SPIRITUAL AND HEAVENLY THINGS
SPIRITUAL AND HEAVENLY THINGS
1 Corinthians 15: 45 - 49; Exodus 17; Numbers 27: 15 - 19
What is in mind, dear brethren, is to show that God has now brought in and is engaged with spiritual and heavenly things. We have been called to have part in them and, thank God, He uses the circumstances of the present time, wilderness experiences, to develop in us what is spiritual. It says in the first chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians, in that passage we know so well, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” We are to understand at the outset that our blessings are spiritual and not natural, and that the location of them is in the heavenlies and not on earth. That is readily understood as we take account of the fact that Christ has gone on high and the Spirit has come; Christ having gone on high into the presence of God, heaven has been opened up to us, and the Spirit having come, the day of what is spiritual has come in. There is a great tendency with us to cling to what is earthly and natural, but it is good to see from the Scriptures that what is earthly and natural has never been the final thought before the mind of God. The earthly and the natural things were brought in in His ways as a testimony to heavenly and spiritual things. Not that there will not be blessing on the earth in a coming day, for there will; indeed, even in eternity there will be a new earth as well as a new heaven, as though God has indicated that He takes pleasure in different spheres and different degrees of blessing. But that being so, it is well for us to understand that in the sovereignty of God and the love of God, we have been taken up for the very best. You may not be able to say why; that is a matter that lies in God’s sovereignty. He works according to the good pleasure of His will, but there it is, that He has been pleased to choose us in Christ before the foundation of the world for the very best, for heavenly things and spiritual things. God Himself being a Spirit; that is, He intends to bring us into the closest affinity with Himself.
God has not only made known His thoughts, but Christ, having gone on high in virtue of accomplished redemption, has the right to give us by the Holy Spirit to enjoy His own love and to understand that we are to share with Him as Man in a way that saints of no other dispensation will ever do. I say, that position having come about, Christ having gone on high and the Spirit having already come, you can understand that God wishes us to take an interest in heavenly and spiritual things, and that we should lay ourselves out to enter into them, and not allow ourselves to be detained by worldly things or even natural things. We often refer to Rebecca and how the question was put to her, “Wilt thou go with this man?” Genesis 24: 58. The test with which Rebecca was faced was not whether she was going to be governed by what was worldly, but whether she was going to allow herself to be detained by what was legitimate in the natural sphere, her brother and her mother. That was the test with which she was faced, and when the question was raised with her, “Wilt thou go with this man?” (”this man” being a type of the Holy Spirit) she says, “I will go.” The result was, that she became a comfort to Isaac’s heart and was loved by him, all suggesting the possibilities that are open to us to become a comfort to Christ if we will yield ourselves to what is spiritual.
The passage I read in 1st Corinthians emphasises this. It says, “The first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam a quickening spirit.” You can see how what is spiritual comes in, how immensely greater Christ is than Adam. It is the last Adam we are to take account of. He is a life-giving spirit. I wonder whether we all recognise, that if we have received the Holy Spirit we partake by the Spirit in the life of the last Adam. That is a very elevating thought. In Luke 10 the Lord says, “rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven,” but here we have not merely that our names are written in heaven, but we ourselves are heavenly and therefore fit for heaven. So it says here, “howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual,” as though the Spirit of God through the apostle is urging upon us to take account of the fact that the change has now taken place; that there was that which was first, which was natural, but Christ having come in and the Spirit having come, what was ever in God’s mind has come in; and He is urging us to take account of the glory of it, and to take account of the fact that we ourselves have been called to have part in these wonderful things.
The apostle goes on to say, “the first man out of the earth, made of dust”; it is a question of what he was constitutionally. If Adam had never sinned he would still have been earthy, but the second Man, out of heaven! What an immensely superior order of manhood has come in in Christ, a divine Person, bringing supreme moral excellence into manhood. Think of the grace of God that has in mind that we should partake of it. This is not something mystical, but something which has actually come in by virtue of the fact, that we have received the Holy Spirit. We partake by the Spirit in the life of the heavenly One. “Such as he made of dust, such also those made of dust; and such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones.” And, “as we have borne the image of the one made of dust, we shall bear also the image of the heavenly one.”
Well now, we can only enter upon what is spiritual, we can only take on the features of the One who is heavenly, in the power of the Holy Spirit. God has given us the Holy Spirit in order that we might be able to take on what is spiritual, that we might find our life in what is spiritual and take on heavenly features. We were referring to the third chapter of John’s gospel where we have the truth of new birth; that is, if there is to be anything for God, He must begin entirely anew. There must be a new moral being as a result of God’s work, and the character of the new moral being is that it is spirit. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” showing that the two are in absolute contrast. I think the Lord puts it that way so that we may understand, that God is working now on the lines of what is spiritual.
I would turn to Exodus now in order to show that God would use the exercises of the wilderness that we may realise the need for the Spirit; and to give us, if we may so say, a taste for the Spirit, that we may really lay ourselves out for that which is spiritual. I can assure the younger brethren that they will never regret it if they do so. In the living water, a type of the Spirit, there is that which satisfies for ever. If I may go back for a moment in the history of God’s people as brought out of Egypt, you will remember that at the end of Exodus 15 they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. Then when they did find it, it was bitter, so the waters were called Marah; and the question was, What were they to do? Now it is an early experience in our spiritual life to find that the circumstances which God orders for us are not at all according to our natural taste. There is nothing in the wilderness; that is, in the ordinary circumstances of responsible life, to minister to the new spiritual being that has come into existence. We find that circumstances ordered of God for us are often exactly the opposite to those which we would have chosen; the waters are bitter. What is to be done? In what way are they to be made palatable? Moses cried unto Jehovah and Jehovah showed him wood. It is not properly a tree, but rather wood. When it was cast into the waters they became sweet. Wood in Scripture is usually a type of manhood, and here it refers to the character of manhood that was brought in in the Person of Jesus, and, I believe, that is just what alters the whole character of things.
It is of great help, support and encouragement when we first begin to take account of the fact that the Lord Jesus in wonderful grace has entered into the circumstances of human life and has been through them as governed in every way by the principles proper to a man in relation to God. That is to say, as having His part in Deity it did not belong to Him to obey, for, you cannot attach the thought of obedience to God as such, but when the Lord Jesus entered into the human position, He entered into conditions to which obedience attached, and He filled them out in human life in perfect accord with the position which He had taken up. The carpenter’s shop at Nazareth was not what men might regard as the most desirable of circumstances, but these circumstances were the will of God for Him, and He accepted them and filled them out in a glorious way on the principle of obedience. Everything the Father ordered for Him was pleasing to Him. His Father had been pleased to hide things from the wise and prudent and reveal them unto babes, and He said, “Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight,” Luke 10: 21. It alters the whole aspect of things in regard of that which may be contrary to our natural tastes if we begin to see that in the Person of Jesus, God has introduced the principle of obedience as that which is to govern His people in every circumstance. We find wonderful rest of mind and heart and spirit once that is accepted. The waters take on an attraction that the Spirit of God gives them. Nothing spiritual will, of course, ever be attractive to the natural man, but to the renewed mind everything of God becomes attractive. The first governing principle in a Christian’s life is obedience to the will of God in everything. Marah indicates that. It was there that God said, “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of Jehovah thy God, and do what is right in his eyes ... I will put none of the complaints upon thee that I have put upon the Egyptians,” Exodus 15: 26. It is wonderful, how by moving in a simple path of obedience to God’s will, we are set free from anxiety and restlessness, set free from all sorts of diseases that afflict the Egyptians.
Following on that, we find in chapter 16 that the manna is given. God has introduced in the Person of Jesus the principle of obedience to His will, and now He says as it were, I will give you food and I will give it to you daily on that principle. The Lord Jesus moved in the circumstances of human life on the principle of one day at a time. He had His ear opened morning by morning. It was morning by morning that the manna was given. Moses said to the people, “In the evening, then shall ye know that Jehovah has brought you out from the land of Egypt; and in the morning, then shall ye see the glory of Jehovah.” They had desired flesh, and in the evening God brought up quails, not then in judgment as on a later occasion, but just to show them that, if necessary, He could do anything; He can work a miracle. He could order our circumstances, if He chose, so that they should all be congenial, but that would not result in any spiritual development in us. He showed in bringing up the quails that He could do anything necessary, but on the other hand, “in the morning, then ye shall see the glory of the Lord.” The manna was a small round thing on the face of the wilderness. You say, Is that the glory of the Lord? It is indeed the glory of the Lord, that He who is God should have come down in wonderful grace as a Babe, and grown up in human circumstances, filling them out in every way on the principle of dependence and obedience. That is glory indeed, that such a One has entered into our circumstances in order to become, throughout all the ages of the testimony, food for His people. How many millions of saints have been supported by feeding on Christ! If we are governed by the principles of obedience and dependence it enables us to fit into any circumstance. A small round thing fits in easily anywhere, dear brethren. And it is to be gathered afresh every day. The principle of life according to God in the wilderness is one day at a time, and it greatly relieves us of anxiety if we so take it up. The inward man is renewed day by day.
Then they came to a seventh day, a sabbath, and that is what results as we appropriate the manna, we come to rest in our souls. It produces sabbath conditions. “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest,” Matthew 11: 28. And then the Lord shows us the way in which we get it; He says, “take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest to your souls.” He says, as it were, ‘You must come the right way; take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me.’ It was after feeding upon the manna for six days that they arrived at a seventh day, a sabbath of rest. I have said all that in order to show what Christ can be to us in the wilderness; but when we come to Exodus 17, it is not a question there of Christ so much, but of the Spirit. It is a wonderful thing that two Persons of the Godhead should come in, prepared to serve every one of us individually. I do not know whether you have ever thought about it, but the Son and the Spirit are both prepared to serve you and me in the practical every-day exercises of the wilderness path. It shows what God is like; how low He can come in condescending grace; indeed, in the sixth, seventh and eighth chapters of Romans we find that God and Christ and the Holy Spirit are all engaged in the deliverance of the believer. In chapter 6 we have the thought of being “alive unto God in Christ Jesus our Lord”; in chapter 7 we are “to be to Another”; and in chapter 8 we have the service of the Holy Spirit throughout.
Now in the seventeenth chapter of Exodus we have the question of thirst again. There was no water and the people murmured. Water evidently alludes to the idea of refreshment and satisfaction, and we might as well face it, that God does not intend that we should find satisfaction save in the Holy Spirit. If we ignore this, we shall only be heaping up to our souls years of sorrow. We read that “the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.” There is no limit to His activities and what He can do for us, and God intends that we should, early understand that all the refreshment and satisfaction we need are to be found in the Spirit. So Moses cried to the Lord, and the Lord told him to go on before the people and take with him the elders of Israel and his rod, and He says, “I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink.” Think of that, the rock being smitten! Typically, it is Jehovah Himself being smitten in the Person of Jesus. It is as though God would say, so urgent is it that these people should receive the Spirit, that they should have all the joy and satisfaction that are to be found in the Spirit, that I myself in the Person of Jesus am prepared to bear the smiting in order that the Spirit may become available to them. Think of the love that has entered this matter! Are we going to despise the Spirit in the face of this, when it means that the Lord has been prepared to go this way and bear the judgment? God has removed every obstacle that would hinder us from receiving the Holy Spirit. We are not told that the people drank of the water when it came, but we are told of the wonderful provision for them. We do not want to do despite to the Spirit of grace and not avail ourselves of this wonderful gift that God has given.
Well, the next thing we find is that the position is challenged. Amalek comes up against them and Moses at once calls upon Joshua. Joshua was only a young man. I do hope that the younger brothers and sisters will not think that these things are relegated to the older ones. I read this passage because Joshua particularly represents one who is in the gain of the Spirit. In certain positions he is typical of Christ Himself, but in the main he is rather representative of one who is in the gain of the Holy Spirit. Here, he is intended to be representative of us all. Now Amalek represents the power of Satan working through the flesh, and I am sure you will have noticed that Amalek is most inveterate. His hand is on the throne of Jah. He is deliberately opposed to the rights of God, and God will have war with him from generation to generation. The flesh is incurable. It says that they who are in the flesh cannot please God, and that the mind of the flesh is enmity against God. We are to understand what flesh is, the awfulness of it, and that there is no escape from it save as we walk in the Spirit. The point is, On whose side are we going to be? Are we going to be like Joshua, who chose men and fought against Amalek? We read that “Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.” You may say, Is there any weakness with the Lord? For Moses with the rod in his hand on the top of the hill is a type of Christ. What does it mean? There is certainly no weakness with the Lord, but I believe that Moses with his rod represents the authority of the Lord over our souls, which sometimes becomes weakened. Satan is aiming at that, to weaken the Lord’s authority over us. Now when Moses’ hands were heavy, Aaron and Hur supported them. Aaron represents the sympathetic support of Christ. The Lord understands all about our exercises and is prepared to support us in them. If our exercises are in singleness of heart, which Hur perhaps represents, his name meaning purity, and we are set to go in for the best, although we have to feel what flesh is, how opposed it is to the things of God, yet if we will allow the Lord’s authority over us, we shall be given the victory. Aaron and Hur stayed up Moses’ hands, “the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.” And the next verse says that “Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.” Joshua in that way started on this journey of becoming spiritual, and he started by accepting the conflict that flesh will always bring in; but he proved the support of the Lord.
This is very important, beloved brethren, though elementary. “Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua.” How the Lord had His eye on Joshua, and He has His eye on everyone here, because of what we are destined for, such great things. He would have these things rehearsed in the ears of everyone, “I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” The Lord does not intend to give any quarter to the flesh. He wants us to come into line with Him and make no provision for the flesh. And so it says that Moses built an altar and called the name of it Jehovah-nissi - the Lord my banner. It may refer perhaps to the verse in Romans 13, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not take forethought for the flesh, to fulfil its lusts.” You have an understanding between yourself and the Lord, that if God is making war with Amalek from generation to generation, you intend to make no provision for the flesh. Until the Lord comes for us we shall have the flesh in us, but if we will take sides with God against it we shall prove the superiority of the Holy Spirit, so that we are not hindered by the flesh. We learn to value and lay ourselves out for the Spirit of God. We are to make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof; that is the first great lesson in regard of what is spiritual, and it has in mind that we are to find power to enter into the deep things of God, the things that God hath prepared for them who love Him.
In closing, I would refer briefly to Numbers 27, where we read that God had told Moses that he was not to go into the land. He had failed in the test, failed to sanctify God. It says in Psalm 106 that the people provoked Moses in his spirit “so that he spoke unadvisedly with his lips.” They provoked his spirit. God is concerned with our spirits, rather than with our bodies. He gives us our bodies as vessels in which to serve Him, and to some He may preserve health and strength for a little while; with others He may allow poor health and suffering, but the great thing is our spirits. Hebrews calls Him “the Father of spirits.” This scripture calls Him “the God of the spirits of all flesh.” Proverbs tells us that one who rules his spirit is better than one who takes a city. The only power for ruling our spirits is the Spirit of God. And so Moses, about to be superseded, shines in moral dignity. He says, “Let Jehovah, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the assembly, who may go out before them, and who may come in before them, and who may lead them out, and who may bring them in, that the assembly of Jehovah be not as sheep that have no shepherd.” How beautifully Moses was considering for God’s people! This is a word I believe, for leaders. We have our leaders locally and we have leadership in a universal way. Leaders must be men. The word is, “set a man over the assembly, who may go out before them, and who may come in before them,” that is, all his movements must be transparent and in the light. It says that “all Israel and Judah loved David, for he went out and came in before them” (1 Samuel 18: 16), showing how anyone who moves in singleness of heart gains the respect and affections of the saints. “Let Jehovah ... set a man over the assembly ... who may lead them out, and who may bring them in.” I think it is a military allusion. When the conflict is over, the man will bring them in again. We do not want to be always engaged with conflict. When there is a need for conflict, be in it, but when the conflict is over, go in for the positive things of the Spirit.
Moses leaves it to the Lord to name the leader, and Jehovah immediately says, “Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit.” Joshua was now considerably older than he was in Exodus 17. This is the kind of person we need to lead us into heavenly things. Joshua was pre-eminently the leader for the land, while Moses was the great leader for the wilderness, because he was faithful in all God’s house. But a leader for the land must be one who is characterised by affording liberty to the Spirit of God so that the divine scope can be opened up before the saints. If we commence as Joshua commenced, we may become those in whom characteristically the Spirit is. We shall have power to enter into spiritual and heavenly things. Joshua was still to be marked by dependence even though he was one who gave place to the Spirit. In verse 21 Eleazar was to inquire for Joshua at the mouth of the Lord, showing that even though we become spiritual, we are not to become independent. One feature of a spiritual man is that he is essentially and characteristically dependent.
Thus we may understand that God uses the exercises of the wilderness to help us to get the gain of the Spirit, with a view to our entering into the things which His love has prepared for us.