Gen. 15
I desire to express a few thoughts to your readers on some of the various groupings of the scriptures. Every one, for example, must have been struck with the family circle at Bethany, and the outflow of divine and human affections which made that scene of resurrection, power, and life, what it was—but that Lazarus, was a man who came forth from death and the grave. What was true and suitable, when the time was come for Jesus, as “the resurrection and the life” to form the center of that circle was equally in keeping with the ways of God as Creator, when the man and the woman were originally introduced into the world, as the heads of the whole human race, and when God walked in the garden of Eden in the cool of the day. This man came out of the dust of the earth, and was called therefore Adam. The woman was formed out of the man and was called Eve, or “the mother of all living.” How different!
Another and a very distinct group came out from the ark with Noah upon the world that now is. These had typically “seen the end of all flesh,” by the waters of destruction, for man had corrupted his way upon earth and filled it with violence. These close up the history of Adam and the creation, and begin another from the ark as the witness that all who were therein had passed through and over the death and judgment which had swept all else away! Every one must have lingered in company with this new group of Noah and his wife, and their sons and daughters, and two of all kinds of cattle and fowls and creeping things—all these “found grace in the eyes of the Lord;” and the altar with its cloud of sweet savor, in fellowship with which the rainbow of the covenant encircled the horizon of their faith, unmistakably reveal the new ground of their intercourse with God. The Creator, who walked in the garden in the cool of the day, has come forth from the thick darkness—not of original chaos, but of death and righteous judgment at the flood—to bless this second group through “the sweet savor” which He smelt.
“The God of glory” came in (after Babel and the confusion of tongues) to call out Abram from the whole world besides; and it is with this patriarch as the head of the family of faith and those grouped around him with whom we shall have particularly to do in what follows. Gen. 14; 15 may give us the diameter of our circle.
Here and there we find in the Old Testament some illustrious stranger introduced, such for instance as Jethro, “the father-in-law of Moses,” who seems for the moment to be a leader and commander of the whole scene and then withdraws. So here in these chapters, Melchizedek, the king of Salem and priest of the Most High God, is the prominent person in action, and takes precedence of “the friend of God;” so that for the time that then was, and for typical purposes (as we know from Heb. 7) he met Abram returning from the slaughter of the kings, and brought forth bread and wine and blessed him. The comment of the Holy Ghost upon this illustrious visitor is remarkable. “Now consider how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.... and without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better.” But this group in Genesis will not get the commanding color unless we add, “For this Melchizedek, being by interpretation king of righteousness, and after that also king of Salem, which is king of peace; without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God, abideth a priest continually.” The patriarch thus met and thus blessed was in himself the separated one unto God—the only one upon earth with a “calling” —called out from the whole world to walk with God, and that too in the character of the God Almighty.
What a delight to see the head of the family of faith—and in this sense “the father of us all” —thus encouraged and so distinguished! How truly is be the representative man of the new race of men, who are partakers of that faith, without which it is impossible to please God—a faith which identifies them with their calling and with Him who calls, as well as with the blessing wherewith they are blessed, and puts them consequently into a place of separation while in the world, out of which they are called as pilgrims and strangers. Melchizedek blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be the Most High God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.” It is instructive and encouraging to see “this head of the family of faith” wrought upon by the double power of the calling and the blessing—when in the place of real separation—so that by faith he put to flight the armies of the aliens, and wrought deliverance for.” his brother Lot and his goods, the women also and the people” who had been attracted into another and a very different path, by the well-watered plains of Sodom. What a warning, or else an example, for all of us! Nor is it merely in victory and rescue that Abram is a witness, but likewise in his steady refusal to the king of Sodom to accept from a thread even to a shoelatchet (or anything that was his) lest he should say, “I have made Abram rich.” Thus early do we get an example of one who would not morally defile the head of his Nazariteship It is to such an one that the word of the Lord comes in chapter 15 saying, “Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.” Nor is the faith of our father afraid to put God to the proof, according to this announcement. “And Abram said, Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?” One of faith's earliest lessons is here before us—the faith which gives glory to God, by letting Him in to take the place which is according to His own mind. God had made Himself known in calling as the God of glory, and in blessing through the priest of the Most High God as possessor of heaven and earth: He had also proved Himself stronger than all that was against Abram. What could faith say to the possessor and doer of all things, but “What wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless?”
Abram's faith puts God into the place of a giver, and this is what the living God is, and this is the way to give glory to Him. Moreover “the bread and wine” brought out to Abram by Melchizedek is a great warrant and foreshadowing to us in all our intercourse with God. Nevertheless that which is first in order for our communion with the Father in His own thoughts is often last in manifest and outward accomplishment. No doubt this order has been observed by many in the types of Leviticus, where the burnt offering takes the precedence of all others, though in the actual experience of our souls, when first awakened, we began with the sin offering, as requisite for a guilty conscience. In these two chapters Abram seems growingly alive to the fact that this must be God's order, if He begins to act from Himself towards the man who is His friend I Indeed we (in our day) may well say that some of the profoundest secrets are here coming out; for what is the setting aside of Eliezer the steward but the making room for a child of promise, the son in the house? Just as we find in chapter 16 with the realities of Sarah and Hagar, or Isaac and Ishmael, and the yet further reality that the “son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman,” which things are to us (in New Testament language) “an allegory,” of yet deeper mysteries touching Mount Sinai and Jerusalem which is above! In short the external ways of God are but the history of the steward and the stewardship, for this is what man under responsibility to God, from Adam downward, surely is, and therefore the time must come when the unjust steward must be “put out of the stewardship.” As those who know the Lord Jesus Christ, we begin with the Son in the house. The Old Testament is in this way the history of the stewards, and “the kingdom of God taken from them and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”
The New Testament is the revelation of the Son, and the Father, and the Father's house: and it was into this path in principle and type that Abram was being led, though in his lessons he had to offer up his son Isaac, symbolically on Mount Moriah, and receive him back from the dead again in a figure; for the time was not yet come nor the true son of Abraham born into the world. Another thing to be noticed is, that when Abram measured himself by himself he was childless and had no heir; but as soon as he viewed himself in the vastness of God's thoughts, all similitudes and comparisons by things around him fell infinitely short of the Lord's intentions. So “he brought him forth abroad and said, Look now towards heaven and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them; and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.” A most important fact springs out of this look toward heaven, for the Spirit says, “He believed in the Lord, and it was counted to him for righteousness.” He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform. This is what God imputed to him for righteousness, or giving God His right place and Abraham taking his—as it is written, “who against hope, believed in hope” that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, “so shall thy seed be.” Indeed we may add, that the whole family are justified on the same principle as their head; “now it was not written for his sake alone, but for us also to whom it [righteousness] shall be imputed, if we believe on him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification.”
The “God of glory” likewise proclaimed Himself to Abram, as “I am the Lord that brought thee out from Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. And he said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” An Isaac had been substituted in the house for Eliezer, and now heirship is to be established in the son, instead of a steward; and the inheritance itself grounded upon a covenant of which “God is one,” and the only one, and therefore unconditional, because based upon sacrifice and promise. “And he said, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon,” and he divided them in the midst, and laid one piece against another, but the birds divided be not. Abram as head of the family of faith, and made righteous by faith, stands before God as the exceptional man, called out to be blessed and to walk with the Almighty, on the ground of covenant and promise; and now he must needs pass through, by types and shadows, the ways and methods by which God will establish all to him and to his seed in the latter-day glory. The “God of Abraham” exercised his soul according to truth, as well as in grace, and so “when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.”
The “friend of God” in Genesis, and “the man after God's own heart” in the Psalms, are alike instructed by the Spirit to look beyond their own histories, and those of their respective sons (whether an Isaac, or a Solomon), and to see by faith in the far distance, a greater than either; so that when Jesus was on earth, He could say, “your father Abraham saw my day, and he saw it and was glad.” The Holy Ghost in the Acts witnesses as the Spirit of prophecy in David, that the sweet Psalmist of Israel being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit upon His throne; “he seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.”
Abram in earlier days passed through “the horror of great darkness which fell upon him” and into which his younger son David, both in the flesh and by faith, likewise entered and perhaps yet more fully. The heifer, the she goat, the ram, the turtledove, and the young pigeon, had each a voice to the faith of Abram, and a deepening voice; a horror, as he took unto him all these and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another! Who was to walk in this new pathway of life, and death, and substitution, but “the burning lamp?” and who was to be justified as the Giver, but “the smoking furnace in type? and who was to learn the security of the inheritance, and indeed of all covenanted blessing by such means as these, but “the man in a deep sleep, under the horror of a great darkness?” and who had asked, “Lord God, how shall I know that I shall inherit it?”
And may we not (upon whom “the ends of the ages are come”) pause here to speak to one another of Abraham's greater Son and David's greater Lord, the Son of man and Son of God, who in the days of His flesh poured out His soul unto death, when this “deep sleep” was before Him and “the horror of darkness” really come? “And he taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and began to be sore amazed and to be very heavy, and saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here and watch. And he said, Abba Father, all things are possible unto thee: take this cup from me: nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt.” “And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” “But this is your hour and the power of darkness.”
Our souls well know that beyond Gethsemane (the last Adam's garden) lay the cross, where the Lord Jesus our Savior took up more than remained in the deep sleep of the patriarch. The hour that could not pass by was come and He who alone could enter into that horror of darkness did. Then and there He was in fact what “the divided pieces” were in type; for He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, suffered the Just One for the unjust. His own self bare our sins in His body on the tree, that we being dead to sins should be alive unto righteousness, by whose stripes ye were healed. On the cross, too, He submitted to “the smoking furnace,” and under the searchings of that fire vindicated the righteousness of God by the wrath which He endured, whilst the offended holiness found its food and satisfaction in the perfection of the offering, which it consumed. “And it came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.” The furnace and the lamp have each done their respective work at the cross and the sepulcher, for “from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour, and about the ninth hour Jesus cried, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The Lord who had trodden this fiery path and come up out of it, when He rejoined His disciples, reproved them: “O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?”
The bread and wine to the head of the family of faith, in type from the hands of Melchizedek; the victims and the divided pieces in Abram's deep sleep, and the ground of all promise and covenanted blessing in the shed blood, culminate at the Lord's supper, as we sit now around His table to show forth His death till He come. These are handed out to us in their new fulfillments by the glorified Head and Lord from the heavens, where He now sits as the real Melchizedek, in their true and accomplished meanings. The man from the third heavens, “caught up into paradise” says, “I have received of the Lord that which also I have delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks he brake it and said, Take, eat; this is my body which was broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.” After the same manner He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.” “It is finished” closed this work of the burning lamp, and “the rent veil” by the hand of God superseded the smoking furnace; and when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.
But the first man who was created in the image of God had also a deep sleep, though of course no horror of darkness nor offerings, for there was no sin. “The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her unto the man.” We shall do well to contrast this deep sleep that fell upon Adam with the deep sleep which fell upon Abraham, and what issued from both under the mighty power of Him who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working. It was before the fall, and while Adam was still in “the image of God,” that the typical Eve was formed from his side and brought to him, the product of that deep sleep, during which the help meet for the man was created, the one only good thing lacking where all else was pronounced to be “very good” to the eye and heart of Him who had created all things. “And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone.”
We all know from the Holy Ghost's teaching in Eph. 5 to whom this one only paradisiacal symbol pointed, since the very words of the first Adam are quoted in application to the coming marriage of the Lamb, “for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh: this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” We may well remind ourselves, how close we must be upon the second coming of our Lord, seeing that He has Himself passed through in fact the deep sleep of death and the grave whereby to gain His Bride, the Lamb's wife; “except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The Lord repeated by His death what God had said at creation, “it is not good for man to abide alone;” so He bought His Church by His own blood, and brought her out by redemption-title into the new creation of which this Second Man is the beginning, and Lord; and into which He is about to come with His Eve! So likewise (as we have noticed) the horror, and the darkness, and the deep sleep of the head of the family of faith, have been gone through in fact by Him in whom all types and symbols concentrate. The blood of the everlasting covenant has been shed by Christ, and accepted by God; a pathway by which He can be brought back again in the day of the Son of man's glory, not only as the possessor of the heavens and the earth, but according to His promises to Abraham, and to his seed, and the inheritance, and to fill the whole world with His glory. “It shall come to pass in that day I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel.”
There is yet another thing to be remarked in the grouping of Gen. 15 “And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs and shall serve them: and they shall afflict them four hundred years: and also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterward they shall come out with great substance.”
Other important principles are introduced here, such as the government of God in connection with His people, and His promises, and the time of final blessing, as well as the judgment of God amongst the nations and their overthrow. No doubt this was typically carried out in the record of God's actings by Moses, in the land of Egypt, when Pharaoh would not let the people go. “Now the sojournings of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.” And it came to pass, “even the self same day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. It is a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out.” “Thus the Lord saved Israel out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore.”
It may be needful to say a word perhaps upon verse 16, “for the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full,” seeing that so many of the Lord's people of this day have no idea of God allowing iniquity to come to the full; but on the contrary, are expecting evil to diminish and gradually to cease. If we transfer this principle of the growth of evil from the Old Testament to the New, or even from Gen. 15 to 2 Thessalonians, we shall perhaps discover what a measure of insubjection of mind still exists in reference to the character and growth of the evil described in chapter 2. “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way, and then shall that wicked one be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming.” For, “God shall send them strong delusions that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Indeed it is difficult to conceive how a revelation from God, closing as the New Testament does with the Apocalyptic woes and vials and trumpets and plagues, can be understood in any other way than of the coming judgment upon a widespread apostasy, or as Abram in his day was taught in the fact that the “iniquity of the Amorites was not yet come to the full.”
It will have been seen by these sketches and groups and their applications, whether of Adam, Noah, Abraham, David, or Solomon, in the ancient chronicles, that they have each and all found their common center in the Lord Jesus Christ. Types, prophecies, and promises have all been made “yea and amen in him unto the glory of God by us.” All covenanted blessing for the earth and for the heavens, which have thus concentrated in His person and work on the cross, wait only for the second coming of the Lord; when they must all as truly emanate from Him in the day of His glory and shine forth like the brightness of the morning to chase the darkness away and fill every heart with gladness and all tongues with rejoicing.
The blessed hope of the Lord's coming, and our “gathering together” to meet Him is full upon many a soul as the present and peculiar calling of the Church. When the heavens have received us, with our Lord, who is to introduce us to the Father and to “present us holy, and unblameable, and unreproveable in his sight,” all will then have reached the climax and be in position who are to go upward, as truly as all below will rapidly form into crisis under the imperial beast and the antichrist, who are to go downward into the lake of fire!
“And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither; I will shew thee the Bride the Lamb's wife: and he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.” In the order of the new creation, everything is seen to come down from God out of heaven, having the glory of God; whereas in the order of the old creation everything was made out of the dust of the earth, and proceeded from man the creature, to the Creator. God's order is changed. The steward is outside the new creation, and the Son of God, once manifested in the flesh, is become (according to everlasting counsel), in “the dispensation of the fullness of times,” the new center, around whom all things are gathered together, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.
J. E. B.