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CHAPTER 3
The OLD and the NEW, and the ONE and the MANY,
the ULTIMATE in HISTORY and the CONSUMMATION in SPIRIT ...
OLD and NEW TESTAMENT PILGRIMS and the CONSUMMATION OF REST
in REALISATION, not INCARCERATION: because of the INCARNATION
Abraham! alone! certainly, he lost the companionship of culture, the closeness of idolaters, the power to work in an established medium. Indeed, he was in some ways like those who nowadays dare not to accept the various neologies which masquerade as relating to the Bible, the idolatrous address to bits instead of design, in the pirated realm of creation, the bits just 'there' and the world's working logic for bits and organisations and correlativity of codes and laws and life, just 'there'. These, apparently all equipped with silver spoons at birth, from the blatant mind of godless man, set in their ludicrous maws. These are all given everything, presented from nothing for nothing, as if those who so luridly ignore logic, are trying to justify their supposed origin by its violent violation at every turn.
Abraham was thus rather like those thus stripped by idolators of one sort or another, of respect, of posts, of degrees, of opportunities, of hearers because they adhere to truth, and do not travel to Sodom or other sites of degeneration, but on a mission where truth from above, where alone it may be found outside the whirl of ideas and atoms, is paramount and the love and lordliness of God is apparent.
Yes, it is to be alone; but not to be without God. I would rather have all men despise and condemn me all my life, than lack the approval of God for any time; but having lacked it before I found Christ, and was found by Him, the very thought of being immersed in the sea of separation, the Lord apart, is like the square root of minus one, unreal, imaginary, illusory, incompetent, a violation of fundamentals.
There was no violation of fundamentals in the life of Abraham, in its overall thrust, none at all.
First, Abraham did not fail to answer the Lord's call to go to another country: it was express: "Get out of your country, from your family, and from your father's house." It says - "So Abraham departed as the LORD had spoken to him, and Lot went with him." That was rather an exploit, for an oak aged 75, so to proceed to transplant! Taking what was movable, he went, the Lord telling him of His determination to give the land to him. In part of his journey, when in Egypt, he made the mistake of giving a false impression about his wife as a sister, without a formal lie since she was his sister (Genesis 20:12); and was amazingly delivered.
It was the Lord who did this, rescuing him from the monarch who had thought he might deal with Abraham's wife, not realising who she in fact was! Indeed, had he not been a prophet sent by God, this might have led to a horrid pit of sin and death to Abraham. God spoke to the King in vision, and Abraham was delivered in just that incomparable way in which God does NOT remove suffering, necessarily, but does rescue from what would prevent the service assigned to His prophets and to those sent, from being fulfilled (Genesis 20:6-8).
As they moved in the area of the rich land of Canaan, Lot took the pleasant pastures below and Abraham the higher country. This, indeed, in view of what was to happen to Sodom where Lot stayed at length, seemed an image of another and more important journey. Nevertheless, when the time for Sodom's destruction arrived, even Lot was delivered in a direct angelic action which made his successful escape a ground for any delay in Sodom's demise (Genesis 19)! He had to move fast, and the destruction could not be delayed long! It was drama and deliverance combined, as the Lord often provides. Thus there is a sense in which the man of God, the Christian must now be ready as an athlete AND a soldier for whatever service the Lord requires, and that WHEN He requires it. If the war now is spiritual (Ephesians 6), and the weapons no less, yet the drama of doing right in His sight continues.
Even before that destruction of Sodom, Abraham rescued Lot (Genesis 14). In these ways, Abraham did not take, but gave, did not seize, but prevented seizure of another, took for himself what appeared the lesser, by kindly giving the other first choice (Genesis 13:9), and so receiving what was the better, when it came to the point of divine judgment.
Even after Lot's rescue by Abraham, his relative, the patriarch had no male heir. In this, he was advised by the Lord (Genesis 18), that the matter would be remedied, just as, for the time, he had no land of his own in Canaan. He was travelling, though rich, without an actual land parcel of the place to which he was being transported, imported, and without a genetic heir!
In these things, there was, at the level of heart and life, a certain impoverishment; for he was used to having much of his own amid his own people, where he had been eminent, but now he figured rather as a pilgrim, in this being a symbol and example of Christians yet to come. These too are strangers and pilgrims, temporary sojourners in this world, not needing the roots of worldly pretension, but rather the promise of heavenly ascension in resurrection when the time comes, their minds set on the journey for God, on Him, Jesus the Christ, who is with them, and the destination of HIS promised land (as in Revelation 21-22), where He and His Father are the temple, where life is fulfilled in amplitude, fellowship in consummation. Here the pains of the laborious are at last put to rest (I Peter 2:11-12).
No small wonder was it, then, that the Lord confirmed His promise of Genesis 12 and 15, growing in specifics, and that we see in Genesis 17 a strong declaration, that the land would be for Abraham's descendants, as an everlasting inheritance. It was in promise from the first, and in view of the sufferings wrought by the spiritual rebellion of Israel the nations, in this resembling surrounding nations, it has been in promise for long, following the great kingdoms of David and Solomon, and some succeeding.
Just as, however, there has been the promised SEPARATION from their land (as in Hosea 1-3, Leviticus 26), because of the unholy hazard of continued sin, there is the promised RESTORATION, which including Jerusalem is now set before our eyes. No limit on the promise while earth lasts ? That is, it had no bounds; though of course when the earth IS destroyed, there will be another and a better land. However, this not yet having happened, even though Israel the nation has aborted the covenant by breaking on the Cross, its King, the Lord as man, as foretold in Psalms, Isaiah, Zechariah, and indicated in Micah, for example, yet God in His faithfulness is going to do three things, we find in the latter word of God in the prophets.
In other words, what the Lord said to Abraham, He has His own inimitable way of fulfilling. Firstly, according to the promise made through Moses, they would be cast out if they continued in a downgrade regression for a long time (as in Leviticus 26, and seen too well fulfilled in the latter chapters of II Kings and II Chronicles) - and this they were; yet God would bring them back as in Deuteronomy 32, Romans 11, to Himself; and indeed even to His land given through Abraham to generations without limit (Ezekiel 36-39 and see SMR Appendix A).
Meanwhile, in Genesis 15 we find this Abraham, to be enriched in things that endure, but currently without visible hold on land or heir of choice, TOLD that certain future generations of the son who had not yet come, these descendants of his would be in Egypt for some 400 years. That there would be pain was clear, for God in delivering them would JUDGE that nation to which they went, namely Egypt; and how definably He did so, you see not only in Exodus and the Psalms, but in such passages as Ezekiel 30-32, where the thing is put in parabolic form, but in dire realities at the same time. In this, there is seen the Pharaoh finding in hell, those of like mind and misuse of power, reclining without state, now finished with the incendiary battles of their day. Their arrogance is now seen no more.
Thus the pilgrimage is not gain, in the present, but in the future; involves waiting in hope based indeed on amazing evidence, successively mounting, but in it, there is no mere gratification of desire. In fact, Abraham was to lose a son through another woman, and was even tested so hugely, that as to the very son whom he did have with his wife, namely Isaac, he had to be WILLING to lose him, so that he might serve the Lord rightly. Of this we read the account in Genesis 22. Since through that son there was to be the whole race to which the land was given, a site to which Abraham moved on divine direction, this with his natural love was indeed no small impoverishment and trial. Yet he passed it, as Hebrews 11 indicates, believing that God was able, if need be, to resurrect Isaac.
Of course Abraham knew that God is not limited by flesh, His own invention, so that creation and resurrection alike were mere brothers in arms (Hebrews 11:19), a faith you see moving in intensity, in Proverbs 10:30 to 12:28, where we are told this, that
"in the way of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death."
Again,
"the wicked is banished in his wickedness, but the righteous has a refuge in his death"- 14:32.
This is hardly surprising in the presentation in Proverbs, since the ransom of a man's life is his riches (13:8), and those that matter are "durable riches and righteousness" (8:18) which Wisdom provides as a gift to faith. Being ransomed by the wisdom of God, manifest in Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 1:30), man is not then dumped; but those who err from its way, its word, these are disjunct from the Lord and so perish (Proverbs 8:34-36).
In all this, Abraham, as a pilgrim, was not sitting on what mattered to sight, but lived by faith in the One who gave life and would give it for ever, from whose hand was the land for his coming people, though suffer indeed they would on the way. It is for God to declare, and for man to receive by faith, whether then or now; and it is for God to show, as He has done, step by step the ingredients of His plan, policy and program, in detail and in particular, making this the continuing confirmation of the faith of His saints. This is in principle attested in Isaiah 41, 43, 48, where He excoriates a largely faithless generation, who manage in much to disbelieve, despite an evidence so overpowering that it makes them look both devious and deceitful who do not act in Him. Yet He remains the One who acts for those who wait for Him (Isaiah 64:5).
Nor was Isaac, Abraham's son, less tested; for it was HE WHO was in danger of being offered as a sacrifice, before God (Genesis 22). This deliverance occurred when God, having concluded the test of Abraham, intervened with the adventitious seeming gift of a ram, caught in a thicket, a sacrifice far less and far better in this, that killing what you loved too much, is no sacrifice for sin but of mere desire or delight. Thus an animal was more to the point, being a picture of God Himself who in the format of man would pay what only He could, the ransom for sin (Matthew 20:28), that is the price of its commission. Those were the durable riches of righteousness which in Proverbs were the ransom of a man's life, even the unsearchable riches of Christ! (Ephesians 3:8).
Thus, this same impoverishment felt in much by Abraham, moved on into Isaac's case, amounting there almost to the loss of life itself. It was continued in the life of Jacob, who though chosen for his role to come by God, took devious action to secure it. For his illicit pains in that unhappy affair, he lost his place and had to flee even from the place in the land to which Abraham had come. Then, deceived, as if in a deadly circuit, by his OWN sons, he lost his own favoured son Joseph, sold as a slave by shameless and graceless jealousy on the part of his brothers, and at that, to a FOREIGNER. Thus the lad was put in the hands of one who did not know the God of Abraham and of creation! and he, Joseph, had to suffer the ignominy of being falsely accused by a lustful woman, wife of his employer in the land to which as a slave he had been taken, and on this false charge, put in a prison. It did not stop there, for he even at one time, was equipped with shackles on his feet, which hurt them, and this was but a prelude. He survived, only to be dumped again when a way of escape through his forecasting of the meaning of the dreams of some other highly ranked prisoners, closed in his being forgotten by the one of them who lived.
How long was he to be impoverished in reputation, in incarceration, in moral loss by lies, afflicted, deprived by what was depraved, which in turn he also hated! At last, God made the entry required in history, and the courtier who had been in prison, but had forgotten his need, recalled he could be useful to the King in interpreting his dream; and so came the call for Joseph, at last to be a virtual Premier in Egypt. Yet this ignominy did not efface his love, so that when the time came and the opportunity, he richly forgave his brothers and handsomely repaid good to them all, for the evil done. Most beautifully, he saw that this was in God's plan to deliver them all, using the evil wrought to bring about good, and of course, a realisation of the beauty of holiness, which is part of the preparation of man for the life of God, when all this is past.
So the cycle, the circuit of trial in pilgrimage is from the first, in the patriarchs, keen as it is today; for there is one God and one way and one trial and one pilgrimage of man the sinner, who believing in the God of creation and sacrificial redemption, has a life to live in this soiled world, where for all that, once he is saved, his banner of belief must be unfurled, as by a squadron in one way, not merely unashamed of its banner, but seeing the glory which it signifies, and so delighted to display it. Is this not as in Luke 9:24-26, where so far from Christ, executed for sin not His own, being despised because He was despised by authorities bent on His ruin (as in John 11), when it comes to His own people, He is exalted with joy and praised without curtailment!
To return to the historical coverage in the days of the patriarchs, it was through this testimony of Joseph that there began the 400 years of time in Egypt. This, at first, was to bring material blessing in time of famine in their own land, but latter to bring curse, as they were in their growing numbers made slaves by a new governmental administration in Egypt. This teaches us categorically, not to rest on circumstances, but on God. Yet again, God did not forget them; for what was their empowerment when the Lord Himself was with them in the escape promised to Abraham near the first, that known as the EXODUS. This indeed is given in detail, not only in the book of that name, but in the Psalms, and that not seldom! Thus comes "the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings" (Philippians 3:10), as one walks in the light of the life of the Lord.
It is well to look at this declaration of Paul, since we are seeing it in type, in retrospect, as some travelled with the same God as we who are Christians do, with similarity of spiritual blessing and astringency as required, being made and moulded as children of God.
"But such things as were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
Yes doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellence of the knowledge
of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things,
and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law,
but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death."
It is good to see the community of interest, the conclave of generations, seeking and finding the same God, blessed of Him, awaiting the promised land, which was obtained with Joshua, and then in person,the promised Lord, who was given to us all, at the date specified (Christ the Citadel Ch. 2), at the place of birth specified (Micah 5), being tested by mighty adversaries who sought to throw at Him any inconsistency, real or imagined, that they might find; but they could find none, and hence felt it necessary to their autonomy and misconception of safety, like Abrahams in reverse gear, to kill Him as Abraham for other reasons, did NOT kill Isaac.
Now people of Arab stock and Islamic false prophet Muhammad (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4), figure largely amongst those who continue the killings in order, in many cases, to grab back more from that large portion of the land appointed to Israel by the League of Nations and by Britain in particular, during and after World War I, despite its vast reduction already. It does not stop; nor does God. He has yet to bring back the second part of the Ezekiel prophecy found in Ezekiel 36-39. He has done the first: they are back in their land, and He has done more, for as in Zechariah 12, there have been amazing victories against annihilative powere, which could not do their will, for God meant it otherwise and so acted according to His prophetic word (a task He undertakes as in I Peter 1:10ff., and II Peter 2:19ff.).
Thus to Israel already is promised restoration of their land and their city (recognised by Christ in Luke 21:24). But since they do not yet believe in Him as a nation (as in the first step in Ezekiel 37), there is here triumph and tragedy, and so what do we discover when we look there now ? It is to find that same impoverishment which is shown in true repentance for sin, to which Zechariah 12:10-13:1 shows, as they look on that 'Isaac' in a figure which they wrongly slew, departing richly from Abraham in the flight of fancy and desire. Indeed, it is not now Isaac, himself delivered, but the Lord Himself, by them with Rome delivered up; and that it was the effectual sacrifice for sin was not in the thought of his murderers.
God in His wisdom made a mockery of heir mockery of Him. He laughs at their folly and pride (Psalm 2). Thus this victim, it was no figure but the living Christ who, in death, severed all need of symbol in animal sacrifices (Hebrews 7-10), once and for all, Himself leading faith (as in Hebrews 11), to its final resting place, in God become man (as in Hebrews 2, 7, John 8:58), that man through Him might find God.
This, it is He who was slain, the just for the unjust to bring us to God (I Peter 3:18), whether children of Abraham or other; for there is, for all the particularities of land and history, which continue inviolable where not fulfilled (as in Matthew 5:17-20), one race, one God, one salvation and one repentance required of any and of all, to enter into that, and finding it, to live in the light of the life of the Lord.
This, it is an inestimable privilege, but one leading to a fellowship with His sufferings as well as the power of His resurrection for whatever the case requires, as one walks and works with Him, without whom this world, so rich and gay, becomes merely a place of impoverishment even to desolation, first for its pride (as in I Thessalonians 1 and Revelation 19), and then for its very place (as in Matthew 24:35, Isaiah 51:6 and Revelation 20:11).
To be sure, a new heavens and earth are to come as in I Peter 3 and Revelation 21; but here, there is no room for subterfuge any more than for suffering (Revelation 21:4, 7:13ff.), and here the empowerment is not only to meet all things as children of God (as in I John 3:1ff.), but to live where He has finished the test and provides the environment of consummation. Here, meaning is in the very air, and understanding is inescapable, as perfume from a richly flowering series of bushes, thrown at the head that comes near, and swamping it in a botanical glory. Yet this glory, it is ultra-botanical, that of the Lord more direct and marvellous. It is for His new creations (II Corinthians 5:17ff.), in their new creation's final environment, where not only Jew but Gentile, those who were not His people of this kind or that (Romans 9:24-33, 11:13-36), now live with their Father and Saviour, Creator and Redeemer at peace .