GOD'S RELATIONS WITH HIS PEOPLE
GOD’S RELATIONS WITH HIS PEOPLE
Genesis 17:22; Genesis 18:33; Genesis 35:13
I have a thought that came to me today as to God’s way of maintaining personal relations with His people through visitations. I have selected Genesis because of the peculiar freshness it always affords to subjects of which it treats. It affords early facts, relative to God and men, that have peculiar freshness, simplicity and unofficialness, particularly in His personal relations with men. They began early, for we read of Him, heard as walking in the garden. Adam heard the voice of God, and the facts indicate plainly enough that He intended to commune with Adam, to be personally heard by His great creature, the creature and his help-meet that He had taken great pains to create and form, seen too as His own provision in the garden. He planted it eastward, we are told, in Eden.
Well, that is a very early instance of what I am speaking of; but it was a very sorrowful occasion, from one point of view. Very sorrowful, and to no one was it more sorrowful than to God. We are told later of conditions that grieved Him in His heart, conditions that had come about on earth after a lapse of many centuries, for the antediluvian age was more extensive than perhaps we are disposed to admit in our minds. I need not go into the details of that visit to Adam; whilst it was sorrowful it was eventful, and eventful of the very greatest things, the effect of which remain here to this very minute. Eve was there recognized as the mother of all living, and Adam so designated her. God seized the opportunity to establish and consolidate the light; that is what Adam would intimate. That is, if we get a little light and we are simple, God will come in to consolidate it, so that it remains as fixed. He clothed Adam and Eve just then. He made clothes for them; so that the idea would synchronize with the idea of life; it was life out of [p. 512] death. If there was to be any life of which Eve was the mother, it must be on the principle of death; for the animals from which the skins or skin clothes were made clearly died. We just get hints in those early chapters. We do not get great unfoldings of doctrine such as the book of Romans. We get hints to faith for the believer to lay hold of, and it is a very precious hint that as Adam named his wife Eve, meaning the mother of all living, or really the word ‘ living ‘ is enough, God stabilized that in bringing in the skins, or the clothes, for Adam and his wife. So that great results had accrued from that visitation; it was not for nothing. God did not come into the scene and become defeated, and go out defeated. Before He left He drove the man out, but He drove him out as clothed. Satan was shut out too. He could get no advantage out of the introduction of sin into the garden. God already sealed the matter in the making of the clothes. And it is left there clothed, as you might say, and comes down to us in the One of whom it is said, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4).
And so we get God coming down or coming in to walk with another; that is, Enoch. It is spread over a period of three hundred years, one of the most remarkable incidents in the whole history of man is that walk between God and Enoch, year in and year out for three hundred years. We can understand what familiarity would rise from God’s experience as I might say reverentially, for God has experience. What that was for three hundred years! What conversation, what communion, dear brethren, must there have been between God and Enoch. Finally God liked him well, and he grew greatly in His estimation. He was more to God in the three hundredth year than he had been in the first; there is no question about that. As one might paraphrase the facts, God might say, You are a great creature; I like you so well I wish to have you forever. And He did. He took him up to heaven, a remarkable [p. 513] bringing out of what one has in mind in God coming in here in a personal way. It is no mere hour or hours or even days, but three hundred years in personal contact with the man, and the man in personal contact with his Creator. How the conversation was carried on, I cannot say. What form the communion took, we are not told. But what is stressed is the walk. Enoch walked with God three hundred years. The way it is put would indicate that others might be in that walk too, but he was one. I do not say there were others, but I should not deny it if anybody brought it forward. I do not believe for one moment that Enoch was the only one on earth in the antediluvian world in which he lived who could walk with God. He seized the opportunity, whether others did is not stated. But Noah did, and of course, Abraham. But I just wish to bring these facts forward initially, dear brethren, so that we might see what God is in that connection; how He can come down to His creatures, as it is said, “Who humbleth himself to look on the heavens and on the earth” (Psalm 113:6).
And now I take up Abraham here. This short verse says that Jehovah “left off talking with him” (Genesis 17:22). It was a conversation covering several points, but on one theme, namely, the heir, the seed to whom, and concerning whom, the promises were made. God said, It is I. Abraham could say, Well, it is I. Abraham and God; God and Abraham. What was going on in the vicinity? Who knows? Men went on, of course; their affairs went on; items of news, marriages, deaths etc. But here was a wonderful fact. God was down here conversing with Abraham, talking with him, listening to what Abraham has to say. You might say, what about Ishmael? Let him live before Thee: that was in Abraham’s mind. God did not come down to talk to Abraham about Ishmael. When Abraham brought up the matter, God says, Well, he is thy seed; that is what interests Me about him. He does not interest Me himself; his ways do not suit Me, but he is thy seed.
[p. 514] And what an encouragement that is to all parents! Some of us have an Ishmael, alas! It is well to face these matters, a wild ass of a man, a persecutor of Christ when he was thirteen years of age. He began early. But Jehovah says, He is thy seed. Abraham introduces the subject, and God met him in His grace. He is thy seed, He says. Well, that is a comfort to every parent who has a wild ass of a boy, who does as he wishes, whose heart is toward Egypt. He does not go all the way. He dwells before his brethren. He is not ready to go all the way into Egypt. His mother took him a wife out of Egypt, but he has an eye on his brethren, and would like them to pay attention to him, too, when it suits him. He dwelt before his brethren. That means he has little or no conscience about his course. He has no shame attached to him. But then Jehovah says to Abraham, He is thy seed, and I bless him because of that. Well, that is a comfort. It is on low ground, but who is the father that does not take what he can get as regards his Ishmael? He is thy seed. How God honours godly fathers and godly mothers, even comforting them as regards their wayward boys and girls! He is thy seed, He says, “twelve princes shall he beget” (verse 20). He is going to have administrative powers on the earth. He is going to be over against his brethren and say he is as good as they are, ‘ You have twelve tribes; I have twelve princes ‘.
Well, I refer to that by the way, because it is part of the conversation, but the great theme was Isaac; “for in Isaac shall a seed be called to thee” (Genesis 21:12). Paul says that, too; that is, Christ. And the Lord Jesus says, “Your father Abraham exulted in that he should see my day, and he saw and rejoiced” (John 8:56). He saw Isaac honoured in his house; he also saw Ishmael mocking, but he saw Isaac. Isaac, dear brethren, fills the chapter. He illumines the chapter. He is the great theme of the conversation. God has come into this. It is a household matter, and the time came when enough was said for the moment. The matter was not finished;
[p. 515] God broke off the conversation and went up. That is what is stated in the verse: “And he left off talking with him; and God went up from Abraham”. It is not a finished matter; it is to be resumed. Think of the familiarity God had introduced and maintained with His great child, as I might call him, Abraham. He was great enough to be called a father; high father; father of a multitude. He was the most interesting man in all the earth to Jehovah at that time, and hence this conversation full of holy matters, the effect of which reaches down to us, as I was saying, the Lord said about Isaac, about Himself, “Your father Abraham exulted in that he should see my day, and he saw and rejoiced”. It is a question of Isaac, and hence the “Book of the generation of Jesus Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). And the closing words before the ascension were, “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” (verse 19). Then He introduces Ishmael according to what I have been saying, and then He says further, “But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to thee at this appointed time in the next year” (verse 21). God is dealing with life. And He breaks off the conversation. He is to be visited again, of course. He is not to be forgotten. Isaac is to be looked after, too. But the conversation is ended, and, dear brethren, is there not a word as to our communion with God? It is one of the greatest things we could have before us. What intercourse have we with God? He comes in. One has been thinking much of it of late. The burden of the universe is on His shoulder. Of course it is seen in detail, but I am speaking now of God; worlds that we cannot compass are under His hand. “By faith we apprehend that the worlds were framed by the word of God” (Hebrews 11:3). He framed them by His word. He has not left them to wear themselves out. He has looked after them ever [p. 516] since. We have to look after our watches, and in spite of that they run out and need repairs. There is not a world in the universe that is not looked after by God, in all His grace, and it never lapses. There is no lack of repairs. The system goes on; the number, the untold number of systems go on; the worlds go on. Think of that, dear brethren, what God is engaged with every day! Think of it, dear brethren! He has affairs that He is going on with that we have no idea of. We cannot touch them. He is occupied with them every day, and then He comes into our affairs, our families, and our agriculture or our businesses. Businesses of the men of faith are matters of concern to God. Even the grain of wheat God gives a body as it pleases Him. Think of God’s feelings being brought in in a body given to a grain of wheat! Well, one could say much about that, but I think the dear brethren might do well to think over these matters and become enlarged; that God might come in to our families and talk to us about our children. The word of God is what He would say to us, and our prayers are what we would say to Him. Every creature of God is good, being sanctified by the word of God and freely addressing Him. That is, He is speaking to us, and prayer is our speaking to Him. That is how the matter goes on day and night in this world. If we laid hold of this it would have the effect of delivering us from what man is doing — what God is doing day and night; He shuts it off if necessary; He left off speaking with Abraham and went up.
And then in the next chapter it tells us that He appears again in company with two others. Now it is not a question of regulating Abraham’s house. Chapter 17 is a question of Abraham’s house, and its regulation and what is the great theme of the regulation? Circumcision. That is, the putting off of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; the totality of it. That is the lesson of chapter 17, and now God comes back. What does He find? Will He be greeted by some fleshly [p. 517] person in the house? Will it be like Martha who opened the door to the Lord and let Him in to her house and criticized Him as soon as He came in? No. Circumcision is a real feature in Abraham’s house, and that, dear brethren, is the point in our houses. There is no question of criticizing anyone in the family, but the real point is the circumcision. If the children are to be kept, the application of circumcision in principle in the house is necessary. Baptism cannot be excluded from the idea of circumcision. Circumcision is a greater thought. Circumcision is the putting off of the body of the flesh — the totality of it in the household; in the individual, of course, in the man himself. It applied to Abraham as it did to his youngest child; and to every servant in his house. The whole house is circumcised, and then God comes back. He had broken off the conversation, but He comes back, not now to adjust Abraham’s house, but to accept hospitality in Abraham’s house. You cannot expect godly people, spiritual people, to accept your hospitality except there be the principle at least applied of circumcision; baptism, of course, but circumcision as well. And according to the next chapter He comes in company. It is going to be a larger meeting. Chapter 17 is God and Abraham, but there are Three now, and Abraham and Sarah are called into it, and the servant, a young man. It is remarkable. Jehovah says to Abraham, We will wait here for you until you prepare what is needed. Think of that! That He, upon whose shoulders everything rests, the maintenance of the world, would come and just take it quietly under the tree until Abraham prepared His repast. God says, “So do as thou hast said” (chapter 18:5). He accepted his hospitality, and They waited until the meal was set before Them.
Well, many things were said and done; the time came for Them to move, for the moment, and Abraham said, “after that ye shall pass on; for therefore have ye passed on towards your servant (verse 5). He implied They were going on further; Abraham is not the objective this time.
[p. 518] He was so in chapter 17, but this time he is incidental, as it were, but of great importance. But God is going further; He passed on. Abraham understands Jehovah was on an errand. He was on a great mission, a mission of wrath. In principle, God is on His way to final adjustment of things in this world. Abraham was not the terminus, but He called in on His way; that is very beautiful. It is a wayside place for God. He comes in with two others. And Abraham ran. It is one of the remarkable things in Scripture, like Mary Magdalene and the father of the prodigal. What agility will arise when God comes in! Abraham ran. They all moved quickly. Now, the time is passing on and there is no running now, because God is very sure and steady and quiet. There is no hurrying at all in divine movements. All is according to perfect measurement, according to plan, according to the way devised. They are going to pass on, and Abraham says, I will go along with You. It is very beautiful; just like going with a friend down to the corner, or to the station. Pardon my simplicity, but I want to bring home to you what God is, coming down to Abraham, with utter disregard of, and supremely above, what men are doing. God is going His way; Abraham says, I will go along with You. And he did, and he plainly enough intimated, I would like a little word with You, Jehovah, and he had. The two men passed on. Where did they go? Down to Sodom. We are told in chapter 19 what happened there. There were only the two of them; Jehovah and Abraham had a wonderful time. I cannot go into the details of it. We have often heard about this wonderful word about the righteous, ten righteous. He comes down to ten righteous. Fifty righteous, forty, thirty, twenty, right down to ten righteous. God says, I will save the city for ten. That is God — for ten righteous. One can understand the undercurrent in the mind of the blessed God. It would be wonderful if there were ten. He knew there were not. He knows the number of the righteous. They [p. 519] are carefully marked off on this earth; they are so precious, so valuable. God knew the number that were in Sodom. That anyone in Sodom should be called a righteous man is grace. Lot should not be called a righteous man if he is in Sodom, but he is called a righteous man in the New Testament. God will save the city for ten — ten righteous men, notice. Righteous men are most valuable, as I said.
Well, I come to verse 33. Jehovah went away on the line He was on, He had something in His mind; and Abraham, it says, returned to his place. The word ‘ place ‘ is to be noticed there. Abraham had a place. It is true enough he was a pilgrim and a stranger, but he had a place. There is much importance attached to that, Abraham’s place. Jacob said, as we had this afternoon, that he would return to his country and his place. Paul says, “with all that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours” (1 Corinthians 1:2). Do not forget that. Corinthians has the idea of place, but do not forget it is the place in which we call on the name of the Lord Jesus. It is known that we call on that name. There really can be no assembly in the locality save on that principle. The name is the thing. That is, we are not trusting the government to support us; we are not calling on them for their support. We pray for them, of course; we are glad to support them, but I was thinking of it lately in the mid-hours of the night. I wonder why it is that God allows the continuation of the conditions that are so intolerable abroad; still the trains are running; the sun rises every day; the rain falls; the moon rises, and the stars are there, and the laws are respected in every country. Who is at the back of all this? God is. Take His hand away and all would go to pieces. There is not a question about that. The christian would be conscious of it. If the divine hand were withdrawn, the whole thing would go to pieces. But it does not. God is in it, and so it is calling upon the name of the Lord — that name has power in it and there is not a local [p. 520] assembly there that could be without it. There is the protection not only of the government — we pray for external government — but the power of the Lord; the Lord Jesus in whose hand is all power in heaven and on earth; and in hundreds of places there are those that call on the name of the Lord Jesus. He is both theirs and ours. We are bound up in that in one unit. There are hundreds of localities on earth. Abraham went to his place, where he had servants, his wife, his tents, and his cattle, and where he administered things, entertaining his friends, entertaining God in his place. Each of us is to understand what is his place, and how he is holding himself in regard of others, similarly engaged in their place, calling upon the name of the Lord.
Well, Abraham went to his place. I have shown you, I think, that in chapter 17 it is a question of Abraham’s house. And God settled that matter; He left off speaking and went up. In chapter 18 it is not a question of Abraham’s house but of the judgment of Sodom, and Abraham was visited on the way. He would not be visited if he had not his house circumcised. If he failed in that God would not visit him on social lines. Pardon my using the word ‘ social ‘, but that is just what it is. It was the taking of a meal, taking lunch and then, when lunch was provided, going on in the way He had been going. It is a question of judgment, the Judge of all the earth is mentioned in chapter 18, and Abraham went back to his place in all the light of what God had said to him. Abraham would say, I wish there were more righteous persons. There are very few. But he is one himself. God had accounted him righteous. He was righteous.
Now in chapter 35 it is a question of the house of God; God coming into His own house. It is not Jacob’s house; it is God’s house, and how is He to find Jacob in it? He is coming in just to where Jacob is. He had had to do with Him there before, only He was in heaven and Jacob was on the earth, and now God comes down and [p. 521] He converses with Jacob. It is a question of His house. And that brings up the question, dear brethren, of place, as to how each of us is behaving himself in the house of God, in his own place, where he calls upon the name of the Lord. That is one thing. Another thing is how you behave yourself in the house of God. So we are told here, “And God went up from him in the place where he had talked with him”. Now it is not simply Jacob’s place; it is the house of God, but in the place where the conversation was held. God is signalizing that place by going up from him. He does not go off from Jacob and then go up; He goes up from the very spot where the conversation was held. Is that a Bible reading? Or a ministry meeting? It is a question of Beth-el; El-Beth-el. That is the point. It is the house of God, and God speaks with us in the house. We are told, “But the Spirit speaks expressly, that in latter times some shall apostatise from the faith” (1 Timothy 4:1). That is how it happens. God comes in and speaks with us, and then goes up. He is only here a short time. These seasons are not long. They are not intended to be long. The one in chapter 17 was not long, and certainly the one in chapter 18 was not long, and this one is not long. God has wonderful business matters to attend to, and if then He comes down to earth and visits us in His house, well, every minute counts. Who can afford to be absent? But then, we are speaking now about this man here; see what he says! What happened? “And God appeared to Jacob again after he had come from Padan-Aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, Thy name is Jacob; thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. And he called his name Israel. And God said to him, I am the Almighty God: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee; and kings shall come out of thy loins. And the land that I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land” (verses 9-12). Think of that! Well,
you say, that doesn’t take long to say, but think of what is contained in it. Think of how much God can put into a few words, a few sentences. Do we understand, dear brethren, what the house is? Jacob did. We had something about it today. He was on his way to this very place; what happened on the way? how God was with him in the way! This very chapter tells us that God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there” (verse 1). And he did; and he buried the idols by the way. And now God appears. It is a question of a visitation. It is not only an appearing, but it is actually the standing of the feet of Jehovah there. Let nobody attempt to explain how this took place; what feet they were. They were human feet, be sure of that. It is a question of God in Man coming in. That is how He came in. He came in intelligibly to Abraham, and His feet trod on the spot where Jacob was, and He spoke to him, and He went up from that spot. I am seeking, dear brethren, to impress us all with what God is; the familiarity we have with God come in in Jesus; for Jesus is God. We get all this perfectly set out in Jesus — the familiarity with which He is with His people, “all the time in which the Lord Jesus came in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day in which he was taken up from us” (Acts 1:21). So, the passage I read says, “And God went up from him in the place where he had talked with him”. That spot will never be forgotten. “And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had talked with him” (verse 14). It is never to be forgotten. And moreover, it says, “a pillar of stone, and poured on it a drink-offering, and poured oil on it. And Jacob called the name of the place where God had talked with him, Beth-el” (verses 14,15). Note that. It is a question of place every time, as if God says, Well, men claim this and that and the other, but I have got one place, however small physically; however circumscribed; I can take that; I can stand there and talk to you. And think of the speaking! What was conveyed to [p. 523] Jacob in this conversation, and now the Spirit of God says, It is not only what was said, but where it was said, and it is to be signalized for ever. So that this earth, you know, is remarkable in that way. How heaven looks at different places! I have often thought of Asia Minor, the spread of christianity, outside of Judaea. See what places there are there, and in this continent too, that heaven knows well, the spots where divine Visitors came and spoke and left and went back again into heaven. How God has followed up mankind with His light and testimony; so the places there are well-marked in heaven, and well-marked too by those who love the Lord and His people, and where His Name is dear. For He says, Wherever I place My Name there I will come to you — whatever place, there I will come to you and there I will bless you.
Well now, the point I would finish with is how did Jacob behave? What was his behaviour compared with chapter 28? Well, his behaviour here is that he pours a drink-offering on the pillar. Now, that pillar refers to my experience, and I was conscious when God was speaking to me that God loved me, that I pleased Him. That is the idea — Jacob is now a lovable man and he is in the right place, a place where he was directed to go; that is Beth-el. Well, he would say, God would have me there; there He wrestled with me, and there He changed my name. Not to be boastful — but see what a man he was! God made him what he was in Beth-el. He anointed the pillar, so that he could say at all times — That is the spot. He was conscious that God loved him, and that he was pleasing to Him. He would say, If I have done anything out of the way since, I am ashamed of myself. I always want to get back to the joy of that occasion at the spot where Jehovah spoke to me.