LOOKING BACK
[p. 374] LOOKING BACK
Once that faith in God, guided by His word, became the power and light for the walk of the saint on earth, from that time every visible thing or judgment of man, when entertained, weakened and diverted him from the path of faith. It is important for us, as saints of God, to be assured of the principle of our being. God has affixed laws to all created things; the sun and the moon obey His orders, and it becomes us to ascertain the divine law laid down for us. The great fundamental principle is faith; “without faith it is impossible to please him”, and any departure from faith must entail weakness and decline.
When faith works, it is true to itself. Faith reckons on God, and acts independently of other things, looking only to Him. It is when the heart is beset by things around, and faith has lost its control, that other influences spring up and supplant it. Faith is entirely new to man, and contrary to his natural habit of judgment, however keen that may be. It is strange to him to close his eyes to the visible and to his own feelings, and to look for a new light, a divine judgment about everything. This faith does, and while faith is acting, there is a marked energy in separating from the things which savour of man; but as soon as faith wanes or ceases to be active, then other influences rule. For the heart of man must be governed by something, and unless a power greater than man’s own mind rules his heart, he must be ruled by what springs up there, or by what acts upon him as a man. It is plain that man is either under the control of God, entirely outside and beyond the natural, or under that which is natural and within his own reach. There is neither spring nor power in the natural mind to reach to what is of God; it must be introduced and communicated to him. And hence if there be any cessation or interruption of the new action,
[p. 375] the things which naturally influence man must resume their force, and this is looking back. Now we must guard against this in a double way. On the one hand we have to keep the heart with all diligence under the action of the word; and on the other, to avoid everything which calls up the old influences because, they in themselves suit the natural mind, and “no man ... having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better”. So when we begin in faith, and so long as faith is active, there is a going forward, a surrendering of things for the Lord, which after a few years are often resumed. The actual truth which led to a certain profession is not denied, but the activities which, like green leaves upon a tree, indicated real life and power have died off. The tree remains in the same place, but it bears little or no signs of life, and there is no growth, but the older it becomes the more its branches wither and leave it a spectacle of declining greatness.
The saint is turned aside, or looks to things behind, from two causes; one, from the pressure of circumstances, and the other, because of the attractions of things here. We find these personated in Proverbs 2; one is the man of evil which causes fear, the other, the woman of flattery. From the first the Lord mercifully restores, when the heart is awakened to repentance; from the latter, when persisted in, there is no restoration as to testimony, though salvation be not forfeited. We get an instance of the first in Abram in Genesis 12, when from the pressure of famine he went down into Egypt. Again Jonah, fearing service, flees to Tarshish; Peter from fear denies the Lord; Paul, pressed by James in Acts 21, returns to Jewish things. There are several examples in scripture of the saint turning back from fear, or from the pressure of circumstances; and yet the Lord, who has compassion on us because of the weakness of our frame, restores him, and he is found again in the path of faith and obedience. If he had [p. 376] walked in faith, he would have been supported by God, and would have risen above and beyond all that is natural to man. Pressure arises from the fear of death or its consequences; and for a man to be superior to fear, he must know a power greater than his own; he must be possessed of the power of God. “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life”. It requires more than natural power not to fear “them that kill the body” (Luke 12), and as man truly says, ‘Self-preservation is the first law of nature’. It is sad when a saint yields to this pressure; but the Lord in mercy restores him, having first exposed to him his own inability to stand in such circumstances, and then leads him in the very path from which he had swerved, and to endure the very thing which he had feared, as we see in the instances which I have adduced. I think many a one may look to things behind — may turn aside from fear; but if it be only fear, he will be restored to bear up again and endure much more than what at first deterred him. The Lord remembers that we are but dust, and yet He will not depart from His own line or course for us; and though we may turn away from it from fear, the time will come when He will lead us to stand where we had failed, and will teach us, as He taught Moses, that there we must endure. So was it also with Peter; he succumbed through fear, but the Lord tells him, “When thou shalt be old ... another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not”; he should one day lay down his life for Him.
Now the other cause for a servant looking back is quite different. There is no pressure nor fear, but there is temptation — the woman of flattery, seductive influence. When a saint gives way to this, simply for his own gratification or advantage, and if there be not repentance when chastened or warned of God, there is no restoration to testimony. Lot affords us an example of this. He does not give us the standing of being in the land; but the advantages of Sodom seduce him [p. 377] from the path of faith and from the course of a stranger and a pilgrim. There was no real necessity for this step; it was prudent in man’s judgment, (but there it was merely man’s judgment,) but not according to the call of God, which he surrenders for present advantages, while still in the standing in which the call had set him. And he never recovered; that is to say, he was never found again a witness of the truth of God on earth. He had been warned and saved by Abram, who to rescue him had risked his life, which he had feared to lose when the famine was in the land. But Lot persisted in his self-indulgent course, and was never restored to the testimony which he had professed in his early days. Thus it was also with Samson after his surrender of himself to Delilah; he was never restored to the path which he had previously occupied, and in the end his eyes were put out. Divine power, as the gift of grace, flourished again, but he sank for ever under the first exertion of it; Judges 16: 22 - 30. It was so in a measure even with David; he was never the same in public after his fall as he was before it. He began his public career by slaying Goliath, and at the end of it we read that one of the sons of the giants, “being girded with a new sword, thought to have slain David”, 2 Samuel 21: 16. That which most distinguishes the man of faith in his youth, when it is fresh and active, is often the very thing he most fails in at the end of his course. The man who starts in the power of faith, surrendering his position as a man, and forgetting his own people and his father’s house, will, if he departs from faith, return to the very thing which he had surrendered. All Israel, excepting a few faithful ones, allowed their hearts to go back to the leeks and onions of Egypt, in preference to the grapes of Canaan which were presented to them as the reward of faith.
The various ways in which the woman of flattery plies her arts are strangely adapted to each of us. It is all to turn us aside from the path of life. The great distinction between “wisdom” and “the strange woman” is that the former always gives bread and wine, true sustenance, but proposes separation from evil; see Proverbs 9. The other always proposes something to be enjoyed in secret: “Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant”. The intrinsic character of this influence is, that one may retain the reputation of a true standing, and yet yield to the fascination, and return to the garb of the world in secret. How many, like the two and a half tribes, even help their brethren openly in the war in the land, who in their hearts and homes have cities on this side Jordan. This is plainly the case with those who profess or preach heavenly truth, and who are yet, in their houses, dress, and personal details, according to the fashion of the world. Where faith is fresh, it readily prescribes the true course, but when the memory becomes occupied with things surrendered, when one is mindful of the country from which one has come out, there is opportunity to return; the leaf begins to wither, even while the tree still stands. The declension will begin in a way almost imperceptible; a little bit of the world once renounced will be resumed; one can hardly say why or how; but then the leaf fades, the healthy verdure of life is gone, and there is no growth. The turning back may be very small; Lot’s wife only looked back. The Israelites did not go back to Egypt; they only remembered the leeks and the onions.
There are two phases of this turning back; one is where the world in its outward evil has been renounced, yet as to the heart it is still there. This was the case with the two and a half tribes, and in principle with Ananias and Sapphira. Such gradually slip away, and lose all the comfort of the truth. As with Israel, the rain is stayed, and they perish off the good land; and, like the sow that was washed, wallow in the mire. The other phase is when there is a return to things once renounced, because there is not power to continue in [p. 379] the race. They cannot endure to be made little of by their near acquaintances; they do not resist unto blood, striving against sin; and while professedly in the true standing, they have so lost the energy of faith in it that they drop back into old association, and find interest in the society of relations and acquaintances — resuming little items of worldliness in order that they may be on easy terms — from whom they had separated at a former time for the Lord’s sake. Thus, in varied ways, the heart gets under a false influence, and there is a looking back which unfits for the kingdom of God.
The Lord keep our eye steadily set on Himself, for His name’s sake.