MEDITATING IN THE FIELDS

E. C. Burr

Genesis 24: 62–I carry a remark made in the reading as to the degree to which our actual experience of the headship of Christ would lead us to apprehend what He Himself is engaged with. One longs to know it; one longs for the brethren to know it. It is an interesting and observable fact that most of the time when we speak about headship we speak as if its intention was to adjust us. I think it is a question whether the headship of Christ ever adjusts us, or rather whether it does not require an adjusted state for the headship of Christ to operate. It was said in the reading that His headship and His lordship run very close together, and they do, and we perhaps do not always distinguish the way in which He serves us in one connection from the way in which He serves us in the other.

Isaac here is active. It is “toward the beginning of evening”—it represents the present time; it always has represented the present time. There has never been a time since the Spirit came when it has not been towards the beginning of evening. The expectation that the Spirit’s day would end and Christ have what is His has always been the impression which lay upon the saints. But here Isaac comes from the well Beer-lahai-roi, the ‘well of the Living who was seen (or ‘Who reveals himself’)’ (see note to Genesis 16: 14). What an area Christ moves in! He moves in relation to the Spirit, not the Spirit as against the flesh (see Galatians 5: 17) or that order of things, but the Spirit as bearing on us in relation to the revelation of God. What a sphere Christ’s thoughts are occupied with! It is from that that He proceeds to meditate in the fields at the beginning of evening.

One longs to know what Christ meditates on at the present time. Do you think He meditates on the failure of the saints, or the breakdown of the church in its public position? I do not think so. I think He meditates on what He is about to receive—in this chapter Isaac is about to receive Rebecca. We do not know how long the servant had been away, how long the journey took. It is left like that so that we should not know, so that we should not be able to calculate how long the day of the Spirit’s service is; but Isaac here is expectant and he went out to meditate. How much in a certain sense one would give to know what was in Isaac’s mind at this time. He went out to meditate in the fields. Think of that—Isaac meditating in the fields—the vast area over which Christ is able to look as He meditates at the present time. What an area it is! The earth is His; He looks over it. God has said to Him as His Son that He would give Him the “nations for an inheritance, and for thy possession the ends of the earth”, Psalm 2: 8. He goes out into the fields to meditate, fields which He is about to have in their totality as His own, fields which have been the area of the operations of God, out of which in our own day the Spirit is operating to secure the assembly, on which in another day God has operated with an earthly family and with other families to secure them all for Christ in the day when He has what is His, “For the earth is the Lord’s”, 1 Corinthians 10: 26. He went out into that area, that

wide area, to meditate.

We were speaking on Wednesday evening here about the city in the world to come and how it seems that God’s thoughts in relation to every dispensation are gathered up there, without distinguishing one dispensation from another very much; but in the world to come as it is presented in Revelation 21 you get some impression of I AM, the One who has been the same through all dispensations and who gathers up everything in a vessel that can be for the glory of God. What wide operations God has had in what the fields speak of! Think of the reference to “a field which Jehovah has blessed” (Genesis 27: 27); that I think, beloved, is the area that Christ is peculiarly occupied with at the present time. Ruth was bidden to concentrate on “the field which is being reaped” (Ruth 2: 9), but Christ has all the fields before Him, and out of them He is going to have what is for Himself. I believe He meditates on that at the present time; not on failure, not on Adam’s sin, not on the breakdown of Cain in relation to Abel, not on Abraham’s failures in going down to Egypt, not on Isaac’s failures in going down to Egypt, not on Israel’s failures in turning away from God and from the law, but on “whose is the adoption … and the promises … and of whom, as according to flesh, is the Christ”, Romans 9: 4, 5. This, I think, is the anti-type of the area of Isaac’s meditation in the fields towards the beginning of evening. And especially upon the assembly; not the assembly as it is publicly, as one of the hymns we used to have at school says—‘By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed’—not like that. No, He has gone out to meditate on what is intrinsically fair; as far as could be said of what is creature, intrinsically perfect, for you only have to look back earlier in this chapter to discover the characteristics of Rebecca,

and as far as it may be said of what is creature she was perfect. No one had ever known her; she was perfect, representing the assembly just kept for Christ. That is, I believe, what He meditates on at the present time; and, beloved, He would draw us by His headship into what is occupying Him. One says elsewhere—“My meditation of him shall be sweet” (Psalm 104: 34. A.V.), but think of meditating with Him! Think of meditating with Christ over what He is so soon going to have, as the beginning of evening gives way to the evening; and the evening does not give way to the night, the evening gives way to the day, and then He will have what the Spirit has been diligent to secure.

Christ comes, as I say, from this particular area of the Spirit in relation to the revelation of God. How it bears on the present day! What fulness there is in it, what Isaac may meditate on in regard to the God who reveals Himself, the Living One who is seen. How much Christ has to reflect on in that, how much He has in relation to the Spirit, in relation to His own part, and in relation to the Father. But then, “In the fields toward the beginning of evening”. What is about to happen? He is about to have the assembly in its blessedness, in its fairness and perfection, in its suitability for Him, in a state where without any further preparation she can just be taken into His own sphere. He meditates on that. Beloved, may we learn to meditate on it; may we learn to have our thoughts lifted above the level of things on which we live so much. Our minds still revert to administration as if it was the main occupation of the saints, but Christ is meditating on what He will administer, on a sphere of things that will be in His hand because the Father loves Him, and has given everything to be in His hand because He loves Him. He meditates on all

that He will have.

Well, beloved, may our own thoughts be drawn into His. David did not send for Abigail to tell her about Nabal. He sent for Abigail to commune with her that she might become his wife (see 1 Samuel 25: 39); and Christ as typified in Isaac meditates on what He will soon have out of all the fields, what He will have out of this field which is blessedly being reaped at the present time, the assembly apart from breakdown or failure or sorrow. May our thoughts be lifted up to the level on which He Himself is occupied. May we learn His headship in that sphere, where He would draw us into, one might almost say, the relish with which He reflects on what has been secured through God’s operations in all the fields, but what He will have blessedly out of this field of the present moment in the assembly.

Word in meeting for ministry, London
17 October 1975