JACOB, GOD'S PEOPLE, AND ISRAEL, HIS INHERITANCE

JACOB, GOD’S PEOPLE, AND ISRAEL, HIS INHERITANCE

Numbers 21:4-9; Numbers 21:16-18; Numbers 23:10; Numbers 23:21-23; 1 Corinthians 1:1-3; Ephesians 1:1-6

We were speaking this morning of the cross of Christ and of the answer to it in the Spirit, and I wish to follow on that line a little this afternoon, and to show that, as the import of the cross of Christ is apprehended and its power known by the Spirit, we are able to take account of the saints, ourselves among them, of course, in a double way, which is suggested in the words which we get in each of the four of Balaam’s prophecies regarding Jacob and Israel. I have only read from two of those prophecies, but it will be found that in each of the four the people of God are referred to both as Jacob and as Israel. Jacob does not necessarily mean the supplanter, but sometimes stands for the people of God here as in testimony and responsibility according to the will of God, so at the end of Psalm 78 we read that David was taken from the sheepfolds to feed Jacob His people, God’s people, and Israel His inheritance. That is what I have in mind, that Jacob and Israel come into view following on the brazen serpent and the springing well; Jacob being God’s people as here in testimony according to His will, answering to what we have in the first epistle to the Corinthians, and Israel being God’s inheritance; that is, the saints of God in their dignity in sonship as ministering to His pleasure, answering to what we have in Ephesians.

Well now, the cross of Christ has a double aspect. On the one hand it represents God’s judgment of man in flesh, and a very severe and unsparing judgment it is. On the other hand it represents the world’s estimate of Christ, and the world’s estimate of those who are true to Christ. So that there are these two aspects of the cross of Christ. They are closely connected, and the more we are true in our own souls and walk to the cross of Christ as the expression of God’s judgment of man in flesh, the more we shall come into despisal and rejection by this world, so that the two are closely related. The world is made up of man and his will and his ambition and his independence of God and his glory. Jude speaks of those who speak great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage. That is very characteristic of the world, and any person who appreciates the cross of Christ would completely disallow anything of that kind. He would not allow the very beginnings of it in his own soul; it would be entirely contrary to the bearing of the cross of Christ. And as going through the world characterised by that spirit his very movements and attitude become a condemnation of the world, and he thus comes in for the same reproach and rejection, the same despisal as Christ did. He finds that the result of carrying in his soul the cross as representing God’s judgment of man, and being true to it, is that he comes in for the world’s judgment of Christ. The world has the same contempt for him as it had for Christ. Paul says “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.” That is, it was reciprocal. He judged the world in the light of the cross of Christ, and the world judged Paul according to what its estimate of Christ was.

Now it is not all at once that we arrive at these things, and the section of the book of Numbers from chapter 11 to chapter 21 has in mind that God’s people should learn by experience what flesh in themselves is. God knew it from the outset. It was not a question of God having to discover it, it was a question of God’s people having to discover it, in order that they might learn how God had dealt with it in the cross of Christ, and the answer to it in the Holy Spirit. We find when we come to chapter 21 that the children of Israel “journeyed from Mount Hor by way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom; and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.” Edom was their brother, and a most unreasonable brother he was, as we may read from the previous chapter. Israel had only requested that they should be allowed to go through his territory; they promised to keep to the king’s highway, they even promised to pay for any water they drank, and yet for all that Edom refused to give them passage. And here God does not say a word about Edom. What He had in mind in setting Edom in proximity to Israel was that by Edom’s contrariness and unreasonable attitude what flesh was in Israel should prove itself. And therefore, dear brethren, it may be sometimes that in God’s ordering we find ourselves set amongst some who are a great test to us, but what has God in mind in it? God did not say a word about Edom; He would deal with Edom in due time. If we want to know what God thinks about Edom we can read Obadiah and Amos, and others of the prophets, but for the moment He was not saying a word about Edom. The whole point was that His people might discover in the presence of what was so unreasonable the true character of the flesh in them. It says, “the soul of the people was much discouraged ... and the people spake against God and against Moses. Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loathes this light bread.” A most terrible conclusion, “our soul loathes this light bread.” That is, Christ as the manna was loathed; that is what flesh is capable of. And so it says, “God sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.” God was bringing home to the people what the source was of the murmuring and the loathing of the light bread; it was the serpent, the poison of the serpent was in them and could not be eradicated. A solemn thing for us to come to, dear brethren, that the poison of the serpent is in our flesh and cannot be eradicated. It is what we are in flesh, as it says in Romans 8, “The mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God; for neither indeed can it be and they that are in flesh cannot please God.” A most solemn thing to come to; to discover it in ourselves. That is what they had to come to, and then as coming to it, God set before them His remedy. They cried to Moses and asked him to pray to Jehovah that He would take away the serpents from them, but God did not take away the serpents. There is no word that He took the serpents from them. It is not a question of removing the serpents. It is a question of setting us up in Christ by the Spirit in an entirely new power and life. It is not a question of mending the flesh or improving it; it is a question of judging it and of setting us up in Christ by the Spirit. And so God told Moses to make a serpent of brass and put it on a pole and everyone who looked upon it lived. We know what answers to that. As we read in the Lord’s own words in John 3: 14, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up, that everyone who believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal.”

The Son of man is a title of the Lord Jesus as the One who has come in as Man to take up all that God had in view for man, but before He could take up all that God had in view for man, He must also take up and remove all that lay upon man. Man being what he is, the Son of man must be lifted up on the cross. That is. He must, as made sin, endure the judgment of God against sin, so that sin in the flesh might be condemned, as it says in Romans 8, “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” Now that is set before us objectively in the cross of Christ. There was a divine necessity that the Son of man should be lifted up, but then divine love entered into it, so it says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,” John 3: 16. And so there is, as I say, the love of God, a wonderful expression of it, His only begotten Son, and there is the love of Christ in it too, a twofold lever, as power in our souls to accept the truth. The answer to the look of faith, by which the truth is accepted, is life eternal, and this is in the Spirit. That is how God has met the position. He has set us in Christ, in the life of another Man, for the Spirit is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and with power to move in accordance with it. From this point they journeyed; they no longer wandered, they journeyed. It is a point reached in our soul from which there is definite progress. So it says, after introducing certain intermediate journeyings, “And from thence to Beer; that is the well of which Jehovah spoke to Moses, Assemble the people, and I will give them water.” Now this is evidently an allusion to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit, I venture to say, viewed collectively. We have to learn the gain of the Spirit individually, which is what is in mind in the third chapter of John’s gospel, “Whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have life eternal,” but the springing well in Numbers 21 is the Spirit recognised collectively as the only power for life and freshness and living ministry, so to speak, when we come together. And so it says, “Then Israel sang this song.” They all sang it. “Rise up, well! sing unto it.” That is what should mark us when we come together as we are now, or at reading meetings, or on any other occasions; when the saints come together there should be this attitude of mind with us, that that is our outlook. “Rise up, well!” That is, we are not going to rely upon natural ability, we are not going to take things as a matter of course. We rely upon the fact that if there is to be any living ministry, it can only be in the Holy Spirit. And then it says “The princes digged the well.” There is responsibility on the part of the brethren, viewed in their princeliness, to dig the well. It may be a special responsibility on those who are leaders, but still one would not limit it to that, but there is a responsibility to dig the well. Digging the well simply means getting rid of all that hinders the free movement of the Spirit among us. “The princes digged the well, the nobles of the people digged it, by the direction of the lawgiver, with their staves.” The direction of the lawgiver involves that there is practical subjection to the Lord, and the staves, which would normally be most unlikely instruments to dig a well with, would speak of dependence. If the Spirit of God is recognised as the only power for bringing in what is living and refreshing for the people of God, the action of the Holy Spirit will only be realised amongst us as we ourselves are marked by dependence. And therefore the princes are responsible to dig the well by the direction of the lawgiver, and it must be with their staves. The element of dependence must always enter into it.

Well now, following on this we come, as I indicated at the outset, to Balaam’s prophecies. I do not want to touch on them in any detail, except to call attention to what I have already referred to, and that is, that in all of them the people are referred to in the twofold light of Jacob and Israel; Jacob being God’s people here in responsibility in testimony and Israel being God’s inheritance, what the saints are for His pleasure as sons. It is a great thing to have that two-fold view of the saints, and we are entitled to have that view of ourselves once we have learned to judge the flesh and to take account of ourselves soberly as those who are in Christ by the Spirit. It means that we can take account now of what God’s thoughts regarding us are, and that without any unreality. Before I pass on to Corinthians and Ephesians I would just refer briefly to the passages we read in Numbers 23. First of all there is the greatness of the saints in verse 10, “Who can count,” Balaam says, “the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his.” There is a wicked man who had his eyes opened by God to see the saints as God views them, and he is constrained to say, “Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his.” One often thinks of this at a burial; it may be some obscure brother or sister who has never figured at all in prominence in men’s estimation, but he dies the death of the righteous, he dies in Christ, he dies as put to sleep by Jesus. He dies as one who has departed to be with Christ, and who will come out shining in Christ’s glory in a day shortly to come. You can well understand Balaam with his eyes opened by God saying, “Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his.” What would a burial in Westminster Abbey be as compared with the death of the righteous! It is a poor thing if we have low thoughts of the saints. The most humble, obscure, unlearned of saints is far greater than the greatest man on earth if he is not among the saints of God. Then how numerous they are too. They may appear very small, local companies may often be small, and we may feel the smallness of things, but let us remind ourselves of the wealth that the Lord has under His hand in those who are fallen asleep. “Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? “They are referred to as the dust of Jacob, reminding us in a way that that is what we are in one sense. God remembers that we are dust; that is, the frailty of our condition.

Abraham, speaking to God, said, “I have ventured to speak ... I, who am dust and ashes.” And so the saints are not boastful; they have learned the cross of Christ. They have learned to recognise that in themselves they are dying people, so to speak, but then “who can count the dust of Jacob?” that is, the immense wealth that the Lord has in those who have fallen asleep. In one moment they will all be raised in His own likeness, and what a glorious distinguished company it will be then. And then in the next passage we read; it says, “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob neither hath he seen wrong in Israel.” God is entitled to look at His people according to what they are in Christ. He is entitled, if He pleases, to close His eyes to anything in their behaviour that is unbecoming; not that I am making light of it, far from it; nor will God make light of it, far from it; but on the other hand He is entitled to close His eyes to all that, for all that has been met in the cross of Christ, and He is entitled to view them entirely as apart from it all in Christ for His own pleasure. “He hath not beheld,” it says, “iniquity in Jacob neither hath he seen wrong in Israel.” That was God’s answer to Balaam’s effort, the effort of an enemy to curse the people of God. Balaam has to say, “I have received commandment to bless; and he hath blessed and I cannot reverse it.” Hence, if that is how God views the saints let us see to it that we view them in the same way; that we do not regard them according to what God is not looking at, but that we regard them according to what they are in His sight. And he says further, “According to this time,” that is, at the end of the wilderness journey, “it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!”

Now to enlarge a little on what answers to Jacob and Israel, I have read these passages from Corinthians and Ephesians. In Corinthians the saints are viewed as God’s people. You will remember that when God first sent Moses to Pharaoh He told him to say, “Israel is my son, my firstborn. And I say to thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me,” Exodus 4: 22, 23. God’s first thought was a son and the service of a son, and then on subsequent occasions when Moses was sent to Pharaoh his message was “Let my people go, that they may serve me,” Exodus 7: 16; Exodus 8: 1, 20. The thought of a people connects itself with the service of God in the wilderness, while the thought of sons connects itself with the service of God in the land, and that is what is in view in these two epistles. You will notice that in each of them Paul calls himself an apostle by the will of God, showing that the truth that he was about to open up was specially important as definitely linked in his mind with the will of God. So this matter of the people of God here in testimony, the assembly of God in a place, on the one hand; and then this matter of sonship according to God’s eternal purpose, applying to saints universally, on the other hand; both refer to the saints according to God’s will. So in 1 Corinthians it says “unto the church [or assembly] of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints,” or saints by calling, and then it goes on to say, “with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.” We are now dealing with the assembly locally. I do not think you can speak of the assembly of God in a place, even in principle, if you have no saints there who are governed by the truth of the assembly. The mere fact that there may be saints in a place, and therefore abstractly belonging to the assembly, does not warrant, as far as I see, any mention of the assembly of God in that place if they are not in fact moving together as governed by the light of the assembly, for one great thought in the assembly of God in a place is that it can be taken account of as God’s accredited vessel of testimony in that place. If you have two or three saints in a place moving together as governed by the light of the assembly, then without assuming to be the assembly, which no instructed Christians would do, you can speak of the assembly of God in the place in the principle of it.

Now the idea of the assembly of God is that of a dignified company with which the name of God is connected publicly. It stands in the place as a company or vessel with which God’s name and testimony are identified. Now that is a great responsibility as well as a great privilege. The Lord Himself when here was the vessel of testimony, it was a testimony of grace, and He stood up in the synagogue of Nazareth where He had been brought up and said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor,” and so on. He stood up publicly as the anointed vessel of testimony for God in that place where He had been brought up. Now Christ having gone on high and the Holy Spirit having come, the assembly takes His place as the anointed vessel for the expression of God in each locality, and so in 1 Corinthians the assembly is spoken of as the Christ. Paul says, “so also is the Christ,” 1 Corinthians 12: 12. He is referring to the assembly. That conveys the idea of the assembly of God as an anointed vessel, composed of persons set together in a place, bearing the name of God and intended to maintain a testimony to God. They are part of His habitation and therefore they are to maintain amongst themselves the conditions suited to God’s habitation, so that people may get a right impression of God as seen in His sanctuary. Hence you can see at once, dear brethren, what a serious matter it is if any evil is found among the saints, because it is dishonouring the name of God. The name of God is called upon them, they are the assembly of God, and if any evil comes to light amongst them the name of God is brought into public disrepute in the place where they are, a most solemn thing. Hence the necessity for priestly care on the part of all the saints, brothers and sisters, old and young, alike. It was the priests’ responsibility as well as their privilege to maintain what was suitable to God in His sanctuary, and that devolves upon us all the time we are here. Watchfulness as to that is to mark us; first in regard of ourselves, and then in regard of one another.

And so in order that they may be equal to this position of being the assembly of God in Corinth they are spoken of also as “sanctified in Christ Jesus.” That links on with what we have been saying as to the cross and the Spirit. The cross is what the apostle brings forward in the first chapter to meet the unsatisfactory state of things at Corinth. He brings in the word of the cross, because every sort of evil was there, and the root of all that was there was that the man that God had ended in the cross had been revived at Corinth. That is the root of all the troubles amongst us, dear brethren. Whatever trouble arises amongst us, whatever its character, you can trace it to the fact, that the cross of Christ has not its place in our souls. If the cross of Christ in the power and import of it is maintained in our souls there will be no trouble amongst the saints. The saints are spoken of as sanctified in Christ Jesus; that is, they are set apart to God in Him. How else could God commit His testimony to them? Anything committed to the first man is bound to fail, history proves that; so God does not commit His testimony now to the first man. He commits His testimony to an assembly of persons sanctified in Christ Jesus, those set apart to Him in the Man of His pleasure by the Holy Spirit. Such persons are saints by divine calling, so when the apostle is dealing in chapter 5 with the gross evil that had shown itself among the saints at Corinth, he says, “Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, according as ye are unleavened,” not in order that ye may become unleavened. That is, he brings to bear upon them what they are in Christ, sanctified persons in Christ Jesus, in order that they may learn to judge and discard everything that is inconsistent with it. Hence, it is of great importance to us, dear brethren, first to appropriate for ourselves the cross of Christ, and to get the gain ourselves of the presence of the Spirit of God, and then to learn to view ourselves and our fellow saints according to what we are, sanctified in Christ Jesus, unleavened. That is what we are, and as such God is pleased to entrust His testimony to us, in the place where He has set us, and the power for the maintenance of the position is the Holy Spirit.

Now when the tabernacle, God’s dwelling place, was constructed, it was anointed in all its parts. Everything had to come under the anointing, the Spirit of God was to characterise everything that was done in God’s dwelling place. So when we come together in assembly the Spirit of God should give character to everything. The Spirit of God imparts a certain dignity, a certain power, a certain intelligence. The Spirit of God imparts to those who are characterised by Him something that is entirely of God, and marked out as not being of man, and that is what God is looking for in the assembly. If you look at Exodus 30, where you find the instructions for the making of the anointing oil, you will see that it had to be carefully compounded. That is, it can only be arrived at by a good deal of careful exercise. It was not only olive oil, but there were liquid myrrh and other spices in its composition. One might have intelligence in the Spirit and yet might be marked by a certain uncouthness in the way things were done, but the anointing oil involves a carefully balanced compound bringing in different features of the Spirit of God and of the Spirit of Christ, so that there is a certain dignity, and a certain grace, and a certain authority, and a certain intelligence, about all that is done. That is what God is looking for in His assembly, and I believe the more we think about it the more we will see that the anointing ought to enter into everything that is done in the assembly, including, for instance, the giving out of notices and the raising of tunes; everything that is done in the assembly publicly should bear the distinctive impress of the anointing, for the reason that God is publicly represented in it.

Now to refer to Ephesians, I was saying a moment ago, that in the recognition of the cross of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit we are able to take account of ourselves and of the saints according to divine thoughts, and it is a wonderful thing when we have believed in Christ and received the Holy Spirit to take account of the fact that that is the result of God having wrought in us. All is really of God. There has been the side of our responsibility to believe the glad tidings presented to us, and thank God we have done it, but having done it we have to recognise that all is of God, that all is the result of the work of God. The Lord makes that perfectly clear in the third chapter of John’s gospel, that there must be new birth, an entirely new beginning, entirely of God. And God has thus operated, His love entering into it, because He formed a purpose regarding us before the foundation of the world. We are entitled now to take account of ourselves in that light, no longer thinking of our past responsible history or indeed even for the moment thinking of our present responsible history as the assembly of God in a place, but to take account of ourselves as the subjects of divine purpose before the foundation of the world, foreknown; as it says “whom he has foreknown he has also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he should be the first-born among many brethren,” Romans 8: 29. When we come to this side of things it promotes a spirit of worship. “Blessed be the God and Father,” the apostle says, “of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” That is, our blessings are spiritual and they are heavenly, they are not natural or earthly; “according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” That is to be realised now, dear brethren; we are not to put it off to the future; it will be established in actuality and perfection for eternity, but there is no reason why it should not be entered upon now. For all that is still future as to actuality, except our bodily condition of glory, may be anticipated now in the power of the Spirit as the earnest. He is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, and therefore there is no reason why we should not touch what it is to be holy and blameless before God in love at the present time.

God has marked us out for adoption; the word children should not be there, adoption has sonship in mind. We are marked out for this by Jesus Christ to Himself; that is, to God, “according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he has made us accepted, or taken us into favour, in the Beloved.” That is so blessed, dear brethren, that as the Spirit of God unfolds these things He does not leave us occupied with ourselves. He leads up to this in that He directs attention to Christ where He is, apprehended as the Beloved, the One who is abidingly the centre and object of the Father’s affections, the centre of heaven, you might say, the centre of love, and God, has taken us into favour in Him. We are right at the very centre of love in Him who is the supreme object of love, and that is Christ, the Beloved. It is God’s purpose that we should be so, and with that in mind a divine Person became incarnate, and in doing so took up sonship according to God’s pleasure, and accomplished redemption and has taken His place in glorious manhood; He is God’s Son in His presence. There He is now, the Beloved, and we stand in favour in Him according to the good pleasure of God’s will.

But then, dear brethren, how can we touch these things practically if we go on with the flesh? If we do not accept the cross and recognise the Spirit, how can we practically enter upon these things? However good the light may be, we can only prove the liberty and joy of sonship in the Holy Spirit. If we feel we do not know these things as we should, let us each one get to the Lord as his own Teacher, Rabboni, as Mary Magdalene did. The Lord will not fail us if He sees that we really want to get into them, and as we do, there will be more for God at the present time. So there is not only the idea of Jacob, but there is also the idea of Israel. Jacob His people - Israel His inheritance. May the Lord graciously bless what has come before us.