"By
faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto
a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and
he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he
became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land
not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the
heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for the
city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker
is God... These all died in faith, not having received
the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from
afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and
pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things make
it manifest that they are seeking after a country of
their own. And if indeed they had been mindful of that
country from which they went out, they would have had
opportunity to return. But now they desire a better
country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is not
ashamed of them, to be called their God: for he hath
prepared for them a city" (Hebrews 11:8-10,
13-16).
We have seen that the
first crisic step toward the ultimate entering the heart
of God was when Abraham repudiated the old world. When
God said to him: "Get thee out of thy country,
and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house"
(Genesis 12:1), it was God's repudiation of the old
world. Therefore, the first step toward the full entering
into the heart of God is our oneness with God in leaving
the world behind.
Then we saw that when
that step had been taken, the journey was not at an end.
There was another great crisic step to be taken, because
Abraham's father, brother and nephew had gone out with
him, although God had said: "Get thee out...
from thy kindred, and from thy father's house".
That next step, then, was separation from the natural
life, what the Apostle Paul called 'our old man' ...
"Our old man was crucified with him (Christ)"
(Romans 6:6) ... "Seeing that ye have put off
the old man with his doings" (Colossians 3:9).
(Having spent so much
time upon that, we will just leave it there for the time
being.)
Now we come to the
third phase of this spiritual journey, which is oneness
with God in the heavenly nature of everything. Perhaps
this is where we ought to read the verses we have already
read, for they so clearly set forth the heavenly nature
of the journey which Abraham was taking. Leaving for the
moment the mistakes that he made because of the
difficulties of this way, we look at it as a whole, and
it is very comforting to notice that the writer of the
Letter to the Hebrews, when speaking about Abraham, never
mentions his faults. You have to go back to the Old
Testament to find those, and we will do that presently.
First of all, however,
let us look at it through the eyes of this writer of the
Letter to the Hebrews. Of course, we cannot fully
appreciate the meaning of what is written here, for we
are not Abraham and have not got his background, but,
even if we did understand it all, it is a very wonderful
thing that Abraham did. God must have done a very great
work in the heart of this man!
Abraham was born in a
great city and he lived there for over sixty years, which
is the greater part of any life in our time. We have seen
that Ur of the Chaldees was a wonderful city. It was set
in a very wonderful civilization, and it was there that
Abraham was born and brought up. We could say that the
city was in his very blood. He was not only in the city -
the city was in him. Now he comes right out of that city
and is brought into the country of Canaan - and God gave
him not one foothold in that country. It was a good
country, too; not a country to be despised, by any means,
and in it there were a number of cities. You may think
that Sodom and Gomorrah were not much in the way of
cities and that Abraham had very little difficulty in
refusing them, but there were other cities not as bad as
they were. At any rate, the other cities might have
suited him, but although he had been such a man of the
city all his life, he never entered into one of those
cities to become a citizen. Whether they might have been
desirable from the standpoint of the natural man or not,
and whether it might have been quite a good thing to take
possession of some part of that country or not, Abraham
neither took possession of the land nor of one city all
his life. We have read that he was a sojourner in the
land, living in tents, moving up and down the country and
never far from a city, but although the country and the
cities were there, he looked for a city and for
a heavenly country.
God had done something
very deep in this man's heart. If Abraham had looked at
the country as his nephew Lot did, he might have said:
'Well this is quite good enough. Let us settle down
here.' Or he might have looked at the cities and said:
'This is not a bad city. Let us go in and settle down
here.' That is what Lot did, but Abraham looked at the
country and said: 'No, this is not it. This does not
answer to something that has been done in my heart. God
has done something in me that makes me unable to settle
down here.' The word is: "He looked for the
city... whose builder and maker is God... They desire a
better country, that is, a heavenly", and then
the writer of this Letter to the Hebrews gathers it all
up into this: "He (God) hath prepared for them a
city".
The heavenly things had
got such a hold on Abraham's heart that nothing else
could satisfy that heart, and because heavenly things had
got such a grip on him, earthly things lost their hold
upon his life. This is a very real stage or phase in the
spiritual pilgrimage.
I wonder if you
understand this from experience! Of course, when we get
old the things of this life and of this world do lose
their interest for us, but I am not talking about the
natural realm. This has to be just as true of the
youngest Christian as it was true of Abraham. I do not
know who may be the youngest Christian to whom I am
speaking, but I want to say to that one, as to everyone
else, that a real mark of the work of God in the heart is
that we have been spoilt for this world. We have come to
realize that there is nothing that can take the
place of the heavenly things. I do wish this was true of
all Christians, and especially of all young Christians:
that heavenly things have become so real and precious to
them that they would travel half across the world to get
them, and that they are prepared to give up their
holidays and all the earthly interests to get some
heavenly things. Well, I think I am right in saying that
that is why most of us are here now, that we have at
least come this far on the journey: that there is nothing
that can take the place of the things of God for us.
So what we are saying
is that it is a very impressive thing that, although it
was a country full of good things naturally, and although
there were cities there, Abraham never settled down in
any of it. God had done such a deep work in his heart,
and that word 'never' went right on to the end of his
life... "These all died in faith, not having
received the promises".
Now you see our
connection with the last message. We said then that
oneness with God in repudiating the natural life is a
step forward. It is a most unnatural thing never to want
to settle down in some abode or residence on this earth!
It may be all right to dwell in a tent for a little
while, but the time comes when we say: 'Let us leave the
tent and get home', where we have all the conveniences of
a settled abode. I repeat: it is a very unnatural thing
never to want a home, and Abraham, although he longed for
a home, could never settle down in this world. That was a
very unnatural thing: it was a spiritual thing.
So we see that in this
journey we do have to come to this spiritual position of
a gravitation toward the things of God and of heaven. God
puts a law of spiritual gravitation into His born again
children and, as surely as there comes a time when that
law works in the birds of the air and they say: 'It is
time we left this country', so in the true Christian the
law of spiritual gravitation toward the heavenly things
is a mighty work.
If we are moving with
God we shall discover that He is never in favour of our
having settled and permanent spiritual centres in this
world. The horizon of the people of God is not the
horizon of this earth. Perhaps you have heard of certain
places where the Lord has given great blessing and you
have said: 'Oh, if only I could go and spend the rest of
my life there!' If you did that you would be making a
terrible mistake. God is never going to allow any centre
on this earth to be the end of the journey. We may get
blessing there, it may be true that the Lord meets us
there, but if we begin to think that this is the end of
all things we are going to have a great disappointment.
And what is true of
places is also true of experiences. Again and again in my
own life God has given a new experience. When I had the
first one I thought I had come to the end of all
blessing. 'Surely', I thought, 'there can be nothing more
than this!' But then, later on, the Lord did something
else, and again I thought: 'Surely there is nothing
beyond this! I must be ready to go to heaven now!' And
yet again there was another movement forward, and every
fresh experience of the Lord was something in advance of
everything that had gone before. Be very careful that you
do not come to any position which says: 'Now we have come
to finality'. They "greeted them from afar"
- there was always something more beyond, and this is a
true mark of a spiritual progress toward the heart of
God.
There are many times in
the life of the people of God when they come to
disillusionment. They think that they have now come to the
thing which is everything, and then they suffer a
great disillusionment. They find that this thing, after
all, is not the final thing. Indeed, it is not what God
puts into their heart as the thing that is
what He is after. Although it may be something very good,
and even wonderful, there is an element of disappointment
about it. You see, there is a disappointment about
everything and everybody on this earth. If you knew the
truth about Abraham, or Moses, or about any of these
great men, you would find that there was something to
disappoint you in them. There is nothing, and there is no
one, perfect here.
I must just make this
statement and leave it there for the present. The fact is
that the Lord must have us always going on. We are
pilgrims and strangers, which means that we shall never
come to finality here on this earth. If you are
disappointed with what you thought was going to be the
perfect thing, just remember that the Lord is calling you
on to something better. When we look at some of the
mistakes that Abraham made we shall see more clearly what
we mean.
We will close by just
illustrating from the life of Moses. It says of him:
"He supposed that his brethren understood how that
God by his hand was giving them deliverance" (Acts
7:25). He had clothed his Hebrew brethren with a great
idea that if only he presented himself as their leader
they would all come round him and make a great fuss of
him. So one day he went out to offer himself as the hero
of the deliverance of his brethren. And the first
Egyptian that he found badly treating them he knocked on
the head and forced all the breath out of him. What did
he expect? That all his brethren would rally round and
say: 'Now we have got a champion', and they
would all begin to treat the Egyptians as Moses treated
that man. It was a very great surprise and
disillusionment to Moses when one of his own brethren
turned on him the next day and said: 'Who made
you a ruler over us?' That was a great disillusionment to
Moses. Why? Because God's way is a heavenly way and not
an earthly way. We do not do God's work by throwing our
own weight about. When it is done, it will be done from
heaven and not by that kind of Moses. He only made things
much more complicated and lost a lot of time by trying to
do heavenly things on an earthly level.
So what we have to
learn is that we are called to be a heavenly people whose
weapons of warfare are spiritual weapons and not carnal,
whose methods are not the methods of this world, but the
methods of heaven. And to learn that lesson is a phase in
a journey which will end right in the heart of God.
May the Lord interpret
this word to our hearts and teach us what it means that
we are "born from above" and have heavenly
resources at our command!