BAPTISM AND THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD

^[p. 359] BAPTISM AND THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD

Genesis 6: 8 - 10; Genesis 46: 1 - 8

JT Baptism, I thought, is pre-eminently connected with Noah, and my thought in having these two scriptures read was to link up the personal character of Noah and the faithfulness of God as seen in Jacob. I thought the faithfulness of God stands out distinctively in that he sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. There is no mention of Abraham here, because he now sees the fulfilment of the promises, which is in Christ risen from the dead. Isaac being a figure of Christ in that light, and God confirms that in saying that He is the God of His father Isaac. Then we have Jacob’s sons carrying him and all taken account of now as if secured in blessing. He had a long time to wait for this, for the Spirit of God mentions his generations in chapter 37, but proceeds no further than Joseph; all that intervenes is to work out the faithfulness of God in bringing back his family. Evil had already begun to work in them, a most discouraging history until we see the end of it. God in His faithfulness restored all, and then they are taken account of, so we have the names of all the children of Jacob, their wives, their sons and their daughters, not one omitted; an immense encouragement, it seems to me, for every parent, for we all have to experience delinquencies in our families, but this history, I think, is to encourage us to hold on in faith.

WP When you speak of God’s faithfulness in that regard, are you referring to His promises?

JT Yes; what He promises He would fulfil, and the light that came to Jacob from Joseph in Egypt brought it all to him; the spirit of Jacob revived, it says, and he sets out to Joseph, and this is the only instance, I think, where we find Isaac coming in so ^[p. 360] prominently, because Jacob sees that God has acted to fulfil the promises.

DLH I had the thought that when Jehovah says in answer to Jacob, “Fear not to go down to Egypt”, there had evidently been some fear in his mind. Isaac had been distinctly told not to go out of the land; he was the heavenly man, and it would seem that Jacob just at the border hesitated as to whether he was right to go out of the land, and Jehovah appeared to him in the most gracious way and said, “Fear not to go down”.

JT What is so fine in regard to Jacob’s state of soul then is that he sacrificed to the God of his father Isaac, meaning that he had come to see that although he was on his way to Egypt which was not within the scope of the promises (and that was the test, as you say, that he had to go there) yet it says he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac and God spoke to him, as if he had come under God’s eye now as acting in the full light of the position. But that was the point, whether he had faith enough as going out of the sphere of purpose, to rest in God. Everything is fulfilled in a risen Christ. He says, “Jacob, Jacob!”; the recurrence of the name, I think, means that he was especially in God’s mind at the moment; so “Jacob, Jacob”; “Abraham, Abraham”; “Saul, Saul”; these expressions mean that the person is especially in the mind of God, as corresponding to the light.

DLH He uses the title “Jacob”, too, not “Israel”. It was the name that was connected with the poor feeble man that had often stumbled, and was now encouraged to go on, for God was with him.

JT It seems to me to be an immense encouragement that even if the promises are not fulfilled in our own days, we may rest in the faithfulness of God, for He looks a long way ahead.

^[p. 361] Rem In the same way it says, “The sons of Israel carried Jacob their father”. Is that the same line of thought? There seemed to be in measure the embracing of the divine thought.

JT It says, “God spoke to Israel in the visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob!”: the thought of what he is spiritually is identified with what he is representatively. God works out His spiritual thoughts in us in our responsible life; we get remarkable instances of this in the history of Jacob. It is seen that God works out His own thoughts in connection with our responsibility to the end that the spiritual man is ministered to. The name “Israel” refers to what the man is in the mind of God, so it would appear that the sons had come to that. It says, “Jacob rose up from Beer-sheba; and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father”, as if they were no longer the mere product of Jacob after the flesh; they had become spiritual, and the previous history would show that this was so, for they had come to recognise Joseph. When our children come to what is spiritual, they begin to value their father. I think one of the greatest things in Scripture is the patriarchal principle, that you are able to go on and present the right thought to your children, even although they may be refractory and ungrateful. You are true to the light that has come to you; the principle of a patriarch is to hand down things, “House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers”, Proverbs 19: 14. A father conveys a right thought to his children; they may not recognise it, but you leave that with God — they have their posterity to think of. This passage shows that Jacob’s children had come to what is spiritual; they look at their father in the light of what he was spiritually.

Rem They took their cattle and their goods also, I notice.

JT There was a means provided, as it says,

“^[p. 362] Their father, and their little ones, and their wives, on the waggons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him”. I suppose these waggons would be representative of what God provides. You see the combination of circumstances here point to the result of God’s discipline, and that He is now commending His faithfulness, all the family of Jacob is secured; he is not carrying them now: there was a time when he was, and it must have been a heavy burden.

DLH It is interesting to note that when God speaks to Noah, after intimating that the end of all flesh had come before Him, He says, “Go into the ark, thou and all thy house; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation”, Genesis 7: 1. That is to say, there was one man and that man was righteous under the eye of God, and that God would have all his house embraced in the thought of salvation along with him. That would be a great encouragement to us, and I suppose what we are referring to in the later history of Jacob is a kind of answer to that; all his house was secured.

JT In chapter 37 he only gets one, God only takes account of one, Joseph, but here they are all taken account of, as secured for God.

WP Applying that to ourselves and speaking of the faithfulness of God, are you connecting it with the thought of “thou and thy house”?

JT Yes, indeed, I thought of reading that scripture first, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house”, Acts 16: 31. Very few take up that thought of the gospel; it is part of the gospel, you know. This chapter shows how we may reckon on the fulfilment of it; it is a promise and every promise of God is yea and amen in Christ (2 Corinthians 1: 20).

DLH I suppose, for the time being, Egypt takes rather a different character from what it usually ^[p. 363] bears in Scripture, and Pharaoh here is hardly representative of the power of evil, but rather of the hand of God.

JT Just so. When the male children are to be destroyed, then Satan is working again: “There arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph”. While Joseph ruled, Egypt was a different sphere. I suppose the exercises of Jacob found their answer in the Jewish remnant when earthly hopes were deferred; they had to take their part in the gentile world. His act in Egypt is recorded in Hebrews 11.

FWJ This is the only place where the details of a deathbed are given in the Old Testament, and it was a very happy one.

YY-L You said you had two thoughts in your mind, one in connection with Noah and one on the line of the faithfulness of God.

JT What I was thinking of is that the Spirit emphasises the godliness of Noah; he “found favour” it says, “in the eyes of Jehovah”, and then we have his history. Where the Spirit of God gives us a history, He has a new beginning before Him, I think. You have it in chapter 5, “This is the book of Adam’s generations”, the same idea. There you have the beginning of an exercise, and Enoch was the seventh from Adam (Jude 14), that was the end of that exercise, it culminated in life, not in death. “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him”, a wonderful culmination of Adam’s generation. It is Adam reinstated, not as fallen, but as reinstated in Seth. Light had come in, in the name that Seth gave his child. He called his son’s name Enosh (as you do today, Mr. Y-L, that is really what you call your boy); he is dying, his name means ‘mortal’, for life is only on that ground. That was how it came in. They called on the name of Jehovah; then you get Adam’s generations; so it is ^[p. 364] Adam taken up in the light of the acceptance of the solemn fact that man is under death, he is mortal. So Enosh, Seth, Cainan, and so on, each lives a long life, but he died, until we come to the seventh, and he does not die, and that, I think, is the light in which we may take account of the babe. He may die, but the culmination of it is that Enoch did not die, the seventh is the perfecting of the exercise. So the seventh does not die, but lives, but he lives as one who walked with God; that is what we have in mind. So Enoch is the end of that period. Then we have the generations of Noah; he begins another period, and we are to work out in this period the principle of divine judgment, not simply by death, but by the deluge. It is not “in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt certainly die”, that came out in Adam, culminating in Enoch; the period we begin in Noah involves the judgment of God on the world. It is wrath, the windows of heaven are opened and the fountains of the great deep; that is additional to the fact that a man has to die as having sinned. The whole system is dealt with; therefore Noah’s personal godliness is emphasised; God can take him up; he found favour with God. Then it says, ‘These are the generations of Noah’ (see Note); “Noah was a just man”, what a great thing that is! Of how many men of whom histories are written can this be said? He “was a just man, perfect amongst his generations: Noah walked with God”.

DLH Is he not typical here of the just One?

JT In a broad sense I am sure he is. Who could correspond with this and go through the judgment save Christ? Nevertheless, he is a type of any Christian who has children. He walked with God; then it says he “begot three sons”. Enoch did not begin to walk with God till after he begot the sons. I think Noah profits from his grandfather in that he sees, as the matter stands here, that it is better to ^[p. 365] begin to walk with God before you have the family than to begin after, for he began apparently before.

YY-L Have you in mind the two lines of thought, that the offspring may come into blessing as the result of the father, but fail in faithfulness, as seen in Noah, and on the other hand, the faithfulness of God, as seen in Noah’s offspring?

JT Yes.

YY-L Now what do you mean as to walking with God before the offspring arrives?

JT I think it is a very important thing that parents should, in setting out on their responsibilities as parents, walk with God. I have often thought that, even in regard of securing a wife; it says of Jacob that for a wife he kept sheep. One qualifies in caring for the saints. Many features enter into this principle of young parents, those who are starting out, taking account of things for God, for we are apt to be selfish and think for ourselves, but Noah walked with God; I have no doubt he saw the gain of that from his forefather; and these children were born into that light, these three sons.

NL Are you referring to the fact that Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah, and that Noah is an advance?

JT Yes. He walked with God, and then it says, “And Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth”, that is how it stands here, how the Spirit of God puts it down.

DLH With reference to what you were saying just now as to Noah’s special testimony; when he preached righteousness, I suppose that the righteousness which he preached was connected with the coming in of the judgment of God on the whole world’s system. If we preach righteousness (as we ought to do) the righteousness of God is connected very much with grace and the mercy-seat.

JT I am sure that is ^[p. 366] so.

DLH We have to take righteousness very much in regard to the way God Himself is acting. If He was about to act in judgment to overwhelm the then world, His righteousness would be consistent with that; whereas now God is acting in grace. His righteousness must be consistent with grace.

JT What an immense thing it was for God to have a vessel like this; for He had said, “My Spirit shall not always plead with Man; ... but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years”, meaning that Noah should be the vessel of the Spirit; indeed we are told in Peter that the preaching, although by Noah’s instrumentality, was really the preaching of Christ. It says He was “put to death in flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which also going he preached to the spirits which are in prison, heretofore disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah”, so that the Lord Himself, in spirit, preached through this vessel.

DLH Then I suppose the character of that preaching was impending judgment.

JT Noah had to bring up his family in the midst of most dreadful conditions. We speak of the conditions now in the world; they are getting worse, “Wicked men and juggling impostors shall advance in evil, leading and being led astray”, 2 Timothy 3: 13. The darkness is permeating everybody; it is an awful time; one is impressed by the darkness that there is, and your children come into that state of things and have to grow up in it, and it is a great encouragement to see that it is not any worse than Noah’s time, for apparently then there was not any sympathiser, and the children are brought into it, but provision is made, and he prepared an ark.

Ques What would answer to the ark today?

JT I think in a way the assembly. The two things go together; baptism is the negative side, which is your acceptance of God’s judgment of the ^[p. 367] world; but the positive thing is not the acceptance simply, you have to do the thing, he prepared an ark. In a wide sense, as Mr. H, says, the Lord is no doubt typified in the way Noah provides for his house; but it works out in you and me in the way in which we bring in the positive, what is for God. The question often arises, What are we to do with our children? Look at the literature they have to read in the schools, and all that, but the thing is how much meal you have. There is the great pot. A man’s house and bringing up a family involves much. One goes out and brings in a wild thing; in going to school he is apt to get hold of some infidel thought and bring it in. The prophet says, “Bring meal” (2 Kings 4: 41); that nullifies. For the house is not like the circle of the saints; you cannot put your child out because he has a wild thought; nullify it by bringing plenty of meal. The point is how much meal you have in the house. In Proverbs one has noticed there are two evil agencies; a man that speaks froward things and a woman who flatters with her words (Proverbs 2: 12, 16). The man is one who speaks with authority in the world; men think they have got what they call the truth; under that head they talk about evolution and all things of that sort; but they are froward things, they are contrary to the mind of God, however learned they may appear; they are contrary to Scripture. Then the woman who flatters is the side of the world that affords pleasure, theatres and picture palaces and novels, these flatter men in the flesh. The young man in Proverbs is enjoined to avoid these two things. The history of Jacob affords wonderful examples for us, so that we may know where the shoals are, going down to live at Succoth, for instance, to build a house.

DLH How do you explain that piece of serious failure, as I suppose it was in the thought that is ^[p. 368] brought in about Jacob giving Joseph a “tract of land above thy brethren”? I suppose he got Shechem as his portion, did he not? “The land which Jacob gave to his son Joseph”, John 4: 5.

JT I suppose it must be taken up in faith. He says, “which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow”, Genesis 48: 22. Jacob must have come back to the principle of the word. All things are ours, but they are not taken up on the line of nature or the flesh, but of the word which purifies everything. Every bit of inheritance now in the time of our pilgrimage is on the principle of what you take by faith and by conflict.

DLH Historically, what he took from the Amorite with his sword and his bow was rather humiliating, but the Spirit of God evidently takes that point up as a matter of faith. Jacob must have received it in faith, from God.

JT I am sure these two thoughts combined in the souls of those who have families will show us the practical righteousness of a walk with God counting on God’s faithfulness.

NL You referred in your prayer to Ephesians. It says to fathers to bring up their children “in the discipline and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6: 4), it is fathers. One feels the seriousness of the exhortation, for it involves sacrifice and patience, not only the act of baptism. Does it not involve that you go on in faith? Discipline is a word that means a great deal, does it not? It fits in in my mind a little with what you were saying in regard to Jacob. Sometimes the course of discipline involved is pretty long.

JT We see in Abraham how concerned he was as to his posterity. The last great feature in Abraham’s path is concern about a wife for Isaac. We have to be on our guard against alliances in our families; Isaac suffered from ^[p. 369] that.

YY-L Do you think the time comes in the history of a child when it grows up and may cease to feel under the parents’ power? Should that be so? I was thinking of “fathers” and the discipline continuing; you feel sometimes at a certain age the parents may lose grip of their children.

JT That is where you have to fall back on the faithfulness of God.

YY-L You would never give up as a father, would you?

JT No, never. The great thing in a parent is that “he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice”, Genesis 18: 19. Now all the sons of Abraham in Genesis answer to that, he saw to it that they should answer to it as far as lay in him, so that (as we have often remarked) he lived in tents with Isaac and Jacob. He was concerned about the immediate children, Isaac, and the grandchildren: he lived with them both.

Ques Would you connect the faithfulness of God with answering to every exercise we have in this way? I was thinking of the psalm, “Thou shalt eat the labour of thy hands”, Psalm 128: 2.

JT Just so. Faith without works is dead. If I reckon on the faithfulness of God, I see to it that it is fulfilled as far as lies in me. I have no doubt that one of the greatest features in Genesis is the patriarchal feature, that you are exercised all the time to pass down the right thought, for in the ordering of God you may have to leave the results, but you want the thing passed down. Abraham began with the God of glory; it has to be passed on.

YY-L It would be normal, would it not, for the parents to see their children brought into the gain of that to which they are committed? I suppose as parents we should desire that. A great many years ^[p. 370] often elapse between the moment the child is committed and the moment when it is brought into the gain of what is done, but God will answer to it.

JT Yes. In baptising your child he is heir with you of the same promise and you live with him accordingly.

DLH Joshua is very fine, when warning the children of Israel as to what was going to happen, idolatry and the like; he says, “As for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah”, Joshua 24: 15. He did not compromise.

ASL How wonderfully the two sides of things are put together in those two passages you have quoted, “Since Abraham shall indeed become a great and mighty nation; and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him”; that is sovereign purpose; then it goes on, “For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice, in order that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham what he hath spoken of him”, Genesis 18: 18, 19. It is made, in a way, dependent on his faithfulness. Sovereignty, on the one hand, and Abraham’s faithfulness on the other. We may say, God is sovereign and almighty and will carry out His promise; so He will; but in this way it is made to depend on us.

JT Then you see how the patriarchal principle works out in Joseph, bringing the children out from between his knees; he held them there. Then we are told the later posterity were born upon his knees (Genesis 50: 23).

Ques Would you say that in the light of the faithfulness of God you can fulfil your obligations?

JT Yes. It is a great incentive to be faithful when you have the light of the faithfulness of God, for the victory is won before you begin the battle.

YY-L Perhaps you will explain ^[p. 371] that.

JT You believe God. Nelson used to count his prizes before he went into the battle knowing he was going to get the victory. No one can do that better than the christian, for he believes God, and He will do what He has promised. You never give up a child, you hold to the promise.

FWJ “Mine”, Jacob says, the grandchildren are his as well as the sons.

JT I think that is why the Spirit of God gives us the list of names here to show that God takes account of every one of them, not one is lost.