• Topics
• Commentaries
• Addresses
• E-Books
• Magazine
• Languages
• Meet Christians
• Children

 

GENESIS IN THE LIGHT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

PART I: GOD'S COUNSELS IN CREATION

F W Grant

 

Chapters 1 & 2: Introductory

 

1. The Typical Meaning

IN seeking to develop (as is now my purpose) the truths of the New Testament from the history of the Old, it is the typical meaning with which we have to do. The divine glory, as seen in Moses' face, was veiled to the people addressed; for us, the veil is done away in Christ. The words of the apostle with reference to Israel's history, it can scarcely be doubted, apply no less to that which was but prefatory to theirs - "Now, all these things happened unto them for ensamples [lit, types]; and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are."

He gives us, moreover, many of the details, - Adam , a type of Christ; Eve, of the Church; Abel's offering, of the sinner's acceptance; Noah 's salvation by the ark, of our own in Christ; Melchizedek, king of righteousness and peace; the story of Abraham 's two sons; and a hint, at least, as to the offering up of Isaac (Gal. 3: 16, 17). Nor is this all that is commonly recognized as typical, though some no doubt would have us stop where the inspired explanation stops. But in that case, how large a part of what is plainly symbolical would be lost to us - the larger part of the Levitical ordinances, not a few of the parables of the Lord Himself, and almost the whole of the book of Revelation. Surely none could deliberately accept a principle which would lock up from us so large a part of the inspired Word.

Still many have the thought that it would be safer to refrain from typical applications of the historical portions where no inspired statement authenticates them as types at all. Take, however, such a history as that of Joseph, which no direct scripture speaks of as a type, yet the common consent of almost all receives as such; or Isaac's sacrifice, of the significance of which we have the merest hint. The more we consider it, the more we find it impossible to stop short here. Fancy, no doubt, is to be dreaded. Sobriety and reverent caution are abundantly needful. But so are they every where. If we profess wisdom, we become fools: subjection to the blessed Spirit of God, and to the Word inspired of Him, are our only safeguards here and elsewhere.

When we look a little closer, we find that the types are not scattered haphazard in the Old Testament books. On the contrary, they are connected together and arranged in an order and with a symmetry which bear witness to the divine band which has been at work throughout. We find Exodus thus to be the book of redemption; Leviticus, to speak of what suits God with us in the sanctuary - of sanctification; then Numbers, to give the wilderness history our walk with God (after redemption and being brought to Him where He is) through the world. Each individual type in these different books will be found to have most intimate and significant relation to the great central thought pervading the book. This, when laid hold of, confirms immensely our apprehension of the general and particular meaning, and gives it a force little if at all short of absolute demonstration.

The great central truth in Genesis is "LIFE." It thus begins where all begins actually for the soul. God is seen in it as Life-giver, Creator; this involving necessarily also that He is sovereign in purpose and Almighty* in execution. This is why Genesis is, as it has been called, "the seed-plot of the Bible," because it is the book of the counsels of the sovereign and almighty God.

*Which is plainly God's revelation of Himself to Abraham, to Isaac, and Jacob, as distinct from Jehovah to Israel (see Exod. 6. 8). In the rest of the Pentateuch the word occurs only in Balaam's prophecy (Num. 24), and only in Ruth besides of all the historical books where God has wrought, and where the "flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other." Next, Noah's passage through the judgment of the old world into a new scene, accepted of God in the sweet savor of sacrifice, is the type of where salvation puts us - "in Christ, a new creation: old things passed away, and all things become new." (Chap. 6 - 11:9.)

But "life" is, so to speak, the key-note - the thread upon which all else is strung. Genesis is plainly almost entirely a series of biographies. It divides, after the introductory account of creation, in chapters 1 and 2, into seven of these, in which we have a perfect picture of divine life in the soul, from its almost imperceptible beginning to its full maturity.

Adam gives us the beginning, when, with the entrance of God's Word, light comes into the soul of a sinner, and God meets him as such with the provision of His grace. (Chap. 3.)

Then, (Chap. 4 and 6) we have the history of the two "seeds," and their antagonism, - a story which has its counterpart in the history of the world at large, but also in every individual soul

Abraham's Canaan life - pilgrim and stranger, but a worshipper, gives us the fruit and consequence of this - a "walk in Him" whom we have received. (Chap. 11: 10 - 21.)

Then, Isaac, our type as "sons, (Gal. 4: 28.) speaks to us of a self-surrender into a Father's hands, the door into a life of quiet and enjoyment, as it surely is. (Chap. 22 - 24:33.)

Jacob speaks of the discipline of sons, by which the crooked and deceitful man becomes Israel , a prince with God, - a chastening of love, dealing with the fruits of the old nature in us. (Chap. 26: 34 - 27:1.)

While Joseph , the fullest image of Christ, suffers, not for sin, but for righteousness' sake, and attains supremacy over the world, and fullness of blessing from the almighty One, his strength. (Chap. 37 ff)

All this we may more fully see hereafter. Even this hint of it may make plain what I have already stated to be the main feature of the book, with which the first section corresponds in the closest way. Like many another first section, but perhaps beyond any other, it is really a sort of table of contents to the rest of the book. It is of course much more than that, as we shall see, if the Lord give wisdom to unfold what this story of creation gives us.

It is, as all else here, a type, while it is none the less on that account a literal history. Its spiritual meaning in no wise turns it into myth or fable, as some would assume. "All these things happened unto them," says the apostle, - so the things really happened, but - "for types." What importance must attach, then, to a "type," to produce which God has actually modelled the history of the world from the beginning! With what reverence should we listen to the utterances so strangely given, so marvellously "written for our admonition"! Instead of setting aside the literal record of creation, it surely confirms it in the highest degree that the Creator should demonstrate Himself the new Creator, and show how in laying the foundations of the earth which sin has cursed and death has scarred, He who seeth the end from the beginning had even then before Him, in the depths and counsels of His heart, a scene into which, secure in its unchanging Head, sin and death no more should enter - which they should nevermore defile! It is divine, this record: true, of course, then, and infinitely more - although faith be needed for the realization of it.

I do not doubt that the story before us is not merely even a single, but a twofold type; finding its fulfillment in two spheres, which are very generally correspondent to one another. The world without has its reflection in the world within us. So the steps in the divine dealing with the world at large have their correspondence with His dealing with us as individuals. In our consideration of them, this individual application will come first. It is that which is most prominent all through, and which links the whole series of types together; and this has its significance for us. In men's thoughts you will find, as what they imagine to be advanced and liberal views, the progress of the race putting out of sight the interest of the individual: they speak much of man, think little of men.* It is not so with God; the blessing of the race is reached (with Him) through the blessing of the individual, and not one is overlooked. Nay, "not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father." This is what is in His heart, whatever the perplexity which sin has introduced; and oh how profoundly needful for us the assurance of this! It may do for philosophy to proclaim the grandeur of general laws, to which the individual good must give place; but the grip of this iron machinery has none of the comfort of the grasp of a Father's hand. The heart of God alone suffices the hearts which He has made.

Let us take, then, this individual application first, and let creation preach to us lessons which may be happily familiar to us, and yet have a new charm as preached thus, where (as all preaching should be,) the sermon is an anthem, and the anthem is in the many voices of the universe - the revelation-chorus to which all will come at last: "And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, ‘Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever!"'

*As, e. g. Dr. Temple's "Education of the World," in ‘Essays and Reviews."

 

2. The Individual Application

THERE are two smaller sections of the first natural division of the book of Genesis. The first (chap. 1. - 2: 3) gives us the work of God and His rest; the second, (chap. 2:4 - 25.) God in relationship with the creature He has made. Hence, in this latter part the covenant-name is for the first time introduced; it is not "God" merely, but "The Lord God" - Jehovah. We shall see more fully the force of this hereafter. In this double account there is an exquisite beauty, which the unbelief that cavils at it can never see.

It is necessary also to distinguish from the six days' work, what has been strangely confounded with it, the primitive creation of the first chapter and verse, and the ruin into which it had fallen when "without form and void, and darkness on the face of the deep." This used to be, and I suppose still may be called, the common view; and yet the more one looks at the passage the more it seems impossible to make such a mistake. For plainly the work of the six days begins with this: "God said, ‘Let there be light;' and there was light." But as plainly the earth, although waste and desolate, was there before that, not created then. Moreover the words "without form and void," for which "waste and desolate" would be preferable as a reading, imply distinctly a state of ruin, and not of development; while a passage in which the first of these terms is used asserts expressly that the Lord did not create the earth so.*

*It is the word rendered "in vain," Isaiah 14: 18. The two are found together in Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4: 23.

Nor can it be said that the exigencies of a geological difficulty have forced such a construction of the opening words of this account. Augustine, who knew nothing of such a difficulty, long ago decided for it from the mere force of the language used. The requirement of it by the mere typical view I am just now advocating, is independent of it also, and yet quite as urgent; for it makes the six days' work a remoulding of a former lapsed creation, the new birth, as we may call it, of a world. How plainly significant is that, at once! And such a view of it the words themselves necessitate.

There was, then, a primary creation, afterward a fall; first, "heaven and earth," in due order; then earth without a heaven - in darkness, and buried under "a deep" of salt and barren and restless waters. What a picture of man's condition, as fallen away from God! How complete the confusion! how profound the darkness, how deep the restless waves of passion roll over the wreck of what was once so fair! "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt."

Then mark how the new birth begins: "The Spirit of God moved [or brooded] upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light.'" From the Spirit and the Word it comes: we are "born of the Spirit;" we are "born of the incorruptible seed" of "the Word of God." And "the entrance of Thy Word giveth light." How faithfully this beginning of creative work depicts that more mighty still in the human soul, and assures of what was even then for us in the counsels of divine wisdom! Truly His "delights were with the sons of men."

The first day gives us, then, the entrance of the Word giving light. The state of the creature is manifested by it, but as yet it shines on naught but desolation. Nothing is changed, save the darkness; there is nothing that God can find of good but the light itself. That He pronounces so - severs it from the darkness and gives it a place and a name; but the darkness too is named, and has its place, and is not all removed. For not in the earth itself is the source of light, and when turned away from this it is still dark. Practically, the day is not all light, but "evening and morning" make it up; yet, though darkness is in itself "night," it is well to note that it is never, now that light has once come in, simple and absolute night any more, but "evening;" some rays of the day there ever are; and in God's order, too, an evening surely giving place to morning. And then again, as to the "morning," its promise of the perfect "day" is never realized until God's work is wrought out and His Sabbath is reached; then, indeed, there is no more evening, or morning either, but "day," without mixture or decline - God's great finality - is fully come.

I do not believe this needs interpreting; the significance of its voice is not hard to apprehend. And then not only "day unto day uttereth speech," but also "night unto night showeth knowledge." Dear reader, if perchance one there be who may read this, down into whose desolate soul the light has shone, revealing not good but ill, when good has begun to have attraction too, but there is none - you are learning but this first day's lesson. Spite of all that is disclosed, the light is good. Welcome it as from God, the beginning of His gracious work in you, the promise of the day that yet shall come.

The second stage of this divine work is the making of the "firmament," or "expanse," by which a separation of the waters is effected. Strangely misunderstood as it has been by some, it is, one would think, self-evidently, the formation of the atmospheric "heavens," which draw up now (as they have been doing ever since) out of the deep below, waters which, purged of their saltness, become the still inexplicably balanced clouds.

The spiritual stage it represents is scarcely more difficult to follow. A separation is now effected, not in the external condition merely, but more inwardly. The unseen things operate upon the soul, and attract affections and desires upward to them. That which was "lust" and "corruption" in a heart away from God is thus purified by the new object. It is the "kingdom of heaven" spiritually begun. The heart is under divine government. And while the general state of the creature remains apparently the same (there is still no fruit nor solid ground) - while still "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing," yea, while "how to perform that which is good I find not" - still we can say, "To will is present with me," and "with the mind I myself serve the law of God." Peace is not come, nor liberty, nor power; but the heart drawn up to God, that intercourse with heaven is begun which at a further stage shall bring down showers of blessing to fertilize and bring forth fruit to God.

Still, by the Word is every stage produced. Each time God speaks. It is not mere development of what lies unfolded in the earliest germ. Step by step the forthputting of divine power accomplishes counsels that are all divine. "We are His workmanship"- the patient, perfect elaboration of the wisdom of God- "created in Christ Jesus." Happy we, proportionately as we are yielded into His hands, and cast into the mould of His efficacious Word!

The "third day" speaks to the Christian heart of resurrection. It is marked here by resurrection power: the earth comes up out of the waters. That which can be wrought upon and made fruitful is now brought up from under the irreclaimable waste of sea. This is not removed, but bounded and restrained; it cannot return to cover the earth. Its existence is indeed distinctly recognized; it gets for the first time its name from God; in the new earth there will be none. (Rev. 21:1) Meanwhile He lays the foundations of the earth,* that it never should be moved at any time.

* Not the world but that "dry land" which He has named "Earth".

This is only the first half of the third day. It is a double day, as we may say, with God. Twice He speaks; twice He pronounces His work good. In the first half, the earth is separated from the waters; in the second, it brings forth the "grass," the "herb," and "the fruit tree yielding fruit." Let us examine the spiritual meaning of all this.

"Risen with Christ" is the truth which inevitably connects itself with such a figure. Christ having died and risen again for us, His resurrection no less than His death is ours. His death is our passage out of our old state and condition as sinners - as children of Adam. His resurrection is our entrance into a new state and sphere. "In Christ" - "if any man be" there, "he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

The attempt to read this by experience has been the loss (practically) of its blessedness. Unable to look within and say "all things are new," men have been reduced either to modify this as if it were too extreme a statement, or else to doubt if they were really Christians. Moreover, the trying to produce such a state of things within them has resulted in constant disappointment and real loss of power. They have sought to mend self and produce there what they might find satisfaction in, instead of turning away from self altogether, to find in occupation with Christ and with His love true power over it.

But it is not "if any man be born again" or "be converted." It is not the result of the work within us that is stated, but the result of the new position before God in which we stand. Acceptance in Christ is acceptance as Christ. It is no question, therefore, of what is in us at all, but of what is in Christ for us; thus viewed, old things are indeed passed away, and all things become new.

Christ's resurrection has put us in this new place; we are risen with Him. The acceptance of this blessed fact brings us into rest and peace, and sets us on vantage-ground above the water-floods. It is for us spiritually God's bringing up the earth from under the waves, and settling it upon its everlasting foundations. True, the waters are not removed, the flesh is not become spirit, nor done away; on the contrary, it is now for the first time fully recognized as there, and incurable - has its place and its name defined; but the man in Christ has risen out of it - is "not in the flesh." It is in him; but he is not it, nor in it.

This is the first part of the day of resurrection only. The second part gives us the fruitfulness which is the immediate consequence of this; for being now "made free from sin," we are "become the servants of righteousness." Notice some features here.

God calls the dry land "Earth." In the original, this word is derived from one which means "crumbling," and it is manifestly a chief condition of fertility that earth should crumble. The more continually its clods break up into ever finer dust, the more its promise to the husbandman; and this is a simple lesson and a great one. The brokenness of spirit which makes no resistance to the Father's hand is a main element of fertility in souls wherein He works. It is not power He seeks from us, but weakness; not resistant force, but "yieldingness" to Him. All power is His: His strength is perfected in weakness.

The character depicted here is beautifully illustrated in this very "third day" state in Romans 8. Up to the very end of chapter 7, in the well-known experience already alluded to, the man in question is profoundly conscious of two "I's" in opposition to each other; "with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." There is the struggle that convulses him; one part for God and good, the other always contrary - alas, always the stronger too. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" delivers him "from the law of sin and death." Then there are two contrary parties still. But there is a change.

The flesh is there indeed yet, and nowise altered, but its now victorious antagonist is not "I myself." That is sunk; it is now "flesh" and "Spirit" that conflict - the Holy Ghost in place of "me."

Oh for constant realization of this! The dropping (not of the flesh - that cannot be here, but) of that good and right-minded and holy "I" which is ever weakness, ever inability, with all its pious resolution and good will! "I live - not I - but Christ liveth in me."

Even thus is the fertile earth produced. Out of weakness, out of nothingness, out of infirmities, which make the power of Christ to rest upon us, and leave us clay in the potter's hands. The more we know the reality of resurrection, the more shall we know of this.

Then as to the fruit. There is progress; from grass and herb to "fruit-tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself upon the earth" - another beautiful figure that. The fruit bears within itself the capacity of self-perpetuation. Itself for the Master's use (and it is well to remember that), the seed is in this fruit according to its kind, - love to produce love, and so on. If we want to find love, we must show it. And the riper the fruit is for the Master's taste, the riper the seed is also; the best ripe fruit is that which has hung in the sun most.

All this is simple; and it shows there is a real voice in creation round, to be understood if we have will to understand. The works of His hand bear witness to Himself, - creation to redemption - things seen to the unseen; the thoughts of God's heart, the depths of His love. It is not a mere accommodation of these things we are making; they are destined witness, though Christ must be the key to all.

And now we are come to the fourth day. Here the entire scene is changed. It is not the laying the foundations of the earth any more, but the garnishing of the heavens. Sun and moon are ordained as light-givers to the earth now made, and for signs and for seasons, for days and years.

And we are not only "risen with Christ," but in Christ, heavenly; "seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." This truth necessarily follows that of resurrection, and no view of our new creation could be in any wise complete which left out this. Here it follows, then, in very natural order, and the language of the type is not hard to apprehend. "Heaven" is, I doubt not, its own symbol, as indeed the firmament, the lower heaven, gives its name to the unseen and spiritual heaven, God's dwelling-place. Applying it in this way, the first object seen in it speaks for itself. Scripture too applies it (Mal. 4. 2.). The great luminary of the day, the source of heat and light to the earth, its light self-derived, unchanging, constant as the day it brings - clearly enough presents to us the "Heavenly One" back in the glory whence He came. The secondary light, light of the night, a light derived from His, yet oh how cold and dull comparatively at the best, changeful - full-faced or dwindled according as it fully faces or is turned away from Him; how easily we read that too, as we read such words as the apostle's here! - " We all, with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."

Let us learn the lessons that the moon teaches, for they are serious and yet helpful ones. What more serious lesson than her changefulness? She belongs always to heaven according to God's ordinance. Practically, you cannot always find her there; nay, she is more often (to man's sight, of course,) out of the sky than in it. Then, when there, how seldom full-orbed! how often turned away from him from whom all her radiance comes! For so it does come; her part is reception merely; she shines perforce when in his light, not by her own effort in the least. And could you go up, attracted by her brightness, to see how fair and glorious she was, you would find yourself there not in the glory of the moon at all, but of that sun which was bathing her with brightness.

Then notice her from this earth new risen from the waters. Fair she may be, and "precious fruits be brought forth" by her; yea, "abundance of peace as long as the moon endureth;" still the direct sun-rays are another thing, and are the real fructifying, life-giving influence after all. It is one thing to be occupied even with what we are in Christ - and it is our guide in the night, too (Gal. 6: 16.) - it is yet another to be in the glory of His presence, where moon and stars are hidden in the day.

There is much more here, but I leave it and pass on. The fifth day brings another change of scene; and here, when we might have thought that we had left them finally behind, we are brought back again to the barren waste of waters. But now even here the power of God is working; the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and birds fly in the open firmament of heaven. It is still progress in the great creative plan, and new and higher forms of life are reached than heretofore. It is not now grass and herb, but the "living soul," and God blesses them, and bids them multiply.

Can we give this expression? I believe so. There are harmonies elsewhere that will guide us to an understanding of it.

Take one in the order of the Pentateuch itself, where the same thing occurs - a real progress by apparent retrogression. For if Genesis begins (as we have seen it does) with" life," Exodus gives us, very plainly, the redemption of God's people; while Leviticus leads us into the sanctuary of God, to learn in His presence what suits Him to whom we are brought and whose we are. Thus all is progress; but at the next step this seems ended, for in Numbers we pass out once more into the world to face the trials of the wilderness and the still worse exposure of ourselves that meets us there.

This seems retrogression; still it is progress after all. There is no dislocation of His plan who is ever working onward to perfection. For the world is surely the place where, after we have known redemption, and the God that has redeemed us too, we are left to be practiced in what we know, that we may be "those who by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."

There is discipline in this; and failure comes out plentifully too; still we are chastened to be partakers of His holiness; the new life in us gets practical form and embodiment, as we may say: in other words - the words of our type - the "living soul" is produced out of the midst of the waters.

For the waters are, as we have seen, the restless and fallen nature of man; and it is this (whether within or without) that makes the wilderness the place of trial that it is; yet out of this evil, divine sovereignty produces good. And again, the "living soul " - since the soul is the seat of desires, appetites, affections, etc., - may fitly depict the living energies which lay hold of eternal things amid the pressure on every side of what is seen and temporal.*

* Take Philippians 3 as the vivid portrayal of this.

This, I believe, is the fifth-day scene. One day alone remains, and God's work is complete.

And this day, which is a second "third," has its two parts likewise, as the third day had. First, the earth (and not the waters now) bring forth the "living soul." It is not now the fruit of discipline, or the chafing and contact of sin and evil, but the development of what is proper to the new man apart from this. Jacob's and Joseph's lives show us this contrast fully, as we may see more afterward. And like Joseph's too, this sixth day shows us next the rule of the man, God's image. I can but little interpret here, it is true, but the outline is not the less plain because of the meagreness of the interpretation. The mere indication may attract some to look deeper into this final mystery of creative wisdom.

For what remains is rest, and only rest, God's rest in love over His accomplished work. Seven times He has pronounced all "good," the last time "very good." Now evening and morning come no more, but full, ripe, unending "day" - a day blessed and sanctified of God as the day of His rest.

The fuller exposition of this, however, will come more in its place after we have glanced at the dispensational application of the six days' work. For they have their fulfillment also, as I have already said, in the sphere of the world at large, in the progressive steps by which from the beginning divine power and wisdom have been moving on to the accomplishment of that of which eternity alone can fully tell.

3. The Dispensational Application.

THE ordinary dispensational application of the week of creation is one which has so many adherents, and has given rise to so much speculation otherwise, that we shall do well to look at it before proceeding further. In the words of a modern writer, "In this application, ‘one day is as a thousand years.' Six thousand years of labour precede the world's Sabbath. The parallel here has been often traced.” It is as old, indeed, as the so-called "Epistle of Barnabas," * and its scriptural support is supposed to be the passage in 2 Peter 3, already referred to. According to it, the millennial kingdom answers, as the seventh thousand years, to the "seventh day," earth's Sabbath-rest.
* Which, It is almost needless to say, was not the production of the scriptural Barnabas, although by the very general voice of antiquity attributed to him. Its date is supposed to be somewhat before the middle of the second century A. D. I quote the passage from the translation in the "Ante-Nicene Christian Library:"

"Attend, my children, to the meaning ot this expression: ‘He finished in six days.' This *implieth that the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with Him a thousand years. And He Himself testifieth, Behold, to day will be as a thousand years.'" The last is probably an incorrect citation of Psalm 150:4.

But as to the principle, the passage in Peter is no proof at all. It is no statement of time, but the contrary - the simple assurance of how little God counts time as man counts it. It might be as fairly argued from it that the millennial "thousand years" was but a day, as that the creation "days" represented each a thousand years; for it is not only one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, but also "a thousand years as one day."

Nor is the millennium, with all its blessedness, a proper Sabbath. The apostle represents the "rest" (literally, "Sabbath keeping,") that remains to the people of God, as God's rest, and that surely is, as both the epistle to the Hebrews (chap. 4:9.10) and the book of Genesis show, His ceasing from His work. But in the millennium there is not as yet this. It is the last work-day rather, and not till the new heavens and earth will God's rest be come. The seventh day is not, then, the type of a millennium at all, but of final and eternal rest.

Moreover, the millennial kingdom answers so fully to the sixth-day rule of the man and woman over the earth, that it is strange how it could escape the notice of those who were seeking a dispensational application of the creation-work. While on the other hand a mere arithmetical interpretation of the days as each a thousand years of the world's history, seems almost self-evidently artificial and unspiritual.

I may leave this, then, to point out what I have no doubt is the real dispensational application. In this it will be found we have but the former interpretation extended and adapted to the larger sphere.
Thus we have here alike a primitive creation and a fall, and then, too, that work of the Spirit and the Word by which every step toward the blessedness that shall be has been successively produced. The first day has very plainly the features of the age before the flood, when through the word of promise the light shone, but without further interference with the state of the creature. The light fell only upon a ruin. Lust and violence were the general features of man's condition, and furnish a history over which the Spirit of God passes with significant brevity, and which "the troubled sea, when it cannot rest," sufficiently depicts. Upon this world a literal flood passed, and it perished.

The second day gives us the formation of the "heavens," a symbol not hard to read, when we have learnt elsewhere the constant use of these as the seat of authority and power. It is the uniform language of Scripture that "the heavens rule." The "sun to rule by day" is indeed not yet come, nor the moon by night. Naught fills these heavens as yet but "waters " - waters above as well as beneath - the very type of instability. And this makes it the perfect type of what took place when after the flood, man was put in the place of responsibility to be his brother's keeper. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," is the principle, and was the institution, as is plain, of human government. It was the formation of a political "heavens" with, as yet, nothing but waters filling them. And how quickly Noah, the acknowledged head of the new world, drunk with the fruit of his vineyard, exemplified the instability of the type! And from henceforth what has it been but the constant display of this - the want of self-government in those who govern? A step toward the full attainment of God's perfect counsel for the earth it is; even now, power ordained of God, and His ministry for good, and yet a Nero or Caligula may be this "power." And significant it seems that on this second day there is no voice of God pronouncing "good" what is nevertheless for good. Providentially, He may be working blessing by that which in itself He cannot bless. And this is of solemn import for all times and spheres.

The third day following sees the dry land separated from the waters. These waters we have all along seen to be the type of human passion and self-will - what man left to himself exhibits. But this is evidently, on the larger scale we are now taking, just the Gentiles,* and the earth raised up out of these waters is the seed of Abraham after the flesh - that people ploughed up with the plough share of God's holy law, and among whom was sown the seed of the divine Word. Little fruit may it yet have yielded, and given up it may be for its fruitlessness and unprofitableness at the present time; yet it lies but fallow, like the actual land of Israel , waiting for the latter rain and the foretold fertility under the care of the divine husbandry. Nor has the past been only failure. For long the only fruit for God we know was to be found there, and in a sense, of its fruit are even we: "salvation" was "of the Jews." Thus there need be no difficulty in this fertile earth separated from the waters representing Israel 's separation to God out of all the nations of the world.* *

* Compare Rev. 16:15 "The waters …are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues."

**To those acquainted with the meaning of Revelation 13, it will not be insignificant that the last Gentile empire should be figured there in the beast from the ace, the Jewish Antichrist in the second beast from the earth.

The fourth day's lesson is one simpler still. The lights set in the heavens speak very plainly of Christ and of the Church; or, as we are accustomed to say, of the Christian dispensation. The mystery here we have already glanced at, for the individual application scarcely differs from the dispensational. Here Christ, revealed by the Holy Ghost, shines out for men in the word of His grace; while the Church is the responsible reflector of Christ, His epistle to the world. The word of the Spirit to the churches (Rev. 2,3) may give us the moon's phases in the night of Christ's absence - that night surely now fast drawing to a close.

Let this scene preach to us that all true and divine light now is heavenly. To Let our "light shine" is naught else than to let men see we belong to another sphere, are not of the world even as Christ was not; and to let them see our faces brightened with the joy of what He is, our hearts satisfied with Himself, and so independent of the broken cisterns from which they strive to draw refreshment. This was once actually the Church's testimony, in those days when men were "turned to God from idols . . . to wait for His Son from heaven." Alas! while the Bridegroom tarried, the light grew dim. "They all slumbered and slept." The only light for the world is still the virgin's lamp as she goes forth to meet the Bridegroom.

His call of them to Himself will close this dispensation, and then will dawn that strange and solemn fifth day, when once again the "waters" will have risen and covered every thing; the time of which the ninety-third psalm speaks, though as of a past condition, - "The floods have lifted up, o Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves;" but only to prove that "the Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea."

The time of the world's discipline will have come, "the hour of trial upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." These waters speak of a universal Gentile (that is, lawless) state; of the working of man's wild will: "upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring, men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth."

But when God's "judgments are upon the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." This is the secret of the waters producing the living creature. It is the time when (the heavenly people being gathered home) God will be preparing a people for earthly blessing. Brief may be the time in which He does this: Scripture is none the less full of the detail of the mighty work to be done. And a most real and necessary step it will be toward that reign of righteousness and peace which the sixth day so plainly figures.

For here the rule of the man in God's image and likeness can scarcely fail to make itself understood by those who look for the Lord then to take a throne which as Son of Man He can call His own (Rev. 1: 13; 3: 21.), and which therefore He can share with His people, as He cannot share His Father's throne. The first Adam, we are told by the apostle (Rom. 5:14.), was the image of the One to come; even as he also tells us (Eph. 5:25. 32.) Eve is of that Church which He will present to Himself without spot or blemish. Thus we can scarcely by any possibility mistake the spiritual meaning of the sixth day's work.

In that day, too, the earth brings forth the living creature. " Israel shall bud and blossom, and fill the face of the earth with fruit." She shall be Jezreel, "the seed of God," and "I will sow her to Me in the earth," says the Lord God.

And as this is the last work-day, not yet Sabbath rest, so is the millennial kingdom in the hands of Him who takes it to bring all things back to God. "He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet. And when all things shall be subdued under Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject: unto Him that put all things under Him, that GOD may be all in all." Then, and not till then, is the Sabbath reached.

"And on the seventh day God had ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made."

Here God alone appears, and the work being ended, all being according to His mind, He sanctifies the day of His rest. How significant this of the days never to give place to another, when redemption being fully accomplished, and all things brought to the pattern proposed in the eternal counsels, He shall indeed put the seal of His perfect delight upon the whole new creation, hallowed to Himself forever! How could God rest short of this consummation? Then indeed He will be "all," and that be the simple, full expression of the creature's blessedness, and of its perpetuity as well.

Some details of this final blessing are presented to us in the following section, which concludes this first part of Genesis (chap. 2: 4 - 25.); but before we go on to this let us only for a moment compare the meaning of the lives which shortly follow in the book - a meaning already briefly glanced at - with that now given of these six creative days. We shall find in them, not absolute identity (for Scripture never merely repeats itself), but a parallel of a most striking sort; a remarkable witness of the internal unity of Scripture, and of this first book. How easy to understand that Genesis is, as it has been called, the "seed-plot of the Bible," when it is thus in the whole the expansion of those divine counsels which have their indication already in the creative work itself! And so indeed it is.

But it is plain that here the seven lives recorded in Genesis must have their counterparts in the six days' work; there is none to the seventh-day rest. And it is as plain that the last life, Joseph, the most perfect type of Christ, the man, God's image, answers here precisely to the sixth, and not to the seventh day. We shall obtain a seventh day then, so to speak, by taking the third day as a double one. We have already noticed that it is so, for God speaks twice, and twice pronounces His work good. Looking at the days thus, let us compare the double series.*

* It has been noticed by many that the six days themselves fall into a double parallel series. Arranged thus, we have, as to the parts of creation touched on, these respectively: -

1. Light. 4. Light.
2. Waters. 5. Waters.
3. Earth. 6. Earth.

Dividing the third day into two will give us a regular series of seven, which is commonly in Scripture (as noted elsewhere) 4 plus 3.

Now, beginning with the third chapter, the story of Adam is just the exposure of man, such as the fall has made him: the light let in upon his condition, with no apparent internal change. And this is the truth of the first day.

Next, as to the division of the waters on the second day, we have already seen that its lesson corresponds with that of the two seeds into which the human race at once divides: the opposition, namely, between the carnal and spiritual mind, which every renewed soul is conscious of.

Then, if the third day give us in the earth's coming up out of the waters the type of how we too rise up out of the inundation of sin into the place at once of rest and power over it, the third life, Noah's, gives us as plainly our passage in Christ our ark out of the scene of the sin and judgment of man in the flesh to that in which blessing is secured by the sweet savour of accepted sacrifice.

The fruit of the second half of the third day, again, is seen in Abraham, the practical life of faith which follows upon this.
The fourth-day parallel seems less exact with Isaac; yet is he undoubtedly, more emphatically than any, the heavenly man. Even Abraham is found out of Canaan ; Jacob almost spends his life away from it; Isaac may fail, and does, but never leaves it; and as the picture of Christ Himself, as he undoubtedly is, he is necessarily the picture of the reflection of Christ - of the Son and of the Sons of God.

The parallel of the fifth-day type with Jacob is self-evident; the lesson of each is discipline, and what God accomplishes in it for His own - the peaceable fruit of righteousness in those who are exercised thereby.

While Joseph's life is as plainly the spontaneous fruit of the new nature, and the attainment of sovereignty over all around, as the sixth day is also of the same things, none the less blessed because so little known.

Thus the remarkable unity of this first book of Scripture is apparent. Nor will this glance at it be in vain, if it awake in any soul a fresh realization of that eternal love so manifestly set upon us, when He for whom are all things and by whom are all things formed the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. Well may our voices mingle in that jubilee-song,
"Praise ye the Lord from the heavens;
praise Him in the heights; praise ye Him, sun and moon;
praise Him all ye stars of light; praise Him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.
Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all deeps; mountains and all hills; fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping things and flying fowl; kings of the earth, and all people; princes and all judges of the earth; both young men and maidens; old men and children; let them praise the name of the Lord, for His name only is excellent; His glory is above the earth and heaven."

4. Paradise

WE have noted already that from the fourth verse of the second chapter is a distinct part, and gives us "God in relationship with the creature He has made." Thus He is now spoken of, not simply as God - Elohim, but as the Lord God - Jehovah- Elohim.

Jehovah is the name of which the inspired translation is given in the third of Exodus -"I am:" expanded to its full significance in the book of Revelation as, "He which is, and which was, and which is to come." Thus in immutable existence He follows out the changes of created being, propping up creaturehood with the strength of eternity. "By Him all things consist." As in relation with a redeemed people - Israel - how blessed and reassuring this His covenant-name!

But here He is the "Lord God," not of Israel , but of man, a prophecy and picture of what shall be when "the tabernacle of God shall be with men." Still there is no "tabernacle of God" here; the final fact transcends all pictures.

That we have, however, a picture or type of eternal blessedness in this account that follows is plain to see. Its central figure, Adam, with his relationship to Eve, his wife, is so referred to elsewhere. ( Rom. 5:14; Eph. 5: 31, 32.) Paradise and the tree of life also meet us in prophecies of the blessedness to come. (Rev. 2:7; 22:2.) That there should be contrast also in many respects is not inconsistent with the nature of types, but on the contrary most consistent. (1 Cor. 15:45 - 48; Phil. 2:6.) We may therefore in the beginning of things, contemplate the final end, however much we may find it true that "we see in part, and prophesy in part."

Man, then, is the manifest head of the new created scene; and if made in the image and likeness of God, how plainly is he in the image also of the true man, God's image. The dust of the earth, inspired by the breath of the Almighty, might well be the foreshadow of the union of the divine and human in one blessed Person in the time to come. The place of headship over all is but the anticipation of the wider headship of the Son of Man. "Image" and "likeness" of God have immeasurably fuller meaning in their application to the "last Adam" than to the first.

Then as to the relationship of the man and woman. It takes little to see in that "deep sleep" into which Adam was cast the figure of the deeper and more mysterious sleep of the "last Adam." Out of the man thus sleeping the woman is derived, as the Church out of Christ's death, and which by the creative Spirit is built up as His body, "of His flesh and of His bones."

This building of the Church being not even yet complete, the presentation to Himself is of course still future. To that day, however, the apostle carries us on in thought, at the same time reminding us of the necessary contrast between the earthly first man and the heavenly second. For whereas the Lord God brought the woman to the man, "He" - the Second Man - shall "present unto Himself" the Church, "a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing." ‘The margin of Genesis 2:22 gives rightly, for "made He a woman," "builded."

Our eyes are dim to see so far into the blessedness of that bright future which for eternity we shall then enter on with Him. Let us rather turn back here to see how distinctly it is noted that all belongs of right to Him, whose love must needs share it with His own. Thus, first of all, before the Bride exists, the creatures are brought to Adam, that he may see* what he will call them, and as master of them all he gives them names. And though the woman in due time shares this sovereignty as we know, (chap. 1:27, 28.) she yet comes into it by her connection with the man, and only so.
* "I do not doubt that "to see what he would call them," is that Adam might see.

How perfect is the harmony of all this! How blessed to see the Lord of heaven and earth thus at the very beginning occupied with these thoughts of His love as to that new creation which was once again to be wrought out of the ruins of the old! To wisdom such as this the craft of Satan and the weakness of man could add no afterthought. Against such power no other power could be aught but as the potter's clay. Such love combined with all gives acquiescence and delight that all of power and all of wisdom should be His, and make resistless the designs and counsels of His heart.

And Eden , man's garden of delight! how sweet to know that that which lingers lovingly yet in the heart as in the traditions of men - which not six thousand years of sin and misery have been able utterly to banish from the memory - how sweet to know that that also is but the type of a far more blessed reality, "the Paradise," not of man only, but "of God" (Rev. 2:7.)! The little that we can say of it belongs rather to an exposition of Revelation than of Genesis. The trees and rivers and precious things of the latter we see but as images of beauty too little defined. It is to our shame, surely; for even as the fruits of the tree of life finally await the Ephesian "overcomer " - that is, the man who, amid the general decay and departure of heart from Christ, holds fast in the heart the freshness of the first, new-born love - so, who can doubt, a truer devotedness of heart to Him would give us even now a fuller knowledge, as well as a richer enjoyment, of what to Him (for it is His) the Paradise of God will be.

He who has the "keys of death and hell" has also, we may be sure, and in this sense too, the key of Paradise as well.

PART II
DIVINE LIFE IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS

 

Sec. I. - Adam (Chapter 3)

THE third chapter of Genesis is the real commencement of that series of lives of which as is plain, the book mainly consists. It is where the first man ceases to be "a type of Him that was to come" that he becomes for us a type in the fullest way - figure and fact in one. The page of his life (and but a page it is) that treats of innocency is not our example who were born in sin. Our history begins as fallen, and so too the history of our new life in God's grace. Figure and fact, as I have observed, are blended together here. We must be prepared for this, which we shall find in some measure the case all through these histories. Especially in this first one of all, what could be more impressive for us than the unutterably solemn fact itself? Children as we are of the fall, its simple record is the most perfect revelation that could be made of what we are in what is now our native condition, and also of how this came to be such. It is the title-deed to our sad inheritance of sin.

And yet what follows in closest connection may well enable us to look at it steadfastly; for the ruins of the old creation have been, as we know, materials which God has used to build up for Himself that new one in which He shall yet find (and we with Him) eternal rest. A simple question entertained in the woman's soul is the loss of innocence forever. It is enough only to admit a question as to Infinite Love to ruin all. This the serpent knew full well when he said unto the woman, "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" - that is, Has God indeed said so? In her answer you can see at once how that has done its work. She is off the ground of faith, and is reasoning; and the moment reasoning as to God begins, the soul is away from Him, and then further it is impossible by searching to find Him out.

Thus in Paradise itself, with all the evidence of divine goodness before her eyes, she turns infidel at once. "And the woman said unto the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, LEST ye die.' " Notice how plain it is that she is already fallen. She has admitted the question as to the apparent strangeness of God's ways, and immediately her eyes fasten upon the forbidden thing until she can see little else. God had set (chap.2:9.) the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and without any prohibition. For the woman now it is the forbidden tree that occupies that place. Instead of life, she puts death (or what was identified with it for her) as the central thing. The "garden of delight" has faded from her eyes. It has become to her the very garden of fable afterward* (where all was not fable, but this very scene as depicted by him who was now putting it before the enchanted gaze of his victim) in which the one golden-fruited tree hung down its laden branches, guarded from man only by the dragon's jealousy. But here God and the dragon had changed places. Thus she adds to the prohibition, as if to justify herself against One who has lost His sovereignty for her heart, "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it" - which He had not said. A mere touch, as she expressed it to herself, was death; and why, then, had He put it before them only to prohibit it? What was it He was guarding from them with such jealous care? Must it not be indeed something that He valued highly?
*The garden of Hesperides .

She first adds to the prohibition, then she weakens the penalty. Instead of "ye shall surely die," it is for her only "lest [for fear] ye die." There is no real certainty that death would be the result. Thus the question of God's love becomes a question of His truth also. I do not want upon the throne a being I cannot trust; hence comes the tampering with His word. The heart deceives the head. If I do not want it to be true, I soon learn to question if it be so. All this length the woman, in her first and only answer to the serpent, goes. He can thus go further, and step at once into the place of authority with her which God has so plainly lost. He says, not- "Ye shall not surely die" - for so much the woman had already said - but "Surely ye shall not die." Her feeble question of it becomes on his part the peremptory denial both of truth and love in God: "Surely ye shall not die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." How sure he is of his dupe! She on her part needs no further solicitation: "And when the woman saw that the tree was good" - she was seeing through the devil's eyes now - "that the tree was good for food" - there the lust of the flesh was doing its work - "and that it was pleasant to the eyes" - there the lust of the eyes comes out - "and a tree to be desired to make one wise" - there the pride of life is manifested - "she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and gave also to her husband with her, and he did eat."

Thus the sin was consummated. And herein we may read, if we will, as clear as day, our moral genealogy. These are still our own features, as in a glass, naturally. Let us pause and ponder them for a moment, as we may well do, seriously and solemnly. It is clear as can be that with the heart man first of all disbelieved. His primary condition was not, as some would so fain persuade us, that of a seeker by his natural reason after God. God had declared Himself in a manner suited to his condition, in goodness which he had only to enjoy, and which was demonstration to his every sense and faculty of the moral character of Him from whose hand all came to him. The very prohibition should have been his safeguard, reminding the sole master of that fair and gladsome scene, were he tempted to forget it, that he had himself a Master. Nay, would not the prohibited tree itself have proved itself still "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," had he respected the prohibition, by giving him to learn what sin was in a way he could not else have known it, as "lawlessness," insubjection to the will of God?

The entertaining of a question as to God was, as we have seen, man's ruin. He has been a questioner ever since. Having fallen from the sense of infinite goodness, he either remains simply unconscious of it, - his gods the mere deification of his lusts and passions, - or, if conscience be too strong for this, involves himself in toilsome processes of reasoning at the best, to find out as afar off the God who is so nigh. He reasons as to whether He that formed the ear can hear, or He that made the eyes can see, or He that gave man knowledge know, or, no less foolishly, whether He from whom comes the ability to conceive of justice, goodness, mercy, love, has these as His attributes or not! Still the heart deceives the head: what he wills, that he believes. For a holy God would be against his lusts, and a righteous God take vengeance on his sins; and how can God be good and the world so evil, or love man and let him suffer and die?

Thus man reasons, taken in the toils of him who has helped him to gain the knowledge of which he boasts, - so painful and so little availing. The way out of all this entanglement is a very simple one, however unwelcome it may be. He has but to judge himself for what he is, to escape out of his captor's hands. Self-judgment would justify the holiness and righteousness of God, and make him find in his miseries, not the effect of God's indifference as to him, but of his own sins. It would make him also at least suspect the certainty of his own conclusions, which so many selfish interests might combine to warp. But still "Ye shall be as gods" deceives him, and thus he will judge everything, and God also, rather than himself. And so, being his own god, he becomes the victim of his own pride - his god is his belly, as Scripture expresses it; insufficient to himself, and unable to satisfy the cravings of a nature which thus, even in its degradation, bears witness of having been created for something more, he falls under the power of his own lust, the easy dupe of any bait that Satan can prepare for him.

It is thus evident how the fall from God - the loss of confidence in divine goodness - is the secret of his whole condition, - of both his moral corruption and his misery together. For let my circumstances be what they may, if I can see them ordered for me unfailingly by One in whom infinite wisdom, power, and goodness combine, and whose love toward me I am assured of, my restlessness is gone, my will subjected to that other will in which I can but acquiesce and delight: I have "escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust," and I have been delivered from the misery attendant upon it. To this, then, must the heart be brought back; and thus it is very simple how "with the heart man believeth to righteousness." The faith that is real and operative in the soul (and no other can of course be of any value), first of all and above all in order to holiness, works peace and restoration of the heart to God and, let me say, of God to the heart. How fatal, yet how common, a mistake to invert this order! And what an inlet of blessedness it is thus to cease from one's own natural self-idolatry in the presence of a God who is really (and worthy to be) that! There is no such blessedness beside.

But we must return to look at man's natural condition. Notice how surely this leprosy of sin spreads, and most surely to those nearest and most intimate. Tempted ourselves, we become tempters of others, and are not satisfied until we drag down those who love us - I cannot say 'whom we love', for this is too horrible to be called love - to our own level. Nay, if even we would consciously do no such thing, we cannot help doing all we can to effect it. We dress up sin for them in the most alluring forms; we invest them with an atmosphere of it which they breathe without suspicion. The woman may be here more efficient than the serpent. Herself deceived, she does not deceive the man, but she allures him. The victory is easier, speedier, than that over herself: "She gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." The first effect is, "their eyes were opened;" the first "invention," of which they have sought out so many since, an apron to hide their shame from their own eyes.

Thus conscience begins in shame, and sets them at work upon expedients, whereby they may haply forget their sins, and attain respectability at least, if conscience be no more possible. How natural such a thought is we are all witnesses to ourselves, and yet it is a thing full of danger. It was the effort to retain just such a fig-leaf apron which sent the accusers of the adulteress out of the presence of the Lord. "Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone at her" had been like a lightning-flash, revealing to themselves their own condition. They were "convicted in their own consciences;" but a convicted conscience does not always lead to self judgment or to God: and "they, convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest" - the one who naturally would have most character to uphold, - "even unto the last," and left the sinner in the only possible safe place for a sinner - in the presence of the sinner's Saviour. She, whose fig-leaf apron was wholly gone, who had no more character or respectability to maintain, could stay. This was what the loss of that still left to her; and so had He said to the Pharisees, "The publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." This is the misery still of man's first invention, which in so many shapes he still repeats. When the voice of the Lord God is heard in the garden, the fig-leaf apron avails nothing. He hides himself from God among the trees of the garden: "I was afraid, because I was naked," is his own account.

This is what alternates ever with self-justification in a soul: the voice of God - the thought of God - is terror to it. These two principles will be found together in every phase of so-called natural religion the world over, and they will be found equally wherever Christianity itself is mutilated or misapprehended, making their appearance again. Man, in short, untaught of God, never gets beyond them; for he never can quite believe that he has for God a righteousness that He will accept, and he never can imagine God Himself providing a righteousness when he has none. Hence, fear is the controlling principle always. His religiousness is an effort to avert wrath, in reality, if it might be, to get away from God: and even with the highest profession it may be, still "there is none that seeketh after God." Notice thus, the Lord's picture of the "elder son" in the parable, who, hard-working, respectable, no wanderer from his father, no prodigal, but righteously severe on him who has spent his living with harlots, finds it yet a service barren enough of joy. The music and dancing in the father's house are a strange sound to him: when he hears it, he calls a servant to know what it all means. His own friends, and his merriment, are all outside, spite of his correct deportment, and he speaks out what is in his heart toward his father when he says, "Thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends." There the Lord holds up the mirror for the Pharisee of all time. Plenty of self-assertion, of self-vindication, even as against God Himself; the tie to Him, self-interest; his heart elsewhere; a round of barren and joyless services.

This must needs break down in terror when God comes really in: indeed, the principle all through is fear, - servile, not filial. So Adam hides himself among the trees of the garden, but the voice of the blessed God follows him. "And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, ‘Where art thou?' "Here, then, we begin to trace the actings of divine grace with a sinner. Righteousness has its way no less, and judgment is not set aside, but maintained fully. And herein is shown out the harmony of the divine attributes, the moral unity of the God whose attributes they are. There is no conflict in His nature. Justice and mercy, holiness and love, are not at war in Him. When He acts, all act. Let us mark, then, first of all, this questioning of Adam on the part of God. Three several times we find these questions. He questions the man, questions the woman; the serpent He does not question, but proceeds instead immediately to judgment. Plainly there is something significant in this. For it cannot be thought that the Omniscient needed to know the things that He inquired about; therefore, if not for His own sake, it must have been for man's sake He made the inquiry. It was, in fact, the appeal to man for confidence in One who on His part had done nothing to forfeit it; the gracious effort to bring him to own, in the presence of his Creator, his present condition and the sin which had brought him into it.

It is still in this way that we find entrance into the enjoyed favour of a Saviour-God: "we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand," the "goodness of God" leading "to repentance." Confidence in that goodness enables us to take true ground before God, and enables Him thus, according to the principles of holy government, to show us His mercy. Not in self-righteous efforts to excuse ourselves, nor yet in self-sufficient promises for the future, but "if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." To this confession do these questionings of God call these first sinners of the human race. Because there is mercy for them, they are invited to cast themselves upon it. Because there is none for the serpent, there is in his case no question. But let us notice also the different character of these questions, as well as the order of them. Each of these has its beauty and significance. The first question is an appeal to Adam to consider his condition, - the effect of his sin, rather than his sin itself. The second it is that refers directly to the sin, and not the first.

This double appeal we shall find every where in Scripture. Does man "thirst," he is bidden to come and drink of the living water; is he "laboring and heavy-laden," he is invited to find rest for his soul. This style of address clearly takes the ground of the first question. It is the heart not at rest here rather than the conscience roused. Where the latter is the case, however, and the sense of guilt presses on the soul, then there is a Christ of whom even His enemies testify that He receiveth sinners, and whose own words are that the "Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost." These are, as it were, God's two arms thrown around men. Thus would He fain be every tie of interest draw them to Himself, - of self-interest when they are as yet incapable of any higher, any worthier motive. How precious is this witness to a love which finds all its inducement in itself - a love, not which God has, but which He is! How false an estimate do we make of it and of Him when we make Him just such another as ourselves, - when we think of His heart as needing to be won back to us, as if He had fallen from His own goodness, with our fall from innocence! How slow are we to credit Him when He speaks of the "great love wherewith He loves us, even when we are dead in sins"! How little we believe it, even when we have before our eyes "God, in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them"! Even when the awful cross, wherein man's sin finds alone its perfect evidence and measurement in one, manifests a grace overflowing, abounding over it, - even then can he justify himself rather than God, and refuse the plainest and simplest testimony to sovereign goodness, which he has lost even the bare ability to conceive. In how many ways is God beseeching man to consider his own condition at least, if nothing else! In how many tongues is this "Adam, where art thou?" repeated to the present day! Every groan of a creation subject to vanity, whereof the whole frame-work is convulsed and out of joint, is such a tongue.

Herein is Wisdom crying in the streets, even where there is no speech and no word, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." This, man never does until divinely taught. "Wisdom is justified" only "of her children." And Adam does not yet approve himself as one of these. His confession of sin is rather an accusation of God - "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." In patient majesty, God turns to the woman. She, more simply, but still excusing herself, pleads she was deceived. - "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." Then, without any further question, He proceeds to judgment, - judgment in which for the tempted mercy lies enfolded, and where, if the old creation find its end, there appears the beginning of that which alone fully claims the title of "The Creation of God." In the judgment of the serpent, we must remember first of all the essentially typical character of the language used. We have no reason to believe that Adam knew as yet the mystery of who the tempter was. "That old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan," was doubtless for him nothing more than the most subtle of the beasts of the field which the Lord God had made.

Herein, indeed, were divine wisdom and mercy shown, the tempter being not permitted to approach in angelic character, as one above man, but in bestial, as one below him; one indeed of those to which man as their lord had given names, and among which he had found no help, meet. How great was thus his shame when he listened to the deceiver! He had given up his divinely appointed supremacy in that moment. So in the judgment here it is all outwardly the mere serpent, where spiritually we discern a far deeper thing. "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, ‘Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed among all cattle, and among all beasts of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.' "Thus the victory of evil is in reality the degradation of the victor: he is degraded necessarily by his own success.

How plainly is this an eternal principle, illustrated in every career of villany under the sun! By virtue of it, Satan will not be the highest in hell, and prince of it, as men have feigned, but lowest and most miserable of all the miserable there. "Dust shall be the serpent's meat." "He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?" But there is still another way in which the serpent's victory is his defeat: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel." That this last expression received its plainest fulfillment on the cross I need not insist upon. There Satan manifested himself prince of this world, able (so to speak) by his power over men to cast Christ out of it and put the Prince of life to death. But that victory was his eternal overthrow. "Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me". This is deliverance for Satan's captives. It is not the restoration, however, of the old creation, nor of the first man. The seed of the woman is emphatically the "Second Man," another and a "last Adam," new Head of a new race, who find in Him their title as "Sons of God," as "born, not of blood (ie. naturally), nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." This is not the place indeed for the expansion of this, for here it is not expanded. We shall find the development of it further on. Only here it is noted, that not self-recovery, but a deliverer, is the need of man ; and if God take up humanity itself whereby to effect deliverance, it must be the seed of the woman, the expression of feebleness and dependence, not of natural headship or of power. The first direct prophecy links together the first page of revelation with the last, for only there do we find the full completion of it, - the serpent's head at last bruised. As a principle, the life of every saint in a world which "lieth in the wicked one" has illustrated and enforced it. In the next section of this book we shall return to look at this.

The judgment of the woman and the man now follow, but they have listened already to the voice of mercy - a mercy which can turn to blessing the hardship and sorrow, henceforth the discipline of life, and even the irrevocable doom of death itself. That Adam has been no inattentive listener, we may gather from his own next words, which are no very obscure intimation of the faith which has sprung up in his soul. "And Adam called his wife's name Eve [life], because she was the mother of all living." The "woman which Thou gavest to be with me" is again "his wife," and he names her through whom death had come in, as the mother, not of the dying, but the living. Thus does his faith lay hold on God, - the faith of poor sinner surely, to whom divine mercy had come down without a thing in him to draw it out, save only the misery which spoke to the heart of infinite love. Like Abraham, afterward "he believed God," and while to the sentence he bows in submissive silence, the grace inclosed in the sentence opens his lips again. Beautifully are we permitted to see just this in Adam, a faith which left him a poor sinner still, to be justified, not by works, but freely of God's grace, but still put him thus before God for justification. We are ready the more to apprehend and appreciate the significant action following: "Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skin, and clothed them."

Thus the shame of their nakedness is removed, and by God Himself, so that: they are fit for His presence; for the covering provided of Himself must needs be owned as competent by Himself. And we have only to consider for a moment to discern how competent it really was. Death provided this covering. These coats of skin owned the penalty as having come in, and those clothed with them found shelter for themselves in the death of another, and that the one upon whom it had come sinlessly through their own sin. How pregnant with instruction as to how still man's nakedness is covered and he made fit for the presence of a righteous God! These skins were fitness, the witness of how God had maintained the righteous sentence of death, while removing that which was now his shame, and meeting the consequences of his sin. Our covering is far more, but it is such a witness also. Our righteousness is still the witness of God's righteousness, - the once dead, now living One, who of God is made unto us righteousness, and in whom also we are made the righteousness of God. The antitype in every way transcends the type surely, yet very sweet and significant nevertheless is the first testimony of God to the Son; - a double testimony, first to the seed of the woman, the Saviour; and then, when faith has set its seal to this, a testimony to that work of atonement, whereby the righteousness of God is revealed in good news to man, and the believer is made that righteousness in Him. Not till the hand of God has so interfered for them are Adam and his wife sent forth out of the garden. If earth's paradise has closed for them, heaven has already opened ; and the tree of life, denied only as continuing the old creation, stretches forth for them its branches, loaded with its various fruit, "in the midst of the paradise," no longer of men, but "of God."

Section 2

 

6. The Carnal and Spiritual Seed (Chap. 4; 5)

IN the second part of this series we have a mingled story of two lives - of many individuals, but still only of two lives - essentially contrasted with one another. It is already the commencing fulfillment of that prophetic word which had spoken of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The story belongs, not to one generation only, but to every generation from that day to this; for while it is assuredly true that the real and fundamental victory which insures every other is His to whom belongs in its full sense the title of "Seed of the woman," yet it is true, too, that in every generation the great opponents have their representatives among men, and the conflict and the victory are in principle continually repeated. The world has been from the beginning, as all history attests, a scene of unceasing strife; but its strife has been very generally a hopeless contest of evil with evil; for evil has no internal unity nor peace. Its elements may compact, but cannot concord. "Corruption is in the world through lust," lust is its essential feature, and we have had this already traced to its beginning in paradise itself; but lust means strife, means war, the conflict of jarring interests, each pursuing his own: "Whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts, which war in your members?" In such a collision there can be no true victory any where. Such history may fill men's chronicles; with God it is a mere unmeaning blank.

God's history is but the tracing, amid this darkness, of one silver line of light, light come into the world, a foreign element in it. With this the record of the six days' work begins: "Let there be light, and there was light." With this, too, begins the story of that of which we have already seen these creative days to be a type. We do not know how long the earth lay "waste and empty" under darkness; we do know that for man not long was the darkness unbroken. God's word again brought in light, although light at first long struggling with the darkness which it found; yet from the first God's benediction was its pledge of final victory. "Evening" might be, but not henceforth total "night;" while each "morning," as it follows, presages and brings nearer the full and perfect day, God's Sabbath-rest, when darkness shall be gone forever.

But here, then, is conflict, if mysterious, yet most real, where there are victories to be recorded, and where, thank God, the final victory is sure: a conflict just where the light is, and not elsewhere; a conflict to which every human heart in which God has spoken that out of darkness light may shine, is witness, and which is seen on a far grander scale in the field of the world at large. It is to this that the chapters now before us invite our attention; and as we shall see in these two spheres, where the inner world of the heart is but the miniature representative of the world without. We may see it more plainly if we trace it first upon the larger scale.

Here the blood of righteous Abel speaks to us of what often causes to the soul such deep perplexity, the apparent prevalence of evil over good: a perplexity which is not removed until we see it as the law of the conflict we have spoken of. The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head; but then the serpent shall first bruise the heel of the woman's seed. This applies first of all and pre-eminently, as already said, to Christ as the conqueror over man's mortal foe. In Abel's death we may thus see Christ, whose blood indeed speaks better things than that of Abel, but of whom Abel is none the less, as the first martyr, dying at a brother's hand, a perfect type.

If this be true, however, Cain must be a picture especially of the people, Christ's brethren, too, after the flesh, at whose hand he really died; and here at once the whole type assumes meaning and consistency.

Cain, then, is the Jew, the formal worshipper of God, bringing the work of his hands, the fruit of his own toil, not doubting that it ought to be accepted of God. Not irreligious, as men would say, he ignores the breach that sin had caused between man and his Creator, but of which the very toil whose fruit he brought was witness. So coming, he is necessarily rejected of God; and such is Pharisaism, of whatever grade or time. Just persons, having no need of repentance; diligent elder sons, serving the Father, but without getting so much as a kid to make merry with their friends; self-satisfied legalists, ignorant of God and grace: such is the Lord's picture of a generation of which Cain was prototype and father. Pharisees were they, who always were most zealous for commandments and against Christ, a going about to establish their own righteousness, and not submitting themselves to the righteousness of God."

Abel, on the other hand, draws near to God, bringing nothing of his own handiwork, but an innocent victim, a life taken which no sin had stained or burdened, a sacrifice most unreasonable if it were not faith. What pleasure could God take in death, or how could the death of a guiltless substitute atone for the guilty? Thus man still reasons. But the very folly of Abel's sacrifice to the eye of reason should suffice to assure us that he was not following the promptings of his own mind in it. His was not will-worship, but faith; and if plainly the death of a beast could not take away sin, his eye rested upon what that substitution foreshadowed. "By faith Abel ‘offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." And in this he might well speak to us of Him who, not for Himself indeed, but as Man for men, offered to God that one acceptable offering in which all others find their consummation and their end.

"Witness" and "martyr" were from the beginning one. The self-righteous heart of Cain resents the testimony to man's guilt and God's provision for it, resents the testimony of God Himself to the acceptance of Abel and his offering. In vain does God graciously remonstrate with him; Abel is slain, and Cain goes out from the presence of the Lord, not to be slain of man, but to be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth.

How like the people who bought Aceldama with the blood of Christ - "the potter's field to bury strangers in"! for the whole earth has been to them since then a strangers' burial-ground. As a vessel marred upon the wheel, they have been witnesses for Him in their rejection that they are but as clay in the hands of Him against whom they have sinned.

Yet, though wanderers upon the earth, the nation subsists; for He who has ordained their punishment has also ordained its limit. They subsist with the mark of Cain upon them, a people who strikingly fulfill the character of Cain's progeny to this day, away from the presence of Jehovah, according to one of their own prophecies, "without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim."

With Lamech and his sons the line of Cain ends: one in whom self-will and impenitent abuse of God's long-suffering reach their height. A polygamist and would-be homicide, his name speaks of the human "strength" in which he rejoices, his wives names of the lust of eye and ear after which he goes, his sons' names and their inventions of how, then as now, a soul away from God will use His creatures so as to be able to dispense with Him.* This is a generation such as those of whom the Lord said, "The latter end is worse than the beginning." With Cain, seven generations, and in the last still Cain, only developed further: progress in a race away from God, who will possess themselves of the earth in His despite, and be prosperous citizens in the land of vagabondage.

* Lamech is "strong;" Adah, "ornament;" Zillah, "tinkling" ("music player" some interpret rather than translate it); Jabal, "the traveller;" Jubal-"the trumpet-blast), Tubal Cain is variously rendered, "worker in ore," "brass of Cain," "issue of Cain;" Naamab, "lovely."

Happily this is not all; nor is that which is of God, though down-trodden, extinct upon earth. In Seth (appointed in the place of Abel, whom Cain slew) we have its resurrection, and henceforth its perpetuation. The line of Cain perished with the old world in the waters of the deluge; with Seth, God begins, as it were, the race of man anew (chap. 5), Cain and the fall being now omitted. Seth is the son of man, so to speak, in his likeness who was made in the likeness of God and blessed. With Seth, there are nine generations unto Noah, in whom once more the earth is also blessed: three triads, for God manifests Himself in as well as to His people; at the end of the second of which Enoch goes to heaven without seeing death, while Noah is God's seed, brought through the judgment to replenish and find his blessing on the earth beyond. The Church of first-born ones and Israel find here very plainly their representatives, to those who have learned from Scripture the respective destinies of each. Fittingly, therefore, does Enoch become the earliest prophet of the Lord's approach (Jude 14.), while the days of Noah are expressly likened, by the Lord Himself, to the time of the coming of the Son of Man.
The more we look, the more we shall see the force of the comparison. Infidelity has invited our attention to a correspondence between the two lines of Cain and Seth, and there is a certain correspondence which it will be well to examine. The resemblance of some names pointed out is no doubt superficial; but there are undoubtedly two Enochs and two Lamechs, and the latter close upon the end of the old world. Of the two Enochs, all that is noted is but contrast. The first gives his name to the city which Cain builds as it were in defiance of his sentence, a city whose builder and maker God is not. Enoch, one of a line which have no earthly history, walks with God, and is not, for God has taken him. The two Lamechs have more in common, for alas! the separateness which at first obtained between the worshippers of Jehovah and those in alienation from Him narrowed as time went on. It was when Enos was born that men began to call upon the name of the Lord, for "Enos" is "frail" or "mortal man," and those content to bear that title learn the mercies of a covenant-keeping God. But as time goes on, Lamech succeeds to Enos - strength to weakness, the world and the Church approach; and thus Lamech, like his Cainite representative, has his memorable saying also: pious, and largely true, but with one fatal flaw in it. Lamech called his son's name "‘Noah,' saying, ‘This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands because of the earth which the Lord has cursed.'"

And the comfort came, and in Noah, real blessing for the earth from God. Lamech was thus far a true prophet; but the people to whom he spoke, or the survivors of them, with their whole posterity, save Noah's family alone, were all cut off by the flood that preceded the blessing" Is there nothing similar now, when boundary lines are nearly effaced, and the Church has shifted from the Enos to the Lamech-state, and peace is preached in the assurance of good days coming, while intervening judgment, universal for the rejecters of present grace, is completely ignored and set aside?

Seth's line has warning as well as comfort for us, then; yet is it after all the line to which God's promise and His blessing cleave, and while the world profits naught by their inventions, it is beautitul to see how He numbers up the years of their pilgrimage. With them alone there is a chronology, for He who telleth the stars "numbers their steps" and "telleth" even "their wanderings."

Thus far, then, as to the interpretation of this primeval history as it applies to the larger scale of the world around. But there is a world within which corresponds certainly not less to what these types signify, and which lies apparently yet more within the scope of these Genesis biographies. In this inner world, wherever God has wrought, the same conflict is found, and subject to the same laws. Through death, life; through defeat, victory.

In this sphere of the individual experience the conflict is between two natures - the one which is ours as born naturally; the other, as born of God supernaturally: and here, evidently, the order is, "first, that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual." The law of Genesis is thus that the elder gives place to the younger. Cain represents, therefore, that in us which we rightly and necessarily call "the old nature." His name signifies "acquisition, possession;" Abel's, "vapour, exhalation." The contrast between them cannot be questioned, and was prophetic of their lives: Cain possessing himself of that earth on which for man's sake the curse rested, while Abel's life exhaled to God like vapour drawn up by the sun. We may be very conscious, as Christians, of these opposite tendencies: the "flesh," so designated because in it man is sunk down from the spiritual being, which he was created, into mere "body," as we may say or dust, while the new nature rises Godward.

Not that the flesh cannot have a religion of its own. It can bring its offering Cain-wise, the fruit of a toil which should convict it as outside of paradise, and (expecting it to be received, of course,) be roused to anger by not finding the tokens of acceptance which a mere prodigal, coming home as that, obtains ; - the spirit of him who was, again, "the elder son," and who, while professing, "Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandments," had still to add, "and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends." How many of those even in whom there is begun in the heart some true desire after God, are yet destitute of all knowledge of acceptance with Him, because they are endeavouring to approach Him after Cain's pattern, taking their own thoughts instead of His! Faith still, taught of His Word, brings Abel's offering - the surrender of a life unstained by sin, and yielded therefore on account of others, not its own; and faith is the character and expression of the new nature: we are "all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."

The interpretation of the type runs smoothly so far. The difficulty will be for most that Abel should die, and by his brother's hand - a difficulty quite parallel to that which it represents, that when we have so begun to live, we should find in practical experience a law of sin overmastering, death in the place of life - "For I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." - "For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.

Thus, while it is surely true that the life which as children of God we partake of cannot be slain, it is nevertheless true as to experience, from which side the type presents things here, that it is after we have begun to live the true and eternal life we have to learn what death is - to pass through the experience of it in our souls, and learn deliverance from "the body of this death."

In the struggle with evil, we too (though in a very different way from Him who alone is fully and properly the woman's seed) find victory from defeat. We need, on our own account (as He did not) the humiliation of it. Jacob, though heir of blessing, must halt upon his thigh before he can be Israel, a prince with God; and what seems on the one side to be unredeemed evil and its triumph only, shall in another be found the mighty and transforming touch of the "angel that redeems from evil."

We must have the sentence of death in ourselves, that we may not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead. The possession of life - of the new nature - is not power over sin; and this we have to learn, that all "power is of God." Trust in a new nature which we have got is still trust in ourselves as having got it; and self-confidence in whatever shape is still a thing alienate from God, and to be broken down, not built up. We must come to the self-despairing cry, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" before we can learn. as we shall then surely learn, to answer "I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Thus Abel dies, and Cain lives and flourishes; away from God indeed, but not permitted to be slain. The flesh abides in us, though we are born again; we cannot destroy it when we gladly would. Nay, we have, before we can find the fruit we seek for, to see the flesh in its fruit, under its fairest forms, the evil thing it ever was. To its seventh generation "that which is born of the flesh is flesh," from Cain to Tubal-cain, "Cain's issue." But then we have reached a new beginning, and for other fruit find another tree - Seth appointed of God as a seed "in the place of Abel, whom Cain slew."

Just so when the fruits of the flesh are manifest, and we have proved the inefficacy of the right and good desires which come of the new nature in us: when we have failed to work deliverance for ourselves, and have had to cry in despair, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" we find the answer in a fruitful seed bestowed in place of Abel - "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord," and the "law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" makes us "free from the law of sin and death;" - not "the life," but "the Spirit of life," - not our effort, but divine might, - not self-occupation, but occupation with Him in whom we are before God, and in whom the divine favour rests upon us full and constant as upon Him (and because on Him) it rests. "I, yet not I, but Christ in me" This is a second substitution which for deliverance it imports a soul to know: the substitution of the power of the Spirit for the power of a right will and human energy, the substitution therefore of occupation with Christ for occupation with holiness; for then and thus alone is holiness attainable.

From Seth, then, "Enos" springs.* We can take home the sentence of death; we can glory in weaknesses, that the strength of Christ may rest upon us; and His power known - the living God for us, as we find Him whom our weakness needs, we "worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." "Then began men" - from the birth of Enos - "to call upon the name of the Lord."

And with Seth, Adam's line begins afresh, as if sin had never entered, as if it had never blotted the page of human history. Like the genealogy in Luke, where, the Son of Man having come in, Adam again shines forth in the brightness of his creation as "the son of God;" so here begin once more "the generations of Adam," with no record of the fall to touch the blessed fact that "in the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him." No Cain, nor even Abel, enters here. The record is of a life in all its generations not of this world, yet the days of which in the world God numbers: a life which is fruitful, but whose fruit it is not yet the time to show; a life to which alone is appended the record of a walk with God, and which not only finds its home with God in Enoch, but with Noah also, in due time, after the long-suspended judgment is poured out, inherits the earth also by perpetual covenant of a covenant-keeping God.

 

Sec. 3.—NOAH
(CHAPTER. 6 – 11:9)

To Noah's life, as a type, the third chapter of the first epistle of Peter is the key. His bringing through the flood is there declared to be a type of "salvation," but salvation of a fuller kind than ordinarily is reckoned such. The figure is a simple one enough to follow in the main, and will itself guide us if we cleave closely to it.

For, plainly, the ark is Christ, and the flood it saves through is the judgment of the whole world, which perished in it, while those preserved are brought through to a new world which emerges from the waters, and where the sweet savour of accepted sacrifice secures a perpetuity of blessing.

It is the third stage of new life as apprehended by the soul, resurrection therefore, as bringing in the place of which it is said, "If any man be in Christ, [it is a] new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new;" - words which remarkably correspond to Noah's position as come through the flood, making allowance for that essential inferiority of type to antitype which we have often had to refer to as a necessary principle for true interpretation.

Noah is evidently not the type of a sinner, taken up as such, nor could he be, to stand in the place he does in these biographies. He is a just man, a Cornelius rather, a type of those who, quickened and converted though they be - " fearing God and working righteousness " - need yet to know the salvation which the gospel brings.

In the world around, corruption is total and universal. The judgment of the whole is pronounced, with one way of escape, and only one, left open to the man of faith.

The ark is built of gopher-wood. We know not this "gopher," but the resemblance is remarkably close to the "copher" or "pitch" named afterward, and the resemblance has been noticed by many. On account of it the gopher has been of old believed to be the cypress, and might well have furnished the "pitch" also for the vessel's seams. The type would thus correspond more fully to the antitype, for there need be no doubt but that the gopher, like the shittim-wood of the tabernacle-ark, refers to Christ, while "copher" is the word used elsewhere for "atonement." That the tree should be cut down to provide a refuge from the waters of judgment was not enough, the seams must be pitched with the pitch the tree supplied. And so death, as mere death, even though Christ's, would not have been enough to put the soul in security that fled to Him for refuge. The only blood, as the apostle teaches, that could be carried into the presence of God for sin, was the blood of a victim burned without the camp. The place of distance due to the sinner and the unclean had to be taken by the Holy One of God, in order to our salvation. In such an ark we, with Noah, may make "nests" (for so, instead of "rooms, the margin more literally reads). The love that has provided all gives more than security; the house of refuge is not mere bare walls; amid the very storm of judgment the heart that craves may find its lodgment where more than a father's care, more than a mother's tenderness, are found.

For there seems no Scriptural proof or otherwise of "copher" being bitumen, although the Septuagint and Vulgate translate it so and most modern interpreters follow these.
And here, upon the ground - without an altar. The altar, as what "sanctifies the gift," is doubtless the person of the Lord, as what gave value to His work; but in the sin-offering the altar is not seen, for the victim stands in the sinner's place, and is treated as if he were not the person that He really is.

The door of the ark was in the side, but the window above.* It is no new thing to say that this is faith's outlook. The passengers in that marvelously guided and protected vessel needed not their eyes for pilotage, and were not to look out upon the solemnities of the judgment taking effect around; while the waters, which were the grave of the world, floated them above its mountain-tops up to the blue heavens, calming as they rose. What a season for them - shut in by God, with God! and what a preparation for commencing that new life which they were to begin in the world beyond the flood!

And many may recall a not less solemn time, when they too, having fled for refuge from the storm of coming wrath, were made to pass through the world's judgment, and to find in Him who, dead for them and risen, has passed into the heavens, their own escape, not from judgment merely, but from the whole scene of it. They have come in Christ through the floods which fell on Him alone, and in Him have reached a "new creation," old things passed away, and all things become new.

For even Christ (as the apostle tells us) we know no more after the flesh. Plainly, the only Christ there is to know, is one no more found among men; and if our being "in Him" means any thing, it means this: identification with Him who stands as really for us in the glory of the heavens as once for us He hung upon the cross.

* This has been contested, but seems undoubtedly the meaning of the passage. And it is confirmed by the fact that not till Noah removed the covering of the ark could he see that the ground was dry.

It must be remembered that not sense nor experience brings us there. Even Noah may have heard or seen little, if any thing, of that which he passed through; but none the less real was that eventful passage. For us, faith alone can make us realize a plan as to which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man" what nevertheless the Spirit of God through the Word has revealed to us. We are there (if in Christ) apart from all experience; and what experience we are to have of it will be the fruit of, and in proportion to the vigour of, our faith alone.

The ark grounds upon the mountains of Ararat, and not long afterward occurs the well-known incident of the raven and the dove. As a type, this shows us how little is forgotten or denied in these Genesis-biographies, what we practically are, conscious as we may be of our place in Christ Jesus. Saved out of the world, and no more of it, we yet carry with us and may let out the raven. We have that in us which can take up with a scene of death from which the waters of judgment have not yet dried up, and like the unclean bird use the ark but as a means of pursuing with the more vigour its congenial occupation.* Noah first sends forth the raven, but, as others have noted, he distrusts it and sends forth the dove; but the dove finds no rest for the sole of her feet, and returns unto him into the ark. Seven days after, she goes forth again, and returns with an olive-leaf, the assurance of peace and of the fruitfulness of the new world.

*"Went forth, going and returning" (ch.2:7, marg.) seems to indicate this.

Shortly after, but at the word of God, and not at the suggestion of his own mind, Noah goes forth, and the first-fruits of the place into which he as been brought is an altar from which the smoke of a burnt-offering goes up, - a savour of rest to Jehovah. Neither altar nor burnt-offering have we had before, and who can doubt the suitability of their first mention here? For the altar is the person of Christ - that which gave its value to His blessed work, and the burnt-offering is that aspect of His work in which its value Godward is most fully shown. And here, in the new-creation scene pictured for us in this chapter, surely we know in a new way and with a new blessedness, not merely salvation, but the Saviour; and not merely the human side of that salvation - its result for us, but its divine side - its Godward result. The knowledge of the salvation sets us free to be occupied with the Saviour; and He who cannot be known now after the flesh (for He is risen and with God) can only be apprehended justly when we have been brought from off the ground of the world that rejected Him, to find our true place where He is, - in the light, where He is the light, and the glory in His face is the true test and discovery of all else.

"And Jehovah smelled a savour of rest; and Jehovah said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done." Thus the hopelessness of expecting anything on man's part, which was before the flood the reason for his judgment, is now, through the efficacy of accepted sacrifice, but a reason for setting man aside altogether as a hindrance of blessing and of establishing it in perpetuity upon an unchangeable basis. The new creation thus abides forever in bloom and beauty of which the earth under the Noachian covenant is but indeed a shadow.

The heirs of this inheritance find next their own blessing. Their fruitfulness is certainly not more an injunction than a gift of the grace which is now manifesting itself for them (9:1). And so in what these types speak of.

Then their authority over the lower creatures is restored: the fear and dread of man is to be upon every beast of the earth, and upon all that moves, and they are delivered into his hand. All things are his, and even death itself is now to furnish him with food. This is a fact of the deepest significance; it is death ministering to life, a principle of which God would keep us in constant remembrance. Scarcely a meal but thus testifies to us of the very basis of all real gospel, which the Lord's supper fully and formally declares. But it is only after known deliverance, and in the new place with God that this can be rightfully understood. We now go farther than the type, and overpass the restriction here imposed: we drink the blood also; that which is God's only as atonement (for "it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul") is ours to sustain and cheer us as atonement made. "The cup which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?"

Thus are they set in the fullness of blessing: delivered, brought into a scene secured to them irrespective of their own desert, fruitfulness assured sovereignty of the whole bestowed, and death itself put into their possession and made to minister to their sustenance with all else. And now coming in, in its due and fitting place, the question of responsibility for judging the deeds of the flesh, for which before they were incompetent. When Cain shed his brother's blood, in the old world now passed away, God set a mark upon Cain, lest any one finding him should kill him; whereas now, in this new world, God speaks far otherwise: "And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man."

This is evidently the principle of all human government, which began from this date, established by God Himself. We have its history shortly epitomized for us in Noah's weakness and want of self-government, which exposes him to the scorn of those whom he should have governed; and on the other hand, in Nimrod, high-handed power, abused to satisfy the lust of ambition and self-will. Yet the powers that be are ordained of God, while for the abuse of power, or for the inability to use it, they are accountable to Him.

On the other side of the flood also (in the typical sense) we are set in authority, for the use of which we are responsible to God. Power is in our hands from God to judge the deeds of the flesh, which before deliverance we could not judge, and to vindicate the image of God in which we have been created. And to this is appended once more the blessing of fruitfulness, which, however it be of God and of grace, is yet not possible to be attained where nature is unjudged.

Lastly, the covenant is ratified, and a token given to confirm it. The bow in the cloud is man's assurance; but it is more, it is God's memorial of the new relationship into which He has entered with His creatures. His eye, and not man's only, is upon the bow, and thus He gives them fellowship with Himself in that which speaks of peace in the midst of trouble, of light in the place of darkness; and what this bow speaks of it is ours to realize, who have the reality of which all figures speak.

"God is light," and "that which doth make manifest is light." Science has told us that the colours which everywhere cloth the face of nature are but the manifold beauty of the light itself. The pure ray which to us is colourless is but the harmonious blending of all possible colours. The primary ones - a trinity in unity - from which all others are produced, are, blue, red, and yellow; and the actual colour of any object is the result of its capacity to absorb the rest. If it absorb the red and yellow rays, the thing is blue; if the blue and yellow, it is red; if the red only, it is green; and so on. Thus the light paints all nature; and its beauty (which in the individual ray we have not eyes for) comes out in partial displays wherein it is broken up for us and made perceptible.

"God is light;" He is "Father of lights." The glory, which in its unbroken unity is beyond what we have sight for, He reveals to us as distinct attributes in partial displays which we are more able to take in, and with these He clothes in some way all the works of His hands. The jewels on the High-Priest's breastplate - the many-coloured gems whereon the names of His people were engraved were thus the "Urim and Thummim" - the "Lights and Perfections," typically, of God Himself; for His people are identified with the display of those perfections, those "lights," in Him more unchangeable than the typical gems.

In the rainbow the whole array of these lights manifests itself, the solar rays reflecting themselves in the storm; the interpretation of which is simple. "When I bring a cloud over the earth," says the Lord, "the bow shall be seen in the cloud; and I [not merely you] will look upon it." How blessed to know that the cloud that comes over our sky is of His bringing! and if so, how sure that some way He will reveal His glory in it! But that is not all, nor the half; for surely but once has been the full display of the whole prism of glory, and that in the blackest storm of judgment that ever was; and it is this in the cross of His Son that God above all looks upon and that He remembers.

Still the principle is wider, and in every season of distress He does surely at last display His glory. At last the storm is blended with the brightness; and this too is a token of the covenant of God with His people that not destruction, but their blessing, His nearer manifestation and their better apprehension of it, is the meaning of the storm.

(2.) - Chapter 9:18 - 29

The story of the deliverance closes here, and we now come to a very different, in many respects a contrasted, thing - the history of the delivered people. The history begins with failure; it ends with confusion, and from the gracious hand that but now delivered them. It is the humbling lesson of what we are, but which we have now to read in the light of what He is. This will make indeed the shadows deeper, but we can face them in the knowledge that God is light and in Him no darkness; and that for us, too, "the darkness is passing, and the true light already shines."

First, Noah fails, the natural head of all; and sin thus afresh introduced propagates itself at once in his family, and becomes the curse of Canaan and his seed. Noah's snare is the abundance of the new-blessed earth, a thing not easy to understand typically until we see (what will be more fully before us when we come to Abraham's life) that it is the earthly side of the heavenly life we have to do with in the succeeding histories. Thus Abraham is in Canaan as a pilgrim and a stranger, a thing that in our Canaan (for no one doubts, I suppose, what Canaan means) is an absolute impossibility; yet the earthly side is pilgrim and strangership, and the two things thus linked together derive a meaning from their connection they would not have alone. Just so with Noah; the earth side of the typical heavenly life is Nazariteship, and Noah falling from his Nazariteship exposes himself to his shame. The fall tests his children, as the presence of sin still tests the spirit of those who deal with it. Ham in further exposing it to his brethren reveals himself, not taking it as his own, while Shem and Japheth cover, without looking upon, their father's nakedness. "Ham" is "black," - the unenlightened - or perhaps rather the "sun-burnt," - scorched and darkened by the very light itself; for light, if not received as light, becomes a source of darkness to the soul. And Ham is the father of Canaan , - the "trader," as his name imports. The parentage of evil in the professing church seems thus traced, even as in the world before the flood, to one who goes out from the presence of the Lord, only darkened and branded by the light in which he had found no pleasure. Canaan is in the professing church its fruit - the trader in divine things, who may be found in the land, and even in the "house of the Lord," but everywhere true to his unhappy character: "bondsman of bondsmen and no free-born child of light, he is finally driven out of the house which he has made a den of thieves, and finds his true place in Babylon the Great, whose "merchants are the great men of the earth."

Of Noah's two other sons we seem to read in their various blessing two tendencies which are apt to be sundered, and should not. Shem's is the recipient contemplative life, whose danger it is to run into the mystical; Japheth's, the practical, energetic life, which in its one-sideness tends to divorce itself from faith. In the blessing of Shem, it is Shem's God, Jehovah, who is blessed, as it is indeed the highest blessedness of faith that it has God for its portion and its praise; while Japheth's blessing is in enlargement, and in dwelling in Shem's tents, for the practical life finds its home in faith alone, and true service is but worship in its outflow toward men.

Chapter 10

Of the genealogies which follow in the tenth chapter I shall say - can indeed say - little. We may notice that the Egyptian (Mizraim) is also a son of Ham, the darkness of nature (as we speak) being not so much defect of, as resisted, light. The Philistines, too, are Egyptians, as we may by and by more consider. Then Nimrod, the son of Cush, the "rebel," as his name imports, the beginning of whose kingdom is in Babel , points too plainly to the apostate king of the last days to admit much question. Let us now proceed, however, to look at Babel itself, with the account of which this section closes. Here, without doubt, too, Babylon the Great is pictured, although not in the full development in which we look at it in Revelation 17 and 18.

The account is remarkable for its clearness and simplicity. The process by which the professing church settled down in the world, and then built up for itself a worldly name and power, could scarcely be more fully or in plainer terms described. How with one consent they turned their backs upon the sunrise (2 Pet. 1: 19), and leaving the rugged and difficult places in which they were first nurtured - too painful for flesh and blood - descended to the easier if lower level of the world,* - how settling there, ease and abundance wrought in them desire to possess themselves in security of the earth and make themselves a name in it; how Babylon thus was built, "a city," after Cain's pattern, whose builder and maker God was not, and a "tower" of strength, human and not divine; all this he that runs may read. Let us notice further, that this is a carnal imitation and anticipation of God's thoughts, and that thus the earthly city usurps the titles and prerogatives of the heavenly one. But Babylon cannot be built of the "living stone," which is the God-made material for building; they have moved from the quarries of the hills, and must be content to manufacture less durable "brick" out of the mere clay which the plain affords: they have brick for stone and slime (or bitumen) for mortar - i.e., not the cementing of the Spirit, the true Unifier, but the worldly and selfish motives which compact men together, and are but fuel for the fire in the day "the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.

* The meaning of Shinar is considered uncertain. Among others possible is that of "waking sleep," which would at least be very appropriate.

This was what makes a figure in men's histories - the Catholic Church of antiquity, singularly one indeed, whether you look at it in Alexandria or Constantinople or Rome , were most fully developed. The unity whereof it boasted was not God's, and if God came down to see what man was building, it was not to strengthen, but to destroy - not to compact, but scatter. The many tongues of Protestantism are but His judgment upon the builders of Babel; its multitudinous sects but the alternative of the oppressive tyranny with which when united she laid her yoke upon the minds and consciences of men, and under which the blood of the saints ran like water. They are but a temporary hindrance, moreover, for when the antitypype of Nimrod shall make it the beginning of his kingdom, Babylon shall sit as a queen, anticipating no widowhood and no sorrow. Then, however, her doom shall be at hand, "in one day shall her plagues come upon her."

 

 

 

Abraham

Chapter 11. 10 - 21

 

(1) HIS PATH

The life of Abraham is the well-known pattern-life of faith, as far as the Old Testament could furnish this. It connects, as already noticed, in the closest way, with the story of Noah which precedes it, and alone makes it possible. For the essential characteristic of the life of faith is strangership, but this founded upon citizenship