Oneness with God in a Crisis Regarding the Natural Man.
Genesis 11:27, 28, 31, 32: 12:1)
We are seeing in these messages that the spiritual life is a pilgrimage, and that the Christian is on a journey which begins in the world and ends in the heart of God. God's verdict on the life of Abraham was: "Abraham, my friend" (Isaiah 41:8), that friendship meaning that Abraham had really entered into the heart of God. We are seeing that this spiritual pilgrimage has eight steps and stages, and we have already seen that the first major step is in these words: "Get thee out". It is a call of God which allows no compromise. There has to be a point to which we come when we step over a line and are out from the world into the way of God. It is a very clear and unmistakable decision to be separated completely from the world unto God. That is where we where in our last meditation. The first decisive step is oneness with the heart of God in His repudiation of the world.
Now we come to the second phase in this pilgrimage, which is oneness with God regarding the natural man. When we have come to the great decision to go with God an to obey His call, everything is not finished: the battle is not all over when we have decided that this world is no longer our world. We find that the battle only takes on another form, and we are brought face to face with another issue. Our first crisis was concerning the world outside ourselves; the second phase in our pilgrimage is conflict with the world INSIDE ourselves. Indeed, this issue is just with ourselves, and this is the beginning of a new battle which may involve all that has gone before: if we fail in this battle we may just undo what we have done before.
It is the conflict with the natural man (man: meaning "humanity) is a very deceptive thing. He can be a very religious and very zealous natural man.
I think that you will have heard the story about the great preacher, Charles Spurgeon, who had a college for training preachers. One of the subjects in that collage was on how to preach, and every student was given a text from the Bible on which he had to preach a sermon. One student was given the sixth chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians: "Wherefore take up the whole armor of God", and then come all the parts of the armor. Well, this student got busy with his text. When the day came for preaching his trial sermon, he stood in the pulpit, pulled himself together and began to describe the armor. He represented himself as a soldier, and, in a very self-confident, strong way, he described the armor and himself as putting on that armor. He was going to make a great impression on his audience! He stepped forward, clad in all the armor, drew the sword and cried: "Now where is the devil?" Mr. Spurgeon, who was sitting near him, just put his hands over his mouth and said: "The devil is inside the armor!"
Now, that story does illustrate this point. We may have made the great decision to come over on to the Lord's side, to leave the world and follow Him, but it is just then that the real battle inside begins. There is an enemy inside, and that enemy is ourselves, what the apostle Paul calls "the natural man."
Notice our Scripture. The Lord had said to Abraham: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will shew thee", and then we read that the whole of his father's house went with him! Terah, his father, took Abraham out. Abraham's brother went with them and so did his nephew, the son of the dead brother, and later we are led to see that the whole household went. They all went out with Abraham, and ye the Lord had said: "Get thee out ... from thy kindred, and from thy father's house."
You see, in type the natural man had taken hold of the divine purpose. Terah and the family not only went out with Abraham, but they took him out. You are not, therefore, surprised that they did not get very far! They came to Haran and there they stayed, we are not told for how long, but probably quite a time. We are told that Abraham was seventy years old at that time, so quite a lot of time was lost.
This was the first delay in the progress of this spiritual pilgrimage. They came to Haran, and there they stayed until Terah died. Terah, it says, was a very old man, and "the old man" does take a long time to die! But it was not until Terah died that they were able to resume their journey. Terah was the main factor in this spiritual hold-up, but even when the crisis of Terah was passed, there was still something clinging to Abraham. It was this man Lot, who was a perfect nuisance all his life: this something of the old life which continues to cling and is always threatening to hold up spiritual progress. The whole history of Lot reveals that which can limit the purpose of God. Lot ought never to have been there, and his presence is always a menace to the spiritual life. That will create the necessity for another crisis, for the last thing that belongs to that old natural life has to be cut off. Lot will have to go.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 6)
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