THE WILDERNESS
J.C.Evershed
Jeremiah 2: 1-3 (first clause)
I want to speak a little, dear brethren, about the wilderness as it is spoken of in these verses in Jeremiah, because it says that God's people went after Him in the wilderness. I do not intend to speak of the wilderness exactly as a howling desert, or as a grim path, but rather as a pilgrim path and a way in which, although we get to know what is in our own hearts, primarily we get to know what is in God's own heart and the provision that He has made for us at every turn in the testimony. So it says of Israel that "thou wentest after me in the wilderness". That obviously means that God had been in the wilderness before the children of Israel got there. I hope to be able to prove that from Scripture as we go on.
Since, however, this scripture has come before me, I would like just to dwell on this fact that God remembered on account of His people their brightest day. It seems to me a very wonderful thing that, although God had said that He would remember sins and iniquities no more, yet it says here that what He would remember was the brightest day that Israel had, the day of their espousals and the day when they went after Him in the wilderness. It should not have been like that. Actually this was, I suppose, one of the worst times in the history of God's people; the ten tribes had gone into captivity, two were about to go, but God said, I remember your best day. I would say to each believer that God will not remember your iniquities and your sins any more and He, true to His nature, will remember your best day; but you and I should not have to tax His memory to remember when our best day was; our brightest day should be today. He should not have to remember it as a thing in the past. So I would like to lay this upon ourselves that we are concerned that this day should be our brightest day, and if this little word of ministry will help to that end with one and another we shall have reached a good conclusion.
There are one or two very interesting things about the wilderness. One of the most remarkable is that of all the Israelites their clothes and their sandals never wore out. Little did they know on the passover night, when in haste they put on their sandals and girded on their clothes, that those garments would remain new for forty years. And this is not only an interesting fact as being God's miraculous intervention so that whenever clothes were passed down the family, each time the child said, 'I have an entirely new garment, an entirely new pair of shoes'; there is something far, far deeper than that in it. The fact that their garments never wore out means that God's purpose for those people never changed; He ever had before Him that He was to take them through the wilderness into the land. You say, there were only one or two that actually went through. I say He took His people out of Egypt and He took them into the land of promise and He never had to change His purposes on account of what came out in them. And their sandals? That means that the power for walk through the wilderness never diminishes, never becomes old, it is always new and fresh because it resides in the Holy Spirit. Therefore it is possible and normal for the believer to walk through the wilderness in accordance with the light of the purpose of God.
Another interesting thing about the wilderness is that it is not a wilderness, but several wildernesses, at least four. That does not mean to say that it is so much the worse, it means that there are diverse ways in which we learn God's thoughts and intents for us. These wildernesses can be identified in the scriptures and it is one way in which God comes, as it were, to our level and opens up the truth to us - divides it up so that we can distinguish one thing from another. Just the same as there were a number of different classes of persons going through the wilderness, four of them, and a number of different persons besides children who went right through from Egypt to the land, four of them, showing that there are distinctive features to be seen in believers and in the believer as going through the wilderness. There were the priests, the family of the priests (and every believer partakes of that feature), there were the Levites who bore the burdens of the testimony; every believer partakes of that. There were the common persons, as we call them; every believer partakes of that. Thus Paul speaks of the simple Christian, and not only so but of him "who fills the place of the simple Christian", 1 Cor 14: 16. So that if you and I can do nothing else, we can fill the place of the simple Christian and say "Amen" at the giving of thanks. In other words we can be responsive to what goes on in God's service. And then, fourthly there were the strangers who went with the people, not exactly the mixed multitude, but the strangers who would find that "One law shall be for him that is home-born and for the sojourner", Exod 12: 49. Think of God's mercy in taking us up as strangers and at a distance from Him, and saying, as it were 'One law shall be for all. Even if you are a stranger you shall come into the very best that there is and it shall belong to you and no one can take it from you'. The believer is all these four kinds of person in himself.
One person who went through was Joshua who represents one in the gain of the lordship of Christ, because he was so often mentioned as being with Moses. ln fact he says "My lord Moses" (Num 11: 28) in one case. That is an absolute essential in going through our daily path, that we fully acknowledge the Lord and are found in His company. There was also Caleb, of whom it distinctively says that "he hath another spirit" (Num 14: 24) which stresses to us the importance of being such persons; not those who doubt whether God can take us through and can give us the enjoyment even now of the holy privileges; not those who murmur or complain; but those who are of another spirit as having the indwelling of the Holy Spirit here. Then, of course, Moses, though in the government of God he was hindered at one time from going into the land and accepted it, nevertheless represents one who reached there in glory. He represents the believer as going through as a glorified person. Moses appeared in company with Elias and with the Lord Jesus on the mount, and it says they appeared "in glory", Luke 9: 31. So as we go through our pilgrimage we take account of one another as being those whom, by the indwelling of the Spirit, God has already glorified.
Fourthly there was Joseph; he went right through too. It is a very remarkable and interesting thing. He represents what I call long-term faith because he spoke of the going forth of the children of Israel and of their coming into the land (although it was a couple of hundred years before it took place) and he said 'I am going through as well'; and he went through. You say it was just his bones. Yes, that is just the mysterious side of things. There is that which is mysterious about the believer, that which is unseen, and yet structural within him that goes right through. One might think that when they went in haste out of Egypt they would not have wanted to be encumbered with an ark containing the bones of Joseph, but it distinctly says (as I read it) that Moses himself "took the bones of Joseph with him" (Exod 13: 19) on leaving Egypt. And at every encampment, every movement, every step they took, they took the bones of Joseph with them. So after the first year they had two arks with them; one, of course, outstandingly was the ark of the testimony and the ark of the covenant, and that is essential for believers in the wilderness and cannot be too much stressed; it represents the leadership of the Lord Jesus here, the perfection of His person and His being a rallying point and a centre of divine service. But then they had another ark with them as well and that just contained the bones of Joseph and it went right through into the land and he was buried there. So with the believer there is that which he may have to wait a long time to realise; the results of his desires, of his prayers, of his longings, or of whatever it might be, and it demonstrates long-term faith. And I ask myself and my brethren, that as we are tested in things about which we have an underlying faith, let us remember that the bones of Joseph went right through into the land and what he had set before him in faith was realised.
I now dwell on the fact that God had been in the wilderness before the people reached there; before ever a single Israelite got across the Red Sea and up the bank, God had been there before him. I used, as a boy, to think of the Israelites scrambling through the Red Sea and up the other side on to the bank. But you did not scramble through the Red Sea, did you? You did not, nor did I. It would be a slight on the work of Christ if we thought we did. And in any case the scripture says that there was not one feeble among their tribes (Ps 105: 37) and that they had no fear in going through (Ps 78: 53), which is a very remarkable thing seeing that they had a great wall of water on either side of them. They went through in rank and triumphantly because they sang redemption's song when they reached the shore. One of the leaders in the singing and the dancing was a person of about ninety-two years of age, Miriam. So let the old sisters realise that they have a very essential part in connection with this matter of rejoicing in redemption's work, and there is something that they can set on amongst us as a fruit of their experience and knowledge of God. He has seen to it that we have been taken through the Red Sea with a high hand, according to the power and majesty of His own thoughts. As believers we have been powerfully taken out of Egypt where we had been under the domination of the enemy of God and have been brought to a place where God Himself is. Although, as believers, we have been brought, in effect, really in purpose, into the land, God has something for us to learn of Himself in the pilgrimage time.
So those people were taken through the Red Sea which means the death of Christ as making a way through death for us and separating us completely from the world which is dominated by Satan. God Himself has taken us and He has taken us to Himself, as He says: I have "brought you to myself", Exod 19: 14. But when they got into the first wilderness they found the water was bitter to drink, and that must have been a great disappointment to them, having been rejoicing so much in their deliverance. I would like the young ones to listen carefully to this, because the children also would have found the water bitter. It may be that as you grow up and realise that you have been baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus, to the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, you will find that owning the Lord brings a certain bitterness of circumstance to you, something that you will not like - and those of us who are older find it just the same, that the waters of Marah are bitter. Some have said that they were the backwaters, the brackish waters of the Red Sea itself that they had to taste; in other words, what the Lord Jesus Himself so fully tasted in going into death. But then this is one way I am going to prove that God had been there first, because He showed Moses wood. Now God had put that wood there. It was not just any wood, it was not 'go and find some wood and cast it in'; God "shewed him wood, and he cast it into the waters, and the waters became sweet", Exod 15: 25. That means that God has made perfect provision for all our needs and that the Lord Jesus has endured and passed through the fulness of temptations and testings which we pass through, sin apart, in His Person. That did not diminish the bearing of those testings upon Him but rather did it make them the more solemn to Him on account of the perfection of His Person. The wood being cast into the waters therefore demonstrates to us that God has gone before and He has made a means whereby the waters of Marah can be made sweet. I suppose God could have said, 'Take them on another few hundred yards and they will find sweet water', but He did not do that. He did not take them out of their circumstances but left them there, and He made the waters sweet. He did not chide them for complaining, and that is a feature of this early stage of wilderness history. Those of us who are older, if we complain, God is severe with us, but in the early days of the path of faith God would pass over the murmurings of His people and would meet them in His grace.
Then He led them to Elim where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees. God had been there many years before. But here were two million people and twelve wells and seventy palm trees, which did not seem to me when a child to be enough. But then they speak of the sufficiency of God's ministration in the power of the Spirit, I believe through ministry, so that He is able to convey refreshment to however many persons there may be, in fact to whosoever will. Just as the Lord sent out twelve apostles and then sent the other seventy also, just so it is that there are those who are particularly gifted, not apostles now, but those specially fitted to minister to us; and then we have those who can in a way supplement that and bring in something further that adds to the comfort, the refreshment and the building up of the saints.
Well, they moved on from that wilderness and came into another one and then they had not anything to eat. That meant that they proved God in a fresh way altogether because God had also been there first; He said 'When you go out of your tents you will find the manna there'. Think of God providing the manna! And that was sufficient to last them right through the forty years. Perhaps you say they got tired of it. We have to say they did; but manna was their food and I do not believe Joshua and Caleb ever got tired of eating it. In any case it is "the bread of the mighty", Ps 78: 25. They would never be able to feed on the giants in the land as they foretold "they shall be our food", Num 14: 9 - unless they fed on the manna. You and I will never have any power for progress unless we are feeding on Christ known to us as God's daily provision. I do not think we can stress that too much, the daily feeding on Christ as the manna. Those who went after God in the wilderness, in a land not sown, who would not have had any crops or anything like that, were just entirely dependent upon God and what He would supply. And then for their thirst there was the smitten rock. Who put the rock there? God had been first, to that very spot, and that rock was there; that rock was Christ. Think of the refreshing that came from Christ as being smitten, for it required that He should die. Do we realise that these spiritual refreshments and enjoyments that we have are dependent upon the work and suffering of the Lord Jesus? The rock had to be smitten and the waters flowed. And another scripture says that the rock followed them. In other words God went behind them as well, so that all they had to do if they wanted refreshment and water was to turn round and get it. In Christianity that means that the Holy Spirit is always available to us because Christ died.
Then there was another thing that shewed that God had been there first. The Amalekites were there. 'O', you would say, 'I should think if God had been there first He would have cleared them all out'; but He did not do that, He left them there. God said about the Amalekites that He was going to have war with them throughout all generations. Why did He leave it like that? Ah, you see, He left it thus so that they should have some taste of conflict and that they should learn something about the way in which to deal with evil. I would like to mention one or two points as to the matter. The first would be, of course, to pray not to be led into temptation. You say 'Surely God will not tempt us'. Well, the Lord said "Pray that ye enter not into temptation", Luke 22: 40. The very fact of praying puts us into communion with God and although He may test us, allow temptation to come to us, it is not that we seek it, or put ourselves in the way of it, but rather the reverse. Another thing would be to abide in the faith which is in Christ Jesus. A weakly plant is the first to be attacked by any kind of virus, or whatever it might be, so that it is essential that we keep ourselves strong, as the scripture says, "in the grace which is in Christ Jesus". 2 Tim 2: 1.
Another thing is to learn the song or use of the bow. That means to deal with evil while it is as far off as possible and not let it get near. If king Saul had done that instead of letting temptation get nearer and nearer to him, cherishing it and living on it, he might have been saved. And so David in his lament taught the people the song of the bow, which means that while things are as far away as possible you deal with them. I ask the young people and the old people, do we do that, or do we sometimes cherish little temptations? Well, it was in the form of a song in any case and I think that is because it always helps us to be tuneful in our souls - to be responsive and not to view things as being too difficult and troublesome. Saul was put to grief by the very thing that he should have been able to use; the archers shot at him, they confused him, the enemy turned things round upon him and that is a very sad situation to get into.
But then there is more than that, because the scripture as to the Amalekites indicates close combat and they had to be strong for that; Joshua had to engage in close combat with evil. That is so oftentimes with us and God has provided for that too. It does not say what armour He provided for Joshua and the others, but they were able to overcome by virtue of the intercessory service of one who was above them, who represents in a certain aspect the service of Christ. With Him there was and is no failure nor ever could be, yet Moses represents the intercessory system which is supported by waiting upon God in order that persons might be victorious in the field of conflict with evil. It is no good under-estimating the power of the enemy; I do not think Joshua ever did that and I am quite sure that God never intends us to. One might say, 'Why does not God remove the evil condition from me so that I am not harassed by it?' But according to His own wisdom He has left that condition with us, but with power to be maintained in the overcoming of it. As has been often said, the presence of the flesh in us is not in itself defiling, but allowing it to act not only does us harm but detaches us from communion with God in our spirits.
Then they came into the wilderness of Sinai. I do not propose to dwell on the matter of the law but I would like to say just this about Sinai, that although it sounds very solemn and serious to us, and rightly so, because of the majesty of God and His moral requirements, yet the first thing He says when they get there is "Ye have seen... how I have borne you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself ", Exod 19: 4. In other words He had been there first. So that we can take account of God's pleasure in bringing us as quickly as possible to Himself where He is and to do it with power. And He says now, the proposal I have is that I will make you "a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation", Exod 19: 6. I would just like to leave that with us, too, that God would have us as brought to Himself, knowing Him intelligently and having the declaration, as they had at Sinai, of what He was morally, having too the light and construction of the tabernacle and all the detail of it with the fact that He would dwell there, the proposal is that we should be "a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation". So that God looks to us, as having come after Him in the wilderness, to serve Him even there as priests and to be holy persons. So that the fact that you and I are encompassed by infirmities, and that there is breakdown with us and with others, does not alter the fact that it is God's present proposal and intention that we should be a kingdom of priests to Him and a holy people entirely separate for His pleasure. When the children of Israel came into yet another wilderness they sent out spies into the land some of whom came back with an evil report, but two of them came back with a true report. The people began to murmur and complain but God did not then say that everything was finished if they did not want to go; He began to speak to them of what would happen when they would go in, about burnt offerings and the like. So you see that God has gone before at every point and He draws us to Himself where He is. There is progress through the wilderness, but each time we learn God in a fresh way. I would just press this upon us in closing, that we set ourselves in a definite way to learn more of God Himself and what communion with Him is during what we speak of as our wilderness path. In the Name of the Lord Jesus.
London
20 July 1974
EARNEST OF OUR INHERITANCE
C.G.Hitchcock
I have read the whole of this passage for the sake of the connection and because of what the apostle sets out in this paragraph, each part of which is so dependent on the others. It would seem that the early part contains a principal thought - that there is an ascription to God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as being the One "who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ". The passage closes with a reference to saints who have pre-trusted in the Christ, and to the great and blessed fact that "we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance to the redemption of the acquired possession to the praise of his glory". Well now, brethren, we have had before us the thought of the greatness of the position which God has accorded in His counsel, "the counsel of his own will", to Christ and to the saints of this present time, and it seemed to me (following upon our brother's reference to the Holy Spirit's service in taking of the things of Christ, and in giving us entrance into the mind of God according to the expression of God as it is found in Christ, and in His teaching and that of the apostles) that we might be encouraged to see what is the character of our blessing and the way in which we are supported by certain divine thoughts concerning Christ and what is in Him, and the fact that t he service of the Holy Spirit is operative at the present time to bring the saints into the gain of our inheritance, which is a spiritual one.
Now we need, I feel sure, to distinguish between what our inheritance is, what our blessing is, and what we find in the way of support in our responsible pathway here, because as here we are responsible in relation to the things of this life that we may be approved children of God in the course of that responsible pathway. But then, over and above our course here is what belongs to us as given to us of God in Christ, our spiritual inheritance, which we shall come into in the coming time; and we shall enjoy it under conditions that are proper to it, having bodies as the outcome of the redemption of the acquired possession, we being thus clothed with a house from heaven, having bodies of glory.
All that lies before us; but then the Holy Spirit is earnest of our inheritance now. The word 'earnest' is a well-known one and relates to ideas that were in the Old Testament; it is a transliteration of a Hebrew word into Greek, and the idea is a pledge. So what is before us and will be entered into in actuality is now made good to us in a kind of moral way so that our minds and our spirits are affected, and we are enabled in the Spirit's power to enter upon what will ultimately be our fully-enjoyed appreciation of what our portion is with Christ during the time of His reign over the earth and then in eternity when God dwells with men, tabernacles with them in that wonderful vessel where there is no need of the light of the sun, for the Lamb is the lamp. The blessedness of dwelling thus with God from our side of it will be unspeakable. We can hardly conceive it, but we do have some impression of it now, especially in moments of privilege when we are abstracted from what belongs to our responsible course here, of which I have already spoken, and we are thus given an entrance, as led by Christ, into this wonderful spiritual sphere where God is satisfied and joys in those whom Christ has brought to Him in sonship. So it is that as having believed we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Now, the idea of promise is that God has made certain statements as to what He is going to bring in, and the way in which He is going to bless His people, and it is therefore future, it is what He is going to do. But then it goes on to say, "Sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is ... earnest"; now that is, He is the pledge of it now. The thing is, are we going to avail ourselves of that service of the Holy Spirit, to be led so far as we are able at this present time into this wonderful sphere which God has in mind for us to be enjoyed in actuality, but which can be appreciated now and is a wonderful background of support as we pass through a scene of trial and pressure and difficulty. There may be discipline and chastening but we know the Father, and it is all in view of our being conformed to the image of His Son.
May we be encouraged by these thoughts that God has in mind for us, and what He has given to enable us to enter into them.
London
6 August 1974