Reading: Gen. 12:10–13:4.
We are occupied at this time with the Lord's desire to have on this earth a
heavenly people, a people who, being born from above, in vital relationship with
the heavenly Man, Christ Jesus, are His expression on the earth. And we have
been seeking to take account of the working out of this law of heavenliness as
seen in the life of Abraham, concerning whom the New Testament says that his
real seed was not the Jew of the earthly type, but this heavenly people, this
Seed which Paul says is Christ. For the sake of any who might have very strong
dispensational views, I am not saying that the Jews were not in a sense the seed
of Abraham, but in this dispensation it is neither Jew nor Greek, it is all one
Man in Christ, and that means a heavenly Man, for Christ is essentially the
heavenly Man as John in his Gospel makes so clear.
Now, the outworking of this law of heavenliness is seen in a number of
different ways in the life of Abraham. We saw in our previous meditation the
pressing of this law in relation to all his past connections; the old world, the
old relationships, the old kindred had to be cut off and left behind, and until
it was, there was no possible movement in the realm of Divine things, no
possible entering into the things of heaven. Now we will pass on to some of the
specific and more particular applications of this very law.
The Testing of Faith's Obedience
The passage we have before us has to do with Abram having at length moved
away from Haran into the land in obedience, and now full obedience by that basic
separation, and then it says he comes in, having built his altar and called upon
the Name of the Lord at Bethel, it says, "And there was a famine in the land:
and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was sore in the
land." This is the first real pressing of the law of heavenliness in the
land, and it is a very severe one, a very big test, and it embodies some very
important lessons for us.
A heavenly position has been taken, a faith position has been taken, and it
has been taken on the basis of a definite revelation from God, a definite making
known to Abram of God's mind, God's will and God's intention, and in relation
thereto this utter position has been taken. He has moved away from the frontier
right into the land, and having done so, he finds very sore famine in the land,
and he finds himself tested by the very position that he has taken. We naturally would
expect that if the Lord had distinctly and definitely shown us a course that He
wanted us to take and made us to understand that a certain direction was His
will, that a certain position must be taken up by us in relation to His thoughts
and His purposes, that when we are committed to it, when we take that position,
when we are obedient to the heavenly vision, we should immediately find the Lord
came out to meet us with great, wonderful confirmations that we were in His will
and that it was all right. That is the natural expectation, argument and
conclusion but very often it just works in exactly the opposite way. A position
is taken on a basis of strong conviction and assurance that it was the Lord's
will, the Lord's way, and almost immediately we find ourselves in trouble, we
find that the position has brought us into difficulties and our obedience has
precipitated us into a situation which is naturally impossible.
What do you expect when you are being wholly obedient to the Lord? You, of
course, expect that an act of implicit obedience to the revealed will of God
will bring from Him an attestation, a demonstration, a confirmation in some way
that He is quite pleased and satisfied, and that all is well. Do you expect an
immediate confirmation of obedience? If you do, you may be very disappointed.
See all that Abram had done and see all that happened. We have noted what a
forsaking it was, what a wealth of life he had in Ur of the Chaldees, what
security, assurance, riches and what an advanced state of civilisation it was.
He had left it, all of it. Later he had left kindred, coming out on nothing, as
we may say naturally. It was sheer obedience to a command from the Lord, very
costly indeed, and every argument would be that the Lord should vindicate that
straight away, and show by confirming signs that our obedience was well-pleasing
to Him and quite satisfactory. What Abram found was quite contrary to that. "A
sore famine in the land", an impossible situation, naturally speaking.
Now, is that very discouraging, disheartening and terrible to take a step of
obedience to the Lord? You may find that you will get a very real testing by
means of the very position that you have taken. You will be sifted and shaken
and tried about the whole matter. God is going to press this principle of
heavenliness more and more inwardly. When things go like that, remember Abram,
remember that this is in the Bible, and remember the Lord Jesus, because, as we
saw in the previous chapter, the Word transfers us with one step from Abram to
Christ, Christ the full measure of that to which Abram was being step by step
brought. Christ is there in the perfection of it all, having completed this
spiritual journey and summed it all up in Himself.
We have been brought onto the heavenly basis of Christ by being born from
above, and we are on the journey, and the journey is not always one of immediate
confirmations and vindications from heaven. It is usually one of the applying of
heavenly principles more and more stringently.
The Nature of the Test
What was the nature of this test? If we see the nature of it, perhaps we
shall be more helped in understanding. Well, simply, the nature of this test for
Abram was apparent necessity, the argument of necessity. Of course, you have to
decide on what ground the necessity rests, in what connection the necessity
lies, but to all human argument it is a matter of, "It is necessary to
do
something", an apparent necessity for his very life. A subtle argument would
come from somewhere, whispering in the ear, 'For the very purpose of God, you
must do something.' That suggestion came to Abram more than once, "For the
realisation of the purpose with which you are called,
you
must do something about it." Do not misunderstand me, I am not saying that we
are not to be practical people and never do anything. There are a lot of people
who would take up a passive position and be altogether unpractical, so
"spiritual" that they do not want to do anything practical at all. That is not
in the realm of what I am thinking about.
If we allow ourselves to be carried at once with this very thing from Abram
to Christ, we shall find that it was the very first thing that arose in the case
of the Lord Jesus. What had happened? He had been baptized in Jordan, in which
He Himself had openly, before heaven and earth, declared that He was a separated
Man, separated unto heaven, separated unto the will of His Father, separated
from all earthly ways or earthly interests and all personal concerns and
considerations. He was separated by that symbolic grave of Jordan from
everything of the natural man, everything of this earth. He was joined to
heaven. When He came up out of the water, the heavens were open to Him; heavenly
attestation was given, this Man is linked with heaven.
Now, that had been His declaration by the practical means of baptism, "Then
was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights ... the tempter came and said
unto Him, If thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread"
(Matt. 4:1-3). In other words, "If
You
do not do something, You will die and You will never be able to fulfil all this
work to which You are called, all this heavenly vocation which has been
declared, You will not be able to go on with it and get through with it, You
will simply collapse. You will die. You must
do
something about it, necessity is laid upon You. For Your own personal
vindication, for the very proving that it is true what has been said from heaven
that You are the Son, and for the going through with this great work upon which
You have set out,
You must do something about it,
everything is in the balances, and now do something to save Your own life!" Of
course, that was not said, but that is what lies behind it. There is Christ
right at the very beginning, just at the other side of Jordan, with the great
divide, the heavenly position taken up, and the first application of the
heavenly principle is the argument of apparent necessity in relation to all
interests. It is a throw-back upon the original move.
We have not a full record, but I think we can do a lot of filling in from the
little experience that we have had, and from what we have gleaned from our own
spiritual history and from the spiritual history of other servants of God. Those
whispering voices are always present in a position like this, when you are right
up against it, when the way seems closed, when the Lord does not seem to be
vindicating your obedience, when He does not seem to be fulfilling His half of
the undertaking, when everything seems to argue that the Lord has left you to
it. You have taken this course, this step, and now you are left to it, to your
own resources. Those whispering voices, they come and they say, "Are you quite
sure
that you were right in taking that step, are you quite sure that it was the
Lord, quite sure that there was nothing of your own self in this, that you have
not been mistaken, deluded and deceived?" When you are right up against it in
spiritual matters, the enemy is always very near to throw back on the original
step and raise questions as to whether you were right.
One of the enemy's great activities and methods is to try to get us to go back
on our course and in some way call into question our obedience to the Lord, to
confuse us, to paralyse us by a doubt as to whether we were right. Don't forget
that. It has been the experience of many servants of the Lord, that coming up
against a very difficult situation, an impossible one, the enemy has immediately
said, "You see? You were mistaken, there was something wrong about the beginning
of this!" The enemy throws you into such a state of paralysis where all is
hopeless, going right back to the beginning and raising questions as to the
beginning of things. Was it really on the ground of the Cross that you took that
step, was it really utterly selfless when you moved in that way? Was there not,
after all, something of self in it? You see what he is doing. He is trying to
undercut the whole meaning of the Cross, the whole meaning of the Cross as
typically represented in that baptism of Christ.
Christ had taken that step, with the utterness of intention and declared that
it was on the ground of the death to all self-interest that He moved on in the
will of God. Now Satan would undercut all the meaning of the Cross and raise
questions about that. It is a terrible thing when we allow something like that.
Beware of that! Some of you have enough understanding to know what that means,
this terrible throw-back of the enemy to raise questions about the origin, the
beginning, as to whether it was right. If he can get us into doubt about that,
he has destroyed the life of faith.
Now, Abraham is the embodiment of the principle of faith for a heavenly life.
Try to live a heavenly life on this earth apart from faith, and it becomes a
fiasco. Faith is the law of a heavenly life here, it must be in the very nature
of things. The law of the heavenly life is assailed by circumstances, by
appearances, with the argument that says, "You have been wrong, you have made a
mistake; now you have to rectify this somehow, you have to go back on this and
do something." So the argument of expediency is brought in and at this point
Abram fails; he leaves the heavenly position and goes down to Egypt. He takes
the matter into his own hands and out of the Lord's hands. Oh, it is easy to say
these things. It is easy to talk like this unless you know something about it.
It is a very real experience. Some of you have been that way, others will come
this way, but remember this is a true and genuine aspect of a spiritual life.
The Lord presses in this law of heavenliness in this way, and tests us as to the
very position that we have taken, and then Satan comes on to that ground of our
testing and tries to twist the whole thing and distort it and give it an
argument and complexion that would undercut the whole purpose of God in our
lives.
The Complications of a False Step
Abram went down to Egypt, and what happened? If you take one false step like
that, rather than find that it relieves and removes the difficulty, it only
accentuates it and brings other complications. So you have the rest of the
story: Pharaoh and Abram's wife; a very complicated situation arises, and a half
lie (it is only a half lie) has to be told to save the situation. One false step
leads to another, and so you get into a constellation of complexes and find
yourself involved in more difficulties, and rather than get out of your trouble,
you land yourself in more trouble immediately you listen to the argument of
expediency and apparent necessity instead of holding to the ground of God and
His faithfulness. Oh, in many ways this will come to our lives, an argument that
it is sheer folly for you, on all natural grounds, to take a certain course that
you feel the Lord would have you take. It will be disaster, it will be death, it
will be the end of everything, if you do that. Why, all common sense is against
it! All advice is against it, the whole world is against it! You must not do
that, you should do this, you should look after yourself, you should preserve
yourself, you should do something about it in the natural.
And the attitude of the heavenly Man, the Lord Jesus, was undoubtedly this:
"I would sooner perish, standing firmly in the will of My Father, than I would
live and have everything by stepping out of that will." That test is very
severe, but it is the way of the glory, it is the way of fulness, the way of
enlargement, of increase. It is the way to "I will multiply thy seed"
(Gen. 22:17), "I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward" (Gen.
15:1). That is what lies in the way of standing steady in the known will of God,
when necessity seems to be laid upon us to do something else. It is severe, but
there it is. It is the way that the Master went.
Satan usually has something nearby, at hand. Egypt was not so very far away,
the stones were right there to be made into bread. Satan usually has something
not so far away that you can do, if you like you can do it; it is there to be
done, it is quite easy. How easy the enemy makes the way of disobedience! - only
just a little thing to get us out, a nearby Egypt solution, as we think, the
solution of expediency, but it only involves in a false position. Abram came
into a very false position with Pharaoh. It was the earth touch again, and touch
this cursed earth anywhere, and you are in confusion. Become related to it in an
inward way, in any connection and direction at all, and you are in confusion. It
is death so far as spiritual and heavenly things are concerned.
Finding the Lord Where We Left Him
Just before verse 10 of chapter 12 - "And he removed from thence unto the
mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west,
and Ai on the east: and there he built an altar unto the Lord, and called upon
the name of the Lord." He went down into Egypt, and then you come into
chapter 13. (It is a pity there is a break of chapters here.) Verse 3: "And
he went on his journeys (back now
from Egypt into the land) from the
South even to Bethel, unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning,
between Bethel and Ai, unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at
the first: and there Abram called on the name of the Lord." He came back to
the place from which he started on the false road.
Now, there are two things about that. One is that there is, of course, no
hope at all until you get back to the point where your deviation started. You
will never recover until you get right back there and put things right just at
that point, and see everything from that position. I had a friend once who was
very fond of playing golf, and he had a habit of losing his balls, but he also
had a wonderful way of recovering them. Being asked how it was he was able to
recover his balls so often, he said, "I always go back to the place where I hit
them; I follow with my eye the most likely course, and usually find it." Back to
the place from which you started, and just take in the whole thing from that
vantage point, and you are able to correct.
Abram came back to the very spot, the place of the altar, the place where God
was. We always find the Lord where we left Him. The Lord is so faithful that He
cannot go with us always. We get away, we go on our own, take our own
self-chosen way, we fall a prey to the enemy's arguments, we get away from the
place where the Lord meets us, where the Lord was with us, but we always find
the Lord waiting for us just there when we come back. The faithfulness of God!
How often we have found that. He is ready to resume when we get back on to His
ground ready to go on. He has not given us up, He is waiting for us. If you have
deviated, if you have missed the way, if you have lost your touch with the Lord,
just see why, discover why. Get back to the point where it happened. You will
find the Lord there waiting for you. The Lord is not awkward or cantankerous, He
is not of that kind:
"You
went off, all right, get on with it. I am not going to take you up again!" He
is not like that. He is right there, and many, many times some of us have found
it like that. We have made our mistakes, our blunders; we, like Abram, have
defaulted. We have allowed argument to carry us away, we have been forced by
seeming necessity to do something, and we found the Lord was not with us and it
has been a barren patch, a dark tunnel, a closed way. When we have put it right
and got back to the altar, to the Cross, where all things are adjusted, we found
the Lord there waiting for us. So did Abram. He got back to Bethel, got back to
the altar.
The Course of a Carnal Christian
Now, I want to take the next phase of the working of the principle. It is
Lot. You come on into the very next paragraph, and you have Lot brought in, and
his history in a practical way becomes accentuated and emphasized. You know who
he was; he was the son of Haran, who was the son of Terah. He was closely
related to Abram, and it would seem as if, when father Terah
died, Abram took this young man as a younger brother. But it is a sad story, and
it bears out this very principle of which we are speaking in a wonderful way on
both its sides, the contradiction of the principle in the case of Lot only
accentuating the observance of the principle in the case of Abram. They are two
sides of the one law of heavenliness.
All you need to do is to see six steps which Lot took to find out exactly
what sort of man Lot was, and those six steps, beginning in verse 7 with strife
between Lot's herdsmen and Abram's, lead to strife between Lot and Abram. The
nature of that strife we can only imagine, as their herds and flocks had greatly
increased, so it was difficult to live within narrow confines together, and they
were always overrunning one another. And so the herdsmen of both sides were
clashing, and it was a matter of: 'You keep off my ground; you keep encroaching
on my preserves, you are all the time interfering with my things.' That is Lot's
side of things, and that is what is happening; this strife upon the principle of my, I, me and mine.
That is Lot. You see presently that there was none of that in Abram. In Lot it
is that. It is something deep down in Lot which is going to come out more and
more of self-interest, earthly considerations, the government of things
temporal, things present, things sensual.
There is a little fragment in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, 'You
always take note of the things in front of you', by which he meant, "You are
always concerned with what you see immediately in front of you, you are
short-sighted, you only see those immediate things, you don't look beyond, you
have no spiritual perception. It is things right up close, that can be seen and
handled, these are the things you are taking account of." That was Lot's very
disposition. You know as well as I do that if there is anything of personal
interest and concern, it is not long before you are quarrelling with somebody,
before jealousies arise, and I, me and mine become strong elements so that you
are clashing with other people because your personal concerns are being touched.
Do not think that this is necessarily a thing which is only in beginners, in
spiritual infants. It is the sort of thing that has got right into organized
Christianity. What is the cause of a very great deal of the disunity and the
trouble in organized Christianity today? It is because of interest in private
things, our work,
our
mission,
our
institution, you are interfering with our something; yes, it is supposed to be
the Lord's. You are stealing our sheep; yes, they are supposed to be the Lord's,
but they are
ours.
There is something that is less than the Lord, something that is not this utter
selfless occupation with the interests of the Lord. It is something that now
belongs to us, that
we
have to look after,
we
have to get support for it,
we
have to see that it is maintained. It becomes something like that, and so you
get jealousies and divisions and all this unhappy state because it is not all
the Lord's, there is something of ours that has to be safeguarded. It is very
carnal. Christianity, speaking generally, is shot through and through with that
very Lot spirit, and it is not Christ, it is something additional to Christ.
Well, take account of that, and let it sink in and have its effect, for we
are wrestling with the great problem of divisions, of strife, amongst
Christians, and see no solution to that problem except on this
principle. It is no use writing about John 17 - "that they all may be one" - and
presenting the vision of the Lord's mind and trying to get people to come on to
that spiritual level; it is useless. You can have your unions and your
amalgamations; it does not bring about real spiritual unity, and the only
possible solution to this whole problem of disunity, of division, is leaving
earthly ground altogether and taking heavenly ground, the ground of Christ, and
saying, "It is not anything on this earth at all, not our this and our that, my
this and my that. It is not some thing,
it is the Lord that matters." Until you take that ground, you have no solution
to the problem of disunity amongst Christians, it has got to be the Lord. Lot
was on the line of personal interests, earthly interests, and therefore there
was strife.
After Abram so wisely, kindly, generously, said to Lot, 'All the land is
before us, make your choice', it says in verse 10: "Lot lifted up his eyes,
and beheld all the Plain of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere."
He beheld - that was the original sin. "When the woman saw that the tree was
good" (Gen. 3:6); the lust of the eyes. He beheld, he looked naturally, his
eyes argued naturally, his heart through his eyes saw possibilities of natural
gratification. He beheld - the second downward step. Strife because of inherent
personal interest, then he beheld. Verse 11 - he chose; it is not a far cry from
beholding to choosing. Verse 12 - he pitched his tent towards Sodom. He beheld,
he chose, he pitched his tent in a certain direction. Chapter 14, verse 12, he
dwelt in Sodom... he has left the tent and taken a house. He pitched his tent,
now he dwelt in, he settled down. You see the downward steps. And the sixth,
final step. Chapter 19, verse 1. "Lot sat in the gate." Oh, he is an
elder now, he is one of the magistrates of the city! He is sitting in the gate
where counsel is given, he has become a thorough-going part of this earthly
corruption in the city of Sodom.
Six downward steps. Why? Because he was a man of a divided heart.
He had some kind of association with what was of God in an outward way; he was a
professor, yes, and he had something inside which would make him more than a
professor if Peter's word be taken seriously about him, that Lot was vexed every
day with the wickedness (2 Pet. 2:8). Lot was something more than just an empty
professor, there was something about him that brought him on to a ground of
being in association with God. But somehow or other this Christian was affected
and influenced by personal advantage, and it became too strong for him and it
became a snare to him. The story from that point is a sad one.
You remember the angels coming to announce the destruction of the cities,
seeking to get Lot out, practically dragging him out, with the fire already
raging, brimstone pouring down so near at hand that his wife only had to stay
for a moment behind while Lot and the angels went on, and she was caught in the
brimstone and turned into a pillar of salt. It was not necessarily that a
miracle happened. She stopped as the flame and brimstone was spreading and she
was caught in it. But you see what a close thing it was for Lot, how difficult
it was to get this man out, how deeply his roots were in Sodom, and he was, as
Paul said to the Corinthians who are a great spiritual instance of this very
thing, "saved; yet so as through fire" (1 Cor.
3:15). Everything lost, all his works gone, all those interests of his
perished; saved, yet so as by fire.
Then he argues with the angels about the little city of Zoar, why cannot he
go there? And because he argues for it, they let him go there. It is not the
Lord's full thought. They had said, Away to the mountain! He said, No, Zoar. And
then later new fears come upon him, and in his new fears he leaves Zoar. He goes
to live in a cave with his two daughters, and then we have that most shameful of
all Bible stories. Here is a carnal Christian, a Corinthian, saved, yet so as by
fire.
Why have we brought this picture so luridly in view? Why have we looked at
Lot? Just to accentuate the principle of heavenliness. Yes, you may in some sort
of way be a saved person, but do you want to be that kind
of person? After all, when worldly ambition has influenced you and temporal gain
and personal advantage, when these considerations have been indulged to the
full, you may not have bartered your soul and lost your eternal salvation, but
do you want to be that sort of person? Is this not a tremendous argument for the
opposite, the Abramic line of being right out, wholly on heavenly ground? See
the course of Lot and the end of Lot, and mark you, it does not end with Lot's
death. You have that double line coming out of that tragedy and story of incest
in that cave. They live on to be a thorn in the side of everything heavenly for
generations after. It is an awful residue of carnality. Do you want that sort of
thing? Is not this an argument for God's full thought of a heavenly people, and
do you think that if you take the opposite line you are going to lose? Do you
think that you must be alive to the psychological moment of advantage, you must
always have a business eye? Do you think you are going to lose if you choose
God's full way and not that way of things?
The Course of a Spiritual Christian
Look at Abram. How beautiful! To say to this kind of man that Lot was, "Here
you are, here is all the land lying before you, make your choice." What
heavenliness! What letting go! Why? Abram knew in his heart that God had said,
"I will give you the land, it is yours." 'Oh well, I can afford to let go if God
has secured that to me, if God has called me for that purpose. Let anybody get
into my place, let anybody usurp, I am not going to strive about it, I can take
it with perfect equanimity, I can rest in the Lord, I can leave that with the
Lord. My business is just to see that I keep in a heavenly frame, in a heavenly
world, in a heavenly realm, that I exemplify the Lord Jesus.' You are
transferred again at once to Him. "All these things will I give thee, if thou
wilt fall down and worship me" (Matt. 4:9) - a quick way of personal
realisation. What is the attitude and reaction of the Lord Jesus? "Don't you
worry, it is all secured to Me, you can have it all for the time being. I am not
going to worry Myself about it, I am not going to compromise to get that, I am
not going to fight for My own things at all; that is in My Father's hands. The
thing for Me to do is to keep on heavenly ground." It looked as though He lost
everything, but He has it all. Perfect rest, perfect, quiet assurance. He let go
everything and got it all. He let it go on the earth and got it all from heaven.
Abram exemplified that very principle. He said to Lot, "Take your choice,
have it all if you like, I am not jealous, I am not concerned that I shall lose
anything." We get so worked up if people begin to get on to our preserves, take
our place and seem to be getting the honours that we ought to have, all that
sort of thing. We get very disturbed about it, very jealous, we begin to feel
bad about it. Don't worry; concentrate on meekness, self-emptiness and letting
go to God. Wait a bit and it will all come your way, the Lord will see that you
lose nothing. It was when Lot had parted from Abram that the Lord appeared unto
Abram and said, "I am thy exceeding great reward. Lift up now thine
eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and
eastward and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give
it, and to thy seed for ever" (Gen. 13:14-15). Let go and see what God gives
you; do not fight for it, do not strive for it. That is heavenly life, heavenly
nature; that is the principle of the heavenly Man.