“Flee, get you far off, dwell deep” (Jer. xlix. 30).
IN view of the threatened invasion of this northern town by the armies of Nebuchadrezzar, the inhabitants of Hazor were advised to “dwell deep.” These words suggest a number of applications to our conditions in the “vale” to-day, but there is one which is specially important to us, and under the guidance of the blessed Spirit we shall confine ourselves to questions arising from it alone. Later, if the Lord will, we may apply the words to other conditions.
We require to “dwell deep” in view of the materialism of these days. The world has always regarded the witness of God’s Word to eternity with special hatred; yet sour, untoward and uninviting though its reception to this witness in the past has been, the truth itself has not always failed to exert a restraining and sobering influence upon even the most hardened.
We fear, however, that under the gross materialism of these days even this slight blessing is lost. It is lost because the word “eternity” itself has become almost a lost word. There was a time when we might hear the word break from the lips of the worldly with more frequency and seriousness than it is heard to-day from many pulpits. It has become a lost word even to the pages of many Church magazines. A Welfare State in politics; which makes place for this life and for that alone, a Social Gospel which makes the kingdom of God a matter of houses, health and temporal order; and the chief end of man, the filling to bursting point of his now with pleasures, excitements, thrills and money, have ousted the word “eternity” from our present usage. Eternity, however, is of God, and its reality can no more be ousted from our existence than can be the God who made us what we are.
It is under the impact of this materialism that the child of God often reels, and it is with fear and trembling that he finds the pilgrim and stranger within him stifled and silenced. The power wherewith the Holy Spirit once demonstrated the things of eternity to his fully awakened soul, he feels is no more than a memory now. This makes him sad and apprehensive of the future. Under a realisation of the “powers of the world to come,” he experienced a taste of these powers which has never really left him, and he longs for the former powerful manifestation by which that taste was given. To recapture this sense of things eternal, we must “dwell deep,” for it was down in the depths that the Holy Spirit began the solemn work of pressing eternity upon our attention. Well do you remember how, with effortless arms, he placed within your easy reach great armfuls of your own eternal things. You remember too, how ready was your ingathering of them, as with sure hand He directed the laying up of them in the very centre of your soul. You did not then require that any man should remind you of eternity, for the pangs and upheavings of eternal truths within you were more poignant than any witness from beyond you. From within you the light of eternity reached out, and fell on even the least important things touched and handled by you. When with uninterrupted voice the Holy Spirit witnessed to your personal eternity, how every chamber of your heart resounded with the solemn truth, and even a whisper bespeaking eternity became a voice of thunder. What did this powerful witness not keep you from? What did it not send you to? Eternity became your gauge; your only gauge for all that was reasonable and right; and you sought to use it more and more, and apply it to a wider and yet wider circle of things. In all this you were not passive nor were you laboriously active, for a gracious impulse made it easy for you to live and move in midst of these realities. And even then you felt that eternity was none too real to you, and your seeking was for a still deeper conviction of the reality of it. Your seeking was to yoke your time to your eternal state. Eternity was a reality and you loved to have it so. How far off are you now from this sanctified view of things? How tardily do your eyes turn in its direction now. How casual is the look towards it, how fleeting is the influence of it upon you? Where hot-footed your soul once ran, now it is with effort you are able to force it to one short step. Wide-eyed amazement has given place to the heavy peering of eyes dulled and glazed by the dust of earth. I do not know how far the materialism of this age has contributed towards these sad changes, but that it has done so in some degree I am sure. The call to you is to “dwell deep.” Seek your Friend, the Holy Spirit, and with Him seek the depths where reality is found. This surface dwelling is as dangerous for you as it was for Demas. “A deceived heart hath turned him aside . . . till a dart strike him through the liver . . . and he knoweth not it is his life.” Oh, dwell deep, not only for your own sake, but for the sake of Him who in love charges you to lay up treasure in Heaven—in eternity.
Consider the eternity of your God.
To Him one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as one day. “The eternity of God is nothing else than his immediate, perfect and invariable possession of the whole of his unlimited life, together and at once” (Shedd). In God’s eternal NOW, the thousand years and the day are alike, comparisons and contrasts have an end. Prior to and forthwith, all time and the creation which goes to maintain all within it, is the throne of the Eternal and the Ancient of Days sits thereon. “He stretches the North over the empty place and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” All nations before him are less than nothing, and the sum total of all material existence is no more before him than the rapidly evaporating drop falling from a bucket. He is your God who shall change all like a garment and they shall be changed sure, and it is in this eternity of His being that he is a refuge for you. “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms,” The eternal God—God our Saviour—has become the believers’ personal eternity. The Saviourhood of Christ and your personal eternity is one in the eternal God. Dwell deep in the wounds of Christ and you dwell deep in the secret places of the Ancient of Days. Thus you are an heir of God, of the eternal God, and since He is not far from any of us, neither is your eternity far from you. Your fleeting days are lived upon the shoreless bosom of Him who is at once the “Child born,” and “The everlasting Father.” “Dwell deep” in this liberating, humbling, ennobling, weaning and mellowing fact. You cannot have this God without the sanctifying influence of His eternity bearing fruit in your life.
Unconverted man, dwell deep in the thought of your own eternity.
Yes, your own, for your indifference hitherto is a sure token of the kind of eternity you are even now laying up for yourself. “If you believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.” To die in your sins is to die under the wrath of God which abideth for ever. Your personal eternity will consist of your personal contact with our God, who eternally is a consuming fire to the man of the world. “Their knowledge and sense of their misery shall be eternal and they shall know assuredly that it will be eternal . . . This shall fill them with everlasting despair . . . To see floods of wrath coming and never to cease . . . This will fill them with hate and rage against God” (Boston). As you read this, see the bosom loads of wrath you are gathering to yourself. “Dwell deep,” leave forever the surface view of things. You will not find the realities of your eternity in worldly pleasures, nor in earthly schemes. Your delusion is, that what you now possess and enjoy, are things which really abide. Friend, in the nature of things only that which is eternal in its life can abide eternally. The fire of eternity, the fire of your personal eternity, will take all from you and consume it until nothing remains—except that fire, and “their worm dieth not.” Oh! to escape this delusion, dwell deep. Take the blessed Book of God, so long neglected by you, take it down beyond the sight and sound of a delusive world; begin at the beginning and dwell deep in every portion that refers to your personal eternity. Oh! for once, seek a depth of sincerity in dealing with yourself. Take paper and pencil if need be. Put down there all that you possess and all you still seek to acquire. Under the searching light of the Bible’s eternity, write off every item void of eternal life. Seek the Spirit of truth that He may make you more honest with yourself than you ever have been before. Where you cannot find eternal life, you must find eternal death—eternal fire. Oh, that strong arrows of the strong might even now pierce the gross materialism which envelopes your soul. Oh! that one such arrow, searing its burning way, might stab your conscience into fiery and painful awareness of your personal eternity. The invasion is upon you, you are fighting for your eternity. Soon, very soon, you will find yourself still grabbing, grasping, gripping, and cleaving to your empty things, while under you, your footing breaks and, slipping and sliding, you sink down into the awful eternity you have prepared for yourself.
Believer, dwell deep in the view of your own personal eternity.
The light from eternity bears down with a brightness intense and terrifying upon the unbeliever, but the light from the believer’s eternity is mellow and inviting. “I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish: This is eternal life that they may know thee the only true God: I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there ye may be also: a city whose builder and maker is God: a house eternal in the Heavens: we are made to sit in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus: My beloved is mine and I am His (in Heaven).” Soon there shall be no earth and then, “My beloved is mine and I am his,” will be the language of salvation’s eternal Now. Oh! with quiet and firm assurance, dwell deeply in this indisputable fact. Here is the end of every truth and experience relative to Christ and you. As you are in Him, one great end of his incarnation, humiliation, death, resurrection, and every other item of His Saviourhood has its end only in your occupying a place with Him in Heaven. So too with all that has been wrought in you, or for you. Your calling, justification, adoption, and every other blessing which involves believership looks out definitely and constantly on your eternity with your Lord. Elected in him, your eternal issues are bound up with Him. You can no more fail of entering upon eternal life than can any of His perfections which guarantee you this blessing, degenerate or become void. No other sinner of Adam’s race can enjoy that particular life in eternity which the decree of God has ordained should be yours. The decree is absolute for Christ and for you in Him. Each promise referring to our eternity in Him and with Him, presents a depth of joy and love. They are not given with the intention of affording a momentary consolation, but rather, one deep and abiding. With the abandon of a Christ-honouring and child-like faith, commit yourself to the serenity and sweetness to be found only in their deep places, and be assured that your pleasurable anticipation of a near eternity with Him, is from all eternity, a pleasure enjoyed by Him who daily awaits your entry upon it.
Dwell deep in this interpretation of all that affects you in this life.
Go down to those depths where faith finds it easy to view the firm hand of God’s loving purpose; place all the odd corners in your life within the house of many mansions. Dwell deep in those depths where you may see all the loose ends of life woven into the pattern of your personal eternity. Let the corners of your experimental theology be smoothed out by this the only satisfying interpretation of the whole round of your existence. Your round of time is contained by the wider round of your eternity, and both your time and eternity is encircled by the covenant of grace, of which your Saviour holding your eternal life is the centre. It is the surface view of life that suggests and tolerates the harassing “ifs” and “might-have-beens” which are the natural food for a querulous and repining spirit. “Underneath are the everlasting arms”; their direction is always forward and upwards, and in their movement not one fragment is lost. Seek to dwell deep in the abiding security of their ample space.
Dwell deep in the sanctifying influences of this truth.
All truth is of use for our sanctification, and that of “the powers of the world to come” is potent in the hand of the Holy Spirit to this end. A mere recognition that there is an eternity, that it is a truth of our theological system, and an admission that it is important on occasions to take a look at it, are at best merely superficial reactions to the truth, and very far from that “deep dwelling” wherewith the truth dwells in us “richly.” “It is good to take long looks into eternity,” wrote one who was accustomed to seek this truth at depth. As thus he lived, no one was surprised when his last words related to “the weight of glory” soon to be entered on by him. Clearly he repeated, “For our light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory”; then as one well practised in the art of projecting his faith into his eternity, with great deliberation he gave the final assessment of what he had found: “There is no comparison between the moment of time and the duration of eternity, and there is no comparison between the light affliction and the exceeding weight of glory.” Take long looks, dwell deep, sit up closely to the open door; look long and far within; project your mind into the deep circles of these solemn realities; become absorbed by them; make them your constant habitation. You cannot then fail of acquiring a holy detachment, a liberty, a dignity, a spiritual poise, that will enable you to deal with all you touch and handle in that God-pleasing way which is the birthright of every true pilgrim and candidate for glory. And let it be remembered that the acquirement of this attitude is no form of mere escapism from the responsibilities of life. It is far from that. That man is the best citizen of this world, who by grace has disciplined his spirit to sit daily at the feet of his own eternity. Among the affairs of this life, no hand is so light in its touch, yet so firm in its grasp, as is the hand that finds the light from eternity a necessity to its every activity. “I heard things not lawful to be uttered,” the Apostle informs us, but, it was not in spite of this, but because of it, that we find this visitant to the third heavens on occasion gathering sticks to make a fire “because of the present cold.” The danger of wet clothes, the discomfort of a cold wind and the relief of himself and others from exposure, were matters of intense and sanctified interest to him. And still—”While we look not at the things which are seen, for the things seen are temporal”—was the only true side to his inner thought and feeling. It is at the depth of the eternal that we find the true and proper place of the temporal.
Dwell deep in anticipation of your soon transition to your eternal home.
For a time at least Jacob seems to have been unduly influenced by the acquisition and the holding of the things of the life “that now is.” That phase passed, however, and his dwelling deeply in the anticipation of his approaching eternity is manifest to all. “Few and evil have the days of my life been,” held the lessons which drove him to “dwell deep.” Often in flight, in harassment, in panic, in fear, in doubt, and in affliction, the patriarch comes to his last bed, and it is a beautiful bed indeed. It was there that he performed one of the most beautiful, orderly, gracious and saintly things he ever did. “And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost and was gathered to his people.” Take note of that man who has lived in the habit of dwelling deep, for surely the end of that man is peace. “How good when it comes to this (a death bed) to have nothing to do but die,” says Bunyan. Surely good indeed. No gripping fingers to wrench open, no stiff knots to untie, no weights laboriously to lay aside. The Lord is good and He is sovereign and He may grant such an exit to such as may have neglected the habit of dying daily, but His command to “watch” indicates His desire that our living should be lived such as our dying must be. The cross once carried on His shoulders is now a key, and the sacred practice and privilege of committal can be learned only on the doorstep of eternity and with one’s eye on the turning key. Dwell deep in daily dying, and through that gracious habit, your final committal will be no more than one of many thousands of such transactions between you and Him who is your life. “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” Surely, surely, a dwelling deep in this thought, has its own reward, and the man who is wise will not lose it.—Penuel.