EXPERIENCE WITH GOD
A. C. Clapham
Genesis 32: 24–32; 17: 26, 27; 18: 1–5
It is a blessed thing to speak a word to the saints, but a very solemn thing; it is a blessed thing to have to do with God, but a solemn thing too. We have been enjoying together the blessedness of being in that divine sphere and the circle of divine relationships. I want to speak a brief word, with the Spirit’s help, on experience with God; for how we come into the enjoyment and the possession of things is through experience. Divine resources are all there that we might enjoy the inheritance, but it has to be taken up by way of experience, experience with the blessed Trinity; the Father’s love and grace; the love and grace of our Lord Jesus, and of the Holy Spirit. Even if you are growing old and you feel weak in body, the Priest is there available to help you in relation to the things of God.
Now just a brief word on these two great men, great men in God’s eyes and undertakings in the Old Testament—Jacob, and Abraham the friend of God, and their experience, how they came into things by having direct experience with God. Our brother said yesterday that there is no substitute for experience, for the time you spend with the Lord. There is no substitute for the time you spend with divine Persons. We may read and acquire certain knowledge and light—what a lot we owe to the great ministries that have gone before; I suppose that nearly all we have we have acquired from
others. But then it has to be made good in your soul, and I think divine Persons are longing that we might have more intimate experience with them daily, individually; it would bring wealth and richness into our experience assemblywise. For the assembly is normally made up, surely, of persons who are overcomers, persons who have had to do with God, persons who are judging themselves, who are imbibing and deriving from Christ the living Head. All this brings substance into our souls.
It was a critical time, a crucial time, for Jacob; what an experience! He left his wives and his cattle, left his belongings—he was alone with God. It was an all-night matter. How real it was to Jacob; but he was determined with spiritual tenacity to get the blessing, and that is commendable, beloved brethren, to heaven, a brother or sister who is determined to get the blessing. Spiritual tenacity marked Jacob even though the Lord might be raising an issue with him and weakening him on the natural line, touching the sinew, the strength of Jacob. He had been crooked, like many of us, but here the Lord in discipline was having to do with him and weakened him. But you see Jacob would not let Him go, would not let Him go without the blessing. Is that not fine? We want to be more serious and definite about our relations with the Lord and with God. Do not be put off by the devil; do not be put off by anybody; make time. I understand Mr. Taylor loved that hymn, ‘Take time to be holy’. Take time to be with the Lord, take time to get through to God, because you will have opposition—not opposition from divine Persons; the struggle in Ephesians 6 is not with God, you know, the struggle is with the devil, with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places; we wrestle not with blood and flesh but with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.
So the devil is against us, against young people, against every one of us; he wants the young people for the world, not for Christ. We have got to overcome the devil, we have got to resist him and say, ‘No, I am going to be for the Lord; I am going to get alone in my bedroom with the Lord and speak to Him’. You can always speak to divine Persons; at any time night or day you can speak to Them; They are always ready to hear, as though you were the only person on the earth. God takes, an interest in you as though you are the only one He is interested in, and He is doing that to thousands and myriads. He is so great He can give you His personal attention. God gave His personal attention here to Jacob, and Jacob went through and prevailed. He wrestled, he got the blessing, and he became a prince. What an experience! Would it not be worth it, a night of wrestling, if you became princely? If you put off the Jacob feature, if you put off the old man with his deeds, if you put off self and selfishness and put on the new man, if you put on what is spiritual and what is new, is it not worth the wrestling? Is it not worth the discipline? We are all in the school of God; we are all undergoing the Father’s discipline if we are sons. What is the end of it? That we may be partakers of the Father’s holiness.
So I want to draw the attention of the beloved brethren to this experience, crucial as it was and crippling on the natural line; he became a cripple, but what spirituality he gained! And it says that he saw God. God was not revealed as He is today in christianity, but Jacob says, “I have seen God face to face”. What an experience, what intimacy! As far as God was revealed he saw God face to face, not as we would see Him in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but he had to do with God in an intimate way and his life was preserved. Wonderful! that is the gospel, is it not, how we as sinners can have to do with a holy God and not be condemned but be saved. That is Romans, how God can be just and justify him that is of the faith of Jesus (see Romans 3: 26).
Now the sun rose upon him, just as if it rose upon no one else, suggesting divine approval.
Beloved brethren, would we not seek, we who are older, to finish our days with divine approval? The sun rose upon him; God was pleased with him. Now Jacob has come to be princely, come to appreciate the spiritual as over against the natural, the spiritual as over against the carnal, his scheming and his own will; he has come to prove that God can do the very best for him, far better than he could do for himself. His will is the best. So the warm rays of the sun rose upon him as he had a sense of divine approval and divine favour. What an experience! May it be ours, beloved. May we know something of what it is to wrestle in secret; there is a lot to wrestle for. There are assembly matters for concern; we need to see the principles involved in them and be one about principles, and when we are one about principles perhaps God will come in for us and bring a solution. We want to see what the enemy is at, what is at stake. The enemy has a certain design, and we want to see through all that may be on the surface and see what the devil is at. So that while Jacob was a limping man he was a spiritual man, he became a spiritual man through experience with God personally. It is to be coveted, beloved.
Now I want to draw attention to Abraham’s experience. God raises this matter of circumcision in chapter 17. He insists on it, in fact it says in Genesis 17: 22, “And he left off talking with him; and God went up from Abraham”, as much as to say, ‘I
have left the matter with you, Abraham; I am not deviating from this. I am not allowing the flesh in any shape or form. Ishmael may be your son naturally but I am not having to do with the flesh or countenancing or supporting that at all; you must come to my judgment about the flesh. Think about it; think it over’. And Abraham came to it; thank God he came to it, that he must be circumcised and all in his house. He comes into line, in our language, with the cross of Christ where the flesh has been entirely cut off, particularly as it is presented in Colossians, “the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of the Christ”
(Colossians 2: 11). So if God has finished with the flesh, finished with that order of man in the cross of Christ, if it cost Him so much to give His Son up to end that kind of man, we must come to it ourselves. The moral meaning of circumcision would be that we have a judgment of the flesh.
Now Abraham had that judgment. All who were born in his house or bought with money were circumcised, so that he is in a good state of soul now for an experience with God, and what a choice experience he had. There he was sitting at the tent-door in the heat of the day.
When he might have been resting he was spiritually alert and restful at the tent-door, ready for a divine appearing. I believe we need the state of soul for a divine appearing. If we are going on in a careless, indifferent, or earthly way, and minding things that we should not, perhaps divine Persons will not draw near to us. But Abraham, a circumcised man, is ready now for this divine appearing. Jehovah appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre. He is in line with the purpose of God, sitting by the tent-door in the heat of the day. “And he lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, three men standing near him”. Is there a veiled
allusion to the Trinity there? Was not God longing to reveal Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; though the fulness of time had not yet come for the revelation of God in the fulness of His name? But Abraham is such a friend of God that it is as if He gives this veiled allusion and they stationed themselves so that Abraham could avail himself of them. Very fine that, is it not? “And he lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, three men standing near him. And when he saw them, he ran to meet them”.
He was alert, he was in exercise, he wanted an experience with God. May we long for an experience with God daily, and in assembly matters too. May we not be content until we reach consciously in assembly service the fulness of God. Blessed indeed it is to respond to the Father, but as we proceed the Father would strengthen us by His Spirit that we may go inward into the blessedness of the fulness of God, God all in all, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and realise the end of the purpose and ways of God. It is a blessed experience to worship the Fulness. Abraham ran to meet them, “he ran to meet them from the tent-door, and bowed himself to the earth”. Is that not beautiful? What a reverent state with him! “Lord, if now I have found favour in thine eyes …”—Why did he not say ‘lords’? It was spiritual intuition; he was a spiritual man. Where had he got it? By intimacy and communion with God; that is where we grow, that is where we get spiritual intuition. He said, “Lord”, he recognised that God was there. “If now I have found favour in thine eyes”—see the spirit of humility—“pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant. Let now a little water be fetched, that ye may wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. And I will fetch a morsel of bread; and refresh yourselves; after
that ye shall pass on; for therefore have ye passed on towards your servant. And they said, So do as thou hast said”. They were ready to be detained by Abraham.
Think of being able to detain the Lord, to detain divine Persons! Mary was such in John 11
and 12, a spiritual person who could detain the Lord and influence Him, for when Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews weeping. He was “deeply moved in spirit”. A spiritual person can detain the Lord; Oh how choice it is! It involves experience with the Lord, experience with the Spirit, experience with the Father. It will be our eternal portion, beloved, in eternal conditions with bodies of glory to enjoy the revelation of God in that blessed Man. It will be experience with God, and experience with the saints too, intercourse with the saints in heaven. It makes you really long for that experience.
So Abraham was able to detain Jehovah; “So do as thou hast said”. What an experience! May experience with God be ours increasingly, beloved, for His name’s sake.