LEARNING OURSELVES IN THE WILDERNESS

LEARNING OURSELVES IN THE WILDERNESS

I thank you for writing to me, I wish I could talk the subject over with you. I think you would not omit Exodus 15, Exodus 16, Exodus 17 from the wilderness. J.N.D. I see calls them God’s earthly ways with His people. I agree with you that the Christian state is from Numbers 21, but surely you would not overlook that we have to learn ourselves in the presence of God’s grace in the wilderness. It is there we learn that the flesh profiteth nothing. “In me that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing” (Romans 7: 18). How could you “remember” (see Deuteronomy 8) if you had not been there? If you had only Numbers 21 you would be stilted. I see in Romans 6 and Romans 7 that I am in the former looking to Christ and the Spirit for relief. In chapter 7 I have learned my inability to keep the law. I consider that we have after justification (the Red Sea) to enter on the path of death to ourselves — the wilderness, where there is nothing for us but God in His grace. I turn to the manna and the rock for myself, and I find that as I resist Amalek, God is for me. This I call the human side of the wilderness. From Numbers 21 I have come to the end of man, and with life in Christ, and the Spirit given to me, I come out here for the Lord. I run the race surmounting every obstacle, and it is not my own need of Christ now, but I am His, and I am here for Him (Romans 12, Romans 13), and finally I am in ^[p. 171] the wilderness as a heavenly man. See the Epistle to the Philippians. As I read it, it is all Christ there, but still in the wilderness. I hope you will see my mind from these hasty remarks, and that you will agree that we must first learn ourselves in the wilderness. Many an earnest servant, as you know, has been unequal to be ‘the Christian’ in the wilderness, because he had not learned himself; he had not learned “he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28: 26). Many a bitter lesson I had to learn in the very presence of the grace of God; hence you are not ready for fighting (as J.N.D. says on Numbers 21) until you see Christ made sin. If Israel had learned themselves in the day of grace, they would not have been subjected to the law. By the law is the knowledge of sin. The Corinthians and Galatians had the Spirit, but they had not learned themselves.