THE WALK OF FAITH
[p. 395] THE WALK OF FAITH
Hosea 11: 3; Exodus 12: 37 - 46; Exodus 13: 20, 21; Numbers 2:1 - 9; Numbers 2:17; Numbers 20: 19
I wish to use these scriptures by the Lord’s help to set out the thought of the walk of faith. We are said to walk by faith and not by sight, and for this we have to be taught, as the passage in Hosea indicates, Jehovah saying that He taught Ephraim to walk. We have to be taught of God in every respect, meaning that we do not learn from man, as such. God uses man, of course; indeed the Lord Jesus was a Man, so that when we say that we are not to learn anything from man we mean man naturally as he is. Aside from God coming into Manhood, that is in Christ, we could learn nothing. Every divine thought takes form in Christ become Man, it is only thus it could become intelligible. The vast creation, itself indicative of so much power, could be but little understood aside from what has come out in Christ. So that we learn, even as to the creation, from Christ. Not that He occupies us with astronomy and the like, with science; for the whole thought of God is to teach us of Himself and of His counsels, and these great things that occupy men in the sciences are just a means to an end, and when that end is reached they cease. Teaching has reference to God, and so in regard of walking. The first walking in Scripture is by God Himself, which is a significant matter, significant in regard to the subject before us. We are told that Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Not that they saw Him walking, they heard Him walking. Faith comes by hearing and we are to understand things on that principle, but He walked, and walked under the appellation of “Lord God”. That is, God in covenant, the thought that disarms our hearts of fear; so it is significant that that [p. 396] title appears in the section of scripture that speaks about the fall, as we call it, more often than in all the rest of scripture. That is, God would assure our hearts, in spite of the presence of sin through us, that He is a covenant God and is true. God is true. So, although He walked in the garden and called for Adam and Adam was hidden away through his fear, God found a means of carrying out His thoughts. For He is never taken by surprise and never baffled, never defeated; He has always an abundance of resource and in the light of that He is spoken of as “Jehovah Elohim”, that is, the covenant God, which every Christian heart should cherish, for every true believer drinks of the cup of the Lord’s supper which denotes the covenant God, the love of God covenant-wise, meaning a love that is assuring, that condescends to engage itself, to guarantee itself. That is how the subject of walking is introduced to us in the Scriptures. There was a way alongside of God for others to join in the way of walking and we find Enoch and Noah there and many others since. Indeed, every man of faith walks with God and every worker of faith works with God. So that the subject of walking according to God is of the very greatest importance and obviously it is for young people to see how to come into it, to learn it. As God says, “I taught Ephraim to walk”. The New Testament teems with the application of the walk of faith. The apostle in writing to the young assembly at Thessalonica brings it forward, exhorts them as to it, how they should walk and please God, even as they did. There is very great encouragement in urging people to keep on with what they are already doing. It is much more difficult to work to bring people into the path of faith than to urge them in it. The apostle urged the Thessalonians to abound in it more and more. The standard of walking is God, God in Christ, whose walk was so delightful, as I need not remind you, as seen in the gospels. John [p. 397] the baptist saw Him walking and says, “Behold the Lamb of God”. That is to say, the mature thought; the step was firm, not faltering; it was firm, with purpose. So that others came into the path of faith. Throughout the epistles you get the thought stressed, the importance of walking pleasing to God, of coming under God’s eye after the pattern of Christ.
I referred to Exodus, which is the infantile book, and yet not infantile for it goes on to the full growth, typically. It begins with the sons of Israel (New Trans.), not the children, sons, which is a mature thought. Satan hated that thought and will do his utmost to destroy those who actually or potentially are walking according to God, and so I read those scriptures in chapters 12 and 13 to show how the allusion in Hosea took form. It is more particularly to call attention to the details mentioned as they begin to move, because the movement of faith is surrounded by a set of circumstances, a sort of soil which is to develop and produce later. But you will notice that they moved. In the verse that I began with it says, “The children of Israel journeyed”. They did it. This is a suggestion for every young person here, every young Christian, a challenge to his heart as to whether he has begun to move, to journey. It was night, and what you find immediately is the number of persons who joined in this movement, a very great number. An encouragement to the young heart, that it is not going to be alone. Later he may say that he would walk alone, but not alone, for God would be with him. The true faith implies that I am ready to walk alone, and yet not alone. Indeed the exhortation to Christians to separate today involves much. It involves suffering and the possibility of being alone, at least the outlook might suggest that. “Pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart”, and it is with those, so that there is no suggestion that you will be [p. 398] alone. There are over six hundred thousand here in this movement, six hundred thousand men besides children and women. As I may say, that is one of the circumstances; there is a mixed multitude, a sorrowful suggestion that you have to be on the watch. What is mixed is always a danger, but they are there. Another thing is that they have got dough, without leaven. Not yet cakes, and it is presented not as their deliberate doing but that God saw to it that they were forced to have dough without leaven. That is God comes in in His governmental ways, for the Egyptians urged them out. The young believer is helped, but not as he would expect to be helped. His best judgment would lead him to put in the leaven to make a cake such as he was accustomed to eat. God operates in this way at the outset; He is helping us without our knowing it. How many of us have proved that, and we are reminded here that dallying around after the light comes into our souls, when the time has come to move, exposes us to the greatest danger. After the light has come in, as sure as possible we will make a cake with leaven and if we carry that cake with us, so to speak, we shall bring the leaven into the new setting, and may be it will leaven the new setting and we had better not come at all than bring leaven. You will remember how the Lord Jesus, as He was about to introduce the church in Matthew’s gospel, left the Pharisees and Sadducees and went away. He not only left them but went away; He put a distance between Him and them. His disciples were with Him, they are on the boat and He challenges them as to leaven. You may leave people and take their leaven with you. If you dally about and linger on and say,’The Lord has not made my way clear yet’, it is sure that you are making a cake of leaven and you will leaven the company that you come to, if they admit you. It is important that such a challenge should be raised as regards persons who [p. 399] would walk with us. We read of those who walked no more with Jesus. Persons may walk a long way and in that walk have the leaven. So that we have to watch that the leaven is not there as persons enter on the path. The path may be taken on with us under circumstances that are not exactly the circumstances of faith, not the outcome of faith in our souls, so that we have to be on our guard as to persons who would walk. The apostle Paul speaks about many walking, of whom, he says, “I ... now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ”. It is a question of walking according to God, and hence here you have instruction about the passover. They were forced to omit the leaven, they did omit it and God says, ‘I will keep you to it and you must not have it again’. So the ordinance of the passover is that there is to be a night of observance to Jehovah and a remembrance of the passover. There can be no walking according to God without the passover, that is the feast of the passover and the feast of unleavened bread. The unleavened bread is settled because they had unleavened bread and no other; God saw to that. Those of us who care for souls are thankful for the way God acts governmentally to hinder young people from dallying around.
They have not got the leaven. They need instructions with regard to the passover as well as the unleavened bread, and so we get the ordinance of it. It is to be eaten in houses, it is on the principle of a house; young people need to take this into account. It is not a general thing held anywhere; it is held in houses and only in houses and no part is to be taken out of the house; it is to be exclusively in the house. There is the idea of protection, an atmosphere suited.
A bone of it is not to be broken. The young believer is taught these details so that he is to have the whole idea, his mind is not to be scattered, he is not to regard himself as a unit but that he belongs to others,
[p. 400] that if there are six hundred thousand they are to be one. There is one idea in the mind of God and that idea is developed in the assembly. We are apt to break the bones as we begin to move, divide it into this sect and that sect. If the passover is truly kept there will be no sects at all, there will be only one idea before the mind and that idea is His body, the assembly. I will mention one or two other things: the bones of Joseph, and the divine calendar; both appear in this setting. Four hundred and thirty years was the sojourn, according to the spiritual thought, of the children of Israel in Egypt. It is spiritual because it is not literal; it is from promised time. If we understood the divine calendar we would understand that these four hundred and thirty years began in chapter 15 of Genesis. It is a divine calendar and that is an important thing for the young christian to see; his movement is marked down in that calendar, there is a red mark at that date. God keeps records but not as men do; it is not a question of the number of the revolutions of the earth, or sun; it is a question of how God reckons. He did indeed give the heavenly bodies for times and seasons but He has His own way of reckoning and His way of reckoning has to do with the results that He has in His mind, and these results include every christian; every christian’s movement is thought of beforehand and marked off on the calendar, so that heaven knows when you begin to move. You move on time, everything fits in, there is nothing accidental, the movements are exactly on time, on the very day — not night, that comes in later — on the very day they moved out of Egypt. Then the night is to be remembered, meaning that the believer moving out goes through a darkness like Abraham. God says, ‘Your seed shall sojourn for four hundred years in a strange land’. That is what the believer is to remember, and people that have not had this experience are usually weak and shallow. Never was such a night as this,
[p. 401] and never has there been such a night in our histories as when we had to do with God about our sins. If I am not judging sin now, why not? I judged it that night, I was sincere that night, I was thrust out, a night never to be forgotten. If I did not have leavened bread that night, why should I have it now? Why should I be insincere now, untrue to God and to the brethren? If I have thought of those six hundred thousand men then, why not now? They are one idea to God, cling to them. It will preserve you from independence. As I say, there are the bones of Joseph, too: they take me back for years, dead indeed but a living testimony, for it is a question of faith. By faith Joseph gave commandment concerning his bones. Moses had faith and Joseph’s bones were there. One might say much about that but it is only to bring in the item, so that we might be filled with those thoughts in learning to walk as taught of God. Then you have the moving according to the passage in chapter 13. Now you say, I am on the way, I am moving, walking. Another thing which I might insert before I proceed is that they went out harnessed, in ranks of five. They took account of each other, they were learning to keep step with each other. God says, ‘In all these circumstances I am before you’. It was in a visible thick cloud, a pillar. Perhaps there has never been a cloud like it before. It seems to be a new thought, not that a pillar had not been before but this was a cloud in the form of a pillar, a space within it. He is not seen but nevertheless He is there, but with the utmost thoughtfulness. ‘If you are walking by day I change the appearance of things, it is a pillar of cloud; if by night, it is a pillar of fire’. There is no cessation of the movement. That is how the matter stands in the initial thought of it in Exodus. It is a book of potential, and indeed actual, manhood, for presently we find these people in the wilderness with their hearts prompting them, bringing their heave-offerings to God, saying virtually, ‘We want You to abide with us’ and in asking Him to live with them they would also provide what He required. We do not introduce our thoughts or our ideas with regard to the divine dwelling-place. There was plenty of the required materials.
That is the first great feature of this instruction, how God taught them to walk; He took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt. Now the next thing is to learn how to walk together and in the walking how to regard each other. I have already spoken of how they went out in harness, not as a mob. They went out in harness, in fives, in a rank, militarily. Now God would teach us as on the move, He would teach us how to regard one another in this moving and in regarding one another how to regard God in His abode, for He is moving too. Although there were encampments, the general thought in the wilderness is movement. “Since the day that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt ... I went about in a tent and in a tabernacle”, 2 Samuel 7: 6. The general idea is movement but not movement in a lame, straggling, uncertain way, but in definiteness, first as knowing how to regard the brethren, then loving them, and then walking with them. Hence you get the idea of three, first in the encampment and then in their ordered march. Each Israelite was supposed to know the ensign of his father’s house and where to pitch. He was to pitch with his own tribe but in relation to two other tribes, and he was to march in relation to two other tribes, which I apprehend to mean the local meeting. There are the four groups of three each, conveying what is local and what is general. There is only one fellowship; that is general, but it works out locally and in the locality I begin to love the brethren. I want to walk with them and keep step with them. I must know how to keep step with them. In the verses read in Numbers there are three [p. 403] tribes and in this group we have distinction, for Judah had the first place. In these groups someone has the first place. There is the thought of leadership and without leadership you cannot have an assembly according to God. Now by leadership I mean what God provides, not that sort of leadership that says, like Adonijah, “I will be king”. God abominates that. What He has in mind is His own sovereign selection and that is sure to take on something to support it. It requires sovereign leadership and it is a question of moral qualification, and Judah had that. Judah is indicated plainly enough as one who prevailed above his brethren. He did it in love, he pleaded with Joseph for Benjamin, for the youngest. That is the great idea. It is not walking on other peoples’ heads, it is a question of considering for the youngest. He calls him a little one. That is the idea of Judah, one who could consider for the least and make himself less than the least of all the saints. That is the leader. I am afraid we are not anxious for that sort of leading but it is according to God. So that this group of three under Judah is a model for us; I learn in it to respect leadership according to God and to love the brethren in that setting. The other three groups have their own distinctions; each has its own leadership. The first one is the great idea; it sets me down in that setting that is according to God and into which His sovereignty enters, and in bowing to it I learn how great it is morally and that He has made no mistake. It is walking under these leaders that you think according to what He desires. Am I considering for Jehovah in this setting? They are to march in this order. Verse 17 directs me as to the dwelling-place of God, that in every step I take I have my eye on God. Is God amongst us? What are our meetings, our prayer meetings, readings and fellowship meetings? What are they if they do not promote the dwelling-place of God? What is there to distinguish us if God is not [p. 404] with us? Nothing. What distinguishes us is that God puts a distinction upon us. Moses says in effect, How shall we be marked if Thy presence go not with us? (see Exodus 33: 15, 16). Their faith would always have an eye on the tabernacle. Without it what would Israel do in the wilderness? With it, nothing can overcome Israel, no enemy. And what joys, spiritual I mean, would an Israelite have as he looked from his tent and saw that pillar of cloud and thought of God in that very place in His nearness to them. Let us have an eye in our movements therefore to the dwelling-place of God; and so you will observe that it says, “Then the tabernacle of the congregation shall set forward with the camp of the Levites in the midst of the camp: as they encamp, so shall they set forward, every man in his place by their standards”, Numbers 2: 17. Now alongside this dwelling-place of God you have another thought and that is the camp of the Levites. I hope the brethren will be able to follow these things, because I am persuaded they are full of holy instructions. You have recognised Judah, that is the local setting; then leadership according to God, and the next thing is that I am respecting the tabernacle, and then the camp of the Levites. Who are they? They have access to God through the priests but according to Joshua they are the firstborn ones registered in heaven. We are reminded of our great heavenly profession. So Levi has God Himself as his portion, besides that he has cities to dwell in. It is a heavenly company. Levi represents the heavenly sons. How glorious to regard the saints in this light, surrounding the dwelling-place of God! This great family of firstborn ones comes next to God. So that as we observe the divine principles that regulate our walk here there comes this glorious light, the tabernacle, the divine dwelling surrounded by the heavenly sons. This suggests another thing, not the walk in the wilderness but carried into Joshua what Habakkuk speaks of: “He will make me to walk upon mine high places”. We are taught already to walk there. It is a spiritual matter, of course, but of all importance that when we get to heaven we shall know how to walk. There is to be one street in that city. I apprehend there are to be no nobility there, one street, no West end and no East end.
As I get toward the end of the wilderness, maybe I have to do with false brethren, and, alas, we have to do with them, and we have to learn to do with them. The heavenly ones have to know how to speak “Thus saith thy brother Israel”, Numbers 20: 14. He is simply making a request that he would be allowed to pass and surely that is the position. It is not the time for quarrelling with our brethren but asking them to let us pass. If they are not on the way, we are. In having to do with persons known as brethren, if you are not on the way I am on the way and I want to pass. I do not want to quarrel. There is no question of the tabernacle or the cloud, it is my own feet. I have got power, for indeed in this chapter they have drunk of the waters, not from the smitten rock, but the rock spoken to. For in this chapter it is the Spirit come down from heaven. (In Exodus 17 it is the rock smitten.) The allusion is to the state of the saints. Both they and their cattle drank, and as having drunk into one Spirit we have feet of our own but they are united feet. They say, “I will ... go through on my feet”. It is a collective thought, how beautiful that we are walking as one. As the apostle says, “Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing”, Philippians 3: 15, 16. What is this rule? The rule of new creation. Do you ever think of that rule? It is an entirely new theme brought in here. It is not that we [p. 406] agree to differ in anything; it means present unity. Walk by the same rule; think the same thing. It is a great feature in Philippians and so in walking, walk by the same rule. What suggestions are these things for us! “And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God”, Galatians 6: 16. Now you see how beautiful this is, what righteousness is in this. It is enough to move any brother’s heart, to lead him to open the way and let his brother pass by. Edom would not do it but Edom is a false brother. It is a sorrowful thought. God says of Esau that He hated him. It is because of his falsity as a brother. “I loved Jacob”, Malachi 1: 2. How God delighted in this speech of Israel’s. He is an orderly man; he does not take advantage: “We will go by the highway; and if I and my cattle drink of thy water, then I will pay for it: I will only ... go through on my feet”. Go through, pass on, but pass on in righteousness, pass on in nobility, in dignity, as one who is conscious of the power of God. You have got your own feet. If we walk in the Spirit we shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. It is walking by the Spirit that enables me to say this. If you will look at the speech of Israel you will see how manly it is. He knows exactly where he is and he only wants to pass from that point to another. He is going to Canaan, heaven as we say; he is fit to go, he has been through Romans, he is adjusted. He walks by the Spirit. If we live in the Spirit let us also walk by the Spirit, and if we walk by the Spirit we shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. That is all I have to say, I think you will see the links right through. God teaches us how to walk and to use our own feet on the highway, producing righteousness as we go and qualifying for the heavenly land.