GENESIS 20 AND 21
GENESIS 20 AND 21
We have seen in chapters 18 and 19 the contrast between the privilege of faith enjoyed by the truly circumcised, and the loss suffered by unbelief even when found in a righteous person, but one with whom circumcision has no place; that is, one who walks practically after the flesh. Lot was providentially cared for in the faithfulness of God, but he did not enjoy privilege.
In chapters 20 and 21 we have another contrast. We see the believer walking in such a way that he comes even under the reproof of the world (chapter 20);
[p. 156] then we see him walking in such a way that the world has to own that God is with him in all that he does; chapter 21: 22.
In chapter 20 the same weakness and failure that appeared in Abram in chapter 12 comes out again. That is, he denies his true relationship with Sarah; but this time the failure comes out in a worse form. This is generally the case when any working of unbelief is not really judged. It keeps on appearing, and each time it is worse than before. In chapter 12 it was in connection with giving up the heavenly position — leaving Bethel and going down to Egypt. But in chapter 20 it was after the promise of chapters 17 and 18 that Sarah would be the mother of a son with whom God’s covenant should be, and who should inherit the promises.
The special testimony in chapter 12 was the inheritance; in chapter 20 it was the heir; and in each case the effort of the enemy was against the special testimony of the moment. If Abraham had been in the practical faith of the promise he would have realised that the maintenance of the true relationship was of the utmost importance; it was the essential thing in relation to God’s testimony at the moment. Unbelief, weakness, or fear always lead to the giving up of the best thing at the moment. “The top shoot goes first”.
It is a solemn warning, that one so privileged — one who had enjoyed such nearness to God — should so depart from faith as to his public testimony. Perhaps many of us can understand it as we review our own history! Have we not known what it was to use language, and walk in steps, that were not those of faith, even after having tasted the joy of spiritual [p. 157] things? People would not always have gathered from our walk and ways that we were in the dignity and blessedness of our calling and privilege. It is sad to see how soon the thoughts of nature can come in, and practically set aside the thoughts of faith.
We see Abraham here on the ground of mere nature, thinking of himself; “they will kill me”; but the root of it all comes out in verse 13, “God caused me to wander from my father’s house”. What a low and natural view of the call of the God of glory! The call, the inheritance, the privilege of a heavenly man, all lost sight of for the moment. “God caused me to wander from my father’s house!” Was this the thought of faith?
How often we find language that does not rise above the level of the natural man on the lips of true believers! In the storm the disciples very quickly said, “We perish”. In the wilderness they said, “Whence should we have so many loaves as to satisfy so great a crowd?” When the Lord warned them against the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, they said it was “because we have taken no bread”. When He told them He had meat to eat which they knew not of, they said, “Has anyone brought him anything to eat?” Peter did seem to rise to the thoughts of faith when he said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”; flesh and blood had not revealed it to him. And yet almost immediately, when the Lord spoke of His death, he said, “This shall in no wise be unto thee”. It just shows how quickly the thoughts of faith can be departed from; and when they are, there is sure to be a denial of the relationships in which we stand spiritually.
God withheld Abimelech from sinning, and preserved [p. 158] Abraham and Sarah, and even put honour on Abraham. God always loves to honour His people. But the man of faith had to be rebuked by the world. It is well to remember that the world very often knows how saints ought to behave. We may think, as Abraham did, that people do not fear God, but they often have very true thoughts of what is becoming in saints:
Sarah was the vessel of promise for the bringing in of Isaac — typically Christ — and the enemy was behind all the weakness and fear of Abraham, and the actions of Abimelech, working to defeat that. If saints are compromised with the world, and deny their true relation to Christ, there will be no bringing Him in in testimony. The Galatians were taking ground which involved the denial of their divine relationships. Their place in grace with God, and their true relation to Christ, were set aside by the bringing in of law, circumcision, etc. The result was there was no bringing in of Christ; it was a cultivation and glorification of the flesh. But that denies and defeats all that God is working for.
What a rebuke Abimelech gives to Sarah! He gives money to buy her a veil! (verse 16). Sarah ought to have been veiled as Abraham’s wife, and if she had been, Abimelech would never have seen her. The assembly ought to have been always veiled — to have kept herself exclusively for Christ. The idea of taking the veil is right if taken up spiritually. Many things found in Christendom are the material and fleshly imitation of something spiritual and divine. The church ought to be veiled; when Rebecca saw Isaac, she veiled herself; in figure she said, I am now to be exclusively for Christ, and for no other eye.
Abimelech says, “I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver; let that be to thee a covering of the eyes”. It was a serious reproof. You may depend upon it, that the world knows that saints ought to be true to Christ, and to be entirely for Him. By coming down to the world’s level we only lose its respect. At the present day the church has almost entirely lost the respect of the world through unfaithfulness to Christ; she has disowned her proper relationship, and instead of being found here as a covered woman she makes a display of herself before the world.
In chapter 21 Isaac comes in, and the result of giving him his rightful place and Ishmael being cast out is that Abraham appears before the world as having God with him. The ‘great feast’ which Abraham made signifies that blessed day in soul history when Christ is recognised as the only One to have place. It has been called the ‘coronation day’. It sets forth in figure Christ’s day — the day when He is supreme and unrivalled, and no other is in view. What does man after the flesh think of that? He mocks. You never know what the flesh is in yourself until you purpose to give place and honour only to Christ. Then you find how the flesh rebels against being set aside.
It was giving Isaac his place that brought out the character of Ishmael; there is nothing to show that his true character had come out before. It is the bringing in of Christ that exposes all that man is after the flesh, and awakens his enmity. God’s thought is to bring in Christ. Sarah may be regarded as a figure of the assembly as the vessel of the Spirit for the bringing in of Christ. It is God’s intention to make everything of Christ; not to cultivate or make anything of man [p. 160] after the flesh, but to bring in another Man, and flesh rebels against this.
The religious world is busy cultivating Ishmael, and it mocks at the thought of another Man altogether. But the word is, “Cast out this handmaid and her son; for the son of this handmaid shall not inherit with my son — with Isaac”. If a man realises that he is a guilty and lost sinner he will feel his need and cry to God, and will receive blessing from a Saviour God. As marked by dire need and dependence there is grace for man, but as he goes along that road he parts company morally with all that he is according to the flesh.
It becomes a question which man is to have place, as it was with the Galatians. The epistle to the Galatians is very much founded on this chapter. In Galatia they had turned aside to cultivate the wrong man — Ishmael. Therefore Paul says, “My children of whom I again travail in birth until Christ shall have been formed in you”. God’s purpose was to bring in Christ in the saints; that is what God is working for today; and no other man is to have any place. The assembly is the vessel of the Spirit in view of that; if Christ does not get place in my heart and life, I am a complete failure from the divine point of view, though I may be regarded by men as a nice Christian man.
Abraham made a feast on the day Isaac was weaned; I suppose that is the day the Lord referred to when He said, “Abraham saw my day and was glad”. Christ’s day is the contrast to man’s day; it is the day when He is supreme and unrivalled, and no other man has any place. Abraham saw in Isaac the one who was heir of the promises, the one who was to [p. 161] have the covenant and the inheritance; and Abraham’s faith accorded him the place that was due, and made him a great feast. We are all glad to think of Christ’s day coming in publicly. There is a day coming when He will have absolute supremacy. We say Amen to it as viewed in the future, but what about the present? How far has He come in to be the only One honoured and exhibited in me? Nothing is to appear or to have any place but Christ; He is to be magnified and exalted in the saints so that His day comes in advance with them.
The great feast is something positive; it is that Isaac comes in and is honoured, and when he gets his right place Ishmael has to go out. Many believers have never come to this ‘great feast’; they have not really seen every thought of God substantiated in Christ, and that no other man is entitled to have any place; that is the line which the Spirit always maintains. Man after the flesh must be cast out, and then we have to see to it that he does not come in again in some subtle way. Some one said that if you turn him out at the front door he will come in at the back! So that it is a continual exercise to keep him out. I am sure we need to consider this very much, for it is truth that men will not have. You may talk of improving man, lifting him up from degradation, educating him, and making him moral and religious, and men will listen to you. But if you insist that man after the flesh must go, and that Christ only is to have place — another Man of an entirely new order for God’s pleasure — you will find that Ishmael is still a mocker! And the flesh in you does not like it either, which brings the matter nearer home!
The object of many is to make a good and religious [p. 162] man of Ishmael. How many are ready to say that there is an element of good in man in the flesh that has only to be appealed to, and cultivated or developed. But that is all training Ishmael, and it will not do for God; the bond-woman and her son must go out.
Ishmael may be blessed, as we see in verses 17 - 20, but it is through finding out his deep need and being brought to the point of death. When man is brought to that point morally there is hope for him; but that is, in truth, the end of him. Ishmael can be blessed in his extremity, when he is brought down to death, but that is not by his having qualities that commend him to God. It is pure mercy. The door of blessing is indeed open to all, but man reaches it by the cry of need in his extremity. This is a picture of God’s dealings with Israel; He will allow them to wander in the wilderness until they have learned their deep lesson. Then they will be blessed on the ground of sovereign mercy, just as the Gentile is blessed today.
“The thing was very grievous in Abraham’s sight because of his son”. I think we see the mind of the Spirit in Sarah; she was figuratively the vessel of the Spirit for the bringing in of Christ. But in Abraham we see the exercise which faith has to go through in learning to accept this great and salutary lesson. We may see this exercise in Romans 9: 1 - 9. How Paul yearned over his kinsmen according to the flesh! The two exercises go together. There is the mind of the Spirit as to the absolute rejection of man after the flesh; that man is not the subject of promise or purpose, nor can he inherit anything as such. But along with this there is the yearning of grace over those who have had a connection, according to flesh,
[p. 163] with the root of promise. See Romans 10: 1 - 4. But it has to be accepted that it is the children of the promise that are reckoned as seed. Man in the flesh has to be reduced to the point of death before blessing comes in, and that is morally the end of that man. Then there is a well of water for him; in type the Spirit of another Man. It looks on to the time when the heart of stone will be taken away from Israel, and a heart of flesh given, and they will learn to say, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord”.
The failure of Abraham and Sarah recorded in chapter 20 was brought about by their allowing selfish fears to become greater in their hearts than the promise of God. If the promise of Isaac had been in its true power before their hearts they could not have denied their relationship. Losing sight of Christ is the root of all failure. Denying their relationship led to their both coming under the rebuke of Abimelech. But we see the principle and power of recovery in chapter 21; the son of promise comes in and Abraham and Sarah become possessed of him. The day arrives when Isaac gets his place and reigns supreme; there is no place for any other; Ishmael has to go out. The result is that Abraham is seen in moral superiority in the very place where his weakness had been apparent. Even Abimelech has to own that God is with him (verse 12). This is the result of Christ getting His place. Then we find that Abimelech’s servants had violently taken away a well of water which Abraham had dug. Might there not be a moral connection between Abraham’s failure recorded in the previous chapter and the taking away of the well? When the church denied her true relationship with Christ, and was found in the king’s house — exalted in the world — [p. 164] those acting under the world power soon took away her spiritual refreshments. What was formal and official was set up in place of the free action of the Spirit amongst the saints. When Christ was lost sight of as the glorious Man — the living Head — in heaven, the Spirit lost His place; a religious order came in which set Him aside, Christendom has not given Christ His place, and has set aside the Spirit. So that much that had been secured by the spiritual labours of the apostles and the exercises of the saints was taken away. And I think there can be little doubt that this was the result, in the government of God, of the church being unfaithful to her true relationship.
It is to be noted that the hostility of the Philistines both in Abraham’s time and in Isaac’s was in relation to wells. The Philistines represent those who are professedly on divine ground, but without faith, and their course is always such as to deprive saints of spiritual refreshing. The bringing in of the clerical principle was a taking away of the well of water because it set aside the saints’ privilege to come together to profit by the distinctions of gifts operated by “the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each in particular as he pleases”, 1 Corinthians 12: 11. The weakness of the reformation was that in none of the so-called reformed churches did they really give place to the Spirit.
If we wish to have unhindered enjoyment of the well we must see to it that we honour Christ alone, and do not give Ishmael any place. Then God can act for us and preserve to us spiritual refreshing. It is as the lordship and headship of Christ have been owned in these last days that the liberty of saints to [p. 165] come together as such, and to edify one another, has been in measure restored. Then where there is a measure of recovery the enemy often seeks to put orthodoxy and correct terms in place of the present activity of the Spirit. This may be very valuable so far as it goes, but if things are not in our souls in living freshness by the Spirit they are not of much real good to us.
The seven ewe lambs seem to suggest a spirit of grace towards those who have been hostile. The presence of God with Abraham, and the grace displayed by him, result in Abraham’s title to the well being established. Probably Beersheba looks on to the time when it will be owned by all that God is with His people, and they will be found in peaceful enjoyment of “the well of the oath”. But in the meantime we have to establish our title to the enjoyment of what is of the Spirit by being in moral accord with it. The king and the chief captain represent men who have an official title, but the man of faith has to establish a moral title to what he enjoys. The way we exalt Christ, and are able to refuse the flesh a place, proves that God is with us. And the spirit of grace towards those who may not have been favourable to us is powerful evidence of a moral title to enjoy in peace any refreshing of the spirit that has been gained through the Lord’s grace, and through the exercise and diligence of faith. The Lord speaks to Philadelphia of “an opened door, which no one can shut”. He thus pledges Himself to secure freedom to enjoy spiritual refreshing for those who keep His word and do not deny His name. Such have established their title to the well, if we may so apply the type, and He will see that they are not hindered [p. 166] from the enjoyment of it by the Philistines. And very soon even the adversaries will have to acknowledge them as in the place of honour, and to know that they are loved by Christ.