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The Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter eleven and verse nine: By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise, for he looked for the city, which has the foundations whose builder and maker is God. And then next a verse in the book of Genesis in chapter nineteen.
and verse thirty. And Lot went up out of Zoar and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him. For he feared to dwell in Zare, and he dwelt in a cave. And to put those vividly contrasting verses in their historical context, let us just now skim a few items earlier in this book of Genesis, beginning in chapter sixteen.
Genesis sixteen. Now Sarah, Abraham's wife, bare him no children. She had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarah said unto Abraham, Behold, now the Lord hath restrained me from bearing. Go in, I pray thee, unto mine handmaid, and it may be that I shall obtain children by her. Verse five: and Sarah said unto Abram, my wrong be upon thee. I gave mine handmaid into thy bosom, and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between me and thee.
But Abram said unto Sarah, behold, thy maid is in thine hand, do to her that which is good in thine eyes. And Sarah dealt hardly with her, and she fled from her face. And the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness. Verse nine: And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy mistress and submit thyself unto her hands. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, I will greatly multiply thy seed, and it shall be not numbered for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, thou art with child and shalt bear a son, and thou shalt call his name Ishmael, because the Lord hath heard thy affliction.
And he shall be a wild ass among men. His hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him. Chapter seventeen. When Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram and said unto him, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be thou perfect. The Lord giveth good understanding of his holy word. At this hour of the afternoon, I frequently feel tired, and if I am in a meeting, I generally try to find some large hat behind which I can hide my face from the speaker.
Uh, you don't need to do that, even if you should be feeling tired, because I quite understand that overpowering feeling, and if you want to listen with your eyes shut, by all means listen with them shut. The southern end of the Dead Sea has a landscape very much like a lunar landscape for its terrible desolation. But among all that desolation, there was at one time an exceedingly pathetic piece of desolation. It was a standing pillar of salt. And its pathos was this, that once upon a time, that standing pillar of salt had been a woman, warm and loving and pulsating with life.
Now dead and barren and salty. A woman who had made the mistake of thinking that all of life is to be summed up in life's goods and possessions. That there is no more to life than the gay round of social intercourse. A woman who could not be persuaded that there were bigger things in life than mere home and possessions, even when that home was being engulfed in flames. Who, instead of looking for that city that has a foundation whose builder and maker is God, looked longingly back to sodom, even as the brimstone was falling on it, found in that moment warm, pulsating life and love shiver in the cold hand of salt-encrusted death.
For some centuries, she remained a desolate spectacle indeed of the way to love your life and loving it, lose it. But I don't know whether that is to be thought sadder than what happened to her husband. For the man lot ended his days in a cave, and a disreputable old cave at that, where things were done that would have made the very ungodly blush for very shame.
Bad man. He had been born in cities fair and cultured, full of the beauties of civilization, for they were not cavemen from which he set out, but modern civil and cultured men. Lot had left those cities with all their splendor because with Abraham he had shared a vision. He left it for he looked for the city that has the foundation whose builder and maker is God, whose culture is far above the culture of Ur of Chaldees, as earth is far above, as heaven is far above earth.
The man Lot ended his days on earth, not in a city, nor in a tent, but in a cave. Caveman indeed, gone back to the instincts of an animal. The New Testament tells us authoritatively that the man Lot was a believer, and therefore, in the technical sense, he was right with God. He was a justified man. Righteous Lot, says the Holy Spirit.
The New Testament dwells upon the wonder of God's ability to save his people as he thinks of Lot. Look at Lot, says the Holy Spirit. See him outside of Sodom, and Sodom itself turned into a quagmire of salt and sulphur and ashes, and see Lot saved. Mark, the Lord knows how to deliver the godly. Oh, praise God for his wonderful knowledge and ability. He shall save all his people. Were it not for God's extraordinary knowledge and ability, there isn't one of us who might fear in the end to be lost.
God knows how. However weak the faith that placed its anchor in Christ at the beginning. However far the man has wandered from the true path of pilgrimage, let it be known and said, the Lord knows how to deliver the ungodly, and none who have ever trusted Christ shall perish. Here too, the words of the angel as they caught hold of his hand, hurrying him out of the city upon which God's judgment must fall. We can't do anything, they said. Haste out, slop, for we, we can't do anything till you're out.
Oh, wonderful words. For the executors of God's judgment shall always be stayed. That not one part or particle of penal judgment shall ever fall on the head of one who has trusted the Savior. And as I think of Lot, my heart wells up with joy and a tremendous feeling of security. For if Lot needed a savior, I need one more. But then I don't know whether I ought to be glad or sorry.
I see him again in that cave. Say. Safe. That so as by fire, with all the acquirements of a longish life lost, with no evidence of any thought for God at all. His family lost. Dead in the flames.
And they who survived had, had done better to have died. A believer ending up like an animal, doing things that they would have blushed to hear of in the cities that he left, way back in Ur, even before he became a believer. It is easy to see the moral of the story, is it not? One huge warning writ large.
That he that sows to the flesh shall of that flesh reap corruption. If I speak to a young Christian here this afternoon, I'm not quite sure whether I can see him, but if I do, please don't be misled by those that will tell you that the flesh has died or that the old nature is dead. It isn't anything of the sort. The flesh is very much alive and will remain alive. To imagine that the flesh is dead or the old nature is gone is to walk into battle as though it were a paradise.
Is to treat earth as though it were heaven and pilgrimage as though it were home. To walk into danger without knowing the danger is there. The flesh is with us, and in its extreme form, such as lot manifest, of course it is more m- easily and readily recognizable. But on that darker side of the flesh, I have no intention to dwell this afternoon. For Lot's story is told us in its historical context against the background of Abraham's struggle with the flesh.
Abraham never descended to the instinctive immoralities of Lot's cave. He lived out his life in the noble character of a saint of God, journeying worthily from earth to heaven and to that final city. But in this part of Genesis, we see Abraham wrestling, struggling, and very often defeated, wrestling against an enemy that is in fact the same enemy as defeated Lot. Only that same enemy in a different guise. Not now the flesh, gone and abandoned in its grosser sins and irresponsibilities, but the flesh with all good intentions, intention, and christened with a great deal of prayer and determination, attempting to fulfill God's will and, uh, bring about God's promise, in the very best of motives, but relying upon itself,
the flesh, only to learn that to attempt to be a saint of God and to fulfill all godliness in the power of our flesh is doomed to endless defeat. But lest you should think that this gloomy afternoon should descend even into more fearsome gloom, I hasten to add that we shall then see that it is this part of Genesis that tells us, in its quaint old-fashioned terminology. What is the secret of a man's triumph? It is not, says God, that he should discipline his flesh until his flesh be strong to do the will of God.
It is that he should get out his knife and circumcise the flesh and cut it off. Have no confidence in that flesh, whether it be dishonorable flesh, as Lot's was, or God-fearing flesh, if there is such a thing, as Abraham's seemed to be. So then you get it, we're going to talk about the flesh, and in particular the flesh on its nicer side, trying to fulfill God's salvation and work out God's promise. We're going to think of its defeat, but praise God, we're going to think of a way of overcoming.
The background to the story is this. At a certain juncture in Abraham's life, God had come to him and said, Abraham, I'm going to give you vast territorial inheritance. Thank you, said Abraham. Now, exactly how shall I know I'm going to inherit this? Says God, you shall take your covenant sacrifice, that I may covenant with you and with your seed, that I shall give you this land to possess it, and land much more besides. So Abraham made his covenant, or rather made his covenant sacrifice, and the divine presence solemnly walked between the pieces of that covenant sacrifice, ratifying the covenant and establishing as a free, unconditional gift to Abraham and to his seed this vast territorial inheritance.
It was, I repeat, an utterly free gift. There was no signing of the contract for Abraham to do. There was no walking between the pieces for Abraham to perform, for it was a one-sided covenant, a one-party treaty. Only God had conditions to fulfill, and those of his grace he promised to fulfill unconditionally. Abraham and his seed were to be heirs, says Romans chapter four, heirs of the whole world, no less. Abraham and his seed. But then in that same moment when God was making that magnificent gift to Abraham, said he to Abraham, Abraham, do you know why I'm not giving it to you now?
Do you know why I'm asking you to wait, to be a pilgrim still? For this simple reason, Abraham, that this territory that I'm going to give you one day is in the hands of the Amorites. Well then, Lord, why not dispossess them forthwith? I can imagine Abraham thinking it, can't you, in the back of his mind? Well, goodness me, if they're making such a mess of it, why not give it to me now? I could do with a few more square inches, you know. It gets a little bit, uh, narrow in the tent with Sarah all the time, and not much front garden to send the children out to play in, and so forth and so on. Why not give me a bit more now, Lord? No, said God, for this, it's this reason.
The Amorites have it. They are exceedingly wicked. One day, because of their very wickedness, I shall dispossess them. And taking the territory from them because of their wickedness, I shall give it to you and your seed. I can't do it yet, Abraham. Wicked though they are, their wickedness has not come to its full. Their wickedness has not yet manifested itself and proved itself to be the evil thing it is in the eyes of all who look up upon the thing.
Abraham, if I were to take that territory from them now and give it to you, Satan and his hosts, and a good many men as well, would sit back and say, there you are, that's God all over again. Patriotism takes the country from one lot of people, takes it from the Arabs and gives it to the Jews. Just sheer favoritism. There's no rhyme or reason nor moral justice in it. I can't be giving it to you yet, says God. I'm going to wait until the iniquity of the Amorites is absolutely full. And when it is demonstrated before earth, heaven and hell that evil is evil and sin is sin.
And in my judgment upon them, I shall take the territory from them, and I shall give it to you, Abel. That, I should imagine, made Abel think. If it didn't, he'd ought to have done. Did he sit on his old divan in his tent that night and say, yeah, yeah, but wait a minute, this gift I'm going to get, that's a nice gift, but you know, if God publicly takes it away from the Amorites and tells the whole world he's taking it away from them because they're sinners, and then gives it to me, uh, aren't some of the Amorites and some of those other ites going to look at me and say, oh, the Amorites lost it because they were sinners, but what kind of a fellow is Abram, I wonder?
It's pretty obvious, wasn't it, that though the inheritance was for Abram an utterly free gift, that did not mean that Abram could then do as he pleased and live as he liked. Whereby there hangs a lesson for us, surely. We could be sitting here before God feeling exceedingly rich. For that covenant that God made with Abraham and his seed lies written in our favor.
For if we are Christ, then are we Abraham's seed and heirs according to that promise. Nothing less than worldwide dominion belongs to every child of God. Some children of God affect that they're not very interested in it. They have become so spiritually minded that they, uh, listen to the day when they, uh, can say goodbye to earth. They're not interested in earth. All they care about is heaven. All right, perhaps more for me then to enter in. But God nevertheless affirms that just as our blessed Lord shall not be content with heaven, but shall rule earth, the whole of earth, for Christ isn't giving it up.
So all they that are Christ shall inherit this earth, as well as God's heaven. All they that are Christ inherit this vast inheritance simply because they are Christ, solely on the ground of grace and God's free unconditional honor. Then, uh, does it matter how we behave? Will it affect our inheritance, how we behave?
I want to say yes and no to that at the same time. In a sense, no, of course, because it's an unconditional gift, we cannot lose it. But wait a moment, we haven't got the inheritance yet. Even our Lord waits. One day, with great pomp and ceremony. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that blessed potentate, shall stage the great revelation. And drawing the heavens aside, he shall publicly take from the hands of sinful men and women the dominion of this earth, and he shall put it over into the hands of Christ, and all shall say amen, for he's worthy to receive the riches and the honor and the glory and the power.
In that moment shall God take the world from the hands of unregenerate and impious men, and he shall put it into the hands of those that are Christ's. Yes, indeed, yes. And every believer shall reign with him, and the inheritance shall belong to them. So does scripture apart. Away. Our Lord, on one occasion, spoke some other words, the which I read to you now.
You may find them one of these days, if you care, and they are to be found in Luke's Gospel, chapter sixteen and verse, um, uh, twelve. They run like this. And... if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? Mark you, it's your own. It's yours. But you see, says Christ, if you have not been faithful in that which is somebody else's, who will give you what is your own?
Even though it is your own, who will give it to you? It is a glorious thing that this inheritance is promised to us. It is ours by legal right. But though it is ours, the question whether it will be actually and in practice put into our hands to administer, that depends. And if in that day it is found that we have not been faithful in that which was somebody else's, then even though the inheritance is ours, it will not be put into our hands.
All of the House of Windsor, as you well know, are members of a house that is a reigning house. In that sense, they all reign. Her Gracious Majesty and Her Consort, Prince Charles and his sister and his little brothers. They all reign, for they are the reigning house. What vast riches and territories belong to the little princes even, I couldn't begin to describe to you.
Though they have them as of legal right, I don't know anybody yet that would give them what is in fact their own, do you? And if by some unfortunate happening those little boys suddenly ceased to grow and never went beyond their infantile stage, though the great inheritance is theirs, nobody would give it to them. Let us heed our Lord's solemn words. That glorious inheritance to which we go is ours.
Whether we shall be found fit actually to have that inheritance put into our hands to administer depends. Depends on faithfulness of our present stewardship. If in my teaching I have not been honest, if in my research I have not been truthful, if in my business I have done shoddy deals, then let me remember that this present world isn't mine. God hasn't covenanted to give me this world.
Nowhere will you read in scripture that he covenanted to give you your six-roomed house, your car, your job. He hasn't covenanted those things. They're not ours, they're his. We have the use of them as stewards, but they're not ours. And if we have been unfaithful in that which is not ours, but somebody else's, then we shall not be given what is our own. Hence our need to watch this, our great enemy, the flesh.
Is it not so? I hear God's solemn word to me, walk before me and be thou. Then let me remember that this present world isn't mine. God hasn't covenanted to give me this world. Nowhere will you read in scripture that he covenanted to give you your six-roomed house, your car, your job. He hasn't covenanted those things. They're not ours, they're his. We have the use of them as stewards, but they're not ours. And if we have been unfaithful in that which is not ours, but somebody else's, then we shall not be given what is our own.
Hence our need towards this, our great enemy, the flesh. Is it not so? I hear God's solemn word to me, walk before me and be thou perfect. I see before my eyes that great day of appearing, when I must be manifest. How shall I walk before God and please him with honest, truthful, loving, unselfish, and consistent godliness.
We learn in this passage how not to do it first, and then how to do it. How should we fulfill God's great purposes? Abraham, finding Sarah was barren, at her suggestion, took Hagar, the slave girl. Thinking that by his own power and strength, he would fulfill the great promises of God. His intentions were good, his purpose nothing but godly. He would do God's will, he would do it with all his heart.
Wasn't he required to do God's will? Then he would do it. But yet has he learned that the power of the flesh, even though it be buttressed with will and intellect and emotion, is still insufficient, still unable to please God. Mind of flesh is enmity with God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
When Hagar found that she was to have a child. Then interesting, and you might have said expected things began to happen. Her mistress was despised in her eyes. She was only a slave girl, but now, the way she sat at table and began to command the other servants and tell Sarah what to do. Sarah soon found this was impossible. The slave was getting out of her position. She was taking the center of the home. This won't do, said Sarah. Uh, partly in godliness, I'm sure, but partly in those other kind of feelings that people get in that situation sometimes. And finding her nose out of joint, she said, Abram, my dear, now, now, now, I, I mean I did wrong, Abe, but, um, you have to do something about it.
I mean this slave putting on these airs and graces and, uh, uh, refusing to obey me when I tell her to do things. This is insufferable, Abram. You must make the girl. I mean, she says, God be judge. Oh yes. Wait a minute. You ask God to be judge over your flesh. Uh, you want to be advised what will happen. You won't find it very pleasant. Sarah thought that she'd only got to put the screws on, uh, and things would be better, but they were no better.
In the end, Hagar ran away. And there in the wilderness, the angel of the Lord met her, and the angel of the Lord said, Hagar, go back and be subject. Said the angel of the Lord, you shall have a child, and that child shall be a wild ass of a man. I say it wasn't very pleasant in Abram's home for the next few years, was it? To have a slave girl getting out of her place and putting on airs and graces and refusing to obey. And to have a boy about the place that's absolutely wild ass of a chair. I should imagine that there were, not infrequently, what I euphemistically call scenes in the house.
With Abram, uh, Sarah saying, oh, but Abram, it is impossible. You can't expect me to go on like this. Look what the boy did. My best china. Look at the furniture. And as for that slut of a girl. And Abram saying, yes, but you know, my dear, yes, that's terrible, but, uh, you know, well, uh. Well, don't say it again. I know it was my fault, said Sarah, but you know, this is taking things too far. But you can't turn her out, says Abram. You see, the angel of the Lord has sent her back, and, uh, yes, we shall have to put up with you. Trying to govern a wild ass of a man. I think you, the angel of the law, sent her back like that.
Well, the only way you could teach Abram the lesson, surely. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. I may not have let my flesh go to the lengths that old caveman Lot did. Every Monday night they see me on my knees praying and studying my Bible, but it remains true that that which is born of the flesh is flesh. I have a wild ass inside me. Many think people think his contours are the same as mine anyway, but I have a wild ass inside me. He's not subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can be.
His energies will never be able to be recruited to fulfill the lovely law of God. Abram was saddled with this difficult lesson, the impossibility of ruling this chap with any success. For many long years, until the promised seed was born. And Israel was saddled with the law, striving against their flesh, until the promised seed was born. Many dear believers, surely most of us, spend years of our lives struggling with that same flesh, until time and then time again, we come to realize that another way of dealing with it has been born.
And that the fulfillment of God's holy law is not, was never expected to be, the power of my flesh desperately trying to subdue sin according to God's holy law. But to know another kind of power. What power is that? Walk before me, says God, and be thou perfect. And Abraham, I ask you now to observe the covenant of circumcision.
A covenant in which the flesh was cut off. True, in those ancient days it was but a covenant, a seal, and very often as a symbol it was abused, whereas it should have been a symbol of a man's willingness to keep the law of God, it very often was treated merely as an external symbol without any moral effort or intention to keep that law. Which cut the roots of my personality, so no longer is a believer in the flesh.
Flesh is in him very evidently so, but the roots of his personality are not in the flesh. They are in Christ. They are in the spirit. A wonderful reality, mysterious though it be. It means this, that as I have my eye on that great inheritance, and the quality of life that is required of me as one who is pilgrimaging towards that city and that inheritance, as I think of God's eye upon me now and my charge to walk before him and be perfect.
I may know that there is a power adequate to my responsibility. It may take me years of very uneven experience and progress to learn how that power is to use me. I may have to be taught by uncomfortable methods that my flesh, Christian though I am, is still impossibly bad and remains flesh. God's spirit will progressively teach me, if I let him, that the fulfilling of God's way of life for me is not a question of my fleshly powers and determinations trying to use God to accomplish his will.
Rather, it is despairing of myself altogether. I trust the living Christ by his power to live and work in me. I need to learn that lesson. Or if not, two very real dangers stare me in the face. If in the power of my flesh I attempt to do the will of God, I shall of course inevitably fail. Then will come the temptation of saying, well, it's all impossible. Those preachers on the platform, they mouth big things and they say marvelous ideas, but when you get into the shop of a Monday morning, you know it just doesn't work.
What's the good of pretending to live up to full Christian standard? Shall we not have to give in and go the way of the world? That way lies in sincerity, and after in sincerity, disillusion, and if we're not careful, loss of faith. Or it is possible, if I attempt to live a godly life in the power of my flesh, I shall try and conveniently forget the glaring moral failures in my life and compensate by concentrating on the fulfillment of certain tiny little rules, like the Pharisees did.
Punctilious in their observance of tiny little religious rituals and rules, and thereby imagining they were holy, when there were great glaring holes in their business dealings. They were lovers of money, says Holy Scripture, and not too careful how they got eat. No, let me honestly face my inabilities. I as bad as anyone else. Not even as a Christian can I of mine own effort fulfill God's standard. Let me therefore learn constantly and consistently to go on abandoning all faith in the flesh.
Learn that for him who has no confidence in the flesh at all, there is an illimitable power, our living Lord, in whom we are, by whom we are saved. The Lord bless his word to this end, for his name's sake.
