pollution, such as he might meet in Canaan; separation from natural
alliances, such as he had been born into in Mesopotamia. He was under
the call of the God of glory; and such a call made no terms with either
the flesh or the world. In somewhat of Levite holiness, he did not know
his mother's children; in somewhat of church holiness, he knew no man
after the flesh. Nay; beyond even all this, in somewhat of the virtue of
his divine Lord, he did not know _himself_. He was the heir of the land
where he was a pilgrim. The _promise_ of God was his, as surely as the
_call_. He knew himself to be destined of divine, unimpeachable purpose,
to dignities of a very high order. But to the end he was willing to pass
unknown, entirely unknown. He talked of himself to the children of the
land only as a stranger and a sojourner. He would pay for the smallest
plot of ground which he wanted. He would be nothing and nobody in the
midst of them. He never talked of the dignities which he knew, all the
time, really attached to him. David, in like spirit, in other days, had
the oil of Samuel on him, the consecration of God to the throne of the
tribes of Israel; and yet he would be hid, and thank a rich neighbour,
in his need, for a piece of bread. These men of God knew not themselves.
This was the way of our Abraham; and this was the virtue of Him who, in
this same departed, evil world, made Himself of no reputation, though
God of heaven and earth.
Blessed virtues of soul under the power of the call of God, through the
Holy Ghost! Mesopotamia is left, Canaan is estranged, and self is
forgotten and hid! The call of God purposes to do at this day with us
what in that day it did with Abraham. It would fain conform us to
itself. Its authority is supreme. It is not that country or kindred are,
of necessity, defiling. Nature accredits them; and the law of God, in
its season, owns and enforces them. But the call of God is supreme, and
demands separation of a very high, and fine, and peculiar order. And
this was what addressed Abraham when he dwelt in Mesopotamia, the place
of his birth, of his kindred, and of his natural associations, and this
was what still echoed in his heart all the time of his sojourn in
Canaan.
It was not that he was called to assert the _harm_ of such things. Not
at all. But they were such things as the call of God left behind; and
the harm, or the moral wrong, or the pollution of a thing was no longer
his rule, but _inconsistency with the call of God_. He may allow the
right and the claim of a thousand things; but it is the voice of the God
of glory, to which in faith he had hearkened already, that must lead him
and command him. "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking
back, is fit for the kingdom of God."
He was very true to his call. According to it, at the beginning, he had
gone forth, not knowing, as before him, whither he went, and leaving, as
behind him, all that even nature itself must accredit, and all but the
sovereign pleasure of God sanction. He continued in the power of it,
sojourning in tents, unknown and unendowed, a stranger in the world,
refusing to take one backward step. And at the end, we find the same
power of his call as fresh in his soul as ever--as earnest and as simple
in chap. xxiv. as it had been in chap. xii. He charges Eliezer to act
upon it to the full, as he himself at the outset had done--that is, he
was to keep Isaac in the place of separation at all cost. Let come what
may, Isaac was neither to be taken back to Mesopotamia, nor to be allied
with Canaan. He was, let circumstances make it difficult as they may, to
be maintained in his true place under the call of God.
This has a great character in it. There is another mystery in this
exquisite chapter (xxiv.), as we commonly know; but I do not notice it
here. I rather design to trace the earnest, simple path, which faith
trod from first to last, in our father Abraham. The voice of the God of
glory was _still_ heard by him. He was _still_ the separated man. He
declared plainly that he sought a heavenly country. He might have had
opportunity to return. This very journey of Eliezer proved that he had
not forgotten the road. But he did not, he would not.
This strangership of our patriarch in the earth has indeed a very fine
character. He left Mesopotamia, he sojourned in Canaan, he hid or forgot
himself! Abraham left Abraham behind, as well as country, kindred, and
father's house. He made himself of no reputation. He spoke of himself as
"a stranger and a sojourner," and as that only, in the audience of the
children of Heth, though he was, all the while, the one "who had the
promises." All this was real, true-hearted strangership in the world.
And it was conscious citizenship in heaven that made him, after this
manner, a willing stranger here. Because of possessions in prospect, he
could do without them in hand. The land of promise was to him but a
strange country, because it was but a land of promise and not of
possession. He saw Christ's day, and was glad; but he saw it in the
distance. Heb. xi. 9-14.
And Abraham was all this to the very end--as these closing chapters show
us. The character which he took up at the beginning, under the call of
God, that character he maintained to the end. He fails in the power of
faith along the road, again and again, but he is the same heavenly
stranger to the end of his journey.[13]
[13] In the mystic history of the earth given to us in Lev. xxiii. the
Church is brought in as the "poor" and the "stranger" gleaning in
another man's field, in ver. 22. But as she entered that field so
she left it. She was the poor one, and the stranger, and the
gleaner in another's field, to the end. The field never becomes
her property.
Looked at in the light of this beautiful figure, what is
Christendom under God's eye?
And strangership of this order is ours, I am deeply assured. Ours is to
be strangership in the earth, because of conscious and well-known
citizenship in heaven; separation from the world, because of oneness
with an already risen Christ. Nothing can alter this while we are on the
earth. We ought so to look in the face of a _rejected_ Christ as to
maintain this strangership in power. And so we do, as far as Christ is
of more value to us than all our circumstances. It is for want of this
that we take up with the world as we do. We have not learnt the lesson
that Moses learnt--that the reproach of Christ was greater riches than
the treasures of Egypt.
Hard but blessed. Abraham knew something of it in power. He was the
stranger to the end. He might have returned to Mesopotamia. He had not
forgotten the road, as we observed before; and the constant respect and
friendliness of all his neighbours proved that there was no enemy to
hinder the journey. But the call of God had fixed his heart, and he
looked only where it led him.[14]
[14] The Lord Jesus, in the days of His flesh, acted as the God who, of
old, had called Abraham. _For He put in the supreme claims of such
an one._ "He that loveth father or mother more than Me," says He,
"is not worthy of Me." And again, "Follow Me, and let the dead
bury their dead." Who but God can step in between us and such
relationships, such obligations and services? Duties and
affections like these are more than sanctioned by nature; they are
enforced by law--law of God Himself. But the call of God is
supreme, and Jesus asserted it in the day of His humiliation here.
Would that the soul held these things in increased power! Little indeed
does the heart know of this, if one may speak for others. But they are
real--the prized fruit of divine energy in the elect of God.
After all this we find another and distinct matter in the history of
Abraham. I mean his marriage with Keturah, and his family by her.
This family by Keturah is, we may surely judge, a distinct mystery. That
is, Abraham is here presenting a new feature of the divine wisdom, or
illustrating another secret in the ways of the divine dispensations. In
these children of the second wife we get (typically) the millennial
nations, the nations which shall people the earth in the days of the
kingdom, branches of the great family of God in that day, and children
of Abraham. They may lie far off, as in the ends of the earth; but they
shall have their allotments, and be owned as of the one extended
millennial family. "Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His people," shall be
said to them. The ends of the earth shall be Christ's inheritance then,
as surely as the Church shall be glorified in Him and with Him in the
heavens, and the throne of David, and the inheritance of Israel be His,
as set up and revived in the land of their fathers. Abraham's children
will be all the world over.
For in that day of glory, the King of Israel shall be the God of the
whole earth. Christ is the Father of the everlasting age. If Israel be
honoured by Him, all the nations shall be blest in Him. He is "the light
to lighten the Gentiles," as He is "the glory of His people Israel."
Keturah's children, parcelled off in other lands, bespeak this mystery.
They will be second to Israel, it is true; but, nevertheless, they will
be elect and beloved. As it is here written: And Abraham gave all that
he had unto Isaac. But unto the sons of the concubines which Abraham
had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he
yet lived, eastward, unto the east country. xxv.[15]
[15] The same mystery, I doubt not, is presented in the marriage of
Moses and the Ethiopian, and in that also of Solomon with
Pharaoh's daughter. Moses' second wife stands, in dignity, below
his Zipporah, who shines in peculiar glory at the mount of God in
Exodus xviii.; and Pharaoh's daughter, though fully acknowledged
by the king at Jerusalem, would not be given a place in the city
of David.
This is, I believe, the mystic meaning of this new family of Abraham;
and this strange and wondrous article is that which closes his history.
But it is another witness of the large and varied testimony which God
has borne to His own counsels and secrets in that history. And this is
very remarkable. At times _the Father_ is seen in Abraham--as, in his
desire for children--his making a feast at the weaning of Isaac--his
offering up of his son--his sending for a wife for his son; at other
times _the Christ_ is seen in him, as the one in whom all the families
of the earth are to be blest--as the kinsman-redeemer of Israel--as the
holder of the headship of the nations--father of the millennial or
everlasting age--and then, at other times, _the Church_, or heavenly
people, are traced or reflected in this wondrous story; and, at other
times, we are on earth, or with _Israel_.
We have the Blessed One, unto whom all His works are known from the
beginning of the world, in the details and changeful stories of this
life of Abraham, thus showing forth parts of His ways. In the allegories
of Sarah and her seed, of Hagar and her seed, of Keturah and her seed,
we have the mystery of Jerusalem, "the mother of us all," Israel in
bondage as she now is with her children, and the gathering of the
nations all the world over, as branches of the one extended millennial
family. Mystery after mystery is thus acted in the life of Abraham; and
many and various parts of "the manifold wisdom of God" are taught us.
I am quite aware, that _living or personal_ types may have been as
unconscious of what they were, under God's hand, as _material_ types.
Hagar, no doubt, was as passive as the gold that overlaid the table of
shew-bread, or as the water which filled the brazen laver. But the
lesson to us is not affected by this. I have Christ's royal glory in the
state of Solomon, and I have the deeply precious provisions of His grace
in the golden plate on Aaron's forehead; and I no more think of
enquiring about Solomon himself in that matter than I do about the gold.
The sleeping Adam teaches me about the death of the Christ of God; the
waking rapture of Adam, on receiving Eve, teaches me about the
satisfaction and joy of the same Christ of God, when He shall see of the
travail of His soul; but whether Adam knew what he was doing for me, I
do not ask myself. I can learn about the first covenant from an
unconscious Hagar, as I can learn about the cleansing of the blood of
Christ from an unconscious altar. So, as to our Abraham, in taking his
place in the midst of all these varied and wondrous mysteries, I enquire
not curiously the measure of his mind in these things. The wisdom of God
can say--the Christ who stood in the eternal counsels can say, "Behold,
I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for
wonders;" but how far Abraham could speak so, in whatever measure he was
himself in the secret he was made to utter, or whether he spoke
mysteries as in an unknown tongue, we have not to enquire. "God is His
own interpreter."
Our patriarch has now closed his actings and his exercises. We have now
to close his eyes, as we read in chap. xxv. 7, 8, "And these are the
days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, an hundred
threescore and fifteen years. Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died
in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to
his people."
He had, we may say, seen the land, but he was not to go over and possess
it. He was the Moses of an earlier generation; like him, a _heavenly_
man, a man of the wilderness and not of the inheritance--a man of the
tent--a child of resurrection. He was gathered to his people, ere the
land was entered by the Israel of God according to promise. As in the
glass of God's purpose, and by the light of faith, he sees the land; but
he goes not over to possess it. He dies as on Mount Pisgah, on the
wilderness-side of the Jordan, destined, with Enoch before him and with
Moses after him, to shine on the top of the hill in the heavenly glory
of the Son of man.
We have now closed the third section of the Book of Genesis; and, with
it, the scenes and circumstances of the life of Abraham.
In the midst of these fragments, thus gathered and treasured up for us
by the Holy Ghost, we have seen faith getting its victories, knowing its
rights and pleading its titles, practising its generosity, enjoying its
fellowships, making its surrenders, and obtaining its consolations and
promises. But we have seen also its _intelligence_, and learnt it to be
such a thing as walks in the light, or according to the judgment, of the
mind of Christ.
There is something very beautiful in such a sight as this. We do not
commonly witness this fine combination--the _intelligence_ of faith, and
the _moral power_ of faith. In some saints, there is the earnest, urgent
power of faith, which goes on right truthfully and honestly, but with
many a mistake as to the dispensational wisdom of God. In others, there
is a mind nicely taught, endowed with much priestly, spiritual skill, in
following the wisdom of God in ages and dispensations, but with lack of
power in all that service which a simpler and more earnest faith would
be constantly pursuing. But in Abraham we see these things combined.
In our walk with God, the light of the knowledge of His mind should be
seen, as well as our hearts be ever found open to His presence and joy,
and our consciences alive to His claims and His will. The life of faith
is a very incomplete thing, if we know not, as Abraham knew, the times
as signified of God, when to fight, as it were, and when to be still;
when to be silent under the wrongs of an Abimelech, and when to resent
them; when to raise the altar of a sojourning stranger, and when to call
on the name of the everlasting God. In other words, we ought to know
what the Lord is about, according to His own eternal purpose, and what
He is leading onward to its consummation, in His varied and fruitful
wisdom.
Such is the nature of all obedience; for the conduct of the saint is
ever to be according to the dispensed wisdom of God at the time, or in
the given age.
But, let me add, the highest point of moral dignity in Abraham was this:
that he was _a stranger in the earth_.
This, I may say, outshines all. It was this that made God not _ashamed_
to be called his God. God can _morally_ own the soul that advisedly
refuses citizenship in this revolted, corrupted world.
This was the highest point in moral dignity in Abraham.
God loveth the stranger. Deut. x. 18. He loves the _poor_, _unfriended_
stranger, with the love of pity and of grace, and provides for him. But
with the _separated_ stranger, who has turned his back on this polluted
scene, God links His name and His honour, and morally owns such without
shame. Heb. xi. 13-16.
How finely he started on his journey at the beginning! The Lord and His
promises were all he had. He left, as we have seen, his _natural_ home
behind him, but he did not expect to find _another_ home in the place he
was going to. He knew that he was to be a stranger and sojourner with
God in the earth. Mesopotamia was left, but Canaan was not taken up in
the stead of it. Accordingly, from all the people there, he was a
separated man all his days, or during his sojourn among them of about
one hundred years. Canaan was the _world_ to that heavenly man, and he
had as little to do with it or to say to it as he might, though all the
while in it. When circumstances demanded it, or as far as business
involved him, he dealt with it. He would traffic with the people of the
land, if need were (to be sure he would), but his sympathies were not
with them. He needed a burying-place, and he purchased it of the
children of Heth. He would not think of hesitating to treat with them
about a necessary matter of bargain and sale; but he would rather _buy_
than _receive_. He was loth to be debtor to them, or to be enriched by
them--nor were they his _companions_. This we observe throughout. If
Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre--it may be morally attracted by what they saw in
him--seek confederacy with him, he will not refuse their alliance on a
given occasion of the common interest, when such interest the God who
had called him would sanction or commend. But still the Canaanites were
not his company. His wife was his company, his household, his flocks and
his herds, and his fellow-saint, Lot, his brother's son, who had come
out of Mesopotamia with him--as long, at least, as such an one walked as
a separated man in Canaan. But even _he_, when undistinguished from the
people of the land, is a stranger to him as well and as fully as they.
All this has surely a voice in our ears. Angels were Abraham's company
at times, and so the Lord of angels--and at all times, his altar and his
tent were with him, and the mysteries or truths of God, as they were
made known to him. But the people of the land, the men of the world, did
not acquire his tastes or sympathies, or share his confidence. He was
_among_ them but not _of_ them--and rather would he have had his house
unbuilt, and Isaac be without a wife, than that such wife should be a
daughter of Canaan.
To some of us, beloved, this breaking up of natural things is terrible.
But if Jesus were loved more, all this would be the easier reckoned on.
If His value for us _within the veil_ were more pondered in our hearts
and treasured up there, we should go to Him _without the camp_ with
firmer, surer step. "I have learnt," said one of the martyrs, "that
there is no freedom like that of the heart that has given up all for
Christ--no wisdom like that learnt at His feet--no poetry like the calm
foreseeing of the glory that shall be."
Of our Abraham and his companions in this life of faith, confessing that
they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, it is written, "They that
say such things declare plainly that they seek a country--and truly if
they had been mindful of that from whence they came out, they might have
had opportunity to have returned, but now they desire a better country,
that is, an heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their
God, for He hath prepared for them a city."
Beloved, we are called to be these strangers--strangers such as God can
thus morally own. If the world were not Abraham's object, we ought to
feel, even on higher sanctions, that it cannot be ours. The call of the
God of glory made Abraham a stranger here--the cross of Christ, in
addition to that, may still more make us strangers. As we sometimes
sing--
"Before His cross we now are left,
As strangers in the land."
"Ye are dead," says the apostle, "and your life is hid with Christ in
God." That is strangership of the highest order--the strangership of the
Son of God Himself. "The world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not."
In the strength of this strangership in the world, may we have grace to
"abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul"! and in the
strength of our conscious citizenship in heaven may "we look for the
Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it
may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working
whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself."
ISAAC.
GENESIS XXV.-XXVII.
In the former papers, entitled _Enoch_, _Noah_, and _Abraham_, I have
followed the course of the Book of Genesis, down to the end of chapter
xxiv. I now propose to take it up from thence, and follow it on through
chapters xxv.-xxvii.; Isaac, after Abraham, being the principal person
there.
There is, however, but little in his history, and little in his
character. In some respects this is no matter; for, whether much or
little, his name is in the recollection of us all who have learnt the
ways of the God of grace, "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," which
is His name for ever, His memorial unto all generations. Exod. iii.
Isaac was a stranger in the earth, a heavenly stranger, as his father
had been, and we see him with his tent and his altar, as we saw Abraham;
and we hear the Lord giving him the promises, as He had given them to
Abraham.
"By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange
country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with
him of the same promise."
This tent-life of the patriarchs had a great character in it. Hebrews
xi. 9, 10 teaches us this. It tells us that the fathers were content to
live upon the surface of this world. A tent has no foundations. It is
pitched or struck at a moment's warning. And such a slight and passing
connection with this earth, and life upon it, these patriarchs were
satisfied to have and seek only. They did not look for a city or for
foundations, till God became a Builder. Till His building was manifested
they were sojourners here, just crossing the plain, or surface of the
earth, without striking their roots into it.
This is the voice that is heard from the tents of these pilgrim-fathers.
And as their tents bespoke this heavenly strangership, their altars
bespoke their worship, their _true_ worship; for they raised their altar
to Him who had _appeared_ to them. They did not affect to find out God
by their wisdom, and then worship Him in the light and dictate of their
own thoughts. They did not, thus, in the common folly, profess
themselves to be wise; but they knew God and worshipped God only
according to His revelation of Himself. Therefore it was not an altar
"to the unknown God" at which they served; but they served or worshipped
in truth. And in its generation the patriarchal _altar_ was, in this
way, as beautiful as the patriarchal _tent_. The latter put them into
due relationship to the world around them, the former to the Lord God of
heaven and earth who was above them.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alike in all this. There was, therefore,
no new dispensational secret, no fresh purpose of the divine counsels,
revealed in Isaac, as there had been in Abraham.[16] This is so. But
still, though there was no new dispensational scene unfolded, there was
a further unfolding of the glories that attach to the dispensation or
calling which had been already made known in Abraham. And a very
important one too--such as, if we had divine affections, we should
deeply prize. I mean this: The heavenly calling or strangership on earth
was the _common_ thing; but characteristically, _election_ was
illustrated in Abraham, and _sonship_ or adoption in Isaac.
[16] See the paper on "Enoch," pp. 32-37, where certain dispensational
purposes of God, in their differences, are considered.