Reading:
Hebrews 11:24-27, 13, 16.
God has one great desire
- to have what may be termed a 'a people of His best'.
Until He has such a people, He will never be wholly
satisfied. There may be those who will accept His
'second-best' - for He surely often allows a second-best
- but only a people set on His very best will
truly satisfy His own heart. But since the attainment
unto His best is a matter fraught with conflict and cost
and discipline, and much that is utterly contrary to the
whole course of nature, it is not everybody - indeed, it
is but a comparative few - who will go on with Him to His
best. This is seen in all the Scriptures, and there are
some out-standing illustrations of it. They are found in
every dispensation.
For example, whilst we
are not to say that the generation which perished in the
wilderness, which had been brought out in virtue of
precious blood and by initial faith - for "by faith
they passed through the Red Sea" (Hebrews 11:29) -
whilst we are not to say that that generation represents
ultimate and final loss of salvation, it is nevertheless
clear that they lost God's full thought for them, and it
was a great and grievous loss, always held up in the
Scriptures as an example of tragedy, failure and
disappointment. We are not to say that the greater number
of those who went into exile in Babylon, in Chaldea, and
never returned, were lost eternally to God's salvation.
But we do know that the minority came back, and in coming
back fulfilled the true intention of God, and are
represented as those of whom particularly He is not
ashamed. For the others, in the wilderness and in
Babylon, there is sense in which God is ashamed; for
these, not so. And thus it is in every dispensation. The
call continues, and it is being sounded here to the
people of God to be satisfied with no second-best.
But, as we have said,
this is not only a call to us to attain. This is a call
to a people to pioneer this way for others - for so many
of the Lord's people do not know the heavenly way.
Strangely enough, though born from above, they do not
know the heavenly way. We will not bring in all the
proofs of this, but it is true, and perhaps many of us
have been like that for a period of our Christian life.
It was very largely an earthly thing. Our activities were
very earthbound, in a Christian way. Then there came a
time of crisis, when we entered into the meaning of an
open heaven and were lifted on to an entirely new level
of spiritual life and began to learn heavenly things in a
new way. These are facts, and all those who are called of
God into this heavenly way are not only moving in it with
regard to their own spiritual measure, but are called to
pioneer the way for those who do not know, even of the
Lord's people. That does not mean to preach to them about
a heavenly way, to have a special interpretation of
Scripture, some doctrine or phraseology. It means that
they are called to be in the good of it, to be there, and
by what they themselves know and experience to be able to
help others up from the lower levels of spiritual life.
So we are going to look
again at this matter of pioneering the heavenly way,
centring our thoughts upon another great pioneer - Moses.
There are, of course, many other features of his life
besides pioneering, but I think that this really goes to
the very centre of the significance of Moses - this fact
that he was the pioneer of a heavenly way.
If we look at the life
of Moses from an earthly standpoint, we see very much
that speaks of disappointment and of failure and of
tragedy: for, although, for eighty years - eighty long,
trying, testing years of discipline and suffering - he
walked the heavenly way or learned the heavenly way,
neither he nor the people that he brought out of Egypt
entered into the land. That sounds like disappointment,
and indeed tragedy. I can never read that record of Moses
pleading with God to let him go in, and God's full,
final, conclusive refusal, without being deeply stirred.
It is a touching thing.
You see, of these people
who were constituted a nation by the hand of Moses, who
instrumentally owed their existence as a nation to him,
not only did that first generation not go into the land
and inherit, but their whole history ever since has been
one of tragedy. There have been bright spots and periods
in that history; there have been times of glory; but,
taking their history as a whole up to this day,
remembering how much they talk about Moses, what they
attribute to Moses, how they are always appealing to
Moses, it has been a most disappointing history. I
repeat: from certain standpoints, the life of Moses bears
much that speaks of failure and disappointment and
tragedy. But the very fact of his own life and the nature
of its termination, the very fact of the generation that
perished in the wilderness, the very fact of the nation
all through the ages failing and disappointing, is the
one most conclusive argument for another aspect, namely,
the Divine truth of the heavenly. They are asserting in a
most emphatic way that, if this is all, down here, then
it is a poor thing: that there must be some other way
than this, there must be some other sequel to this, this
is not all. No, there is another standpoint from which to
view it - there is the heavenly standpoint, where heaven
interprets and governs everything.
Well, let us look at
Moses. Firstly, Moses himself and his training. Secondly,
Israel under his leadership.
(1)
MOSES' TRAINING
(a) SOVEREIGN
APPREHENDING
We begin with himself
and his training. We are not beginning with his birth. We
begin where we read of him in the letter to the Hebrews -
Moses in Egypt; and here we are once more met by
something that has come up repeatedly in these
meditations - that inborn sense of destiny. You cannot
get away from it. When you are dealing with God's full
purpose and when you are dealing with the work, the
service, the ministry, the pioneering in relation
thereto, that is always the point at which you have to
begin; and it is always there - this deep-down sense of a
Divine, sovereign apprehending for something.
Here is this man in
Egypt. He is surrounded by all that Egypt has, and
students of history know that the glory and the glamour
of Egypt were no small thing in Moses' day. He was
surrounded by it all. The writer here speaks of "the
pleasures of Egypt". Its pleasures, its amenities,
its scholarship, its education: all its privileges, right
up to the very house of the king - everything was at the
command and disposal of Moses. He was "learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts 7:22), and he
had all the "pleasures" of Egypt to his hand.
That was no small thing. Do you say that was nothing to
throw away? It was a mighty 'all' of this world - but
this sense of destiny made it as nothing. Although
enjoying it all, as far as he could enjoy it, there was a
shadow over his enjoyment all the time; there was a
something inside that withheld him from becoming finally
content with it. There was within him a sense of restless
discontent and dissatisfaction, which really was a
working in him of God's unwillingness to be satisfied
with anything short of His full purpose. Moses may not
have been able to explain or define this strange urge,
but it made him know that the 'all' of Egypt was by no
means God's all, and that Egypt could never answer to
this call and pull from above and beyond.
Now, that is not
exaggeration, and those are not just words. That is
Scripture, and that is very testing. For such as are
called into the way of God's full thought, His highest
and His best, it will be like that. It does not matter
what there may be of popularity, worldly position,
success, means and resources - everything to hand: if we
are truly called according to His purpose, we shall be
restless in it all, dissatisfied, and feel, 'After all,
is it worth it? There is something more than this.' Test
your hearts by that. That is no fiction; that is fact.
It may be that that fact
lies behind your very reading of these words today. You
could have much in this world if you liked to lay
yourself out for it. You could have a way in the world
and its pleasures, and other things, if you really went
for it. Yes, and perhaps you could get acceptance and
position even in the religious world, but to you it has
become second-rate. There is something in you - you may
not be defining it, perhaps you could not write down what
it is - but you know there is something, and unless you
discover that something, arrive at that something, life
will be a disappointment, for there is a mockery in
everything else. If that is true in your case, it is a
very hopeful thing, it is a marvellous thing: heaven has
come down to lay hold of you in relation to all its
meaning. Of course, if you have not got this sense, you
will be pleased with all sorts of things less than that,
and you will be out for them. But, mark you, if you can
be like that, it is a very terrible indictment, for it
means that somehow, where you are concerned, that mighty
heavenly apprehending has failed.
(b) A CRISIS
So the thing began with
Moses inwardly, and that inward thing led to a definite
crisis, the crisis of the earthly and the heavenly. The
Lord has wonderful ways of producing this crisis. You
know it is not always produced and precipitated by some
ecstasy - if that is what you are after - the glory of a
great light and vision, the enrapturing of your soul,
some tremendously wonderful heavenly experience. It does
not always happen like that. It did not happen like that
with Moses, nor with others. How did it happen? He went
out one day and saw an Egyptian persecuting a Hebrew, and
this sense of destiny took possession of him and
overmastered him, and so, being evidently of powerful
physique, he laid on to the Egyptian and slew him there
and then. That was the crisis that precipitated this
whole thing. Sometimes we only wake up to the heavenly or
are brought face to face with the heavenly by some
ghastly misdemeanour or failure; for, almost immediately
after this, things were made untenable for Moses in that
realm in Egypt, and he had to quit.
But what was inside the
crisis, what was the meaning of it, why did God allow it?
Moses might have said, 'Why did the Lord allow me to do
that? Why did the Lord, who had foreknown me and had in
His own foreknowledge called me to His great service, let
me make a mess of things like that? Why did He let me
become involved by my own act in a thing like murder, to
have the stain of murder on my hands? - I who am called
to be the emancipator of God's people! Why has the Lord
allowed it?' And the answer would have been: 'That is not
the way in which heaven does things, Moses. That is the
way the world does things; it is the way the flesh does
things. It is not heaven's way of doing things. You,
Moses, can never bring out a heavenly people into a
heavenly place by earthly methods and means. Learn that
once and for all. It may seem a terrible way of dealing
with the situation, but there it is, clear and plain.
This people, that you are chosen in the foreknowledge of
God and by the sovereign act of God and by this sense of
destiny in yourself to lead out: this people, chosen to
be a heavenly people - how can you get them on to a
heavenly level of life if that is your level of life?' We
will come back to that again in a minute. Heaven breaks
in and says with terrible emphasis, 'No, Moses. Carnal
weapons for carnal ends, but not carnal weapons for
spiritual ends; earthly ways for earthly ends, but not
earthly ways for heavenly ends. Heaven is governing here
and must register itself like this.' What a lesson for a
life! What a foundation!
Now you may never have
been a murderer, but I have no doubt that some at least
who read these lines have learned very deep lessons of
this kind: that you just cannot go on with God on that
level, you cannot get through with God along that line,
you cannot serve God in His heavenly purpose in such
ways, in the strength of the flesh. It is so true to
principle. Heaven will have none of them; it demands its
own life, its own nature. That was the crisis of the
heavenly and the earthly in the training of Moses.
(c)
FORTY YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS
And the next phase - to
the wilderness, to the "back-desert" for the
next forty years. Oh, surely this has no place in the
economy of God! Yes, wildernesses always represent and
signify one thing wherever you find them. They signify
self-emptying. Think about that. You cannot be a very
important person in a wilderness. You cannot be a very
self-sufficient person in a wilderness. You cannot be a
self-confident person in a wilderness. A wilderness
empties all that out. You are not only in the wilderness:
the wilderness gets into you, barren, desolate,
unprofitable, useless. And do you not think that that got
into Moses in forty years? What is happening?
It is the negative side
of training. It is the cancellation of Egypt and of the
world. Egypt stood for self-sufficiency, Egypt was always
the synonym for independence - and Egypt had to be
emptied out of Moses; he had to be emptied of the spirit
and principle of the world. It had got inside, and now it
was being put out, and just the contrary to Egypt was
coming in. This negative side, as we have called it, is
an integral part of the school of the heavenly way. It
brings us inwardly and spiritually to the place where we
see clearly that there is no profit whatever in us; where
of ourselves we can produce and accomplish nothing. That
is the wilderness. Do not misunderstand or fail to
recognise that. It is true to life, true to experience,
and true to heavenly principle. Room has to be made in us
for heaven - for there is no room for heaven in us by
nature.
(d) THE ORDEAL
OF EMANCIPATION
Then the next thing
after that - Moses is brought back to Egypt for the
ordeal of emancipation. Now it is the Lord, not Moses. It
is going to be all the Lord now, or nothing at all. But
it is going to be the Lord. "Now shalt thou see
what I will do" (Exodus 6:1). There was a day
when Moses said, 'Now you shalt see what I will do', and
the Egyptian felt the weight of that, and the next day
the Hebrew. But that has gone, and the Lord says,
"Now shalt thou see what I will do". 'I will
do, now you have stopped.' The position is altered;
everything now becomes possible. There has been a
transition from the negative to the positive. The great
ordeal of the emancipation of this people begins.
The first stage relates
to the rod and the hand. Exodus 4 - "What is that in
thy hand?" "A rod." 'Very well; by that
rod things are going to be done.' "Put now thine
hand into thy bosom." 'Take it Out' - white and
leprous. "Put thine hand into thy bosom again."
'Take it out' - clean and whole.
THE
ROD
What is the rod? You
know that the rod that Moses used was later Aaron's rod,
the rod that budded when the test of priesthood was made
(Numbers 17). Twelve rods were put up overnight,
representing the tribes. In the morning there were eleven
dead rods and one living - the insignia of a living
priesthood. And do not forget: priesthood has to do with
the spiritual. They are going to have to deal with all
the gods of the Egyptians. They are unclean, they are
corrupt, they are evil, they are of the devil's company.
It needs the mighty power of a holy priesthood to deal
with that unclean situation. It is the rod of the word of
the Cross. The word of the Cross is a mighty rod.
What is the issue here -
the issue that is bound up with this whole ordeal? This
is it. The Lord had said, "the Egyptians shall
know that I am Jehovah" (Ex. 7:5). That is the
issue. Very well then; begin to apply that in practical
ways by the word of the Cross, the word of living
priesthood.
Apply it first to the
whole realm of nature, of creation. "I, the
Lord, have created" (Isaiah 64:8). The Lord of
Calvary is the Lord of creation, and the first
application of the word of the Cross is in that realm in
Egypt. At the touch of the Lord of creation the world of
living things is brought under judgment; the issue -
"I am the Lord".
The second application
is to the heavens - for the Lord made the heavens as well
as the earth - and the elements, under the word, are
touched. If you look on to Calvary, you will see all
these features. When He, the great Pioneer of the
heavenly way, went to the Cross, the whole creation was
affected. Heaven and earth were involved. There was a
great earthquake, and there was "darkness over all
the land until the ninth hour". Creation and the
very elements were coming under the impact of Him who is
the Word in the Cross. That happened in Egypt, in type.
Then thirdly, there came
the application to hell. What is hell's greatest weapon?
Death, "the last enemy" (I Cor. 15:26) Death is
no friend, death is the last enemy, and that was the last
judgment of Egypt. Hell's stronghold was broken into; the
power of death was taken hold of for the emancipation of
a people. That is what Christ did in the Cross. The word
of the Cross is this: that hell has been broken into and
death has been apprehended and made to serve the ends of
God rather than frustrate them. In Egypt the word by the
rod touched the firstborn with death, and hell was stung
with its own sting to the very core of its being. But
that is not all. That self-same rod led the people out,
worked redemption from Egypt and through the Red Sea. "Lift
thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the
sea" (Ex. 14:16). The word of the Cross is the
word of life triumphant over death. Death is vanquished
and life and incorruption are brought to light. By means
of the rod of the word of the Cross, through this
wonderful ordeal of emancipation, Moses is learning one
thing - that heaven rules: heaven rules in this
creation, heaven rules in heaven, heaven rules in hell;
and in the kingdoms of men heaven rules for the
emancipation of the elect. All this is the story of the
intervention of heaven.
You wonder why this was
graduated as it was. It did not happen all at once. The
effect of the rod was only partial to begin with, but
gained in strength and power as it went along.
There are two sides to
this. On the one hand, there is the progressive nature of
this education: it is gradual. We do not come all at once
to see and to know the full power of heaven. We learn it
a bit at a time. It is graduated. It goes so far at one
time; it will go farther later on. Are we not learning
that? We learn it in simple ways - how heaven is greater
than earth, than man, than nature, than the enemy. We are
learning, step by step, more and more of the meaning of
that tremendous, infinite ascendancy of heaven.
But there is the other
side. God, by this gradual means, is drawing out the
opposing forces, gradually extending them. "I will
harden Pharaoh's heart." "I will harden
Pharaoh's heart." "I will harden Pharaoh's
heart." "Pharaoh shall harden his heart."
God could have wiped him out in one stroke, but He is
going to extend him to his utmost limit. The power of
this world is going to be drawn out to its full extent to
meet the infinite power of heaven, and then heaven's
superiority will be a very simple thing, after all.
We have so often said
this, and it is true. Though we cannot grasp it or see it
or calculate it, the truth is that "the power that
worketh in us" is "the exceeding greatness of
His power" (Eph. 3:20; 1:19). We do not know, we are
not able to measure, the immensity of the forces that are
against a soul being saved, the immensity of the forces
that are set against God's full purpose for His people.
We know a little and we shall know more and more as we go
on; but when it says "the exceeding greatness
of his power", that is not just language: that is an
attempt - only an attempt - by means of language, by
superlatives, by all that human language can do - to
arrive at the reality. "The exceeding greatness
of his power to us-ward who believe, according to that
working of the strength of his might which he wrought in
Christ, when he raised him from the dead" (Eph.
1:19, 20). And that is to us-ward.
There is something
tremendous here. It is heaven's superiority over this
whole situation to bring a people out and to bring a
people through. We are in that school. Moses was in that
school. He was put through that ordeal in order that he
might progressively, but quite steadily and definitely,
recognise that all that is here in Egypt, all that
Pharaoh represents, is going to be drained to the last
drop of its vitality and be laid in death at last - all
of it. Moses was sometimes apprehensive. Sometimes he
came back from the challenge disappointed. He felt, 'We
have not got there yet, something more is needed yet'.
'All right', says the Lord, 'we will have something
more'. The Lord was leading him on in his education; he
was coming progressively to see more and more. Do you not
think that, if God did everything all at once, in one
act, we should miss something, we should take it all for
granted, it would not mean so much to us, it would be
just a miracle of the past? And yet throughout our
lifetime God is extending the forces against us in order
to prove that His forces are superior. It is a long
schooling, but that is the way of the heavenly purpose.
THE
HAND
From the rod to the
hand. "Put now thy hand into thy bosom." What
hand? That hand that had murdered the Egyptian, that hand
stained with blood, that hand of natural strength, that
hand of self-sufficiency, that hand which represented the
old Moses and his failure, failure under the energy and
drive of his own will. 'Put that hand in. What is in your
bosom, Moses? That is what is yours. Do you think that
can wield the rod of God? Do you think that
can bring in the heavenly authority? Oh no, that hand has
to be cleansed before you can wield that rod. That bosom
must be cleansed, that stain must be removed, all that
self-energy and self-sufficiency has to be
undercut. Moses, that leprous hand is what you
are like in yourself.'
Are we not discovering
that? What is my heart like? What are we like? Just like
that. The more we know and see of ourselves, the more it
is like leprosy. But, blessed be God, there is a
cleansing. For Moses there was a Divine act of cleansing.
In that instant, all the meaning of the Cross, the word
of the Cross, took effect in Moses' life - of course in
type, in figure. And now that there is a hand that
cleansed, that is, a heart circumcised, the inner life
separated from the fleshly strength and sufficiency, all
that can take the word of the Cross, the word of
authority. It must be like that. We have no power in the
realm of the gods of the Egyptians, those spiritual
forces that are actuating this world, no authority at all
in that court, no hope of overpowering that strength,
unless something has happened for the deliverance of
ourselves from our own strength, our own sufficiency, our
own hearts.
(2)
ISRAEL UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF MOSES
Then there is that
phase, so large that I hardly dare touch on it at the
moment - Israel under the leadership of Moses. It was one
long drawn-out issue of the heavenly and the earthly. All
those forty years of the nation in the wilderness were
just that - the issue of the heavenly and the earthly
being fought out. They had been brought out to be a
heavenly people; to have all their resources, all their
support and succour, from heaven; to be in this world and
not of it. If ever that is true - to be in the world and
not of it - it is true in a wilderness.
The Divine thought was
the making of a large place for heaven. There was a large
place for heaven in that wilderness. Everything from the
Divine side was to be heavenly. The people were
constituted on heavenly principles. Moses up in the mount
was securing those heavenly principles for the
constituting of the nation. It was all coming from
heaven. Their whole relationship to God in the
wilderness, as centred in the tabernacle, came out of
heaven: it was the pattern shown in the mount. It was
heavenly; nothing was left to man and his judgment at
all. Their going from day to day was out from heavenly
means of the pillar of cloud and fire. It was all
heavenly. What warfare there was, was heavenly: Moses on
the top of the hill, with hands uplifted, the battle
going on in the valley. Heaven is directing this warfare:
it is heavenly warfare. It was all learning the meaning
of the heavenly way, in every aspect.
But they failed to learn
those lessons. They would come down to earth, they would
reject the heavenly. It was too hard, it was too
difficult for the flesh, it was too uncertain. It was
such dependence, it was such helplessness so far as self
was concerned. They could not help themselves - and we do
want to help ourselves in this business. It was all so
heavenly. But it was most real. Those who know anything
about it know that heavenly things are the most real,
spiritual things are far more real than other things. But
they would not have the heavenly way, they would have the
earthly; and they repudiated it all and perished, on the
earth, in the wilderness.
Joshua and Caleb took up
all those lessons of the schooling of Moses and Israel,
in themselves. They learned the lessons, they apprehended
the heavenly truth, and they took the next generation
over - a heavenly generation.
Well, all that may be
regarded as history, as what is in the Bible: but I am
sure that many of you are reading your own history. Is it
not so true in principle to what we are going through, to
what God is doing with us - defeating us, bewildering us,
bringing us to an end, to an emptiness and helplessness?
- and yet, by some mighty power that we do not feel, of
which we are not conscious, we are going on' we are being
drawn out and drawn up. It is the story of so many
survivals, when it would seem that all has gone: that we
are lost, we have failed, broken down, disappointed the
Lord; there can be no future.
But there is a future.
We have continued. There is something from beyond that is
all the time holding us on, and it may be that today our
hearts are more set upon what is of God than ever they
were. And why is that? Not because we have been more
successful, not because we have been less full of failure
and weakness. No; rather we have learnt the lesson of our
own weakness. We know today, better than ever we knew it,
that "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good
thing" (Rom. 7:18) - and yet today the Lord has a
stronger purchase upon us than ever. What is this? This
is a mystery. Oh, thank God it is true! Thank God for His
sovereign grace! These are the evidences that He has
called us with a great calling and that He will not be
satisfied until He has brought us right through to His
own full end. May we follow on, whatever the cost.