What a marvelous spectacle was the camp of Israel, in that waste howling wilderness! What a spectacle to angels, to men, and to devils! God’s eye ever rested upon it. His presence was there. He dwelt in the midst of His militant people. It was there He found His habitation. He did not—He could not—find His abode amid the splendors of Egypt, of Assyria, or of Babylon. No doubt those nations presented much that was attractive to nature’s eye. The arts and sciences were cultivated amongst them. Civilization had reached a far loftier point amongst those ancient nations than we moderns are disposed to admit. Refinement and luxury were, probably, carried to as great an extent there as amongst those who put forth very lofty pretensions.
But, be it remembered, Jehovah was not known among those ancient nations. His name had never been revealed to them. He did not dwell in their midst. True, there were the ten thousand testimonies to His creative power. And, moreover, His superintending Providence was over them. He gave them rain and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. The blessings and benefits of His liberal hand were showered upon them, from day to day, and year to year. His showers fertilized their fields; His sunbeams gladdened their hearts. But they knew Him not, and cared not for Him. His dwelling was not there. Not one of these nations could say, “ Jehovah is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation; he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him.” Exod. 15:22The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt him. (Exodus 15:2).
Jehovah found His abode in the bosom of His redeemed people, and nowhere else. Redemption was the necessary basis of God’s habitation amongst men. Apart from 125 redemption, the Divine Presence could only prove the destruction of man; but, redemption being known, that presence secures man’s highest privilege and brightest glory.
God dwelt in the midst of His people Israel. He came down from heaven, not only to redeem thorn out of the land of Egypt, but to be their traveling companion through the wilderness. What a thought! The Most High God taking up His abode, on the sand of the desert, and in the very bosom of His redeemed congregation! Truly there was nothing like that throughout the wide, wide world. There was that host of six hundred thousand men, beside women and children, in a sterile desert, where there was not a blade of grass, not a drop of water—no visible source of subsistence. How were they to be fed? God was there. How were they to be kept in order? God was there. How were they to track their way through a howling wilderness where there was no way? God was there.
In a word, God’s presence secured everything. Nature might shrug its shoulders, look doubtful and suspicious. Unbelief might say, ‘ What! are three millions of people to be fed on air? Who has charge of the commissariat? Where are the military stores? Where is the baggage? Who is to attend to the clothing?’ Faith alone could answer: and its answer is simple, brief, and conclusive. ‘ God was there.’ And that was quite sufficient. All was comprehended in that one sentence. In faith’s arithmetic, God is the only significant figure: and, having Him, you may add as many ciphers as you please. If all your springs are in the living God, it ceases to be a question of your need, and resolves itself into a question of His sufficiency.
What were six hundred thousand footmen to the Almighty God? What the varied necessities of their wives and children? In man’s estimation, these things might seem overwhelming. England has just sent out ten thousand troops to Abyssinia; but only think of the enormous expense and labor; think of the number of transports required to convey provisions and other necessaries for that small army. But imagine an army sixty times the size, together with the women and children. Conceive this enormous host entering upon a march that was to extend over the space of forty years, through “ a great and terrible wilderness,” in which there was no corn, no grass, no water spring. How were they to be sustained? No supplies with them; no arrangements entered into with friendly nations to forward supplies; no transports dispatched to meet them at various points along their route; in short, not a single visible source of supply—nothing that nature would consider available.
All this is something worth pondering. But we must ponder it in the Divine presence. It is of no possible use for human reason to sit down and try to solve this mighty problem by ‘ the rule of three.’ No, reader: it is only faith that can solve it, and that, moreover, by the rule of One, the Living God. Here lies the precious solution. Bring God in, and you want 110 other factors to work out your answer. Leave Him out, and the more powerful your reason, and the more profound your arithmetic, the more hopeless must be your perplexity.
Thus it is that faith settles the question. God was in the midst of His people. He was there, in all the fullness of His grace and mercy—there, in all His perfect knowledge of His people’s wants and of the difficulties of their path—there, in His almighty power and boundless resources, to meet those difficulties, and supply those wants. And so fully did He enter into all those things, that He was able, at the close of their long wilderness wanderings, to appeal to their hearts in the following touching accents, “ For the Lord thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand; he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing” And again, “Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.” Deut. 2:7; 8:47For the Lord thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing. (Deuteronomy 2:7)
4Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years. (Deuteronomy 8:4).
Now, in all these things, the camp of Israel was a type—a vivid, striking type. A type of what? A type of the Church of God passing through this world. The testimony of scripture is so distinct on this point as to leave no room and no demand for the exercise of imagination. “All these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are met.” 1 Cor. 10:1111Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. (1 Corinthians 10:11).
Hence, therefore, we can draw near and gaze with intense interest upon that marvelous spectacle, and seek to gather up the precious lessons which it is so eminently calculated to teach. And, oh! what lessons! Who can duly estimate them? Look at that mysterious camp in the desert, composed of warriors, workers, and worshippers! What separation from all the nations of the world! What utter helplessness! What exposure! What absolute dependence upon God! They had nothing—could do nothing—could know nothing. They had not a morsel of food, nor a drop of water, but as they received it, day by day, from the immediate hand of God. When they retired to rest at night, there was not a single atom of provision for the morrow. There was no storehouse, no larder, no visible source of supply: nothing that nature could take any account of.
But God was there, and that, in the judgment of faith, Was quite enough. They were shut up to God. This is the one grand reality. Faith owns nothing real, nothing solid, nothing true, but the one true, living, eternal God. Nature might cast a longing look at the granaries of Egypt, and see something tangible, something substantial there. Faith looks up to heaven, and finds all its springs there.
Thus it was with the camp in the desert; and thus it is with the Church in the world. There was not a single exigency, not a single contingency, not a single necessity of any sort whatsoever, for which the Divine presence was not an all sufficient answer. The nations of the uncircumcised might look and marvel. They might, in the bewilderment of blind unbelief, raise many a question as to how such a host could ever be fed, clothed, and kept in order. Most certainly they had no eyes to see how it could be clone. They knew not Jehovah, the Lord God of the Hebrews; and therefore to tell them that He was going to undertake for that vast assembly, would indeed seem to them like idle tales.
And so it is now in reference to the spiritual camp—the assembly of God, in this moral wilderness. Looked at from God’s standpoint, that assembly is not of the world. It is in complete separation. It is as thoroughly apart from the world, as the camp of Israel was apart from Egypt. The waters of the Red Sea rolled between that camp and Egypt; and the deeper and darker waters of the death of Christ roll between the Church of God and this present evil world. It is impossible to conceive separation more complete. u They,” says our Lord Jesus Christ, “ are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” John 17
Then, as to utter helplessness, what can be more helpless than the Church of God in this world? She has nothing in, or of, herself. She is set down in the midst of a moral desert, a dreary waste, a vast howling wilderness, in which there is literally nothing on which she “can live. There is not one drop of water, not one morsel of suited food for the Church of God, throughout the entire compass of this world.
So also as to the matter of exposure to all sorts of hostile influences. Nothing can exceed it. There is not so much as one friendly influence. All is against her. She is in the midst of this world like an exotic—a plant belonging to a foreign clime, and set down in a sphere where both the atmosphere and the soil are uncongenial.
Such is the Church of God in the world—a separated, helpless, exposed, defenseless thing, wholly dependent upon the living God. It is calculated to give great vividness, force, and clearness to our thoughts about the Church, to view it as the antitype of the camp in the desert. And that it is, in nowise, fanciful or farfetched to view it thus, 1 Cor. 10:1111Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. (1 Corinthians 10:11) cloth most clearly show. We are fully warranted in saying that what the camp of Israel was literally, that the Church is morally and spiritually. And, further, that what the wilderness was literally to Israel, that the world is morally and spiritually to the Church of God. The wilderness was the sphere of Israel’s toil and danger, not of their supplies or their enjoyment; and the world is the sphere of the Church’s toil and danger, not of her supplies or her enjoyment.
It is well to seize this fact in all its moral power. The assembly of God in the world, like “ the congregation in the wilderness,” is wholly cast upon the living God. We speak, be it remembered, from the divine standpoint—of what the Church is in God’s sight. Looked at from a human point of view—looked at as she is, in her own actual, practical state, it is alas! another thing. We are now only occupied with the normal, the true, the divine idea of God’s assembly in this world.
And let it not be forgotten, for one moment, that, as truly as there was a camp in the desert of old—a congregation in the wilderness, so truly is there the Church of God, the body of Christ, in the world now. Doubtless the nations of the world knew little and cared less about that congregation of old; but that did not touch the great living fact. So now, the men of the world know little and care less about the assembly of God, the body of Christ; but that, in nowise, touches the grand living fact that there is such a thing actually existing in this world, and has been ever since the Holy Ghost descended on the day of Pentecost. True, the congregation of old had its trials, its’ conflicts, its sorrows, its temptations, its strifes, its controversies, its internal commotions, its numberless and nameless difficulties, calling for the various resources that were in God.
But, in spite of all these things that we have named—-* spite of the weakness, the failure, the sin, the rebellion, the strife—still, there was the striking fact to be taken cognizance of by angels, men, and devils, namely, a vast congregation, amounting to something like three millions of people (according to the usual mode of computation) journeying through a wilderness, wholly dependent upon an unseen arm, guided and cared for by the Eternal God, whose eye was never, for one moment, withdrawn from that mysterious, typical host; yea, He dwelt in their midst, and never left them, in all their unbelief, their forgetfulness, their ingratitude, and rebellion. God was there to sustain and guide, to guard and keep them, day and night. He fed them with bread from heaven, day by day; and He brought them forth water out of the flinty rock.
This, assuredly, was a stupendous fact—a profound mystery. God had a congregation in the wilderness, apart from the nations around—shut up to Himself. It may be those nations knew nothing, cared nothing, thought nothing about this assembly. It is certain the desert yielded nothing in ^Î the way of sustenance or refreshment. There were serpents and scorpions—there were snares and dangers—drought, barrenness, and desolation. But there was that wonderful assembly maintained in a manner that completely baffled and confounded human reason.
And, reader, remember, this was a type. A type of what? A type of something that has been in existence on this earth for over eighteen centuries—is in existence still—and shall be in existence until the moment that our Lord Christ rises from His present position, and descends into the air. In a word, a type of the Church of God in the world.
How important to recognize this fact! How sadly it has been lost sight of! How little understood even now! And yet every Christian is solemnly responsible to recognize it, and practically to confess it. There is no escaping it. Is it true that there is something on the earth, at this very moment, answering to the camp in the desert? Yes, verily. There is, in very truth, the Church in the wilderness. There is an assembly’ passing through this world, just as the literal Israel passed through the literal desert. And, moreover, the world is, morally and spiritually, to that Church, what the desert was, literally and practically, to Israel of old. Israel found no springs in the desert, and the Church of God should find no springs in the world. If she does, she proves false to her Lord. Israel was not of the desert, but passing through it; and the Church of God is not of the world, but passing through it.
If this be thoroughly entered into by the reader, it will show him the place of complete separation which belongs to the Church of God as a whole, and to each individual member thereof. The Church, in God’s view of her, is as thoroughly marked off from this present world, as the camp of Israel was marked off from the surrounding desert. There is as little in common between the Church and the world, as there was between Israel and the sand of the desert. The most brilliant attractions and bewitching fascinations of the world are to the Church of God what the serpents and scorpions, and the ten thousand dangers of the wilderness, were to Israel.
Such is the divine idea of the Church of God; and it is with this idea we are now occupied.
(To be continued, if the Lord will.