EU 13:1-18{EU 11:1-17{There are two subjects in these two chapters: one is the contrast between the wilderness and Canaan; the other, the contrast between Egypt and Canaan; they are very distinct contrasts. and the teaching of the two Scriptures is, how we are to retain what we reach. Many reach who cannot retain, because retaining a thing requires a continuance of the power by which we reached it. Many a person in natural things can reach a height he cannot maintain. A great effort, a fortunate act, may reach a great eminence, but the question is whether you can retain it.
We all admit the fact that God has a place for us hereafter, but Canaan is not a future place; it is heaven on earth at the present time. We belong to another place altogether; we are on earth in a place that we do not belong to. I belong to heaven, but I am on earth, and that is Canaan. I am out of Egypt, and I have to learn the wilderness, and the man who is mostly in Canaan is the man who best understands what it is to be in the wilderness, for the higher you go the better you understand what it is to be dependent.
In the history of Israel they needed the wilderness to get into Canaan, and then they left it. It is not so with us; you often get contrasts in this way in Scripture. It is not that we leave the wilderness for Canaan, but that we are in the wilderness as belonging to Canaan. A person may say, You are not in heaven; and I answer, That is true, but I am united to One who is, and I am nearer to that One than to any other. I am on the earth, but I am united to One who is in heaven; and the more I know that, the more I am in Canaan. Besides this, I get no support whatever from this earth that I am on; so it is the wilderness to me. And the more you advance in the knowledge that you are a heavenly man the more novel, the more distressing, the more severe, the more extraordinary, the more unaccountable, will be the trials that you are subjected to in order that you may be dependent, lest being puffed up you should lose your high position through independence or wilfulness.
There are many people who are converted who are not sure that they are saved; and there are many who are saved who do not know that they are heavenly. But all these stand or fall together. As we read, " The land the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance; " it is a gift. I am as much a heavenly man as a saved man. I may be a very useless British subject, but I am one all the same. It is a great thing to get hold of the calling: " Walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye are called." I lay it down as a settled thing for your soul, that you must say, I am as much a heavenly man as I am a saved man. He has already united me to Himself there, and, when He comes, it is that He may take me to the place where He is. I have not got to heaven yet, but I belong to the One who is there.
Man naturally never rises to this even when he is converted. Take, for example, the thief on the cross. He says, " Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." No, says the Lord; to-day in paradise. He was to have, not the kingdom, but heaven. Take another case, that of Stephen. He looked up and saw " Jesus standing on the right hand of God," and he turns to his murderers and says, You are going to send me out of this place, but it is only to send me to heaven. Take a still farther case in Paul. He says, " I knew a man in Christ, whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out of the body, I cannot tell; " I have lost all sense of things here. Every person does not get so high as Paul did, but every one is entitled to be where Stephen was.
It is a great thing to be able to walk about and say, I do not belong to this place at all; It is nothing but wickedness. Take an amiable man in nature. As he suffers in seeing all the disorder, misrule, cruelty, that is around him, what a relief to him to be able to say, My citizenship is not here; I am not responsible for it. My citizenship is in heaven. I say it is an immense thing. God says to me it is not my place. When He began with Abram, He called him out and said, This is not to be your country; come out of it to a land that I will show you. And so now God says, I do not give my people a place where my Son is rejected, but a place where He is received. I am a heavenly man, not by attainment, but by the gift of God. I am as much a heavenly man as I am a British subject, whether I am acting well or not.
Some seek to escape the edge of this truth by refusing to be called heavenly; but you are a heavenly man by calling. Heaven is your place: it is the first thing that is brought before you as a saved person.
I turn to these two Scriptures to show that no height to which grace elevates us at the present moment ever takes us out of dependence here. Nay, if we lose dependence, as some have done, we bring reproach on the truth we are brought into. What keeps us in the high position is dependence. A man who learns obedience without dependence is legal. What was the great lesson of the wilderness? Not simply to " humble thee," but " to make thee know that man Both not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord cloth man live." That is, that you are to be dependent on the word of God; and then you are obedient. Obedience when you are looking for a rule is legal. Dependence is what I learn in the wilderness, and obedience is what keeps me in Canaan: but it is obedience as the consequence of being a dependent man.
Look at the Lord: the most heavenly Man; "the Son of man who is in heaven." And what is He down here 2 The most obedient one. He says, I have not got a word from God, so I cannot turn the stone into bread. I have learned to be a dependent man, and because I am a dependent man therefore I am an obedient man. I "live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." That is the place of a heavenly man upon earth.
It is then in proportion as you enjoy the land that there will be trials in the wilderness. So much so, that even Peter, who does not get out of the wilderness at all, says: " Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you." I am passing through the wilderness; and the only thing I have to keep my eye on here, as Peter says, is the enemy of God. Peter, as we have seen, never puts you out of the wilderness. John is the first who puts you out of it; and he does not put you in heaven-only gives you a heavenly life on earth. "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." I have different enemies-three great ones, at any rate. There is Pharaoh; that is the clutch, the grasp, of the world. There is Amalek; that is the power of Satan to hinder. And there is Balaam; that is the snare of socialism. And these you do not get in Canaan at all.
The warning of these two chapters in Deuteronomy is, that, if you do not obey, you will lose all. He shows you all the abundance of things, the contrast that there is between Canaan and Egypt; but will all this go on 2 Are you sure of it? Not if you are not obedient. If you are not happy there, you are worse off than in Egypt. There was water there, any how when you worked for it with your foot; but here there is none unless it come down from heaven. We get on to heavenly ground, and we rejoice in the fact; but we keep it only by obedience. All we have in the wilderness is the terrific opposition of the enemy of God. We are attacked by the way; but we do not become aggressors ourselves until we get into the land. And what is the result of aggression? It is getting place for Christ. Those who fought the holy wars were seeking material space for Christ; they had not intelligence as to His mind. What we want is to get moral space for Christ.
In 2 Cor. 12, we get the brightest example of the heavenly man. A man caught up into Paradise, who heard unspeakable words which it was not possible for a man to utter. He was caught up into the place without going there bodily. He is sensibly in the enjoyment of it; so sensibly that, for the moment, he has lost his link with the earth. I do not say that souls do not get a taste of it now-a-days; but, as they do, they get a deeper sense of the wilderness. Paul did: there was given to him " a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him." For this he cried to the Lord three times; and He said: "My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness." I gave it you lest you should be puffed up-lest you should get out of the place of dependence. And then see how Paul comes round, how beautifully he accepts it; he says: " Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities." Whilst not out of the wilderness, I have entered on the enjoyment of heaven, and I can go back to it; but I am made sensible that I am to be more of a dependent man than I ever was before. What tried Paul was, that he lost the ability to expound this very thing that he had received. Never mind, through the grace of Christ he will be a better wilderness man.
There is not time to go into chap. 11, but it opens with showing at what an immense cost they were brought into the land. I believe the great hindrance to every soul getting on is, not that it does not know the glory-every soul has that-but that it does not know the cross. The cross has taken everything away, and left only Christ. It is not the glory that takes things away. Paul says: " God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." It is the cross that takes all away. Paul is a bright specimen of a heavenly man.
Now I will show you one who lost the heavenly thing, as many do, by not being dependent. In Gen. 33 Jacob has come back to the land. There have been real power and grace shown in restoring him; but like many a one he thinks to rest in what he has attained. He builds a house, buys a field, and erects an altar, calling it El-Elohe-Israel. He does not give up truth, but he makes truth the thing that is before him, instead of God, who has brought him to Himself. He ought to have gone to Bethel. When at last he does get there, he finds quite another order of things. At Shechem he is a heavenly man; but he wants to rest in things here, and not to be dependent. What is the consequence? He is brought into the most humiliating state. He says: " I shall be destroyed, I and my house." He has to be subjected to all this in order to make him true to his calling.
The Lord make us see what a wonderful place we are called to. I do not believe a soul ever has really known the presence of Christ if it have not at some time or other, known what it is to have everything lost to it for the moment. But, when after such a moment, you return to this scene, do not be surprised if some new form of trial come upon you, because you cannot be let rest in the happiness you have reached, instead of in the grace that brought you into it. Many a one can trace failure and defeat to the moment that followed some happy time. God grant that we may seek to enjoy His Son in the unclouded light of His own presence. When I come down from it, I am all the more prepared to meet the contrariety, the opposition to God, of the scene in which I am. Thus, while I delight in the One I have learned to know up there, I possess the sweetest thing the heart can know-dependence on God. Down here I have the most consolitary sense that I am dependent upon the One I am delighting in and so am competent to come down and take my place for Christ, to seek space for Him in this world, whilst I myself do not seek to be sustained by anything in it but by Him who is my life.
[J. B. S.]