Reading:
Hebrews 11:13-16
We return now to Abraham
as one of the representative pioneers of the heavenly
way. We begin by reiterating one thing which was so true
of Abraham, but which must be true, and is always true,
of every spiritual pioneer, of every one who is moving on
to explore and exploit the heavenly kingdom: that is, his
sense, his deep, inborn sense, of destiny. Stephen
has told us, concerning Abraham, that "The God of
glory appeared unto our father Abraham" (Acts 7:2)
when he was in Ur of the Chaldees. We do not know how the
God of glory appeared unto him. It may have been in one
of those theophanies common to the Old Testament and
common to Abraham's later life when God came to him in
man-form. We do not know. But we do know from his whole
life that the effect of it was to bring to birth in him
this tremendous sense of destiny - the sense of destiny
which uprooted him from the whole of his past life, and
which created in him a deep unrest, unrest of a right
kind, a deep and a holy discontent.
Discontent may be all
wrong, but there is a right kind of discontent. Would to
God many more Christians had it! There was started in
Abraham an urge which grew and grew through the years and
made it impossible for him to settle down and accept
anything less than the full meaning of God. He could not
accept a second-best in relation to God. Of course, the
consciousness of that had to grow. He had to come
progressively to realise what it meant. It came in this
way: that he arrived at a certain place, and perhaps
thought that here was it, and then he found it was not,
and he had to move; and then perhaps he thought, 'Now,
this is it - but no, it is not. There is still - I do not
know what it is, I cannot define, explain, but I know
within me there is still something more that God has'. "Not
that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect:
but I press on" (Phil 3:12); it was this urge
through the ages - so very real in the case of the man
whose words I have just quoted. He was never able to
accept God's second-best. God has a second-best. Again
and again in history God has found it impossible to
realise His 'first best', His very best. People would not
go on. He said, 'All right, you shall have My
second-best', and they had it; but pioneers never do
that. Abraham could not do it.
Now, do not
misunderstand or misinterpret this. This was not natural
or temperamental instability. Do not think that, if you
are a person who is never contented, that is a Divine
discontent. It may be temperamental. You may be one of
those people who can never stick at a thing for very
long, who are always jumping from one thing to another.
You will be an entire misfit, both in the world and in
the kingdom of God. It was not that sort of thing with
Abraham. There was something of heaven working in him,
the proof of it being that he was always on the upward
move; he was not on the horizontal, he was on the upward
move. He was making progress, not only on the earth
level, but spiritually, all the time.
Now you see, alongside
of Abraham there was Lot, and Lot was a man who was
always seeking security here. He sought the city;
he sought a house. He disliked this tent life. He wanted
to be settled in this world, and he sought to be settled.
But Lot was the weak man with all that. Abraham who was
always moving in a tent was the strong man. This was not
natural at all, it was spiritual. This urge from heaven,
this mighty working of a spiritual force in Abraham
brought him into the very hard school of the heavenly. To
the natural, to the earthly, to the flesh, the heavenly
is a very hard school, and Abraham was brought into it by
this urge from heaven.
CONFLICT
BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL
In the first place,
there was the conflict between the spiritual and the
temporal, the conflict between the seen and the unseen -
and that is a very fierce conflict. In Abraham's life it
was sometimes pressed to a very fine issue. You see, on
the one hand Abraham was blessed of the Lord, he was
prospered of the Lord, there were the signs that the Lord
was with him. There was increase, enlargement, great
enlargement, yes, embarrassing enlargement. His flocks
and his herds multiplied; he was a very prince in the
land - and yet, and yet, that very blessing of the Lord
was at times brought to the point where the whole thing
could in a moment be wiped out - by famine, acute,
devastating famine. Why had God blessed and increased and
enlarged, and then allowed something that could wipe it
all out in no time? That is rather a difficult problem,
is it not? Would it not have been better to have been
kept small and limited than to see all this threatened?
Abraham found the problem very acute. It was that that
brought about one of his failures. He went down to Egypt.
It was a hard school.
What does it mean? It
seems that God gives with one hand and takes away with
the other: prospers and blesses - and then throws in
something that threatens to destroy the blessing. Is God
a contradiction? Is He denying Himself? You know the
temptations at such times to try to interpret. Are we,
after all, but the pawns in a game? Are we, after all,
but the children of chance, of fortune or misfortune?
After all, is the Lord in this? Can this really explain
the Lord, a consistent God?
It is a hard school.
But, you see, it is wholly in keeping with what God is
doing.
What is He doing?
Well, if He blesses,
there are two things bound up with it. In the first
place, Abraham's blessing and prosperity and increase and
enlargement had to find its support from heaven and not
from earth. God is introducing the great heavenly
principle. Oh, the Lord may bless and enlarge, but God
forbid that ever we should assume that now we can support
ourselves, now we can carry on, now we have got going and
can maintain our going by our own momentum. He will see
to it that, however He may bless, if a thing is of
Himself - however great, however enlarged, however
increased it may be - it can perish at any moment if
heaven does not look after it. That is a lesson. Do not
presume; do not take anything for granted. Live every
moment out from heaven. As truly in the day of blessing
as in the day of adversity, cling to heaven.
And then there is this
other factor. God was so training Abraham that he could
be safe for blessing, and that is something - to be safe
for blessing. Such discipline, such trial of faith, such
testing! And yet it does not matter to Abraham how much
God blesses him, he does not allow the blessings to
obscure the heavenly vision and halt him on the way. That
is a tremendous triumph. Oh, the devastating perils of
blessing! Perhaps you may feel that you do not know much
about those perils as yet. But God wants to make us safe
for His heavenly kingdom, safe for spiritual enlargement,
safe for being used mightily; and we are never safe if
things less than God's ultimate can hold us up, never
safe if the good is the enemy of the best. With Abraham
it is perfectly clear, that, whether in prosperity or
adversity he was never allowed to settle and never
allowed to seem to have arrived. If at any time he did
feel he had now arrived, that was very quickly exploded.
"These all died in faith, not
having received... but having seen... and
greeted... from afar".
Another thing about
Abraham is this: that he never allowed the apparent
difficulties, however great they were, ultimately to stay
his spiritual onward and upward march. We will come back
to that again in a moment. Do you not see how all that
was taken up by Joshua and Caleb? Think again about
Joshua and Caleb. These were most certainly men who had
been in that school. If they had not been, they would
never have taken the next generation into the land. God
only knows what those men went through. You see, the
story is told in so few verses, about the spies going
out, and the minority report, and the taking up, or
proposal to take up, stones, to stone these men and kill
them. But you have got to add to that the long, long
years while that whole generation was dying out, with
only two men holding on to the heavenly vision. That is a
hard school. They might easily have lost heart and given
up and said, 'It is a hopeless outlook'; but they did
not: the heavenly had got a grip upon them in their
innermost being and held them. It held them, even in the
greatest adversity, and they came through; they 'overcame
the world'.
THE
CONFLICT BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL AND CARNAL
Then, again, with
Abraham there was the conflict between the spiritual and
the carnal: not only between the spiritual and the
temporal, but between the spiritual and the carnal. This
conflict came right inside what we may call the domestic
circle. It was in the family, in the blood. It was in
Lot. I am speaking spiritually. I interpret Lot as
representing something that is not only objectively in
the Christian family (which is of course quite true) but
is in our own natures, subjectively, the carnal setting
up conflict with the spiritual, the earthly with the
heavenly.
Here, you see, is Lot,
and he is of the same blood as Abraham; but right in the
blood, right in the family - if you like, right in the
Christian family - there is this streak of carnality: Lot
and his worldliness, his worldly-mindedness, his worldly
vision, his worldly ambition, his worldly longings. There
is no heavenly vision with Lot; and he is right
alongside, so closely alongside, Abraham. Abraham finds
this menace of an argument against his spiritual course
right in his blood. It is there; it is in us, and it is
in the Christian family. It is right alongside, very near
all the time - this craving to settle down, to have
things here and now - quick returns - things seen - the
gratification of the soul; that rest which is not rest,
but which we think of as rest.
Many of you know what I
am talking about. You know how sometimes naturally we
crave for rest, and we try to get it - and we do not get
it until we get to the Lord. We find our real rest in the
things of heaven, not in having holidays. But there it
is, and it is always trying to draw us away, get us away,
make us run away. 'Oh, to get out of it! If only we could
live on some island alone - how restful, how peaceful!
To get away from it all!' And it never happens. Our rest
is in heavenly things. We only find our real satisfaction
in the things of the Lord. You Christian go and
have a surfeit of the world: you know you will come back
and say, 'No more of that!' You know you cannot do it.
But that craving is with us all the time. The carnal
influence is in our blood. And it is in the whole
Christian family - the Lot side, that wants to have a
Christianity of this world, always dragging and
pulling downward and away from the heavenly. Abraham knew
all about that.
That constitutes the
very ground of this pioneer work, pioneering for the
things of the Spirit. It is this warring the things of
the flesh, as though we were always carrying about a
corpse, some lifeless thing to be dragged about and
subdued every day. We have to say to ourselves 'Come on,
none of that!' It is the way of the pioneer. You can
settle down, but you will lose your heavenly inheritance.
The carnal has very, very subtle ways - very 'spiritual'
ways.
Is that a contradiction?
It is a spurious spirituality, but what is interpreted as
spirituality. I think of the great battle that Paul, the
heavenly man, had with the Corinthians, the earthly
church. And yet the Corinthians were supposed to be
spiritual. They had all the spiritual gifts; they had the
miracles, the healing, the tongues. But Paul said
"I... could not speak unto you as unto spiritual,
but as unto carnal" (I Cor. 3:1). The carnal can
have very 'spiritual' ways, apparently. The fact is that
their carnality was taking hold of spiritualities, and
making the spiritualities serve their carnality; giving
them soulish gratification, in display, in show, in
demonstrations; pulling the heavenlies down to the earth.
Do not let us blame the Corinthians. How we long to see,
how we long for evidences and proofs! Why do these things
gather such a following? Because there is something in
human nature that is gratified, and it is so infinitely
more difficult to walk the heavenly way where you do not
see and you do not know; but that is the way of the
spiritual pioneer who is going to inherit for others.
THE
PROOF OF THE REALITY OF HEAVENLY VISION
Finally, the proof of
Abraham's vision: the proof of this sense of destiny
being real, true, genuine, being really of God, and not
just his imagination: how is that proof given in his
case?
(a) FAITH IN THE GOD OF
THE IMPOSSIBLE
First of all, Abraham's
attitude toward the impossible. As we said in the last
chapter, the New Testament gives us the full story. In
the Old Testament it looks as though he gave way, broke
down in the presence of the impossible.
We shall come to that in
a minute. The New Testament tells us quite emphatically
that Abraham looked the impossible squarely and
straightly in the face and believed that it was possible.
His attitude to the impossible over Isaac proved that
there was something more than just imagination; there was
something mighty in his sense and consciousness of
destiny. If we give up when a situation begins to appear
to be impossible - that is the ultimate test of whether
we really have had registered in us a sense of heavenly
vocation. The fact is that, although you feel you want to
give up, you are not allowed to give up. Something in you
just does not let you give up. You have been on the point
of writing your resignation a hundred times. Again and
again you have said 'I am going to get out of this; I
cannot go on any longer or any further; I am finished';
but you have gone on, and you are going on, and you know
quite well that there is something in you stronger than
all your resolutions to resign. How necessary is that
sense in us - and it is proved to be something, not of
ourselves, but of God. "According to the power that
worketh in us" (Ephesians 3:20) - it is that.
(b) CAPACITY FOR
ADJUSTMENT WHEN MISTAKES ARE MADE
Then consider Abraham's
capacity for adjustment when he made mistakes. This man,
this pioneer, made mistakes, and they were big mistakes.
What is the temptation of a servant of God who makes a
glaring blunder; of one carrying responsibility who makes
a terrible mistake? What is the immediate reaction? 'Oh,
I am evidently not fit for this, I am not called to this;
God has got hold of the wrong person, I was never meant
for this; I had better find another job, I had better get
out.' But although Abraham made the mistakes - and they
were very bad ones, grievous lapses and failures not
excused in the Bible, shown to be what they were, never
rubbed out by God; there they are on record - and not
only on record in the written Word, but on record in
history: look at Ishmael today! - although they were seen
for what they were, there was that in Abraham which
reacted to adjust. 'I have made a mistake in going down
to Egypt; but I will not give up in self-despair and
refuse to go back again; I will get back. I have made
this mistake over Ishmael - I must get back and recover
my ground.' He was a great man for recovery and
adjustment in the presence of heart-breaking
disappointment with himself.
(c) THE WORKING OF A
HEAVENLY POWER WITHIN
What does all this say?
There is a working of a heavenly power in this man. This
is not natural, this is not the way of nature. If only we
knew the tension and the stress, if only we knew all the
hardness of that school that Abraham was in-! I never
fail to marvel when I read Paul on Abraham. "Without
being weakened in faith he considered his own body now as
good as dead (he being about a hundred years old)... yea,
looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through
unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to
God, and being fully assured that, what he had promised,
he was able also to perform" (Romans 4:19-21).
"... the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us
all... before him whom he believed, even God, who giveth
life to the dead" (Romans 4:17). He proved his
faith by binding his only son and taking the knife to
slay him. In an instant more the son, in whom all the
promises were centred, would have been dead. I say, I
marvel. It is one thing even for God to do a thing like
that - to take away; it is another thing for us to have
to do it, to give it up to God: but Abraham did it. There
is something not natural here. This is not the way of the
world, the earth. It is the heavenly way. Abraham is
pioneering the heavenly way. And so he occupies that
tremendous place, not only in the old dispensation, but
in this, and for ever. A great pioneer of things heavenly
- that is what it means.
That may explain a great
deal in our own experience. God needs people like that in
this day of terrible downward, down-grade spiritual
movement to the world on the part of His Church. With all
its good intentions, perhaps even its pure motive, it is
nevertheless adopting the framework and form of this
world in order to do the work of heaven. There must be a
reaction to that, and there must be vessels who can prove
that it is not necessary to go to this world. Heaven is
sufficient for all things.