Here are the proof texts you have sent me from God’s Word, which refer to the Flood, Matt. 24:38, 39; Luke 17:27; 2 Peter 2:5, 6; to the Ark, 1 Peter 3:20, 21; Heb. 11:7; and to the Rainbow, Isa. 54:9; Ezek. 1:28; Rev. 4:3; 10:1.
Before God sent the flood of waters to destroy man, whom He had created, from the face of the earth, He beheld that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, Gen. 6:5-7, and as Noah and his family left the ark “the Lord said in his heart, I will not curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is only evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every living thing as I have done.” Gen. 8:21. Alas! how soon did Noah’s saved family prove this by forgetting the God that had saved them. As they grew and multiplied, they consulted together to make themselves a name by building a great city; which should have a tower whose top (was to be) unto heaven, Gen. 11:1-9, and not spread peacefully over the face of the earth, as God had bid them do. Gen. 9:1-7.
As they would not trust in God, and peacefully go forth to replenish the earth, God scattered them by judgment, confounding their language, and compelling them to cease building their city which because of this was called Babel, confusion. In the next chapter, God comes forth in grace, as in the eleventh He had acted in judgment. All the world had given God up, not liking to retain Him in their knowledge, for when they knew God they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Rom. 1:21-25. But if man had given God up, God would not give up man, and in grace He calls one of these idolaters to know Him as the God of glory, Acts 7:2; and in doing so God calls him to leave his country, and his kindred, and his father’s house, to go forth into a land which God promised to show him. And Abraham obeyed God’s voice, and left his country as a pilgrim on his way to this unknown land.
Now mark, my dear children, that in God calling Abraham out of an idolatrous world in order to bless him, He was condemning the world as an evil place, which He could no longer acknowledge.
Abraham was the first of God’s saints that was called out of his country to go to another place. The world had given God up, and therefore God must separate His own from the world. At first Abraham moved to Haran with his father and his nephew, and they settled there, but God had called Abraham not only to leave his country, but also his kindred, and his father’s house, and so when his father Terah died, God removed Abraham from Haran to the land of Promise, to which He had called him at the first. Acts 7:3, 4. Abraham now fully obeyed the call of God, and had left his father’s house as well as his country, and his kindred. God calls sinners by His Spirit now, out of a world not only ungodly, but also guilty of the death of His Son, and awaiting the day of wrath, when God will send Jesus in flaming fire to destroy His foes.
The world is a worse place now God ward than in the days of its early idolatry. Satan is its prince and its god and God in His infinite grace is calling sinners out of it, to a greater blessing in a better land than Abraham’s. He calls sinners now to heaven as their inheritance, where He blesses them with all spiritual blessings in Christ. Eph. 1:3.
And if my reader is one whom God has called thus with a heavenly calling, may he or she be true to that call, and not stop on the way at any Haran to pleas flesh and blood, or God will have to re move that which detains you from following Him with a whole heart. When Abraham goes forth again, he does not stop by the way. “They went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came.” Gen. 12:5. This was the true pilgrim spirit. This is what one longs for oneself, and for all who are God’s pilgrims now. Canaan was the land where God promised to bless Abraham, and nowhere short of it would be obedience to God’s gracious call. Are you, my Christian reader, however young you may be, blest anywhere this side of your Canaan? Christ is in heaven, and your home and inheritance and all your blessings are there, and there God’s Spirit would conduct your heart and spirit. As one of the early martyrs sweetly said, when about to be thrown to the wild beasts, his heart with all its treasure, was in heaven, and he longed to be himself where his heart had been so long.
But the pilgrim’s path is one of faith throughout, and when Abraham reached Canaan and had pitched his tent, and built his altar there, God allowed a famine to try his confidence. And without waiting for God’s word, Abraham and his family left God’s land and sojourned, in Egypt, to escape the famine. Directly; we get off the ground of faith in God’s word, and dependence on Himself, our strength is gone. Abraham ceased to be the happy worshipper directly he left God’s land for Egypt. He found bread there, but not bread for his soul. He had lost the sweet assurance that God was with him, and he was afraid lest the ungodly Egyptians should kill him and take Sarah from him, so they agreed, not to return to Canaan and trust the living God, but to tell a lie and say they were brother and sister, that they might live, safely in Egypt. Many a Christian has fallen into the same snare, and in order to live in peace with God’s enemies, he has denied his calling and his hope. But this lie brought Abraham into the very trouble he sought to avoid. The king of Egypt hearing that Sarah was Abraham’s sister, and admiring her beauty, took her from Abraham, and had not God come in in mercy and delivered Abraham and Sarah from Pharaoh and Egypt altogether, Abraham would have lost the blessing God called him to Canaan to bestow.
God had not changed in His love and grace to Abraham, and directly restoring mercy brings Abraham back, he returns to his true life as God’s pilgrim and worshipper. Oh, what a mercy, when a young believer really hears that word, “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to Thy word.” Psa. 119:9. We never should go wrong if, whatever the trouble was, we trusted God, and waited to know His word, before we took another step. If Abraham had asked God what to do in the grievous famine, he would never have gone to Egypt to escape it. We remember what the blessed Lord said, when He hungered in the desert, and Satan tempted Him to command the stones to be made bread: “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
Your affectionate friend,
UNCLE R.