[6]It has been justly said by another, that the principle of government was represented in Noah; that Adam had been the representative head of creation, and that Noah is the same now of government. And I doubt not, that after the judicial scattering from Babel, the nations became associations in which God still recognized the sword of justice and the seat of government, which therefore are still to be exercised, and ought still to be religiously owned and reverenced.
[7]As intimating blessed and distinct actions among the Persons of the Godhead, according to covenant arrangements, we may remember Messiah's words in Isa. xlviii.--"And now hath the Lord God and His Spirit sent me." What words! how full of deep, counselled, and ordered grace towards sinners! And they are quite according to the structure of things in the Gospels--for there not only does the baptism of Jesus but many passages tell us or show us, according to this word of the prophet, that the mission and ministry of the Lord Jesus were under the ordaining of God and the anointing of the Holy Ghost;--the Lord God and His Spirit sent the Son, the Christ or Messiah.
[8]Just like the throne of David. That throne is for the present in the dust--the crown of Judah is cast down--but the promise of the Lord to it is remembered, as is His promise to the earth. This analogy Scripture giveth us in Jer. xxxiii. Dishonoured now or made the sport of the wicked, the promises to the earth and to David's throne are still in full remembrance, and, in their season, will be accomplished.
[9]The family of Cain was the contradiction of this, in those antediluvian days. They tilled the ground for something more than livelihood. Their tillage led to the culture and advancement of the world as a system of gain and pleasure. And thus were the two families distinguished--the one was formed by faith, or by obedience to the revelation of God; the other by the despite of it, as the world is to this day.
[10]In their day, Abraham's seed, or the nation of Israel, are again an earthly people; and they exhibit the very opposite of all this. They smite the nations of Canaan; and instead of being called from kindred and country, they are called to all such things; men, women, children, and even cattle (for not a hoof was to be left behind), journeyed from Egypt to Canaan--from a land of strangers to their own inheritance.
[11]The Lord Jesus, in His day, acknowledged this same pledge or symptom of the kingdom. For when the Greeks came up to the feast and asked to see Him, as the Gentile here seeks Abraham, His thoughts are immediately upon His glory. He knows indeed that glory is to be reached only by His death, and so He testifies; but still, His thoughts go out at once to the glory. See John xii. 23.
[12]There are mysteries as well as illustrations of faith in these things; but I cannot follow them here. The offer of Isaac on Moriah, we none of us doubt, is a mystery. So, I surely know, is the action of Hagar and Ishmael in chapter xxi. It is the picture of the present outcast but preserved Jew--a homeless fugitive, destined, however, for future purposes of mercy. See Gal. iv. 25. But I follow not these things particularly here.
[13]In the mystic history of the earth given to us in Lev. xxiii. the Church is brought in as the "poor" and the "stranger" gleaning in another man's field, in ver. 22. But as she entered that field so she left it. She was the poor one, and the stranger, and the gleaner in another's field, to the end. The field never becomes her property. Looked at in the light of this beautiful figure, what is Christendom under God's eye?
[14]The Lord Jesus, in the days of His flesh, acted as the God who, of old, had called Abraham. For He put in the supreme claims of such an one. "He that loveth father or mother more than Me," says He, "is not worthy of Me." And again, "Follow Me, and let the dead bury their dead." Who but God can step in between us and such relationships, such obligations and services? Duties and affections like these are more than sanctioned by nature; they are enforced by law--law of God Himself. But the call of God is supreme, and Jesus asserted it in the day of His humiliation here.
[15]The same mystery, I doubt not, is presented in the marriage of Moses and the Ethiopian, and in that also of Solomon with Pharaoh's daughter. Moses' second wife stands, in dignity, below his Zipporah, who shines in peculiar glory at the mount of God in Exodus xviii.; and Pharaoh's daughter, though fully acknowledged by the king at Jerusalem, would not be given a place in the city of David.