as with this yoke of bondage. The house must be
freed of Ishmael, for it is to be built only in Isaac. "The son of the
bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman."
But all this quickly bears its fruit. Hagar being now gone, and the
house settled in Isaac according to this demand of faith, glory is
therefore quickly ready to enter. For this is the divine order. Having
"access into this grace wherein we stand, we rejoice in hope of the
glory of God." Such is the order of the Spirit in the soul of such a
saint; and such is the order now in the mystic house of our Abraham.
_Abraham is sought by the Gentile._ This is full of meaning. In the days
of stress and famine, Abraham seeks the Gentile, whether in Egypt or in
Philistia; but now, the Gentile seeks Abraham. This is a great change.
Abraham's house, as we have seen, is now established in grace. Ishmael
is dismissed, and Isaac is gloried in. In mystic sense, Israel has
turned to the Lord, the veil is taken away, Jerusalem has said to
Christ, "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord," her warfare
is therefore accomplished, and she is receiving the double. The Gentile
seeks Israel. Abimelech and Phichol, the king and his chief captain,
come to Abraham.
This is a great dispensational change. Israel is the head now, and not
the tail. The skirt of the Jew is now laid hold on by the nations; for
the Jew has, by faith, laid hold on the Lord, and the nations say, God
is with you. Chap. xxi. 22; Zech. viii. 23.
This is full of meaning; and Abraham on all this (led of the Spirit) is
full of thoughts of glory or of the kingdom. And rightly so. Because,
when the Jew is sought by the Gentile, instead of being trodden down or
degraded by the Gentile, the kingdom is at hand. Accordingly, on the
king of Gerar seeking him and suing him, our patriarch raises a _new_
altar; not the altar of a heavenly stranger, as in chapter xii., but an
altar to "the everlasting God;" not an altar in a wilderness-world, but
an altar beside a _grove_ and a _well_; the one being a witness that the
solitary place had been made glad, and that the wilderness was
rejoicing; the other, that the peoples of the earth were confederate
with the seed of Abraham.[11]
[11] The Lord Jesus, in His day, acknowledged this same pledge or
symptom of the kingdom. For when the Greeks came up to the feast
and asked to see Him, as the Gentile here seeks Abraham, His
thoughts are immediately upon His glory. He knows indeed that
glory is to be reached only by His death, and so He testifies; but
still, His thoughts go out at once to the glory. See John xii. 23.
All this bright intelligence of faith in Abraham is very beautiful. We
have already seen other actings of it in him. He knew a time of peace
and a time of war, and acted accordingly in the day of the battle of the
five kings with four. So, again, he knew his heavenly place, and took
it, when the fire of the Lord was judging the cities of the plain. So,
again, as this chapter xxi. very remarkably shows us, he also knew when
to suffer wrong and when to resent, when to be passive and when to
assert his rights. For now, in the time of this chapter, when the
Gentile seeks him, he reproves Abimelech for a well of water which
Abimelech's servants had violently taken away. _But he had not
complained of this injury until now_; for Abimelech said to him, "I wot
not who has done this thing; neither didst thou tell me, neither yet
heard I of it, but to-day." And this is exceedingly beautiful. It is
perfect in its generation. Abraham had till now suffered, and taken it
patiently, because till now he had been a heavenly stranger on the
earth; and such patient suffering in such an one is acceptable with God.
But now, times are changed. The heavenly stranger has become the head of
the nations, sought by the Gentile; and rights and wrongs must now be
settled, and the cry of the oppressed must be heard.
All this has great moral beauty in it. I know not how sufficiently to
admire this workmanship of the Spirit in the mind of Abraham. He was an
Israelite who knew the seasons of the year--when to be at the Passover,
and when at the Feast of Tabernacles. He knew, in spirit, when to
continue with Jesus in His temptations, and then again, when the day
arrived, how to surround Him with hosannahs as He entered the city of
the Son of David. All such various and blending lights shone in the
spiritual intelligence of his soul. God, by the Spirit, communicated a
beautiful mind to Abraham. In other days, he would not have so much of
this earth as to set his foot on--he would surrender the choice of the
land to Lot--he would leave the Canaanite where he found him--he would
refuse to be enriched by the king of Sodom even in so little as a thread
or a shoe-latchet--he would wander up and down in his tent here, a
stranger from heaven--but now, in a day signified and marked by the hand
of God, he can be another man, and know his millennial place, as father
of the Israel of God, and their representative as head of the nations.
He can keep the Feast of Tabernacles in its season. His rebuke of
Abimelech--his entertaining him--his enriching him--his giving him
covenant pledges--and all this in such easy, conscious dignity--and then
his new altar or his calling on God in a new character, and his planting
a grove, all bespeak another man, and that a transfiguration, if I may
so speak, had taken place in him, according to God.
All this I judge to have a great character in it. But I will not any
longer stay here; for there is still more in this fine life of faith
which our father Abraham, through grace, tracked to the very end,
holding still the beginning of his confidence.
And here let me say, this life of faith is, in other words, life spent
in the _power of resurrection_. It is the life of a dead and risen man.
It is a lesson, if one may speak for others, hard indeed to be learnt to
any good effect, but still it is the lesson, the practical lesson of our
lives, that we are a dead and risen people. At the outset Abraham, in
spirit, took that character. He left behind him all that nature or the
world had provided him with. He left what his _birth_ introduced him to,
for that which _faith_ introduced him to. And as he began, so he
continued and ended, with failings by the way indeed, and that too again
and again, but still to the end he was a man of faith, a dead and risen
man.
As such an one he had received Isaac, some twenty years ago, not
considering his own body now dead, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's
womb; and as such an one he now offers him on the altar at the word of
the Lord. The promise was _God's_--that was enough for him. For _faith_
is never overcome. It has divine, infinite resources. The believer fails
again and again; but faith is never overcome, or comes short of its
expectation. xxii.
This is the way of faith, when Isaac was demanded.[12] And the same
overcoming faith we trace in the very next scene, the burial of Sarah.
This was the same faith, the faith of a dead and risen man, the faith
which had already _received_ Isaac, and _offered_ Isaac, now buries
Sarah. Abraham believed in resurrection, and in God as the God of
resurrection, the God who quickens the dead, and calls those things that
be not as though they were. The cave of Machpelah tells us this. "Earth
to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, _in sure and certain hope_," was
the language of Abraham's heart there. His purchase of that place, with
all his care to make it his own, to have it as his _possession_, while
beyond it he cared not for a single acre of the whole land, tells us of
his faith in resurrection. His treaty for it with the children of Heth
is like his words to his servants at the foot of mount Moriah, "Abide ye
here with the ass, while I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and
come again to you." Each of these things bespoke beforehand what he knew
about his Isaac and his Sarah. He committed each of them into the hands
of Him who, as he knew, quickens the dead. The corn of wheat dying, as
he knew, was to live again. The handful of sacred dust, as he knew, was
to be gathered again. Death itself was eyed in like victory of faith, as
had already been eyed the fire, and the wood, and the beloved victim on
the altar. xxiii.
[12] There are _mysteries_ as well as _illustrations of faith_ in these
things; but I cannot follow them here. The offer of Isaac on
Moriah, we none of us doubt, is a mystery. So, I surely know, is
the action of Hagar and Ishmael in chapter xxi. It is the picture
of the present _outcast_ but _preserved_ Jew--a homeless fugitive,
destined, however, for future purposes of mercy. See Gal. iv. 25.
But I follow not these things particularly here.
These were the victories of faith again. Faith in our patriarch, after
this manner, talked calmly with all circumstances, and won the day over
them all in their turn. Beautiful victories of "precious faith"! And
they are gained still. Faith still disposes of one circumstance after
another as it rises. It meets our own personal condition as "dead in
trespasses and sins;" it meets the difficulties and temptations of the
way; it meets the last great enemy. Let me not make a wonder of meeting
things on the journey, or at the end of it, if I have already met what
withstood me at the outset. Faith will go to mount Moriah, or to the
cave of Machpelah, if it have already gone out in the starry night with
the Lord at Hebron. If it have met death in my own person, it may meet
it in my Isaac or my Sarah. One speaks, the Lord knows, of His grace,
and not of one's own experience. But still, beloved, let each of us say,
Am I not at peace with God? Do I not know that He is for me? Do I not
know that my estate of sin, guilt, and condemnation has been met in His
grace? Do I not know that I am washed, accepted, adopted? Have I not
gone out with Abraham, as in the night of chap. xv., and found relief
for my own state by nature, and shall I then tarry on my way, though the
trial of mount Moriah await me, or the death and burial at Machpelah? If
faith have already met sin, it is to know itself conqueror over even
death. Let our souls be accustomed to the thought that the _brightest
victory of faith was achieved at the beginning_--that if at peace with
God in spite of sin, we may reckon on strength and comfort from Him in
spite of the trials of the way, and on power and triumph in Him in spite
of the end of it. Faith which has done its _first_ work has done its
_greatest_ work. "If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by
the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by
His life." God is glorified in these reckonings of faith. "He that
spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He
not with Him also freely give us all things?"
It is the power of life over death, life in victory, that faith uses. It
was such power of victorious life that Abraham possessed himself of by
faith. The sepulchre is empty, and the grave-clothes are lying there, as
the spoils of war. The deadness of his own body, the altar of his Isaac,
and the grave of his Sarah, were visited and inspected by a _risen_ man,
in the light of the faith of Him who is the Quickener of the dead, and
calleth those things that be not as though they were.
These are the great things of faith in the souls of the elect. But
further still, in this fruitful, shifting history. Abraham, at the end,
is seen to hold his first ground, as well as to work his earlier
victories. He maintains, through grace, erect and firm, that very
attitude which he had at once and at the first assumed, when by faith he
hearkened to the call of God.
That call of God had done these two things with Abraham, I might say
_for_ Abraham; it had separated him from Mesopotamia, and yet left him a
stranger in Canaan. From country, kindred, and father's house he had
been withdrawn; but still, in the midst of that land and people to which
he had come, he was to be but a pilgrim, dwelling as on the surface of
it, in a tent, whatever part of it he might pass through or visit.