BLESSING AND CURSE
[p. 496] BLESSING AND CURSE
Genesis 9: 18 - 27; Genesis 22:15 - 18; Genesis 27: 26 - 28; Galatians 3:8 - 16.
I desire to say a word about blessing. What becomes evident in the Old Testament is, that whilst God had it ever in His mind to bless, His way of blessing was, that it should flow out through a vessel. In Noah we have the first indication of that. Noah is a remarkable figure of Christ, especially in this way, that he appeared in the midst of a world that was alienated from God, and as in that world, he became the resting place for the mind of God. As we all know, his name signifies rest. God found in him a resting place for His mind amid a world that was estranged from Him by wicked works, and finding in that way one in whom He could rest. He undertakes to set aside the world that was alienated from Him. In Noah God had the head of a new world before Him, so He was free to remove the world that caused Him grief. Noah secured everything for God and carried it through the judgment. I want you to consider that for a moment.
What a man Noah was! He evidently lacked sympathisers. Little can be said of his house in this respect; his wife and sons were saved on account of their relation to him. Noah bore testimony for God during one hundred and twenty years, and thus reared up a monument to his faith, which must have been the Occasion of much moral suffering. The building of the ark placed him in the light of a person acting without any obvious good reason; in other words, acting as if he were deprived of ordinary intelligence. That was the position that Noah occupied before the flood. And more than that, he was a man imbued with the Spirit of Christ.
[p. 497] You will remember how Peter refers to him in 1 Peter 3: 20; he speaks of Christ preaching to the spirits in prison, it was the Spirit of Christ preaching through Noah. If it was the Spirit of Christ, there must have been in Noah some expression of Christ, for, as we all know, the spirit of a man is that which gives character to him. It was in the Spirit of Christ that Noah carried on his ministry. That marked his position before the flood.
When we come to the end of Genesis 8 we find a man issuing triumphantly from death; he has not only escaped, like Lot, in a later day, but he has carried everything for God through the judgment with him, he has secured everything for God. That is Noah. In this way he was a remarkable type of Christ. When the New Testament speaks of any of the men of faith it enables us to understand more fully what marked them. One is thankful to refer to Noah as having many great personal traits, but what is more, he expressed the Spirit of Christ in a lawless world; he preached by the Spirit of Christ; he laid hold of what God valued, and he appreciated it and he carried that over intact to a new world. I refer to that to show you his position in chapter 9.
On leaving the ark he thinks first of God, for God was first with him, and he takes of the clean animals and fowls and offers a burnt offering; he thought of what was due to God. I will say one word about that before I pass on to chapter 9. He was true to his name, which signified rest as I said. It was, we may say, a prophetic name given to him. It is a very great thing to be true to your name; God has put His name upon us, and the point with every believer is to be true to that. If you are true to it you are true to God. God works in us to bring us into correspondence with the worthy name by which we are called. In the burnt offerings the Lord smelled a sweet savour, and then He declared that [p. 498] there should be no more curse. God said, as it were, ‘I am going to establish everything permanently; I am going to establish a permanent order of things now, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease’. No change! When you apply that to Christ, what a consideration it is! God is resting in the savour of the burnt offering! What about man? The imaginations of his heart are only evil, but the believer need not be engaged with that now, he can be engaged with Christ, the burnt offering, and it is in connection with this that there is to be no change. While the earth remaineth there is to be no change. The hymn writer says,. Change and decay in all around I see; that is true, but that is not the point; there is no change in the order of things connected with Christ. This is indicated at the end of Genesis 8.
What I want to say now is, that in the light of all we have been dwelling on, this Man must be Head. You will understand what I mean. God has appointed a Head, and Christ is the Head; the Man who has gathered up everything from the wreck and brought it into a new sphere is Head. God has made a covenant with that Man. Here Noah comes before us as a type of Christ. God enters into a covenant with Noah and with Noah’s sons; this is the first time that the sons have come in for direct recognition; it sets forth our position. God has entered into a covenant with us in connection with Christ. We are thus owned of God in connection with Christ, and established in a permanent order of things.
Now I want to come to what is on my mind; this man Noah is conscious of blessing. He is the first man who may be regarded as a vessel of blessing. It is only dimly indicated that he was this, but the fact is there. I want to dwell upon that, and then [p. 499] I want to touch on Abraham and Isaac, but I wish first to call attention to the family of Canaan in Genesis 9. You will have noticed, that twice over we are told that Ham was the father of Canaan; he was also the father of other families; it does not say that Ham was cursed. Ham was the father of Canaan, and Canaan was cursed. I wish to say a word about that family and to seek to show how that family is identified, but before dwelling upon it I wish to make clear that we are not living in the age of the curse. The age of the curse is coming. In the ways of God the family of Canaan has come to light. It has appeared in the world, and it is very important to trace it, and to discover what are the marks of that family. I do not say there are not Canaanites at the present time, but the present moment takes character from Isaac which is blessing.
We are now living under the conditions of Genesis 27. Genesis 9 contemplates a state of things where there were certain families indicated for blessing, and certain families indicated for curse. Ham dishonours his father. Here we have to distinguish between the person as he is, and that of which he is typical. What we see in Ham was the lack of personal respect due to his father; there was disregard of parental authority; whatever Noah’s actual condition was he was in the position of supreme authority in the world. It is a great thing to recognise divine authority, it is the disregard of it that determines the Canaanite. The Canaanitish family has to be distinctly located. I understand that God brought in the law so that the Canaanitish family might be discovered; in the law God introduced authority; this was authority in Noah, but in the law there was the full assertion of God’s rights over man.
In calling out Abraham, God says, “thou shalt be a blessing; and I will bless them that bless thee,
and curse him that curseth thee”. The presence of Christ here upon the earth was a peculiar testimony; it was more than the law, indeed it included the law, for the Lord had the law in His heart; but He was more than that, He was the expression of God’s glory. The presence of the Lord here upon the earth brought everything to light, the conditions that existed here were fully exposed. He was the expression of divine glory here and that was the idea in the call of Abraham. It was “the God of glory” who called Abraham out, the divine glory was centred in that Man; it was fully expressed in Christ, not only centred in Him; the radiancy of the divine glory shone out in Christ. But the mass of the Jews hated him. They saw no beauty in Him. How many were there to appreciate what was in Him? Isaiah said truly, “when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him”. They said, “Away with him!” Thus was the true Canaanite discovered by the presence of Jesus here in this world. His enemies cursed, Him and so exposed themselves to the curse of God. But what came to pass? Instead of the curse falling on them it fell on Christ. Were they hanged on trees? No, Christ goes to the tree Himself. Noah did not do that; he announced the curse, but he did not endure it himself.
You will remember the eighth of John’s gospel. What a wonderful scene! The Lord says to the sinful woman, “has no one condemned thee?” The representatives of the law and the law-breaker were there; the woman was a true Canaanite in the sense that she had broken the law, but all went out, there was no one to condemn her. Instead of executing the curse upon her and upon her accusers, for the only difference between her and them was this, that they went out and she remained. He would bear it Himself. Both the woman and her accusers [p. 501] were exposed; the presence of Christ here brought everything to light in its true character; He exposed the Canaanitish family, but there was a remnant of that family, in that woman, for Christ; the Canaanitish family is retained, but it is retained for blessing.
In Galatians 3 it is stated that the Lord bore the curse, and so the blessing of Abraham now comes to the nations. You will remember that it was said to Abraham that in him and his seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed; all the families should be blessed so that included the family of Canaan. The apostle said that Christ “was made a curse for us”, “that we might receive the promise of the Spirit”. Paul had been of the Canaanitish family. Was Saul of Tarsus a Canaanite? There never was a truer one than he. The Lord Jesus took that man’s curse. Paul accepted the fact that he was in the Canaanite’s position, and he says that the Lord was made a curse for him. Paul gloried in Christ having been made a curse for him; he sees that he himself was in the Canaanitish position, and that Christ having borne the curse, instead of meting it out to him, gives him the Holy Spirit, “That we”, he says, “might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith”. But more, “that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations”. The apostle Paul here touches Genesis 22; that is, he sees that the blessing is now in Christ; this is not the age of the curse, that age is coming on; he speaks of Christ bearing the curse, and then does not refer to that any more.
I want you to see how that, Christ having died, as typified in Isaac, in Genesis 22, God has confirmed the blessing in Him. The apostle says, “not to seeds, as of many, but as of one; and to thy seed, which is Christ”. He does not say “seeds”, but “seed”; that is, one, and that One is Christ. One can understand the apostle Paul referring to Genesis 22.
[p. 502] See Galatians 3: 16 - 18. The Canaanitish family is not excluded from blessing; “all families of the earth” must be included. The Canaanite was really Israel; it is a very solemn thing to have to say that; the Canaanite in the mind of God was Israel morally, for it was in that nation that disobedience had its greatest expression. Divine authority was in every way disregarded there.
Saul was the representative Canaanite. He was the embodiment of Canaanitish sentiments and spirit, and that man received “the promise of the Spirit”. But it could only be through the death of the Lord Jesus. He alone was clear of the curse Himself, and so He could become a curse for us, as the apostle states. And now the Canaanitish family comes into blessing with the other families and receives the promise of the Spirit. The blessing of Abraham has arrived at the nations! They have not had to go for it, it has been brought to them. We do not want the dispensation of grace to pass away. I think faith would rather suffer evil than have the dispensation of grace out short. God delights in the present dispensation. Christ having borne the curse has gone up to heaven and thence He is dispensing the blessing of God to every family.
In regard to the age of the curse that is coming on, I want to say a very brief word. The Canaanitish family will reappear in those who do not love Jesus. That is very searching. Jesus has been in the attitude of a Blesser towards the world for nearly two thousand years. He has only kind words, words of grace, for every man. Anyone who does not love that Man comes under the curse. The apostle says: “If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed”. That is terrible! Do you love Him? What about the world today? Christ has been presented as the Vessel of grace to the world, and hence the seriousness of men not appreciating [p. 503] Him. The apostle was so much under the power of the love of Christ, that he says in effect, ‘If anyone does not love that Man, let him be anathema maranatha’. The apostle did not want the dispensation to pass away, but he knew that it would pass away, and when it does, those who do not love the Lord Jesus Christ will be accursed.
It was said that those who blessed Abraham should be blessed. The Lord’s supper is the great occasion of the blessing. “The cup of blessing which we bless” really involves our appreciation of Christ. Publicly we are committed to Christ, and we express our appreciation of Christ there. Love delights in it, but where there is no love for that Man the apostle’s word is, “let him be anathema maranatha”. But the curse is not executed now, it will be when the Lord comes. The Lord is coming! Love delights to anticipate it, but where there is no love for Christ, it is awful; and I appeal to you that you may not be found in the family of Canaan in that day. There is hope for you now, for all families come into blessing; but when God begins to discriminate, those who do not love the Lord Jesus Christ come in for the curse.