READING (6)
READING (6)
JT There is in this book a line of instruction relative to recovery. We have at least four instances of it recorded, in each of which the result is for the pleasure of God. The one in the portion of Scripture which we have read culminated in Enoch who, as we are told in the New Testament, was “the seventh from Adam” — meaning that he was the great end of an exercise. In Hebrews 11: 5 we read that before Enoch’s translation “he has the testimony that he had pleased God”. So that the end of the exercise resulting from Adam’s failure was a product for God’s pleasure. Then in chapter 8 we have Noah, who in the recovery after the deluge offered up every clean beast in burnt-offerings; and the Lord smelt a sweet savour. That was for His pleasure.
Again, in Jacob’s departure, when he arrives back at Bethel it says he poured out a drink-offering; meaning that he was for God’s pleasure as restored. And then in the recovery of Joseph’s brethren we have a like thought; he embraced them. It was mutual; there was unity in it; “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (Psalm 133: 1). I thought it would be a help for us to see, as we are living in a day of recovery, that this is what God has before Him in it. Whether it be collective or individual, there is no true recovery unless there be pleasure for God in it.
Chapter 3 recounts the fall of Adam and Eve, as we call it; and chapter 4 is the result of that in the way of disaster, in which Eve takes the initiative.
Rem The point in the recovery is that it is for God’s pleasure.
JT Yes; if there is not something for God’s pleasure, recovery is not complete.
Rem And if there be real recovery, those recovered share in God’s pleasure.
JT Exactly. And this thought is conveyed by Enoch in a special way, because he is mentioned as the seventh from Adam; the end of a spiritual exercise.
Ques Would walking with God be the evidence of recovery?
JT Yes. Enoch’s name, I think, denotes ‘discipline’. So the discipline of God brings about a state pleasing to Him. His name would indicate what began with Adam in chapter 5.
Ques Is it like a new generation?
JT Yes; God begins over again in chapter 5. In chapter 4 the light begins with Seth. Recovery is always by means of light being introduced; it says that Seth had a son, and he called his name Enosh; meaning that he recognised that man was mortal; that he was not going to live for ever; that he was born to die. That implies that he had light. And “Then people began to call on the name of Jehovah” (Genesis 4: 26). If there had been no light, there would have been no recovery.
Ques Would Luke 15 come in here?
JT Well, the prodigal, as we speak of him, would be pleasurable to God.
PL In the recovery of David, after he numbered the people, there was light as to the house of God 1 Chronicles 21 and 22.
JT Just so. He recognised the judgment of God on him, and then thought of the house — preparing for it in every way. This was pleasing to God.
Rem Seth accepted the judgment of God on the flesh.
JT The name given to his son indicated that all his posterity were mortal, notwithstanding their [p. 85] longevity (the life of one of them extending to nine hundred and sixty-nine years, almost a millennium), but what is to be noted is that he died. That is in keeping with the light of that particular moment. In subsequent events there is always the light covering the period; and the light which covered this period was that which Seth had in naming his son Enosh. In fact, the first chapter of Genesis, what we term creation, was recovery. It was not what it had been as the primary work of God. All that follows the first verse is recovery. And the same principle obtains now. Indeed, it is a principle that runs through the whole of Scripture. God said, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1: 3). There can be no movement Godward at all, save where light is introduced.
Ques Why did they live so long in the dispensation of Seth?
JT God had His own wise thoughts in allowing such longevity. But no matter how long a man’s life lasted, he had to die. The light Seth had was concerning every family. It was there as testimony.
Ques Would you say that while God works in the way of recovery, where departure has taken place on our side, the departure has to be acknowledged?
JT Yes; that is so. And I think the first chapter of Genesis encourages us to hope for that; it enables you to be patient when things happen. In Genesis 1: 2 it is said that “darkness was on the face of the deep”. But the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters, waiting, no doubt, for the time when light should be commanded. And God said, “Let there be light”. It does not say that the Holy Spirit said, Let there be light. He is always subservient to the will of God. In the address to the assemblies in Revelation the Lord speaks: “These things says the Son of God”, etc. (Revelation 2: 18). That is the commandment, that is authority. But what the Spirit says is the development of that. And so in Genesis 1 the command [p. 86] is from God, but the Holy Spirit was waiting to come in on the light. He works in the light. The will of God and the activity of the Holy Spirit go together. That is a great principle running right through from the beginning.
Rem So there is an appeal to the ear: “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says”, (Revelation 2 and 3).
JT Yes; but notice that when the Lord speaks, you do not get that. It is authority. But, “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says”. You are not to judge what He may say, because He brings things up, and applies what the Lord says.
Ques Would you say that recovery is sovereign?
JT Yes. What can we do if God does not operate?
Rem You get the same thought in connection with John the baptist; he did not begin his mission until Christ was here, so that he had One to point to.
JT John was a burning and a shining light, but he was not the true light. The true light was here, and it was in that light he operated.
I do not know any part of scripture that has been more assailed in modern times than the book of Genesis; the enemy has attacked it. Save in the first verse we are not occupied with God’s primary operations. The first verse says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. All that follows is to bring in recovery, and that begins with light. What can men know about the book of Genesis, unless God commands light in their souls?
Rem And our part is to look to Him to let the light shine in.
JT Yes. And the Holy Spirit was hovering there over the darkness, ready and waiting for God to speak. For it was due to the Creator that He should speak; and He said, “Let there be light. And there was light”.
PL [p. 87] Have we the sovereignty of God in connection with the Galatians? “God sent forth his Son”, (Galatians 4: 4); and then immediately after that we read that “God has sent out the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Galatians 4: 6). They had fallen away, and God brings in greater light than they had before to recover them. Then God sends out the Spirit; that would answer to the recovery.
JT Just so; and the Spirit cries, “Abba, Father”. This is pleasing to God.
Ques Would increased light be seen in Enoch?
JT Undoubtedly. But this chapter gives you the moral features of the recovery. Chapter 1 gives you the same thing in moral sequence: you have light, then separation of light from darkness on the first day; the firmament on the second day; the earth, vegetable life, fruit trees, etc., on the third day; lights in the heavens on the fourth day; fish, living creatures and fowl on the fifth day; and on the sixth day we have human life. And so it is morally, too, in that way. Whatever the disaster in the second verse arose from, we cannot say much about that; but we do know that the disaster in chapter 4 arose from sin in man, and the recovery that is dealt with in this chapter had to do with that. “From the beginning the devil sins”, we are told (1 John 3: 8); what the history of that is we know little about, but we do know the history of sin in man.
PL And we have got our hands full in facing it.
JT Yes; we begin with ourselves there.
In chapter 4 it is the mother that is spoken of, whereas in chapter 5, it is the father all through. It is a question of begetting.
Ques What would help us in regard to local difficulties?
JT Well, no man can have authority unless he [p. 88] has moral power. And I think that is what comes out in Adam; he had re-acquired the position of head. So chapter 5 begins over again: “This is the book of Adam’s generations. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him”. God will never give up His original thought; He ignores chapter 4, so to speak.
Ques He “called their name Adam:” what is the meaning of that?
JT It means that Eve was merged in him; that she was not taking the lead. He “called their name Adam, in the day when they were created”. Adam is the head; he is to dominate everything.
Rem I thought it was suggested that Eve had taken the lead in chapter 4.
JT She did; she thought she had acquired in Cain a man from Jehovah.
PL The expression that puts ‘I’ first, and ‘Jehovah’ last, will carry its own sorrowful fruit.
Rem God exercised His right in regard to Enoch.
JT That is what comes out. Noah is the beginning of an exercise. Enoch is the end of one, and therefore I think he sets out this great principle we are dealing with, because it was said of him that “before his translation he has the testimony, that he had pleased God” (Hebrews 11: 5). And what led him to walk with God was that he begat a son, Methuselah. After he had begotten Methuselah he walked with God three hundred years. He was not going to duplicate Adam’s mistake; he was going to hold the position God had given him. If he is to have moral weight to bring up his children, he must walk with God.
Ques Enoch saw the “holy myriads;” as it says in Jude 14, “Behold, the Lord has come amidst his holy myriads”. Enoch prophesied that. Do you think he saw the result of his walking with God?
JT He was probably alone walking with God in those days. Apparently he did not have many companions [p. 89] in walking with God, so it would be a great stay to his heart to see the “holy myriads”. Holiness is essential to walking with God.
PL Hebrews 3: 1 speaks of “holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling”.
Rem Enoch was evidently converted when he was sixty-five years of age. It says he “walked with God after he had begotten Methuselah three hundred years”.
JT It brings up the question of the household. The presence of a family involves serious consideration. How can I represent God to them unless I walk with Him? And one has always that privilege one may always have such companionship. What God did not find in Adam in the garden He found in Enoch. He walked in the garden in the cool of the day, it says, and He called for Adam. I suppose God intended that Adam should be a companion. He breathed into him; the transaction was very intimate. He desired that Adam should enter into His thoughts. But what He did not find in Adam He now finds in a disciplined man.
Rem If the head of every household walked with God, what an immense change there would be!
JT Yes; and especially so had that been the case in the era before the flood, before the national order was introduced. That was a time of families, or tribes, hence the great importance of the head of a tribe or family walking with God.
Rem There is a growing line of apostasy in this section of Genesis, and the only thing for it is that the head of a family should walk with God.
JT Noah “prepared an ark for the saving of his house” (Hebrews 11: 7). This thought is accentuated in Noah. If Enoch is taken up to heaven, his testimony remains, and the Holy Spirit uses it; it is material that He can use, and so He brings it forward in Noah. I have no doubt the thought began with Seth really,
[p. 90] that is to say, the thought of the head of the house naming his child, and walking with God before his family; and it runs right through, so that you find it in Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, etc. In other words, it is the great patriarchal thought.
Ques Is recovery to the likeness of God? Is that the thought?
JT You get the thought of likeness in the first verse, “In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him”. Then it says, “Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his likeness”. So that these are initial thoughts, but they convey what God intends to emphasise, namely, that there must be likeness. So that Adam was in God’s likeness, and Seth in Adam’s likeness. There must be likeness if the families are to represent God on the earth. However ungrateful the children may be, the parents’ concern is to pass on the likeness; that is their responsibility.
Rem 1 suppose in Timothy we find an example of the likeness having been passed on from his mother, and his grandmother.
Ques How can we pass on this likeness? We are dependent on the sovereignty of God.
JT Quite so. “I have nourished and brought up children; and they have rebelled against me”, God said (Isaiah 1: 2), but He kept on to His own principles; He never gave them up. You can count on God to use your testimony for the following generation.
Ques Would the testimony be what we reflect?
JT The testimony is the measure in which you reflect God. The patriarchal idea necessarily emanated from God.
Now when man is created, God enters into relation with him; chapter 2. What infidels cavil at involves the most precious truth; that is to say, man is in special relationship with God, hence the name. Jehovah here.
[p. 91] Rem It is interesting to notice that the patriarchal thought, which would go with the thought of likeness, is traced back in Luke’s gospel to Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
JT That shows that God had recovered His primary thought, a generation running right through. It is an immense thought for parents to lay hold of. The thing is to hold on to your responsibility to convey likeness. That is a treasure of the soul, and God will use it. It affords material for the Holy Spirit. It is remarkable that David, although he failed so remarkably in his house, acknowledges it: “Although my house be not so before God”, he says, “Yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant” (2 Samuel 23: 5). And the Holy Spirit first recognises in David — on the day of Pentecost — that he was a patriarch, and Solomon was the product of David’s fatherhood. In whatever other respects he failed, he looked after Solomon, and he brought him up patiently and tenderly.
PL David was a disciplined man before Solomon was born.
JT Yes; he refused to take food or to wash himself while the child was ill, but when the child died he said, “Why should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12: 23). There was perfect resignation to the will of God. And then Solomon comes in; he is the offspring of a disciplined man, and he has all the advantage of having a disciplined father.
Rem Though one might not live to see it, yet the child would get the gain of it.
JT God follows up the light that shines on a faithful parents’ household.
PL So that the greatest heritage a man could leave his children would be the fruit of his discipline with God.
JT Now we find in all these extensive families,
[p. 92] their years being given, that every one died. We have a like passage in chapter 11, but it does not say they died, because the point there is not to emphasise the light that Seth had. Here it is to emphasise that light; and so it says of each one that he lived so many years, “and he died”. Longevity must not blind us. Things may arise that seem to dispute the light that governs the position, such, for example, as the apparently long delay in the return of the Lord, so that the scoffers say, “Where is the promise of his coming? ... all things remain thus from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3: 4). But they are wilfully ignorant.
And so, if you take in all these heads of families, some of them living nearly as long as a millennium, you could understand how blinded the young people would become to the fact that their fathers would die. These men would possibly have thousands of descendants, and that fact would seem to deny the truth of the position; that is to say, that men should die. So that Enoch brings in the confirmation of the light; and we may be sure that the Lord is not failing to give confirmation to faith regarding the Lord’s return. We know the promise is sure, we are not deceived by the delay. Enoch walked three hundred years with God, and I suppose his sons and daughters would be reminded of that every morning, if, indeed, not every part of the day. He walked with God, and “before his translation he has the testimony, that he had pleased God”.
Ques Is there a difference between walking in the light, and walking with God?
JT There is not much difference, because God is in the light. “If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” (1 John 1: 7). Walking with God emphasises that.
Rem Of Samuel it is said, that “Jehovah was with him”, but Enoch “walked with God”. Is there any difference?
JT There was no commission given to Enoch. Nothing is said about his service. Samuel had a commission, and he needed divine support in his service, which is of course important.
But what I believe the Holy Spirit has in this passage is that the result of the exercise is recovery. God has man walking with Him for three hundred years! Well, that is worth all the exercise, and all the breakdown. If He did not get it in Eden, He got it in a scene of breakdown in a disciplined man. No one is fully recovered save as he is walking with God.
Rem Then God in this case had greater pleasure than He would have had in Adam if he had walked in innocence for ever.
JT Yes. Enoch is the fruit of God’s moral dealings — a disciplined man. Adam, as he stood, was the fruit of His creatorial power. Morally, Adam could not be translated to heaven; he was not made for it, he was made for earth. But the first man under discipline becomes a heavenly man. Enoch was a disciplined man. The first essential point in recovery is what God has got out of it for His pleasure.
PL A disciplined man can give God pleasure, which a man in his sins cannot do. Do we get this principle in the man who is mentioned in John 9? The disciples ask the Lord, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered, Neither has this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be manifested in him” (John 9: 2, 3).
JT Yes; there was a moral element in that man. He had sight given to him; but that was not all, he had to go through a process; and in that process the works of God were [p. 94] manifest.
Rem The exercise here is complete.
JT I think so. Enoch was the seventh; which would signify complete exercise.
Rem Often in individuals, as well as in companies, you may see partial recovery. That does not reach the pleasure of God.
JT No. There may be an endeavour to meet things legally, by arrangements, and what not, and yet there is nothing for God in it.
Rem It does not come about as the result of walking with God.
JT In the case of Cain there was a certain reasoning with him, and then he said, “My punishment is too great to be borne” (Genesis 4: 13). There was not a word about his guilt; he did not go to the root of the matter. But see how merciful God was! Even to such an one as Cain, He says, “Whoever slayeth Cain, it shall be revenged sevenfold. And Jehovah set a mark on Cain, lest any finding him should smite him. And Cain went out from the presence of Jehovah” (Verses 15, 16). There was not the slightest sign of God’s pleasure there. He went out, and left God behind him.
Rem Enoch walked with God three hundred years. The Lord Jesus Christ was here only a comparatively short period.
JT Yes. He was so delightful to God that He would have Him in heaven. So Luke makes much of heaven’s delight in Him. In Luke 9: 51 we read “It came to pass when the days of his receiving up were fulfilled, that he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem”. It does not say His ‘going up’, but His “receiving up;” because heaven wanted Him back. And then as He was blessing them, “he was separated from them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24: 51). And we may be sure that heaven does not wish the assembly to be delayed here; but God would honour us that we should be in accord with His long-suffering. The church as disciplined, and [p. 95] knowing His mind, should be content to be in the great position of identification with God in His long-suffering.
PL So the generation that God wants is a generation He can leave here, and entrust with His thoughts and interests.
JT And so John comes in at the end to show us the greatness of being trustworthy. God honours us, and entrusts us with His thoughts in the end of the period.
Ques Would walking with God at the present moment involve walking in the light of the dispensation?
JT Yes; walking with God at any period means that you are walking in the light that governs that dispensation.
Ques Is there such a thing as partial recovery?
JT Yes.
Rem They may stop in the middle of it.
JT Yes, they may indeed. Whereas what we have in this chapter, in the light of the New Testament, is “the seventh from Adam” — the complete thing.
Ques Would Jacob be partially recovered when he took the stone and set it up for a pillar, and poured a drink-offering and oil on the top of it; Genesis 35?
JT As soon as Joseph was born, Jacob says “Send me away, that I may go to my place and to my country” (Genesis 30: 25). Recovery, I think, begins there. It is the light of Christ in the soul. But he waited still in Syria after that for a time; then finally he leaves it, and he wrestles with God. He was further on there. He says, Now I want to get the blessing. Heretofore he had been occupied in getting cattle, and wives, and children, and what not, but now he says to God in effect, I want you to bless me. He had plenty of this world’s goods, but [p. 96] he wanted something more. That shows he was progressing spiritually. He says, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me” (Genesis 32: 26). And we read, “He blessed him there”. He got it. That was a fresh step. Then afterwards he gets into disgrace. But God is faithful, and He says to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto the God that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother” (Genesis 35: 1). And Jacob set up the pillar, and poured on it a drink-offering, and poured oil on it; showing that God had secured the full result.
Rem How many there are in Christendom who have got the light of forgiveness and justification, but never move on into the light of sonship!
JT Just so. And where sin happens, however much acknowledgement there may be, unless the thing is bottomed, and unless the soul is really with God about it, the pleasure of God is not there.
Rem In recovery a good deal would lie in the sensibilities.
Ques Does God stop short in carrying out His intentions to recover a soul; does He not bring one finally to what He had in His mind for them?
JT Yes; but then there are hundreds like those to whom He refers in Matthew 23: 27 when He says, “How often would I have gathered thy children as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!”
Rem But if you are clinging to God, He will never cease until the final result is accomplished.
JT Yes; but that depends on how far I want to go. I might turn aside to Shechem and build a house. You see it was God who suggested to Jacob to leave Shechem. That was the faithfulness of God.
PL Recovery depends on going down. Was it not characteristic of the Lord? He recovered all by going to the greatest depth.
[p. 97] Rem I suppose in the case of the ten leprous men, partial recovery would be suggested in nine of them, but the tenth, the one who came back, was fully recovered.
Rem In the epistle of Jude 24, already referred to as speaking of the seventh from Adam, we also read that God “is able to keep you without stumbling, and to set you with exultation blameless before his glory”.
JT Yes; and Jude also says, “But ye, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God” (verse 20).
Ques In connection with light and recovery do you think God calls attention to a divine principle in it as a rule?
JT No doubt something would come out of it. “Out of the eater came forth food” (Judges 14: 14). Whatever spoil there is, is to be a permanent asset in the house.