It seems to me that we have the whole moral history of Israel, the purposes of God, and the accomplishment of them in Christ as regards this people, in the blessing of Jacob, in Gen. 49. I can only briefly set it forth here. First, Israel as it was, and its moral failure in Reuben, Simeon, and Levi. The universal characters of the development of sin are given. Corruption and violence. Defiling and instruments of cruelty. God in the testimony of the Spirit rejects their assembly. The violent passions are the latter form. The beast is destroyed after Babylon. God's purposes are in Judah. The King, the Lawgiver is there; the gathering of the peoples is to be to Him. But we know when presented to the responsibility of Israel He was rejected. There was no gathering of the peoples. The staves of Beauty and Bands were broken. Those by which the peoples were to be gathered and the two divisions of Israel united in one under one head. Then in Zebulun and Issachar, Israel is presented as mixed up with the world like Tire in Ezekiel, and content to be subject to strangers for ease, as if they were not God's people at all. Dan is still, in spite of all, owned, and represents Israel recognized as God's portion in spite of all, but at the same time points out the apostasy and power of Satan in Israel. The remnant taught of God look beyond the whole position of the people to God's own, salvation who cannot but be faithful to His word. Thereupon we have unmingled blessing crowned with the heavenly and earthly glory of a rejected Christ-channel of all the resources of God's blessing to His people beyond all previous knowledge of blessing. Israel had been overcome, but overcomes at the last. Asher (not like Zebulun) has his fatness in his own pastures, and royal dainties are there. In Naphtali is joyful liberty-the liberty God has given, and full of goodly words. Then comes the crown of all. The rejected one of his brethren sorely tried and shot at; Christ personally considered the Shepherd the Stone of Israel made strong by the power of God, exalted when rejected to be at the King's right hand, and Head over the Gentiles, is the exhaustless source of every divine blessing with which the heart of man can be made glad, all richly coming from God are upon the crown of the head of Him that was separated from His brethren. Such is Christ as rejected and glorified, and the medium as partaking of heavenly glory of all divinely given blessings which are to His glory who was separated from his brethren. In Benjamin, finally, we have the royal strength a kingly power in Israel and of the people when Christ is returned as King amongst them, and makes Judah His goodly horse in the day of battle, and fills His bow with Ephraim. Such in general is the prospect of which the outlines seem to me to be given in this prophecy.
Your affectionate brother in Christ, J. N. D.
"ABLE TO STAND-STAND." Ephesians 6
When Israel was in Egypt, it was not in the desert; and when it was in the desert, it was not in Canaan. God was teaching then according to what man was; and man had to learn the varied truths in succeeding chapters-no two of which existed at the same time. But now God is teaching in another way, according to what Christ is; and this changes all in that which is most real of all things. Christ alone is out of Egypt, and those that, through faith, are in Him: they are as much out in reality as He is-so far indeed as they are in Him. Faith may be strong, and the soul may repose simply upon what God has done for us in Christ, and then we know that we are not of the world, even as He is not of the world. Or faith may be weak, and instead of our taking God's testimony about Christ, with a " let God be true and every man a, liar," we may be occupying ourselves in part with what God is to do in us, if He has saved us; and in our minds confounding what is to be done in the saved, with the saving which precedes the results which flow from it. If so, it is with us no wonder if we hardly know whether we are in or out of Egypt. If thus -weak, let us turn to God's testimony about His Son, and rest upon that, and acknowledge that which God tells us of the blessedness of those who rest upon His grace in Christ-Christ and His work finished for us-a Christ now in heaven, made ours by God, is the sole Exodus of an individual soul. Mark it-Christ and His work made ours through the grace and mercy of God; "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined into our hearts, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus." That light is its own evidence. If I have it I am not of Egypt; I am out of Egypt, and am not blinded as Satan blinds them that perish.
But though I myself be out of Egypt, my feet are in the wilderness; and all that I can say as to it, whether in the daily gleaning of experience through unbelief, or in the spiritual teachings of faith to the inner man is,- " In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
Many a Christian cleaves to pilgrimage-character, according to the experiences of nature: such cannot hope, I think, to get better fare than Lot did in Sodom,-if they are cleaving to the world,-or Jacob at Jabbok, if they are seeking to gather back to the path of faith. There is, however, another way of going to work, and that is that of Abraham, who walked according to the call and promises of God. This will not turn the wilderness to a garden-it will make them rather taste the more (because after a divine and heavenly mode and taste) what the wilderness itself is-and I might here say, what none dare question, that none ever tasted what the wilderness was, like Him whose whole being, and heart, and mind, and soul were divine and heavenly. To Him, the blessed Lord Jesus, it was the wilderness indeed.
But then, while our feet are in the wilderness-while we tread the earth, and are in the world, though not of it, we have not to wait to cross Jordan ere tasting Canaan's corn, and the milk, and the honey of that good land.
Heaven is open upon us already, and a Christ full of blessing is there already known and tasted as our blessing. Neither, again, have we, like Israel, to fight our way into the land; nor, when in the land, to make good the claims God has given to us of blessing.
If I am striving to fight my way into the land of promise, I do not recognize that my Head is in possession of what commands it all. I am occupied with striving to take possession (which Christ alone can do), and not striving to act consistently with the possession of blessing already given to me in Christ.
Neither am I trying to make good the claims to the blessing which God has given me—that is, if I act consistently. No; but to act consistently with a possession given in Christ, which has "yet a little while " added to it as the link that connects my soul with the entrance from below into the field of blessing, into which Christ will enter from above at the divinely-appointed moment, for His beginning to enjoy and to act upon the blessings which are His.
Many, I conceive, lose much by confusion on this point; they think they have to fight their way into the promise, or that they have to make good their claims to the promised blessing. Self and its energy get a wrong place and a wrong direction. They must be wrong, for the blessings are already all treasured up in Christ; and there is but One that can make good the claims to the enjoyment of the blessings, even Christ. Their mistake herein leads many to strive amiss; and instead of saying, " Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth;" instead of owning-"O how little taught in the blessing!" they are for a doing and a striving which flows from a zeal without knowledge.
What would I have them do? What would I have you do? Why this " Act, hourly, in all the difficulties which come upon you from the wilderness around you, as being indeed and already a living member of the body, whose Head, the Man Christ Jesus, sits in heaven, crowned with honor and glory. That is one thing I would have you do and suffer. Another is like it. Namely, Do and suffer here below in all the trials which flow down upon you from Satan's possession of the heavenlies, as the living member of the Christ of God should suffer.
And, if I added a third word, it would be this: In order that it may be so, be sure to look up from the wilderness where your feet are fast, the spot held by evil spirits in the heavenlies, to where Christ is at the right hand of the Father.
O if men knew what Christ's thoughts to-day are about the spiritual wickednesses in heavenly places and about this world that rejected Him, they would well understand, that being counted by Him as members of His body, one spirit with the Lord, the exhortations to stand fast, at the close of the Ephesians, are not without force.
But who of us really counts himself as so looked upon by God and Christ, and proves that he counts it so by acting thereupon, in all the details of his walk here below?