Reading:
Gen. 28:16-17,19; Gen. 31:13; 35:1,6-7; 29:15-18; Col.
1:24.
We come
now to the sixth of these operations of the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and we are brought to
Jacob. We come to see the working of the law of life in
another and still more advanced aspect; for you will have
recognized that each of these steps is in advance of the
other. We are moving forward, we are reaching unto God's
end, we have the goal in view. Fullness of life is before
us, and we reach the fullness by these successive steps,
each of which brings us nearer the end and, with itself,
increases the fullness. So we have to see what this
further advance in the matter of life is as represented
by Jacob.
There
are three things which stand out more clearly than others
in the case of Jacob. The first is the birthright, the
second is Bethel or the House of God, and the third is
service. These three are really one in essence, or three
phases of one thing. The birthright is the blessing; the
chief blessing, the highest blessing, the first blessing.
The House of God, or, using the New Testament
designation, the Church of God, is that which takes the
supreme blessing, and that blessing means pre-eminence.
You notice how it worked out with Jacob, what the
birthright meant to him. It was not only that he got a
form of words from his father which represented a
blessing, not only that he got certain things, but that
blessing brought him into the first place, so that the
elder served the younger; it gave him pre-eminence. The
House of God, the Church, which is Christ's Body, is
elected to that. "Jacob have I chosen";
"Jacob have I loved". The service is ever
related to the House of God. We have, then, three aspects
of one thing.
The Foundation of Service
Now we
are going to begin with the third aspect. I suppose, when
we contemplate Jacob, the thing about him which strikes
us very forcibly is his intensely active nature; active
in mind, in brain, in wit; active in will, active in
transaction, in execution; active as one ever alert, ever
on the move, ever watching for an opportunity, an
occasion. His life is indeed a life of activity, and
withal he has his eye upon high things; yes, upon Divine
things. If this were not so, then we could find no saving
feature in Jacob. It was his perception of the
transcendent value of Divine things which gave him his
place and upon which God was able to work, in so far as
there is anything in a man which forms the basis of
Divine activity. That birthright - he understood the
nature of it, the range of it. He knew what it meant, he
knew whither it would lead him. He had a sense of the
value of Divine things which his brother, Esau, did not
possess. When he came to Bethel and had his dream and
awoke in the morning, he did not merely say, Well, I have
been dreaming. He said, "Surely God is in this
place.... How awful is this place"; and he turned a
dream into a very practical expression and set up a
pillar and anointed it and called the name of that place
Bethel, the House of God.
If you
move on with Jacob, despite all that you may deplore, you
will find that the big steps in his life are all marked
by some perception of Divine things, some spiritual
discernment. He is in heart in the right direction. His
thoughts were right; the trouble was with his mind and
his will. The end was a right one, but the way by which
he sought to reach it was all wrong. If you analyse Jacob
in this way, you will not be long before you arrive at
his signification in this matter of life and death. You
will remember that, although he had secured the title to
the blessing by his wit, by his cunning - yes, but do not
overlook the fact of his spiritual perception - he never
came into the blessing until that which he had employed
to secure the title to it had been thoroughly dealt with
and brought to an end. It is one thing to be in the way
of the blessing, to have a heart in the direction of
God's purpose and highest will, but, between the
perception of its value and our stepping into the way of
it, and our reaching it, there may be a great deal to be
got rid of. We may discover that there has to be a great
working of death before there can be the life which is
bound up with that which we have seen. We have seen, we
have reached out for it, we have striven after it, we
have laid ourselves out with all our human resources to
achieve it; but we never do. Something has to be done in
us before we come to that which in itself is God's will
for us, and it is the "Jacob" in us that has to
be dealt with, so that we come to the "Israel"
position. That self-energy, that wit, that self-resource
in relation to Divine things has to be slain, and we have
to come to the place where it is perfectly clear to us,
where we know it as we know nothing else, that God's end
is reached by God's strength alone, that the resources
for the accomplishment of Divine purposes are not in us,
but only in Him.
Now,
then, you can see what arises at once as the operation of
the law of life, the first law of service, for it is that
which the activity and the energy of Jacob represents;
work, service, doing, and all with Divine things in view.
The first law of service is subjection. If anything is
patent in the case of Jacob, it is this. On the one hand,
he is the man who stands out more than any other as the
man of action, the man of activity and the man of
service. He served Laban for two periods of seven years.
It took quite a bit out of his life, that service. He is
a man who is ever doing, active from the beginning of his
story. Yet, as clear, as obvious as that is the other
thing, that subjection was the lesson Jacob had to learn.
That is as simple to grasp as anything in the Bible. The
great crisis of his life upon which everything turned as
to Divine purposes was that hour in which he came finally
to take his place of subjection under the touch of the
finger of God, and it was not until that had happened
that he could go back and dwell at Bethel.
Service Inseparable from the House of
God
You see,
these two things went together. The Lord said,
"Arise and go to Bethel and dwell there". Jacob
had never been able to dwell in Bethel. He had made a
fleeting visit to Bethel and Bethel had become an
established fact. Bethel was there, the House of God was
there, but Jacob could not dwell there; because no one
can dwell in the House of God until they have come to the
place of subjection. So he went on to learn the lesson
which is basic to the House of God, and then God said,
"Arise and go to Bethel and dwell there". He
had to meet that crisis, where self-strength was
exhausted and broken and he was weak; but where God
became his strength - a prince with God. It was thus he
was rendered suitable for God's House. You see how all of
a piece this is. The House of God is the object and
sphere of Divine service.
Now, if
ever I have said a thing which is true, that is such a
thing. I am going to challenge you on that: I defy you to
show me and prove from the Scriptures that there is any
service to God which is not related to His House. All
service to God is bound up with, and inseparable from,
His House. The Old Testament is full of it; the New
Testament is emphatic. The Church, which is Christ's
Body, is the object and sphere of all the service of
God's people and there is no service apart therefrom. Oh,
that the Lord's people had kept the object of service in
view. They have so much service which is not consciously
related to the House of God. You may be called to serve
the Lord especially along the line of soul-winning, but
you must remember that such service relates to the House
of God. If you make it something in itself, you are going
to dwarf it, to limit it, and to deprive it of all that
it is intended to come to. Oh the tragedy of great
evangelistic efforts that do not issue in the full
purpose of God! Souls are saved and left; and they are
put into Gospel missions, which are in no sense local
churches as seen in the New Testament, and after twenty
or thirty, or even fifty years in these Gospel missions,
you will find these saints knowing nothing more than that
they are saved. They were saved so many years ago and
beyond that point they have not progressed an inch. There
are multitudes of these missions all over the world. They
are delightful; you meet saved souls rejoicing in
salvation: but there is a tragedy. "Oh, I was saved
under Moody all those years ago, and I am still rejoicing
in the Lord today." That is typical of the position
of many and, when that testimony has been given, it
represents all that these can say. It is very good, of
course, to know the Lord as your Saviour and to be
rejoicing in salvation; I am taking nothing from that.
But that is something which has been made an end in
itself; it has never gone further. Why is this? Because
the Church was never brought into view. I am not speaking
now of "going to church," of congregations in
certain places called "churches". You know of
what I am speaking, of God's full thought about the House
of God, the Church, which is the Body of Christ, with all
that means as revealed especially through Paul, the great
unveiled mystery of Christ's spiritual Body and its
eternal destiny in the purposes of God. All service, in
God's thought, must be consciously related to the Church,
to the House of God.
You may
be used and blessed in just moving round comforting and
cheering saints and doing all sorts of kindly things for
the Lord's children. Are you quite sure that is leading
to real spiritual increase, the increase of Christ,
leading on to God's end. It may be a help, it may be a
blessing, but what about the real building up of the
House of God? In our comforting, consoling, helping
ministry, we have to be able to impart spiritual
increase, not just to help lame dogs over stiles. There
has to be a goal to which it is all moving, namely, the
House of God.
Whatever
may be the form of ministry or of service, all service,
from God's standpoint, is related to the House of God,
and that is what is made so clear in the case of Jacob.
What is service, after all? A little child, in all good
intention, all innocence, may do lots of things to help
mother, and mother of course is very patient, mother does
not punish the child. She knows quite well the child
means well, and really means to help: but poor mother! At
times you hear mother saying, "Of course, she means
to help me, but she little knows how much work she makes
for me, what a lot I have to clear up after her, and
really how little help it is after all." That is all
right for children. When we really consider the question
of service, how do we resolve it? Surely we would say
that service in truth, in reality, is that which realizes
the end we have in view, and we say to all those who so
contribute, Now you are really helping, now we are
getting somewhere!
What has
God in view? Upon what is His heart set? It is His
Church. The Lord Jesus loved the Church and gave Himself
up for her. That is why we have read the passage about
Rachel, and we will come again to that in a minute. It is
real service to secure the Church. Yes, the Church is His
Body, and real service to God is that which secures the
Church and secures God's full thought in the Church. That
is true service to God; not a hundred and one other
things unrelated and nice and good and kind, but never
really reaching God's end, not really serving the purpose
of His heart. So far as God is concerned, it is in that
way that life operates.
The law
of the Spirit of life operates when we come actively into
line with God's end, God's purpose, God's thoughts, and
they are all concerning His Church. You see, we
saw Abraham's faith issuing in sonship in Isaac, and now
in Jacob sonship is taken up and carried on, and in Jacob
we see the true spirit of sonship in service which can
never be truly satisfied with less than a Church after
the Spirit.
The Lesson of Leah and Rachel
Now,
that brings us to Leah and Rachel. Jacob served seven
years for Rachel, and then Laban deceived him and gave
him Leah. Leah was not the object of Jacob's heart, and
he could not be satisfied with Leah. He might have been.
There were pleasant things about Leah. Leah was tender of
eye. Evidently it was something calculated in a certain
realm to appeal to a gentleman! something attractive
about her: and there were other things too. Leah, without
any difficulty, provided Jacob with a family, and Rachel
was unable to do that. Jacob might have said, Well, Leah
is not so bad: Leah is not what I wanted, but there are
good things about Leah; I will settle down and be
satisfied. But no, Leah was not the object of his spirit,
his heart, his inner man, and he could not be content
with anything less than that, and he said, "I will
serve thee yet another seven years for Rachel". He
doubled his labour and went the second mile in order to
have a wife after his spirit.
Now, the
spirit of sonship, true sonship, can never be satisfied
with anything less than that which is of the Spirit - of
the heart, of course, in the type, Jacob; but speaking in
New Testament language, after the Spirit. Leah might have
been, for Jacob, a wife after the soul, after nature, but
Rachel was something more than that, as she proved to be.
Oh, I think there is a wonderful lesson bound up with
Rachel and Leah. The true service of sonship will stop
short at nothing less than that which is wholly of the
Spirit.
The Lord
Jesus, the true Son and Servant of Jehovah, in whom is
the true spirit of sonship, and in whom is the true
spirit of the servant, can never be satisfied with a
Church that is merely outward and formal and natural,
however many good points there may be in it. When He
looked at the seven churches in Asia, He was able to say,
as Jacob could have said of Leah, Yes, some very good
points, some very nice things. But, like Jacob, He
further said, in effect, I cannot be satisfied with that:
that does not answer to My heart, that is not after My
Spirit; it is not for that that I have laboured and
travailed. It is something more that I need really to
satisfy my deepest and innermost sense of what is
adequate, what is right, what is according to God's
thought. Thus the good has to be subordinated for the
best. The spirit of service is always set upon God's full
thought as to the Church, the wife, the bride, and can
never be satisfied with anything less. Sonship works in
that way. I do not know how it comes about other than
like that. I am quite sure that if some of us were to
have a little conference on this matter, and say, Now,
how is it that we came to be so concerned for God's full
thought as to the Church? as we talked it over we should
have to say, Well, it was not because we heard a series
of addresses on the nature of the Church, nor because we
found something in the Bible about it, but somehow,
somewhere in our hearts there came to life a sense of
Divine concern in this matter. It is a thing of the
Spirit, and we have had to labour hard amidst much
adversity, enough adversity, enough opposition, enough
suspicion to have quenched anything less than something
begotten of God. Long since we would have abandoned this
matter because of the difficulty of the way, had it not
been of God in us, had we not realized that we were not
holding it but that it was holding us. We had not taken
up something, but God had taken us up in this matter, and
what could we do? Can we, in view of the cost, the
suffering, can we be content with things as they are
among the Lord's people? No, a thousand times! We must
labour on.
I
believe, beloved, that is the spirit of sonship, the
spirit of service. The deeper God's work is in us, the
more we shall travail for the Church, the less shall we
find ourselves able to settle down with any contentment
with things as they are amongst the Lord's people. So
Rachel was the result of suffering, the suffering of the
Spirit.
But
then, Rachel could not do what Leah could do. We have
said the family, with Leah, was quite a spontaneous, easy
thing, but it was far otherwise with Rachel. What a
disappointment, after all! Naturally speaking, there was
no fruit possible. But oh the wonder of this sovereignty
of God! How often the sovereignty of God is represented
in the Scriptures by natural things, and this particular
thing so frequently. We note it in the case of Sarah, the
case of Hannah, and others, and here with Rachel. Well,
Rachel does have children eventually, but they are the
result of a Divine intervention. They are of God in a
special sense, by the act of God. You see how strictly
God keeps to His principles; that real service, real
sonship service, can never be fruitful out from nature.
The natural life can provide no spiritual fruit, no fruit
unto God. It is only that which comes out from God which
is really spiritual fruit, the fruit of spiritual
service. You remember what Paul said in his letter to the
Galatians: "My little children, of whom I travail in
birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Gal.
4:19). The Galatians were the Lord's children, and Paul
might have said, Well, you are the Lord's children, you
are saved, it is all right. I am sorry that there are
these unhappy things that mar your walk. I would rather
they were not there; but still you belong to the Lord and
so it is all right. Oh no! That would be too much like
Leah, that is too easy. There is need of something more,
and for that something more of the Spirit (and that is
the key note, as you notice, to the letter to the
Galatians) Paul says, "... I am again in travail
till Christ be fully formed in you." That is God's
thought for His people. So again, we find Paul, this
great Israelite in the fullest, highest sense, saying,
"I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up
that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my
flesh for his body's sake, which is the church"
(Col. 1:24). That is service, that is sonship, - His
sufferings in me for His Church.
A Summary of the Practical Issues
That is
the way of life, that is the operation of the law of
life. It is simply, and not by any means exhaustively,
stated. God's fullness is going to be expressed in the
Church, therefore God's satisfaction is centred in the
Church. All real service to God is that which relates to
the securing of what is most precious to God, namely, the
Church, and all service to God begins with subjection,
and subjection is a thing which is seen in the House of
God. That is where God establishes the law of subjection.
I have to be as subject in the House of God as any other
member of the House of God. It is not the subjection of
one and another more than of others, but in the House of
God we have to find our place in subjection. I can no
more act independently as a minister in the House of God
than any member of the House of God. We shall find our
life as we learn to be subject. In so far as it is not
true that we are in subjection in the House of God, we
are not in the way of life, we are in the way of death.
It is the first law of service.
Herein
is the importance of the Church as locally expressed. One
of the things for which a local assembly serves God is to
be a sphere in which its members can learn to be subject
to the Lord. Very often you know that subjection to the
Lord in the Church becomes a very practical thing, and a
very testing thing.
I have
indicated things, that is all. That is the way of life.
The blessing is there. Yes, this is the House of God,
this is the gate of heaven. "Jacob called the name
of the place where God spake with him, Bethel";
because there God revealed Himself unto him. That is
life, the gate of heaven where God reveals Himself. The
Lord open our understanding.