A CLOUD OF WITNESSES
J.C.Evershed
I have read about a part of a cloud - not a crowd - a part of a great cloud which stretches from one horizon to the other, for, as the scripture says, it surrounds us. It is not a dark cloud although you might think that parts of it are dark, but it is a bright cloud. If you think of all the clouds in the New Testament you will discover, with perhaps one exception, that they are all quite good and bright ones. And this cloud is bright. When you read of persons being sawn asunder, being tempted and not accepting deliverance, you might think it dark and wonder why God did not intervene to prevent such things. He did not, but He knew who was in a goatskin and who in a sheepskin, who was in a den and who in a cavern, who was in a desert and who in the mountains. It helps us, I think, just to ponder that and get our assessment of what the world really is. Those persons were prepared by faith to go through all those things. They relinquished, no doubt, things that they might quite legitimately have had in order that they might live in a path of faith true to God, and that helps us in our assessment of the things of the world which so easily ensnare us and turn us from the path of faith. But that does not make this a dark cloud. It is like being up above the clouds, so that you enjoy the sunshine, and you also see the sunshine reflected from the clouds. A great point about this cloud is that it not only reflects what Christ is but it draws your attention to Him. Thus the whole of this chapter does but lead on to draw our attention fully and solely to the Person of the Lord Jesus, taking our look off from everything else that we might look upon Him and thus run with endurance the race set before us.
I want to speak especially about these first five persons named here who had faith, because I think they set out basic principles for us in the path of faith. I do not overlook the earlier verses of the chapter which are vastly important. We do not exactly get a definition of faith in the first verse; rather if we wanted one we should have to say that one has "set to his seal that God is true". A person who sets his seal to a thing makes it final. No doubt all here have done that, we have set to our seal that God is true, whatever wavering there may be in our pathway. But then there is what faith brings with it, and that is the "substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen". In other words, the things we enjoy we enjoy by conviction and yet we cannot demonstrate them to anybody else; they are real to us just as they were real in the promises of God to these persons of whom we have read, and of others. It says that they did not receive the promises, but they saw them and embraced them. By faith they had the benefit and the motive power in their souls to live here in a path pleasing to God in whatever circumstances He ordered for them, and they themselves had the substantiating of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. The scripture speaks of the elders and then of us. It says "we apprehend that the worlds were framed by the word of God". I would just say to the children that they must remember that this is the truth of God in a very few words brought forward here, and they are to understand it by faith. Whatever developments of learning might come in, these words stand in order that we should know that the things that are seen do not take their origin from the things which appear.
Then we get these five great personages, and might wonder why these are brought forward and not others. Adam must have known what faith was, but first of all we have Abel, then Enoch, then Noah, then Abraham and then Sarah. I think in Abel we learn what acceptance is with God, in Enoch acceptability, in Noah salvation and in Abraham pilgrimage, while in Sarah we see what strengthening is. So these features coming into the path of faith would lead us, I believe, to be in it and running the race with endurance, reaching out to the goal set before us.
Both Cain and Abel came before God. It is remarkable that Abel should have the name he had; we do not know how long he lived but he was called 'Breath'. Every time anybody said his name they would say 'Breath'. How he must have felt how short, in a way, life could be, how essential it was that what there was of it should be rightly used and rightly devoted. We breathe somewhere about twenty times a minute. Think of what one breath is! So Abel would correspond, I suppose, with the weakness and frailty of our human nature - as James says, "what is your life? It is even a vapour", chap 4: 14. A man like that is a man who appreciates what it is to be accepted by God Himself by virtue of the sacrifice that he brought, and to have the testimony of it. It says he "offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained testimony of being righteous, God bearing testimony to his gifts, and by it, having died, he yet speaks". This scripture does not develop, of course, the line of Cain which can be looked at with profit; a kind of negative study, and yet necessary because scripture brings it in in its place. These two both had a desire to approach God, but one was accepted and the other was not. The acceptance of Abel is dwelt upon here, and the excellence of his sacrifice. So I think it is vital for us in the path of faith, as the first element, that we should understand that as believers coming to God in the worth of Christ, and in the virtue of the shedding of His blood, we come as persons who are accepted by Him. And it says, "God bearing testimony to his gifts". We know from the scripture that he not only brought of the firstlings of the flock but also of the fat thereof. In other words he came with the understanding that he must offer an offering to God; doubtless it was a blood sacrifice from the flock and not that which he himself by his labour had produced. He brought it to come as it were between himself and God, but he brought also the fat, which was his gift. In other words, he brought what would speak to God of the excellences of Christ. How much he may have understood those things we do not know, but that is what the teaching is for us. So we find that the offerings in the book of Genesis take the character of burnt offerings, that which ascends to God as pleasurable to Him, and, as we know, later He reserved the fat for Himself. As we come in to God we come in as accepted by Him in the excellence of Christ.
A further step in faith is to be acceptable. I may know and understand very well that I am accepted by God in the Beloved but am I acceptable to Him? Is my state always such? Enoch I think sets this out. It says elsewhere that he walked with God and it appears that he walked for three hundred years, comparatively a short life for those times. I suppose each day he got nearer to God, and the more he walked with God the more he understood God's thoughts. You or I might say, I wish God would walk with me, that is what I would like; and our circumstances as far as we are able should be ordered in such a way that He can, and that is piety. But then Enoch walked with God, desiring to enter into His thoughts and mind. He had his normal daily life as well, "he begot sons and daughters" and was not abstracted from the ordinary things of life. Nevertheless he walked with God, and that means that he maintained a state whereby he was continually acceptable to God. It says "Enoch was translated", which means he was taken away, as another has said, as if God said, 'We have been together so long now, you come and be with me for ever'. That is how it will be with us. When the Lord comes we shall be translated and go to another place; we shall be the same, only we shall be different, that is what translation means. If you translate something into a foreign language it looks different but it is the same. Enoch was the same but he was translated, they could not find him here; that will be so with the assembly, the body of Christ, those in whom the Spirit dwells. They will not be translated because they cannot get on here any longer, even if it does mean dens and caverns. It will mean that the assembly is translated because of the Lord's pleasure in it. As with those persons who were in goatskins and sheepskins, the world was not worthy of them, so it will be with the assembly and so it should be now. Enoch sets that out; I expect they looked for him but he was not there. In another sense we have already been translated into the kingdom of the Son of God's love, that is a somewhat different thought, but it means really that what God will bring in in actuality He brings in now in the power and enjoyment of the Holy Spirit into our souls, so that we have what these persons looked forward to themselves, and we have it in the Spirit. If we are to be acceptable it is I believe by the unhindered activity of the Holy Spirit in us.
Then Noah comes before us as one who was saved and his house. He was obedient to God and was moved with fear. It is a good thing to be moved. We might have said that it is a poor moral reason just to do something through fear; but it is not so, this was fear of God leading to obedience to God's word, and it is good if we are moved by God's word at all times. I have felt for myself how much I have listened to and read; and have had to say at the end that I really have hardly been moved at all by it. Noah prepared an ark for the saving of his house; therefore this matter of salvation is an important one. He did this by faith and we know that, as to household baptism, parents are concerned to bring their children on to the ground on which they themselves are and have faith as to the working of God in their souls, so that they also should take their place in the path of faith. It is important that anyone should remain in the path of faith and not get out of it. One would not want to go out of this ark and try to enjoy oneself because it was judgment all around. There is judgment on the whole world's system, and we are to beware not only of the world but of the things of the world as well which are more insidious. God shut Noah in; on His part He saw to it that Noah was safely there. Noah condemned the world, but he did not set out exactly to do that. I do not suppose he preached condemnation while he was building the ark; he preached righteousness, the word of God. He preached what was coming because he believed it, and we preach what we believe. Noah condemned the world because as far as we know nobody said they wanted to go into the ark. Indeed it is a remarkable thing that only few, that is eight souls, were saved. Then he became the heir of righteousness which is according to faith. So there is an inheritance to be obtained, an inheritance which is necessary to the believer in the path of faith, that he has the righteousness which is of faith. Abel had it, I have no doubt Adam had it too; and it has come all the way down to us, the righteousness "which is by faith of Christ". Think of having an inheritance like that! Have you taken it up? In business I have had to write to people to tell them that they have had an inheritance. They write various letters in reply but you can always read into them that each person asks, How soon can I have it? Well, it is a good thing if that is uppermost in our souls as to these things of God. We might think that the righteousness of faith is a very basic and elementary thing, and so it is, but it is very far reaching, otherwise it would hardly speak of Noah as being the heir of it; it might say he was the heir of something else such as the new world, which I suppose he was in a way. His inheritance was the righteousness which is of faith.
Abraham is commended as one who obeyed and went out not knowing where he went. A person of the world would say that was folly not faith. But in a way Abraham did know where he was going, not in detail, but God had said to him "Go out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, to the land that I will shew thee", Gen 12: 1. In other words Abraham attached his faith to what God had said, that God had a place for him, though when he got there he did not actually possess it. Marvellous faith there must have been with that man! Perhaps he was slow starting out, but he went on from stage to stage as one to whom God could come and commune, not only as to the things that He would give to Abraham but what He would be to him. Right down the centuries he saw the coming in of Christ after the pattern of Isaac, the blessing of the nations with Israel, and the world to come. Abraham, as he was dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, knew what it was to be a pilgrim, and that is what I feel we need to learn more of. The material things that we have and enjoy are not to be grasped and reached after for their own sakes, but to be enjoyed on account of the One who has given them to us and whose they are.
The things that really do belong to us are the spiritual things that God gives to us so freely. Abraham was ready to wait. It is interesting that it says, By faith Abraham, because he was Abram when he was called out; his name was changed after that. I like to think of every believer as it were having a change of name. We have the name that is called over us in baptism and let us not forget that it is called over us in close conjunction with the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and with the name of the Lord Jesus. But I like to think of a name being given to us in connection with what God's work is in our souls, and what He purposes to reach in us. Abraham was known by his new name. I think God would look upon us and know us by our new name. Perhaps those are the names that are written in heaven. I think that what the Lord was pointing to in speaking to His disciples as to their names being written in the heavens was that, however great it was to overcome evil spirits and so on, yet to have a peculiar place of his own or her own, in heaven according to the measure of God's work and purpose for us, is what is to be rejoiced in the more by us. Well, there is much more spoken about Abraham because he waited for a city which had foundations. He failed as we know and scripture does not hide the fact, but the course of Abraham viewed in the Scriptures is a steady one; it was not an unhappy one because it says that Abraham exulted. So his path of pilgrimage was not unhappy because he saw Christ's day - therefore it says he exulted.
The special feature of strengthening comes in with Sarah. It says she "received strength" for something which naturally speaking was impossible. We might even get to circumstances like that where it really seems impossible to continue in the path of faith and have the right issue that is expected of it. Sarah "received strength", she must have got it from somewhere, and she got it from God of course. In the beginning of Luke it says that nothing shall be impossible with God, it does not say to God although that would be true. Elsewhere I believe it is similar, all things are possible with God. That means that persons are at the receiving end of the things that are impossible. Sarah was a very great personage of faith, not only on account of the fact that she became the mother of countless numbers and was a setting forth of what God could do to one who was already as dead, but because of this great matter of receiving strength in the path of faith. Scripture is very reserved as to the ages of women, and I think Sarah is the only one whose age is definitely given; she was ninety at this time and when she died it says she was one hundred and twenty-seven. So that in the Scriptures Sarah is unique in being brought before us as one whose years were counted by God and repeated in the word (see Gen 23: 1). God is able for every year, He is able for every month, every week, every day, and He is able to impart strength where it appears to be impossible.
All these died in faith, it says, with the exception of course of Enoch; they confessed to being strangers and sojourners. And I believe in the light of what God presents to us as to His thoughts and what is open to us we should be prepared to regard ourselves as strangers and sojourners on this earth, but belonging to a commonwealth which has. its existence in the heavens, whence also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. May we be in this spirit continually, for the Lord's Name's sake.
MAIDSTONE
24 August 1974