Reading: John 3:9-18; 4:10,13-15,23-24; Numbers
21-26.
The thing which we must bring into our view as
we come to this word, is the movement of the Lord's people toward the Lord's
goal. The goal of God for His own is the gaining of Christ. To put it in the
words of the apostle Paul, words which in their completeness have a very apt and
fitting application to this whole matter in these chapters of the book of
Numbers, "Forgetting those things which are behind... I press toward the mark
of the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus"; "I count not
myself to have attained... this one thing I do"; "I count all things as
refuse that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of
mine own...". The picture is of a man just stripping off and leaving behind
everything that would in any way impede, arrest, check, hold back or discourage
in this way in which his heart is set; with his eye upon a goal, and that goal
is expressed in the words: "That I may gain Christ...". That is the very
fulness of Christ, the goal of God for His people.
That is what is in our view as we come to
Numbers 21 to 26 and note a progressive movement in relation to God's end. In
chapter 21 we have what the apostle Paul called a tempting or a trying of God.
He puts it this way in 1 Cor. 10:9: "Neither let us tempt the Lord, as some
of them tempted, and perished by the serpents". This twenty-first chapter of
the book of Numbers brings in the fiery serpents: "And the Lord sent fiery
serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel
died". Paul says that that was because they tried or tempted the Lord. In
what way did they tempt the Lord? The words are these: "And the people spoke
against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have you brought us up out of Egypt to
die in the wilderness?" (verse 5). God's thought was anything but that. God
never brought them out of Egypt to die in the wilderness. God's redemption is
unto life and not unto death; unto salvation and not unto condemnation. And so
they interpreted the very redemptive activities of God as representing exactly
the opposite of God's thought and God's intention. They attributed to God, in
His very mercy, evil rather than good. They turned salvation round in the form
of a charge against God, to their own detriment.
That is a very serious thing. That is what the
apostle, writing to the Hebrews, calls: "Treading under foot the Son of God
and counting the blood of the covenant an unholy thing". That is a most
solemn thing to do, "There is no bread, and there is no water; and our soul
loathes this light bread" (verse 5). Speaking so of God's manna, despising
the manna. And seeing that God's thoughts are always spiritual thoughts, and in
God's mind in giving the manna there is always the foreshadowing of something
else - the Lord Jesus, as the Bread of Life - it is in spirit the despising of
the gift of the Lord Jesus as the very life of God for His people, and saying: "Vile
bread" (RV margin).
You say: Would ever anyone do that? Yes! If you
look further you will see that it was the mixed multitudes who were guilty of
this, and that phrase: "mixed multitude" gives you the key to the whole
situation. It means people who were not really out for the Lord, who had mixed
motives and interests and whose hearts were divided and very largely all the
time back in Egypt. They had never come right out for the Lord's sake. And if
there is a state like that, we shall always be making comparisons and saying the
people of the world have a better time than we do; those who are not professing
Christians have a much better time than those who are. That entirely depends
upon whether your heart is wholly out for the Lord or whether it is a divided
heart. Those who are wholly out for the Lord find Him wholly true and know what
His joy and His satisfaction are. If the heart is divided there will be a very
imperfect apprehension of what the Lord can be.
So the mixed multitude tempted the Lord in this
way and the Lord, of course, can never bring people like that to His goal.
Something must happen in such people before they can come to God's end: the
fulness of Christ. There is only one thing that can happen to people like that;
that is that they should die. God sent fiery serpents among them who bit the
people and many people of Israel died. Then a cry of penitence went up, truly a
confession of sin, and an entreaty to Moses to pray for them; and the Lord
commanded that he make a serpent of brass and set it upon a pole, so that all
who had been bitten of the serpents, looking upon it, should be delivered from
this judgement and from this death.
That is explained for us in John, chapter 3.
The Lord Jesus says that He is speaking heavenly things and He gives the
heavenly interpretation to the serpent lifted up in the wilderness. He says: "No
man has ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son
of man, which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up". The heavenly Lord
will explain in a heavenly way the meaning of the serpent. One has come from
heaven, to take the place of the sin-stricken, serpent-bitten people, and to be
made a curse for them. And there is nothing which more clearly symbolises the
curse than the serpent. Just as the thorns are a symbol of the curse, and they
were put upon His Head, so Christ has been made a curse for us. And faith's gaze
upon a substitute bearing the consequences of our sin, and being made a curse
for us, is the way of our deliverance and our salvation. That is the way, and
the only way, by which it is possible for us to come to God's end, the fulness
of Christ - that we have recognised that we lie under a curse and that it is
true that the bite of the serpent has left the poison of sin and death in our
very natures. From birth it is there, and yet God has called us unto His eternal
glory.
How shall sin-indwelt, Satan-infected humanity
come to God's eternal glory? Only as it dies; and it dies in its Substitute, in
its Representative: the Lord Jesus. The first necessity to gain Christ is that
we recognise our death in the Lord Jesus, His death as ours; judged, cursed, yet
delivered through His death. That is all the simplest Gospel truth, but we take
nothing for granted, and there are always those who are not clear upon the
simplest things of the Gospel. We would make provision for any who might not
have seen that that is the first step; the basic thing, the initial thing. If we
are coming to God's end of Christ's fulness, we have to recognise the utterness
of our condition by nature: cursed, ruined, lost. The Lord Jesus has taken that
place to deliver us from judgment. God's thought was never our destruction and
God's will was never our judgment; God's thought always was our salvation, our
glory. It is unbelief that has involved us in the other.
That is just where we begin in Numbers 21. Life
out of death; salvation out of condemnation; deliverance from judgment through
the death of a Substitute - and what a Substitute! He that came out from heaven!
When that has taken place, the next thing
becomes possible as the next thing in the course of progress toward God's end.
That comes in in the same chapter in verses 16-18. Having been delivered from
death, through faith in the work of the Lord Jesus in His cross, we come to the
place of the well of water springing up within. John 3 passes to John 4: "...the
water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up...".
Numbers 21:17 is: "Spring up, O well...". The Holy Spirit, as resultant
from the death of the Lord Jesus, becomes the inward life of the people of God.
Nothing is possible until that takes place. Everything is possible when that
does take place. The Holy Spirit dwelling within is the guarantee to faith of
God's end being reached. All you have to do is to repose your faith in God, and
allow the Holy Spirit to have His way in your life, you will reach God's full
end once you are on this side of death and of the cross. The Holy Spirit takes
up the work within the believer immediately that work of the Lord Jesus
in His cross has been accepted.
That, again, is very simple, but it is
foundational, and to all of us it is a great comfort. You may be very much ahead
of me spiritually, but I confess to you that my own heart leaps at that thought
that this matter is in the hands of the Holy Spirit and will be carried through
to perfection as long as I move in the obedience of faith, in harmony with the
Holy Spirit. The reaching of God's end is just that; the answer of faith to the
inward working of the Holy Spirit; the cooperation of faith with Him.
From the springing well we pass to Numbers 23.
When we have been brought from death unto life, and have become the recipients
of the indwelling Holy Spirit (Who is the Springing Well) then the next thing is
that the Lord's chosen people are brought out into the light. Or, to put that
another way, then it is manifest who are the Lord's people. Who are the Lord's
people? What is the elect? They are those who have come from death into life,
and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit; and that you find as you come to chapter 23.
This chapter is the beginning of the work of
Balaam. Balaam was hired by Balak to curse Israel. We know the story; how he
went out for gain to curse Israel. The angel of the Lord withstood him on the
way; the ass saw the angel, and showed that he had more intelligence than his
master. It is an indication of how utterly blind spiritually people can be when
they have got fleshly ends in view; that even a beast can be more noble in
instincts than a man who is out for personal gain at the expense of God's
people. But that is a little aside.
Balaam came with his intention to curse, and
the Lord arrested him and put the bridle upon the jaws of Balaam, put him on the
rein, and told him that he could go, but he was to say only the things which God
put in his mouth. He became, willingly or unwillingly, the prisoner of the Lord.
The first time that Balaam opens his mouth he brings out something very blessed
as a fresh movement in this spiritual history of God's people. Do you notice
what he says in verses 7-9? The Lord has brought right out into clear
distinction that this people is His elect; He has made it manifest that this is
His peculiar people. "A people that dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned
among the nations", (verse 9). Super-national, outside of the world, God's
elect! How constituted? Because they are brought from death unto life and are
indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Balaam had not originally thought of saying a thing
like that. But that is the first thing that he has to say, and, being the first
thing, it carries its own significance, that he puts a hedge around this people,
in effect, and says: They are God's people in a peculiar and particular way, and
who can touch them? It is a great thought, to be of that people. God, for that
people, turns every curse into a blessing. God sovereignly rules so that every
design against them is turned for their good. They are a particularly separated,
preserved, watched-over people: "The Lord knows them that are His."
That is, again, on the way toward God's end and
we have to recognise that. To come to the fulness of Christ we have to recognise
that we are God's people - utterly separated unto Him, His own peculiar
treasure, and that we are not in any way reckoned among the nations and are not
to reckon ourselves as being in any relationship whatever with the world.
Another thing that comes out is even more
magnificent than that. It is in chapter 23 verse 21. What does that say? That is
just a declaration of what poor, weak, sinful, imperfect, unreliable men and
women (so far as they themselves are concerned) are. It is a declaration of what
they are as seen by God's eye when they are in Christ. Supposing the Lord came
to you and said: I have not beheld iniquity in you; I see no perverseness in
you. You would say: Well, Lord, you see very differently from what I see in
myself. We know the perverseness and the iniquity of our own hearts, and for the
Lord to say: "I have seen none of it, and I see none of it", makes us wonder
whether we are right or wrong in this matter. The Lord would sit down at our
side and tell us what it means to be in Christ, and would say: "I no longer look
upon My saved ones as what they are in themselves, but as what they are in My
Son. I look upon Him: He provides Me with all that is lacking in them; He covers
all that is in them that I cannot look upon." "He has not beheld iniquity in
Jacob, neither has He seen perverseness in Israel". It was all there, but to
be in Christ brings us into a place where God has found all that He needs of
satisfaction for us in His Son. That is, again, on the way.
We shall never come to God's fulness until we
have come to an appreciation of what Christ is for us before God. If we are
forever, even as the Lord's children, going to be circling round ourselves and
be occupied with our own imperfections and taken up with an introspective
analysis of our own faulty beings, instead of keeping our eyes upon Jesus and
thanking God for what He is for us; we shall never make progress. There are so
many whom we know who are not moving a bit spiritually, and when you come to
talk to them they have nothing to talk about but their own miserable selves. It
is one continuous string of miserable "I's", and they are not rejoicing in
the Lord. We have to learn how not to condone or make light of failure, but,
on the other hand, when grieved over failure and confessing it to the Lord, we
hold on to the position that if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and that the Lord
Jesus is accounted to us for righteousness - we rejoice in that. That is an
important factor in spiritual progress, in getting to God's end; rejoicing, not
in what we are not in ourselves, but what we are in Christ as in the eye of God.
Having got that far, we come to chapter 25. The
atmosphere changes here, and this is a terrible chapter. Whom the devil could
not curse, he tricked. To frustrate the realisation of God's purpose for His
people, sinners are put in the way and these sinners are in the nature of links
and associations with unholy things. Spiritual advance is always arrested by an
association, a contact, a link with an unholy thing. The apostle, writing to the
Corinthians who had been arrested in their spiritual growth, said: "Be not
unequally yoked together with unbelievers... for what fellowship has light with
darkness; and what concord has Christ with Belial?" It was those unholy
links that arrested the Corinthians and their spiritual growth. And these
daughters of Moab represent unholy things with which Israel became associated;
and all with a view to arresting their progress.
We must always be very watchful and very
careful about a link with an unholy thing, for that is one of the things that
the enemy is constantly trying to bring about. It is the spiritual people whom
he is out to ensnare in this way, and it is a remarkable thing that very often
the people who are spiritual are tripped up in this way. When you come into this
kind of a relationship with the Lord, you come also into relationship with other
spiritual things and they are out to trip up, to ensnare, to get a contact with
something unholy in order to cut right in and break spiritual progress. So the
daughters of Moab were the subterfuge used by the enemy when an open curse had
been rendered impossible. If the enemy cannot work openly to bring us
immediately under judgement, he works secretly to get some kind of relationship
with unholy things.
Let us remember that this is in the path to
God's end. These are the things that we meet on the way, and it is the true
children of God who meet these things. The way of the Lord's highest purpose is
the way most beset by perils and it is the way in which most watchfulness is
necessary. When you get to an Ephesian position (chapter 6) of conflict in the
heavenlies, the final word is: "praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and
watching thereunto..."
Out of this comes something very fine. In this
twenty-fifth chapter of the book of Numbers, verses 11-13, there is that which
speaks of a very special blessing for those who will have nothing to do with
unholy things. The Lord secures unto them very special promises and very special
blessings; for those who, like Phinehas, will have no compromise with unholy
things. Phinehas, as you notice, saw this relationship with a Midianitish woman
taking place, in the very act, and he took a spear and thrust both man and woman
through and slew them and so he prevented God from breaking out because that
thing was coming into the presence of the house of God. God's wrath was stayed,
and Phinehas turned aside judgement. It was an uncompromising attitude toward
something which was unholy, and to all such the Lord gives very special promises
of blessing. There are great blessings for those who will remain absolutely
clean and clear for God. God is with them in a very special way.
In Chapter 26 you have the people numbered.
When you get to the end of that chapter you notice: "These are they that were
numbered by Moses and Eleazar the priest... But among these there was not a man
of them that were numbered by Moses and Aaron the priest; who numbered the
children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. For the Lord had said of them,
They shall surely die in the wilderness...". This is a fresh numbering with
a view to the inheritance (if you go right through chapter 26 you will see it is
the inheritance that is in view). As the last verses point out, it is the
numbering of a fresh people. It is not the original Israel, who came out of
Egypt. It is the new generation coming into their possessions and into the
inheritance. It is that company who have come by the way which we have
indicated: from death into life, indwelt by the Spirit - God's own peculiar
people, separated from the world, overcoming the snares of entrapping and
involving in evil relationships. That is the people now marked out and numbered
and named for the inheritance.
Yet our last word shows that there is a
relationship between the former and the latter. Do you notice what the last
verse of chapter 26 says? Caleb and Joshua were the link between the first race
and the second race, the first generation and the second generation. The
spiritual application demands some explanation.
How does the fact that one generation died in
the wilderness and did not go into the inheritance, and another generation arose
and did go in, apply to us? There is a sense in which the first generation went
in with the second generation. It was the kind of generation which existed at
first that died. Let us put it this way: If we are in Christ there is both an
old man and a new man in us, an old creation and a new creation. This old
creation has been brought out of Egypt, not any part of us is in Egypt, in the
world, but we have accepted God's attitude toward the old creation, that it is
ruled out. And yet, in a sense we are going to take this old creation through.
This body of ours is a body of the old creation, and it has got to go through.
But that which is evil in it has got to be left behind, to perish. What is the
link? It is that represented by Caleb and Joshua. What do they speak of in this
connection? They speak of the principle of faith. Caleb came to Joshua when they
were in the land, and said: The Lord - away back there forty-five years ago -
promised me this land; all the people have died, and I have survived; give me
what the Lord promised me. What is that but faith? Faith, forty-five years old,
holding on, when everything is going into death all around. All is perishing,
and yet faith says: I do not give up what God has promised, and I stand on God's
promises.
So Caleb and Joshua were a link between an old
generation and a new. It is the principle of faith that carries right through to
God's end. What is not of God goes, but all that can be for God is carried
through by faith. What do you say about even your mortal body? Well, faith says:
This mortal shall put on immortality, and this corruptible shall put on
incorruption; this body shall be changed and made like unto His glorious Body. I
am going to take a body through to glory; I am not going to be a disembodied
spirit, floating about in space. Faith carries through all the creation which
can be purified by the Blood of the Lord Jesus to the inheritance.
We are only saying that in order to indicate
what we mean by Caleb and Joshua being a link between the first and the second
generations, because there is that which is of us which is still with us, and
which is being changed and carried through, a part of the old creation, but
the evil principle of the old - the body of the flesh - is left behind, is cut
off. None of that will go through.
We find there these eight stages mentioned in
these five chapters, the points in the progress toward God's end:
- We begin with our death in Christ, Who was made a curse for us.
- We come to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
- Then, as such, we are declared God's peculiar people, separated unto
Himself
- Then we apprehend what we are as His people, as in His eye - not in our
own eyes, but in His eyes - how He looks upon us.
- Then we are aware that there is every kind of trick and plot of the enemy
to get us down from that spiritual position and involve us in something unholy
in order to arrest our spiritual progress; and all the time we are having to
separate ourselves from unholy things as we go along, and refuse to have
fellowship with them.
- As we go on in that way, God is securing unto us His exceeding great and
precious promises. These are for the wholly consecrated.
- Then the inheritance comes into view for such, and we are named as His
inheritors, heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, heirs of the
promises.
- Finally, we come through to the fulness of Christ.
It is always interesting to notice that, great
man as he was, Joshua is not mentioned in chapter 11 of the letter to the
Hebrews. With all the heroes of faith in the Old Testament, Joshua is left out.
Perhaps you say that is unfair on Joshua; there were men mentioned of much
smaller stature than Joshua in comparison - Samson is a poor thing, and he is
mentioned. Perhaps in comparison Barak is very insignificant. Others who
certainly did not reach the standard of Joshua are mentioned there, and Joshua
is not included. And you say: Evidently the Holy Spirit forgot something very
important! Why was Joshua not mentioned? Simply because Joshua is a type of the
energies of the Holy Spirit, and the energies of the Holy Spirit are behind all
the other people mentioned so that Joshua is in every one of them. Joshua, in
principle, is behind Abraham, Isaac and the whole list. When you speak of the
Holy Spirit you do not put Him amongst the heroes of the faith; He is
responsible for all the faith. If Joshua is a type of the Holy Spirit in energy
toward the inheritance, he will not be mentioned particularly, because He covers
the whole.
May we not fall short of God's end, God's goal.
May we press right on and right through by this way to all that God has intended
for us, and rejoice that He has given us His Spirit to see us through. May we
enjoy more the reality of: "It is God who works in you, both to will and to
do of His good pleasure".