Heavenly Mindedness (48)

 

“We have already seen that even in the promised land the patriarchs remained tent-dwellers. God had a wise purpose in thus postponing for them personally the fulfilment of the temporal promise.” G. Vos (See previous post for full quotation to get context.)

 

The Patriarchs were ever on pilgrimage, even though they were in the Promised Land. Even though we are also in the Promised Land, our Lord Jesus Christ, we also are ever on pilgrimage; for though we know our Lord Jesus and are known by Him, we are called to know Him in ever-deepening communion and relationship. We travel many places in Him, pitching our tent in Galatians one day, Isaiah another day, 1 Samuel yet another, the book of Hebrews another. A time comes when we are enveloped in the fulness of the Word, when the many become one, when we “see” the Bible as a whole, a complementary unity, and when the image of Jesus Christ radiates from Genesis to Revelation.

 

Has our pilgrimage brought us to Nepal? Having arrived at Nepal, have we journeyed to base camp? Having journeyed to base camp, have we acclimated to the altitude and environment? Having acclimated, have we begun our ascent of Everest? Are we ascending in the company of others? Having ascended, are we now living as Sherpas, guiding others into the heights of Everest? Are we showing others the Way?

 

“Although Canaan was a goodly land, it was yet, after all, material and not of that higher substance we call spiritual. While capable of carrying up the mind to supernal regions, it also exposed the danger of becoming satisfied with the blessing in its provisional form. That this danger was not imaginary the later history of Israel testifies. In order to guard against such a result in the case of the patriarchs God withheld from them the land and its riches and made of this denial a powerful spiritualizing discipline.” Vos.

 

Just a word of caution, when we read, “it was yet, after all, material and not of that higher substance we call spiritual,” we want to be careful not to denigrate the natural and material, for God is the Creator and His creation, even in its fallen condition, remains His creation and is good – even though it is tossed and turned and in upheaval. Let’s remind ourselves that the entire creation is waiting for the manifestation of the sons and daughters of God (Romans 8:19).

 

Vos tells us that the Patriarchs had the blessing in a provisional form, that is, they were given a down payment, a foretaste of the fulness of what was to come. Even so we have been given the Holy Spirit as a foretaste of the fulness of our inheritance in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:13 – 14; 2Cor. 1:21 – 22). When Vos uses the word “provisional” he does not use it (I think) in the sense that the blessing may be withdrawn or lost, he uses it in the sense that we are living in a provisional time when the age to come overlaps the present age, and the blessing of the fulness of time in Christ (Eph. 1:9 – 11) reaches into our hearts and souls to draw us into its glory.

 

Vos points out two things that can occur as we experience God’s blessing of the age to come, we can either allow it to draw us upward and onward on pilgrimage in Jesus Christ, or we can settle for what we have and build a permanent home. If we make the immediate blessing our goal, if we are satisfied with a measure and not the fulness, then we will lose what we think we have and learn the ways of the people of Canaan, that which was to have been a land of promise will become a land of idolatry. On the other hand, if we allow the blessing to create greater desire for more of our Lord Jesus Christ, then our pilgrimage will continue and we will see Him in His unfolding fulness.  

 

When Israel ceased to conquer the land of Canaan, when they became satisfied with a measure of their inheritance, they learned the ways of the pagans and traded their inheritance for idols and promiscuity. We can allow God’s blessing to lift us up, or we can pull the blessing down and attempt to preserve it. God’s blessing is like manna, we are to consume it today trusting Him for more tomorrow; but if we attempt to hoard His blessing it will decay and rot.

 

We are to build on foundations, not live solely on foundations. We are to live in a house that is on a firm foundation, Jesus Christ and the Apostles and Prophets (Eph. 2:20), and we ought to be leery of attempting to introduce any other foundation (1Cor. 3:11). Foundations are laid so that buildings can be built, how strange it would be to see a community in which people lived on building lots with only the foundations laid; with no walls or roofs or windows or plumbing or electricity. Stranger still would it be if the citizens of this community considered this normal.

 

I think we have this strange condition throughout Christendom, for we have taken blessings given to others in previous generations and have frozen them in time, making them permanent homes, rather than building on them and allowing those blessings to draw us upward and onward into Jesus Christ. Show me a tradition, show me a movement, show me a denomination, and I can likely show you an illustration of what I’m saying. The very fact that we name ourselves after blessings and understandings given to previous generations, the fact that we make these names our identities, demonstrates this point. We think of ourselves as of this or that tradition before we think of ourselves as members of the Body of Christ. We don’t build on the past as much as we fossilize the past. We encase significant people who have gone before us in glass tombs, and we pay homage to them.

 

This is not pilgrimage, this it not living in tents – this is entombing ourselves.

 

To live in tents is to be good stewards of that which we have inherited from those who have gone before us, to pass on what we are receiving in our own generation, and to allow Jesus Christ to transform us from glory to glory (2Cor. 3:17 – 18) so that we might leave an inheritance to others. There is a sense in which all blessing in this age is provisional, but its measure should be ever increasing as we are ever on pilgrimage.

 

We are all living in tents, let us not be deceived about this. When the Psalmist writes, “I am a stranger in the earth, do not hide Your commandments from me,” he is not only referring to the planet earth, but also to the body in which he lived. Peter writes, “I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder, knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent…” (2Pt. 1:13 – 14).

 

Paul writes, “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (2Cor. 5:1). He then tells the Corinthians that “we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven.” Looking forward to that time when “what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.” Then Paul refers to the down payment, the foretaste that God has given us, “Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.”

 

How can we live like this? By learning to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2Cor. 5:7). We, by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, learn to “see” as we were meant to see, to understand as we were meant to understand, looking not at the things seen, but rather at the things that are unseen (2Cor. 4:18).

 

We all live in tents, we are all camping out. Are we allowing God to use this awareness to draw us closer and closer to Himself, deeper and deeper into Himself? O what a glorious future we have in our Lord Jesus Christ, unfathomable in its glory and joy, in its love and splendor. O how He loves you and me…and how He desires that we share His love with others.