And Abraham was all this to the very end--as these closing chapters show us. The character which he took up at the beginning, under the call of God, that character he maintained to the end. He fails in the power of faith along the road, again and again, but he is the same heavenly stranger to the end of his journey.13And strangership of this order is ours, I am deeply assured. Ours is to be strangership in the earth, because of conscious and well-known citizenship in heaven; separation from the world, because of oneness with an already risen Christ. Nothing can alter this while we are on the earth. We ought so to look in the face of arejectedChrist as to maintain this strangership in power. And so we do, as far as Christ is of more value to us than all our circumstances. It is for want of this that we take up with the world as we do. We have not learnt the lesson that Moses learnt--that the reproach of Christ was greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.Hard but blessed. Abraham knew something of it in power. He was the stranger to the end. He might have returned to Mesopotamia. He had not forgotten the road, as we observed before; and the constant respect and friendliness of all his neighbours proved that there was no enemy to hinder the journey. But the call of God had fixed his heart, and he looked only where it led him.14Would that the soul held these things in increased power! Little indeed does the heart know of this, if one may speak for others. But they are real--the prized fruit of divine energy in the elect of God.After all this we find another and distinct matter in the history of Abraham. I mean his marriage with Keturah, and his family by her.This family by Keturah is, we may surely judge, a distinct mystery. That is, Abraham is here presenting a new feature of the divine wisdom, or illustrating another secret in the ways of the divine dispensations. In these children of the second wife we get (typically) the millennial nations, the nations which shall people the earth in the days of the kingdom, branches of the great family of God in that day, and children of Abraham. They may lie far off, as in the ends of the earth; but they shall have their allotments, and be owned as of the one extended millennial family. "Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His people," shall be said to them. The ends of the earth shall be Christ's inheritance then, as surely as the Church shall be glorified in Him and with Him in the heavens, and the throne of David, and the inheritance of Israel be His, as set up and revived in the land of their fathers. Abraham's children will be all the world over.For in that day of glory, the King of Israel shall be the God of the whole earth. Christ is the Father of the everlasting age. If Israel be honoured by Him, all the nations shall be blest in Him. He is "the light to lighten the Gentiles," as He is "the glory of His people Israel." Keturah's children, parcelled off in other lands, bespeak this mystery. They will be second to Israel, it is true; but, nevertheless, they will be elect and beloved. As it is here written: And Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac. But unto the sons of the concubines which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country. xxv.15This is, I believe, the mystic meaning of this new family of Abraham; and this strange and wondrous article is that which closes his history. But it is another witness of the large and varied testimony which God has borne to His own counsels and secrets in that history. And this is very remarkable. At timesthe Fatheris seen in Abraham--as, in his desire for children--his making a feast at the weaning of Isaac--his offering up of his son--his sending for a wife for his son; at other timesthe Christis seen in him, as the one in whom all the families of the earth are to be blest--as the kinsman-redeemer of Israel--as the holder of the headship of the nations--father of the millennial or everlasting age--and then, at other times,the Church, or heavenly people, are traced or reflected in this wondrous story; and, at other times, we are on earth, or withIsrael.We have the Blessed One, unto whom all His works are known from the beginning of the world, in the details and changeful stories of this life of Abraham, thus showing forth parts of His ways. In the allegories of Sarah and her seed, of Hagar and her seed, of Keturah and her seed, we have the mystery of Jerusalem, "the mother of us all," Israel in bondage as she now is with her children, and the gathering of the nations all the world over, as branches of the one extended millennial family. Mystery after mystery is thus acted in the life of Abraham; and many and various parts of "the manifold wisdom of God" are taught us.I am quite aware, thatliving or personaltypes may have been as unconscious of what they were, under God's hand, asmaterialtypes. Hagar, no doubt, was as passive as the gold that overlaid the table of shew-bread, or as the water which filled the brazen laver. But the lesson to us is not affected by this. I have Christ's royal glory in the state of Solomon, and I have the deeply precious provisions of His grace in the golden plate on Aaron's forehead; and I no more think of enquiring about Solomon himself in that matter than I do about the gold. The sleeping Adam teaches me about the death of the Christ of God; the waking rapture of Adam, on receiving Eve, teaches me about the satisfaction and joy of the same Christ of God, when He shall see of the travail of His soul; but whether Adam knew what he was doing for me, I do not ask myself. I can learn about the first covenant from an unconscious Hagar, as I can learn about the cleansing of the blood of Christ from an unconscious altar. So, as to our Abraham, in taking his place in the midst of all these varied and wondrous mysteries, I enquire not curiously the measure of his mind in these things. The wisdom of God can say--the Christ who stood in the eternal counsels can say, "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders;" but how far Abraham could speak so, in whatever measure he was himself in the secret he was made to utter, or whether he spoke mysteries as in an unknown tongue, we have not to enquire. "God is His own interpreter."Our patriarch has now closed his actings and his exercises. We have now to close his eyes, as we read in chap. xxv. 7, 8, "And these are the days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, an hundred threescore and fifteen years. Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people."He had, we may say, seen the land, but he was not to go over and possess it. He was the Moses of an earlier generation; like him, aheavenlyman, a man of the wilderness and not of the inheritance--a man of the tent--a child of resurrection. He was gathered to his people, ere the land was entered by the Israel of God according to promise. As in the glass of God's purpose, and by the light of faith, he sees the land; but he goes not over to possess it. He dies as on Mount Pisgah, on the wilderness-side of the Jordan, destined, with Enoch before him and with Moses after him, to shine on the top of the hill in the heavenly glory of the Son of man.We have now closed the third section of the Book of Genesis; and, with it, the scenes and circumstances of the life of Abraham.In the midst of these fragments, thus gathered and treasured up for us by the Holy Ghost, we have seen faith getting its victories, knowing its rights and pleading its titles, practising its generosity, enjoying its fellowships, making its surrenders, and obtaining its consolations and promises. But we have seen also itsintelligence, and learnt it to be such a thing as walks in the light, or according to the judgment, of the mind of Christ.There is something very beautiful in such a sight as this. We do not commonly witness this fine combination--theintelligenceof faith, and themoral powerof faith. In some saints, there is the earnest, urgent power of faith, which goes on right truthfully and honestly, but with many a mistake as to the dispensational wisdom of God. In others, there is a mind nicely taught, endowed with much priestly, spiritual skill, in following the wisdom of God in ages and dispensations, but with lack of power in all that service which a simpler and more earnest faith would be constantly pursuing. But in Abraham we see these things combined.In our walk with God, the light of the knowledge of His mind should be seen, as well as our hearts be ever found open to His presence and joy, and our consciences alive to His claims and His will. The life of faith is a very incomplete thing, if we know not, as Abraham knew, the times as signified of God, when to fight, as it were, and when to be still; when to be silent under the wrongs of an Abimelech, and when to resent them; when to raise the altar of a sojourning stranger, and when to call on the name of the everlasting God. In other words, we ought to know what the Lord is about, according to His own eternal purpose, and what He is leading onward to its consummation, in His varied and fruitful wisdom.Such is the nature of all obedience; for the conduct of the saint is ever to be according to the dispensed wisdom of God at the time, or in the given age.But, let me add, the highest point of moral dignity in Abraham was this: that he wasa stranger in the earth.This, I may say, outshines all. It was this that made God notashamedto be called his God. God canmorallyown the soul that advisedly refuses citizenship in this revolted, corrupted world.This was the highest point in moral dignity in Abraham.God loveth the stranger. Deut. x. 18. He loves thepoor,unfriendedstranger, with the love of pity and of grace, and provides for him. But with theseparatedstranger, who has turned his back on this polluted scene, God links His name and His honour, and morally owns such without shame. Heb. xi. 13-16.How finely he started on his journey at the beginning! The Lord and His promises were all he had. He left, as we have seen, hisnaturalhome behind him, but he did not expect to findanotherhome in the place he was going to. He knew that he was to be a stranger and sojourner with God in the earth. Mesopotamia was left, but Canaan was not taken up in the stead of it. Accordingly, from all the people there, he was a separated man all his days, or during his sojourn among them of about one hundred years. Canaan was theworldto that heavenly man, and he had as little to do with it or to say to it as he might, though all the while in it. When circumstances demanded it, or as far as business involved him, he dealt with it. He would traffic with the people of the land, if need were (to be sure he would), but his sympathies were not with them. He needed a burying-place, and he purchased it of the children of Heth. He would not think of hesitating to treat with them about a necessary matter of bargain and sale; but he would ratherbuythanreceive. He was loth to be debtor to them, or to be enriched by them--nor were they hiscompanions. This we observe throughout. If Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre--it may be morally attracted by what they saw in him--seek confederacy with him, he will not refuse their alliance on a given occasion of the common interest, when such interest the God who had called him would sanction or commend. But still the Canaanites were not his company. His wife was his company, his household, his flocks and his herds, and his fellow-saint, Lot, his brother's son, who had come out of Mesopotamia with him--as long, at least, as such an one walked as a separated man in Canaan. But evenhe, when undistinguished from the people of the land, is a stranger to him as well and as fully as they.All this has surely a voice in our ears. Angels were Abraham's company at times, and so the Lord of angels--and at all times, his altar and his tent were with him, and the mysteries or truths of God, as they were made known to him. But the people of the land, the men of the world, did not acquire his tastes or sympathies, or share his confidence. He wasamongthem but notofthem--and rather would he have had his house unbuilt, and Isaac be without a wife, than that such wife should be a daughter of Canaan.To some of us, beloved, this breaking up of natural things is terrible. But if Jesus were loved more, all this would be the easier reckoned on. If His value for uswithin the veilwere more pondered in our hearts and treasured up there, we should go to Himwithout the campwith firmer, surer step. "I have learnt," said one of the martyrs, "that there is no freedom like that of the heart that has given up all for Christ--no wisdom like that learnt at His feet--no poetry like the calm foreseeing of the glory that shall be."Of our Abraham and his companions in this life of faith, confessing that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, it is written, "They that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country--and truly if they had been mindful of that from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned, but now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city."Beloved, we are called to be these strangers--strangers such as God can thus morally own. If the world were not Abraham's object, we ought to feel, even on higher sanctions, that it cannot be ours. The call of the God of glory made Abraham a stranger here--the cross of Christ, in addition to that, may still more make us strangers. As we sometimes sing--"Before His cross we now are left,As strangers in the land.""Ye are dead," says the apostle, "and your life is hid with Christ in God." That is strangership of the highest order--the strangership of the Son of God Himself. "The world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not."In the strength of this strangership in the world, may we have grace to "abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul"! and in the strength of our conscious citizenship in heaven may "we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself."ISAAC.GENESIS XXV.-XXVII.In the former papers, entitledEnoch,Noah, andAbraham, I have followed the course of the Book of Genesis, down to the end of chapter xxiv. I now propose to take it up from thence, and follow it on through chapters xxv.-xxvii.; Isaac, after Abraham, being the principal person there.There is, however, but little in his history, and little in his character. In some respects this is no matter; for, whether much or little, his name is in the recollection of us all who have learnt the ways of the God of grace, "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," which is His name for ever, His memorial unto all generations. Exod. iii.Isaac was a stranger in the earth, a heavenly stranger, as his father had been, and we see him with his tent and his altar, as we saw Abraham; and we hear the Lord giving him the promises, as He had given them to Abraham."By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise."This tent-life of the patriarchs had a great character in it. Hebrews xi. 9, 10 teaches us this. It tells us that the fathers were content to live upon the surface of this world. A tent has no foundations. It is pitched or struck at a moment's warning. And such a slight and passing connection with this earth, and life upon it, these patriarchs were satisfied to have and seek only. They did not look for a city or for foundations, till God became a Builder. Till His building was manifested they were sojourners here, just crossing the plain, or surface of the earth, without striking their roots into it.This is the voice that is heard from the tents of these pilgrim-fathers. And as their tents bespoke this heavenly strangership, their altars bespoke their worship, theirtrueworship; for they raised their altar to Him who hadappearedto them. They did not affect to find out God by their wisdom, and then worship Him in the light and dictate of their own thoughts. They did not, thus, in the common folly, profess themselves to be wise; but they knew God and worshipped God only according to His revelation of Himself. Therefore it was not an altar "to the unknown God" at which they served; but they served or worshipped in truth. And in its generation the patriarchalaltarwas, in this way, as beautiful as the patriarchaltent. The latter put them into due relationship to the world around them, the former to the Lord God of heaven and earth who was above them.Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alike in all this. There was, therefore, no new dispensational secret, no fresh purpose of the divine counsels, revealed in Isaac, as there had been in Abraham.16This is so. But still, though there was no new dispensational scene unfolded, there was a further unfolding of the glories that attach to the dispensation or calling which had been already made known in Abraham. And a very important one too--such as, if we had divine affections, we should deeply prize. I mean this: The heavenly calling or strangership on earth was thecommonthing; but characteristically,electionwas illustrated in Abraham, andsonshipor adoption in Isaac.God called Abraham from the world, from kindred, country, and father's house, separating him to Himself and to His promises. But Isaac was already as one chosen and called and sanctified, while in the house of his father. He was at home from his birth, and he was there with God, having been born according to promise, and through an energy that quickened the dead; and in all these things he representedsonship, as Abraham had representedelection. In Isaac we see that family that is "born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God," and who stand in liberty; as the apostle says, "Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise." We are Abraham's seed, so many Isaacs, children of the freewoman, or in the adoption, if we be Christ's.Now this mystery of sonship or adoption represented in Isaac, as the mystery of election had been made known in Abraham, is in divine order. Forthe election of God is unto adoption, as we read, "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself;" and this being so, this high, personal prerogative being represented in Isaac, in the course of his history we get the mystery of the son of the freewoman very blessedly, largely exhibited.For we get both thebirthand theweaning. And each of these events was the occasion of joy in the house of the father. The child born was called "laughter," the child weaned was celebrated by a feast.Wondrous and gracious secrets these are. It is the father's joy tohave children, it is his further joy that his children shouldknow themselves to be children. This was the birth and the weaning of Isaac in the Book of Genesis. And all this, after so long a time, is revived in the Epistle to the Galatians. For what was represented in Isaac is realized in us through the Spirit. In that epistle we learn that we are children by faith in Christ Jesus. And there we learn also that, being children, we receive the spirit of children. We areweanedas well asborn. Paul travailed in birth for them again, as he says: "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you." The Christ of this passage is Christthe Son; and Paul longed and laboured that they might be brought into the Isaac-state, the liberty of conscious adoption. They were under temptation to feed again upon the ordinances which gendered bondage, and which the tutors and governors of an earlier dispensation had enjoined. But opposed to this, the apostle would draw them again into liberty, as he himself had proved the virtue of it in his own soul. It had pleased God, as he says, to reveal the Son in him. The life he lived in the flesh he lived by the faith ofthe Son, who loved him. He could, therefore, go down to Arabia, where he had no flesh and blood to confer with, no Jerusalem or city of solemnities, no apostles or ordinances, no priesthood after a carnal order, no worldly sanctuary, to countenance, to seal, or to perfect him. He did not want what any or all could give him, for he hadthe Son revealed in him. He was a weaned Isaac; and he would fain have the Galatians to be such likewise; and to hear the word which of old had been heard in the house of Abraham over Isaac, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman."All this is given us, mystically, in Isaac, the child of the freewoman, whose birth caused laughter, and whose weaning was celebrated with a feast. And this mystery is, we thus see, largely and expressly revived and opened, in its full character, in the Epistle to the Galatians.It is not ofgloriesonly that we must be thinking, when thinking of predestination. God's purposes concerning us are still richer. We are predestinated to a state ofgratified affections, as well as to a place ofdisplayed glories--to "the adoption of children," and to be "before Him in love," as well as to the inheritance of all things. Ephesians i. And the Spirit already given is as surely in us the power to cry, "Abba, Father," as He is the seal of the title of the coming redemption.We are apt to forget this. We think of calling and of predestination, in connection with glory, rather than in connection with love, and relationship, and home, and a Father's house.And yet it is relationship that will give even the inheritance or the glory its richest joy. The youngest child in the family has another kind of enjoyment of the palace of the king, than the highest estate and dignitary of his realm. The child is therewithout state, for its title is in relationship--the lords of the land may be there, but they are there as at court, by title of their dignity or office. And the child's enjoyment of the palace is not only, as I said, ofanotherkind, it is of a higher kind--it is personal and not official--the palace isa hometo it, and not merelythe court of royalty.Now it is the son, the child at home, the child in the privileges of relationship, that we get in Isaac. It is such an one that he represents--this is what Isaac, mystically, is. Isaac was kept at home, waited on by the household, nourished and endowed; and the wealth as well as the comfort of his father's house was his; as we read, "And Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac. But unto the sons of the concubines which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country."Mystically looked at, Isaac is thus before us, a son, born of the free woman, born of promise, born of God, as it is said, "I will come and Sarah shall have a son." Isaac represents that adopted family who are made "accepted in the Beloved," who have put on Christ, who stand in His joy, and breathe His spirit.We have, however, to consider himmorallyas well asmystically; that is, in hischaracter, as well as in hisperson. The elements, however, are but few. There is but little history connected with him. There are but few incidents in his life, and but little disclosure of character. And this is to our comfort. At times we find among the elect of God very fine natural materials, a noble bearing of soul, or a delicate, attractive form of human virtue; and again, at other times, either poor, or even very bad, human materials. And this becomes a relief to our poor hearts.Becausewe find it (from a better acquaintance with ourselves than with others) easy to own the poor and wretched materials that go to make up what we ourselves are; and then it is our comfort (comfort of a certain sort) to find like samples of nature in others of God's people.Isaac waswantingin character. He was neither of fine nor of bad natural materials. There was much in him that, as we say, was amiable, and which, after a human estimate, would have been attractive. But he was wanting in character. The style of his education may go far to account for this. He had been reared tenderly. He had never been away from the side of his mother, the child of whose old age he was--her only child; and these habits had relaxed him, and kept a naturally amiable temper in its common softness. Quietness and retirement, the temper that rather submits than resents, and this allied to the relaxing indulgence of domestic, if not animal, life, appear in him. He was blameless, we may quite assume, pious and strict in the observance of relative duties, as a child and as a husband, and would have engaged the good-will and good wishes of his neighbours; but he was wanting in that energy which would have made him a witness among them, at least, beyond the separation which attended his circumcision, his altar, and his tent. And such a life is always a poor one. To his tent and his altar he was true, to a common measure; but he pitched the one and raised the other with too feeble a hand.Isaac was forty years old when he received Rebecca to wife. For twenty years they were childless; but under this trial they behaved themselves even better than Abraham and Sarah had done. Abraham and Sarah had no child, and Sarah gave her bondmaid to her husband. Isaac and Rebecca had no child; but they entreated the Lord, and waited for His mercy. This was a difference, and for a moment, the last are first, and the first are last; and such moral variety do we find among the people of God to this day. But the two sets of children suggest different divine mysteries, as the way of the parents of each thus afford different moral teaching.There were the two sons of Abraham--Isaac and Ishmael; but they were by two wives: there are now the two sons of Isaac--Jacob and Esau; but they are by the same wife.The enmity between the sons of Abraham began when Ishmael, a lad of fourteen years of age, mocked the weaned Isaac. But the struggle between the sons of Isaac was in the womb. Two nations were there, as the Lord had told Rebecca, "Two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels." And so it came to pass. The man of God was found in Jacob, the man of the world in Esau; the principle offaithwas in the one, the principle ofnaturein the other. Two manner of people were indeed separated from her bowels, and had struggled in her womb. "The friendship of the world is enmity against God." And this was Esau. Accordingly, Esau made the earth the scene of his energies, of his enjoyments, and of his expectations. He was "a man of the field," and "a cunning hunter." He prospered in his generation. He loved the field, and he knew how to use the field. He set his heart on the present life, and knew how to turn its capabilities to the account of his enjoyments. His sons quickly became dukes, nay kings, and had their cities; as Ishmael's children had become princes, and had their castles. Their dignity and their greatness proceeded from themselves; and the world witnessed them in their magnificence.But Jacob was "a plain man," a man of the tent. He took after his fathers. Like Abraham and Isaac, he was a stranger here, sojourning as on the surface of the earth for a season, with his eye upon the promise. His children--while Esau's were dukes, settled in their domains, in the sunshine of their dignities and wealth--had to wander from one nation to another people, to suffer the hardships and wrongs of injurious Egypt, or to traverse, as pilgrims, the trackless, wasted desert.Esau was the "profane" one. His hope and his heart were linked with life in this world, and with that only; for he would say, "I am at the point to die, and what profit shall this birthright do to me?" Like the Gadarenes, and like Judas, Esau would sell his title to Christ. But Jacob had faith, and was ready to buy what Esau was ready to sell.Two manner of people were, after this manner, separated from Rebecca's bowels, as all this tells us. They are no sooner brought forth than this is seen; and their earliest habits, their first activities, are characteristic. It was not merely the bondwoman and the free, or the children of the two covenants, as Ishmael and Isaac had been; in Esau and Jacob we get afullerexpression of the same natures; the one, that reprobate thing, had from Adam, profane or worldly, which takes a portion in the earth and not in God; the other, that divine thing, had from Christ, which is believing, hopeful, looking to God's provisions, and waiting for the kingdom.All this survives to the present day, and flourishes abundantly in different samples in the midst of us, or around us. I might say the Cain, the Nimrod, the Ishmael, and the Esau are still abroad on the earth, and these tales and illustrations have their lessons for our souls. They are wonderful in their simplicity; but they are too deep for the wisdom of the world, and too pure for the love of it.These things I have gathered for the sake of the moral and the mystery which so abound in them. But my immediate business is with Isaac.Isaac, as I have already noticed, was brought up in his mother's tent. He was, as I may say, rather the child of his mother than of his father--the common case of all of us in our earliest days. But with Isaac, this was so till his mother died; and then he must have been much beyond thirty years of age.He knew more of Sarah's tent, than of the busier haunts and occupations of men. Her tent had been histeacher, as well as hisnurse, and this education left impressions on his character which were never effaced. We have a passing or incidental, but still, a very sure, witness of the strength of maternal influence over him, in chap. xxiv. 67. "And Isaac brought her [Rebecca] into his mother's tent,and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death."This strongly intimates the tendencies of his early life. And thus was character formed in him. He was the easy, gentle, unresisting Isaac, pious, as we speak, and, as I have said of him, blameless and amicable.But with all this, and while this I doubt not is surely so, I ask, Was it merely nature or character that bore him unresistingly along the road to Mount Moriah? See chap. xxii. Was it merely filial piety which then disposed him to be bound as a lamb for the slaughter, without opening his mouth? Can we assume this? Was this the force of character merely? I say not so. This was too much for human gentleness and submission, even such as might have been found in an Isaac, or in a Jephthah's daughter. I must rather say, the hand of the Lord was over him on that occasion, just as, long afterwards, it was over the owner of the ass that was needed to bear the King on to the city, and then over the multitude that accompanied and hailed Him on the road; or, as it was over the man bearing the pitcher of water, who prepared the guest-chamber for the last passover. On these occasions, the hand of the Lord was strong to force the material to comply, and take the impression of the moment. As also in the earlier days of Samuel, when the kine carried the ark of God right on the way homeward, though nature resisted it, their young being left behind them. For the divine power was upon the kine then. And Isaac, in like manner, was under divine power, under the hand of God, on this occasion; willingly, I fully grant, but made willing as in a day of power; for he was to be the type or foreshadowing of a greater than he. The seal was in a strong hand, and the impression must be taken, clear, deep, and legible. "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God," is the writing on the seal. "As a lamb before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth."That was a great moment in the life of Isaac, an occasion of great meaning. So in his acceptance of Rebecca. See chap. xxiv. In his taking a wife, not of all whom he chose, but of his father's providing, we may trace the same strong hand over him. There might easily have been more of human submissiveness and filial piety in this, than in the case of the sacrifice on Mount Moriah, we may surely allow; but still this was asealingtime as well as the other. This marriage was a type or mystery, as well as that sacrifice. The wife brought home to the son and heir of the father, by the servant who was in the full confidence and secret of the father, this was a mystery; and the material must comply again, and take the impression from the hand that was using it. The potter was making vessels for the use of the household, and the clay must yield. The prophet's children, ages afterwards, had names given them, as the Lord pleased, and the prophet had to say of them, Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders. Isa. viii. And so, Isaac and Rebecca, in the day and circumstances of their marriage, were a type, "for a sign and a wonder." This was their chief dignity;they tell the mysteries of God. They are parables as well as mysteries. They were events set in time or in the progress of the earth's history, as the sun and moon and stars are set in the heavens,for signs. Each of them has a writing on it under the hand of God. "I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts;" for on these events He has impressed the image of some of His everlasting counsels.But though this gentle and submissive nature that was in our Isaac was not equal to such sacrifices and surrenders as these, yet gentle, submissive nature is the quality which gives him his character. At times it acts amiably and attractively; at times it sadly betrays him. But at all times, under all circumstances, amid the few incidents that are recorded of him, it is the easy, gentle, yielding Isaac that we see. And the presence of one and the same virtue on every occasion is, I need not say, but poor in point of character. It iscombinationthat bespeaks character and divine workmanship. "The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." It is firm as well as gracious and joyous. And this is moral glory; as many coloured rays give us the one unsullied result in the light we enjoy and admire. But this does not shine in Isaac. In none, surely, in its full beauty, save in Him in whom all glories, in their different generations, meet and shine.Jeremiah, I might here take liberty to say, appears to me to have been a man of one passion, as Isaac was a man of one virtue. I mean, of course, characteristically as to each of them, Isaac and Jeremiah. A godly passion indeed it was, grief over the moral wastes of Zion, which characterized Jeremiah. But being thus hisoneaffection, the passion or sentiment, which, after this manner, possessed his soul, it makes him generally very engaging and attractive to the heart; but at times it allies his spirit with that which defiles him. He is angry with the people who were stirring the sorrows of his heart. And he murmurs against God Himself. I speak, of course, of Jeremiah's character, as we get it exhibited in his ministry. I know, surely, in that ministry, looked at in itself, he was the prophet of God and delivered the inspirations of the Holy Ghost. But as a man I speak of him; as a man, he was a man of one passion; as I have said of Isaac that he was a man of one virtue. But it is those in whom there isassemblageof virtues, that tell us more assuredly of divine workmanship, of trees planted by the rivers of waters, that bring forth fruitin season. Psalm i. For it is this seasonableness that is the real beauty. Everything is beautiful in its season, and only then. Gentleness loses its beauty, when zeal and indignation are called for. The first Psalm is too high a description for a man of one virtue; it implies character, and decision, and individuality; it shows a soul drawing its virtue from God. "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth its fruit in its season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." This is of divine husbandry; but such we do not see in our Isaac. In his measure, and certainly in contrast with Isaac, this combination or assemblage of virtues, of which I have already spoken, appears in Abraham; and this difference in the two may be seen in their acting under similar circumstances. Abraham in chap. xxi. and Isaac in this chapter xxvi.17Isaac had been very badly treated by the Philistines. One well after another of his own digging was violently taken away from him, as the wells which his father had dug had been filled up. He had yielded to this wrong with a gentle, gracious spirit, in a spirit that well became one of God's strangers and pilgrims here, who look for citizenship in another world. He went from place to place, as the Philistines again and again strove with him and urged him. This was according to the mind which marks him, as we said, in every incident of his life. Suffering, he threatens not--doing well and suffering for it, he takes it patiently; and this we know is acceptable with God. 1 Peter ii. 20. And so God here attests this; for He owns His servant in this thing, and comes to him by night as He had comforted Abraham. But when, in season, the Philistines are brought to a better mind, and Abimelech the king, with his friend Ahuzzath, and Phichol his chief captain, seek Isaac and alliance with him, I ask, Does not his character, in its way, betray him?Of course it was right in Isaac to receive them, and plight them his friendship, and to exchange the good offices and pledges and securities of neighbourliness which they sought. For we ought to forgive, if it be seventy times seven a day. But with that there is to be faithfulness in its season--faithfulness as well as forgiveness. "If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him." But Isaac was not quite up to this sturdier virtue. He complains to Abimelech, but it is in such soft and easy terms, that it seems to carry no authority to the conscience with it. Not so his entering into covenant with him. He strikes hands readily, and, I may say, heartily. He makes a feast for the king of Gerar, and sends him away as his ally, without his being brought to any acknowledgment of the wrong which his people had done to the man whose friendship he was now seeking and getting. Nor is there on the lips of Isaac any gainsaying of Abimelech's assertion, that he had done nothing but good to Isaac all the time he had been in his country. As far as this intercourse went, and as far as we can discover the mind of the king of Gerar, he was not convicted by Isaac, but returned home with his friends at peace with himself as well as with Isaac. Isaac had not made good to Abimelech's conscience the complaint he had made to his ear--there was want of character and force in it--it partook of Isaac's own nature.This was but poor virtue in Isaac. It is but poor virtue in ourselves, when it appears--and some of us have to treat it as such, and confess it as such, at times. It is agreeable in a certain form of amiable human nature; but it is not service to God. We are humbled by reason of that in our own ways. It is poor, and our Isaac here gives us, in measure at least, a sample of this.It was, however, otherwise with Abraham. The king of Gerar had sought Abraham in his day, and sought him for a like reason, and with a like desire. Abraham meets him in as noble a spirit of forgiveness as Isaac would have done, with an equal readiness of heart and hand to accept him, and to pledge him. But with all this, he rebukes him and makes him feel the rebukes. "AbrahamreprovedAbimelech," as we read, but as we do not read in the case of Isaac. Abraham will not send him away satisfied with himself, as Isaac did, with an unanswered boast in his mouth of his and his people's virtues. He will assure him, as fully as Isaac could have done, of his full forgiveness and reconciliation; but he will not hide it from him, that his conscience may have a question with him, though his neighbour may accept him and pardon him; that there are matters (as between him and the Lord) which Abraham's feast and Abraham's friendship could never settle.This wasreal, real before God, wherereality, beloved, ever puts us. May we know that secret better, and be upright before Him! This was beautiful--and by this Abraham wasblessingAbimelech, and notmerely gratifyinghim. But this was not so with Isaac; and we may leave him on this occasion, in chap. xxvi., with something of this inquiry in our hearts, Was it mere nature, or the renewed mind in the saint, that acted thus?--a question which still occurs.Isaac was an elect one, as surely as Abraham; a stranger with God in the earth; one whousedhis altar as well ascarriedit. He was meditating in the field when he got his Rebecca, and he had prayed for the mercy, when Esau and Jacob were given to him. We speak ofcharacterin him only, when we thus contrast him with another. We speak of the living, practical ways of a saint; and we see in him what was below a witness for God abroad, though amiable and devout at home. This is found in Isaac; and kindred things are still found, again I may say, as many of us know to our humbling. As one once said to me, "There is much that goes with others for beingspiritual, because it is done for the eye and taste of our fellow-Christians, and not, as in God's presence, with a single heart to Him."
And Abraham was all this to the very end--as these closing chapters show us. The character which he took up at the beginning, under the call of God, that character he maintained to the end. He fails in the power of faith along the road, again and again, but he is the same heavenly stranger to the end of his journey.13
And strangership of this order is ours, I am deeply assured. Ours is to be strangership in the earth, because of conscious and well-known citizenship in heaven; separation from the world, because of oneness with an already risen Christ. Nothing can alter this while we are on the earth. We ought so to look in the face of arejectedChrist as to maintain this strangership in power. And so we do, as far as Christ is of more value to us than all our circumstances. It is for want of this that we take up with the world as we do. We have not learnt the lesson that Moses learnt--that the reproach of Christ was greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.
Hard but blessed. Abraham knew something of it in power. He was the stranger to the end. He might have returned to Mesopotamia. He had not forgotten the road, as we observed before; and the constant respect and friendliness of all his neighbours proved that there was no enemy to hinder the journey. But the call of God had fixed his heart, and he looked only where it led him.14
Would that the soul held these things in increased power! Little indeed does the heart know of this, if one may speak for others. But they are real--the prized fruit of divine energy in the elect of God.
After all this we find another and distinct matter in the history of Abraham. I mean his marriage with Keturah, and his family by her.
This family by Keturah is, we may surely judge, a distinct mystery. That is, Abraham is here presenting a new feature of the divine wisdom, or illustrating another secret in the ways of the divine dispensations. In these children of the second wife we get (typically) the millennial nations, the nations which shall people the earth in the days of the kingdom, branches of the great family of God in that day, and children of Abraham. They may lie far off, as in the ends of the earth; but they shall have their allotments, and be owned as of the one extended millennial family. "Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His people," shall be said to them. The ends of the earth shall be Christ's inheritance then, as surely as the Church shall be glorified in Him and with Him in the heavens, and the throne of David, and the inheritance of Israel be His, as set up and revived in the land of their fathers. Abraham's children will be all the world over.
For in that day of glory, the King of Israel shall be the God of the whole earth. Christ is the Father of the everlasting age. If Israel be honoured by Him, all the nations shall be blest in Him. He is "the light to lighten the Gentiles," as He is "the glory of His people Israel." Keturah's children, parcelled off in other lands, bespeak this mystery. They will be second to Israel, it is true; but, nevertheless, they will be elect and beloved. As it is here written: And Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac. But unto the sons of the concubines which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country. xxv.15
This is, I believe, the mystic meaning of this new family of Abraham; and this strange and wondrous article is that which closes his history. But it is another witness of the large and varied testimony which God has borne to His own counsels and secrets in that history. And this is very remarkable. At timesthe Fatheris seen in Abraham--as, in his desire for children--his making a feast at the weaning of Isaac--his offering up of his son--his sending for a wife for his son; at other timesthe Christis seen in him, as the one in whom all the families of the earth are to be blest--as the kinsman-redeemer of Israel--as the holder of the headship of the nations--father of the millennial or everlasting age--and then, at other times,the Church, or heavenly people, are traced or reflected in this wondrous story; and, at other times, we are on earth, or withIsrael.
We have the Blessed One, unto whom all His works are known from the beginning of the world, in the details and changeful stories of this life of Abraham, thus showing forth parts of His ways. In the allegories of Sarah and her seed, of Hagar and her seed, of Keturah and her seed, we have the mystery of Jerusalem, "the mother of us all," Israel in bondage as she now is with her children, and the gathering of the nations all the world over, as branches of the one extended millennial family. Mystery after mystery is thus acted in the life of Abraham; and many and various parts of "the manifold wisdom of God" are taught us.
I am quite aware, thatliving or personaltypes may have been as unconscious of what they were, under God's hand, asmaterialtypes. Hagar, no doubt, was as passive as the gold that overlaid the table of shew-bread, or as the water which filled the brazen laver. But the lesson to us is not affected by this. I have Christ's royal glory in the state of Solomon, and I have the deeply precious provisions of His grace in the golden plate on Aaron's forehead; and I no more think of enquiring about Solomon himself in that matter than I do about the gold. The sleeping Adam teaches me about the death of the Christ of God; the waking rapture of Adam, on receiving Eve, teaches me about the satisfaction and joy of the same Christ of God, when He shall see of the travail of His soul; but whether Adam knew what he was doing for me, I do not ask myself. I can learn about the first covenant from an unconscious Hagar, as I can learn about the cleansing of the blood of Christ from an unconscious altar. So, as to our Abraham, in taking his place in the midst of all these varied and wondrous mysteries, I enquire not curiously the measure of his mind in these things. The wisdom of God can say--the Christ who stood in the eternal counsels can say, "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders;" but how far Abraham could speak so, in whatever measure he was himself in the secret he was made to utter, or whether he spoke mysteries as in an unknown tongue, we have not to enquire. "God is His own interpreter."
Our patriarch has now closed his actings and his exercises. We have now to close his eyes, as we read in chap. xxv. 7, 8, "And these are the days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, an hundred threescore and fifteen years. Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people."
He had, we may say, seen the land, but he was not to go over and possess it. He was the Moses of an earlier generation; like him, aheavenlyman, a man of the wilderness and not of the inheritance--a man of the tent--a child of resurrection. He was gathered to his people, ere the land was entered by the Israel of God according to promise. As in the glass of God's purpose, and by the light of faith, he sees the land; but he goes not over to possess it. He dies as on Mount Pisgah, on the wilderness-side of the Jordan, destined, with Enoch before him and with Moses after him, to shine on the top of the hill in the heavenly glory of the Son of man.
We have now closed the third section of the Book of Genesis; and, with it, the scenes and circumstances of the life of Abraham.
In the midst of these fragments, thus gathered and treasured up for us by the Holy Ghost, we have seen faith getting its victories, knowing its rights and pleading its titles, practising its generosity, enjoying its fellowships, making its surrenders, and obtaining its consolations and promises. But we have seen also itsintelligence, and learnt it to be such a thing as walks in the light, or according to the judgment, of the mind of Christ.
There is something very beautiful in such a sight as this. We do not commonly witness this fine combination--theintelligenceof faith, and themoral powerof faith. In some saints, there is the earnest, urgent power of faith, which goes on right truthfully and honestly, but with many a mistake as to the dispensational wisdom of God. In others, there is a mind nicely taught, endowed with much priestly, spiritual skill, in following the wisdom of God in ages and dispensations, but with lack of power in all that service which a simpler and more earnest faith would be constantly pursuing. But in Abraham we see these things combined.
In our walk with God, the light of the knowledge of His mind should be seen, as well as our hearts be ever found open to His presence and joy, and our consciences alive to His claims and His will. The life of faith is a very incomplete thing, if we know not, as Abraham knew, the times as signified of God, when to fight, as it were, and when to be still; when to be silent under the wrongs of an Abimelech, and when to resent them; when to raise the altar of a sojourning stranger, and when to call on the name of the everlasting God. In other words, we ought to know what the Lord is about, according to His own eternal purpose, and what He is leading onward to its consummation, in His varied and fruitful wisdom.
Such is the nature of all obedience; for the conduct of the saint is ever to be according to the dispensed wisdom of God at the time, or in the given age.
But, let me add, the highest point of moral dignity in Abraham was this: that he wasa stranger in the earth.
This, I may say, outshines all. It was this that made God notashamedto be called his God. God canmorallyown the soul that advisedly refuses citizenship in this revolted, corrupted world.
This was the highest point in moral dignity in Abraham.
God loveth the stranger. Deut. x. 18. He loves thepoor,unfriendedstranger, with the love of pity and of grace, and provides for him. But with theseparatedstranger, who has turned his back on this polluted scene, God links His name and His honour, and morally owns such without shame. Heb. xi. 13-16.
How finely he started on his journey at the beginning! The Lord and His promises were all he had. He left, as we have seen, hisnaturalhome behind him, but he did not expect to findanotherhome in the place he was going to. He knew that he was to be a stranger and sojourner with God in the earth. Mesopotamia was left, but Canaan was not taken up in the stead of it. Accordingly, from all the people there, he was a separated man all his days, or during his sojourn among them of about one hundred years. Canaan was theworldto that heavenly man, and he had as little to do with it or to say to it as he might, though all the while in it. When circumstances demanded it, or as far as business involved him, he dealt with it. He would traffic with the people of the land, if need were (to be sure he would), but his sympathies were not with them. He needed a burying-place, and he purchased it of the children of Heth. He would not think of hesitating to treat with them about a necessary matter of bargain and sale; but he would ratherbuythanreceive. He was loth to be debtor to them, or to be enriched by them--nor were they hiscompanions. This we observe throughout. If Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre--it may be morally attracted by what they saw in him--seek confederacy with him, he will not refuse their alliance on a given occasion of the common interest, when such interest the God who had called him would sanction or commend. But still the Canaanites were not his company. His wife was his company, his household, his flocks and his herds, and his fellow-saint, Lot, his brother's son, who had come out of Mesopotamia with him--as long, at least, as such an one walked as a separated man in Canaan. But evenhe, when undistinguished from the people of the land, is a stranger to him as well and as fully as they.
All this has surely a voice in our ears. Angels were Abraham's company at times, and so the Lord of angels--and at all times, his altar and his tent were with him, and the mysteries or truths of God, as they were made known to him. But the people of the land, the men of the world, did not acquire his tastes or sympathies, or share his confidence. He wasamongthem but notofthem--and rather would he have had his house unbuilt, and Isaac be without a wife, than that such wife should be a daughter of Canaan.
To some of us, beloved, this breaking up of natural things is terrible. But if Jesus were loved more, all this would be the easier reckoned on. If His value for uswithin the veilwere more pondered in our hearts and treasured up there, we should go to Himwithout the campwith firmer, surer step. "I have learnt," said one of the martyrs, "that there is no freedom like that of the heart that has given up all for Christ--no wisdom like that learnt at His feet--no poetry like the calm foreseeing of the glory that shall be."
Of our Abraham and his companions in this life of faith, confessing that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, it is written, "They that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country--and truly if they had been mindful of that from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned, but now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city."
Beloved, we are called to be these strangers--strangers such as God can thus morally own. If the world were not Abraham's object, we ought to feel, even on higher sanctions, that it cannot be ours. The call of the God of glory made Abraham a stranger here--the cross of Christ, in addition to that, may still more make us strangers. As we sometimes sing--
"Before His cross we now are left,As strangers in the land."
"Before His cross we now are left,As strangers in the land."
"Before His cross we now are left,As strangers in the land."
"Before His cross we now are left,
As strangers in the land."
"Ye are dead," says the apostle, "and your life is hid with Christ in God." That is strangership of the highest order--the strangership of the Son of God Himself. "The world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not."
In the strength of this strangership in the world, may we have grace to "abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul"! and in the strength of our conscious citizenship in heaven may "we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself."
ISAAC.
GENESIS XXV.-XXVII.
In the former papers, entitledEnoch,Noah, andAbraham, I have followed the course of the Book of Genesis, down to the end of chapter xxiv. I now propose to take it up from thence, and follow it on through chapters xxv.-xxvii.; Isaac, after Abraham, being the principal person there.
There is, however, but little in his history, and little in his character. In some respects this is no matter; for, whether much or little, his name is in the recollection of us all who have learnt the ways of the God of grace, "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," which is His name for ever, His memorial unto all generations. Exod. iii.
Isaac was a stranger in the earth, a heavenly stranger, as his father had been, and we see him with his tent and his altar, as we saw Abraham; and we hear the Lord giving him the promises, as He had given them to Abraham.
"By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise."
This tent-life of the patriarchs had a great character in it. Hebrews xi. 9, 10 teaches us this. It tells us that the fathers were content to live upon the surface of this world. A tent has no foundations. It is pitched or struck at a moment's warning. And such a slight and passing connection with this earth, and life upon it, these patriarchs were satisfied to have and seek only. They did not look for a city or for foundations, till God became a Builder. Till His building was manifested they were sojourners here, just crossing the plain, or surface of the earth, without striking their roots into it.
This is the voice that is heard from the tents of these pilgrim-fathers. And as their tents bespoke this heavenly strangership, their altars bespoke their worship, theirtrueworship; for they raised their altar to Him who hadappearedto them. They did not affect to find out God by their wisdom, and then worship Him in the light and dictate of their own thoughts. They did not, thus, in the common folly, profess themselves to be wise; but they knew God and worshipped God only according to His revelation of Himself. Therefore it was not an altar "to the unknown God" at which they served; but they served or worshipped in truth. And in its generation the patriarchalaltarwas, in this way, as beautiful as the patriarchaltent. The latter put them into due relationship to the world around them, the former to the Lord God of heaven and earth who was above them.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alike in all this. There was, therefore, no new dispensational secret, no fresh purpose of the divine counsels, revealed in Isaac, as there had been in Abraham.16This is so. But still, though there was no new dispensational scene unfolded, there was a further unfolding of the glories that attach to the dispensation or calling which had been already made known in Abraham. And a very important one too--such as, if we had divine affections, we should deeply prize. I mean this: The heavenly calling or strangership on earth was thecommonthing; but characteristically,electionwas illustrated in Abraham, andsonshipor adoption in Isaac.
God called Abraham from the world, from kindred, country, and father's house, separating him to Himself and to His promises. But Isaac was already as one chosen and called and sanctified, while in the house of his father. He was at home from his birth, and he was there with God, having been born according to promise, and through an energy that quickened the dead; and in all these things he representedsonship, as Abraham had representedelection. In Isaac we see that family that is "born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God," and who stand in liberty; as the apostle says, "Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise." We are Abraham's seed, so many Isaacs, children of the freewoman, or in the adoption, if we be Christ's.
Now this mystery of sonship or adoption represented in Isaac, as the mystery of election had been made known in Abraham, is in divine order. Forthe election of God is unto adoption, as we read, "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself;" and this being so, this high, personal prerogative being represented in Isaac, in the course of his history we get the mystery of the son of the freewoman very blessedly, largely exhibited.
For we get both thebirthand theweaning. And each of these events was the occasion of joy in the house of the father. The child born was called "laughter," the child weaned was celebrated by a feast.
Wondrous and gracious secrets these are. It is the father's joy tohave children, it is his further joy that his children shouldknow themselves to be children. This was the birth and the weaning of Isaac in the Book of Genesis. And all this, after so long a time, is revived in the Epistle to the Galatians. For what was represented in Isaac is realized in us through the Spirit. In that epistle we learn that we are children by faith in Christ Jesus. And there we learn also that, being children, we receive the spirit of children. We areweanedas well asborn. Paul travailed in birth for them again, as he says: "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you." The Christ of this passage is Christthe Son; and Paul longed and laboured that they might be brought into the Isaac-state, the liberty of conscious adoption. They were under temptation to feed again upon the ordinances which gendered bondage, and which the tutors and governors of an earlier dispensation had enjoined. But opposed to this, the apostle would draw them again into liberty, as he himself had proved the virtue of it in his own soul. It had pleased God, as he says, to reveal the Son in him. The life he lived in the flesh he lived by the faith ofthe Son, who loved him. He could, therefore, go down to Arabia, where he had no flesh and blood to confer with, no Jerusalem or city of solemnities, no apostles or ordinances, no priesthood after a carnal order, no worldly sanctuary, to countenance, to seal, or to perfect him. He did not want what any or all could give him, for he hadthe Son revealed in him. He was a weaned Isaac; and he would fain have the Galatians to be such likewise; and to hear the word which of old had been heard in the house of Abraham over Isaac, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman."
All this is given us, mystically, in Isaac, the child of the freewoman, whose birth caused laughter, and whose weaning was celebrated with a feast. And this mystery is, we thus see, largely and expressly revived and opened, in its full character, in the Epistle to the Galatians.
It is not ofgloriesonly that we must be thinking, when thinking of predestination. God's purposes concerning us are still richer. We are predestinated to a state ofgratified affections, as well as to a place ofdisplayed glories--to "the adoption of children," and to be "before Him in love," as well as to the inheritance of all things. Ephesians i. And the Spirit already given is as surely in us the power to cry, "Abba, Father," as He is the seal of the title of the coming redemption.
We are apt to forget this. We think of calling and of predestination, in connection with glory, rather than in connection with love, and relationship, and home, and a Father's house.
And yet it is relationship that will give even the inheritance or the glory its richest joy. The youngest child in the family has another kind of enjoyment of the palace of the king, than the highest estate and dignitary of his realm. The child is therewithout state, for its title is in relationship--the lords of the land may be there, but they are there as at court, by title of their dignity or office. And the child's enjoyment of the palace is not only, as I said, ofanotherkind, it is of a higher kind--it is personal and not official--the palace isa hometo it, and not merelythe court of royalty.
Now it is the son, the child at home, the child in the privileges of relationship, that we get in Isaac. It is such an one that he represents--this is what Isaac, mystically, is. Isaac was kept at home, waited on by the household, nourished and endowed; and the wealth as well as the comfort of his father's house was his; as we read, "And Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac. But unto the sons of the concubines which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country."
Mystically looked at, Isaac is thus before us, a son, born of the free woman, born of promise, born of God, as it is said, "I will come and Sarah shall have a son." Isaac represents that adopted family who are made "accepted in the Beloved," who have put on Christ, who stand in His joy, and breathe His spirit.
We have, however, to consider himmorallyas well asmystically; that is, in hischaracter, as well as in hisperson. The elements, however, are but few. There is but little history connected with him. There are but few incidents in his life, and but little disclosure of character. And this is to our comfort. At times we find among the elect of God very fine natural materials, a noble bearing of soul, or a delicate, attractive form of human virtue; and again, at other times, either poor, or even very bad, human materials. And this becomes a relief to our poor hearts.Becausewe find it (from a better acquaintance with ourselves than with others) easy to own the poor and wretched materials that go to make up what we ourselves are; and then it is our comfort (comfort of a certain sort) to find like samples of nature in others of God's people.
Isaac waswantingin character. He was neither of fine nor of bad natural materials. There was much in him that, as we say, was amiable, and which, after a human estimate, would have been attractive. But he was wanting in character. The style of his education may go far to account for this. He had been reared tenderly. He had never been away from the side of his mother, the child of whose old age he was--her only child; and these habits had relaxed him, and kept a naturally amiable temper in its common softness. Quietness and retirement, the temper that rather submits than resents, and this allied to the relaxing indulgence of domestic, if not animal, life, appear in him. He was blameless, we may quite assume, pious and strict in the observance of relative duties, as a child and as a husband, and would have engaged the good-will and good wishes of his neighbours; but he was wanting in that energy which would have made him a witness among them, at least, beyond the separation which attended his circumcision, his altar, and his tent. And such a life is always a poor one. To his tent and his altar he was true, to a common measure; but he pitched the one and raised the other with too feeble a hand.
Isaac was forty years old when he received Rebecca to wife. For twenty years they were childless; but under this trial they behaved themselves even better than Abraham and Sarah had done. Abraham and Sarah had no child, and Sarah gave her bondmaid to her husband. Isaac and Rebecca had no child; but they entreated the Lord, and waited for His mercy. This was a difference, and for a moment, the last are first, and the first are last; and such moral variety do we find among the people of God to this day. But the two sets of children suggest different divine mysteries, as the way of the parents of each thus afford different moral teaching.
There were the two sons of Abraham--Isaac and Ishmael; but they were by two wives: there are now the two sons of Isaac--Jacob and Esau; but they are by the same wife.
The enmity between the sons of Abraham began when Ishmael, a lad of fourteen years of age, mocked the weaned Isaac. But the struggle between the sons of Isaac was in the womb. Two nations were there, as the Lord had told Rebecca, "Two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels." And so it came to pass. The man of God was found in Jacob, the man of the world in Esau; the principle offaithwas in the one, the principle ofnaturein the other. Two manner of people were indeed separated from her bowels, and had struggled in her womb. "The friendship of the world is enmity against God." And this was Esau. Accordingly, Esau made the earth the scene of his energies, of his enjoyments, and of his expectations. He was "a man of the field," and "a cunning hunter." He prospered in his generation. He loved the field, and he knew how to use the field. He set his heart on the present life, and knew how to turn its capabilities to the account of his enjoyments. His sons quickly became dukes, nay kings, and had their cities; as Ishmael's children had become princes, and had their castles. Their dignity and their greatness proceeded from themselves; and the world witnessed them in their magnificence.
But Jacob was "a plain man," a man of the tent. He took after his fathers. Like Abraham and Isaac, he was a stranger here, sojourning as on the surface of the earth for a season, with his eye upon the promise. His children--while Esau's were dukes, settled in their domains, in the sunshine of their dignities and wealth--had to wander from one nation to another people, to suffer the hardships and wrongs of injurious Egypt, or to traverse, as pilgrims, the trackless, wasted desert.
Esau was the "profane" one. His hope and his heart were linked with life in this world, and with that only; for he would say, "I am at the point to die, and what profit shall this birthright do to me?" Like the Gadarenes, and like Judas, Esau would sell his title to Christ. But Jacob had faith, and was ready to buy what Esau was ready to sell.
Two manner of people were, after this manner, separated from Rebecca's bowels, as all this tells us. They are no sooner brought forth than this is seen; and their earliest habits, their first activities, are characteristic. It was not merely the bondwoman and the free, or the children of the two covenants, as Ishmael and Isaac had been; in Esau and Jacob we get afullerexpression of the same natures; the one, that reprobate thing, had from Adam, profane or worldly, which takes a portion in the earth and not in God; the other, that divine thing, had from Christ, which is believing, hopeful, looking to God's provisions, and waiting for the kingdom.
All this survives to the present day, and flourishes abundantly in different samples in the midst of us, or around us. I might say the Cain, the Nimrod, the Ishmael, and the Esau are still abroad on the earth, and these tales and illustrations have their lessons for our souls. They are wonderful in their simplicity; but they are too deep for the wisdom of the world, and too pure for the love of it.
These things I have gathered for the sake of the moral and the mystery which so abound in them. But my immediate business is with Isaac.
Isaac, as I have already noticed, was brought up in his mother's tent. He was, as I may say, rather the child of his mother than of his father--the common case of all of us in our earliest days. But with Isaac, this was so till his mother died; and then he must have been much beyond thirty years of age.
He knew more of Sarah's tent, than of the busier haunts and occupations of men. Her tent had been histeacher, as well as hisnurse, and this education left impressions on his character which were never effaced. We have a passing or incidental, but still, a very sure, witness of the strength of maternal influence over him, in chap. xxiv. 67. "And Isaac brought her [Rebecca] into his mother's tent,and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death."
This strongly intimates the tendencies of his early life. And thus was character formed in him. He was the easy, gentle, unresisting Isaac, pious, as we speak, and, as I have said of him, blameless and amicable.
But with all this, and while this I doubt not is surely so, I ask, Was it merely nature or character that bore him unresistingly along the road to Mount Moriah? See chap. xxii. Was it merely filial piety which then disposed him to be bound as a lamb for the slaughter, without opening his mouth? Can we assume this? Was this the force of character merely? I say not so. This was too much for human gentleness and submission, even such as might have been found in an Isaac, or in a Jephthah's daughter. I must rather say, the hand of the Lord was over him on that occasion, just as, long afterwards, it was over the owner of the ass that was needed to bear the King on to the city, and then over the multitude that accompanied and hailed Him on the road; or, as it was over the man bearing the pitcher of water, who prepared the guest-chamber for the last passover. On these occasions, the hand of the Lord was strong to force the material to comply, and take the impression of the moment. As also in the earlier days of Samuel, when the kine carried the ark of God right on the way homeward, though nature resisted it, their young being left behind them. For the divine power was upon the kine then. And Isaac, in like manner, was under divine power, under the hand of God, on this occasion; willingly, I fully grant, but made willing as in a day of power; for he was to be the type or foreshadowing of a greater than he. The seal was in a strong hand, and the impression must be taken, clear, deep, and legible. "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God," is the writing on the seal. "As a lamb before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth."
That was a great moment in the life of Isaac, an occasion of great meaning. So in his acceptance of Rebecca. See chap. xxiv. In his taking a wife, not of all whom he chose, but of his father's providing, we may trace the same strong hand over him. There might easily have been more of human submissiveness and filial piety in this, than in the case of the sacrifice on Mount Moriah, we may surely allow; but still this was asealingtime as well as the other. This marriage was a type or mystery, as well as that sacrifice. The wife brought home to the son and heir of the father, by the servant who was in the full confidence and secret of the father, this was a mystery; and the material must comply again, and take the impression from the hand that was using it. The potter was making vessels for the use of the household, and the clay must yield. The prophet's children, ages afterwards, had names given them, as the Lord pleased, and the prophet had to say of them, Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders. Isa. viii. And so, Isaac and Rebecca, in the day and circumstances of their marriage, were a type, "for a sign and a wonder." This was their chief dignity;they tell the mysteries of God. They are parables as well as mysteries. They were events set in time or in the progress of the earth's history, as the sun and moon and stars are set in the heavens,for signs. Each of them has a writing on it under the hand of God. "I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts;" for on these events He has impressed the image of some of His everlasting counsels.
But though this gentle and submissive nature that was in our Isaac was not equal to such sacrifices and surrenders as these, yet gentle, submissive nature is the quality which gives him his character. At times it acts amiably and attractively; at times it sadly betrays him. But at all times, under all circumstances, amid the few incidents that are recorded of him, it is the easy, gentle, yielding Isaac that we see. And the presence of one and the same virtue on every occasion is, I need not say, but poor in point of character. It iscombinationthat bespeaks character and divine workmanship. "The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." It is firm as well as gracious and joyous. And this is moral glory; as many coloured rays give us the one unsullied result in the light we enjoy and admire. But this does not shine in Isaac. In none, surely, in its full beauty, save in Him in whom all glories, in their different generations, meet and shine.
Jeremiah, I might here take liberty to say, appears to me to have been a man of one passion, as Isaac was a man of one virtue. I mean, of course, characteristically as to each of them, Isaac and Jeremiah. A godly passion indeed it was, grief over the moral wastes of Zion, which characterized Jeremiah. But being thus hisoneaffection, the passion or sentiment, which, after this manner, possessed his soul, it makes him generally very engaging and attractive to the heart; but at times it allies his spirit with that which defiles him. He is angry with the people who were stirring the sorrows of his heart. And he murmurs against God Himself. I speak, of course, of Jeremiah's character, as we get it exhibited in his ministry. I know, surely, in that ministry, looked at in itself, he was the prophet of God and delivered the inspirations of the Holy Ghost. But as a man I speak of him; as a man, he was a man of one passion; as I have said of Isaac that he was a man of one virtue. But it is those in whom there isassemblageof virtues, that tell us more assuredly of divine workmanship, of trees planted by the rivers of waters, that bring forth fruitin season. Psalm i. For it is this seasonableness that is the real beauty. Everything is beautiful in its season, and only then. Gentleness loses its beauty, when zeal and indignation are called for. The first Psalm is too high a description for a man of one virtue; it implies character, and decision, and individuality; it shows a soul drawing its virtue from God. "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth its fruit in its season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." This is of divine husbandry; but such we do not see in our Isaac. In his measure, and certainly in contrast with Isaac, this combination or assemblage of virtues, of which I have already spoken, appears in Abraham; and this difference in the two may be seen in their acting under similar circumstances. Abraham in chap. xxi. and Isaac in this chapter xxvi.17
Isaac had been very badly treated by the Philistines. One well after another of his own digging was violently taken away from him, as the wells which his father had dug had been filled up. He had yielded to this wrong with a gentle, gracious spirit, in a spirit that well became one of God's strangers and pilgrims here, who look for citizenship in another world. He went from place to place, as the Philistines again and again strove with him and urged him. This was according to the mind which marks him, as we said, in every incident of his life. Suffering, he threatens not--doing well and suffering for it, he takes it patiently; and this we know is acceptable with God. 1 Peter ii. 20. And so God here attests this; for He owns His servant in this thing, and comes to him by night as He had comforted Abraham. But when, in season, the Philistines are brought to a better mind, and Abimelech the king, with his friend Ahuzzath, and Phichol his chief captain, seek Isaac and alliance with him, I ask, Does not his character, in its way, betray him?
Of course it was right in Isaac to receive them, and plight them his friendship, and to exchange the good offices and pledges and securities of neighbourliness which they sought. For we ought to forgive, if it be seventy times seven a day. But with that there is to be faithfulness in its season--faithfulness as well as forgiveness. "If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him." But Isaac was not quite up to this sturdier virtue. He complains to Abimelech, but it is in such soft and easy terms, that it seems to carry no authority to the conscience with it. Not so his entering into covenant with him. He strikes hands readily, and, I may say, heartily. He makes a feast for the king of Gerar, and sends him away as his ally, without his being brought to any acknowledgment of the wrong which his people had done to the man whose friendship he was now seeking and getting. Nor is there on the lips of Isaac any gainsaying of Abimelech's assertion, that he had done nothing but good to Isaac all the time he had been in his country. As far as this intercourse went, and as far as we can discover the mind of the king of Gerar, he was not convicted by Isaac, but returned home with his friends at peace with himself as well as with Isaac. Isaac had not made good to Abimelech's conscience the complaint he had made to his ear--there was want of character and force in it--it partook of Isaac's own nature.
This was but poor virtue in Isaac. It is but poor virtue in ourselves, when it appears--and some of us have to treat it as such, and confess it as such, at times. It is agreeable in a certain form of amiable human nature; but it is not service to God. We are humbled by reason of that in our own ways. It is poor, and our Isaac here gives us, in measure at least, a sample of this.
It was, however, otherwise with Abraham. The king of Gerar had sought Abraham in his day, and sought him for a like reason, and with a like desire. Abraham meets him in as noble a spirit of forgiveness as Isaac would have done, with an equal readiness of heart and hand to accept him, and to pledge him. But with all this, he rebukes him and makes him feel the rebukes. "AbrahamreprovedAbimelech," as we read, but as we do not read in the case of Isaac. Abraham will not send him away satisfied with himself, as Isaac did, with an unanswered boast in his mouth of his and his people's virtues. He will assure him, as fully as Isaac could have done, of his full forgiveness and reconciliation; but he will not hide it from him, that his conscience may have a question with him, though his neighbour may accept him and pardon him; that there are matters (as between him and the Lord) which Abraham's feast and Abraham's friendship could never settle.
This wasreal, real before God, wherereality, beloved, ever puts us. May we know that secret better, and be upright before Him! This was beautiful--and by this Abraham wasblessingAbimelech, and notmerely gratifyinghim. But this was not so with Isaac; and we may leave him on this occasion, in chap. xxvi., with something of this inquiry in our hearts, Was it mere nature, or the renewed mind in the saint, that acted thus?--a question which still occurs.
Isaac was an elect one, as surely as Abraham; a stranger with God in the earth; one whousedhis altar as well ascarriedit. He was meditating in the field when he got his Rebecca, and he had prayed for the mercy, when Esau and Jacob were given to him. We speak ofcharacterin him only, when we thus contrast him with another. We speak of the living, practical ways of a saint; and we see in him what was below a witness for God abroad, though amiable and devout at home. This is found in Isaac; and kindred things are still found, again I may say, as many of us know to our humbling. As one once said to me, "There is much that goes with others for beingspiritual, because it is done for the eye and taste of our fellow-Christians, and not, as in God's presence, with a single heart to Him."