THE REPRESENTATION OF GOD
THE REPRESENTATION OF GOD
Genesis 35:6 - 15; Genesis 37:3 - 11; Genesis 45:25 - 28; Genesis 46:1 - 7; Genesis 48:12 - 20
My thought is to show how the development of life in the believer leads to divine representation; this representation being contingent on the representative being like God Himself; in order to be like Him we must know Him, and that involves life, for He is the living God. He, being the living God, found One in whom He could express Himself, even Christ. For almost the first statement we have in John’s gospel is, “In him was life”, John 1:4. So that God, in the Word become flesh, had One like Himself. As it is said, “The glad tidings of the glory of the Christ, who is the image of God”, 2 Corinthians 4:4.
There was no need of development in Christ, for in the Word becoming flesh, life was there. He did not receive it; nor was He breathed into; in becoming flesh He brought life into that condition; so that He was like God, as being God. “The last Adam”, as it is said, “a quickening spirit”, 1 Corinthians 15:45. God had in mind to quicken, and hence when the divinity of Christ is stated, we have the further statement, “In him was life”. John 1:4. So that God, in His Representative, can work out what He has in mind, for in Christ was life. He was a quickening spirit; He brought into manhood the power to quicken, and God works in those who are quickened, so as to bring about, first likeness, and then representation.
Now I wanted to show how this is wrought out in Jacob, because, as a type, he serves to show how life is developed in the believer, culminating in his being [p. 303] qualified to represent God, as like Him. If I am not here as a representative of God, I am short of the divine intent in taking me up and quickening me; so that the matter becomes exceedingly weighty and serious. It is a question, therefore, for every believer as to how far he has developed in life, and as to how far he is like God, for to the extent in which he is like God, he correspondingly represents Him.
Now the idea of representing God here is stated at the very outset of humanity. Adam was to be His representative as His image; God has not relinquished the thought; He intends to work it out in every believer. Jacob, then, in this book of Genesis, represents this great feature of the truth, that in him God worked out, through long years of discipline, this great principle; so that ere he passed off the scene of testimony he represented God.
Chapter 48 is one of the finest sections of scripture; Jacob is sick and about to die; and when he hears that Joseph is coming to him, he strengthens himself, indicating the inherent power in his soul. Having strengthened himself, he blesses according to God. It is God’s right to bless, but it is also a privilege of those who represent Him, to bless also. You can see how great and how weighty a matter this representation is; but God intends, I believe, at the end of the dispensation in which we are, to have this representation of Himself; He places it within the reach of every believer; so that unless I have arrived at the state of soul in which I am qualified to represent God, I am short of His thought for me.
There are two lines which run parallel in the history of the believer, which we shall see worked out in Jacob. The one has reference to God, and the other to Christ. These two lines run side by side in the soul, yet they retain their distinctiveness. The one which has reference to God, culminates in His house; and the other, which has reference to [p. 304] Christ, culminates in the believer as corresponding to Christ, representing God in the world. God approaches man in the gospel. In Romans 1:1 it is “God’s glad tidings”. God approaches me in Christ, and secures me for Himself. That, I think, is the great end in view in Romans. The believer is secured for God, so as to have part in the house of God. He is, in Romans, constituted a board for the tabernacle, as it says in Exodus 26:15, “the boards ... standing up”. Boards are not ordinarily made standing up, but spiritually we are made standing up. That is to say, the light of God coming into the soul, according to Romans, enables the believer to stand on his feet; like the man at the gate of the temple who was lame from his birth; for forty years he had been on the earth, and had never walked. Peter says, “Rise up and walk ... and leaping up he stood and walked” (Acts 3:6 - 8), and leaped and praised God; then it says he held Peter and John, meaning that as standing up, he is linked up with others. For that is how we come from our side into the structure. We enter by learning how to hold; and one would say to the young people, Have you learned to hold things yet? It is true that God holds me, but I have to learn to hold things. If the truth, for instance, as represented in Peter comes to my soul, i.e., the principles of administration, order, and government in the house of God, how do I regard them as something to be interested in, or am I affected by them so that I hold them? As it says, “Holding the truth”, Ephesians 4:15. I mention this for the benefit of the young people here. From the divine side everything is as stable as God Himself in Christ; but we begin by holding things that come into our souls, and treasuring them. Another thing comes to us, the truth of the family of God, which John represents. We hold that also.
These two great truths combined and held firmly [p. 305] in the soul, link one with the house of God, for they involve this — that we recognise all the saints. Peter represents the outward order and government of the house of God; the keys given to him speak of authority. John suggests love, and the brethren, who are the children of God, so that holding these two men, as I begin my Christian career, I am in the house of God. So that the truth as in Romans, rightly worked out in my soul, sets me up in relation to God; and this is what is worked out in Jacob, until we arrive at chapter 35. He had been to the house twenty years before; and it was a dreadful place to him. He was lying on the earth and God was in heaven. That is not the divine thought. It indicated that Jacob’s state of soul did not warrant God coming down and talking to him then, and so he had to go through the intervening experience, that is to say, he needed a nurse. We may thank God that there are nurses. So that we read in chapter 35 that when he returned to Beth-el, Deborah, Rebecca’s nurse, died. That is not a mere historical record; Scripture is not history. We may get historical things mentioned, but Scripture does not mention things for mere historical purposes. If Scripture records that Deborah died, at this period, it means to convey to us that she had ceased to be necessary. Rebecca, in the mind of the Spirit, anticipates the intelligence that we have today of the assembly; for every line of Scripture was written for us. All has been written for our instruction; Romans 15: 4. So the young believer, as typified in Jacob, up to this point, needs a nurse.
The apostle enlarges on the thought of a nurse, in his letter to a company of believers, whose spiritual history extended over a period of only three weeks, namely the Thessalonians; they needed a nurse. He says, “As a nurse would cherish her own children”, 1 Thessalonians 2:7. He, as in their midst, nursed them;
[p. 306] and we may thank God if the young ones here find among the people of God, the spirit, skill, watchfulness and tenderness of the nurse. Mark you, not a hired nurse. No one who is a hireling would ever give the service of a mother, therefore he says, “As a nurse ... her own children”. 1 Thessalonians 2:7. With Paul it was the affections of a mother allied to the skill of a nurse. That is what the young need, and this is supplied in the house of God. The believer is nursed, as God said of Israel, that He had nursed them in the desert. Moses says to God, “Have I conceived all this people, have I brought them forth”, Numbers 11:12? God had brought them forth, and had nursed them in the desert; and in like manner He nurses us. But then we are not always to be found in that state; and as Jacob arrives at Beth-el, Deborah, Rebecca’s nurse, died. He is now standing on his feet.
God had said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Beth-el”. In response he, remembering the holiness of the house, demands that everything: connected with idolatry must be surrendered, and buried; and so with us, as we progress in our souls there is the acknowledgement of the holiness of God’s house. I am bold to say that there is scarcely anything so little known by us as holiness, and yet without it we do not see the Lord. We may see others that see Him, but we do not see Him. It says, “Holiness, without which no one shall see the Lord”, Hebrews 12:14. No one can be really in the house of God without holiness: “This is the law of the house: Upon the top of the mountain all its border round about is most holy. Behold, this is the law of the house”, Ezekiel 43:12. If we are to be in it, we must respect the law of it. So that Jacob as reminded of Beth-el, demands that all that spoke of unholiness be surrendered and buried. What I am now speaking of, you may be assured, is that which hinders our entering consciously into the house of God. It is [p. 307] because of the unholiness which is innate in us and connects us with this world. But Jacob was equal to it, and as he arrived at Beth-el, Deborah, Rebecca’s nurse, died. You say, Why does it say Rebecca’s nurse? Because it is a spiritual thought. When you come into the house you understand that it is the assembly of the living God. “These things I write to thee”, says the apostle, “but if I delay, in order that thou mayest know how one ought to conduct oneself in God’s house, which is the assembly of the living God”, 1 Timothy 3:14,15. Rebecca is a type of the assembly; and Jacob has arrived typically, at the house, and is governed by the law of it; hence Rebecca’s nurse dies, he dispenses with her, for Jacob is now a prince in the house and owned as such.
So that we have two accounts in this chapter; the first has reference to the believer’s arrival, from his own side, at the house. It is the continuation of a long record. But if God states things from His side, He does it very concisely; if He goes over the history of the believer it is necessarily a long matter. It is a wonderful event when the believer arrives at the house. I wonder if the young people here have any idea of what that means. As soon as you arrive there Deborah’s service is ended; Rebecca’s nurse dies, and is buried. There is no pillar reared up for her. She is buried under the oak beneath Beth-el; the oak is the testimony to her grave. This chapter is one of graves, because as you arrive at the house, you must be prepared for a full measure of sorrow. You say, sorrow? What, sorrow in the house! Yes, but there is the joy, so it is joy and sorrow; these two words cover the whole of the believer’s sojourn in this world. Put together they temper him and develop his spiritual constitution.
But I was dwelling on the arrival at the house. It is a wonderful moment for heaven when a believer arrives there. I hope what I am saying is not beyond [p. 308] the understanding of even the youngest here. There are two distinct sides to Jacob’s history. Infidels might say, there were two authors of his life, but this is not so. There is first, the history from Jacob’s side; which God follows with the utmost interest, from the time that he comes into the light of God, until he arrives at the house. The second, how God has wrought, put very briefly; so that it says in verse 9, “God appeared to Jacob again after he had come from Padan-Aram, and blessed him”. This covers a lot of ground from God’s side. We have only a few words, but this latter is God coming out and confirming Jacob as he arrives at the house. It is as if God Himself came out to meet you, as moved in the infinite love of His heart, to welcome you. You do not arrive there as a pauper, but as a prince! His name is no longer Jacob, but Israel. Is that not attractive to you? It is to me. It should be an incentive to every one of us to make haste to the house. When the prodigal was a long way off, the Father saw him, and ran to meet him. It is the same thing in principle. The prodigal is there, but there is not a word said about his being brought into the house, because as clothed in what came out of the house, he is of the house. The best robe is brought out and put on him, and now you have, in principle, the house. How blessed! I refer to the prodigal especially for the young ones here; to impress upon them what a royal welcome awaits them as they arrive at the house. You are now on your own feet, a prince. You have power with God and with men. God greets you, not from the top of the ladder, for there is no distance now. It is a poor thing if the state of your soul is such that you have to say, “Our Father who art in the heavens”, Matthew 6:9. There are thousands of Christians who say that constantly when they go ‘to worship’. No one who formally repeats that is in the house, but at a distance [p. 309] from it. He is like Jacob, who says, “How dreadful is this place!” (Genesis 28:17), after seeing the top of the ladder. Jacob might have said at that time, Jehovah, who art in heaven; but when you come to chapter 35, it is not God in heaven, it is God in His house, standing beside Jacob. What a wonderful experience to have God come down and stand beside you, and speak with you face to face! That is the experience the Spirit of God presents, from the divine side. It is not Jacob recording this, nor is it given from Jacob’s side of the history. It is God Himself recording, as it were, how He received Jacob, and talked with him.
Now it is after God goes up that we are put to the test as to how much we have gained by the interview. It says that, “Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had talked with him”, Genesis 35:14. You see, he is in the full benefit of this visitation of God, and sets up the pillar and pours a drink offering on it, which means simply: God loves me! Did you ever have the sense of that in your soul, that God loves even you? The very first action of the Spirit in us is to make us know that God loves us. That is what Romans 5 presents, the Holy Spirit coming in the believer, does not announce Himself, but sheds abroad in the heart the love of God. That is what Jacob meant by his drink offering: God loves even me; and God would impress upon you in like manner that He loves even you. Jacob never forgot all this, and says, This pillar is a token of what I have experienced in my soul of the love of God. I am conscious that I am pleasurable to Him, and that He delights in my company. Did you ever realise this? God had been working with Jacob all these years; and now He has gained His end, for Jacob is in the house. It is not now the place, as in the earlier verses, where God appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother; it [p. 310] is the place where God is known in his soul. It is Beth-el, the house of God.
Now, sorrow follows; there is weeping in the death of Deborah, and then the death of Rachel. It was a serious matter that he should lose the object of his tenderest affections. Such are the wonderful “balancings of the clouds”, Job 37:16. It is God’s way. If He fills our souls with His love, He balances us with His discipline. We would not be without the discipline. For “whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives”, Hebrews 12:6. He had received Jacob in His house; had filled his heart with His love, and now He chastens him. As Elihu says to Job: “Dost thou know about the balancings of the clouds?” Job 37:16. You know the whole physical system would become chaotic were it not for divine balancing. Everything is on that principle. God knows how to balance things. As Elihu said, “With plentiful moisture he loadeth the thick clouds” Job 37:11; but they are clouds nevertheless, and God orders them “As a rod, or for his land, or in mercy”, see Job 37:13. We have then God balancing things for Jacob. Rachel is taken from him; and his father Isaac dies, as recorded at the end of the chapter, so that it is joy and sorrow mingling. The Christian’s history is indeed a paradox. It is joy as we come into relation with God; but it is sorrow because of the flesh in us, otherwise the flesh would get the upper hand of us. Hence the dearest object of his affections is taken away at a stroke. Rachel dies and is buried, and then Isaac dies and is buried also. The tenderest links, according to nature, are broken; such are the ways of God! Let us not, however, be discouraged by the discipline, it is to maintain us in the good, in the fulness of blessing which is ours in the house of God, for God had blessed Jacob in His house.
Now, parallel with all this, we have Jacob’s [p. 311] relationship to Christ typically. The two things run together. Christ personally is to be known as the Object of the soul; so that in chapter 30, when Joseph is born, Jacob begins to move out of Syria. It is the light of Christ personally coming into the soul. This is a collateral line, which begins in chapter 30. Then in chapter 33, you will see that as Jacob’s wives and children pass before Esau, Joseph comes before his mother. Rachel was, indeed, everything to Jacob; the Spirit enlarges on his affection for her, but, nevertheless, Joseph comes into his soul’s vision, and must replace the tenderest object of his affection. Joseph must have the pre-eminence, and we have to learn to give Christ the pre-eminence. It was a new movement in the history of Jacob, and is a type of the believer’s progress, as giving Christ personally the first place in the soul, as Paul said of Him, “Who has loved me and given himself for me”, Galatians 2:20. The Lord Jesus had a place in Paul’s soul that no other could have.
We come now to chapter 37, Jacob loved Joseph. He is now a young man of seventeen years. He has come into development and corresponding attractions; so that Jacob loved Joseph more than all his sons. How one seeks in one’s own soul to have such a sense of the blessedness of Christ that He eclipses all else, and is everything to the soul! As the apostle says, “If anyone love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha”, 1 Corinthians 16:22. If anyone does not love Him, he is fit only to be accursed. Jacob loved Him. Joseph is typically the Lord Jesus as developed in your soul, in all His loveliness. As the bride in Canticles says, “The chiefest among ten thousand ... he is altogether lovely”, Song of Songs 5:10,16. But then, this lovely One is going to be greater in your soul; and so Joseph begins to dream, and his first dream implied that Christ arose from the dead by inherent [p. 312] power. This lovely One who so entrances your soul by His beauty, is no less than the Son of God. Joseph says, “My sheaf rose up” (verse 7), which means the power of resurrection. The Lord was “Marked out Son of God in power, ... by resurrection of the dead”, Romans 1:4.
This lovely One, who comes into my soul’s vision, is no less than the Son of God. You now apprehend Him as such. His sheaf rose up and remained standing, and the other sheaves did obeisance to his sheaf. Who dare to question the rights of One who has power to raise the dead? He has thus progressed in my soul, on moral lines. But there is more than that. The next vision implies that He is made Lord and Christ. He is not only raised from the dead, but is set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens, the same Person, that same lovely One; but now I see Him as the Son of Man, for the sun, moon and the eleven stars did obeisance to Joseph, who is Christ typically. Christ is supreme in heaven. Is He yours? Has He got a place in your heart? Otherwise you are not in victory. “Who is he that gets the victory over the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” 1 John 5:5. So that now Jacob has Christ typically in His personal loveliness, not only as down here, but as raised from the dead and exalted to heaven. But now this one in Jacob’s affections dies, so far as Jacob is concerned. Those ten brothers ask of their father: ‘Is this your son’s vest?’ It was smeared with blood by their hands. Think of their murderous state of soul, as they brought Joseph’s vest to their father, which they had dipped in blood! Reminding us of Jesus, who by wicked hands was crucified and slain. But what has God to say to Jacob in it? He has to undergo another set of exercises. It is again the balances of which we were speaking; for every accession of light entails a corresponding measure of [p. 313] discipline. Even the apostle Paul when caught up to the third heaven has to undergo discipline when he returns. “A messenger of Satan”, he says, “that he might buffet me, that I might not be exalted”, 2 Corinthians 12:7. So Jacob, after going through a long series of exercise, mourning for his son, receives the tidings that Joseph is governor over all the land of Egypt. And Jacob sets out to go down to Joseph in Egypt. This is a new lesson altogether; as applied to us, it qualifies us to be representative of God. On his journey Jacob comes to Beersheba and sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. He has now come in soul-history to the light presented to him in Joseph’s dreams, for Isaac is Christ known as risen from the dead. He is now in the light that everything is secured in resurrection. So he sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac at Beersheba, and is now in the full light of the faithfulness of God. “Whatever promises of God there are, in him is the yea, and in him the amen, for glory to God by us”, 2 Corinthians 1:20. For glory to God by Jacob, as you might say, because everything is to be fulfilled as promised to Jacob; and moreover his sons are carrying him to Egypt. The generations of Jacob are now given, in the full light of the resurrection of Christ. In chapter 37 his generations briefly end with Joseph, but in chapter 46 they are all taken account of, and linked up spiritually with Christ risen from the dead.
The scene now changes: Joseph passes out of the position of a type of Christ to the position of a believer, and Jacob passes into the position, typically, of Christ, as the representative of God. So that the first great thing that you find Jacob doing when he comes to Egypt is blessing the greatest man in Egypt. See how great Jacob is! He blesses Pharaoh. Jacob is qualified for it too, for he has gone through much experience, and he tells Pharaoh that the days of the years of his life have been few and evil; nevertheless [p. 314] he is able to bless Pharaoh. You see how he has progressed, and how God would encourage everyone of us to progress similarly.
But Jacob does not stop there; he is able to bless the sons of Joseph and the twelve tribes also; and in doing it he is God-like. Jacob is told that Joseph is coming to him, and he strengthened himself, and sat on the bed. He had the power of life in him; and as the two sons of Joseph were brought to Jacob for blessing, he crosses his hands intelligently. You see, he has now arrived at the fulness of God’s mind, he rejects the man born after the flesh, and blesses Ephraim instead of Manasseh. Jacob began as newly born to take hold of his brother’s heel; it was a sort of initial instinct; now he is at the full intelligent apprehension of the mind of God, that the man after the flesh has to be supplanted. The Second Man is the order of man before God. In other words, it is Christ not Adam. If we are to be effective here, as representative of God, we too must be on that line; we must not respect persons, for we cannot be in the house of God effectively if we allow ourselves to be governed by natural feelings. How much sorrow is caused in the house of God by natural preferences taking the place of intelligently crossed hands! God has passed by the man after the flesh, and has committed Himself to another Man; and we must learn to disallow the former, whatever his distinctions may be, and recognise only the latter; for “That which is spiritual was not first, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual”, 1 Corinthians 15:46.
What tests is whether we can commit ourselves entirely to the spiritual, and that is what Jacob does, but in doing it he blesses. That is the thought I wish to convey, that blessing is in the mind of God. In John 20:21 the Lord says, “As the Father sent me forth, I also send you”. Then He breathed into them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”. John 20:22 Think of being in that position? Then He says, “Whose soever sins ye remit”. John 20:23. Now, mark that! In John, remission comes before retention, because it is like God in these last days to remit. It is a time of remission, so that people may be set free to take up their privileges with us. We are set up thus, with the Spirit of Christ, to represent God in these last days. It is a wonderful thought to be here in that blessed position.