THE THIRD PART: 24 CRUCIAL LINES IN THE BIBLE
The Divine Dispensing
Message Two—God’s Dispensing Revealed in the Experience of the Patriarchs
Scripture Reading: Gen. 3:15; 20:21; 4:4, 26; 5:22, 24; 6:9, 14; 7:7; 12:1; 26:4; 28:12-14, 16:19; 32:28; 41:40-41
I. In the first two chapters of the Bible God clearly shows us that His intention is to have a Bride bearing His image, possessing His life, and being transformed and built up as a Bride to match Him, to satisfy Him, and to express Him—Gen. 1:26-27; 2:11-12, 18.
II. God is going to reach His goal through all the dispensations and complete His work of making us His counterpart; He began to work in Genesis 3, and He works through the entire Old Testament and the New Testament to reach His goal—the New Jerusalem—Rev. 21:2; cf. Gen. 3:
A. God intended that Adam would take the divine life into himself, and that he would have the flowing of the river within him to be transformed into gold, bdellium, and onyx stone for the building up of a bride—Gen. 2:9, 12-13, 22:
1. But he got fallen away from God, in other words he lost God; that was a real loss—Gen. 3:6-7, 24.
2. But God is eternal, and He would never give up His intention; after man’s fall God came in to find Adam; the first word that God spoke to fallen man was, “Where are you?”—Gen. 3:9:
a. After God found Adam He gave him a promise that the seed of woman would bruise the head of the serpent, the seed indicates life-giving; instead of death, life was there; so this was good news! This was the gospel! This was the first preaching of the gospel in the entire universe; this gospel preaching was concerning Christ being the seed of woman—Gen. 3:15.
b. Eventually Christ came through a virgin; he was the Son of a virgin, also the seed of the woman—Matt. 1:21-23.
c. Adam believed this gospel because he called his wife’s name Eve, indicating she would be the mother of all who live; that was the strong sign that Adam believed in God’s promise as the gospel—Gen. 3:20.
d. Adam believed, and God also did something; He made a coat of the skin of an animal sacrifice to cover Adam—Gen. 3:21.
3. So in the first great landmark of human history, Adam, you can see the fall of man, the gospel, and redemption—See Gen. 3.
B. Abel was the continuation of Adam; Adam was redeemed, Abel was not only redeemed, but also brought back to God, through the offering typifying Christ—Gen. 4:4:
1. Abel’s offering was not for sins; his offerings were for fellowship with God; through these offerings, which were types of Christ, he was fully accepted by God; but he suffered the persecution, the martyrdom for God’s testimony—vv. 5-8.
2. It is the same today; if we bear God’s testimony that we can fellowship with God through Christ we will suffer the persecution—2 Tim. 3:12.
C. Enosh realized that he was weak and fragile, so he had no trust in himself; he called upon the name of Jehovah—Gen. 4:26:
1. He did not call upon the name of God the Almighty, but upon the name of Jehovah, the Eternal One, the One who was, who is, and who will be, the One who is the great I Am; He is the great to be; He is the reality, He exists forever—Exo. 3:14; 1:4, 8.
2. Enosh lived, not by his fragile man, but by the great I Am, the ever-existing, eternal Lord—Gen. 4:26.
D. In Enoch there is a man walking with Elohim; this is the life under God’s dispensing; by this that God can carry out His dispensation, dispensing Himself into man—Gen. 5:22:
1. In the Bible walking means to have your life, to have your being, to do things, to say things, to think things, to go anywhere; to walk with God is to have your life with God—Gal. 2:20.
2. Enoch not only walked with God, but also was taken away from death; this kind of “God-walking” kept Enoch from death—Gen. 5:24.
3. In principle today it is the same; whenever we walk with the Lord and live with the Lord, at that time we are kept away from death; as we walk with Him, He is dispensing Himself into our being, so we are kept away from death—Rom. 8:10, 6, 11.
E. As a continuation of Enoch, Noah not only walked with God, but went further and worked with God according to God’s salvation; eventually Noah with his entire family entered into the ark, entered into what he had worked for God and with God to be kept away from the judgment of death-water—Gen. 6:9; 7:7, 14:
1. Noah was a person who was not only fallen and redeemed, who was not only brought back to God, who not only called on the Lord’s name, who not only lived by Him and walked with Him, but also worked with Him, he had a common interest with God—Gen. 6:9, 14, 22.
2. Today we should follow the same steps, not only to work with God, but to enter into what we have worked with God and for God, that we may enjoy the practical and present Christ and be kept away from the judgment of death—Phil. 2:12; 1 Pet. 3:20.
F. Acts 7 tells us that the very God who called Abraham appeared to him as the God of glory; glory is the highest attraction; that glory attracted Abraham; then Abraham received God’s promise of the gospel with the Spirit as the blessing—Gen. 12:2-3; Gal. 3:8, 14:
1. The blessing of this gospel is the Spirit; this charming Jesus today is the life-giving Spirit; this is why He is not only charming, but also prevailing—1 Cor. 15:45b.
2. The blessing of Abraham is just the life-giving Spirit; when the life-giving Spirit comes to us, that is the Triune God reaching us—Gal. 3:14.
G. The riches of God were typified by the rich produce of the good land which was inherited by Isaac; this signifies that we who have received such a gospel inherit all the riches of God—Gen. 25:5; 26:4; 28:13-14.
H. God made it clear to Jacob that what was on His heart was a house; heaven is not God’s house, God’s house is His redeemed people; God wants His redeemed people to be His dwelling place, His house—Gen. 28:12; Eph. 2:22.
I. After Jacob’s transformation, Joseph became a great steward to carry out God’s dispensation, to distribute the riches of God to feed all the hungry people on the earth—Gen. 41:48-49, 56-57.
III. The end of Genesis shows us a prince of God, filled with God, saturated with God, one with God to express Him and to reign for Him; here we can see the goal of God’s dispensation—to make God’s chosen people one with Him, bearing His image, possessing His life, and having the flow of life within to transform them into His glorious image to express Him and to reign for Him—Gen. 47:29-31; 42:6.
Ministry Excerpts:
THE ENTIRE BIBLE CONSUMMATING IN THE NEW JERUSALEM
The entire Bible consummates in the New Jerusalem. In the first two chapters of the Bible God clearly shows us that His intention is to have a Bride bearing His image, possessing His life, and being transformed and built up as a Bride to match Him, to satisfy Him, and to express Him. God’s eternal intention is not just to save a group of sinners and bring them into heaven, but to have a glorious Bride to be His counterpart to match Him. How He is, this Bride should also be. This Bride will be a match to the Triune God for His expression. This is much, much greater than forgiveness of sin or going to heaven. This is to make all of us a part of God just like a wife is a part of her husband. God is going to reach His goal through all the dispensations and complete His work of making us His counterpart. He began to work in Genesis 3, and He works through the entire Old Testament and the New Testament to reach His goal, the New Jerusalem. God’s goal is a city which will be His Bride. The entire city of the New Jerusalem will be a Bride. It will be a corporate Bride bearing His glorious image to express Him, built up with God the Father’s nature, through God the Son’s death and resurrection, and by God the Spirit’s transformation. This city will be nourished and supplied and fed all the time with the divine life signified by the river of water of life and the tree of life. Then in the entire universe there will be such an organism to match God, to be His Bride, His counterpart, to satisfy Him and express Him. This is God’s goal in His dispensations, and today the proper church life is just a miniature of this Bride. Hallelujah for such a goal!
In this message we want to look at the book of Genesis from a bird’s eye view. If you have such a view of Genesis you will realize that it is composed of eight great persons with an annex. There are Adam, Abel, Enosh, Enoch, and Noah. There are also Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with Joseph as an annex to Jacob. In our life-study on Genesis we pointed out that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob depict one complete person with Joseph as an annex. So there are two groups and a total of nine great men as landmarks of the human race.
ADAM
The first great landmark of the human race was Adam, who fell away from God. We should not forget that he was the first generation of mankind. He was the father of all of us, and he was made in the image of God. God intended that Adam would take the divine life into himself, and that he would have the flowing of the river within him to be transformed into gold, bdellium, and onyx stone for the building up of a bride. But he got fallen away from God, in other words he lost God. That was a real loss. If you lose God, you lose everything. In Genesis 2 God charged him to be careful about his eating. There were two categories of food. One would issue in life, and the other in death. And Adam ate the wrong one. After eating the wrong tree, he realized that he was about to die. That threatened him so he kept himself away from God’s presence and hid himself under a covering.
But God is eternal, and He would never give up His intention. After man’s fall God came in to find Adam. The first word that God spoke to fallen man was, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). After God found Adam He gave him a promise that the seed of woman would bruise the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). Such a word to them was the gospel! That was good news, because after Eve and Adam had eaten of the wrong tree, they were scared and prepared to die. They thought that their destiny was nothing but death. But God spoke to them about the seed. The seed indicates life-giving. Instead of death, life was there. So this was good news! This was the gospel! This was the first preaching of the gospel in the entire universe. This gospel preaching was concerning Christ being the seed of woman. Eventually Christ came through a virgin. He was the Son of a virgin. The Son of a virgin is just the seed of the woman. Surely Eve and Adam were scared and they hated that serpent, so God promised them that the seed of woman would bruise the head of the serpent. Hallelujah for such a gospel! We know that Adam believed this gospel because he called his wife’s name Eve, indicating she would be the mother of all who live (Gen. 3:20). That was the strong sign that Adam believed in God’s promise as the gospel. Adam believed, and God also did something. He made a coat of the skin of an animal sacrifice to cover Adam (Gen. 3:21). We know that the coat of the skin of the sacrifice was a type of Christ being our righteousness. So in the first great landmark of human history, Adam, you can see the fall of man, the gospel, and redemption.
ABEL
From Adam we go on to Abel. Revelation with all of these great men was progressive. It was advancing from one level to another level until it reached the top. Abel was the continuation of Adam. Adam was redeemed. Abel was not only redeemed, but also brought back to God, through the offering typifying Christ (Gen. 4:4). We too were not only redeemed, but also brought back to God to contact God and to fellowship with God. Abel’s offering was not for sins. His offerings were for fellowship with God. Through these offerings, which were types of Christ, he was fully accepted by God. But he suffered the persecution, the martyrdom for God’s testimony (Gen. 4:5-8). It is the same today. If we bear God’s testimony that we can fellowship with God through Christ we will suffer the persecution.
ENOSH
From Abel we go on to Enosh. The word Enosh indicates a fragile man. I do believe that Seth, Enosh’s father, realized that they were fragile men, so he named his son Enosh, meaning a fragile man. Enosh realized that he was weak and fragile, so he had no trust in himself. He called upon the name of Jehovah (v. 26). He did not call upon the name of God the Almighty, but upon the name of Jehovah, the Eternal One, the One who was, who is, and who will be, the One who is the great I Am. He is the great to be. In the entire universe everything is vanity. Everything is not to be. Everything is to vanish away. Only this Eternal One is to be; only He is. He is the reality. He exists forever. Yesterday, today, and forever, He is the same, without any change. He is the self-existing and ever-existing One. He is everything. Whatever you need, He is. His name is I Am.
In Genesis 4 Enosh realized that he was weak and fragile, so he called upon the name of this ever-existing One. This means that this fragile man did not live by himself. He lived by the ever-existing One. This is like saying, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). Enosh lived, not by his fragile man, but by the great I Am, the ever-existing, eternal Lord. How did he live this life? It was by calling on this name. So you can see that to call upon the name of the Lord is an ancient matter. It is not our invention today. We are so weak, so fragile, so easy to be broken. Just a long face from our wife can put us down. Just one half sentence from our boy can break us. We are so fragile, we have no way to live, so we call upon His name. When we call upon Him, He lives for us! We are fragile, but He is so strong. So we call upon His name. Calling on the Lord’s name makes us happy, strong, and even victorious. This was the landmark of Enosh. Hallelujah for such a landmark! In human history that was the landmark of one who called upon the name of the Lord.
ENOCH
Enoch went further than calling upon the name of Jehovah; he walked with God. Sisters, don’t just call on the name of the Lord. After you call upon the name of the Lord you need to walk with the Lord. When you go to see your husband, the Lord Jesus needs to walk with you. What kind of life is this? This is the life under God’s dispensing. It is by this that God can carry out His dispensation, dispensing Himself into man. In the Bible walking means to have your life, to have your being, to do things, to say things, to think things, to go anywhere. To walk with God is to have your life with God. This does not mean that God would be willing to go every place and to do everything with Enoch. Sometimes God would probably say no, that He would not go there, or that He would not do a certain thing. Suppose at that time Enoch would not go along with God. That would break their walking together. In our experience we realize this. Too many times we call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus comes to walk with us. But then we want to do something which He does not want to do. When we insist on doing our thing, this breaks the company, the walking together. After calling upon the Lord’s name, you have to go with the Lord. Then the Lord would go with you. Don’t ask Him to follow you; you have to follow Him. It is not that God walked with Enoch, but that Enoch walked with God. God did not live Enoch’s life, but Enoch lived God’s life. He was living a life that was God’s life. Isn’t this wonderful!
Enoch not only walked with God, but also was taken away from death (Gen. 5:24). Genesis 5 is a record of death. It tells us that this one died, that one died, and another one died. Everyone was under death, but Enoch was kept from death. By walking with God day after day for three hundred years he was kept in everything away from the element and atmosphere of death. This kind of “God-walking” kept Enoch from death.
NOAH
From Enoch we go on to Noah. As a continuation of Enoch, Noah not only walked with God (6:9), but went further and worked with God according to God’s salvation (Gen. 6:14). He was one in the same interest with God. At that time God was very much interested in building the ark. But God did not do it by Himself. He charged His co-worker, Noah, to build the ark for Him. So Noah worked with God.
Noah was not building something else. He was building the ark. The ark built by Noah was a type, not of a historical Christ, but of a present Christ. It is not a Christ far away from us, but a practical Christ. Today in the Lord’s recovery, we are building up such a Christ. We are building up a practical and present Christ to be a salvation, not only to ourselves, but also to others. The local churches are building up the ark for the salvation of so many others, because we are now in a common interest with God.
Eventually Noah with his entire family entered into the ark, entered into what he had worked for God and with God (Gen. 7:7) to be kept away from the judgment of death-water. Today we should follow the same steps, not only to work with God, but to enter into what we have worked with God and for God, that we may enjoy the practical and present Christ and be kept away from the judgment of death.
ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND JACOB (WITH JOSEPH)
Now we have to go on from Noah to this complete person composed with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with Joseph. With this complete person you can see more items. This complete person was called by God as the God of glory (Gen. 12:1; Acts 7:2-3; Heb. 11:8). And even before he was called, he was chosen by God (Rom. 9:11-13).
Acts 7 tells us that the very God who called Abraham appeared to him as the God of glory. Glory is the highest attraction. Look at the situation. Abraham was living in an idolatrous country with so many attractions. Suddenly the very God of glory came and called him out. The attraction to come out of that country was the very glory of God. That glory attracted Abraham.
Then Abraham received God’s promise of the gospel with the Spirit as the blessing (Gen. 12:2-3; Gal. 3:8, 14). Galatians 3:8 tells us that what God spoke to Abraham in Genesis 12 was the preaching of the gospel. This is the second preaching of the gospel in the Scriptures. The first was in Genesis 3:15. The first preaching of the gospel was concerning the seed of the woman, and the second preaching of the gospel was concerning the seed of Abraham. This is the same seed. The seed of the woman is the seed of Abraham. The seed is Jesus Christ, the charming One. This is the center of the gospel. The blessing of this gospel is the Spirit. This charming Jesus today is the life-giving Spirit. This is why He is not only charming, but also prevailing. People might ask, Where is your Jesus? My Jesus is within me! He is the Spirit. He is prevailing. He is living, and He lives in me. Sometimes I can hardly bear His wonderful living within me. It is too wonderful! Hallelujah! This is the blessing of Abraham. The blessing of Abraham is just the life-giving Spirit (Gal. 3:14). When the life-giving Spirit comes to us, that is the Triune God reaching us. It is not a small thing for the life-giving Spirit to live in us. That means that the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—all are here. Our Christ is living, and He is living within us. We have received such a gospel.
Not only have we received such a gospel, but we are also inheriting all the riches of God. The riches of God were typified by the rich produce of the good land which was inherited by Isaac (Gen. 25:5; 26:4; 28:13-14). This signifies that we who have received such a gospel inherit all the riches of God. It is too rich!
After this we need to see a vision. According to the record of the Bible after Isaac inherited all the riches, his continuation, Jacob, saw a vision in a dream. He saw the vision of Bethel, of God’s house (Gen 28:12-13, 16-19). God made it clear to Jacob that what was on His heart was a house. Heaven is not God’s house. God’s house is His redeemed people. God wants His redeemed people to be His dwelling place, His house. According to Isaiah 66:1 and 2 heaven is God’s throne, and the earth is His footstool. What then is His house? Isaiah tells us clearly that man is God’s dwelling place. The heart of the contrite one is God’s house. God does not desire to dwell in heaven. He wants to dwell in you and me in a corporate way.
When Jacob saw the dream, he was not yet transformed. He was still a supplanter, a heel-holder. On the one hand he saw the vision of Bethel, and on the other hand he was being transformed. One day God came in to change his name from supplanter to the prince of God, from Jacob to Israel (Gen. 32:28; 41:40-41). He was transformed into the prince of God to express Him and to reign for Him on the earth.
After Jacob’s transformation, Joseph became a great steward to carry out God’s dispensation, to distribute the riches of God to feed all the hungry people on the earth. All eight of these great persons plus Joseph actually depict one complete person.
Our experience can be fully seen in these nine great men. You are Adam, and you are Abel. You are Enosh, and you are Enoch. You are Noah. You are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with Joseph. Eventually you will be transformed. Today we are on the way to be transformed. In Adam we got fallen and redeemed. In Abel we were brought back to God and suffered persecution. In Enosh we called upon the name of the Lord and lived not by ourselves but by Him. In Enoch we walked with God. And in Noah we worked with God. In Abraham we were called out by the God of glory, and in Isaac we inherited all the riches of God. In Jacob the supplanter we saw God’s choosing and the dream of God’s house. How marvelous that even the supplanters are qualified to see the vision of God’s house. In Israel we became the prince of God, and in Joseph we reigned to distribute the riches of God to the hungry ones. This is God’s dispensation. By the time you come to Israel and Joseph, God has nearly been fully infused into man. This man became the prince of God. He became one with God to express Him and to reign for Him.
This is God’s dispensing in His dispensation. God has dispensed Himself to carry out His dispensation. By this dispensing in His dispensation He could have a prince on this earth who was saturated with Himself. He could work Himself into His chosen people to express Him and to reign for Him. The end of Genesis shows us a prince of God, filled with God, saturated with God, one with God to express Him and to reign for Him. Here we can see the goal of God’s dispensation—to make God’s chosen people one with Him, bearing His image, possessing His life, and having the flow of life within to transform them into His glorious image to express Him and to reign for Him. Hallelujah for such a wonderful dispensing of God in His dispensation and its glorious goal! (The Divine Dispensing of the Divine Trinity, ch. 2)