of trouble." It is comparatively easy to trust God while everything goes along pleasantly, but the time of disappointment, of loss, of persecution, of bereavement, is the time of testing; and then how often we fail! Here is where the Lord Jesus is in such striking contrast from all others. Stress of circumstances only served to display the perfections of His heart. When He was a hungered, and tempted by Satan to make bread to supply His own need, He lived by every word of God. When He sat by the well, worn with His journey, He was not too weary to speak words of grace and life to the poor Samaritan woman. When the cities in which His mightiest works had been done rejected His message, He meekly submitted, saying "Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in Thy sight" (Matt. 11:23-26). When He was reviled, He reviled not again. And in the supreme crisis, on the cross, His perfections were fully displayedpraying for the forgiveness of His enemies, speaking the word of acceptance to the repentant thief, making provision for His widowed mother, yielding up His spirit into the hands of the Father. Ah! our garments (symbols of conduct, habits, ways) are at best, so much patchwork, but His were "without seam, woven from the top throughout" (John 19:23). Yes, in all things He has the preeminence. Light is thrown upon Abraham's fall by the thirteenth verse of our chapter-"And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father's house, that I said unto her, This is thy kindness which thou shalt shew unto me; at every place whither we shall come, say of me, He is my brother." It is to be noted that this arrangement entered into by Abraham with his wife, was made before they left Chaldea. It was therefore something which they brought with them from the place of their birth! In other words, it was that which was attached to the old man and, as we have seen, something which had never been judged. Let us learn then from this, the vileness of the flesh, the utter corruption of the old nature, the hideousness of the old man. Truly there is need for us to "mortify" our members which are on the earth. Plainly, the evil compact which Abraham made with Sarah was due to the feebleness of his faith in God's power to take care of them. And once more, let not writer or reader sit in pharisaic judgment upon Abraham, but see a picture of himself. Abraham did but illustrate what is all too sadly common among the Lord's people-that which might be termed the inconsistency of faith. How often those who are not afraid to trust God with their souls, are afraid to trust Him with regard to their bodies! How often those who have the full assurance of faith in regard to eternal things, are full of unbelief and fear when it comes to temporal things! We have believed in the Lord and it has been counted unto us for righteousness; yet, how often, like Abraham, in the matter of the practical concerns of our daily life, we too, have more confidence in our own wisdom and scheming than we have in the sufficiency of God. And how did God act? Did He lose patience with Abraham, and cast off one so fickle and inconsistent? Manifestly Abraham had dishonored the Lord in acting as he did, in setting such an evil example before these heathen (Philistines). Yet, behold the grace of Him with whom we have to do. Instead of casting him off, God interposed and delivered Abraham and his wife from the peril which menaced them. Not only did God not forsake Abraham, but He would not abandon him to his foes. Ah! the gifts and calling of God are "without repentance. And why? Because they are bestowed altogether without respect to any worthiness in the recipient, and hence, because God's gifts are free and we do nothing to merit them, we can do nothing to demerit them. "The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I will not desert to his foes; That soul, though all Hell should endeavor to shake, "But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man's wife" (Gen. 20: 3). This statement may appear very commonplace to the casual reader-the mere narration of a detail lacking in importance. But the meditative mind discovers here an exemplification of a truth of profound importance and high value, though one that is now generally lost sight of. We refer to the universality of God's rule; the absolute control which he has over His creatures; the ease with which He can move men to accomplish His will. God has access to all minds and can impress them by a dream, an affliction, or in any way He thinks proper. In the above case God used a dream to instruct Abimelech, to show him the wrong he had unconsciously done, and to point out to him his immediate duty. Abimelech was a Philistine, and, so far as we know to the contrary, a heathen. He knew nothing of the fact that Sarah was the one chosen to be the mother of the Jewish race, and the one from whom, according to the flesh, the Messiah was to come. Appearances seemed to show that Jehovah's purpose was in immediate danger of being foiled. But how simply God dealt with the situation! By means of a dream, nothing more, Sarah is delivered, the seeming hindrances to God's purpose is removed, the situation is saved! What we here desire to emphasize is the perfect ease with which God can move men when He pleases. All this modern talk about man's "freedom" and man's going his own way in defiance of God's secret counsels leaves God out entirely. To say that God wants to influence men but that men will not let Him is to reduce the Almighty to a helpless spectator, full of gracious intentions but lacking in power to make them good. But what saith the Scriptures? Hear them: "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: He turneth it whithersoever He will" (Prov. 21:1). Yes, and so easily can He turn the king's heart, that when He pleases He needs employ nothing more than a "dream"! "And God said unto him in a dream, Yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart; for I also withheld thee from sinning against Me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her" (Gen. 20:6). In these words we have (as so often in Scripture) an apparently incidental statement which throws great light upon a difficult problem and which positively refutes the proud reasoning of the philosophic theologians. How often it has been said that in endowing Adam with the power of choice God was unable to prevent his fall. But how untenable are such theorizings in the face of the above passage! If God could "withhold" Abimelech from sinning against Him, then had He pleased He could have done the same with our first parents. Should it be asked why He did not "withhold" Adam from sinning, the answer must be that He permitted sin to enter that opportunity might be given to display His grace. "Therefore Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants, and told all these things in their ears and the men were sore afraid. Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto him, What hast thou done unto us? and what have I offended thee, that thou hast brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done" (Gen. 20:8, 9). It is important to note that Abimelech recognized fornication as a "great sin." Unquestionably the heathen are aware of the criminality of many of the sinful acts which they commit "their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another' (Rom. 2:15). A brief consideration of one other thought and our space is exhausted. Notice how differently God looked at and spoke of Abraham from Abimelech's words concerning him "Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee and thou shalt live. All that Abimelech saw in our patriarch was a man guilty of barefaced deception. But God looked at Abraham in Christ, and therefore speaks of him as a "prophet" (one who has His mind), and makes Abimelech debtor to his prayers! This is how God ever vindicates His own before the unbelieving. It was a similar case to what He said through Balaam concerning Israel at a later date "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness in Israel" (Num. 23:21). In some such way as this is now being answered on high the charges of the enemy who accuses the brethren before God day and night. Oh! blessed fact, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." Will this encourage careless living? God forbid, "For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace." 24. ABRAHAM "THE FATHER OF US ALL" It is to be feared that many who read the Old Testament, particularly its earlier books, look upon these Scriptures as little more than historical narratives, as simply containing a description of certain events that happened in the far distant past, and that when they come to the record of the lives of the patriarchs they discover nothing beyond a piece of ancient biography. But surely this is very dishonoring to God. Is it not obvious that when we relegate to a remote date in the past what we are told about Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, etc., and see in the inspired record little or nothing applicable to ourselves today, that we virtually and practically reduce Genesis to a dead book? Suppose we express this in another way: If Genesis is a part of "The Word of Life" (Phil. 2:16), then it is a living book, charged with vitality; a book which must have about it a freshness which no other book, outside of the Sacred Canon, possesses; a book which speaks to our day, which is pertinent and applicable to our own times. Let us now follow out another line of thought which will lead us to the same point at which we arrived at the close of the preceding paragraph. One truth which Scripture reveals about God is, that He changes not, for He is "the same yesterday, and today, and forever." Therefore, it follows that, fundamentally, His ways are ever the same; that is to say, He deals through all time with men, especially His own people, upon the same principles. It is this which explains the well-known fact that so often history repeats itself. Having stated the broad principle, let us now apply it. If what we have just said is correct, should we not expect to find that God's dealings with Abraham forecast and foreshadow His dealings with us? That, stripped of their incidental details, the experiences of Abraham illustrate our experiences? Grant this, and we reach a similar conclusion (as we anticipated) to the one expressed at the close of the preceding paragraph. Let us now combine the two conceptions. Because the Bible is a living book no portion of it is obsolete, and though much that is recorded in it is ancient, |