BEING SUSTAINED BY WHAT IS HEAVENLY
BEING SUSTAINED BY WHAT IS HEAVENLY
CAC My thought in suggesting this scripture was to get help from the Lord as to the way He would sustain us in the wilderness by giving us the light of all that is heavenly.
This section of the book of Numbers is one which is typical of the assembly as found in wilderness conditions; that is, conditions of weakness, failure and rebellion, and all the things that actually come out in the people of God in the present state of things — unbelief getting in among the people of God. In the chapters before, the spies had gone up and brought an evil report; God has sentenced the previous generation to perish in the wilderness, but He has got a Caleb. It was in Caleb’s heart to cherish what was of God. There is a bit of Caleb in every believer. It is a comfort to know that God has put the light of His purpose in the hearts of His people; that is, the Spirit works in their hearts. Caleb had the land in his heart; he did not judge the land according to what he saw, but according to what was in his heart. J.B.S. used to tell us that God gives the light of the finish at the beginning. The soul that gets the Spirit gets the consciousness of the love of God; there is a consciousness — it may not last more than five minutes — that God wants me, He wants to set His love on me; that in the heart makes me a Caleb. You find in the previous chapter there is a generation who will go in. God’s says, “Your little ones, of whom ye said they should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land that ye have despised” (chapter 14: 31). Your children shall feed in the wilderness forty years (verse 33); there is a generation represented by the children, nurtured and disciplined in the wilderness in view of the absolute certainty of their coming into [p. 175] the land. That is the position taken by those in whose hearts God has put the sense of His love, and the fellowship of His purpose of their coming into the land.
Rem I had not noticed the gift of the Spirit came so early in their course.
CAC The soul that has come into it and has the Spirit has the consciousness that God has taken us up for the pleasure of His love; it may not last long, but you have it. In Exodus 15 they speak in the past tense; they did not put their foot on the land for forty years. God’s salvation covers everything; no one has the completeness of God’s salvation until they reach the land. We are being nourished in the wilderness, that is our side. It says in Acts 13: 18, “He nursed them in the desert”. He is feeding us with the ministry of Christ and giving us a constitution. Then there is discipline — was it not discipline for Caleb to wander for forty years in the wilderness! They learn all that is of the first man has to be disciplined; there are so many things that have to be brought down if God is going to put us into the land of His purpose. He says, “When ye come into the land of your dwellings”. It is Ephesians 2: 6, “Made us sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus”. God gives the light of it to encourage them. He gives us the light of it to be a comfort and cheer and present joy in our souls. He says, ‘When you come into the land, you will want to bring burnt-offerings’; there is an increasing appreciation of Christ; it begins with a lamb and goes on to a ram, and then a bullock. That belongs to the heavenly side of the Christian’s experience; there is an enlarging and increasing appreciation of Christ as the ground and measure of our acceptance with God. It is different in Leviticus; there it is God speaking from His own side: we get the greatest first, and in great grace He comes down to the smallest. Here it is the ground of acceptance; that is, you think of Christ in His complete devotion in regard to sin and death. I fear a great many have not the complete joy of acceptance. When you come to the burnt-offering, it is not a [p. 176] once-for-all thing; if people do not continue to bring their burnt-offering, they lose the joy of acceptance. I do not say they lose the light of it, but they lose the joy.
Rem In each of the offerings, the wine is the same proportion.
CAC That is very important; as we increase in the consciousness of acceptance in the burnt-offering, there must be the corresponding increase of our appreciation of the character of the walk and the Spirit of Christ, and as we are increasing in that we become delightful to God.
Ques Does the wine correspond to that?
CAC I think the wine is most blessed. In every case the offerer is identified with his offering; my spirit is identified with my appreciation of the self-sacrificing love of Christ; the conscious joy of acceptance marks me. How wonderful to be with God consciously identified with the sweet odour of Christ! As the consciousness of acceptance increases by the constant renewal of the burnt-offering, it is renewed on every fresh occasion when you come to God. I sometimes ask people, what do you pray about? ‘Oh, I pray about trials and difficulties, the people of God, and that I may get on and be here for God’. Suppose you start on a new tack! Go to God and speak to Him about Christ; I think it would transform your spiritual life. As you speak to God about His delight in Christ, it becomes real in your soul and you get the joy of it. I believe the people of God today are a joyless people. They do not bring their burnt-offering, they are not in the joy of acceptance.
Ques You are taking the complete view of the death of Christ; it is what secures personal acceptance, that is how I am with God. That preciousness is in His life as well as in His death?
CAC I should discern between the burnt-offering, the meat-offering, and the drink-offering; that is, in proportion as we enjoy the burnt-offering, we are able to appreciate the joy God had in His life here. I shall abide in Him, and walk as He walked. It is a wonderful thing to have Christ as the [p. 177] meat-offering before your soul; every perfection is there, and our souls learn to contemplate every moral perfection in Christ. Your idea of what is a spiritual person you have learned from Christ: everything about Him is spiritual; that is the only way I get a right idea of a spiritual person. You connect it all with Christ; there is no evil, no blemish, no defect.
Ques. No disproportion?
CAC No, there is not a single defect; there is every feature of moral excellence in Christ; you get a sense of that, and it marks out your path; you take your path according to that. The psalmist says, ‘Prepare our hearts to keep Thy precepts, that we should walk in them’ (cf. Ephesians 2: 10). Where? In Jesus. All is prepared there, that is the life in which we are to walk, that would give the heavenly character while we are still in wilderness conditions, wilderness circumstances. When you come to the drink-offering it suggests the delight of Christ, His great delight in being poured out for God and for saints. He could say, “To do thy good pleasure is my delight” (Psalm 40: 8). That is the drink-offering. His delights were with the sons of men (Proverbs 8: 31). “In them is all my delight” (Psalm 16: 3). It was a positive delight to the Lord. We take character from what we bring to God.
Rem Mr. Darby puts it, ‘In this Thy nature grow’.
C.A.C. Yes,
‘And thus Thy deep perfections
Much better should I know,
And with adoring fervour
In this Thy nature grow’. (51:5)
There is no other way but by getting at them in Christ. I must study Christ if I want to know what moral perfection is; the power of God is in that; it works through the affections.
Ques When does it come out?
CAC Oh! it comes out when it is there; it is the light of what is proper to the land brought to us in the wilderness to be the stay and joy of faith while we are still in the wilderness conditions.
[p. 178] Ques Does John give the thought when he says, “We have contemplated his glory”?
CAC I think it would undoubtedly come out there, but it would come out in the whole life of the saint; you can have the light of acceptance in your private walk with God. As the deep perfections of Christ are known they give character to the saint.
Ques I suppose when we come together what we have individually would come out?
CAC It comes out in the way of service to God undoubtedly.
Ques Would this constitute the testimony? It is the wilderness in question.
CAC It is the light of what is heavenly coming out in the saint; the life of Jesus was always poured out in the service of love; every feature of His life was delightful to God. You see the real joy of it in Paul. We grow in the appreciation of it; it is a growing thing. If we had it ‘once for all’ it would wane; if we do not get it renewed it wanes.
Ques Would that be leaving first love?
CAC The natural tendency is to decline, but as we increase we take character from it; it all goes together — you get a wonderful result: a people identified with God’s purpose, bound up with all that Christ is; it is the greatest possible delight to think that it is so.
Rem There is need of abstraction from things here; you do not get it in a crowd.
CAC No, all this is properly heavenly and brings us to love the support of faith in the wilderness. I should think Caleb found very great joy from this chapter, and probably lived on it. It is what we have to take up individually; then you get further light. All this is laid open to the stranger: “One statute for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you” (verse 15). If Christ is brought in, He is too great for Israel; it suggests the bringing in of the Gentiles. It is God’s pleasure that as many as possible shall participate in the preciousness of Christ. Then He suggests eating the bread of the land (verse 20): “the heave-offering; as the heave-offering of the threshing-floor”. This is another aspect. The bread of the land is the food of God’s purpose, a risen and glorified Christ. In John 6 Christ is the “living bread which has come down out of heaven”; “he also who eats me shall live also on account of me” (verses 51, 57). Then God says, ‘When you come to that you must think of Me first’; that is, to get the nourishing power we have to think first of God’s delight to have Him there; if we do not start with that we shall not get the nourishing power in our souls. That refers to the wave sheaf of Leviticus 23. The wave sheaf is the soul taking its place with God in the sense of God’s delight to have Christ in reserve. Satan never made a greater mistake from his point of view than when he incited man to put Christ to death, because it necessitated resurrection, and so as to the bread of the land God has the first joy, and we have to realise God’s portion, the delight of God to have Man in the Person of the Lord Jesus. God says, ‘Now think first of My point in it’.
Ques Is that the secret of true deliverance?
CAC It is that we should think of Christ in relation to God.
Ques “In that he lives, he lives to God”. God has come into the vision of his soul?
CAC Yes; in the end of Romans 7 I used to wish he would explain a little more how it was done; he seems to get all tied up in a knot, and then he exclaims suddenly, “I thank God”. That is how it happened; he gets God before him and he himself is nowhere. It is sonship in Ephesians 2. It was all with the risen and glorified Man in view. There is His place officially in the moral universe, but first of all you have something Godward. If God is going to have sons before Him, He has secured it in Christ. Think what it was to God when sin came in! What a grief to His heart. Now God has a Man who is equal to put sin away. What a delight to God to have One like that! In the end of the gospels it is the inherent power that is in Christ that was before the writers’ minds so that they do not say, ‘He was raised’, they say “He is risen”. It is [p. 180] His glory. God has Him in ascension and resurrection, so God can say, ‘Now before you get the nourishing power of it, think first what it is to Me’; that brings you to what is properly heavenly, while we are still in wilderness conditions being disciplined; but God brings in the nourishing light of all this for the support of faith in circumstances of all kinds. It is a fine chapter. Nothing else will make us heavenly in our spirits. God is ever ministering Christ to us, so that there is a power to effect everything that is for God’s delight in us. We cannot improve upon God’s way of working.