Joseph’s own history, remarkable and checkered as it was, sets forth in type the varied exercises and trials to which a servant of God is subjected, in order that he may be a suitable vessel for the Master’s use. In considering Joseph’s life, the names of his sons, born to him in the land of his exile, are full of the deepest interest and significance. These names were given with a special reason and intent, for the children were born to him in a strange land. Thus, even in their names, they were witnesses of how entirely apart from “his father’s house” he was and how he was left to be fruitful only to God amid his affliction.
“Forgetting”
Now the meaning of Manasseh is forgetting, and of Ephraim, fruitful. These two great features will be produced in our hearts, when the revelation of God’s mind and will for the present moment is received in faith. No one can truly say that he forgets “his father’s house,” until his heart has found a treasure in a brighter scene; then, wherever he is in body becomes the land of exile to him. It is truly a wonderful emancipation to a man when what he has found in heaven throws into shade all that is connected with our “father’s house.”
Yet it is only Christ in glory that can displace “all things,” leading us to count them loss for the excellency of His knowledge. How sorrowful it is to see many so little distinguished by this Manasseh character of testimony! It is solemn to realize that the highest character of testimony may be held doctrinally, along with the most evident self-seeking and worldliness. How is this? It is because truth is sought after or held in the mind instead of Christ personally dwelling in the heart, for it is possible to separate Christ from truth. Sometimes more importance is attached to natural quickness of apprehension of the truth, even to the point of slighting some who, though slow in apprehension, are far more conscientious in their handling of the truth, because they are deeply impressed with the sense of its claims upon them.
How blessed it is when we can really walk through the world as in a foreign land — Christ in glory having so possessed us that we are but vessels here at His disposal and pleasure! When the eye is single and Christ alone is filling its vision, all is lost sight of — not only our toil and father’s house, but even our progress in pressing on to Christ in glory. Hence the Apostle says, “Forgetting those things which are behind.” What a wonderful and surpassing power it is, which turns out every rival, that Christ alone may rule and reign there!
“Fruitful”
But another son was born to Joseph at this time also, to whom he gives the name of Ephraim, that is, fruitful. This sets forth a second testimony, which the Lord has called His own to render for Him. We are left in a world with which we ought to have nothing in common to be fruitful for Christ.
There is another point of great interest in this history, which finds its antitype in the Lord’s ways with His saints at the present time. It required both the pit and the prison to develop and mature this testimony of Joseph. And is it not so with His saints now? Can there be either forgetfulness or fruitfulness, unless death practically works in us? As we bear about in our body the dying of Jesus and as we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, His life is manifested in us. We owe our all to His blessed death; by it He has set us free from the moral pit and prison in which we were hopelessly held. But while almost every saint would glory in this, how few there are who have as yet accepted the solemn reality that it is only through death that we can, as free, follow Him, and it is only as death practically works in us that we are either forgetting or fruitful.
May the Lord awaken us all to a more serious estimate of such a calling, so as to set forth in a scene of moral death and darkness, the land of our exile and strangership, the beautiful simplicity of those whose father’s house and toil are all to us things of the past, to be no more remembered or resumed connection with! We, though in a foreign land, ought to be fruitful trees of the Lord’s culture, even “planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit” (Jer. 17:88For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. (Jeremiah 17:8)).
W. T. Turpin (adapted)