Family Religion
Gen. 11
This is a history which will be found, I believe, to suggest much occasion for the searching of the heart. I desire grace to handle it wisely and to profit!
Shem, among the sons of Noah, was the sacred branch. Religion was connected with him rather than with his brothers, and from him came the separated people.
This is a common history even to this day. Families as well as churches are seen in a sadly degenerate and corrupt condition, though once they were known for their zeal and service.
The Spirit of God, however, in the sovereignty of grace, visits a son of Terah who was removed eight generations from Shem. The call of the God of glory came to Abram and separated him from those corruptions, and from country and from kindred and from father's house, to fashion him as a new piece of workmanship for the Lord. (Acts 7:22And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, (Acts 7:2).)
Abram, it appears, made this call known to his family, and (as is often seen to this day among ourselves) this communication has a certain influence among them. Family religion springs from this. The power of the gospel is known at first by one member, and from thence it spreads. And the Lord would have it so. It is a bad symptom (as we may see presently) where this does not take place.
So here. Terah the father gets ready. Nahor, one of his sons, from the whole narrative, we may presume, was not much under this influence; for he, his wife, and children, all abide where they were. But Abram and Abram's wife, and Lot, the son of Terah's deceased son Haran, set out on the divinely appointed journey, and Terah the father apparently takes the lead. (Chap. 11.)
But ere I go farther with the narrative, I would ask, was all this entirely right on Abram's part? The call had been to him. On him the energy of the Spirit had come. Within the range of that energy or influence, the family, it is true, may be brought; but still, did it not belong to Abram to fill that place which this energy had manifestly assigned him? Was there not some conferring with flesh and blood on Abram's part, ere Terah could have been allowed to take the lead in this great movement under the Spirit of God? There may have been. And I rather judge that there was, and that this has to account for the delay at Haran and for the death of Terah there, and for the putting forth of a second energy from the Lord in calling Abram from Haran. (Chap. 11:31-12:1.)
This is all admonitory to us. Family religion is beautiful; but family order or human claims, are not to assume the rights of the Spirit. Beautiful to see Cornelius, or any other in like circumstances, bringing his friends and kindred within that influence which was visiting his house; but if flesh and blood, or human relationship disturb the sovereign progress of the Spirit, we may expect a halt at Haran or at the half-way house again, and the need of a second call (in some sense a second) to set the soul in the path of God afresh.
We may mark and distinguish these things for profit and admonition. However, under this renewed energy of the Spirit, Abram renews his journey, and Sarah his wife and Lot his orphan nephew accompany him. It is a scene of family religion still. And in Lot we see one who was within the verge of the general or family influence. We read of no distinct call on him, or of any sacrifice from him. Not that he represents a mere professor, or one who attaches himself for some end to the people of God. No: he was a righteous man and had a living soul that could be and was vexed with the wickedness of the wicked. (2 Peter 2) But his entrance into the household of faith expresses no energy. It was effected in a family way, as I have been observing—as a thousand cases in our own day. And good such things are. Happy when Sarah the wife, or Terah the father, or Lot the nephew, of these latter days, will go along with our Abrams. This would not be, we know, without the drawing and teaching of the Father. And Lot was as surely an elect one as Abram. But the energy of the call of God is not manifested in him as in Abram—distinctions which we cannot fail to mark continually. It was a personal thing characteristically with Abram; it was a family thing characteristically with Lot. And according to all this, in the very first scene in which Lot was called to act in an independent way we see his weakness.
Abram gives him the choice of the land. And he makes a choice. Now it is not merely in his choosing the goodliest that our hearts condemn him, but in his making a choice at all. In every respect Abram had title to have the first choice, as we speak. He was the elder both in years and relationship. He was principal in all that action which had drawn them to this distant land, and Lot was but, as it were, attached to him. He was noble and generous in surrendering his right to his younger. But Lot was insensible to all this. And he undertakes to make the choice, and then (naturally in the course of such a beginning) he chooses on an entirely worldly principle. He takes the well-watered plain for his flocks and his herds, though that took himself near the defiled city. (Chap. 13.)
This first trial of Lot is thus a painful witness against him. It argues the weakness in which faith or the kingdom of God had been brought forth in his soul. Abram's way was very different, for the voice of the God of glory had been powerfully heard by him, detaching him from that world to which Lot was still adhering. And all this has language in our ears.
It is soon discovered what a disappointing world Lot was choosing. The well-watered plain soon becomes a field of battle; and had it not been for Abram or Abram's God, Lot would have lost his liberty and all his possessions there.
But it is still more sad to have to tell it, that this first disappointment does not free his heart from its unholy attachment. He takes up Sodom a second time, till he is forced to remove by the hand of God Himself. If when the watered plain became a field of slaughter, Lot refused to learn its character and to leave it, he shall learn it by its becoming burning heaps in the day of the Lord.
Melancholy catastrophe shameful end of an earthly-minded believer! What a voice for us all this has! Here was a saving so as by fire, a running out of a house in flames, an inglorious departure from the world! We may lay the admonition to heart, and watch against the first look toward the watered plains of Sodom. (Chap. 14.—15)
In the whole of this, indeed, we get great lessons, whether of comfort or of warning. It tells us that family religion is a beautiful thing, and that true godliness may begin in that way as in Abram's house. But it admonishes us that each one in the scene should take good care to cultivate the power of godliness in a very personal way, lest our religion betray the weakness of a mere general or family influence, and in a little season leave not a trace behind it.
Under Abram family religion, as I was observing, did spread, but not under Lot; for his wife continued with the mind of Sodom in her, and is made a beacon-light to warn passengers on their way to this hour. His two daughters defile themselves and become the parents of two such corrupt seeds as are denied, under special prohibition (Deut. 23:22A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 23:2)), any place in God's house; and his sons-in-law, when he spoke to them of judgment, profanely thought that he was a trifler or a fool.
Here surely is serious matter for our souls to deal with If our religion or profession of Christ have sprung up under the influence of a family atmosphere, we have warning here to watch and cultivate a deep and personal power of godliness, in holy fear and suspicion of the weakness of the root of such a plant.
But again, if our profession of Christ have not more or less, as in the case of Abram, spread an influence in the family, we have great reason to be humbled and to fear that it is so, because like Lot we have not in our own persons exhibited faiths in its separating and victorious power.
Lessons of serious and holy importance on the subject of family religion are in that way read to us by this little history. It tells us, as I have said, that we ought to be the means of spreading it; but that if we ourselves are the subject of its influence, we should watch specially as those who have special reason to suspect their weakness. For it is equally said by the same perfect unerring Spirit, “Let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another;” and again, “Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Family religion is thus honored by the Lord, but the thorough and the personal power of it is also assisted. The fathers to the children are to make known the truth (Isa. 38), but each man must be born again, or he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Beautiful to see “unfeigned faith” dwelling in one generation after another of the same family, as in the grandmother Lois, the mother Eunice, and the child Timothy; but it is beautiful also to read, in the third of those family generations, the tears and the affections which draw up the full persuasions that their religion is not imitative or educational, or the mere catching of a family influence, but the precious inwrought power of a kingdom which God Himself has set up in the soul.
“What we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us, we will not hide from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done.”
J. G. B.