1. ADAM: “The figure of Him that was to come” (Rom. 8:14)
I have in my possession the photograph of an animal. The person who held it in position for the photographer is not seen in the picture, but against the wall there is the sharply defined shadow of a man. When the light threw the shadow on the wall, it must have struck the substance FIRST. The form of the man gave form to the shadow.
This photograph may illustrate for us the meaning of the Old Testament, for there the sharply defined shadow of a MAN is clearly seen on the pages of it. Much more than a man, surely—“God over all blessed for ever,” a wonderful, glorious Person, “whose being none can know;” but yet a Man, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ. From Genesis 1 to Malachi 4 we find the sacred page full of the shadow of Christ. He Himself talking to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets… expunded to them in all the Scriptures THE THINGS CONCERNING HIMSELF” (Luke 24:27). No wonder their hearts burned within them as they listened to such an unfolding from such a Person.
Adam, Abraham, Melchizedek, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, David, Solomon, and a host of others prefigured Christ. In them in divers ways we see the shadow of Him who was to come.
Our illustration brings out a most important point. The expression, “the figure of Him that was to come,” emphasizes it with all the direct force of Scripture. The light must have shone upon the man before the shadow was cast upon the wall. In the same way all the perfection yet to be manifested in Christ in manhood, and all the excellency of His work, was present, before God, before ever the types set Him forth. The substance was before the shadow. The antitype was before the type. The New Covenant was before the Old, paradoxical as such a statement may appear. Yet it is and must be true, or else Adam and Eve could not have been wrapped up in those coats of skin, nor could Abel have been accepted because of his offering, nor could one bit of blessing ever have reached sinful man.
Headships of Adam and Christ
The expression, “the figure of Him that was to come” (Rom. 5:14), refers directly to Adam. It occurs in a very striking place and manner. The latter half of Romans 5 is occupied with comparing the HEADSHIPS OF ADAM AND CHRIST. One brought in the curse; the other, blessing. One brought in condemnation; the other, justification. One brought in death; the other, life.
And it is just in the midst of the description of the utter failure of Adam, in contrast with the perfection of Christ, that we get this striking expression, “the figure of Him that was to come.”
We should not have expected the expression to come in just there. It looks disjointed and out of place. But the apparently disjointed place in which it occurs arrests and detains us. A moment’s thought, and our soul is lulled with a flood of light. Christ comes before us in two ways: by figure and contrast. Adam, as God made him, was the figure of Christ; as he made himself in his fall, he becomes a contrast to Christ. What a valuable lesson, if we learn it aright. Never was a finer man placed in finer circumstances than Adam—yet he fell; and, as fallen, became the head of a race of men like himself. What can come from such a source? If the fountain is polluted we shall not expect clean waters to flow therefrom. Let us once and for all “cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils,” and turn to Him in whom alone incomparable perfection dwells.
The earlier a type is found in Scripture the more forcible it is. Such a type is made up of very few but very bold strokes. Later types will bring in details, and the more removed the type is from what is primitive, the more detailed and less strong as a type it will be found to be. We are now considering the first human type of Christ found in Scripture.
“God said”
In Genesis 1:26 we read, “And God said, Let Us make man.” What divine prescience and wisdom are revealed in those two words, “GOD SAID.” The words are more remarkable than appears on the surface. They must have sorely puzzled the pious scribe in Old Testament times. The words occur nine times in the first account of creation in Genesis 1. We are told that a Hebrew scribe was accustomed to wipe his pen every time he wrote down the most blessed and most awful word we know—GOD. How sorely puzzled he must have been to have found the word in the plural—not in the singular, which means one, nor the dual, which means two, but the plural, which means three or more in the Hebrew language. And this followed by the verb—said—in the singular! A plural noun governing a singular verb. And yet such was the scribe’s reverence for the Scriptures that not a jot, the smallest letter in the Hebrew language, or a tittle, its smallest sign—would he alter. And here was an error in grammar apparently nine times repeated in the early verses of Genesis.
The plural noun governing a singular verb shows that the word God is a PLURAL UNITY, if one may so describe it. It is obvious that the Trinity—God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—is here indicated. Three Persons—one God: and thus acting.
“And God said, Let Us make man in Our IMAGE, after Our LIKENESS.” Here we get two ways indicated in which Adam is “the figure of Him that was to come,” viz. IMAGE and LIKENESS, the former referring to what is representative, the latter to moral similitude.
Image
Adam represented God in the fair scene of the first creation. How quickly he disgraced himself as in some sort the visible representation of God in this world. How quickly he fell, dragging after him in his ruin the unborn race, and affecting the lower creation, which “groans and travails together in pain until now.”
How one turns instinctively and in relief to the Christ, the Image of the invisible God. He has more than glorified God as the second Man out of heaven in the scene where the first man had so signally failed. How good it is that we know Him as worthy of fullest confidence. He is the quickening spirit. He is the last Adam. To Him is committed all judgment as the Son of Man. In His pierced hands lies all blessing for this world. And we look forward with joyful anticipation to the time when He will publicly take His place in this world as God’s IMAGE.
Likeness
Man is like a battered and well-worn coin. You can see the king’s head upon the coin. It bears his image. The coin represents him as the guarantee of value in currency. But the image is also the king’s likeness. But, alas! when we look at man how wellnigh obliterated the likeness of God has become. The image remains; the likeness has almost ceased.
The image and likeness should go together. But in Adam’s fall the likeness to God was greatly marred. What is man in the flesh like now? Ravening beasts, unclean birds. Such similes are found in Scripture.
Again, we turn with joy of heart to the Christ of God. How fully He bore the moral features of God. He made God known, revealed Him fully. On earth the Father could say, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). In heaven all the glory of God is seen in His blessed face.
Headship
In Genesis 2 a new name for God is introduced—LORD God, Jehovah Elohim. Jehovah (God in relation to man in a covenant of blessing), Elohim (God in plural unity). Headship involves life and nature. Hence it is the LORD God, who is prominent in Genesis 2 preparing for the race, who should be in association with their Head. And seeing that Adam is “the figure of Him that was to come”—of Christ who was to be the Head in new creation—we examine with deep interest the narrative before us.
First of all, and showing what was first in God’s mind, if not first in point of time, we read: “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him” (Gen. 2:18).
Then every living creature is brought to Adam, and he names them, thus asserting his place as HEAD OVER ALL THINGS. This is surely a figure of Christ. “The Head of every man is Christ” (1 Cor. 2:3). He is “the Head of all principality and power” (Col. 2:10). God “gave Him to be the Head over all things” (Eph. 1:22).
As head, Adam ruined and wrecked everything, and that in a scene where all was most favourable. Christ has come, and tried in the most adverse circumstances. He was ever perfect; He has triumphed, and now as the risen Man He takes the place of Head.
In Genesis 2 the preparation of the garden and the naming of the animals are but preparatory to the introduction of the woman. In this connection Adam is a figure of Christ as HEAD OF THE CHURCH. Here we get the first and strongest type of Christ and the church. We need to complete the quotation from Ephesians 1:22-23, given above. God “gave Him to be the Head over all things TO THE CHURCH, which is His body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all.” Head of the church as to herself Head to the church as to her association with Him in rule and dominion. What a place God has given us in Christ! Could anything be more wonderful?
In the type we see how it is brought about. Adam falls into a deep sleep—figure of the death of Christ, by which alone the church could be brought into existence. The rib taken, the side closed, the woman builded and brought to Adam as a help meet, a wife—how striking a figure of the way the church has been given to Christ. This is the only type of Christ and the church where the church is typified as of Christ. Adam could say of Eve, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,” even as it could be said of the church, “We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones” (Eph. 5:30). For indeed the marriage relationship is not a haphazard illustration of the bond between Christ and the church, but was designed to illustrate it. That is to say, God had the eternal relationship between Christ and the church before His mind before ever the time relationship of man and wife was designed by Him to illustrate this great truth. “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32).
Partnership
God in creating Eve gave her to Adam in the double character that, whilst he was her head, she was his help meet, and said in creating man, “Let THEM have dominion” (Gen. 1:26).
So whilst we shall ever look up to the Lord as Head—nay, more, we shall say with one of old, “My Lord, and my GOD”—yet we shall be associated with Him in His dominion and rule. “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years” (Rev. 20:4). What a prospect! To be Christ’s help meet, His bride, companion in His kingdom, sharer in His rule.
2. ABEL: The Murdered Preacher’s Sermon
The Bible stands, as literature, by itself. In every other book of antiquity the more remote its history the more impossible it is. Indistinct, vague, shadowy, always puerile, often blasphemous, the description of earliest events in profane history stands in sharpest contrast to the Bible narratives. In Bible pictures the strokes are few but powerful. By the pen of inspiration masterpieces for all time are given in very few words.
One such is the account of Abel and his offering and death. Seven verses only in Genesis 4 comprise all that the Old Testament says about Abel. Four verses exhaust all that is said about him in the New. And yet, as dead, Abel is speaking still. He has preached longer than any, for he was the world’s first preacher, and death did not stop his preaching.
“He being dead yet speaks” (Heb. 11:4).
We read:
“And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground” (Gen. 4:2).
Two interesting questions here claim our attention.
(1) Why is the younger brought before our notice first? Naturally we should have described the elder brother’s occupation first. Does not God here, right early on the page of Scripture, assert His sovereignty? Not by a direct claim, but quietly by the way He presents things. Does not this very principle run through Scripture? Was not Jacob the younger son? And yet the blessing rested on him. Was not Ephraim the younger? Yet Jacob’s right hand rested on his head. Was not Moses, “slow of speech,” junior to the eloquent Aaron, and was he not chosen to be the leader of Israel’s hosts through the wilderness? Was not David the youngest of Jesse’s Sons? Yet Samuel poured on him the anointing oil.
God clearly put Abel first because he was a man of faith. The man of faith may appear in a less attractive light than the man of the world, but heaven views things very differently from earth. The world’s frown is but for a moment; heaven’s favour is for ever.
(2) Why is Abel described as a keeper of sheep? This lets in a flood of light upon Abel’s character. Sheep were not in those days raised for purposes of slaughter and consumption. Herbs and fruits were given by God for man’s sustenance in Genesis 1:29-30. Not till after the flood was animal food given to man.
This being so, we may gather that Abel reared sheep for purposes of sacrifice, and in this we see his faith made evident.
It is very interesting that the first death that actually took place in this world was not the death of the sinner, but of the innocent victims that provided the coats of skin wherewith our guilty first parents were clothed, which coats were surely a type of “Christ made to us righteousness”—“even the righteousness of God… to all and UPON all them that believe.” In all this is typified the eagerness of God’s love in meeting man’s need. “Where sin abounded grace did MUCH MORE ABOUND.”
Abel must have been instructed in the necessity of the death sentence being met only by death, and the lesson must have sunk deeply in his heart. In keeping sheep he put God first. What an encouragement is here for believing parents to instruct their children in the things of God.
In sharp contrast to Cain’s offering we read:
“And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect to Abel and to his offering” (v. 4).
Here we learn the height of Abel’s faith. He approached God through death. Where did Abel get such knowledge? How was he enabled to grasp such realities? For it is evident Cain had similar opportunities. “FIRSTLINGS of his flock and of THE FAT thereof” indicates that Abel gave his choicest to God. It is not natural to do thus. In Malachi God complained that His people brought to Him that “which was torn, and the lame, and the sick.” It was not so with Abel. His was a deep conviction and a rich faith. Abel’s best going through death in sacrifice to enable him to approach God was typical of God’s best, even His well-beloved Son, going through death in sacrifice. The antitype was before God in Abel’s day or the type were of no value, and Abel’s faith rested in a vain form.
The New Testament lights up the scene with all the splendid glory of God’s appreciation of Abel’s act. We read:
“By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaks” (Heb. 11:4).
Here we get the only principle—mark it well—by which man gets divine blessing—“by faith.” How the principle shines on the early page of inspiration with all its divine lustre. It came out triumphantly in Adam: sinful by his fall, crushed by the sentence passed upon him, oppressed by the prospect of hard-wrested competence to be wrung by the sweat of his face from a soil cursed because of his sin, only to end in decay and death; but out of all the gloom there shone a bright ray of faith, when he called his wife Eve, i.e. living, or life-giver, taking up the thought of God’s promise that her Seed should bruise the serpent’s head. Again it comes out in Abel’s offering. “By faith,” “Through faith,” “In faith” are the magnificent changes rung from one end to the other of the triumphant eleventh chapter of Hebrews.
God’s appreciation of Abel’s offering comes out in a wonderful way. By it “he obtained witness that he was righteous”—righteous not in himself surely, for the sacrifice was the acknowledgment of how very seriously things were the reverse. He acknowledged that only death, and that in figure the death of Christ, God’s Lamb, could meet his desperate condition. And yet God, a thrice holy God, an omniscient God, who knew Abel through and through, witnessed that he was righteous. How could this be? We read the secret in the next clause, “God testifying of his gifts.”
Then God did not testify of Abel. He testified “that he was righteous.” He testified OF HIS GIFFS. The gifts produced an effect, and God testified of cause and effect, and not of Abel in himself.
Applying this, God does not testify of the believer, save in relation to Christ and His work and its effects. He testifies of Christ. It is Christ’s sacrifice, Christ’s perfection, “Christ made righteousness to us” that God has to say to. The moment a sinner puts his simple faith in Him, God is “just and the Justifier of him which believes IN JESUS”—the believer is “accepted IN THE BELOVED.”
What a relief of heart it is to turn from self and self-effort and rest completely on Christ, and on what He has done.
No wonder that God will never let the murdered preacher’s sermon die away in silence. Alas! the first man to whom it was preached—Cain—did not believe it. Instead, it roused all the natural hate of a heart bent on salvation by self-effort and self-improvement, and he murdered the preacher. The gospel in that day, as in this, was indeed a savour of life to life, or of death to death. Abel was blessed, Cain was not.
But did it end there? Death indeed stilled Abel’s lips; yet we read, “By it [Abel’s sacrifice] he being dead yet speaks.”
And if we would read the sermon aright, it will be to turn from Abel’s typical offering to what it typified, even the wondrous death of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to find the question of righteousness settled in His death, and the believer linked by faith with that righteousness before God for ever.
What a rebuke to the shallow Unitarianism of the day—a creed that makes light of sin and refuses the atoning sacrifice of Christ, whether it takes the form of Unitarianism pure and simple or masquerades in the second-hand robes of the New Theology, in which there is nothing new, but its self-assumed title. These robes that it wears are perhaps scarcely so reputable as second-hand; they are the worn-out garments of pagan unbeliefs, handed down from age to age to the present day, now donned by Spiritualist and Campbellite alike.
There is no book like the Bible. It stands incomparably alone, even if judged from the low level of mere literature. But received as the inspired Word of God, and read by the eye of faith, it takes upon it glories not of this world; it sheds a light “above the brightness of the sun,” and on its first pages, as on its last, are stamped the triumphs of God.
3. ENOCH: The Translated Saint
Up to the time of Enoch, save for the untimely death of Abel, there is no record in the Bible of any death save that of Adam, the father of the human race. I do not say there were no other deaths, but none other is recorded.
With the knowledge, and probably in the presence of many of his descendants, representing no less than eight generations, Adam died.
It was no ordinary death. The death sentence bad been passed directly upon him by God Himself. It carried the same consequence to every one of his race. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12).
What a profound and painful impression Adam’s death must have made upon his descendants! How it must have pressed home the awful gravity of sin! How it must have spoken loudly to them as to its awful and appalling consequences! With what tears and shame they must have buried out of their sight the progenitor of their race!
Little more than half a century rolled by when Enoch was translated. His father and grandfathers up to and including Seth were alive when this wonderful translation took place. All whose names figure in Genesis 5, who could have been, and probably were, present at the death of Adam, were cognizant of Enoch’s translation. That is to say, they suddenly missed him—he was gone—translated.
How the event must have set them thinking! The more they pondered over it the more important in its bearing the event would seem. The death penalty was passed upon the sinner. Enoch was a sinner, yet he “was translated that he should not see death.”
It is as if a peculiarly bright and arresting beam of glory had been shot into the gloom of the place where death reigned. Thus early in the history of this world God declared Himself superior to death. For Him the power of death was broken, and He declared it triumphantly and emphatically in this one notable example. But how was death broken? BY DEATH. Was not Enoch’s translation an answer to the coats of skin that covered our first parents? Was it not an answer to Abel’s offering—the firstlings of the flock? Nay, these were but shadows, shadowy shadows, of the substance, the glorious substance. The glory has been unfolded to us, the ray of which illuminated so powerfully the gloom of that far-distant scene. The glory of the work of Christ, the glory of God’s righteousness fully maintained, the glory of a victory that has annulled death and brought life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel, is what we are blessedly familiar with. All was future in Enoch’s day, but the future of certainty. CHRIST’S DEATH was the warrant for Enoch’s translation.
A little reflection will show how intelligent Enoch was, and how he entered into things.
Three things prove this:
First. The naming of his son, Methuselah. His name (“He has sent his death”) implies Enoch’s intelligent apprehension that judgment must come, and end things as they existed around him. Methuselah’s name was, indeed, a prophecy, and implied that when he died the flood would come, which it did in the very year of his death.
Second. Enoch’s intelligence went far beyond the prophecy of immediate judgment. It went far beyond the flood, and even yet his prophecy is awaiting fulfilment. Jude tells us:
“And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints to execute judgment upon all” (vv. 14-15).
No doubt he prophesied to those around him. We should never have known this, had not Jude, centuries after, told us.
What intelligence and light Enoch had! What a knowledge of God’s ways!
Third. By his practical godly life. In the charming brief biography of Genesis 5 we get four words, which sum up a life of purpose, steadfastness, and earnestness—“Enoch walked with God.” He was no anchorite or recluse, finding in the contemplation of solitude a path free from temptation. One word tells us that he took his place in the ordinary affairs of life. He married and was the father of sons and daughters. He had the care of them, and the duty of making provision for them.
How encouraging to us! No ups and downs are recorded in Genesis 5. No failures, nor any brilliant successes. Just this brief yet pregnant sentence, “Enoch walked with God.” It reveals a quiet steady purpose, a saintship which walked in separation from a world under judgment. Hebrews 11:5-6 shows us it was a life of faith, of diligently seeking God.
Then came the climax. “He was not; for God took him.” Is this not the believer’s path and prospect today? His path, separation from a world going on to judgment; his prospect, translation when the Lord comes.
In vivid contrast to Enoch, the seventh from Adam, is Lamech, likewise the seventh from Adam. Lamech instituted polygamy. The self-denial and uprightness of Enoch’s walk stands in strong relief to the self-indulgence of Lamech. Alas! such a course ends in disaster. Lamech has to lament, we know not the particulars, “If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.” Evidently a course of self-indulgence had ended in passion and murder.
And look at his children. One was the father of agriculture and commerce. Another of music and pleasure. A third, of all workers in iron. They sought by their ingenuity to make the world happy and comfortable without God.
What happened to them? The flood came, took them all away, themselves, their commerce, their music, their brass and iron work—all disappeared in judgnient.
So it will be with this age, in which the activities of Lamech’s children are revived and extended. “For as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man” (Luke 17:26).
The Christian’s hope is the coming of the Lord to catch away His people (see 1 Thess. 4:14-18) before judgment falls upon this godless, pleasure-loving, and industrial age, similar in these three respects to the age in which Enoch lived. And while they wait for this translation their privilege is to walk with God.
4. NOAH: the Condemner of the World
Ten generations lay between Adam and Noah. Five is the number of human responsibility; two, that of adequate testimony. Twice five, then, signifies adequate testimony concerning human responsibility. The Ten Commandments formed an adequate test as to man’s ability or otherwise to answer to God’s claims. The human body illustrates the use of the numbers five and ten. We have five senses. We have five fingers on each hand, ten in all, for work. We have five toes on each foot, ten in all, for walking.
Ten generations afforded full demonstration, then, of the utter corruption of fallen man. “Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” is the solemn summing up of Scripture.
The way in which Satan succeeded in getting things into this awful condition is very significant, and conveys a solemn warning to us at this present time. “The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose” (Gen. 6:2). The sons of Seth,* the line of promise, allied themselves with the ungodly seed of Cain. The effort of Satan ever has been to obliterate the distinction between good and evil. The alliance of good with evil never purifies the evil, but always defiles the good. Absolute separation one from the other is ever God’s way.
{*Many think “the sons of God” here referred to are angelic beings. If this view is correct, it leaves unaffected the warning we seek to give against unholy alliances. The writer thinks Matthew 22:30 is conclusive on the point. That distinctly states that there is no marrying in the higher world, either of human beings, who have attained to the resurrection, or of angelic beings, who are indigenous to the scene.}
The next verse contains the solemn statement: “And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.’
Thus it ever is. The end of the violence which resulted from the unholy alliance was the flood; the end of the awful mix-up we see all around us will be fire.
And yet at the end of this ten generations we find Noah “a just man and perfect in his generations,” one who “found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” His name means Rest, a triumphant prophecy of Lamech’s when all around was labour and toil, sweat of the face in the man, sorrow in conception in the woman—the result of sin. But faith looked on. Faith pierced the clouds, and laid hold of that which is beyond.
It is ever thus with those whom God enlightens. Be the outward portents never so bad, be the clouds never so lowering, let men’s hearts fail them for very fear—nay, we know from Scripture that as the world was once destroyed by a flood, it shall yet be destroyed by fire—still can the believer rest in the knowledge that good will triumph, that a way of deliverance will be found in Christ, that we shall emerge into a scene of rest, where there will be no more curse, no tears, no pain, no death. The present moment is but a speck of time, a moment of pressure, and then the rest that remains for the people of God will be ours.
In tracing the history of man’s wickedness we see shining through it traces of God’s gracious workings, His power and long-suffering.
Look at the history of Enoch. Compressed into very few words. It is like a verdant oasis in the midst of an arid desert—like a sunny spot lighted up by the smile of God where all around is gloomy and grey and on which His frown rests.
Look, again, at the prophecy of God’s long-suffering involved in the meaning of Methuselah’s name. It meant “when he is dead it shall be sent,” i.e. the deluge. None have lived longer than he. Older than Adam with his 930 years, older than Jared with his 962 years, surviving his own son, Lamech, with his 777 years, Methuselah’s great age was a standing witness of God’s long-suffering compassion, of His unwillingness to judge. What a light is thrown upon His blessed nature when we read in another connection that He “endured with MUCH long-suffering the vessels of wrath” (Rom. 9:22).
Methuselah’s great age must have caused deepening wonder as year slowly succeeded year until his years almost spanned a millennium of time. Would men pay no heed? Alas! no. As then, so it is now.
At length there came an end to God’s long-suffering. Methuselah died. That year the flood came. The awful blow fell. God’s long-promised but sure judgment on the world was carried out.
Look, too, at the prescience of Scripture. Examine carefully the ages of the antediluvian patriarchs when they first begat sons and daughters, and mark the solitary contrast Noah affords.
Adam 130 yearsAnd yet the Bible makes no comment on this. It is like the Bible that it does not—its self-restraint is majestic. It does not stop in the calm recital of events to say this is striking and that is wonderful. In this it affords a great contrast to the uninspired works of men, which take the reader behind the scenes, and explain how and why the puppets of men’s imagination are made to work.
The great age that Noah attained before he became a father is on parallel lines with Methuselah’s longevity. It bespeaks two things: (1) God’s long-suffering; (2) His care, planning for hundreds of years, that several generations, including little ones, should not go through the flood in the ark, with all its difficulties and privations.
The three sons of Noah, all married men, did not carry one infant into the ark. Eight adult persons passed through the flood. What a touch this is, bespeaking God’s thoughtful contriving, His arranging and planning tenderness! And occurring as it does in such an unexpected place, it may well come as a comfort to many who are tried in circumstances.
Hebrews 11:7 tells us that “Noah … prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he CONDEMNED THE WORLD and became the heir of the righteousness which is by faith.” The lines on which Noah acted are well worth our careful consideration. His condemnation lay rather in what was positive than negative. By negative I mean it was not by rebuking the actions of the wicked that he condemned the world. That would be comparatively easy, and place him on the judgment seat. But he condemned the world by his actions, by his life. That is a higher thing, and reveals the whole spring of his being—faith. By mouth he was a preacher of RIGHTEOUSNESS, he placed what was positive before his hearers; by action in the preparing of the ark be passed a long, drawn-out positive condemnation upon the world.
5. ABRAHAM: Or the Call of God
Ten generations ran their course from Shem to Abram. This number possesses in Scripture the significance of testing as we have already seen. Ten generations, from Adam to Noah, sufficed to utterly prove that “every imagination of the thoughts of his [man’s] heart was only evil continually,” and God cleared the earth in righteous indignation by the flood.
Again ten generations ran their course. The first thing Noah did in the post-diluvian world was to offer burnt offerings to the Lord. The Lord smelled a sweet savour, and said in His heart that He would not again curse the ground for man’s sake, as He did at the fall, nor smite every living thing as He did at the flood. Why was this? The burnt offerings brought Christ before God. It is in Christ that all blessings lie.
So when the ten generations had fully tested man again, and man had again utterly failed, God would not again bring in a flood of waters, but began a new principle of acting altogether.
What was this new principle of acting? I venture to say that it has been Satan’s great object to obscure it. If every Christian saw it, and acted upon it, it would mean for the church of God the mightiest revival since the days of Pentecost. But if we cannot hope for that, the individual Christian who sees and acts upon it will hold in his heart and hand the key of God’s way for him in practical detail through this world.
What, then, is this principle, never hinted at in the first two thousand years of the world’s history, and which has ever since characterized God’s dealings in blessing man.
It is that of SEPARATION in answer to the call of God.
Abraham was the first person to be called out—to be the subject of the call of God in that way.
Going down the stream of time we find this developed in Israel—his descendants—becoming a called nation, separated from the surrounding nations, and all blessing for man publicly flowing in that called channel.
And coming down to the present time, the church of God is called out, for the Greek word for church, ecclesia, means the called out ones.
And it is just this Satan endeavours to obscure, and round which he will dispute every inch of advance we make.
It is interesting to note in passing that it is as relating to Abraham the numeral ten is first mentioned in Scripture. It was after Abraham had dwelt ten years in Canaan that his faith broke down, and he endeavoured to gain the fulfilment of God’s promise that in his seed should the earth be blessed, by taking Hagar, the Egyptian, to wife (Gen. 16:3). The next instance is equally suggestive. In Genesis 18:32 he left off pleading with the Lord to spare Sodom when his prayers reached the point, “Peradventure TEN [righteous persons] shall be found there.”
Space forbids that Abraham’s history in connection with the call of God should be dealt with exhaustively or in detail. But a few points are important to note.
1. HIS CALL PROVED THE DOOM OF THE WORLD. A famous politician years ago gave currency to a sparkling epigram, “The House of Lords must be either ended or mended.” If it were determined to end it, one could only marvel at any one seeking to mend it. It were a useless task.
So with this world. God is going to end it. There will yet be a new heaven and a new earth. The present earth and the present heaven will yet flee from the face of Him who sits upon the throne. The Apostle Peter, in startling and graphic language, describes how “the heavens shalt pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” He then asks with vehemence, “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting to the day of God” (2 Peter 3:10-12).
God would not call a man out of the world if HE were trying to improve it? To call Abraham was a proof of the doom of the world. Why should the Christian seek to improve what God is going to end?
2. HIS CALL DETERMINED ABRAHAM’S ATTITUDE TO HIS COUNTRY, KINDRED, AND RELATIVES. “The Lord… said to Abraham, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house” (Gen. 12:1).
The language was vigorous and forcible. “Get thee out.” Has anything similar to this ever taken place in your history? I don’t mean physically and geographically, as it meant in the case of Abram, but morally.
(a) He had to leave his country. If Christians understood the moral application of this, they could not be politicians. The Lord’s words in prayer to His Father are plain, and should be acted upon in simplicity and faith, “They [His people] are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”
This world is doomed. Man is away from God, His whole politics—whether they be governed by one set of ideas or another—are radically false. Christ is rejected. God and His principles are ignored. There never was a more fundamentally false or more mischievous statement than that the voice of the people is the voice of God. Government that comes from below comes in reality from the abyss of hell. Governments to be righteous must come from above, higher than the Commons, or the Lords, or King—from GOD Himself. Till then everything must get out of gear more and more. The Christian’s part, according to God and Scripture, is to abstain from these things. To act otherwise is to impair practically their whole Christian position, and weaken their power to be a true blessing in this world. Was Abraham or Lot better able to be a blessing—Abraham living in separation on the plain of Mamre, or Lot resident in Sodom? We all know the answer.
(b) He had to leave his kindred. This comes closer home. It covered a pretty wide field in the days of the patriarchs, when Abram was contemporaneous with Shem, who came through the flood, and who lived to know his descendants to seven and eight generations. But God’s command came closer still.
(c) He had to leave his father’s house. This is where Abram, alas! failed, and got nothing but sorrow for his pains. He allowed his father apparently to take the lead. He led him half-way, and detained him from following on to God’s full purpose for him till death removed his influence. Moreover, Abram took his nephew Lot with him, and he proved nothing but trouble and sorrow to him.
And here we must guard a point. Abraham was called to actually leave his father’s house. Christians are not necessarily called to leave their relatives when they are converted. They are called to be affectionate, dutiful, and humble in their relations to those near and dear to them. But they are called morally to leave their father’s house; in other words, to live apart in spirit and ways from the worldliness, the aims and objects and maxims that go to make up worldliness, which they may find in the nearest and dearest relative, even if it be a father or a mother, a husband, a wife or a child.
To act wisely, tactfully, graciously, withal faithfully and in separation in such circumstances needs great grace and patience. The ultimate object should be surely the eternal blessing of those we love in the ties of nature.
3. HIS CALL DETERMINES HIS PATH AS THAT OF A STRANGER AND A PILGRIM. For surely if God called Abrabam out it was because He called him to something better. Just in the same way if God said to Israel, “I will bring you OUT,” He did not stop there, but continued, “And I will bring you IN to the land concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob” (Ex. 6:6, 8). So in this dispensation the Apostle Paul could write in 2 Thessalonians 2:14, God “called you by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Don’t talk about what you have given up for the Lord! You will be no loser by a long way in obeying His call. You may leave your nest in a forest of death-doomed trees, as Samuel Rutherford quaintly puts it, but if you gain eternal glory, talk about your gains, and not your losses.
What prospect did Lot give up when he left Sodom? Only the prospect of being burned up. And what prospect do we give up when we become strangers and pilgrims?
But what a glorious prospect is ours! What a future! How it shines gloriously upon the firmament of hope! We are strangers, because we belong to another place—pilgrims, because we are journeying thither.
Where do we belong? To heaven. If our citizenship in this doomed world has ceased, though we live in this world, and must be duly subject to the powers that be, have we lost anything, when we can say in exchange, “Our conversation [citizenship, R.V.] is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20)? Nay, we are infinite gainers, especially as we recollect all this goes into and throughout eternity. May we rise to the height of our calling, and be true to it.