The Patriarchs / Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.

by J. G. Bellett

This is the voice that is heard from the tents of these pilgrim-fathers. And as their tents bespoke this heavenly strangership, their altars bespoke their worship, their true worship; for they raised their altar to Him who had appeared to them. They did not affect to find out God by their wisdom, and then worship Him in the light and dictate of their own thoughts. They did not, thus, in the common folly, profess themselves to be wise; but they knew God and worshipped God only according to His revelation of Himself. Therefore it was not an altar "to the unknown God" at which they served; but they served or worshipped in truth. And in its generation the patriarchal altar was, in this way, as beautiful as the patriarchal tent. The latter put them into due relationship to the world around them, the former to the Lord God of heaven and earth who was above them.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alike in all this. There was, therefore, no new dispensational secret, no fresh purpose of the divine counsels, revealed in Isaac, as there had been in Abraham.[¹⁶] This is so. But still, though there was no new dispensational scene unfolded, there was a further unfolding of the glories that attach to the dispensation or calling which had been already made known in Abraham. And a very important one too--such as, if we had divine affections, we should deeply prize. I mean this: The heavenly calling or strangership on earth was the common thing; but characteristically, election was illustrated in Abraham, and sonship or adoption in Isaac.

God called Abraham from the world, from kindred, country, and father's house, separating him to Himself and to His promises. But Isaac was already as one chosen and called and sanctified, while in the house of his father. He was at home from his birth, and he was there with God, having been born according to promise, and through an energy that quickened the dead; and in all these things he represented sonship, as Abraham had represented election. In Isaac we see that family that is "born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God," and who stand in liberty; as the apostle says, "Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise." We are Abraham's seed, so many Isaacs, children of the freewoman, or in the adoption, if we be Christ's.

Now this mystery of sonship or adoption represented in Isaac, as the mystery of election had been made known in Abraham, is in divine order. For the election of God is unto adoption, as we read, "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself;" and this being so, this high, personal prerogative being represented in Isaac, in the course of his history we get the mystery of the son of the freewoman very blessedly, largely exhibited.

For we get both the birth and the weaning. And each of these events was the occasion of joy in the house of the father. The child born was called "laughter," the child weaned was celebrated by a feast.

Wondrous and gracious secrets these are. It is the father's joy to have children, it is his further joy that his children should know themselves to be children. This was the birth and the weaning of Isaac in the Book of Genesis. And all this, after so long a time, is revived in the Epistle to the Galatians. For what was represented in Isaac is realized in us through the Spirit. In that epistle we learn that we are children by faith in Christ Jesus. And there we learn also that, being children, we receive the spirit of children. We are weaned as well as born. Paul travailed in birth for them again, as he says: "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you." The Christ of this passage is Christ the Son; and Paul longed and laboured that they might be brought into the Isaac-state, the liberty of conscious adoption. They were under temptation to feed again upon the ordinances which gendered bondage, and which the tutors and governors of an earlier dispensation had enjoined. But opposed to this, the apostle would draw them again into liberty, as he himself had proved the virtue of it in his own soul. It had pleased God, as he says, to reveal the Son in him. The life he lived in the flesh he lived by the faith of the Son, who loved him. He could, therefore, go down to Arabia, where he had no flesh and blood to confer with, no Jerusalem or city of solemnities, no apostles or ordinances, no priesthood after a carnal order, no worldly sanctuary, to countenance, to seal, or to perfect him. He did not want what any or all could give him, for he had the Son revealed in him. He was a weaned Isaac; and he would fain have the Galatians to be such likewise; and to hear the word which of old had been heard in the house of Abraham over Isaac, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman."

All this is given us, mystically, in Isaac, the child of the freewoman, whose birth caused laughter, and whose weaning was celebrated with a feast. And this mystery is, we thus see, largely and expressly revived and opened, in its full character, in the Epistle to the Galatians.

It is not of glories only that we must be thinking, when thinking of predestination. God's purposes concerning us are still richer. We are predestinated to a state of gratified affections, as well as to a place of displayed glories--to "the adoption of children," and to be "before Him in love," as well as to the inheritance of all things. Ephesians i. And the Spirit already given is as surely in us the power to cry, "Abba, Father," as He is the seal of the title of the coming redemption.

We are apt to forget this. We think of calling and of predestination, in connection with glory, rather than in connection with love, and relationship, and home, and a Father's house.

And yet it is relationship that will give even the inheritance or the glory its richest joy. The youngest child in the family has another kind of enjoyment of the palace of the king, than the highest estate and dignitary of his realm. The child is there without state, for its title is in relationship--the lords of the land may be there, but they are there as at court, by title of their dignity or office. And the child's enjoyment of the palace is not only, as I said, of another kind, it is of a higher kind--it is personal and not official--the palace is a home to it, and not merely the court of royalty.