The Patriarchs. Bellett John Gifford
touches the land into which the call of God had brought him. A strange surprise this may well be thought to have been. But faith would have been equal to it. Faith in Paul was equal to a like surprise. Called into Macedonia by the voice of God, a prison awaited him. But Paul stands the shock, though Abraham falls before it. Paul and his companion sing hymns in the prison in Macedonia; but Abraham practises a lie, seeking help from the famine of Canaan in another land, of which his call under the God of glory had made no mention whatever.
Such things have been, and still are, found among the saints. There are "Little Faith" and "Great Heart" among the elect, as well as flesh and spirit-nature and the new mind in each of them. But this we may know: that if nature rule us, nature will expose us. Even the man of the earth, Pharaoh of Egypt, puts Abraham to shame; and his journey, instead of being onward in the witness of his tent and in the joy of his altar, was that of a wearied foot, because it was that of a rebuking heart. He has to "do his first works," to retrace his steps, and regain his standing-sorrowful works at all times. He has to leave "by-path meadow" for the King's highway again, betaking himself back from Egypt to the place between Ai and Bethel, where he had raised his altar at the first.
What say we to this, beloved? The flocks got in Egypt accompany him home. The glitter of the gold and the silver-the offerings of a land that lay beyond where the God of glory had called him-adorn and set off his return. All this is so indeed. But what say we to all this? again I ask. Is the bleating and the lowing of such flocks and herds in our ears like the soft music of an approving conscience? or this glittering wealth like the brightness of the divine presence which was now lost to Abraham? I am bold to answer for Abraham, though I may not for myself, that his spirit knew the difference. The wearied heart was but feebly relieved by all that he brought with him from the land of Egypt, or out of the house of Pharaoh. Sure I am of this. It could not but be so with such a man. "He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul," must have been his experience; and his action in the scene which immediately succeeds, as I judge, tells us something of this.
Lot, his younger brother, or his brother's son, who had come with him out of Ur into Canaan, now becomes the occasion of trial to Abraham, as the famine had lately been. But faith in Abraham triumphs, I may say, to admiration. The very style in which he gives this trial its answer seems to say, that he will return fourfold to the life of faith for that which nature had so lately, as it were, taken away from it. The herdmen of the two brothers, the elder and the younger, cannot feed their flocks together. They must separate. This was the occasion of trial which had now arisen. But "let Lot choose," is Abraham's language. In a fine sense, he will act on the divine oracle, "the elder shall serve the younger." Lot may choose, and leave Abraham what portion he please. The well-watered plains may be his; Abraham can trust the Lord of the country, though he lose them. He may have to dig wells instead of finding them; but it is better to dig for them in the strength of God, than to find them in the way of covetousness; better, as it were, to wait for them in Canaan, than to go after them again down to Egypt. xiii.
This is beautiful recovery. And in this way will faith, at times, exercise judgment on unbelief, and clear itself again. And now the Lord visits him, as He had not, as He could not, have done in Egypt. The God of glory, who had called Abraham into Canaan, could not go with him into Egypt: but to the man who was surrendering the best of the land to his younger brother, in the joy of restored confidence in God, He will delight to show Himself.
Where, then, are we, beloved? I will ask. Where is our spirit? On which road with Abraham are we, as at this moment, travelling? Are we knowing Egypt in the bitterness of self-reproach, or a regained Canaan in the joy of God's countenance? Is it a walk with God we are taking every day? The life of faith knows the difference between the checks of the worldly mind and the enlargements of the believing mind. Abraham knew these things. He knew, in spirit, what Egypt was-the place of gold and of silver, and of rebuke and death; he knew what it was to regain Ai without an altar on the road; and he knew what it was to rest again, with altar and tent, in the plains of Mamre.
Thus the chequered life of faith begins. But there is vastly more in it than this. And in this variety of action in the life of faith, we notice its intelligence, the exercise of the mind of Christ, or of the spiritual sense, which discerns things that differ, which has capacity to know times and seasons according to God. This fine endowment of the saint we find in Abraham, in the next passage of his history.
The battle of the kings is recorded in chap. xiv. While that was a mere contest between such, Abraham has nothing to say to it. Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds. But as soon as he hears that his kinsman Lot is involved in that struggle, he stirs himself.
Everything, as we read, is beautiful in its season. There is a time to build, and a time to pull down. There was a time for Abraham to be still, and a time for Abraham to be active; a time to be silent, and a time to break silence. And he understood the time. Like the men of Issachar afterwards, he knew the time, and what Israel ought to do. God's principles were Abraham's rules. Lot was taken prisoner, and the kinsman's part was now Abraham's duty. The battle-field in the vale of Siddim shall be his now, as the tent had been his till now in the plains of Mamre. The mind of God had another lesson for him than that which he learnt while the potsherds of the earth were alone in the conflict; and a time to break silence calls him out at the head of his trained servants.
Excellent and beautiful indeed in a saint is this intelligence of the mind of Christ, and beautiful is everything in its season. Out of season the very same action is defiled and disfigured. For the materialof an action is not enough to determine the characterof an action. It must be seasonable likewise. Elijah, from his elevation, may call down fire from heaven on the captains and their fifties; and so, the two witnesses, in the day of Rev. xi. But it will not do for the companions of the lowly, rejected Jesus to act thus on the Samaritan villagers. Luke ix. It is only in its season that anything is really right. How was the garden of Gethsemane (made sacred as it was by the sorrows of the Lord Jesus) disfigured by the blood which Peter's sword drew there! What a stain on that soil, though the power of Christ was present to remove it! But another sword was doing right service when it hewed Agag in pieces. For when vengeance is demanded, when the trumpet of the sanctuary sounds an alarm for war, vengeance or war will be as perfect as grace and suffering. It is for God to determine the dispensational way, and to make known the dispensational truth. That being done, all life of faith is just that manner or order or character of life that is according to it. "The duties and services of faith flow from truths entrusted. If the truths be neglected, the duties or services cannot be fulfilled." And the good pleasure of God, or His revealed and dispensed wisdom, varies in changing and advancing ages. Noah, in a few generations before Abraham, would have avenged the blood of one made in the likeness or image of God, in the same spirit of faith, as Abraham allowed one army of confederate kings to slay another. It is neither the "sword" nor the "garment," as the Lord speaks in Luke xxii., that must needs be the due instrument of service, or symbol of faith; but either of them, according as it severally expresses the dispensational good pleasure of God at the time.
This is much to be observed; for the distinguishing of things that differ, and the rightly dividing of the word of God or of truth, is expected, among other virtues, in the life of faith. Abraham was endowed with this fine faculty. He walked in the light of that day, as God was in the light. He knew the voice of the silver trumpet; when, as it were, to gather to the tabernacle, and when to go forth to the battle.
But there is more than this in our patriarch at this time. Two victories distinguish him-one over the armies of the kings, and one over the offers of the king of Sodom.
The first of these Abraham gained, because he struck the blow exactly in God's time. He went out to the battle neither sooner nor later than God would have had him. He waited, as it were, till "he heard the going in the mulberry trees." Victory was therefore sure; for the battle was the Lord's, not his. His arm was braced by the Lord; and this victory of Abraham's was that of an earlier sling and stone, or of the jaw-bone of an ass, or of a Jonathan and his armour-bearer against a Philistine host; for Abraham's was but a band of trained servants against the armies of four confederated kings.
The second, still brighter than the first, was achieved in virtue of fellowship with the very springs of divine strength. The spirit of the patriarch was in victory here, as his arm had been before.