Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

“Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay; but as the Captain of the Host of the Lord am I now come.” Joshua 5:13-14.

Preface to Second Edition (revised).

The writer desires to commit the Second Edition of this little work to the grace of the Lord Jesus; praying for His blessing on all therein which may be found agreeable to His own blessed Word.

Islandderry, Dromore (Co Down), May, 1877.

Introductory Remarks.

The Lord’s Host, as of old with an earthly people, may fitly be used to distinguish those — now a spiritual people, whom He has redeemed. He has in His mighty love delivered them from the “world,” the “flesh,” and the “devil,” through the redemption which He has wrought; putting them in full acceptance before God; an acceptance known and enjoyed by faith. This is the common lot of all who are His — of every child of God. “When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men” (Ephesians 4:8). He first went down into the condition into which sin had brought man; into the “lower parts of the earth,” broke asunder the last stronghold of the enemy; led captive those who were captives to Satan, and so perfectly and completely delivered them, that He can now use them against the enemy as instruments of His power.

Now, not only has He given us, by the calling of His grace, to be “holy and without blame before him in love;” but He has also seated us “in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” as to our present place before Him. Nor is this enough. It is not sufficient that we should possess these, our blessings, and our place by faith; He would also have us to realize consciously the wealth of our portion in Him.

Of what use would be all the riches of India, even to one who possessed it by an unchallengeable title, if he did not realize his possessions, so as to use and enjoy them? So with the things of Christ — “Our own things.” We may be assured of it that they offer a wondrous field for diligence of heart, to realize and enjoy them, and to put others into possession of them also. But we may also be assured that this required purpose of heart, with a right condition of soul, and self-denial and devotedness: faithfulness, too, with that which is “another man’s,” that God may entrust us with the “true riches” (Luke 16:11-12).

There is a wide difference between being, in the abstract, possessors of these heavenly riches, and the active realization and enjoyment of them, as of our place in union with Christ.

We shall hope, if the Lord will, to examine these things in detail; as also the activities of those who have entered upon their heavenly warfare — let us add — with diligent hearts; and we will then endeavour to exhort one another while it is called today, and encourage one another, or be encouraged, as the Lord may distribute to each of us in His own wise way.

We will divide our meditations, therefore, into three larger divisions, viz: —

1. The heavenly place, in Christ Jesus, which is ours as the people of God, through the redemption that is in Him.

2. Being there — the condition of soul which is needed, that we may realize our “own things.” This will embrace three special phases: 1. The practical dealing with flesh and self consequent on our place in Him. 2. The condition of soul needed to meet the enemy. 3. How the presence of the Lord is ensured, and “good success” in our spiritual warfare. And,

3. The realization of our heavenly inheritance and the deliverance of others — in short, the activities of “the Lord’s Host” under the leadership of a heavenly Christ.

The striking analogy between the Book of Joshua and the Epistle to the Ephesians and Colossians has been a fruitful theme of meditation and instruction at times amongst the Lord’s people, even when the analogy has been but faintly seen. Our meditations will be based chiefly upon these Scriptures which offer such a rich field for the study of those who are His. “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4); and “All these things happened unto them (Israel) for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Corinthians 10:11). Not only, then, have we the immense field of the “Law of Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalms,” for our learning, patience, and comfort but we have in a special way, the “things” which happened unto Israel, under the specific dealings of the Lord, presented to us as warnings and encouragements by the way.

May He bless His people, and stir up their hearts’ energies in the way that He can own and bless, for His name’s sake! May we not only have divine sensibilities as to the truth, and to the blessedness of these things which pertain to Christ but may we have the divine energies also in seeking His face, that we may know and enjoy the things that are freely given to us of God!

Part 1.

Chapter 1.

The Purposes of God, and the State of the People.

In the early chapters of the Book of Exodus we have a vivid illustration of the state of God’s people as sinners, before redemption. They are in Egypt, a company of slaves and idolaters. Egypt gives us, in type, the world in its state of nature, fallen and under Satan’s power. They were there in conscious misery, though apparently without any thought but present ease from the bondage under which they groaned. The “iron furnace of Egypt,” with the lash of its taskmasters, and the clank of the chains of its slavery was felt, but God was unknown! Even when their cry “by reason of the bondage” was heard, it was not a cry to God. It reached His ears doubtless, for all things are naked and open before Him; His ear is never heavy, so that the groans of this scene do not reach Him. The poor prodigal (Luke 15) had got to the end of his means in the land of his slavery, but that did not bring him to his father, nor even “to himself;” nor did his heart cry to God for deliverance. To supply the want from which he suffered, he goes further away from God than ever. His will brought him away from his home at the first; his need took him further off still; his complete misery gave occasion for the display of his father’s fullest grace!

So with a sinner. You will see one wasting health, talents, and energies, in the pursuit of some bubble which long eludes his grasp; when reached at last, it vanishes from his sight and affords no satisfaction to his craving heart. Then the prodigal goes further, and joins himself to a citizen of that country, but he finds the reality of the principles of that land — it never gives. Ask a man of the world to look back upon his life and tell you, when he was wasting his energies, and appearing so rich and happy, did it satisfy him? He will honestly answer you, No! His want never brought him to God; it carried him further away even than his will; and he barters for the husks his all! It is in a certain sense a mercy to find a soul at this extremity, for in the extremity of misery there is no hindrance to the grace of God, which an “elder son” refused.

“And God heard their groaning” (Exodus 2:14); and God came down to deliver them. He is not merely love, but He is active in His love. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” “The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” But “God is a consuming fire.” How then can He act in love, and have to do with sinners without consuming them? This is beautifully hinted at in Exodus 3, where the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses “in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.” The bush burned, but was not consumed. Strange anomaly! “And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt!” This was the wonder. If God had revealed Himself in the character of One whose burning holiness must consume all contrary to itself, who might abide? But He came down and revealed Himself in lowly grace in Jesus. He veiled His glory in that lowly Man. Still “he could not be hid.” As the sun in piercing through the cloud proves the intensity of his beams by the light and heat which they convey, so Jesus in His lowly path of service and toil, sent forth His beams of love and light to enter the hearts of those whose need had penetrated His. He came down in grace to seek in a poor lost world for those who would trust His love, before the day of judgment. Thus God, who is a consuming fire, was not consuming, because He was revealing Himself in grace, but in a grace which reigns through righteousness.

He now announces His purpose to Moses: “I am come down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.” Not a word is said of the wilderness, and its forty years of endurance and toil. His plan was to test them there, which He did; but His purpose was to bring them to the place where He could dwell, to a land that “drinketh water of the rain of heaven. A land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year” (Deuteronomy 11). He would bring us into a place where His own heart can be satisfied, and where He may dwell with and enjoy His people. How different from the land of slavery where nothing is to be had for nothing, where no man gives! “For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs” (Deuteronomy 11).

God has redeemed us for heaven and for His own glory to Christ. He has not redeemed us for this world at all, though He tries and tests our hearts here, and teaches us to test and trust His. So He announces His purpose to Moses, and says not a word of the wilderness.

Now when Moses came to announce God’s purpose to redeem His people, Satan began at once to bestir himself. As long as the strong man armed kept his palace, his goods were in peace, but when a stronger than he appears, all is changed. Burdens are increased, and the tasks more severe. Bricks are to be made without straw. The quiet service of Satan, where all are asleep under his power, gliding down the stream, is easy indeed, compared with the moment when God begins to work. The deathfulness of a previous state is even preferred to the pressure of the enemy. The chains which had been noiseless and unfelt are now heavy, and their clank is heard. How many and how varied are the fetters with which Satan binds his victims! And these chains are the saddest of all which are noiseless, and therefore unfelt and unheard.

Cain’s chain was envy. He could not bear to see one who had not toiled like himself accepted without an effort, as Abel was. Balaam’s was the “wages of unrighteousness” which bound his soul in its fetters. He would gladly have died the “death of the righteous,” but to break the fetters he so well loved, and to live the life of the righteous, he could not bear, and he was a lost man.

With Herod, it was his lust which bound his soul. In him we see the signs of deep workings of the natural conscience, so much so that “he feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him; and when he heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly” (Mark 6). He seemed for a time to be an altered man. But the chain that bound his soul with noiseless power was too powerful for him to break, and to please a courtesan he beheaded John. How deeply solemn!

We might mention other cases in Scripture of this kind. Judas loved money; avarice was the noiseless chain, and it ate away his heart; no eye but the Lord’s could see it. He grasped it more tightly, till the “son of perdition” “went to his own place.” With the amiable young ruler, it was his possessions which bound his heart unconsciously to the scene, till Jesus put His finger on the chain, and “he went away grieved, for he had great possessions.” With Gallio it was the careless indifference which we see in so many; “He cared for none of those things.” With Felix it was procrastination. He trembled at Paul “reasoning of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come,” but put off repentance to a convenient season, which, alas! never came. With Saul of Tarsus, it was his robe of self-righteousness. Cleaving so closely to the heart, these chains are unfelt till the Lord interferes in mercy; then all is changed. Satan’s bondage begins to be felt as it never was before, and all his energies are then put forth to frustrate the purpose of the Lord in delivering grace. Alas! we find that the people whom He has come to deliver now murmur. But we cannot wonder at this, as all was comparatively well with them in that service with which Satan had made them satisfied. But when the chains are touched they complain.

I desire to address the conscience of my reader as I pass on. Is there some noiseless chain, silently but surely woven round your heart, and, alas! it may be, unknown to you! Perhaps it has been touched now and then by the Lord, and the clank heard for a moment in your conscience; still yet you are unbound. It may be a chain which you know yourself — the Lord and conscience have made you aware of it — and still it is there. Some secret sin — something cherished and allowed in your heart and ways — unseen by the eye of others, there it rusts, and cleaves to you. Be warned, and look to Him who has pointed it out; be assured that as surely as His unerring eye has seen it, so surely can He snap the fetters that bind your heart; they will be like “the cords that were upon (Samson’s) arms” — they will become “as flax that was burnt with fire.”

Do not allow the terrible chain of procrastination to bind your soul till that “convenient season” which never comes; but be warned, and flee to Him (be you saint or sinner), and in His presence He will prove the truth of His words — “If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8.)