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THE NEED FOR BEING GOVERNED BY WHAT IS SPIRITUAL

E. F. Cary

I may refer to other scriptures but I think these three illustrate the point in mind and that is that we need help to be preserved from being governed by what is natural at the expense of what is spiritual. The danger of many great men of God is that they made mistakes in this connection as I read of Abraham and Isaac and Joseph. They allowed natural persons to come in and blunt their spiritual judgment in regard of very important things. And so it is in Christianity, we are all prone to let what is natural sway our judgments of things that come up. We want to be preserved from this, and we want to look straight through matters and give due consideration to the facts of every matter that may come to our attention in an unbiased way, considering what is for God and what the rights of the Lord are and what God’s mind is in every matter. The Spirit of God is here to help us do that. That which is first is not spiritual but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual. In other words the natural has come first with us. We have all been created in bodies of flesh and blood. But then the Spirit of God has come upon us and, I trust, He is indwelling every one of us, and in that sense the Spirit is the end in view, not what is natural but what is spiritual.

So with Abraham, he says to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before thee!”. He just seems to conclude quickly that what God had said about a son being born to him in his old age, almost a hundred years old, could hardly be possible. He had already had one son thirteen years before so surely he was the one God could use, and so he says “Oh that Ishmael might live before thee!” How does God answer that remark? He says, “Sarah thy wife shall indeed bear thee a son; and thou shalt call his name Isaac; and I will establish my covenant with him, for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him”. In other words, “In Isaac shall a seed be called” as we read in Romans 9: 7. Isaac is the heavenly man officially as Mr James Taylor has said. Abraham was the heavenly man morally, but Isaac officially, and Jacob experimentally, and Joseph administratively, and Joshua spiritually. Those are features that marked those persons. We might say that all were heavenly minded, but some of them made mistakes as I have read about them. So with Abraham, he has to accept it and he does finally accept it and Sarah, of course, is made to laugh (Genesis 18: 12) and Abraham himself laughs at the matter (Genesis 17: 17) as though it was an utter impossibility from a natural standpoint. But with God all things are possible. We have had that before us here lately and this is one matter in scripture that baffles the human mind; it is beyond what we can take in on natural lines; it has to be taken in from the divine viewpoint, a spiritual matter, entirely outside the strength and ability of man. But God has power and He can bring from nought what is substantial.

Now with Isaac, who is the heavenly man officially, and the one in whom the seed is to be called; the head of a new race, we might say, which God had in mind for Israel. We find in these cases there is just the opposite to the other brother; with Isaac and Ishmael there is just the opposite, and now with Jacob and Esau. At their birth Esau came out first but Jacob supplanted him, his hand took hold of Esau’s heel. Jacob acted instinctively

to take away the first and to establish the second; his life was the experimental working out of that, and God loved him. He was a man according to God’s thoughts and purposes, but not Esau who was a man after the flesh. But Isaac, you see, is overcome on this matter. He has become old and his eyes were dim and he could not see, and he called his elder son, Esau, and said to him, “My son!”, and he said to him, “Here am I”. And Isaac said to him, “Behold now, I am become old; know not the day of my death. And now, I pray thee, take thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field and hunt me venison, and prepare me a savoury dish such as I love”. You see he is overcome by his natural tastes. Well, you might say that is legitimate, he wants something good to eat but in this particular setting it indicated that he was allowing his spiritual instincts to be overcome by what is natural. So God has to graciously adjust him, as the sequel shows in the subsequent chapters. How humbling it must have been to Isaac when he found out he had been deceived. But then he knew his natural eyesight was abated, yet his spiritual instinct was blunted at this time, and that is the point that is most serious; not just his natural eyesight was gone but his spiritual eyesight is what is so important; to be able to see through things and discern between what is right and wrong, what is righteous and what is unrighteous, what is good and what is evil.

Well, with Joseph you might say that is a rather delicate matter, as he is a man that has stood out so well in his younger days and one who has become governor over all the land of Egypt and his brethren by this time had been subdued and brought into subjection to him. Now it is a question of Joseph’s sons and the order they were to fill out in God’s purposes and counsels, and who was to be first. Well, naturally Joseph thought that Manasseh should be first, as he was the oldest and he should be first to get the blessing. He says to his father, “Not so, my father, for this is the firstborn—put thy right hand on his head”. You would

say that naturally that is what we would expect, but it was not God’s mind and his father refused. Even though Jacob was an old man, and he like Isaac was weak naturally, and you might think he would be unable to discern as he should discern, yet his spiritual faculties were sharp in his old age. Even though he had had quite a history, a heavenly man experimentally, yet what experiences he had and failures all along his lifetime, but at the end he blossomed out; the work of God shone out. It says, “he gathered his feet into the bed, and expired”, Genesis 49: 33. So here he refused. You might have thought that Joseph being such a great man, and who had given him comfort down there in Egypt and provided for him for the last seventeen years, surely Jacob should not disagree with his judgment about things; but no, Jacob would not allow anything natural to blunt his spiritual discernment. “But his father refused and said, I know, my son, I know—he also will become a people, and he also will be great; but truly his younger brother will be greater than he; and his seed will become the fulness of nations”. Well, that is God’s mind about the matter and that is what we want to get to in any matter that may come before us to challenge our spiritual judgment; that we might do what is right and judge righteously as the Lord said, “judge righteous judgment”, John 7: 24. Some matters become very delicate and refined and not too clearly distinguishable by any other precedent, you might say; but still, a spiritual person “discerns all things, and he is discerned of no one”, 1 Corinthians 2: 15. Well, that could be said of Jacob at this time.

We could have read also about Samuel, great man as he was, who allowed his feelings toward Saul to overcome him for a time. Then he quickly came round to see that David was the man of God’s choice, not Eliab and all the other older sons of Jesse, but the youngest. Samuel finally came to it and fell in line with God’s thoughts, but at first he was sorrowing over Saul, and had a hard time giving up Saul because of what place he

had had, governing Israel for some forty years. Samuel had become accustomed to that, as he had been told by God to go and anoint him, which he did; but now he has to anoint another man, a second man, you might say, the second man out of heaven, of which David is a type.

So he finally comes round and is adjusted.

I thought these thoughts might help us at this time although we do not have any particular matters at the moment that we have to discern between right and wrong or good and evil. But still little matters come up from time to time that test us and the question is whether we are going to allow the natural to sway us in our thoughts. As much love as we might have for our son or our daughter, father or mother, sister or brother, or whatever it may be that comes into the matter, let us just look right through to what God’s mind and thought is, and be with God in every matter. If we are, we can be assured He will support us and bring us through in victory, for His name’s sake.

Word in meeting for ministry, Los Angeles
18 March 1997

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