The Gifts or The Giver?

8/2/1997

The thing that prompted me to think about the following chapter is the thought that all that our lives really encompass are gifts from God. Everything we have - the air we breathe, the food we eat, the children, the jobs, the ability to share life with one another is all a gift from God. He has poured that into our hearts and hands to use as He might use, not as we might use, but as we might be stewards of any gift that He gives. Also the thought that it might give some illumination, some encouragement, some direction with regards to how we consider the gifts that God gives.

“The Gifts or the Giver” from Changed Into His Likeness by Watchman Nee

“Abraham had learned that God is Father. This it was that made possible his prayer for Abimelech’s household. He knew that neither their troubles nor Sarah’s hindered God in the least. He knew that ultimately, fruitfulness depended neither on them nor on himself. It was God’s gift. He could not have prayed for the people of Gerar if he had still been nursing hopes in himself in regard to his own need. He prayed a costly prayer, and the price of it was a complete abandonment of himself. It was a prayer God would answer immediately.

“To know God in the closest relationship of ‘our Father’ is one thing. To know Him as God the Father, the source and originator of everything is something more. Abraham had learned that nothing could hinder and nothing could help God. He is Almighty.

We read now that Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian mocking and that she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.’ This appears to be merely human jealousy, but God was speaking through Sarah. This is clear from Galatians 4:30. Ultimately, only one son can fulfill God’s purpose, namely Christ.

“Ishmael represents Adam, the man of the flesh. In him we are in bondage, and Paul says ‘With freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.’ (Gal. 5:1). How then, are we to act toward the flesh?

“Notice first that Ishmael was not cast out until after Isaac was born and weaned. It is no use preaching against the flesh to unbelievers. They are flesh, and they possess nothing else! There must be an Isaac, a new birth. When Isaac came into his position and was recognized as the son, then Ishmael was cast out. It is Christ dwelling in us who sets us free. ‘Walk by the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. They that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lust thereof.’(Gal. 5:16, 24).

“ Now at last God’s way with Abraham was complete. We come to Chapter 22, and it is God’s Glory that here He could still test His servant. ‘It came to pass after these things that God did prove Abraham.’ How many of us can stand being tested yet again when all the lessons have already been learned?

“What God now demanded of Abraham was nothing less than the outright sacrifice of his son. The Old Testament story emphasizes the emotional crises this was for Abraham personally. ‘Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, even Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering.’

“But it is in the New Testament that we are shown the real costliness of this demand. Far more than mere human feelings were at issue. ‘By faith, Abraham, being tried, offered up Isaac: yes, he that had gladly received the promises was offering up his only begotten son even he to whom it was said, ‘In Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God is able to raise up even from the dead from whence He also did in a parable receive him back.’ Isaac was the son God had promised, the hope of his posterity. That was the thing at stake, namely God’s matchless purpose of love. The son was not merely a personal matter to Abraham. If this heir of the promise died, upon whom hung the entire plan of God? Then what remained? Thus it was that this third test came to Abraham, not as an individual, but as a vessel of the divine purpose.”

That was one of the key thoughts that I was thinking of through the reading of this chapter is that the divine purpose was worked through Abraham. God chose him, but it was really all a gift. His faith was a gift from God, both his sons were gifts from God, everything that Abraham and Sarah ever walked in or knew or ever saw was a gift of God revealing Himself to them and to his people. It was this third test that came to Abraham, not as an individual, but as a vessel of the divine purpose.

(Nee chapter continued):

“For all the fullness of promise was settled upon Isaac. To sacrifice him was to sacrifice the covenant Word of God. This very witness to God and the nations turned upon this lad, and he was to be given up.

“Ishmael was mine. To turn him out is reasonable. I respect that. But Isaac--he is not, in that sense, mine. He came by promise, entirely from God. I did not even ask for him. God gave him. Now he wants me to give him back. And He is not even taking him naturally by death. I must sacrifice him. In the first place, I didn’t want him, for I had Ishmael, so why give him? Having so wonderfully given him, why not leave him? But to give him and then to ask for him back? It is not reasonable.

“Once again, Abraham must know God as Father. Isaac truly was from God. There was no problem there. The problem now was with Abraham’s concern with Isaac. We must not become tied up possessively with God’s gifts. Abraham had learned that God was Father in the birth of Isaac; he must learn that God is still Father after his birth. We often recognize it before Isaac comes, but when we look at Isaac, we cannot do without Isaac.

“The question is, is it still God who occupies our vision, or Isaac? Before Isaac’s birth, the two were one (the vision and the hope). Now they have become two, representing two claims upon our attention. We think now Isaac has come, God’s work is done and everything turns upon him. But God’s promise is still with Himself, not with His gift.

“Isaac can stand for many things. He represents many gifts of God’s grace. Before God gives them, our hands are empty. Afterward, they are full. Sometimes God reaches out his hand to take ours in fellowship. Then we need an empty hand to put into His. But when we have received his gifts and are nursing them to ourselves, our hands are full, and when God puts out his hand, we have no empty hand for Him. We can dwell on His gifts at the neglect of Him. Often, we forget that our experience is not for our lifelong use. Our source of life is God, not our experiences. We hold onto the experience and forget God as Father. Let go of the gift, and the experience, and hold onto God. Isaac can be done without, but God is eternal.

“But as we have said, this matter of Isaac goes deeper. It is concerned with more than individual matters--with God’s gifts to us personally and with our personal experiences of Him. Isaac was intimately linked with God’s will. In fact, Abraham might have been led to feel that Isaac, in fact, represented God’s will and therefore must be held onto for that reason. But at the risk of seeming to press this matter excessively, we must affirm that the will of God is not bound up with any Isaac, but with God Himself.

“It will help us if we compare together two chapters in the New Testament, Luke 22 and John 18, which hopefully illuminates this passage. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus knelt and prayed, ‘Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me: nevertheless, not My will, but thine be done.’(Luke 22:42). This request of His that the cup might pass from Him does not represent His fear of the cross. We cannot doubt our Lord’s courage. If martyrs have gladly died for Him through the ages, certainly their Lord did not fear crucifixion.

“But there is a distinction here between what Jesus called the cup and the will. The cup was surely the work that God had sent Him to do, and this included the cross. The will was something lying behind that in the heart of God Himself. The cup in this passage is just one work - redemption. Jesus knew He had come for that work, even before He left heaven. Yet He had not become so bound to it that He could not let it go. There was an ‘if possible’ in it, and of course there were real human reasons why some other alternative might be welcome, if God so willed. But for Him there was no ’if possible’ about God’s will; that must be done, ‘possible’or not. Right up to the night before his crucifixion, Jesus never thought, ‘I must be crucified at all costs,’ but only, ‘I must do the will of Him that sent me.’ The one is subsidiary and might possibly be changed; the other, the will of God, is something in God Himself and must be done. Important, no vital, as the cross most certainly was, the Lord Jesus had not grasped it to Himself. All that mattered to Him was the Father’s Will and the decision of how that Will should be fulfilled remained in the Father’s hands, not his.

“So the cup represents the work, and the will represents God Himself. We are concerned with God Himself, not the thing He wants us to do. With Christ, the will of God was an ever-present thing ever to be done. He was not even tied up to a single point in that will, such as the crucifixion. But when it was clear to Him that without any question the cross was in the will of God for Him, then with equal positiveness He said to Peter (and notice that these words follow the previous ones) ‘The cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?’ (John 18:11) Jesus puts first things first, the Father’s will before the work that will involves.

“How perverse we are! Until Isaac comes, we are like Abraham; we do not want him. But once Isaac has been given, we cannot do without him and we must hold onto him. First we oppose Isaac; then we possess him. That is what man is! And that is what Moriah deals with. It was Abraham’s last test.

“Do we love the work God has given us to do at the expense of the Giver of it? Or is our fellowship with God the same whether He gives or whether He withdraws our Isaac? Only as it is so can what Isaac represents be maintained upon the earth. Praise God, Abraham did not murmur at all. He did not even use the word ‘sacrifice’. He said, ‘I and the lad will go yonder, and we will worship, and come again to you.’ (Genesis 22:5) This experience really was worship to him.

“Then it was that God could give Isaac back. The possessive bond was already broken. The attitude of Abraham’s heart was, “I dare not think too much of Isaac. I don’t know what God is going to do with him.

“But out of this experience, there came a further thing for Abraham; he discovered that God was not only the God of creation, but also the God of resurrection. Hebrews 11:19 tells us ‘that God is able to raise up even from the dead; from whence he also did in a parable receive him back.’ In this also he knew God as Father, and for this too he was reckoned righteous. ‘Was not Abraham our Father justified by works in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? Thou sees that faith wrought with his works and by works was faith made perfect; and the scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. He was called the friend of God.’ Everything that is really of value to us, even the work God gives us, and even our knowledge of God’s will, must go through death to resurrection. In resurrection we know it can be something so miraculously of God that we can never again take it possessively into our hands. Resurrection puts it out of our reach. Isaac is born in my home, but he dwells in God’s. He is not mine; I cannot hold him. God has become everything. This accords with the opening words of God’s promise to Abraham there on the Mount,’By myself have I sworn, says the Lord.’ There is nothing greater than that.

“The fully developed promise that follows is very wonderful. ’ Because thou has done this thing and has not withheld thy son, thine only son: … in blessing I bless thee and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.’ Abraham’s call was first for the land, second for the people of God and now third for the ‘nations of the earth.’

“Through deep experience, Abraham has come to know God, not just as the Giver of gifts, but as the Father, the source of everything. It was this that qualified him to be the Father of them that believe. It was this that fitted him to be God’s vessel in the divine program of recovery.”

For those who have children he was making some parallels of issues of having children, but on a more practical, day by day level the things that crossed my minds were things that I know God puts into my hands and asks me to be a good steward with regard to my money, my personal possessions, my family, my time, my thoughts.... all the things that I have that I can see, touch and know by faith are actually gifts from God. Many times recently I have been challenged in my heart to give those things back to Him if He requests them as a declaration that He is sovereign and everything that I have I owe to Him. My hands need to be empty in order to hold His and to fellowship with Him. He is God. He can ask back anything He wants, and there is a purpose behind it. We know it’s not selfishness, we know it’s not greed on His part. Why would God be greedy? He created everything and owns everything, so there is no need for that. There are lessons to be learned in offering things back to God that He has given us and being faithful with the gifts and other types of blessings that seem to be taken for granted or abused, at least by me from time to time.

I found the chapter challenging to a point, but encouraging too, to see a bigger picture, another aspect of the nature of God and His character, his desire for us. Everything He does is for our good, for our building up, for our blessing, that we might see the power and the resurrection, not just the blessing of a gift, but the power of giving that gift up for greater purpose, for something else to test our faith.