That merit, dear people, must be and is the standing place of every saint. The next representative man we meet is Enoch. Enoch is not so much a type of acceptance through the blood, but of life and immortality brought to light through the Gospel. Enoch "was not, for God took him." He did not die, but was simply changed into a better and greater life than any he had known before. On being changed, he possessed a life never more to change, never more to die. This was significant. For life, our life in Christ, is eternal; no death to the believer, but life and immortality. Thus, says Paul, whether we wake or sleep, we shall live, together with Him. The life he meant is not moral life; that we now have, but life from the dead, or changed. That is, if we die, we shall be raised, raised in the likeness of the Lord Jesus, or if we remain and are alive at His coming, we shall be, as was Enoch, changed. This is our hope. The Jew looked for a Messiah who would come to reign; we look for Jesus, who will change our vile bodies, and fashion them like unto His own body of glory. We live in faith, not for ourselves so much as for Israel and the world, of a coming Messiah, the son of David, to reign on earth; but we of this dispensation, who believe in a rejected Jesus, look for Him from heaven, to take us to Himself. Meanwhile He is the object of our faith and of adoring worship. Ah, yes! we ought, each of us, to say, "I love to take my place with a crucified Jesus, outside the camp. I love to stand with Him in the rejection. I love to share His scorn, His sufferings, and to know that He is now a glorified man in heaven, that as Son He will come again, and that when He shall appear in the regeneration, they who have been with Him in His rejection shall appear with Him, and sit down with Him on His throne, dwelling and reigning together with Him. Beloved, do you not see where he puts such? "With me on my throne." And us?—Not so much to be reigned over, but as kings and priests to reign with Him! But for this we must be raised or changed; one or the other, not both. For these ends Christ is the resurrection, or the raiser up of the dead; and the life,the changer of the living. So said Jesus to Martha : "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die," i.e., he that believeth and is alive when I come, he shall never die. Thus also Paul, “We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed." Enoch did not sleep, but was changed. But another truth foreshadowed in Enoch. Enoch was taken away before the flood came, intimating, as we believe, that believers in Jesus will be safely taken away before the great tribulation, before the terrible vials of God's wrath are poured out. Thus the Lord Jesus, when He comes for His disciples, as promised in John xiv. 1, 3, will take out of a world which has rejected Him all that is precious; but when subsequently, as we believe, He appears as Messiah, He will take out of His kingdom all that offends. For these ends He will, we think and believe, come, specifically and perhaps privately as Head, our glorious Head, to take away His members; and next appear publicly to visit the Sodom of this world with its threatened destruction. And then throughout a millennium of years, blessedly as King of peace He will reign. Again we look on past ages, and our eye rests upon Noah. Here is a third representative character. Noah, unlike Enoch, was not taken away before the wrath to come. Yet he was saved, was brought through the overwhelming flood; so doubtless will it be with Israel in the latter day. After the flood Noah appears as a new forefather, the head and source of a fresh generation. So also will it be with Israel, who, according to Isa. Ixi., will be the head and root of the new age-the age of righteousness in all nations-the millennial age. Then will the saved earth know its 60th of Isaiah; that grand description of its condition, with Jew and Gentile all saved, all blessed, all glorious! But before this, and before the tribulation which will precede it, like Enoch, the members of Christ's body, the Church, will have been taken away, as in 1 Thess. iv., and be for ever with the Lord. Hence when God comes, we shall come with Him. When the Lord appears in glory to reign, on or over the earth, Rev. v. 10, we shall appear with Him. Is it not so? Ah, beloved people, do not imagine these things to be visionary, but search the word. These things are written for our comfort and joy; and they gleam out as bright dawn on an horizon which will yet glow into a glorious day! to me. We pass on and come to a fourth representative man; not now one who typified blood; that we have seen, yet, oh, it is the blood of Jesus only which can satisfy our soul's longing; nothing else, nothing short of or below it can save our soul. But from the moment I am taught by God the true value of the blood, or am brought by faith into the realisation of what the blood is to me, and where it places me-inside the holiest, from that moment, this present evil age is as nothing I am as one dead to the world, and the world is dead to me. My position in relation to the world is-first, taken out of the world; next, sent into it, but not now a lover and friend of the world; but to live and labour as one who is a stranger in it—a pilgrim and a sojourner. Here Abraham stands before us as a model pilgrim. No doubt believers are thought strange. So was Abraham. People thought him "a strange man." What! without any settled rest, or so much as a foot of land to call his own, to leave home and kindred, and his own land! and for a land his friends knew nothing of, and which he had never seen. Yet, as we have often remarked, there was a defect in our model pilgrim. At the first, instead of leaving his kindred, he took his father and Lot with him; the command was to get up out of his kindred, and out of his father's house. Ah, beloved, that father hampered him, and so did Lot. He should simply have done as God commanded, have left all, and oh! what an immensity of trouble he would have spared himself. At Haran God took his father from him, and then, and not till then, did he fully get up and start forward. Lot caused him still more uneasiness. God, beloved, calls you to be a pilgrim! but if you will be mixed with the world as if still its citizen; if you will have its so-called pleasures, and live its life, then, prepare for it, your hindrances, or shall I say your idols, must die. If you will go into the world, and be of it, under the false notion of thus making it better, the Lord will deal with you. He will chasten you. What is it which makes a pilgrim? Death will make a pilgrim; if at the cross you have died (judicially) together with Christ, and are (judicially) dead, then (morally) you are to live as one dead. You are to mortify whatever is according to the world. Your affections, your mind will be set on things which are above. Says Paul, "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." A greater treasure known to be his in heaven will make of a man a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth. God is that treasure. Heaven itself is a treasure-its holiness and love, its service and rest, its glory and joy. Christ is the true treasure. He will allure you to where He is. But oh! set not your affections here! If you have loved too fondly with a mere creature love, even the babe over whose cradle you have sung your first lullaby,—if you have cherished with too engrossing an affection, your children, your wife, your husband,—if as a Christian you have been unduly absorbed in business or with riches,-if you have been setting up your own poor name, your own reputation, your own work for the Lord, making yourself an idol,-O beloved, God will take you in hand, He will in love dash your idol from before your eyes, He will make earth desolate, so that you may indeed say— "This world is a wilderness wide, I have nothing to seek or to choose, O beloved, if there be a home above, whose pavement glitters with all the effulgence of Deity, whose walls glow with the emitted radiance of every precious stone, whose very light is the Lamb,-oh, if heaven be your home, and you are hastening towards it, can you rest in the wilderness? If the God of glory have presented to your view the inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and which fadeth not away, how can your eyes be drawn away to the fleeting, the uncertain baubles of time? The city to which Abraham was called, was out of sight; so, our prepared home, believer, is not here. Our eyes are out on unseen mansions. Has death, many times entered your circle? have you felt the uncertain nature of things here? and does Jesus say, "I am gone to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also"? Ah, then are you not a pilgrim? Do you not feel a home feeling? Have you not a longing for home? Oh, what a portion is the believer's! What a rest is there in Jesus! Beloved, look upon Abraham as a pattern pilgrim; he had naught but his tent and his altar. Naught, did I say? He had God, and wanted for nothing; he was satisfied with a tent and an altar; the tent showed he had no established home in the waste, the altar showed that God was his portion. To mark the order of these is interesting. He had an altar, therefore a tent. Some people strive to begin with |